Sara Miles: "the altar does not belong to the church"

Submitted by Alex Carpenter on February 26, 2007 - 8:14pm.

It's great to wake and read about a Beatitudes blogger in today's paper.

Sara Miles recently spoke for our Graduate Theological Union, sharing both her story and the thrill of her work in combining a community of need and a fresh way to break the bread of Christ.

The San Francisco Chronicle piece starts out:

God probably had a few good giggles over Sara Miles' conversion. The San Francisco writer and former restaurant cook was a happy atheist, a probing journalist who covered wars and revolutions in Central America -- and a woman married to another woman. She certainly didn't intend to become a Christian or -- as she describes it -- "a religious nut." But early one morning she ambled into St. Gregory of Nyssa Episcopal Church on Potrero Hill, took Communion and her life changed. That day Miles found both God and her life's mission: feeding the hungry.

Miles, a former editor at Mother Jones magazine and the founder of St. Gregory's Food Pantry, documents her conversion in "Take This Bread" (Ballantine Books, Feb. 2007). More than a spiritual memoir, the book details her experiences starting and running food pantries, a process that she says causes her to occasionally "cross the line from self-righteous do-gooder to crusading zealot."

That sounds like a 21st century follower of the Beatitudes.

Read the interview here.

» Alex Carpenter's blog

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