About this title: Miles has produced a provocative and witty spiritual memoir from an atheist-turned-religious activist. "Take This Bread" is the story of her journey to faith and how she took Jesus' call to feed others by establishing food pantries that feed thousands of people.
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Binding: Hardcover
Publisher: Ballantine Books
Date Published: 2007
ISBN-13:9780345486929ISBN:0345486927
Description: New in very good dust jacket. unread, remainder mark. Glued binding. Paper over boards. With dust jacket. 283 p. Audience: General/trade. read more
Binding: Softcover
Publisher: Ballantine Books
Date Published: 2008-02-26
ISBN-13:9780345495792ISBN:0345495799
Description: NEW. Softcover. From an inventory that is 100% brand-new, 100% direct from the publishers' distribution channel. We carry NO pre-owned, NO remaindered. We pack in CARDBOARD to ensure the pristine quality is maintained. (Bubble-wrap alone is NOT sufficient to protect from USPS equipment. ) Guaranteed brand-NEW, protected with CARDBOARD, your satisfaction is guaranteed. BKLUVID: 9780345495792. read more
Description: New. 0345486927 Brand New Hardcover In Stock and Ready to ship from Georgia, Same or Next Business Day, Expedite Shipping and receive your book within 3-5 business days. Buy with confidence! Please leave feedback after your purchase. It helps other buyers know we are a responsible and reliable seller. Thank you! read more
Binding: Hardcover
Publisher: Ballantine Books
Date Published: 2007
ISBN-13:9780345486929ISBN:0345486927
Description: Fine in very good dust jacket. Glued binding. Paper over boards. With dust jacket. 283 p. Audience: General/trade. Fine/Very good with price clip to dust jacket that is otherwise as new. Clean inside and out with fine/as new condition boards. read more
Description: Fine. 0345486927 Hard cover book in excellent condition. There is hardly any wear to the cover of the book. The binding is tight and the pages are clean througout. Fast shipping. Expedited available. read more
Binding: Hardcover
Publisher: Ballantine Books, New York
Date Published: 2007
ISBN-13:9780345486929ISBN:0345486927
Description: Book Hardback with dust jacket. Very Good with previous owner's signature on the front free endpaper in a Very Good dust jacket that has some creasing and light wear to edges of jacket. read more
Binding: Paperback
Publisher: Random House Inc
Date Published: 2008
ISBN-13:9780345495792ISBN:0345495799
Description: New. "Mine is a personal story of an unexpected and terribly inconvenient Christian conversion, told by a very unlikely convert. "-Sara Miles Raised as an atheist, Sara Miles lived an enthusiastically secular life as a restaurant cook and a writer. Then e... read more
"San Francisco journalist and former atheist Sara Miles tells the story of wondering into St. Gregory's Episcopal Church, being transformed by receiving communication, and starting a food pantry at the church. As I worked at St. Gregory's when I first moved to San Francisco, I've met Sara and enjoyed reading about her and the history of Saint Gregory's. But the real power of this book is Sara's explanation of her faith grounded in action, love, gratitude, and unconditional acceptance. As she writes, "In breaking bread with my people and hearing their stories..., I was learning something about God. You can't hope to see God without opening yourself to all God's creation.""
"I was so impressed with this book that I called to the church in SF and hunted Ms. Miles down. I arranged to go down with a friend and work one day with her at her food bank. The experience totally turned this book into a work of fiction to me. The minister of the church came and when I went to thank him for the experience of being there you would have thought the world would come to an end simply by me addressing him directly. The persons coming to get food were mostly asian immigrants and were treated with such rancor and disrespect my heart hurt. The conceptual idea expressed in the book is good, the reality of the book is not."
"This is the story of unlikely conversion: A radical lesbian activist, who spend much of her youth involved in people's uprisings in Mexico & Central America, one day walks into a church, receives communion, and is transformed. She becomes filled with the idea of "sharing the body," which for her becomes a command to feed the people. Which leads her to setting up a weekly food bank in the church, and then to helping others in the city start new food banks as well, challenging her congregation, those in her neighborhood, and even those who visit the food bank to expand their ideas of community, service, and comfort.
What I appreciated most about this book was the author's meditations on what it means to "be the body of Christ," and sharing in that call with those whose religious beliefs differed significantly from hers. (And vice versa!) It's a thought that I've been mulling over all summer, and it's helping me be less reticent expressing my beliefs around those with more conservative views (Pretty much everyone.)"
"The premise of this book compelled me to request it from the library, and I certainly found parts of it interesting, insightful, and inspiring. But, by about the halfway point, I began feeling like I was reading the same stories and thoughts over and over. At a certain point, it felt like Miles was hitting the reader over the head with her beliefs about communion and Jesus' radical inclusivity, which she feels is most illustrated (then and now) in the breaking of bread. Although Miles is a self-proclaimed liberal/progressive Christian who writes with disgust about the members of her congregation who sought to keep her food pantry out of the church, I found her to be pretty intolerant of other Christians. She writes with disdain about any church service that is different than her own church's very active, highly-participatory services.
I finished this book because I have a huge hang-up about abandoning books, and I am genuinely interested in spirituality and others' experiences with faith, but I do feel that I could have read only about 2/3 of this book and still gotten out of it as much as I did from reading the whole thing. I wish that Miles had more deeply explored not just the outward expression of her faith (her work with the food pantry and feeding people in general), but everything else that went on in her mind/heart during the years when she converted to Christianity."
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