Sarx

What is communion? Do not answer in the theological sense, debating concepts of sacramentology or “real presence”. Think rather in the real, literal sense. Skip, too, over the idea of “matter”, of unleavened or leavened bread, of the percentage of alcohol required to make everything “valid”. Avoid also the question of “ordination” and “apostolic succession”. Come to the heart of the matter. Come, if you will, to the “Apostolic Suggestion” of communion as recorded in the Gospels and, even, in the epistolary literature of the Early Church, both in and out of the canonical scripture. Pass it all up with a dose of comparative religion, so that we can discuss “communion” among the Jews, the Hindus, the Sikhs, the Muslims. Between them all, even.

What is communion?

Sara Miles’ new book, Take this Bread, is an exploration of that very question, although anyone schooled in questions of Church polity or liturgical theology may reject that possibility.

What is church? And here, too, we must overlook questions of institutional reality, of theological uniformity, of doctrinal purity or historical roots. What makes “church” happen among people; even people who are not Christian, or among those who are not even religious?

Sara’s book explores this as well.

Starting in her early life, raised in a non-religious home – one that actively rejected religion. She traces a development of answers to those two questions through her own life: What is Church? What is Communion?

From her college years, Sara draws on the experience of attending “a tiny radical college founded by internationalist Quakers and communists.” Spending time in Central and Southern America, the Philippines, in Asia, Europe or the Middle East, she learnd of the shared community of all humans. More than that, she learned of our shared traditions of hospitality.

This experience continued past her college and into her professional life as a reporter, covering our country’s secret, dirty wars in Central America or in Asia. No matter where she went, no matter how poor her hosts, someone always feeds her. The first portion of the book documetns their her feeding by Latin American Jesuits, Mexican revolutionaries and Philippine Guerrillas. Friends or enemies or strangers, everyone turns to her and shares something: a scrap of dog, a beverage, some root vegetable, a crust of bread.

Eventually, growing tired of covering the world, she settles in New York and begins to feed her friends. She becomes a chef. She discovers the joy of cooking for others in the restaurant kitchens of NYC. She learns the joy of the kitchen dance of preparation, of sharing and of giving. She cooks for friends, for family. She cooks with friends and family. She feeds the dying and the bereaved in their grief.

Eventually she moves to San Francisco and discovers St Gregory of Nyssa Church, as is foreshadowed in the early pages of the book, and in the PR material. I think what is intended to sell this book is the sudden conversion of an Atheist. This will do well among those for whom The God Delusion is currently all the rage. The back-sliding of one of their own will certainly move copies of this book, as will the interest of evangelical (etc) sorts who might want to “save” their friends.

But what got me – and what should call every Christian or, indeed, every religious person, is not “How did this Atheist get religion?” but rather what she did with it once it gets her.

Sara continues to feed people, but her sense, her understanding of the action is changed, transformed. Her life in Christ is a baptism of her prior life, a writing large of her life, a eucharistizing, a loves-and-fishing of what was already present. Sara takes her natural gospel of hospitality and giving and turns it into a sacramental action or, more to the point, she realises the sacramental nature of feeding others.

Alexander Schmemman – following St Paul – says we humans are to stand in the midst of the world making Eucharist with everything, making thanksgiving for everything. Everything we have is offered back to God and comes back to us as the Body of Christ, present and active in the world. We eat it and we become that body, you are what you eat. The hands of God placed in healing and reconciliation around everything that has been separated and bringing it to reunion, to union in God.

This is the primary action of communion: God gives Godself to us to eat in our actions of feeding each other.

Sara begins literally to feed others: to gather food stuffs and pass them out, free of charge, to all comers. She sets the food around the altar of St Gregory of Nyssa Church. Everything is communion.

After the very moving story of her communion the book documents the development of the food pantry programme. Sara’s initial idea grows from a weekly donation-based function of her parish to a volunteer-run feeding of 300+ families a week, to the establishment of other such programmes in other churches around San Francisco. With no experience of fund raising, she goes from a few dollars a week, contributed by fellow parishioners and friends, to donations of $2,500, to a $200,000 endowment. Every problem is met by what Sara wonders if it might be an action of God. Her friends say, “I expect you’ll get tired of hearing ‘loaves and fishes’ very soon.”

The book tells not only of her support and growth but also of the problems she has – problems with her own fear, her food supply, her family and the folks (clergy and lay) at St Gregory. The book ends in a good place… but I don’t think I need to tell you everything here, in a review, but I dare say it makes exciting reading. It makes wonderful writing.

Sara tells other people’s stories very well – and describes them, fleshes them out to make them living people. I was helped in this by my own history at SGN. I knew most of the people, I knew most of their voices. I could hear Steve say, “Fuck”. I could hear Rick when she quoted his sermons. I could hear Donald when he becomes amazed. Sadly I also could hear the nay-sayers and, really, I could hear Sara, too. The only major voice from SGN that I didn’t know was Paul Fromberg, the current interim pastor. But from Sara’s stories I knew how perfect a fit Paul was for that place.

The book may well trouble some Christians who are liooking for rules. Sara realises this herself when she begins to fight for her vision against nay-sayers. She has to learn to hold the different views in love, to let Christ work. It’s hard. When I hit that point my own journey at SGN, I left. It takes years to figure out that leaving is not the right answer. But Sara rightly points to her baptism as the beginning of Chaos. The openess required of a Christian – to be open to all comers, to be loving always – it results in what seems like chaos to our human minds. But perfect love casts out all fear, and Sara casts out her fear and loves unceasingly (or at least in seeming super-human ways).

Sara begins to realise in her life the “priesthood of all believers”. The average believer may never get ordained but each of us presides at his or her own Eucharists daily, the de facto absolutions, annointings, baptisms and marriages that we each perform in our lives are the evidence of this priesthood. Sara’s telling makes it all evident in very clear ways. It made me go over my own life to look for this evidence as well.

Take this Bread requires that we do that with all of life – all of “church life”. It’s not enough that we grasp doctrines or can say the creed without flinching. We have to live this. And, apart from momentary accidents when Christianity gets pulled out of us, kicking and screaming, most of us are happy muttering words and hoping that God will be kind. Sara never gets around to that feeling: rejects it at every turn. Sara is “working out her salvation” and it’s powerful to watch.

Although the entire story is moving – and gripping (I read it in lest than 48 hours) the story is best when she is telling her personal tales instead of those of others’. In the midst of the insanity of San Francisco in the war years, in the midst of the insanity of the food pantry, and at the behest of her daughter, Sara and her partner get married in City Hall. It’s another example of hospitality, of Gospel breaking through. Between the legal wedding at City Hall and the “blessing of a civil marriage” that Sunday at St Gregory’s, I was moved beyond words to tears.

On a personal note this book was hard for me. As I noted above at the point where I began to search for certainties – which means, of course, “I’m right and the rest of you had better get in line” I gave up fighting. I didn’t follow through. I left. Reading of the realisation of Sara’s vocation in the food pantry, of Steve’s vocation as a priest in this book stunned me with regret. How close was I to my own vocation? When, if ever, will I get there? At 42, it begins to feel like never. Reading of Sara’s story made me in no small way jealous. There was a moment of pain, too, at the only point in the story when I know I was there. I was not present, however, to say “include me in the writing” and so someone named “Jake” shows up who “baked a sublime brioche”. I’ve racked my brain to find “Jake” in my memory banks at SGN. He’s just not there, and he’s filling my function and, lo: I wrote myself out of history. That pains me to the core. There may, in fact, be a Jake: I’m not the person of perfect memory I pretend to be. That doesn’t deny the realisation: I wrote myself out of this story that was partly mine – not just Sara’s story, not the Food Pantry (with which I was never involved beyond watching in awe), but rather of SGN’s whole community story.

What is church? We are, when we dare to be Christ to one another. We are – no matter what our faith – when we dare to let the Holy One reach in through us and act in Love to feed another. What is communion? That feeding.