This evening Sara Miles read from her books Take This Bread and Jesus Freak in St Olaf's Viking Theater. She told the story of her "coming late to Christianity" by means of being fed at St. Gregory of Nyssa church in San Francisco and of her continuing conversion while founding and overseeing a food pantry (video) where 600 families are given groceries every week. She convinced the leaders of the parish to try the project by quoting the passage from Luke inscribed on their altar: He ate with sinners. She tells this as a story about Christianity and the church. Certainly it is that. Surely there is much to learn from her assertion that a spiritual life is also a physical life.
I'm intrigued by what she says about church, but I also listened with AmCon ears and was struck by the degree to which her story is the opposite of Franklin's story. Rather than offering sage little proverbs about how to get ahead and recounting contributions to the common good as Franklin did, Miles simply described her experience of receiving abundant grace in a piece of bread and being compelled to give away food. Can this be an American story? Could we recognize our abundance as a charter for generosity? Could the dream be for a "better, richer life" for everyone, not just for anyone who wants it badly enough, and works hard enough, or is lucky enough?
Perhaps the way to insure freedom from want is to share.
Here's testimony from another woman who thinks it. From NPR's This I Believe Series: The Art of Being a Neighbor by Eve Birch
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