Saturday, July 04, 2009






Love this Guardian story about a Church in San Francisco::



On a Sunday, the congregation sings and dances around the altar;
on a Friday, hundreds of people walk around it collecting fresh vegetables, fruit and basic staples like rice and bread.
Liturgy shapes social practice.
Here there is no difference between being spiritually fed and literally fed,
no difference between the spiritual hunger that leads many to St Gregory's on a Sunday and the physical hunger of the people who come for their weekly groceries on a Friday.


Sara Miles, an energetic Anglican laywoman who, 10 years ago, while still a dedicated atheist, walked in off the street and received the bread and wine, the body and blood of Christ - at St Gregory's everyone is welcome to God's table to receive communion. She was converted there and then. As she puts it: "Eating Jesus, as I did that day to my great astonishment, led me against all expectations to a faith I'd scorned and work I'd never imagined. The mysterious sacrament turned out to be not a symbolic wafer but actual food - indeed, the bread of life." She wrote about that experience in her book Take this Bread, a compelling read for its raw honesty, spiritual and emotional intelligence, and gripping conversion story: a Pilgrim's Progress for the postmodern age.


......... which strangers quickly became friends, and conservative Pentecostal Christians happily worked alongside drag queens and Russian grandmothers. After all the food has been delivered and set out in the church, a delicious meal is served to all the volunteers, and then the doors are opened to the crowds lining up around the block. It is, as Miles said to me, "kind of like heaven, no?" This is the diversity of God's human community in reality .......

All about priority to the poor and everyone being swept along with the blessings ...... WOW


FULL ARTICLE