Take This Bread – Book by Sara Miles, Review by David Roche

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Take This Bread

by Sara Miles

Reviewed by David Roche

David Roche on Take This Bread:

—Sara Miles is a storyteller, and her story, written in a tight, wonderfully readable style that she honed in her reporting years, is about food . . . Yes, this book is good enough to eat.

—She nails a core aspect of New Age spirituality when she describes it as “spongy”.

—Her prayers are not words but actions.

—She is not saintly. She can be testy, edgy, judgmental, with a touch of arrogance. But that’s the way prophets are supposed to be. Miles’ conversion is a flawed floundering.

—Her descriptions of the food pantry scene and its human communion are vivid, at times heartbreaking, but always respectful. 

As a lesbian left-wing journalist, Sara Miles covered revolutions in Nicaragua, El Salvador, the Philippines and South Africa. She then settled into a fine life as a restaurant cook and writer in the foodie paradise of San Francisco. Yet Sara, raised as an atheist, still “hungered and thirsted for righteousness”. Take This Bread describes her conversion to a Christianity that is neither pious nor dogmatic.

Sara Miles is a storyteller, and her story, written in a tight, wonderfully readable style that she honed in her reporting years, is about food. It is about the food that she and her colleagues give out in a food pantry that serves the marginalized and outcast of San Francisco. It is also about food for the soul and it is presented in tantalizingly tasty stories. Yes, this book is good enough to eat.

The writing is lyrical, passionate and filled with insightful, catchy phrases. She notes that “certainties about God can flicker on and off”. She nails a core aspect of New Age spirituality when she describes it as “spongy”.

Sara Miles’ faith is real faith, tested in daily life, incarnate, meaty, and renewed daily in the act of performing one of the corporal works of mercy: feeding the hungry. Her prayers are not words but actions.

She is not saintly. She can be testy, edgy, judgmental, with a touch of arrogance. But that’s the way prophets are supposed to be. Miles’ conversion is a flawed floundering. She finds anchor spots along the way, not in abstract truth but in illumined, actively lived moments, where there is “eternity available in a fully lived instant.”

Food is the currency, the language of her faith. The sharing of food is redemptive for her. In the sharing, the people she meets reveal themselves as fully human, flawed and loveable. She glimpses, “…that because God was about feeding and being fed, religion could be a way not to separate people but to unite them.” Her descriptions of the food pantry scene and its human communion are vivid, at times heartbreaking, but always respectful.

I can attest to her accuracy. I myself began to re-find my own faith while I was a left wing political activist in San Francisco. My teachers were Latina Catholics and black Baptist grandmothers whose faith was a lived one, embodied in service and activism.

Sara Miles says it is all about “faith, working through love.” Faith without works is dead. Read Take This Bread. You will understand that faith without food is dead.

Saramiles.net is currently undergoing renovations. Sara can be reached directly at sara@saramiles.net.

David Roche is an award-winning inspirational humorist, motivational speaker and performer, as well as author of the critically-acclaimed book The Church of 80% Sincerity. Meet David at http://www.davidroche.com.

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