Sara Miles – författare

“Mine is a personal story of an unexpected and terribly inconvenient Christian conversion, told by a very unlikely convert.”–Sara MilesRaised as an atheist, Sara Miles lived an enthusiastically secular life as a restaurant cook and a writer. Then early one winter morning, for no earthly reason, she wandered into a church. “I was certainly not interested in becoming a Christian,” she writes, “or, as I thought of it rather less politely, a religious nut.” But she ate a piece of bread, took a sip of wine, and found herself radically transformed.The mysterious sacrament of communion has sustained Miles ever since, in a faith she’d scorned, in work she’d never imagined. In this astonishing story, she tells how the seeds of her conversion were sown, and what her life has been like since she took that bread. A lesbian left-wing journalist who covered revolutions around the world, Miles was not the woman her friends expected to see suddenly praising Jesus. She was certainly not the kind of person the government had in mind to run a “faith-based charity.” Religion for her was not about angels or good behavior or piety; it was about real hunger, real food, and real bodies. Before long, she turned the bread she ate at communion into tons of groceries, piled on the church’s altar to be given away. The first food pantry she established provided hundreds of poor, elderly, sick, deranged, and marginalized people with lifesaving food and a sense of belonging. Within a few years, the loaves had multiplied, and she and the people she served had started nearly a dozen more pantries.Take This Bread is rich with real-life Dickensian characters–church ladies, child abusers, millionaires, schizophrenics, bishops, and thieves–all blown into Miles’s life by the relentless force of her newfound calling. She recounts stories about trudging through the rain in housing projects, wiping the runny nose of a psychotic man, storing a battered woman’s .375 Magnum in a cookie tin. She writes about the economy of hunger and the ugly politics of food; the meaning of prayer and the physicality of faith. Here, in this achingly beautiful, passionate book, is the living communion of Christ.“The most amazing book.” – Anne LamottFrom the Hardcover edition.

With a look at the political awakening that occurred in America's Silicon Valley in the late 1990s, this text offers analyses of, among other things, the digital divide and the nuances of party subdivisions.

The past decade has seen an extraordinary outpouring of research, writing, and talk about lesbian and gay sexuality, triggered in part by the confluence of the AIDS epidemic, the feminist sex wars, and the development of queer studies. Yet many lesbian and gay writers and readers have been frustrated by recurring gaps and absences in the queer studies approach to sexuality, as well as by the limitations of explicit queer community discourse around sex.Opposite Sex brings the sex back into queer studies, making real bodies, acts, and desires central to analysis of the complex relationships between male and female homosexualities, and their impact on lesbian and gay culture. The contributors to this volume--scholars, artists, activists, and journalists--redress the remarkable dearth of thoughtful discourse about the many ways in which lesbian and gay men are implicated--and viewed within--in each other's sexual realities.Opposite Sex includes writing by lesbians and gay men about each other's bodies, interpretations of different male and female homosexual sex cultures, and reflections on the history, sociology, and politics of changing discourses around queer sexuality. Passionate and challenging, this anthology shows the rich and complex forms through which individuals and communities make meaning from their quotidian sexual impulses, their utopian sexual mores, and their idiosyncratic sexual acts.The contributors include Roberto Bedoya, Kaucylia Brooke, Lawrence Chua, Linnea Due, Sandra Lee Golvin, Jewelle Gomez, Francisco J. Gonzalez, Della Grace, Amber Hollibaugh, Robert Jensen, Kate Kane, Elizabeth A. Kelly, Monica Majoli, Mimi McGurl, Robert Reid-Pharr, Gayle Rubin, Lawrence Schimel, Richard Schimpf, and Susan Stryker.

The past decade has seen an extraordinary outpouring of research, writing, and talk about lesbian and gay sexuality, triggered in part by the confluence of the AIDS epidemic, the feminist sex wars, and the development of queer studies. Yet many lesbian and gay writers and readers have been frustrated by recurring gaps and absences in the queer studies approach to sexuality, as well as by the limitations of explicit queer community discourse around sex.Opposite Sex brings the sex back into queer studies, making real bodies, acts, and desires central to analysis of the complex relationships between male and female homosexualities, and their impact on lesbian and gay culture. The contributors to this volume--scholars, artists, activists, and journalists--redress the remarkable dearth of thoughtful discourse about the many ways in which lesbian and gay men are implicated--and viewed within--in each other's sexual realities.Opposite Sex includes writing by lesbians and gay men about each other's bodies, interpretations of different male and female homosexual sex cultures, and reflections on the history, sociology, and politics of changing discourses around queer sexuality. Passionate and challenging, this anthology shows the rich and complex forms through which individuals and communities make meaning from their quotidian sexual impulses, their utopian sexual mores, and their idiosyncratic sexual acts.The contributors include Roberto Bedoya, Kaucylia Brooke, Lawrence Chua, Linnea Due, Sandra Lee Golvin, Jewelle Gomez, Francisco J. Gonzalez, Della Grace, Amber Hollibaugh, Robert Jensen, Kate Kane, Elizabeth A. Kelly, Monica Majoli, Mimi McGurl, Robert Reid-Pharr, Gayle Rubin, Lawrence Schimel, Richard Schimpf, and Susan Stryker.

In the Gospels, Jesus tells his followers to feed the hungry, heal the sick, raise the dead and gives the motley crew authority to do ‘greater deeds’ than he has done. In much of our church life we’ve tamed this extreme calling, but Sara Miles, a passionate, funny, undomesticated Christian, tells what happened when she decided to follow Jesus into the messy diversity of human life and do the extraordinary things he asked. For everyone afraid to feed hungry strangers, love the unlovable, or go to dark places to bless and heal, her vivid and heartbreaking stories are a call to action and hope as she and the people around her are transformed as they join in with God’s work in the world. Sara’s mission springs from the Anglican church of St Gregory of Nyssa in San Francisco. All of human happiness and misery is to be found in the streets round about. A more diverse, crazy community it would be hard to imagine, yet in this modern day Gospel we see Jesus everywhere.

The story of an unexpected and terribly inconvenient Christian conversion, told by a very unlikely convert, Take This Bread is not only a spiritual memoir but a call to action. Raised as an atheist, Sara Miles lived an enthusiastically secular life as a restaurant cook and writer. Then one morning, for no earthly reason, she wandered into a church. She ate a piece of bread, took a sip of wine, and found herself radically transformed, embracing a faith she’d scorned and which would lead to feeding others in a way that she’d never imagined. Sara started a food pantry giving away literally tons of food from around the same altar where she’d first received the body of Christ, and providing hundreds of hungry families with free groceries each week. Take This Bread is rich with real-life Dickensian characters–church ladies, millionaires, schizophrenics, bishops, and gangsters – all blown into Miles’ life by the relentless force of her new-found calling. Here, in this beautiful, passionate book, is Christ’s living communion.

The story of an unexpected and terribly inconvenient Christian conversion, told by a very unlikely convert, Take This Bread tells the story of a restaurant cook and writer who wandered into a church and found herself transformed, setting up a food pantry around the same altar where she first received the body of Christ.

Jesus tells his followers to feed the hungry, heal the sick, raise the dead, but often we’ve tamed this calling. Sara Miles, a passionate, funny, undomesticated Christian, tells what happened when she decided to follow Jesus into the messy diversity of human life and do exactly what he asked.

City of God is a moving and prophetic account of the divine in daily life, of God finding us no matter where we are, and making us new. It reveals that the simplest things in life are brimming with the mystery of God’s grace. It tells the story of one day in Sara’s ministry: Ash Wednesday, when she carries ashes out of church to public places including bus stops, bakeries, beauty shops, fast-food joints and street corners; marking the foreheads of strangers with the sign of the cross, and offering blessing to waitresses and drunks, mothers and babies, believers and doubters alike. Sara pioneered this practice which is now taken up by many different churches to mark the beginning of Lent.Sara explores the profound spiritual meanings set loose by touching the forehead of a stranger and paints a vivid, moving and unforgettable picture of the hunger and search for God and for meaning that is taking place all around us.

City of God is a moving, prophetic account of the divine in daily life. It tells the story of one day in Sara’s ministry: Ash Wednesday, when she carries ashes out of church to public places. Sara explores the profound meanings set loose by touching the forehead of a stranger and paints an unforgettable picture of the search for God all around us.