Sara Miles said this quote

“ Just like the strangers who'd fed me in El Salvador or South Africa, I was going to have to see and understand the hunger of other, different men and women, and make a gesture of welcome, and eat with them. And just as I hadn't deserved any of what had been given to me—the fish, the biscuits, the tea so abundantly poured out back in those years—I didn't deserve communion myself now. I wasn't getting it because I was good. I wasn't getting it because I was special. I certainly didn't get to pick who else was good enough, holy enough, deserving enough, to receive it. It wasn't a private meal. The bread on that Table had to be shared with everyone in order for me to really taste it. ”

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In big ways and small, I knew exactly how selfish a war could make me, and I saw all around me how fear and need drove other people to terrible betrayals. Yet over and over, I also saw how war created a community, a people, and how that community was nourished by gestures of sharing. It was sharing that didn't depend on personal intimacy, and a community that didn't depend on everyone's being friends; it foreshadowed what I would come to understand as church, at its best.

~ Sara Miles

The entire contradictory package of Christianity was present in the Eucharist. A sign of unconditional acceptance and forgiveness, it was doled out and rationed to insiders; a sign of unity, it divided people; a sign of the most common and ordinary human reality, it was rarefied and theorized nearly to death.

~ Sara Miles

What happened once I started distributing communion was the truly disturbing, dreadful realization about Christianity: You can't be a Christian by yourself.

~ Sara Miles

I read the story about the loaves and fishes and thought about Jesus gazing at the hungry crowd, saying to his anxious, doubting, screwed-up followers: You give them something to eat. So we did.

~ Sara Miles