Glorifying the stranger

 

How to be church for the wrong people: emerging worship with whores, foreigners and the ritually unclean. A lesson in how to welcome the stranger.

Raised as an atheist, Sara Miles lived an enthusiastically secular life as a restaurant cook and writer. Then early 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. Best-selling author of the spiritual memoir Take This Bread, she founded St Gregory’s Food Pantry in San Francisco where, every Friday, literally tonnes of fresh fruit and vegetables, pasta and beans are distributed from around the altar to poor families in the area. She is here for the first time at Greenbelt with priest and artist Paul Fromberg to talk liturgy, community, food and service. Delicious.

Sara Miles