Old ladies making church

My friend Sara, whose religious conversion and consequent founding of a successful Food Pantry was the subject of her book Take This Bread, told me once that the old ladies who gather on the sidewalk for hours before the pantry opens to distribute food are, in their community with one another, fulfilling a spiritual need. "That's church too," she said of their alfresco klatsch.

I remembered Sara's words when I stumbled across this video:

Isn't that church too?

technorati: postmodernism,dancing, church, Sound of Music

Adventures in book publicity

Hey look, it's my friend Sara on the NPR home page, doing a "This I Believe" shot to promote her book Take This Bread. I interviewed Sara in 2006 when she was completing the book; this interview with the SF Gate.com website is much better. Among other places, you can see her work on salon.com. Her book caught the attention of the Episcopal church's presiding bishop, Katharine Jefferts Schori, who quoted it in a 2007 commencement address at an Episcopal seminary. Others who loved the book include Anne Lamott. Sara's previous book was about the relationship between Web 1.0-era entrepreneurs in Silicon Valley and the Al Gore campaign, but this piece she wrote in the New York Times in 1999 -- the same year she began going to church -- already reflects her questions about whose responsibility it is to make sure people are fed. (By the way, this Sara Miles is a completely different one than the one with the autistic kid who's gone on the Snow White ride at Disney World 2084 times, and whom I blogged about yesterday without mentioning the mother's name.)

technorati: Sara Miles

Best friends in the world

Lots of action from friends of mine.

Sara Miles is promoting her new book Take This Bread, and yesterday she did a radio interview at Irvine's KUCI. I saw her this morning at morning prayer and she was handing out buttons that read: wtfwjd?

Painter Chris Carraher recently put up a new show of her work down in the art capital of the Mojave Desert, Twentynine Palms. (Don't believe it? Ask The New York Times.) Her recent post about performance artist Nao Bustamente, in which she confesses she is dumbstruck in the presence of the local genius, is lovely.

technorati: Chris Carraher, Nao Bustamante, Sara Miles

Sara's book launches

My friend Sara was interviewed on SFGate today, and the Chronicle also reviewed her book yesterday. Now if I hear she's appearing on "Fresh Air" I'll know the book is truly getting traction.

It's interesting what bloggers are saying (Technorati search) -- most seem to be focussing on the book's conversion theme. Even the tarot card reader identified.

technorati: Sara Miles, Take This Bread, Christian conversions

Buy my friend's new book

One of my best friends, Sara Miles, has a new book out, Take This Bread, a memoir about her conversion to Christianity and starting a food pantry for poor people in one of San Francisco's richest Episcopal churches. An excerpt from the book was published on Salon Saturday (I'm slightly embarrassed to admit that this excerpt happens to mention me personally -- not that embarassed, of course, since like everyone else on the internet I am a total egotist, but that's not why I'm pushing her book; I'm pushing it because it's a great piece of writing) and has attracted over 250 letters to the editors so far.

There will be a book party this Sunday at the church where, more than five years later, the food pantry is still going strong.

Read Sara's other articles on Salon:
- Habeas Corpus and the Bush administration's attacks on it
- How bans on gay marriage affect children
- Bush's wiretapping frenzy
- Rome's latest witch hunt for gays

technorati: Take This Bread, Sara Miles, Episcopalians, food pantries