Thursday, October 14, 2010
Discussion: Chapters 10-17
I am amazed at Sara's ability to continue to grow so much in her faith and to expand her love for God by serving others. In Chapter 17, The Desert, she talks about recognizing that the beautiful space and rituals we experience while attending church, while important, aren't the only places we should be "seeing" God. And this moves her to go searching in the nearby projects, delivering food in assistance to another pantry.Later, she writes that one of her friends notes that once "church powers" start to control how communion is handled, it gets "further and further from the power and the genius of that meal." What do you think about that?
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9 comments:
To some extent she may have a point. There have been times, while reading this book, that I have questioned whether I take the act of communion for granted. It is an aspect of the service each Sunday, but do I really focus on its meaning and intent?
Sara actually believes that communion should lead one to baptism. because taking communion led her from atheism to becoming a Christian. She does not see the need for the different interpretation of the elements by the different denomination. In fact she believes that an individual should take communion before being baptized as she did. that communion is what led her to baptism, which looked on as a major commitment.
In contrast, our church's communion statement is "Invited to the Lord's Table are baptized Christians who come to celebrate with us the real presence of Christ in the Sacrament." Sara is to be admired because she certainly "acted boldly on her faith in Jesus Christ." She however was very unconventional in her approach and beliefs.
Her situation is very unique. Connie, your observation is thought provoking. Sara receives communion in the most basic and purest form.
Thank you, you are putting into words what I'm having difficulty conveying
Sara identified with the poor, suffering and homeless people from the mission distric who came to the food pantry she established at St. Gregory. She said "but as I got to know them, I started to see more clearly how the people who came to the pantry were like me: messed up, often prickly or difficult, yearning for friendship. I saw how they were hungry, the way I was. And then, I had a glimpse of them being like Jesus again: as God, made flesh and blood." She gave the ever growing throng of pantry clients not only a source of fresh, nourishing food but a friendly shoulder to lean on, a way to feel useful and needed as volunteers. and an opportunity to feel in the presence of God. What do you think about Sara setting up the pantry on tables around the altar?
I really appreciated the text of her letter on p. 116 where she presents her case for organizing a food pantry at the church. I thought it was beautifully written and really speaks to her strong connection to being spiritually fed through communion
Given everything Sara has shared thus far in this memoir, distributing food from the alter seems to be the only way that makes sense. She has made an amazing connection between being spiritually fed and physically fed
I was amused at the reaction of the church staff when she proposed to them the idea of the pantry around the altar. She later received a phone call stating that their reactions "basically ranged from 'Over my dead body' to 'When hell freezes over.'" She thought about involving the church's social outreach committee in setting up the pantry but felt that committees in churches "served the same purposes as committees in other institutions: They were holding tanks for people who professed interest in an issue but didn't always want to act." She said she "favored the jump-in, personalized, occasionally dictatorial method of organizing: Why spend months coaxing a perfectly worded position paper on hunger and service out of a committee when you could just grab some helpers, buy some food, and give it away? Why try to fix the frazzled, depressive committee members instead of just hustling the money myself?" So she went ahead on her own and no one moved to stop her, even though the new floor around the altar was being scratched from all the pantry activity, a compost container was set on Friday's next to the altar and she was asked for and giving spiritual comfort, although not authorized or trained to do so. As Kim said, her situation was very unique.
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