Best 17 quotes of Sara Miles on MyQuotes

As assistant director of programs, Anne was struggling with how to get more food out where it was needed. "Donors love pictures of cute little kids having snacks at school," she said. "And they support meal programs for seniors. But nobody's lining up to say, Gee, I want to put food in the cupboard for really poor black mothers who use drugs; I want to buy groceries for everyone living in the projects. Very few donors trust poor people enough to just give away food without conditions." Anne held a dim view of charity kitchens that kept poor people waiting in line two or three times a day just to get a meal ladled out. "They're convenient for staff," she said, "but they take away people's dignity, and they reinforce dependency. They're about control." In addition, she said, institutional meal programs, such as those in school lunchrooms, tended to provide unhealthy food that was fast to make—bologna sandwiches on white bread, instant mashed potatoes, canned fruit cocktail.

Charity had always slightly creeped me out: There was nothing quite as condescending as the phrase "helping the less fortunate" rolling off the tongue of a white professional, as if poverty were a matter of luck instead of the result of a political system.

Christians could agree or argue about God as much as we wanted, but it was all essentially chatter. What bound that driver and me together was the obvious thing, so plain and dumb between us we could almost ignore it: the rough wooden pallet of onions that organized our days. Feed the hungry, heal the sick, visit prisoners. We fed people.

Conversion isn't, after all, a moment: It's a process, and it keeps happening, with cycles of acceptance and resistance, epiphany and doubt.

He recounted how, at a Jesuit retreat put on by the UCA, the fathers had been talking politics and discussing the issues of democracy in Latin America. Apparently they were sitting around castigating the FMLN for its authoritarianism. Then someone pointed out that in a real democracy, not just the priests but the women who were serving them lunch were going to have something to say about the way things were run, and one of the men blurted out, "You can't do that. They'd make horrible mistakes." Well, said Martín-Baró, that's right: Democracy definitely means that people will make mistakes. "And," he added, "we should welcome them.

He's the thrilling, scary Boyfriend who's going to dare you to do things you'd never dreamed of, shower you with unreasonable presents, and show up uninvited at the most embarrassing times. Then he's going to stick with you, refusing to take the hint when you don't answer his calls.

I'd gone to Central America because I didn't think politics was simply a matter of opinion. It wasn't about having the right "line," having an ideologically pure analysis. It had to be incarnate. And now I was seeing the same thing with faith. It couldn't be about wrangling over the Bible to find justification for your convictions. Like politics, faith had to be about action.

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.

In both roles, as journalist and as organizer, I'd learn that it's possible to fall in love with a revolution—then doubt it, fight with it, lose faith in it, and return with a sense of humor and a harder, lasting love. I would have to learn the same thing about church when I was much older, and it would be no easier.

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.

I wanted to stand on the kind of holy ground that wasn't curated by church professionals, where a burning bush could blaze forth in defiance of safety regulations and outside of regular office hours.

Respectable Protestant denominations retreated inside...leaving...unaffiliated madwomen to evangelize alfresco...

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.

There's no way to be a Christian at home by yourself.

Though its leadership fights to keep the doctrine pure, the faith is constantly contaminated, syncretized, revered, and tinkered with by its adherents - and by outsiders like me, who it continues to influence. It's sentimental and businesslike, the faith of superstitious peasants and of brainy postmodern Jesuits. It's undergirded a great deal of radical immigrant and labor activism for generations, but it's also been a reactionary force wielding money and power in support of political bosses.

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

While the classic conversion story involves desperation, hitting bottom, and a plea for help, I think now that it was gratitude, as well as the suffering I'd seen, that made room for me to open my heart to something new.