Take This Bread by Sara Miles Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1500 words

Take This Bread by Sara Miles - Essay Example The essence of all religious texts is-- help and do service to others. That is the greatest meritorious act. To cause intentional pain to others is the greatest act of sin. Sara Miles said thus, without actually saying! A true Christian is the one who has not only cross on the neck, but also Christ in the heart. Sara Miles prayed and performed. Prayer took the second place in the order of her religious priorities and service occupied the first place. â€Å"Hunger† is the word that set her thinking and energized her. When she converted to Christianity at the age of 46, she was not like a young girl/youth with impressionable mind, receptive to transplantation of new ideas. She was a tough individual, experienced in many facets of life, with strong leftist leanings, secular-intellectual, and by strict standards of Christianity and Church, not a fit candidate for conversion. But such ‘accidents’ do happen in life, and when it happened it opened for her new vistas of f orward thrust. ‘To feed people’ became, not her view of life, but the way of life. She was obsessed with the idea of feeding people. Did she create a special brand of her own type Christianity? The answer to this question is both yes and no. For no one born on this Planet Earth can interpret what the true Christian principles are. What is the exact import of the revelations of that realized soul, the son God; no one will ever be able to comprehend! Each one sees a new horizon and interprets the Christian principles from the level of one’s spiritual progression. No one knows what is the perfect truth related to Christianity. When perfect Christian discipline is not known, they carry on with the available discipline, thinking that it alone is the final truth about Christianity! Divinity and humanity are alternative beats of the same heart. If you have any doubt, study the book, not mere read the book, â€Å"Take this Bread† by Sara Miles. They (Divinity and humanity) must run together like the train that speeds on two parallel tracks. It is like the scale of justice. Both arms of the scale are important to strike the equilibrium. To give another comparison they are like the two banks of a river! Sara turned one piece of bread that she ate at communion into many tons of groceries and discovered the new mission for her life. She used the altar of the Church where she met her God, Jesus Christ for the purpose. Poorest parts of the country turned out to be her pilgrimage centers. Her struggle was not ordinary. She came into contact and had to interact with a heterogeneous section of the society, good, bad and worst. She writes, (2000, xii) â€Å"I had to struggle with my atheist family, my doubting friends, and the prejudices and traditions of my newfound church. I learned about the great American scandal of the politics of food, the economy of hunger, and the rules of money. I met thieves, child abusers, millionaires, day laborers, polit icians, schizophrenics, gangsters, and bishops—all blown into my life through the restless power of a call to feed people, widening that I thought as my â€Å"community† in ways that were exhilarating, confusing, and often scary.† It is better not to give than give with arrogance. In her search for ways and means to combat hunger she provides the above description of the types of people she encountered---all