Communing

I just finished the book take this bread, quite a page-turner autobiography by Sara Miles. Her life moved from being raised an atheist, to becoming a lefty student in Mexico, a journalist in Nicaragua, a restaurant cook in New York City, and then a Christian convert in San Francisco, immersed in feeding people. She launches a food pantry in a church there to care for the homeless and hungry, taking seriously Christ’s message to his followers to “feed my sheep.” In so doing, she finds herself in a journey of self-discovery seeking to understand what it means to be in communion with others. She realizes that sharing food with everyone else is a calling for her and that it is a sacramental act, making Jesus real - for herself, for those she touches, and for those who touch her.

Over the years, I’ve met and gotten to know a good many people like Sara who are motivated, even driven, to walk, not just talk, their deep-set spiritual beliefs and world view. I myself feel spiritually grounded in my work as an activist, but not always in a Christian kind of way. But recently, being in the company of Catholic Workers has helped me to reconnect to the Jesus who was planted within me during my own Catholic upbringing. This book did the same.

Sara Miles is especially taken with the idea of communion, and so am I. It means seeing that it is in the act of giving to others that we also receive. It’s not a one-way street. In Sara’s case, it comes in the act of physically feeding others. She herself is fed by what she does. For me, communion has come in different forms, but maybe most tangibly through walking. Until now, I’ve not really seen myself engaging in any Christ-like action by simply walking along side of others. But he did a lot of that, didn’t he?

Doing this accompaniment work at the border is a very explicit example of walking with others. The same goes with the peace walks I have taken part in through recent years. Or the delegations I’ve been on in places of suffering like Honduras, Palestine, and Haiti. But in a broader sense, I also see other parts of my life as having been a way of walking beside people. In fact, as a teacher educator at the university, I used to say that I was accompanying people on their journey to become a teacher. And now as a political activist, I often say that I am witnessing and calling out, which implies a spiritual communication, from the same root as communion. Baba Ram Dass coined a now well-known phrase about what we are doing in this life: “We’re all just walking each other home.”

I like walking. I try to do it every day – in the woods, in parks, on sidewalks, wherever. Often with Melody, quality time together. It centers me and tunes me into my surroundings. It moves me, physically as well as emotionally. And, to be honest, it feeds a hunger in me that seems to have been a constant in my life – to get up and go! At the same time, it’s my way of meditating, a communing with myself, and beyond myself.

From time to time, people sort of thank me for being a do-gooder kind of guy. But it’s not like that. I’m not “doing good.” I’m having communion, coming together with others and myself, trying to walk with Jesus, if you like. It’s not exactly an easy path, not something that fits into the scheme of having a comfy and secure retirement in your later years. But it keeps me in shape - and it certainly feeds my soul.