Thanks to Dan Clenendin at Journey with Jesus for the tip about Sara Miles' Take This Bread: a Radical Conversion. It's a really fabulous memoir from a member of St. Gregory of Nyssa Episcopal parish in San Francisco. I've long admired the church's liturgy, but Miles' memoir tells both a compelling personal story and an insightful view of the underside of this parish (and, by extension, of every church made up of real people). My favorite quote so far:
You can't be a Christian by yourself was a lesson I thought I'd grapsed when I first started serving communion at St. Gregory's. . . Offering groceries to all comers around the altar, I would idscover how painfully like church the food pantry really was: how it asked me to leave the certainties of the past behind, tangled me up with people I didn't particularly want to know, and frightened me with its demand for more than I was ready to give.
