Between Bread and Stone

Stephen Brewer

Between Bread and Stone is a weekly reflection from Stephen Brewer — a baptized human trying to live in the way of early Christians — exploring the tensions between institutional faith and radical love. Rooted in scripture, personal experience, and spiritual discernment, each episode invites listeners into the spaces where ritual breaks down, hospitality is tested, and grace persists. With a voice shaped by study of world religions, lived exclusion, and unwavering hope, Stephen challenges the boundaries of belonging and bears witness to the sacred in the margins. This is not a podcast of easy answers, but of honest questions, and of trust in the Christ who walks outside the gates. percival84.substack.com

  1. 4d ago

    El peregrino que olvidó las palabras

    The final stop on my pilgrimage through the Episcopal Diocese of San Joaquin took me to St. John’s in Tulare, where the Sunday evening Eucharist is celebrated in Spanish. Armed with three years of long-forgotten high school Spanish and an emergency flash card inspired by Doctor Who, I arrived prepared to make a fool of myself. What I encountered was something unexpected. Through Padre Nelson’s guitar, a sermon I could barely understand, and the quiet hospitality of a small congregation, I discovered a dimension of Christian worship that familiar words had somehow kept me from experiencing. In this Wednesday’s open letter to Father Luis, I reflect on language, Julian of Norwich, the Holy Spirit, and what happens when we stop worrying about saying the right words long enough to recognize the love being offered. Sometimes the most meaningful part of a pilgrimage is discovering what we needed to leave behind. You are welcome here. Protected Speech | Views My Own Between Bread and Stone © 2026 Stephen Brewer. All rights reserved. Podcast audio and full text may be quoted for noncommercial purposes with attribution. Gospel text from the New Revised Standard Version Bible, copyright © 1989 the Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved. Get full access to Drawing the Line at percival84.substack.com/subscribe

  2. Oct 25

    The Love We Bring to the Cross

    What if remembering someone could affect their conscious experience? Suppose consciousness extends beyond the physical body, and the affection we feel for someone who has died could somehow reach them. The possibility remains speculative, but its implications are extraordinary, especially when we consider how Christians remember Jesus Christ. For centuries, we have gathered before the Cross, contemplating the suffering inflicted upon him. But if our remembrance could become part of his experience, what would we be bringing him? Would our devotion return him to the suffering of his execution, or could we bring him the joy and gratitude his life has inspired? This Sunday, Ray Bradbury’s The Messiah and the revelations of Julian of Norwich accompany us into that question. Along the way, we’ll examine how Christian institutions came to sanctify suffering, and what our remembrance might mean for people whose lives have been defined by the violence they endured. The Gospel brings us back to a man telling his friends how He wants to be remembered. His request offers a surprisingly simple answer to an extraordinary question. Bring love. You are welcome here. Protected Speech | Views My Own Between Bread and Stone © 2026 Stephen Brewer. All rights reserved. Podcast audio and full text may be quoted for noncommercial purposes with attribution. Gospel text from the New Revised Standard Version Bible, copyright © 1989 the Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved. Get full access to Drawing the Line at percival84.substack.com/subscribe

  3. Oct 21

    The Road to the Table

    Dear Father Luis, You sent me to St. John the Evangelist in Stockton to see the HUB, a bicycle ministry that helps people get where they need to go. Unfortunately, I ran out of money, and the HUB is closed on Sundays anyway. So I made the pilgrimage from my couch. My car is still recovering from the indignity. What I encountered was a congregation that had sustained its life through years without a priest in charge, now celebrating the ordination of the Reverend Noni Shezi. A visiting bishop from South Africa sang during the ordination, and Noni stood. The following day, as the congregation approached the altar for Communion, I remained two hundred and forty miles away. You celebrated the Eucharist during the pandemic while your congregation watched from home. I have a question for you about that experience, and what the Church may have learned from it. This week’s Between Bread and Stone is a letter from Stockton, written without ever leaving Bakersfield. I hope Walsingham is treating you kindly, Father. You are welcome here. Protected Speech | Views My Own Between Bread and Stone © 2026 Stephen Brewer. All rights reserved. Podcast audio and full text may be quoted for noncommercial purposes with attribution. Gospel text from the New Revised Standard Version Bible, copyright © 1989 the Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved. Get full access to Drawing the Line at percival84.substack.com/subscribe

  4. Oct 18

    The Coin in His Hand

    I began this episode expecting to challenge a documentary about the Episcopal Church’s treatment of traditionalist clergy. Then I heard a priest describe an experience remarkably similar to what Episcopalians endured during the San Joaquin schism. My understanding of the conflict began to change. I’ve decided to set aside the litigation of which side was right. I’m more interested in what might happen if Christians divided by schism could encounter one another, hear one another’s experiences, and discover possibilities that neither side could have imagined alone. This Sunday’s Gospel offers an intriguing approach. Jesus is handed a question designed to force a choice, and He rejects the premise. I explore that movement through either/AND/or, a transcendent via media informed by the perichoretic understanding of communion: distinct participants entering a relationship through which something greater than their separate positions can emerge. And yes, there are rainbow-colored Adirondack chairs involved. You are welcome here. Protected Speech | Views My Own Between Bread and Stone © 2026 Stephen Brewer. All rights reserved. Podcast audio and full text may be quoted for noncommercial purposes with attribution. Gospel text from the New Revised Standard Version Bible, copyright © 1989 the Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved. Get full access to Drawing the Line at percival84.substack.com/subscribe

  5. Oct 14

    The Corner of the Stage

    My pilgrimage took me to St. Thomas the Apostle in Hollywood for National Coming Out Day. Getting there involved a mutinous windshield, a mysterious freeway stoppage, and three attempts at parking. Inside, I found one of the most magnificent High Masses I have ever attended, a remarkable history of ministry during the AIDS epidemic, and an organ that carries the memory of those who died. Then came coffee hour. Standing alone beside the corner of a stage, holding a cup of coffee, I found myself remembering what it was like to stand alone in the gay bars of Hillcrest and West Hollywood. The experience raised some uncomfortable questions about hospitality, belonging, and the Gospel of the wedding banquet. This week’s letter to Father Luis follows those questions through Hollywood and back over the mountains, where I discovered that I was homesick for a place where people know my name. You are welcome here. Protected Speech | Views My Own Between Bread and Stone © 2026 Stephen Brewer. All rights reserved. Podcast audio and full text may be quoted for noncommercial purposes with attribution. Gospel text from the New Revised Standard Version Bible, copyright © 1989 the Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved. Get full access to Drawing the Line at percival84.substack.com/subscribe

  6. Oct 11

    The Robe on the Hook

    On National Coming Out Day, Matthew’s Gospel gives us a troubling wedding banquet. The invitation eventually extends to everyone on the streets, yet one guest is bound and expelled for arriving without the proper clothing. I have some questions about that king. This week on Between Bread and Stone, I examine the parable alongside Christianity’s history of religious coercion, a painful chapter in my own diocese, and the extraordinary story of Matthew Shepard, a young Episcopalian whose ashes finally found a resting place at Washington National Cathedral twenty years after his murder. Along the way, I find myself imagining a robe hanging on a hook beside the banquet entrance. It isn’t in the Gospel. But I’ve been wondering what might have happened if it had been. You are welcome here. Protected Speech | Views My Own Between Bread and Stone © 2026 Stephen Brewer. All rights reserved. Podcast audio and full text may be quoted for noncommercial purposes with attribution. Gospel text from the New Revised Standard Version Bible, copyright © 1989 the Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved. Get full access to Drawing the Line at percival84.substack.com/subscribe

  7. Oct 7

    The People Had a Mind to Work

    I went to Taft looking for St. Andrew’s. The doors were locked on a Sunday morning. By lunchtime, a woman at a diner counter had given me sixty-one years of the town’s history instead. Episode 79 follows a quieter kind of pilgrimage: through fading adobe, oilfield signs, old paintings, racial memory, grief, work, and the places where community survives after institutions become harder to find. This week, the question of refugium moved outside the church walls. You are welcome here. Protected Speech | Views My Own Between Bread and Stone © 2026 Stephen Brewer. All rights reserved. Podcast audio and full text may be quoted for noncommercial purposes with attribution. Gospel text from the New Revised Standard Version Bible, copyright © 1989 the Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved. Get full access to Drawing the Line at percival84.substack.com/subscribe

  8. Oct 4

    Two Vineyards

    The Francis most of us inherited is harmless: a garden statue, a bird on his shoulder, and pets lined up for a blessing. The man himself was considerably more dangerous to imperial Christianity. Francis renounced property, refused the logic of possession, called creation his kin, and told his brothers to live as strangers and pilgrims. Within years of his death, the Church began setting those instructions aside. Centuries later, men wearing his habit came to California, built missions on Indigenous land, confined the people they baptized, and placed Francis’s own name over the door. This episode asks what happens when we reclaim the saint from the institution that inverted him. For Californians, that question is not academic. His name is still on our cities, missions, schools, roads, and monuments. The history underneath those names is still present too. We follow Francis back past the garden statue, past Serra, and past the imperial version of Christianity that used his habit while abandoning his instructions. What emerges is a Francis much harder to possess, and perhaps much more useful for the work that remains. You are welcome here. Protected Speech | Views My Own Between Bread and Stone © 2026 Stephen Brewer. All rights reserved. Podcast audio and full text may be quoted for noncommercial purposes with attribution. Gospel text from the New Revised Standard Version Bible, copyright © 1989 the Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved. Get full access to Drawing the Line at percival84.substack.com/subscribe

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About

Between Bread and Stone is a weekly reflection from Stephen Brewer — a baptized human trying to live in the way of early Christians — exploring the tensions between institutional faith and radical love. Rooted in scripture, personal experience, and spiritual discernment, each episode invites listeners into the spaces where ritual breaks down, hospitality is tested, and grace persists. With a voice shaped by study of world religions, lived exclusion, and unwavering hope, Stephen challenges the boundaries of belonging and bears witness to the sacred in the margins. This is not a podcast of easy answers, but of honest questions, and of trust in the Christ who walks outside the gates. percival84.substack.com

Information

  • Creator
    Stephen Brewer
  • Years Active
    2026
  • Episodes
    85
  • Rating
    Clean
  • Copyright
    © Stephen Brewer
  • Show Website
    Between Bread and Stone