To be fully human is perhaps why I’m Christian, because I see in the life of Jesus a way of being fully human.
BARBARA BROWN TAYLORTo be fully human is perhaps why I’m Christian, because I see in the life of Jesus a way of being fully human.
BARBARA BROWN TAYLORThe problem is, many of the people in need of saving are in churches, and at least part of what they need saving from is the idea that God sees the world the same way they do.
BARBARA BROWN TAYLORI’m a follower of the Christ path, and that opens a huge discussion about what we even mean by words like “Christian.”
BARBARA BROWN TAYLORThe boundaries became constrictive in what I was doing, and if my faith grew, it was because I pressed some of the boundaries in ways I hadn’t felt comfortable or responsible doing that before.
BARBARA BROWN TAYLORThere was no time anymore to be quiet or still or pray. So, in many ways, that’s what led to my downward spin.
BARBARA BROWN TAYLORYou only need to lose track of who you are, or who you thought you were supposed to be, so that you end up lying flat on the dirt floor basement of your heart. Do this, Jesus says, and you will live.
BARBARA BROWN TAYLORI can’t help but note that God is being useful to a lot of people trying to do harm to one another.
BARBARA BROWN TAYLORIt does seem to me that at least some of us have made an idol of exhaustion. The only time we know we have done enough is when we are running on empty and when the ones we love most are the ones we see the least.
BARBARA BROWN TAYLORHaving been brought up with a definition of faith as adherence to a set of beliefs, I have more and more begun to turn instead toward a definition of faith as openness to truth, whatever truth may turn out to be.
BARBARA BROWN TAYLORWhoever you are, you are human. Wherever you are, you live in the world, which is just waiting for you to notice the holiness in it.
BARBARA BROWN TAYLORI miss the hot spots. I miss the hospital calls. I miss the nursing homes. I miss the really intimate human contact with other people, which I did nothing to earn.
BARBARA BROWN TAYLORThe real problem has far less to do with what is really out there than it does with our resistance to finding out what is really out there.
BARBARA BROWN TAYLORMost of us like thinking we are God’s only children…At least one of the purposes of church is to remind us that God has other children, easily as precious as we. Baptism and narcissism cancel each other out.
BARBARA BROWN TAYLORI think my idea of God was much more directive than my idea of God now, that is, a God who had one plan in mind for me, perhaps, and my job was to find out what it was and obey.
BARBARA BROWN TAYLORThe great wisdom traditions of the world all recognize that the main impediment to living a life of meaning is being self-absorbed.
BARBARA BROWN TAYLORDivine reality is not way up in the sky somewhere; it is readily available in the encounters of everyday life, which make hash of my illusions that I can control the ways God comes to me.
BARBARA BROWN TAYLOR