For a long time I listened to other people to decide whether I was still Christian or not, and I would sort of vet myself by the traditional formulae.
BARBARA BROWN TAYLORThe effort to untangle the human words from the divine seems not only futile to me but also unnecessary, since God works with what is. God uses whatever is usable in a life, both to speak and to act, and those who insist on fireworks in the sky may miss the electricity that sparks the human heart.
More Barbara Brown Taylor Quotes
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There comes a time when it is vitally important for your spiritual health to drop your clothes, look in the mirror, and say, ‘Here I am. This is the body-like-no-other that my life has shaped. I live here. This is my soul’s address
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When I say I trust Jesus, that is what I mean: I trust that the way of life leads through perishability, not around it.
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You can create an intimate community of about 20 or 25 people, and beyond that you’re into a different kind of relationship.
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If God is about putting God ahead of myself then I’ve just quit being religious, because that’s what got me into such deep trouble.
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To get God on your side is a great way to feel powerful.
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Salvation happens every time someone with a key uses it to open a door he could lock instead.
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You 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.
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When I talk about losing myself, which I did, it’s losing my idea of who I was and my idea of what I was supposed to be doing and the idea of what my value was to God. I lost all of that at least.
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I am always surprised by people who speak of faith as if it happens in the air somewhere. Our bodies are God’s best way of getting to us. Revelation begins in the flesh.
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The value for me being in a mainline tradition is history and memory, which is not just Christian tradition but denominational tradition, and characters, you know, with real distinct flavors of ways to be Christian.
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We are born seekers, calling strange names into the darkness from our earliest days because we know we are not meant to be alone, and because we know that we await someone whom we cannot always see.
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Beliefs have become unimportant to me. Faith as radical trust became even more important to me.
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As a general rule, I would say that human beings never behave more badly toward one another than when they believe they are protecting God.
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I have learned to prize holy ignorance more highly than religious certainty and to seek companions who have arrived at the same place.
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I have learned things in the dark that I could never have learned in the light, things that have saved my life over and over again, so that there is really only one logical conclusion. I need darkness as much as I need light.
BARBARA BROWN TAYLOR