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.
BARBARA BROWN TAYLORThe 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.
More Barbara Brown Taylor Quotes
-
-
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.
BARBARA BROWN TAYLOR -
Most 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 TAYLOR -
I became so attentive to the souls of other people that I was not as attentive as I might have been to my own.
BARBARA BROWN TAYLOR -
The 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 TAYLOR -
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 TAYLOR -
I read more widely. I made friends more widely. I wore more red. I stayed home on Sundays. I did things that were never in the realm of possible things to do before. That was a real desert experience for me.
BARBARA BROWN TAYLOR -
Our waiting is not nothing. It is something — a very big something — because people tend to be shaped by whatever it is they are waiting for.
BARBARA BROWN TAYLOR -
You can create an intimate community of about 20 or 25 people, and beyond that you’re into a different kind of relationship.
BARBARA BROWN TAYLOR -
The only real difference between Anxiety and Excitement was my willingness to let go of Fear.
BARBARA BROWN TAYLOR -
The church grew, and I gained a reputation for preaching, and people came, and it was a wonderful community. But we had a building that seated 82 people, and with a congregation then approaching 400 we were up to four services on Sunday, and everyone was tired.
BARBARA BROWN TAYLOR -
Earth is so thick with divine possibility that it is a wonder we can walk anywhere without cracking our shins on altars.
BARBARA BROWN TAYLOR -
The 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.
BARBARA BROWN TAYLOR -
The tradition piece is so embedded in me I don’t know that I can see it any more, but the community piece is one I’ve been in danger of losing.
BARBARA BROWN TAYLOR -
I’m a follower of the Christ path, and that opens a huge discussion about what we even mean by words like “Christian.”
BARBARA BROWN TAYLOR -
I began to get notes from people saying they were sorry to hear I’d left ministry. And for a while, I halfway believed they were right, that I’d left.
BARBARA BROWN TAYLOR