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I don’t have time for a job that doesn’t leave me time to be quiet or still or to pray.

Barbara Brown Taylor

Most of us spend so much time thinking about where we have been or where we are supposed to be going that we have a hard time recognizing where we actually are.
BARBARA BROWN TAYLOR

Hard Recognizing Thinking Times
Science is not metaphorical. Science is scientific.
BARBARA BROWN TAYLOR

Metaphorical Science Scientific
I’m leaving out some of the hugely successful megachurches, of which I have very little experience.
BARBARA BROWN TAYLOR

Leaving Littles Successful
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.
BARBARA BROWN TAYLOR

Ideas Losing Lost
The 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 TAYLOR

Church Ideas People
The great wisdom traditions of the world all recognize that the main impediment to living a life of meaning is being self-absorbed.
BARBARA BROWN TAYLOR

Self Tradition World
I can’t help but note that God is being useful to a lot of people trying to do harm to one another.
BARBARA BROWN TAYLOR

Helping People Trying
Salvation happens every time someone with a key uses it to open a door he could lock instead.
BARBARA BROWN TAYLOR

Doors Keys Locks
The beauty in the losing is a loss finally of self-consciousness. There’s a gorgeous moment that can happen in all kinds of places. It can happen with people, it can happen with nature, and it can happen with my eyes shut anywhere I am.
BARBARA BROWN TAYLOR

Eye Loss Self
That’s enough, and I have a ministry as a neighbor as well. A ministry as a friend and a ministry as an aunt and a godmother, and family is very much in the circle of my vocation.
BARBARA BROWN TAYLOR

Aunt Circles Godmother
Wisdom is not gained by knowing what is right. Wisdom is gained by practicing what is right, and noticing what happens when that practice succeeds and when it fails.
BARBARA BROWN TAYLOR

Knowing Practice Succeed
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 TAYLOR

Christian Long People
I wanted to be as close as I could to the Really Real, and I’ll capitalize both of those R’s, because God is a word that means different things to different people, but we might all agree it’s what is most real.
BARBARA BROWN TAYLOR

Mean People Real
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

Baptism Children Thinking
I 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 TAYLOR

Home Nursing People
I found myself in a maze where I’d taken the wrong turn. In my wish to do well for that congregation I wasn’t doing particularly well for myself or my friends or my family, and I even found that the work for God was taking me away from God.
BARBARA BROWN TAYLOR

Maze Taken Wish

I don’t have time for a job that doesn’t leave me time to be quiet or still or to pray.

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I don’t have time for a job that doesn’t leave me time to be quiet or still or to pray.

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