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To be in the mainline is to have a history and not simply to be an amalgam, a community church of who knows what that came from who knows where.

Barbara Brown Taylor

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.
BARBARA BROWN TAYLOR

Calling Darkness Names
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 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

People Sunday Tired
I thought being faithful was about becoming someone other than who I was…it wasn’t until I failed that I began to wonder if my human wholeness might be more useful to God than my exhausting goodness.
BARBARA BROWN TAYLOR

Becoming Faithful might
I have learned to prize holy ignorance more highly than religious certainty and to seek companions who have arrived at the same place.
BARBARA BROWN TAYLOR

Holy Ignorance Religious
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
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
To get God on your side is a great way to feel powerful.
BARBARA BROWN TAYLOR

Feel Powerful Side Way
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 TAYLOR

Heart Jesus Lying
The poets began drifting away from churches as the jurists grew louder and more insistent.
BARBARA BROWN TAYLOR

Church Grew Poet
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
Science is not metaphorical. Science is scientific.
BARBARA BROWN TAYLOR

Metaphorical Science Scientific
With so much effort being poured into church growth, so much press being given to the benefits of faith, and so much flexing of religious muscle in the public square, the poor in spirit have no one but Jesus to call them blessed anymore.
BARBARA BROWN TAYLOR

Blessed Jesus Religious
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
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.
BARBARA BROWN TAYLOR

Behave Believe Politics
There 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 TAYLOR

Praying Quiet Way

To be in the mainline is to have a history and not simply to be an amalgam, a community church of who knows what that came from who knows where.

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To be in the mainline is to have a history and not simply to be an amalgam, a community church of who knows what that came from who knows where.

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