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 TAYLORThe great wisdom traditions of the world all recognize that the main impediment to living a life of meaning is being self-absorbed.
More Barbara Brown Taylor Quotes
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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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Prayer is happening, and it is not necessarily something that I am doing. God is happening, and I am lucky enough to know that I am in The Midst.
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Most of us will have more than one job in our working lives, which means we will have more than one opportunity to seek meaningful work at different stages of our own deepening humanity.
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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.
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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.
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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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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.
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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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I can’t help but note that God is being useful to a lot of people trying to do harm to one another.
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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.
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It 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.
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I’ve got a hold of something that won’t move. It’s a willingness to keep walking into the next day, open to whatever may turn out to be true that day.
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The only real difference between Anxiety and Excitement was my willingness to let go of Fear.
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I think a toxic message in a lot of Christianity has been that the self has to be annihilated in order for God to be found. I think that has been a toxic message.
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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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To be fully human is perhaps why I’m Christian, because I see in the life of Jesus a way of being fully human.
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To get God on your side is a great way to feel powerful.
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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.
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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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Science is not metaphorical. Science is scientific.
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Once I gave up the hunt for villains, I had little recourse but to take responsibility for my choices…. Needless to say, this is far less satisfying that nailing villains. It also turned out to be more healing in the end.
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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.
BARBARA BROWN TAYLOR -
It’s difficult for me to ignore how many conflicts locally and worldwide have religion tagged to them.
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I became so attentive to the souls of other people that I was not as attentive as I might have been to my own.
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Beliefs have become unimportant to me. Faith as radical trust became even more important to me.
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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