Earth is so thick with divine possibility that it is a wonder we can walk anywhere without cracking our shins on altars.
BARBARA BROWN TAYLORDay by day we are given not what we want but what we need. Sometimes it is a feast and sometimes…swept crumbs, but by faith we believe it is enough.
More Barbara Brown Taylor Quotes
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Humanity can be pretty stinky.
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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 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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The great wisdom traditions of the world all recognize that the main impediment to living a life of meaning is being self-absorbed.
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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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I didn’t want to be a priest. I wanted to do the work that priests do, and that required becoming a priest.
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I don’t miss the ministry, because I’m completely engaged in it. In terms of parish ministry, I miss the intimacy with a group of people.
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There was no time anymore to be quiet or still or pray. So, in many ways, that’s what led to my downward spin.
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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.
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Day by day we are given not what we want but what we need. Sometimes it is a feast and sometimes…swept crumbs, but by faith we believe it is enough.
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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.
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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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Beliefs have become unimportant to me. Faith as radical trust became even more important to me.
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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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Whoever you are, you are human. Wherever you are, you live in the world, which is just waiting for you to notice the holiness in it.
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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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I’m a follower of the Christ path, and that opens a huge discussion about what we even mean by words like “Christian.”
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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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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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Science is not metaphorical. Science is scientific.
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We’re children of God through our blood kinship with Christ. We’re also sons and daughters of Adam and Eve, with a hereditary craving for forbidden fruit salad.
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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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In a world where faith is often construed as a way of thinking, bodily practices remind the willing that faith is a way of life
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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.
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The abundance of our lives is not determined by how long we live, but how well we live. Christ makes abundant life possible if we choose to live it now.
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When I forget the power of the word, I read Frederick Buechner. When I forget the deep relief of telling the truth, I read Frederick Buechner. When I forget to look for the holiness all around me, I read Frederick Buechner. When I forget why the gospel matters, I read Frederick Buechner.
BARBARA BROWN TAYLOR