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I think my idea of God was much more directive than my idea of God now, that is, a God who had one plan in mind for me, perhaps, and my job was to find out what it was and obey.

Barbara Brown Taylor

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.
BARBARA BROWN TAYLOR

Believe Needs Want
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

might People Soul
To get God on your side is a great way to feel powerful.
BARBARA BROWN TAYLOR

Feel Powerful Side Way
I love being alone. I learned that from my father, I think, who loved his own company.
BARBARA BROWN TAYLOR

Father Love Thinking
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

Community Different People
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
BARBARA BROWN TAYLOR

Practice Thinking World
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.
BARBARA BROWN TAYLOR

Holiness Waiting World
Beliefs have become unimportant to me. Faith as radical trust became even more important to me.
BARBARA BROWN TAYLOR

Belief Important Radical
When someone asks us where we want to be in our lives, the last thing that occurs to us is to look down at our feet and say, ‘Here, I guess, since this is where I am.’
BARBARA BROWN TAYLOR

Feet Looks Want
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.
BARBARA BROWN TAYLOR

Enough Lucky Prayer
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
I am always surprised by people who speak of faith as if it happens in the air somewhere. Our bodies are God’s best way of getting to us. Revelation begins in the flesh.
BARBARA BROWN TAYLOR

Air Body People
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.
BARBARA BROWN TAYLOR

Order Self Thinking
The only real difference between Anxiety and Excitement was my willingness to let go of Fear.
BARBARA BROWN TAYLOR

Differences Letting Go Real
Church can be extremely boring. It can be very meaningful, it can be character forming, but can be have very little fizz in it.
BARBARA BROWN TAYLOR

Character Church Meaningful
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
Every human interaction offers you the chance to make things better or to make things worse.
BARBARA BROWN TAYLOR

Chance InterAction Offers
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

Community Losing Pieces
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
Kindness is not a bad religion, no matter what name you use for God.
BARBARA BROWN TAYLOR

Kindness Names Use
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
It’s difficult for me to ignore how many conflicts locally and worldwide have religion tagged to them.
BARBARA BROWN TAYLOR

Conflict Difficult Tagged
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
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 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.
BARBARA BROWN TAYLOR

Christian Memories Real
Science is not metaphorical. Science is scientific.
BARBARA BROWN TAYLOR

Metaphorical Science Scientific
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 think my idea of God was much more directive than my idea of God now, that is, a God who had one plan in mind for me, perhaps, and my job was to find out what it was and obey.

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I think my idea of God was much more directive than my idea of God now, that is, a God who had one plan in mind for me, perhaps, and my job was to find out what it was and obey.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

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