black
grey
blue
red
brown
white

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

Science is not metaphorical. Science is scientific.
BARBARA BROWN TAYLOR

Metaphorical Science Scientific
I think we d like life to be like a train..but it turns out to be a sailboat.
BARBARA BROWN TAYLOR

Sailboat Thinking Turns
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
The real problem has far less to do with what is really out there than it does with our resistance to finding out what is really out there.
BARBARA BROWN TAYLOR

Problem Real Reality Resistance
Every human interaction offers you the chance to make things better or to make things worse.
BARBARA BROWN TAYLOR

Chance InterAction Offers
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
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
BARBARA BROWN TAYLOR

Clothes Drop Important Mirrors Spiritual
The great thing about civility is that it does not require you to agree with or approve of anything. You don’t even have to love your neighbor to be civil. You just have to treat your neighbor the same way you would like your neighbor to treat your grandmother, or your child.
BARBARA BROWN TAYLOR

Children Grandmother Love You
I decided I got to say whether I was Christian or not, and so I’ve relaxed enormously since then. I’m the one who gets to say that, and not someone else.
BARBARA BROWN TAYLOR

Christian Decided Relax
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
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

Jobs Praying Quiet
Having been brought up with a definition of faith as adherence to a set of beliefs, I have more and more begun to turn instead toward a definition of faith as openness to truth, whatever truth may turn out to be.
BARBARA BROWN TAYLOR

Adherence Definitions May
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 boundaries became constrictive in what I was doing, and if my faith grew, it was because I pressed some of the boundaries in ways I hadn’t felt comfortable or responsible doing that before.
BARBARA BROWN TAYLOR

Boundaries Responsible Way
I’m a follower of the Christ path, and that opens a huge discussion about what we even mean by words like “Christian.”
BARBARA BROWN TAYLOR

Christian Followers Mean
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

Church Community Knows
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.
BARBARA BROWN TAYLOR

Dark Light Needs
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.
BARBARA BROWN TAYLOR

Quitting Religious Trouble
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

Home Real Sunday
Divine reality is not way up in the sky somewhere; it is readily available in the encounters of everyday life, which make hash of my illusions that I can control the ways God comes to me.
BARBARA BROWN TAYLOR

Everyday Reality Sky
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.
BARBARA BROWN TAYLOR

Doe Idols Running
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
Humanity can be pretty stinky.
BARBARA BROWN TAYLOR

Humanity Pretty Stinky
Science is not metaphorical. Science is scientific.
BARBARA BROWN TAYLOR

Metaphorical Science Scientific
The poets began drifting away from churches as the jurists grew louder and more insistent.
BARBARA BROWN TAYLOR

Church Grew Poet
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

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.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

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.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

More Barbara Brown Taylor Quotes