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 TAYLORI 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.
More Barbara Brown Taylor Quotes
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Kindness is not a bad religion, no matter what name you use for God.
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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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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.
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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.
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God does some of God’s best work with people who are seriously lost.
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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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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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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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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.
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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 began to get notes from people saying they were sorry to hear I’d left ministry. And for a while, I halfway believed they were right, that I’d left.
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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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Earth is so thick with divine possibility that it is a wonder we can walk anywhere without cracking our shins on altars.
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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.
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I love being alone. I learned that from my father, I think, who loved his own company.
BARBARA BROWN TAYLOR