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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.

Barbara Brown Taylor

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.
BARBARA BROWN TAYLOR

Groups Missing People
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.
BARBARA BROWN TAYLOR

Jobs Meaningful Opportunity
God does some of God’s best work with people who are seriously lost.
BARBARA BROWN TAYLOR

Lost People Seriously
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.
BARBARA BROWN TAYLOR

Choices Healing Responsibility
You only need to lose track of who you are, or who you thought you were supposed to be, so that you end up lying flat on the dirt floor basement of your heart. Do this, Jesus says, and you will live.
BARBARA BROWN TAYLOR

Heart Jesus Lying
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
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.
BARBARA BROWN TAYLOR

Blessed Jesus Religious
I live by the simplest, perhaps facile command that Jesus ever gave, which is to love God with the whole self and the neighbor as the self, and I find that’s entirely consuming. To do those two things leaves me very little time to do much else.
BARBARA BROWN TAYLOR

Jesus Self Two
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 TAYLOR

Church Ideas People
To be fully human is perhaps why I’m Christian, because I see in the life of Jesus a way of being fully human.
BARBARA BROWN TAYLOR

Christian Jesus Way
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
Earth is so thick with divine possibility that it is a wonder we can walk anywhere without cracking our shins on altars.
BARBARA BROWN TAYLOR

Christian Inspirational Religious
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
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 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
I didn’t want to be a priest. I wanted to do the work that priests do, and that required becoming a priest.
BARBARA BROWN TAYLOR

Becoming Priest Want

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 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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Popular Authors

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