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.
BARBARA BROWN TAYLORI think we d like life to be like a train..but it turns out to be a sailboat.
More Barbara Brown Taylor Quotes
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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 only real difference between Anxiety and Excitement was my willingness to let go of Fear.
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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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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.
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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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I don’t have time for a job that doesn’t leave me time to be quiet or still or to pray.
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I 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.
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Beliefs have become unimportant to me. Faith as radical trust became even more important to me.
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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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Humanity can be pretty stinky.
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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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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.
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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.
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Kindness is not a bad religion, no matter what name you use for God.
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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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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.
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I can’t help but note that God is being useful to a lot of people trying to do harm to one another.
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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.
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I love being alone. I learned that from my father, I think, who loved his own company.
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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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I think we d like life to be like a train..but it turns out to be a sailboat.
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For a long time I listened to other people to decide whether I was still Christian or not, and I would sort of vet myself by the traditional formulae.
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Church can be extremely boring. It can be very meaningful, it can be character forming, but can be have very little fizz in it.
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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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To get God on your side is a great way to feel powerful.
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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.
BARBARA BROWN TAYLOR