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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.

Barbara Brown Taylor

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
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 found myself in a maze where I’d taken the wrong turn. In my wish to do well for that congregation I wasn’t doing particularly well for myself or my friends or my family, and I even found that the work for God was taking me away from God.
BARBARA BROWN TAYLOR

Maze Taken Wish
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
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
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
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
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 can’t help but note that God is being useful to a lot of people trying to do harm to one another.
BARBARA BROWN TAYLOR

Helping People Trying
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
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
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
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.
BARBARA BROWN TAYLOR

Christian Long 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
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
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

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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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.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

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