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I became so attentive to the souls of other people that I was not as attentive as I might have been to my own.

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
Beliefs have become unimportant to me. Faith as radical trust became even more important to me.
BARBARA BROWN TAYLOR

Belief Important Radical
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
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
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 have learned to prize holy ignorance more highly than religious certainty and to seek companions who have arrived at the same place.
BARBARA BROWN TAYLOR

Holy Ignorance Religious
I miss the hot spots. I miss the hospital calls. I miss the nursing homes. I miss the really intimate human contact with other people, which I did nothing to earn.
BARBARA BROWN TAYLOR

Home Nursing People
Our waiting is not nothing. It is something — a very big something — because people tend to be shaped by whatever it is they are waiting for.
BARBARA BROWN TAYLOR

Bigs People Waiting
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

Community Losing Pieces
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
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
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
Church can be extremely boring. It can be very meaningful, it can be character forming, but can be have very little fizz in it.
BARBARA BROWN TAYLOR

Character Church Meaningful
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 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.
BARBARA BROWN TAYLOR

Mean People Real
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

I became so attentive to the souls of other people that I was not as attentive as I might have been to my own.

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I became so attentive to the souls of other people that I was not as attentive as I might have been to my own.

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