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To get God on your side is a great way to feel powerful.

Barbara Brown Taylor

When I say I trust Jesus, that is what I mean: I trust that the way of life leads through perishability, not around it.
BARBARA BROWN TAYLOR

Jesus Mean Way
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
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

Holiness Looks relief
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

might People Soul
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
Science is not metaphorical. Science is scientific.
BARBARA BROWN TAYLOR

Metaphorical Science Scientific
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
Humanity can be pretty stinky.
BARBARA BROWN TAYLOR

Humanity Pretty Stinky
Wisdom is not gained by knowing what is right. Wisdom is gained by practicing what is right, and noticing what happens when that practice succeeds and when it fails.
BARBARA BROWN TAYLOR

Knowing Practice Succeed
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
I am always surprised by people who speak of faith as if it happens in the air somewhere. Our bodies are God’s best way of getting to us. Revelation begins in the flesh.
BARBARA BROWN TAYLOR

Air Body People
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
I’m a follower of the Christ path, and that opens a huge discussion about what we even mean by words like “Christian.”
BARBARA BROWN TAYLOR

Christian Followers Mean
To be in the mainline is to have a history and not simply to be an amalgam, a community church of who knows what that came from who knows where.
BARBARA BROWN TAYLOR

Church Community Knows
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
God does some of God’s best work with people who are seriously lost.
BARBARA BROWN TAYLOR

Lost People Seriously
As a general rule, I would say that human beings never behave more badly toward one another than when they believe they are protecting God.
BARBARA BROWN TAYLOR

Behave Believe Politics
The only real difference between Anxiety and Excitement was my willingness to let go of Fear.
BARBARA BROWN TAYLOR

Differences Letting Go Real
I don’t have time for a job that doesn’t leave me time to be quiet or still or to pray.
BARBARA BROWN TAYLOR

Jobs Praying Quiet
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
When someone asks us where we want to be in our lives, the last thing that occurs to us is to look down at our feet and say, ‘Here, I guess, since this is where I am.’
BARBARA BROWN TAYLOR

Feet Looks Want
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
We are born seekers, calling strange names into the darkness from our earliest days because we know we are not meant to be alone, and because we know that we await someone whom we cannot always see.
BARBARA BROWN TAYLOR

Calling Darkness Names
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
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.
BARBARA BROWN TAYLOR

Ideas Jobs Thinking
I’m leaving out some of the hugely successful megachurches, of which I have very little experience.
BARBARA BROWN TAYLOR

Leaving Littles Successful
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.
BARBARA BROWN TAYLOR

Christian Memories Real

To get God on your side is a great way to feel powerful.

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To get God on your side is a great way to feel powerful.

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