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I began to get notes from people saying they were sorry to hear I’d left ministry. And for a while, I halfway believed they were right, that I’d left.

Barbara Brown Taylor

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

Feel Powerful Side Way
I thought being faithful was about becoming someone other than who I was…it wasn’t until I failed that I began to wonder if my human wholeness might be more useful to God than my exhausting goodness.
BARBARA BROWN TAYLOR

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

Belief Important Radical
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
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
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
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.
BARBARA BROWN TAYLOR

Children Daughter Son
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
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’ve got a hold of something that won’t move. It’s a willingness to keep walking into the next day, open to whatever may turn out to be true that day.
BARBARA BROWN TAYLOR

May Moving Next Day
There was no time anymore to be quiet or still or pray. So, in many ways, that’s what led to my downward spin.
BARBARA BROWN TAYLOR

Praying Quiet Way
God does some of God’s best work with people who are seriously lost.
BARBARA BROWN TAYLOR

Lost People Seriously
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.
BARBARA BROWN TAYLOR

Baptism Children Thinking
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
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
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

I began to get notes from people saying they were sorry to hear I’d left ministry. And for a while, I halfway believed they were right, that I’d left.

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I began to get notes from people saying they were sorry to hear I’d left ministry. And for a while, I halfway believed they were right, that I’d left.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

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