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God does some of God’s best work with people who are seriously lost.

Barbara Brown Taylor

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 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 TAYLOR

Determined Life Long
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
I decided I got to say whether I was Christian or not, and so I’ve relaxed enormously since then. I’m the one who gets to say that, and not someone else.
BARBARA BROWN TAYLOR

Christian Decided Relax
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.
BARBARA BROWN TAYLOR

Enough Lucky Prayer
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
The effort to untangle the human words from the divine seems not only futile to me but also unnecessary, since God works with what is. God uses whatever is usable in a life, both to speak and to act, and those who insist on fireworks in the sky may miss the electricity that sparks the human heart.
BARBARA BROWN TAYLOR

Effort Heart Sky
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
The only real difference between Anxiety and Excitement was my willingness to let go of Fear.
BARBARA BROWN TAYLOR

Differences Letting Go Real
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
Humanity can be pretty stinky.
BARBARA BROWN TAYLOR

Humanity Pretty Stinky
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
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 have learned things in the dark that I could never have learned in the light, things that have saved my life over and over again, so that there is really only one logical conclusion. I need darkness as much as I need light.
BARBARA BROWN TAYLOR

Dark Light Needs
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
Science is not metaphorical. Science is scientific.
BARBARA BROWN TAYLOR

Metaphorical Science Scientific
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
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
The poets began drifting away from churches as the jurists grew louder and more insistent.
BARBARA BROWN TAYLOR

Church Grew Poet
The beauty in the losing is a loss finally of self-consciousness. There’s a gorgeous moment that can happen in all kinds of places. It can happen with people, it can happen with nature, and it can happen with my eyes shut anywhere I am.
BARBARA BROWN TAYLOR

Eye Loss Self
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
Kindness is not a bad religion, no matter what name you use for God.
BARBARA BROWN TAYLOR

Kindness Names Use
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’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
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
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
The great thing about civility is that it does not require you to agree with or approve of anything. You don’t even have to love your neighbor to be civil. You just have to treat your neighbor the same way you would like your neighbor to treat your grandmother, or your child.
BARBARA BROWN TAYLOR

Children Grandmother Love You

God does some of God’s best work with people who are seriously lost.

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God does some of God’s best work with people who are seriously lost.

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