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You can create an intimate community of about 20 or 25 people, and beyond that you’re into a different kind of relationship.

Barbara Brown Taylor

Divine reality is not way up in the sky somewhere; it is readily available in the encounters of everyday life, which make hash of my illusions that I can control the ways God comes to me.
BARBARA BROWN TAYLOR

Everyday Reality Sky
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
Whoever you are, you are human. Wherever you are, you live in the world, which is just waiting for you to notice the holiness in it.
BARBARA BROWN TAYLOR

Holiness Waiting World
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
It’s difficult for me to ignore how many conflicts locally and worldwide have religion tagged to them.
BARBARA BROWN TAYLOR

Conflict Difficult Tagged
God does some of God’s best work with people who are seriously lost.
BARBARA BROWN TAYLOR

Lost People Seriously
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
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
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
Most of us spend so much time thinking about where we have been or where we are supposed to be going that we have a hard time recognizing where we actually are.
BARBARA BROWN TAYLOR

Hard Recognizing Thinking Times
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
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
Science is not metaphorical. Science is scientific.
BARBARA BROWN TAYLOR

Metaphorical Science Scientific
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
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
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 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
That’s enough, and I have a ministry as a neighbor as well. A ministry as a friend and a ministry as an aunt and a godmother, and family is very much in the circle of my vocation.
BARBARA BROWN TAYLOR

Aunt Circles Godmother
I read more widely. I made friends more widely. I wore more red. I stayed home on Sundays. I did things that were never in the realm of possible things to do before. That was a real desert experience for me.
BARBARA BROWN TAYLOR

Home Real Sunday
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
The poets began drifting away from churches as the jurists grew louder and more insistent.
BARBARA BROWN TAYLOR

Church Grew Poet
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
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
You can create an intimate community of about 20 or 25 people, and beyond that you’re into a different kind of relationship.
BARBARA BROWN TAYLOR

Community Different People
There comes a time when it is vitally important for your spiritual health to drop your clothes, look in the mirror, and say, ‘Here I am. This is the body-like-no-other that my life has shaped. I live here. This is my soul’s address
BARBARA BROWN TAYLOR

Clothes Drop Important Mirrors Spiritual
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
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

You can create an intimate community of about 20 or 25 people, and beyond that you’re into a different kind of relationship.

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You can create an intimate community of about 20 or 25 people, and beyond that you’re into a different kind of relationship.

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