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396b003 I have learned to prize holy ignorance more highly than religious certainty and to seek companions who have arrived at the same place. We are a motley crew, distinguished not only by our inability to explain ourselves to those who are more certain of their beliefs than we are but in many cases by our distance from the centers of our faith communities as well. Barbara Brown Taylor
32b1cba I am not in charge of this House, and never will be. I have no say about who is in and who is out. I do not get to make the rules. Like Job, I was nowhere when God laid the foundations of the earth. I cannot bind the chains of the Pleiades or loose the cords of Orion. I do not even know when the mountain goats give birth, much less the ordinances of the heavens. I am a guest here, charged with serving other guests--even those who present th.. Barbara Brown Taylor
4ef95ba In a quip that makes the rounds, Jesus preached the coming of the kingdom, but it was the church that came. All these years later, the way many of us are doing church is broken and we know it, even if we do not know what to do about it. We proclaim the priesthood of all believers while we continue with hierarchical clergy, liturgy, and architecture. We follow a Lord who challenged the religious and political institutions of his time while w.. Barbara Brown Taylor
ffbcf75 If I had to name my disability, I would call it an unwillingness to fall. On the one hand, this is perfectly normal. I do not know anyone who likes to fall. But, on the other hand, this reluctance signals mistrust of the central truth of the Christian gospel: life springs from death, not only at the last but also in the many little deaths along the way. When everything you count on for protection has failed, the Divine Presence does not fai.. Barbara Brown Taylor
9d99175 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
321632c I know that the Bible is a special kind of book, but I find it as seductive as any other. If I am not careful, I can begin to mistake the words on the page for the realities they describe. I can begin to love the dried ink marks on the page more than I love the encounters that gave rise to them. If I am not careful, I can decide that I am really much happier reading my Bible than I am entering into what God is doing in my own time and place.. Barbara Brown Taylor
d2a60aa I had done everything I knew how to do to draw as near to the heart of God as I could, only to find myself out of gas on a lonely road, filled with bitterness & self-pity. To suppose that I had ended up in such a place by the grace of God required a significant leap of faith. If I could open my hands, then all that fell from them might flower on the way down. If I could let myself fall, then I too might land in a fertile place. Barbara Brown Taylor
9082259 The world for which you have been so carefully prepared is being taken away from you,' he said, 'by the grace of God.' (Walter Brueggemann) Barbara Brown Taylor
c6bfde4 All I am saying is that anyone can do this. Anyone can ask and anyone can bless, whether anyone has authorized you to do it or not. All I am saying is that the world needs you to do this, because there is a real shortage of people willing to kneel wherever they are and recognize the holiness holding its sometimes bony, often tender, always life-giving hand above their heads. That we are able to bless one another at all is evidence that we h.. Barbara Brown Taylor
9b99481 Although I never found a church where I felt completely at home again, I made a new home in the world. I renewed my membership in the priesthood of all believers, who may not have as much power as we would like, but whose consolation prize is the freedome to meet God after work, well away from all centers of religious command, wherever God shows up. Barbara Brown Taylor
b384cd5 I discovered a version of the sinner's prayer that increased my faith far more than the one that I had said years earlier...In this version, there were no formulas, no set phrases that promised us safe passage across the abyss. There was only our tattered trust that the Spirit who had given us life would not leave us in the wilderness without offering us life again. Barbara Brown Taylor
d034975 Committing myself to the task of becoming fully human is saving my life now...to become fully human is something extra, a conscious choice that not everyone makes. Based on my limited wisdom and experience, there is more than one way to do this. If I were a Buddhist, I might do it by taking the bodhisattva vow, and if I were a Jew, I might do it by following Torah. Because I am a Christian, I do it by imitating Christ, although i will be th.. Barbara Brown Taylor
7e3ecb1 There is a light that shines in the darkness, which is only visible there. light Barbara Brown Taylor
fa99413 E. B. White once wrote, "I can't decide whether to enjoy the world or improve the world; that makes it difficult to plan the day." Barbara Brown Taylor
90bb6e6 a priest is someone willing to stand between a God and a people who are longing for one another's love, turning back and forth between them with no hope of tending either as well as each deserves. To be a priest is to serve a God who never stops calling people to do more justice and love more mercy, and simultaneously to serve people who nine times out of ten are just looking for a safe place to rest. To be a priest is to know that things a.. Barbara Brown Taylor
1ecb3da I had arrived at an understanding of faith that had far more to do with trust than with certainty. I trusted God to be God even if I could not say who God was for sure. I trusted God to sustain the world although I could not say for sure how that happened. I trusted God to hold me and those I loved, in life and in death, without giving me one shred of conclusive evidence that it was so. Barbara Brown Taylor
4e59dfa Salvation is a word for the divine spaciousness that comes to human beings in all the tight places where their lives are at risk, regardless of how they got there or whether they know God's name. Sometimes it comes as an extended human hand and sometimes as a bolt from the blue, but either way it opens a door in what looked for all the world like a wall. This is the way of life, and God alone knows how it works. Barbara Brown Taylor
63564d3 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
e9b314e those of us who wish to draw near to God should not be surprised when our vision goes cloudy, for this is a sign that we are approaching the opaque splendor of God. If we decide to keep going beyond the point where our eyes or minds are any help to us, we may finally arrive at the pinnacle of the spiritual journey toward God, which exists in complete and dazzling darkness. Barbara Brown Taylor
9769c3d I cannot say for sure when my reliable ideas about God began to slip away, but the big chest I used to keep them in is smaller than a shoebox now. Most of the time, I feel so ashamed about this that I do not own up to it unless someone else mentions it first. Then we find a quiet place where we can talk about what it is like to feel more and more devoted to a relationship that we are less and less able to say anything about. Barbara Brown Taylor
a825c08 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
3ed2cce If I have any expertise, it is in the realm of spiritual darkness: fear of the unknown, familiarity with divine absence, mistrust of conventional wisdom, suspicion of religious comforters, keen awareness of the limits of all language about God and at the same time shame over my inability to speak of God without a thousand qualifiers, doubt about the health of my soul, and barely suppressed contempt for those who have no such qualms. These a.. darkness Barbara Brown Taylor
570f081 but I know that I have an easier time loving humankind than I do loving particular human beings. Barbara Brown Taylor
f39c77d Or my eyes go back to seeing it that way. When I entered the cave hoping for a glimpse of celestial brightness, it never occurred to me that it might be so small. But here it is, not much bigger than a mustard seed--everything I need to remember how much my set ideas get in my way. While I am looking for something large, bright, and unmistakably holy, God slips something small, dark, and apparently negligible in my pocket. How many other tr.. Barbara Brown Taylor
fac3610 The real problem has far less to do with what is really out there than it does with our resistance to finding out what is really out there. Barbara Brown Taylor
66815c3 A few years ago, Ed and I were exploring the dunes on Cumberland Island, one of the barrier islands between the Atlantic Ocean and the mainland of south Georgia. He was looking for the fossilized teeth of long-dead sharks. I was looking for sand spurs so that I did not step on one. This meant that neither of us was looking very far past our own feet, so the huge loggerhead turtle took us both by surprise. She was still alive but just barely.. Barbara Brown Taylor
ede6a0a When my friend Matilda lay dying of Lou Gehrig's disease, she said that she had been prepared all of her life to choose between good and evil. What no one had prepared her for, she lamented, was to choose between the good, the better, and the best--and yet this capacity turned out to be the one she most needed as she watched the sands of her life run out. Barbara Brown Taylor
de6e8c5 Susan B. Anthony. "I distrust those people who know so well what God wants them to do," she once said, "because I notice it always coincides with their own desires." Barbara Brown Taylor
bbe57bd Busy? The word loses all meaning under the canopy of this sky. Barbara Brown Taylor
34beb06 This is good, and all good things cast shadows. Barbara Brown Taylor
8d66c0a During the day it is hard to remember that all the stars in the sky are out there all the time, even when I am too blinded by the sun to see them. Barbara Brown Taylor
54c5fee Who would stick around to wrestle a dark angel all night long if there were any chance of escape? The only answer I can think of is this: someone in deep need of blessing; someone willing to limp forever for the blessing that follows the wound. Barbara Brown Taylor
29f2112 Plato once said that pain restores order to the soul. Rumi said that it lops off the branches of indifference. "The throbbing vein / will take you further / than any thinking."14 Whatever else it does, pain offers an experience of being human that is as elemental as birth, orgasm, love, and death. Because it is so real, pain is an available antidote to unreality--not the medicine you would have chosen, perhaps, but an effective one all the .. Barbara Brown Taylor
3f474de I wish I could turn to the church for help, but so many congregations are preoccupied with keeping the lights on right now that the last thing they want to talk about is how to befriend the dark. Barbara Brown Taylor
fe8a262 We cannot live in a world that is interpreted for us by others. An interpreted world is not a hope. Part of the terror is to take back our own listening. To use our own voice. To see our own light. --Hildegard of Bingen Barbara Brown Taylor
671755a As many years as I have been listening to Easter sermons, I have never heard anyone talk about that part. Resurrection is always announced with Easter lilies, the sound of trumpets, bright streaming light. But it did not happen that way. If it happened in a cave, it happened in complete silence, in absolute darkness, with the smell of damp stone and dug earth in the air. Sitting deep in the heart of Organ Cave, I let this sink in: new life .. Barbara Brown Taylor
2af1a10 our comfort or discomfort with the outer dark is a good barometer of how we feel about the inner kind. Barbara Brown Taylor
c5cd147 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
b0e5782 I noted that it is sometimes hard to tell whether you are being killed or saved by the hands that turn your life upside down. Barbara Brown Taylor
e5638dc Who had persuaded me that God preferred four walls and a roof to wide-open spaces? When had I made the subtle switch myself, becoming convinced that church bodies and buildings were the safest and most reliable places to encounter the living God? Barbara Brown Taylor
82e9524 You shall love the stranger, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt." Those most likely to befriend strangers, in other words, are those who have been strangers themselves. The best way to grow empathy for those who are lost is to know what it means to be lost yourself." Barbara Brown Taylor
544b35a Sometimes I wondered if it even mattered whether our communion cups were filled with consecrated wine or draft beer, as long as we bent over them long enough to recognize each other as kin. Barbara Brown Taylor
90abd73 To see takes time, like having a friend takes time. It is as simple as turning off the television to learn the song of a single bird. Why should anyone do such things? I cannot imagine--unless one is weary of crossing days off the calendar with no sense of what makes the last day different from the next. Unless one is weary of acting in what feels more like a television commercial than a life. The practice of paying attention offers no quic.. Barbara Brown Taylor
f169278 The problem with every sacred text is that it has human readers. Consciously or unconsciously, we interpret it to meet our own needs. There is nothing wrong with this unless we deny that we are doing it, as when someone tells me that he is not 'interpreting' anything but simply reporting what is right there on the page. This is worrisome, not only because he is reading a translation from the original Hebrew or Greek that has already involve.. Barbara Brown Taylor
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