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aba36e6
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To lie flat on the ground with the breath knocked out of you is to find a solid resting place. This is as low as you can go. You told yourself you would die if it ever came to this, but here you are. You cannot help yourself and yet you live.
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Barbara Brown Taylor |
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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.
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Barbara Brown Taylor |
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Effective people are busy people. Religious people are busy people. For millions and millions of people, busy-ness is The Way of Life. "How are you?" "Busy like crazy, but what else is new? And you?" Some busy people cannot even tell the difference between relaxation and narcolepsy, because the minute they sit down in a quiet place alone, they nod off."
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Barbara Brown Taylor |
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ac03083
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When we arrived in this large room, Rockwell put a fluorescent marker down where we entered so we could find the way back out again. When Hurd failed to do that, her teacher corrected her. "In a cave," she told Hurd, "always, always look back. Every few minutes, turn around. Nothing looks the same coming out as it did going in, so you have to memorize the backsides of every boulder, the shape of the hole you've just come through, see the re..
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Barbara Brown Taylor |
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f9178e1
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Anyone who stands up in front of other human beings to speak knows what a frightful gift it is. This power of ours has no safety catch on it. We are as likely to make nothing out of something as the other way around.
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Barbara Brown Taylor |
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here is the testimony of faith: darkness is not dark to God; the night is as bright as the day.
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Barbara Brown Taylor |
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The whole purpose of the Bible, it seems to me, is to convince people to set the written word down in order to become living words in the world for God's sake. For me, this willing conversion of ink back to blood is the full substance of faith.
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Barbara Brown Taylor |
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Because Jesus died instead of ushering in the messianic age, Paul responded with a doctrine of atonement. Because the risen Christ struck his followers as very close kin to God, the early church responded with a doctrine of the Trinity. Because Christians did not turn out to be much better behaved than anyone else, Augustine responded with a doctrine of original sin. The doctrines are works of genius, for the most part, but like books they ..
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doctrine
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Barbara Brown Taylor |
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931b8f5
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I wanted to recover the kind of faith that has nothing to do with being sure what I believe and everything to do with trusting God to catch me though I am not sure of anything.
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Barbara Brown Taylor |
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6f62b76
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If Jesus were in charge of an average congregation I figure there would be about four people left there on Sunday mornings, and chances are those four would be fooling themselves. Jesus would greet newcomers by saying, "Are you absolutely sure you want to follow this way of life? It will take everything you have. It has to come before everything else that matters to you. Plenty of people have launched out on it without counting the cost, an..
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Barbara Brown Taylor |
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When visitors come to a worship service in my own religious tradition, a great deal depends on how warmly they are welcomed and whether they feel included or excluded by what they hear during the short time they are with us. We may have exactly one shot at communicating who we are to people who know nothing about us - or who think they already know a lot about us - but who, in either case, will remember us at the embodiment of our entire tr..
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religion
inspirational
first-impressions
welcome
tradition
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barbara brown taylor |
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b10be6e
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For reasons no one may ever understand, God decided it would be helpful for people to be different instead of the same, if only because it would slow them down a little bit. God decided it would be good for them to have to stop on a regular basis and say, 'Could you say that a different way, please? I don't understand what you mean' or 'Can you show me with your hands?' God decided it would be good for them to stop taking their communicatio..
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Barbara Brown Taylor |
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WHEN YOU LIVE IN GOD, your day begins when you open your eyes, though you have done nothing yourself to open them, and you take your first breath, though there is no reason why this life-giving breeze should be given to you and not to some other. In the dark or in the light, with a stone slab under your back or a feather topper, your day begins when you let God hold you because you do not have the slightest idea how to hold yourself--when y..
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Barbara Brown Taylor |
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9fdcf88
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religion is more than a source of conflict or a calculated way to stay out of hell. Religions are treasure chests of stories, songs, rituals, and ways of life that have been handed down for millennia.
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Barbara Brown Taylor |
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049e423
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Salvation happens every time someone with a key uses it to open a door he could lock instead.
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Barbara Brown Taylor |
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7053621
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People ask me: why do you write about food, and eating and drinking? Why don't you write about the struggle for power and security, and about love, the way the others do? The easiest answer is to say that, like most other humans, I am hungry. --M. F. K. Fisher
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Barbara Brown Taylor |
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1f6ea93
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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. Wise people do not have to be certain what they believe before they act. They are free to act, trusting that the practice itself will teach them what they need to know.
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Barbara Brown Taylor |
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c9e28f6
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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. In the words of Arun Gandhi, grandson of Mohandas, "People of the Book risk putting the book above people."
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Barbara Brown Taylor |
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1c51b3b
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Once, at the end of a field trip to the Atlanta Masjid of Al-Islam, the imam ended his meeting with students by saying, 'Our deepest desire is not that you become Muslim, but that you become the best Christian, the best Jew, the best person you can be. In the name of God, the Most Gracious, the Most Merciful. Thank you for coming.' Then he was gone, leaving me with a fresh case of holy envy.
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Barbara Brown Taylor |
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d8e1f51
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The earth had granted me a lifeline, by letting me siphon off some of the water that was on its way somewhere else. Because of me, there would be less water flowing into the Chattahoochee River: less for the speckled trout, less for the wood ducks, less for the mountain laurel that drop their white petals into the river every fall. There would be more water flowing into my septic tank, laced with laundry detergent, dish soap, and human wast..
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natural-resources
water
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Barbara Brown Taylor |
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15c1bd6
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In his book 'God and the Universe of Faiths,' British theologian John Hick makes a compelling argument. Before Copernicus, he says, earthlings believed they occupied the center of the universe - and why not? Earth was the place from which they saw everything else. It was the ground under their feet, and as far as they could tell everything revolved around them. Then Copernicus proposed a new map of the universe with the sun at the center an..
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Barbara Brown Taylor |
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63b781e
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If Jesus meant for his followers to rule the world, then why did he teach them to wash feet?
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Barbara Brown Taylor |
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1ae3ec1
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At the very least, most of us need someone to tell our stories to. At a deeper level, most of us need someone to help us forget ourselves, a little or a lot. The great wisdom traditions of the world all recognize that the main impediment to living a life of meaning is being self-absorbed.
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Barbara Brown Taylor |
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1e2b7c5
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I read science for the same reason I read theology: because I am a seeker after truth.
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Barbara Brown Taylor |
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7b9377d
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By most estimates, 70 percent of our sense receptors are located in our eyes. When they are working, they can take over most of the duties of all other senses.
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Barbara Brown Taylor |
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dc8bda8
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The world for which you have been so carefully prepared is being taken away from you," he said, "by the grace of God."
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Barbara Brown Taylor |
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c1bfc6d
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What if I could learn to trust my feelings instead of asking to be delivered from them? What if I could follow one of my great fears all the way to the edge of the abyss, take a breath, and keep going? Isn't there a chance of being surprised by what happens next? Better than that, what if I could learn how to stay in the present instead of letting my anxieties run on fast-forward?
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Barbara Brown Taylor |
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Maybe you have to be really, really tired before you can answer questions like those. Maybe you have to be deeply discouraged by never having time for all the things that need doing in this world--not just the important things, like spending time with the people you love, taking care of your health, and engaging in purposeful work (paid or unpaid) that gives you a chance to participate in the repairing of the world, but also the minor but n..
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Barbara Brown Taylor |
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the degree to which we believe our faith is what makes us human is the same degree to which we will question the humanity of those who do not share our faith.7
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Barbara Brown Taylor |
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1d2d74b
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as she went. Her head bent so far underneath her that I feared her neck would break. Finally the Jeep stopped at the edge of the water. Ed and I helped the ranger unchain her and flip her back over. Then
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Barbara Brown Taylor |
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2aedf6f
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So of course when it came time to decide what to do with my life, I decided to go to seminary. What else do you do when you are in love with God?
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Barbara Brown Taylor |
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We wanted More. We wanted a deeper sense of purpose. We wanted a stronger sense of God's presence.
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Barbara Brown Taylor |
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bc2f0d2
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Somewhere along the line we bought--or were sold--the idea that God is chiefly interested in religion. We believed that God's home was
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Barbara Brown Taylor |
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a70e834
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How many times since then have I rejected Love because it did not present itself the way I expected, in a form acceptable to me?
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love
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Barbara Brown Taylor |
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3642914
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about that too, ma'am," he said, writing up her citation, "but what made"
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Barbara Brown Taylor |
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2348fa8
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A priest is a priest, no matter where she happens to be. Her job is to recognize the holiness in things and hold them up to God. Her job is to speak in ways that help other people recognize the holiness in things too.
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Barbara Brown Taylor |
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a720eeb
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Prayer, according to Brother David, is waking up to the presence of God no matter where I am or what I am doing. When I am fully alert to whatever or whoever is right in front of me; when I am electrically aware of the tremendous gift of being alive; when I am able to give myself wholly to the moment I am in, then I am in prayer. Prayer is happening, and it is not necessarily something that I am doing. God is happening, and I am lucky enoug..
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Barbara Brown Taylor |
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d39c3c9
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I spent a great deal of time trying to be good, but was good the same as whole?
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Barbara Brown Taylor |
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eabf777
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I was so busy serving the Divine Presence that we never got any time alone anymore.
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Barbara Brown Taylor |
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2a784bb
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when we run from darkness, how much do we really know about what we are running from? If we turn away from darkness on principle, doing everything we can to avoid it because there is simply no telling what it contains, isn't there a chance that what we are running from is God?
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Barbara Brown Taylor |
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c3e0da3
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If we could learn to be attentive every moment of our lives, he said, we would discover the world anew. We would discover that the world is completely different from what we had believed it to be. Because blindness taught him that, he listened with disbelief as the most earnest people he knew spoke about the terrible "night" into which his blindness had pushed him. "The seeing do not believe in the blind," he concluded, which may help expla..
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Barbara Brown Taylor |