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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 -
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
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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 -
I'll do my best to always put God and neighbor ahead of ego, but I want to find myself, and if finding myself means losing my ego self, I'll go there.
Barbara Brown Taylor -
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 -
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 -
Humanity can be pretty stinky.
Barbara Brown Taylor -
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
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Beliefs have become unimportant to me. Faith as radical trust became even more important to me.
Barbara Brown Taylor -
Kindness is not a bad religion, no matter what name you use for God.
Barbara Brown Taylor -
When I say I trust Jesus, that is what I mean: I trust that the way of life leads through perishability, not around it.
Barbara Brown Taylor -
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 -
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 -
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
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I don't have time for a job that doesn't leave me time to be quiet or still or to pray.
Barbara Brown Taylor -
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 -
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 -
With so much effort being poured into church growth, so much press being given to the benefits of faith, and so much flexing of religious muscle in the public square, the poor in spirit have no one but Jesus to call them blessed anymore.
Barbara Brown Taylor -
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 -
With all the conceptual truths in the universe at His disposal Jesus did not give them something to think about together when He was gone. Instead, He gave them concrete things to do - specific ways of being together in their bodies - that would go on teaching them what they needed to know when He was no longer around to teach them Himself ... "Do this" He said - not believe this but do this - "in remembrance of me.
Barbara Brown Taylor
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The boundaries became constrictive in what I was doing, and if my faith grew, it was because I pressed some of the boundaries in ways I hadn't felt comfortable or responsible doing that before.
Barbara Brown Taylor -
Most of us will have more than one job in our working lives, which means we will have more than one opportunity to seek meaningful work at different stages of our own deepening humanity.
Barbara Brown Taylor -
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.
Barbara Brown Taylor -
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