Quotes from Barbara Brown Taylor

If you are not able to set priorities any other way, then getting lost may be the kick in the pants you have been waiting for.

I have lived through parts of life that no one in her right mind would ever willingly have chosen, finding enough overlooked treasure in them to outweigh my projected wages in the life I had planned. These are just a few of the reasons that I have decided to stop fighting the prospect of getting lost and engage it as a spiritual practice instead.

You are truly, seriously lost, even though you know exactly where you are.

Gradually I remembered what I had known all along, which is that church is not a stopping place but a starting place for discerning God's presence in this world. By offering people a place where they may engage the steady practice of listening to divine words and celebrating divine sacraments, church can help people gain a feel for how God shows up—not only in Holy Bibles and Holy Communion but also in near neighbors, mysterious strangers, sliced bread, and grocery store wine.

Maybe someone should start an Opaque Church, where we could learn to give up one kind of vision in hope of another. Instead of wearing name tags, we would touch each other's faces. Instead of looking around to see who's there, we could learn to listen for each other's voices.

Our shadows are often behind us, where others can see them better than we can. If we want to hear and see more, even the parts that expose our scornfulness, we need partners from outside our ingroups to keep telling us how we sound.

When students first encounter the reality of multiple religious worldviews, they often race to the lowest common denominator: your truth is true for you and mine is true for me. This is their peace offering, their way of living with religious difference without fighting, but it also prevents them from exploring the differences in any meaningful way. Holy envy gives those students another way forward, especially those who are inclined toward religious absolutes.

Week after week, I was permitted to stand up in special clothes and talk while everyone else sat quietly and listened. Week after week, they heard the gospel filtered through my sensibilities. On Sunday mornings they sang the hymns I had chosen, and on Wednesday evenings they engaged the topics I had picked.

The meaning we give to what happens in our lives is our final, inviolable freedom.

Greenspan calls this "spiritual bypassing"—using religion to dodge the dark emotions instead of letting it lead us to embrace those dark angels as the best, most demanding spiritual teachers we may ever know.

To be human is to live by sunlight and moonlight, with anxiety and delight, admitting limits and transcending them, falling down and rising up. To want a life with only half of these things in it is to want half a life, shutting the other half away where it will not interfere with one's bright fantasies of the way things ought to be.

if God is all-powerful and God is all-good, then why do terrible things happen to good people?

All in all, the moon is a truer mirror for my soul than the sun that looks the same way every day.

Let's just say that an introverted romantic with a touch of obsessive-compulsive disorder does not make the best pastor.

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.

I don't have time for a job that doesn't leave me time to be quiet or still or to pray.

There was no time anymore to be quiet or still or pray. So, in many ways, that's what led to my downward spin.

The problem is, many of the people in need of saving are in churches, and at least part of what they need saving from is the idea that God sees the world the same way they do.

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.

Every human interaction offers you the chance to make things better or to make things worse.

No one longs for what he or she already has, and yet the accumulated insight of those wise about the spiritual life suggests that the reason so many of us cannot see the red X that marks the spot is because we are standing on it. The treasure we seek requires no lengthy expedition, no expensive equipment, no superior aptitude or special company. All we lack is the willingness to imagine that we already have everything we need. The only thing missing is our consent to be where we are.

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.

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.

new life starts in the dark. Whether it is a seed in the ground, a baby in the womb, or Jesus in the tomb, it starts in the dark.