Quotes from Barbara Brown Taylor

As enjoyable as it could be to spend a couple of hours on Sunday morning with people who were at their best, it was also possible to see the strain in some of the smiles, the effort it took to present the most positive, most faithful version of the self.

Reverence requires a certain pace. It requires a willingness to take detours, even side trips, which are not part of the original plan.

Handing out free food and clothes was a charitable act. Approaching the powers was a political act.

All these years later, I recognize this as the way that winners often speak of those they have harmed beyond repair. Trying to find some way to live with what we have done, we find solace in the idea that their doom was their own doing.

Watching them ride the waves of their own dark emotions, I learned that sadness does not sink a person; it is the energy a person spends trying to avoid sadness that does that.

As much as I love the written word, I am aware of the ways this love removes me from the world.

Then one night when my whole heart was open to hearing from God what I was supposed to do with my life, God said, "Anything that pleases you." "What?" I said, resorting to words again. "What kind of an answer is that?" "Do anything that pleases you," the voice in my head said again, "and belong to me.

When the compressor for the air conditioning in the house turns on, I feel apologetic. I had no idea how loud it was out here, clearly interrupting a whole valley full of creatures that are trying to say something to one another.

Yet even this turned out to be helpful, since recognizing my jerkdom is how I remember that is not who I want to be.

On day three, I decided that a power outage would make a great spiritual practice.

The basic principle is to do no harm. Beyond that, you are free to do quite a lot of things for a living, but they are not all going to come with their own evident purposes. Supplying that purpose is going to be up to you.

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.

Reverence for creation comes easily to most people. Reverence for other people presents more of a challenge, especially if those people's lives happen to impinge upon your own.

Finally I asked my friend Judy, who spent many years as a student of Sufism and who embodies fana —the self-annihilating love of God—as well as anyone I know. When I asked her to define spirituality for me, she thought for a moment and said, 'Spirituality is the active pursuit of the God you didn't make up.' I loved that. I also did not know what it meant.

As painful as it is, pain cannot be communicated except by approximation, which means that any description of pain requires imagination.

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

Reason can only work with the experience available to it. Wisdom atrophies if it is not walked on a regular basis.

When you live in God, your day begins when you lose yourself long enough for God to find you, and when God finds you, to lose yourself

reverence was the proper attitude of a small and curious human being in a vast and fascinating world of experience. This world included people and places as well as things.

no one had to tell me why Martha stayed in the kitchen while her sister Mary sat at Jesus's feet. Martha was an introvert. She found chopping potatoes far less exhausting than talking to people, and besides, she could hear everything they were saying right where she was without having to come up with something to say herself.

being ordained is not about serving God perfectly but about serving God visibly, allowing other people to learn whatever they can from watching you rise and fall. "You probably won't be much worse than other people," he said, "and you certainly won't be any better, but you will have to let people look at you. You will have to let them see you as you are.

Supreme Court justice Potter Stewart once said he could not define pornography, but he knew it when he saw it. Reverence is a little like that. It is difficult to define, but you know it when you feel it.

The problem is that people we cannot stand are loved just as much as we are, by a God with an upsetting sense of community.

The only clear line I draw these days is this: when my religion tries to come between me and my neighbor, I will choose my neighbor. That self-canceling feature of my religion is one of the things I like best about it. Jesus never commanded me to love my religion.