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Barbara Brown Taylor

Barbara Brown Taylor Books

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Gospel Medicine

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“What I noticed at Grace-Calvary is the same thing I notice whenever people aim to solve their conflicts with one another by turning to the Bible: defending the dried ink marks on the page becomes more vital than defending the neighbor. 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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Book:Leaving Church: A Memoir of Faith
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“When I read the stories in the Bible about people such as Sarah, Jacob, or David, what stands out is not their virtue but their very strong wants. Sarah wanted her son to prevail over Hagar's son, Jacob wanted his older brother's blessing, and David wanted Bathsheba. While these cravings clearly bought them all kinds of well-deserved trouble, they also kept these characters very, very alive. Their desires propelled them in ways that God could use, better than God could use those who never colored outside the lines.”

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Book:Leaving Church: A Memoir of Faith
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“Like most Christians, I have my own canon, in which I hear God speaking most directly to me, but I also like the parts in which God sounds like an alien, since those parts remind me that God does not belong to me. I do not pretend to read the Bible any more objectively than those who wrote it for me. To read it literally strikes me as a terrible refusal of their literary gifts. I will keep the Bible, which remains the Word of God for me, but always the Word as heard by generations of human beings as flawed as I. As beautifully as these witnesses write, their divine inspiration can never be separated from their ardent desires; their genuine wish to serve God cannot be divorced from their self-interest. That God should use such blemished creatures to communicate God's reality so well makes the Bible its own kind of miracle, but I hope never to put the book ahead of the people whom the book calls me to love and serve. I will keep the Bible as a field guide, which was never intended to be a substitute for the field.”

BibleScriptureDivine InspirationBiblical LiteralismBible As Literature
Book:Leaving Church: A Memoir of Faith
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“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, since shutting the book to go outside will involve the very great risk of taking part in stories that are still taking shape.”

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Book:Leaving Church: A Memoir of Faith
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“Our bread was given, not earned. We had nowhere else to go and nothing else to do but sit there together, saying sonorous words in unison, listening to language we did not hear anywhere else in our lives. Take heart. Go in peace. Bear fruit. Although we could have sat quietly with Bibles on our laps and read these things to ourselves, we took turns reading them out loud to each other instead. The words sounded different when Kline read them than they did when Kathy read them. They sounded different from the mouth of a young mother than they did from the mouth of a widow. This was because the words did not come straight off the page. They percolated up through the silt and gravel of real people's lives so that the meaning in them was fluid, not fixed. Listening to one another read Holy Scripture, some of us learned what is meant by 'the living word of God.' We also sang things we could more easily have said. The Lord be with you. And also with you. None of us would have dreamed of doing this in the grocery store, but by doing it in church we remembered that there was another way to address one another. Lift up your hearts. We lift them up unto the Lord. Where else did any of us sing anymore, especially with other people? Where else could someone pick up the alto line on the second verse of 'Amazing Grace' and give five other people the courage to sing in harmony? Sometimes, when we were through, we would all just stand there listening until the last note turned entirely to air. We could even be quiet together, which was something else that did not happen many other places in our lives. Silence was so countercultural for most of us that it took a lot of practice before we could do it together.”

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Book:Leaving Church: A Memoir of Faith
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“You can get lost on your way home. You can get lost looking for love. You can get lost between jobs. You can get lost looking for God. However it happens, take heart. Others before you have found a way in the wilderness, where there are as many angels as there are wild beasts, and plenty of other lost people too. All it takes is one of them to find you. All it takes is you to find one of them. However it happens, you could do worse than to kneel down and ask a blessing, remembering how many knees have kissed this altar before you.”

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Author:Barbara Brown Taylor
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“If I could make my neighbors up, I could love them in a minute. I could make them in my own image, looking back at me with deep gratitude for how authentically human I am being to them—and they to me!—reading poetry to each other, admiring pictures of each other’s grandchildren, and taking casseroles to each other when we are sick. But nine times out of ten these are not the neighbors I get. Instead, I get neighbors who cancel my vote, burn trash in their yard, and shoot guns so close to my house that I have to wear an orange vest when I walk to the mailbox. These neighbors I did not make up knock on my front door to offer me the latest issue of The Watchtower. They put things on their church signs that make me embarrassed for all Christians everywhere. They text while they drive, flipping me off when I pass their expensive pickup trucks on the right, in spite of the fish symbols on their shiny rear bumpers.”

JudgmentLove Thy NeighborNeighborsOther Religions
Book:Holy Envy: Finding God in the Faith of Others
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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 waste. At that moment of high awareness, I promised the land that I would go easy on the water. I would remember where it came from. I would remain grateful for the sacrifice.”

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Book:Leaving Church: A Memoir of Faith
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“For reasons that will never be entirely clear, God has a soft spot for religious strangers, both as agents of divine blessing and recipients of divine grace - to the point that God sometimes chooses one of them over people who believe they should by all rights come first. This is a great mystery, but it does nothing to obscure the great commandment. In every circumstance, regardless of the outcome, the main thing Jesus has asked me to do is love God and my neighbor as religiously as I love myself. The minute I have that handled, I will ask for my next assignment. For now, my hands are full.”

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Book:Holy Envy: Finding God in the Faith of Others
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“I always wondered why it took "three days" for significant things to happen in the Bible--Jonah spent three days in the belly of the whale, Jesus spent three days in the tomb, Paul spent three days blind in Damascus--and now I know. From earliest times, people learned that was how long they had to wait in the dark before the sliver of the new moon appeared in the sky. For three days every month they practiced resurrection.”

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Book:Learning to Walk in the Dark
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“Our Lady of the Underground never asks me to choose between day and night. If I want to flourish I need the ever-changing light of darkness as much as I need the full of light of day. Give your heart to them both, she says. When I complain that I cannot see as well at night as I can during the days, she tells me this is a good thing. Maybe it will slow you down. When I tell her that I cannot get as much done at night because darkness makes me sleepy, she says yes, that is the plan. Maybe you will get some rest. When I point out that slowing down just makes me think about things I would rather not think about, she laughs. Do you think that not thinking about them will make them go away?”

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Book:Learning to Walk in the Dark
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“Later, when I stood in front of an alter waving incense, I would remember standing in front of the bar at Dante's waving cigarette smoke out of my face, and the exact same feeling of tenderness would wash over me, because the people in both places were so much alike. We were all seeking company, meaning, solace, self-forgetfulness. Whether we found those things or not, it was the seeking that led us to find each other in the cloud even when we had nothing else in common. Sometimes I wondered if it even mattered if 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.”

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Book:Learning to Walk in the Dark
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“So if waiting is an aggravation, it is at least partly because we do not like being reminded of our limits. We like doing -- earning, buying, selling, building, planting, driving, baking -- making things happen, whereas waiting is essentially a matter of being -- stopping, sitting, listening, looking, breathing, wondering, praying. It can feel pretty helpless to wait for someone or something that is not here yet and that will or will not arrive in its own good time, which is not the same thing as our own good time.”

IfsFeelsMatterHappensWaitingWonderBuildingListeningPrayingLimitsSittingDrivingThings HappenSellingBreathingBuyingGood TimesHelplessEarningStoppingBakingAggravation
Book:Gospel Medicine
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“It can be difficult to be an introvert in church, especially if you happen to be the pastor. Liking to be alone can be interpreted as a judgment on other people's company. Liking to be quiet can be construed as aloofness. There is so much emphasis on community in most congregations that anyone who does not participate risks being labeled a loner.”

PeopleIfsDoeHappensPastDifficultCommunityChurchCompanyRiskQuietJudgmentIntrovertPastorEmphasisLonerCongregationAloofness
Book:An Altar in the World: A Geography of Faith
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“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.”

ThinkingKnowsWayGivingBelieveSaidBodyTogetherUniverseJesusTeachGoneTeachingGoes OnNeededThings To DoConcreteRemembranceBeing Together
Author:Barbara Brown Taylor
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“I went to the little church in the country after ten years in the city. And part of my dream was to sit on people's front porches with glasses of iced tea, and all that happened. I was able to send birthday cards to everyone in the parish and able to know everyone who was there on Sunday by name. And that was what I'd been looking for.”

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Author:Barbara Brown Taylor
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