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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

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Barbara Brown Taylor
Age: 72
Born: 1951
Born: September 21
Anglican Priest
Priest
Church
Blessed
Poured
Faith
Benefits
Muscle
Jesus
Growth
Square
Given
Effort
Squares
Spirit
Public
Muscles
Much
Call
Presses
Religious
Press
Poor
Anymore
Flexing

More quotes by Barbara Brown Taylor

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We are born seekers, calling strange names into the darkness from our earliest days because we know we are not meant to be alone, and because we know that we await someone whom we cannot always see.
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Every human interaction offers you the chance to make things better or to make things worse.
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I found myself in a maze where I'd taken the wrong turn. In my wish to do well for that congregation I wasn't doing particularly well for myself or my friends or my family, and I even found that the work for God was taking me away from God.
Barbara Brown Taylor
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You probably can't get much closer to God than serving a congregation 24/7. At the same time, there's a different kind of closeness in this present life I have in which I have much more freedom to come and go and to engage some of the silence and stillness and solitude that I was missing before.
Barbara Brown Taylor
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I think my idea of God was much more directive than my idea of God now, that is, a God who had one plan in mind for me, perhaps, and my job was to find out what it was and obey.
Barbara Brown Taylor
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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.
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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
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I can't help but note that God is being useful to a lot of people trying to do harm to one another.
Barbara Brown Taylor
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The tradition piece is so embedded in me I don't know that I can see it any more, but the community piece is one I've been in danger of losing.
Barbara Brown Taylor
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Most of us spend so much time thinking about where we have been or where we are supposed to be going that we have a hard time recognizing where we actually are.
Barbara Brown Taylor
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I've got a hold of something that won't move. It's a willingness to keep walking into the next day, open to whatever may turn out to be true that day.
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
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Most of us like thinking we are God's only children...At least one of the purposes of church is to remind us that God has other children, easily as precious as we. Baptism and narcissism cancel each other out.
Barbara Brown Taylor
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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
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Kindness is not a bad religion, no matter what name you use for God.
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
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Salvation happens every time someone with a key uses it to open a door he could lock instead.
Barbara Brown Taylor
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Earth is so thick with divine possibility that it is a wonder we can walk anywhere without cracking our shins on altars.
Barbara Brown Taylor
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I didn't want to be a priest. I wanted to do the work that priests do, and that required becoming a priest.
Barbara Brown Taylor
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I wanted to be as close as I could to the Really Real, and I'll capitalize both of those R's, because God is a word that means different things to different people, but we might all agree it's what is most real.
Barbara Brown Taylor