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When someone asks us where we want to be in our lives, the last thing that occurs to us is to look down at our feet and say, 'Here, I guess, since this is where I am.'

Barbara Brown Taylor

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Barbara Brown Taylor
Age: 73
Born: 1951
Born: September 21
Anglican Priest
Priest
Thing
Since
Asks
Lasts
Last
Lives
Someone
Occurs
Look
Guess
Looks
Feet

More quotes by 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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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.
Barbara Brown Taylor
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I am always surprised by people who speak of faith as if it happens in the air somewhere. Our bodies are God's best way of getting to us. Revelation begins in the flesh.
Barbara Brown Taylor
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The poets began drifting away from churches as the jurists grew louder and more insistent.
Barbara Brown Taylor
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There was no time anymore to be quiet or still or pray. So, in many ways, that's what led to my downward spin.
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.
Barbara Brown Taylor
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Whoever you are, you are human. Wherever you are, you live in the world, which is just waiting for you to notice the holiness in it.
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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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 think a toxic message in a lot of Christianity has been that the self has to be annihilated in order for God to be found. I think that has been a toxic message.
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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I'm in a mainline church, I'm very aware, especially as I move through community churches and new-start churches that are making real efforts not to associate themselves with traditional denominations - very often they have no history. They have no institutional memory.
Barbara Brown Taylor
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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
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The value for me being in a mainline tradition is history and memory, which is not just Christian tradition but denominational tradition, and characters, you know, with real distinct flavors of ways to be Christian.
Barbara Brown Taylor
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Every human interaction offers you the chance to make things better or to make things worse.
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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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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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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As hard as I have tried to remember the exact moment when I fell in love with God, I cannot do it. My earliest memories are bathed in a kind of golden light that seemed to embrace me as surely as my mother's arms. The divine presence was strongest outdoors, and most palpable when I was alone.
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