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You can create an intimate community of about 20 or 25 people, and beyond that you're into a different kind of relationship.

Barbara Brown Taylor

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Barbara Brown Taylor
Age: 72
Born: 1951
Born: September 21
Anglican Priest
Priest
Create
Community
Different
Kind
People
Intimate
Beyond
Relationship

More quotes by 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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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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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
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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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The hardest spiritual work in the world is to love the neighbor as the self - to encounter another human being not as someone you can use, change, fix, help, save, enroll, convince or control, but simply as someone who can spring you from the prison of yourself, if you will allow it.
Barbara Brown Taylor
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The effort to untangle the human words from the divine seems not only futile to me but also unnecessary, since God works with what is. God uses whatever is usable in a life, both to speak and to act, and those who insist on fireworks in the sky may miss the electricity that sparks the human heart.
Barbara Brown Taylor
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The real problem has far less to do with what is really out there than it does with our resistance to finding out what is really out there.
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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Beliefs have become unimportant to me. Faith as radical trust became even more important to me.
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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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.
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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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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To be fully human is perhaps why I'm Christian, because I see in the life of Jesus a way of being fully human.
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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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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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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I miss the hot spots. I miss the hospital calls. I miss the nursing homes. I miss the really intimate human contact with other people, which I did nothing to earn.
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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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