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I'm leaving out some of the hugely successful megachurches, of which I have very little experience.

Barbara Brown Taylor

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Barbara Brown Taylor
Age: 73
Born: 1951
Born: September 21
Anglican Priest
Priest
Leaving
Successful
Experience
Littles
Little
Hugely

More quotes by 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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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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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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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 have learned things in the dark that I could never have learned in the light, things that have saved my life over and over again, so that there is really only one logical conclusion. I need darkness as much as I need light.
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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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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Church can be extremely boring. It can be very meaningful, it can be character forming, but can be have very little fizz in it.
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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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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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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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 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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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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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 have learned to prize holy ignorance more highly than religious certainty and to seek companions who have arrived at the same place.
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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You only need to lose track of who you are, or who you thought you were supposed to be, so that you end up lying flat on the dirt floor basement of your heart. Do this, Jesus says, and you will live.
Barbara Brown Taylor
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Kindness is not a bad religion, no matter what name you use for God.
Barbara Brown Taylor