Quotes by Barbara Brown Taylor - Page 2 | QuoteForever

A
B
C
D
E
F
G
H
I
J
K
L
M
N
O
P
Q
R
S
T
U
V
W
X
Y
Z

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 / Priest
Air
Body
People
Copy Quote
The problem is, many of the people in need of saving are in churches, and at least part of what they need saving from is the idea that God sees the world the same way they do.
Barbara Brown Taylor / Priest
Church
Ideas
People
Copy Quote
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 / Priest
Jobs
Ideas
Thinking
Copy Quote
That's enough, and I have a ministry as a neighbor as well. A ministry as a friend and a ministry as an aunt and a godmother, and family is very much in the circle of my vocation.
Barbara Brown Taylor / Priest
Aunt
Circles
Godmother
Copy Quote
Most of us will have more than one job in our working lives, which means we will have more than one opportunity to seek meaningful work at different stages of our own deepening humanity.
Barbara Brown Taylor / Priest
Jobs
Opportunity
Meaningful
Copy Quote
Divine reality is not way up in the sky somewhere; it is readily available in the encounters of everyday life, which make hash of my illusions that I can control the ways God comes to me.
Barbara Brown Taylor / Priest
Everyday
Reality
Sky
Copy Quote
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 / Priest
Boundaries
Responsible
Way
Copy Quote
When I talk about losing myself, which I did, it's losing my idea of who I was and my idea of what I was supposed to be doing and the idea of what my value was to God. I lost all of that at least.
Barbara Brown Taylor / Priest
Ideas
Losing
Lost
Copy Quote
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 / Priest
Calling
Darkness
Names
Copy Quote
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 / Priest
Jesus
Heart
Lying
Copy Quote
I thought being faithful was about becoming someone other than who I was...it wasn't until I failed that I began to wonder if my human wholeness might be more useful to God than my exhausting goodness.
Barbara Brown Taylor / Priest
Becoming
Faithful
Might
Copy Quote
I read more widely. I made friends more widely. I wore more red. I stayed home on Sundays. I did things that were never in the realm of possible things to do before. That was a real desert experience for me.
Barbara Brown Taylor / Priest
Home
Real
Sunday
Copy Quote
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 / Priest
Baptism
Children
Thinking
Copy Quote
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 / Priest
Mean
People
Real
Copy Quote
It does seem to me that at least some of us have made an idol of exhaustion. The only time we know we have done enough is when we are running on empty and when the ones we love most are the ones we see the least.
Barbara Brown Taylor / Priest
Running
Doe
Idols
Copy Quote
Having been brought up with a definition of faith as adherence to a set of beliefs, I have more and more begun to turn instead toward a definition of faith as openness to truth, whatever truth may turn out to be.
Barbara Brown Taylor / Priest
Adherence
Definitions
May
Copy Quote
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 / Priest
Christian
Memories
Real
Copy Quote
Once I gave up the hunt for villains, I had little recourse but to take responsibility for my choices.... Needless to say, this is far less satisfying that nailing villains. It also turned out to be more healing in the end.
Barbara Brown Taylor / Priest
Choices
Healing
Responsibility
Copy Quote
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 / Priest
Dark
Light
Needs
Copy Quote
There comes a time when it is vitally important for your spiritual health to drop your clothes, look in the mirror, and say, ‘Here I am. This is the body-like-no-other that my life has shaped. I live here. This is my soul’s address
Barbara Brown Taylor / Priest
Here I Am
Mirrors
Spiritual
Copy Quote
The beauty in the losing is a loss finally of self-consciousness. There's a gorgeous moment that can happen in all kinds of places. It can happen with people, it can happen with nature, and it can happen with my eyes shut anywhere I am.
Barbara Brown Taylor / Priest
Eye
Loss
Self
Copy Quote
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 / Priest
Jesus
Blessed
Religious
Copy Quote
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 / Priest
Mazes
Taken
Wish
Copy Quote
I live by the simplest, perhaps facile command that Jesus ever gave, which is to love God with the whole self and the neighbor as the self, and I find that's entirely consuming. To do those two things leaves me very little time to do much else.
Barbara Brown Taylor / Priest
Jesus
Self
Two
Copy Quote
The church grew, and I gained a reputation for preaching, and people came, and it was a wonderful community. But we had a building that seated 82 people, and with a congregation then approaching 400 we were up to four services on Sunday, and everyone was tired.
Barbara Brown Taylor / Priest
People
Sunday
Tired
Copy Quote
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 / Priest
Memories
Moving
Real
Copy Quote
The great thing about civility is that it does not require you to agree with or approve of anything. You don't even have to love your neighbor to be civil. You just have to treat your neighbor the same way you would like your neighbor to treat your grandmother, or your child.
Barbara Brown Taylor / Priest
Children
Grandmother
Love You
Copy Quote
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 / Priest
Self
Spiritual
Spring
Copy Quote
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 / Priest
Holiness
Looks
Relief
Copy Quote
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 / Priest
Light
Memories
Mother
Copy Quote
I know that the Bible is a special kind of book, but I find it as seductive as any other. If I am not careful, I can begin to mistake the words on the page for the realities they describe. I can begin to love the dried ink marks on the page more than I love the encounters that gave rise to them.
Barbara Brown Taylor / Priest
Book
Mistake
Reality
Copy Quote
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 / Priest
Missing
Silence
Solitude
Copy Quote
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 / Priest
Effort
Heart
Sky
Copy Quote
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.
Barbara Brown Taylor / Priest
Dream
Country
Sunday
Copy Quote
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 / Priest
Community
Past
People
Copy Quote
I have learned to prize holy ignorance more highly than religious certainty and to seek companions who have arrived at the same place. We are a motley crew, distinguished not only by our inability to explain ourselves to those who are more certain of their beliefs than we are but in many cases by our distance from the centers of our faith communities as well.
Barbara Brown Taylor / Priest
Distance
Ignorance
Religious
Copy Quote
Contrary to popular opinion, Christians are not nice polite people who never get angry with one another. Those are not the virtues of God's people. Our virtues are truth-telling, kindness, forgiveness and yes, even anger-as long as it is the anger that is part of true love-through which we move closer to one another and to the God who has shown us how it is done.
Barbara Brown Taylor / Priest
Kindness
Christian
Nice
Copy Quote
I discovered a version of the sinner's prayer that increased my faith far more than the one that I had said years earlier...In this version, there were no formulas, no set phrases that promised us safe passage across the abyss. There was only our tattered trust that the Spirit who had given us life would not leave us in the wilderness without offering us life again.
Barbara Brown Taylor / Priest
Offering
Prayer
Years
Copy Quote
Salvation is a word for the divine spaciousness that comes to human beings in all the tight places where their lives are at risk, regardless of how they got there or whether they know God's name. Sometimes it comes as an extended human hand and sometimes as a bolt from the blue, but either way it opens a door in what looked for all the world like a wall. This is the way of life, and God alone knows how it works.
Barbara Brown Taylor / Priest
Blue
Doors
Wall
Copy Quote
Because I'm a "strong person," the symptoms hit me by surprise. It was, as I write in the book, stinging in my eyes after Sunday that I thought was an allergy, until one day I sat in the car and decided to just let my eyes tear up so that whatever was in them would come out, and what came out were tears that wouldn't stop. It was literally a physical reaction that was my first indication there was anything wrong.
Barbara Brown Taylor / Priest
Book
Strong
Writing
Copy Quote
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.
Barbara Brown Taylor / Priest
Jesus
Believe
Teaching
Copy Quote
Jesus was not killed by atheism and anarchy. He was brought down by law and order allied with religion, which is always a deadly mix. Beware those who claim to know the mind of God and who are prepared to use force, if necessary, to make others conform. Beware those who cannot tell God's will from their own. Temple police are always a bad sign. When chaplains start wearing guns and hanging out at the sheriff's office, watch out. Someone is about to have no king but Caesar
Barbara Brown Taylor / Priest
Jesus
Kings
Gun
Copy Quote
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 their 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.
Barbara Brown Taylor / Priest
Believe
Book
People
Copy Quote
No one longs for what he or she already has, and yet the accumulated insight of those wise about the spiritual life suggests that the reason so many of us cannot see the red X that marks the spot is because we are standing on it. The treasure we seek requires no lengthy expedition, no expensive equipment, no superior aptitude or special company. All we lack is the willingness to imagine that we already have everything we need. The only thing missing is our consent to be where we are.
Barbara Brown Taylor / Priest
Wise
Missing
Spiritual
Copy Quote
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.
Barbara Brown Taylor / Priest
Aggravation
Breathing
Waiting
Copy Quote
What is saving my life now is the conviction that there is no spiritual treasure to be found apart from the bodily experiences of human life on earth. My life depends on engaging the most ordinary physical activities with the most exquisite attention I can give them. My life depends on ignoring all touted distinctions between the secular and the sacred, the physical and the spiritual, the body and the soul. What is saving my life now is becoming more fully human, trusting that there is no way to God apart from real life in the real world.
Barbara Brown Taylor / Priest
Giving
Real
Spiritual
Copy Quote
If churches saw their mission in the same way, there is no telling what might happen. What if people were invited to come tell what they already know of God instead of to learn what they are supposed to believe? What if they were blessed for what they are doing in the world instead of chastened for not doing more at church? What if church felt more like a way station than a destination? What if the church’s job were to move people out the door instead of trying to keep them in, by convincing them that God needed them more in the world than in the church?
Barbara Brown Taylor / Priest
Jobs
Believe
Blessed
Moving
Copy Quote
All I am saying is that anyone can do this. Anyone can ask and anyone can bless, whether anyone has authorized you to do it or not. All I am saying is that the world needs you to do this, because there is a real shortage of people willing to kneel wherever they are and recognize the holiness holding its sometimes bony, often tender, always life-giving hand above their heads. That we are able to bless one another at all is evidence that we have been blessed, whether we can remember when or not. That we are willing to bless one another is miracle enough to stagger the very stars.
Barbara Brown Taylor / Priest
Blessed
Real
Stars
Copy Quote

Related Priest Authors

Thomas Aquinas
Priest
Tuesday, Jan 28, 1225
Wednesday, Mar 07, 1274
Pope John Paul Ii
Priest
Tuesday, May 18, 1920
Saturday, Apr 02, 2005
William P. Leahy
Priest
Walter Ciszek
Priest
Friday, Nov 04, 1904
Saturday, Dec 08, 1984
Vincent De Paul
Priest
Friday, Apr 24, 1581
Monday, Sep 27, 1660
Uwem Akpan
Priest
Timothy Radcliffe
Priest
Thomas Naughton
Priest
Theodore Hesburgh
Priest
Friday, May 25, 1917
Thursday, Feb 26, 2015
Solanus Casey
Priest
Friday, Nov 25, 1870
Wednesday, Jul 31, 1957
Sam Shoemaker
Priest
Robert Sirico
Priest
Saturday, Jun 23, 1951
Robert L Faricy
Priest
Robert Barron
Priest
Richard Rohr
Priest

View All Priest Quotes

Top Authors

Thomas Jefferson
3Rd US President
Saturday, Apr 13, 1743
Tuesday, Jul 04, 1826
Dr. Seuss
Writer
Wednesday, Mar 02, 1904
Tuesday, Sep 24, 1991
Theodore Roosevelt
26Th U.s. President
Wednesday, Oct 27, 1858
Monday, Jan 06, 1919
Alfred Lord Tennyson
Poet
Saturday, Aug 05, 1809
Thursday, Oct 06, 1892
Abraham Lincoln
16Th U.S. President
Sunday, Feb 12, 1809
Saturday, Apr 15, 1865
Francis Of Assisi
Saint
Thursday, Jun 24, 1182
Saturday, Oct 03, 1226
Martin Luther
Monk
Saturday, Nov 10, 1483
Monday, Feb 18, 1546
Charles Spurgeon
Preacher
Thursday, Jun 19, 1834
Sunday, Jan 31, 1892
John Muir
Author
Saturday, Apr 21, 1838
Thursday, Dec 24, 1914
Heraclitus
Philosopher
Thursday, Jan 01, 1970
Thursday, Jan 01, 1970
Kobe Bryant
Basketball Player
Wednesday, Aug 23, 1978
Khalil Gibran
Poet
Saturday, Jan 06, 1883
Friday, Apr 10, 1931
Nelson Mandela
Former President Of South Africa
Thursday, Jul 18, 1918
Thursday, Dec 05, 2013
Tyler, The Creator
Rapper
Wednesday, Mar 06, 1991
Samuel Taylor Coleridge
Poet
Wednesday, Oct 21, 1772
Friday, Jul 25, 1834

View All Authors

Share This Page