Quotes from Barbara Brown Taylor
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
The great wisdom traditions of the world all recognize that the main impediment to living a life of meaning is being self-absorbed.
- Barbara Brown Taylor
Being ordained is not about serving God perfectly but about serving God visibly, allowing other people to learn whatever they can from watching you rise and fall.
- Barbara Brown Taylor
During the day it is hard to remember that all the stars in the sky are out there all the time, even when I am too blinded by the sun to see them.
- Barbara Brown Taylor
I wish I could turn to the church for help, but so many congregations are preoccupied with keeping the lights on right now that the last thing they want to talk about is how to befriend the dark.
- Barbara Brown Taylor
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
Busy? The word loses all meaning under the canopy of this sky.
- Barbara Brown Taylor
Who had persuaded me that God preferred four walls and a roof to wide-open spaces? When had I made the subtle switch myself, becoming convinced that church bodies and buildings were the safest and most reliable places to encounter the living God?
- Barbara Brown Taylor
This is good, and all good things cast shadows.
- Barbara Brown Taylor
When my friend Matilda lay dying of Lou Gehrig's disease, she said that she had been prepared all of her life to choose between good and evil. What no one had prepared her for, she lamented, was to choose between the good, the better, and the best—and yet this capacity turned out to be the one she most needed as she watched the sands of her life run out.
- Barbara Brown Taylor
You shall love the stranger, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt." Those most likely to befriend strangers, in other words, are those who have been strangers themselves. The best way to grow empathy for those who are lost is to know what it means to be lost yourself.
- Barbara Brown Taylor
Human beings have a hard time regarding anything beautiful without wanting to devour it.
- Barbara Brown Taylor