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4.22 AVERAGE
4.22 AVERAGE
"If my time in the wilderness taught me anything, it is that faith in God has both a center and an edge and that each is necessary for the soul's health. If I developed a complaint during my time in the wilderness, it was that Mother Church lavished so much more attention on those at the center than on those at the edge."
It is moments from this book like this one that make this one of my favorite books. As a person who has spent much of her adult life on the edge of her faith, I know full well the deep and abiding loneliness that is found there. Those of us living on those edges need to find fellow edge-walkers and I have found that in Barbara Brown Taylor. Her experiences with faith and church are different from my own -- and that's okay. She has lived out her faith in a way that I have not -- but I have found in her that common yearning -- I have always felt the ache, the call to the spiritual. I can't walk away from it no matter how hard I have tried. I feel like I met a friend in this honest, heart-felt book.
And then there is this -- a call to more from the Church:
"Might it be time for people of good faith to allow that God's map is vast, with room on it for both a center and an edge? While the center may be the place where the stories of the faith are preserved, the edge is the place where the best of them happened."
This book provides that expansion of the map for me. I highly recommend this book for people like me -- who are in the faith, who often believe in spite of themselves -- who have deep and abiding doubts about God coupled with deep and abiding pulls towards God. This is a safe book and a read that readers like me will likely find very comforting.
It is moments from this book like this one that make this one of my favorite books. As a person who has spent much of her adult life on the edge of her faith, I know full well the deep and abiding loneliness that is found there. Those of us living on those edges need to find fellow edge-walkers and I have found that in Barbara Brown Taylor. Her experiences with faith and church are different from my own -- and that's okay. She has lived out her faith in a way that I have not -- but I have found in her that common yearning -- I have always felt the ache, the call to the spiritual. I can't walk away from it no matter how hard I have tried. I feel like I met a friend in this honest, heart-felt book.
And then there is this -- a call to more from the Church:
"Might it be time for people of good faith to allow that God's map is vast, with room on it for both a center and an edge? While the center may be the place where the stories of the faith are preserved, the edge is the place where the best of them happened."
This book provides that expansion of the map for me. I highly recommend this book for people like me -- who are in the faith, who often believe in spite of themselves -- who have deep and abiding doubts about God coupled with deep and abiding pulls towards God. This is a safe book and a read that readers like me will likely find very comforting.
hopeful
inspiring
reflective
medium-paced
emotional
funny
hopeful
inspiring
reflective
medium-paced
I don’t have enough good things to say about this book. What a beautiful perspective of what it means to pastor and be in the church while not being in a church building.
A spiritual writer that was just a little too 'new age' for me. Both intuitive and highly intelligent she didn't really leave church; she left her role as the ordained minister of a church. I envied her tangible connection with the Divine.
A remarkable journey of faith, in which a seeker becomes a shepard, then returns to the flock shorn of certainty, and learns a new path, divergent from the first, but roughly parallel:
This is a beautifully-written and intimate book, steeped in wisdom and humility.
As many years as I wanted to wear a clerical collar and as hard as I worked to get one, taking it off turned out to be as necessary for my salvation as putting it on. Being set apart was the only way I could learn how much I longed to be with everyone else. Being in charge was the only way I could learn how much I wanted to be in community.
This is a beautifully-written and intimate book, steeped in wisdom and humility.
hopeful
reflective
slow-paced
hopeful
informative
inspiring
medium-paced
“What is saving you right now?” This book turned out to be more relevant for me than I anticipated. It is her story of leaving working in ministry and going into the “normal” workplace, but not leaving the faith. It is also a story of her leaving behind attending church regularly and the joys and struggles that came with it. This was very encouraging and helpful for me as I navigate similar things.
It wasn't the book I wanted it to be, but I loved it even more for telling its own story, instead of the one I had in my head as I began.
A beautiful and generous book. I wanted a slightly less guarded tone, but when it felt guarded, it was her old congregation's privacy she was mostly guarding. We couldn't have started our faith journeys more differently, but we ended up on very similiar land.
The last 50 pages of my copy is full of dog-ears. Here's one of my favorite passages:
"What if people were invited" (to church)"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?"
and this one too:
"The clerk at the grocery store is messenger enough for me, at least if I give her a fraction of the attention that I lavish on my interior monologue. To emerge from my self-preoccupation long enough to acknowledge her human presence is no mean feat, but when I do I can almost always discover what she has to teach me--and not only she, but every person who crosses my path."
A beautiful and generous book. I wanted a slightly less guarded tone, but when it felt guarded, it was her old congregation's privacy she was mostly guarding. We couldn't have started our faith journeys more differently, but we ended up on very similiar land.
The last 50 pages of my copy is full of dog-ears. Here's one of my favorite passages:
"What if people were invited" (to church)"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?"
and this one too:
"The clerk at the grocery store is messenger enough for me, at least if I give her a fraction of the attention that I lavish on my interior monologue. To emerge from my self-preoccupation long enough to acknowledge her human presence is no mean feat, but when I do I can almost always discover what she has to teach me--and not only she, but every person who crosses my path."