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4.22 AVERAGE
4.22 AVERAGE
slow-paced
A beautiful book not about leaving the faith or even abandoning church (as I'm sure many would assume), but rather about finding oneself and really connecting with God. Barbara Brown Taylor is one of the best writers I have ever read.
hopeful
inspiring
reflective
medium-paced
Narrator was pretty mechanical, but the ideas were fairly interesting.
hopeful
informative
inspiring
reflective
relaxing
medium-paced
I like the author's style of writing. It's very evocative and she had me going. But it ended much sooner than I thought it would, and it felt a little cheap because I think that she explored a lot of different paths and learned a lot and grew - but she was not comfortable sharing any of that story because it would probably mean a lot of her built in Christian audience would put the book down and stop reading her.
So - good book, but she left a lot out, it feels like.
So - good book, but she left a lot out, it feels like.
Leaving Church is about Brabara Brown Taylor's journey first into being a priest and then leaving that particular job due to burn-out. It is a remarkably sympathetic description of the church despite her leaving it in a sense, although slightly terrifying in the sheer amount of work that seems to be involved which is not something I would necessarily see. It is a very interesting memoir of faith although at times I felt slightly voyeuristic at this deep pain displayed in the book. I'm sort of slowly realising just how well know she is, but it did mean that not talking about it all that much in the book didn't seem so odd to me as some other readers have picked up on this. I'm glad I read "An Altar in the World" first but this does add a bit of background texture to that book.
Extremely familiar. Taylor very kindly tells the story of leaving church (the priesthood in fact). There is no bitter judgement of the institution, only gentle retelling of her experience and her observations. In fact, as she says herself, when some time after leaving it, she visits the church where she had been priest and smells the bread of communion: "That smell alone was enough to tell me that I would never leave church, not really."
reflective
slow-paced
I had been looking forward to this book for a long time and I was not disappointed. Taylor's story of her call to the Episcopalian priesthood and later her decision to leave the priesthood and become a professor was full of beautiful thoughts about how the world and the church need not be enemies - completely separate entities that are necessarily opposed to one another. She writes beautifully about the ways she encountered God and grace outside of the church as well as inside it. Among many great quotes, here was one I particularly enjoyed since it describes my current faith journey so well, "I wanted to recover the kind of faith that has nothing to do with being sure what I believe and everything to do with trusting God to catch me though I am not sure of anything."