Leaving Church: A Memoir of Faith

by 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.

the Creator does not live apart from creation but spans and suffuses it. When I take a breath, God’s Holy Spirit enters me.

The whole purpose of the Bible, it seems to me, is to convince people to set the written word down in order to become living words in the world for God’s sake. For me, this willing conversion of ink back to blood is the full substance of faith.

In practice, this means that my faith is far more relational than doctrinal.

being ordained meant being set apart from them, then I did not want to be ordained anymore. I wanted to be human. I wanted to spit food and let snot

run down my chin. I wanted to confess being as lost and found as anyone else without caring that my underwear showed through my wet clothes. Bobbing in that healing pool with all those other flawed beings of light, I looked around and saw them as I had never seen them before, while some of them looked at me the same way. The long wait had come to an end. I was in the water at last.

God was in this loss, which was not robbery but relinquishment.

Sabbath was who he was. It was his stake in the ongoing life of his community, the one set day each week when he entered into communion with God and his neighbor.

The good news of God in Christ is, ‘You have everything you need to be human.’ There is nothing outside of you that you still need—no approval from the authorities, no attendance at

temple, no key truth hidden in the tenth chapter of some sacred book. In your life right now, God has given you everything that you need to be human.”