An Altar in the World: A Geography of Faith

by Barbara Brown Taylor

The issue was not the ritual but the relationships.

WHAT WE HAVE most in common is not religion but humanity.

Do not be too moral. You may cheat yourself out of too much life. Aim above morality. Be not simply good; be good for something. —Henry David Thoreau

Whatever our jobs in the world happen to be, Luther said, our mutual vocation is to love God and neighbor. “None of the things with which you deal daily are too trifling to tell you this incessantly,” he wrote, “if you are but willing to hear it; and there is no lack of such preaching, for you have as many preachers as there are transactions, commodities, tools and other implements in your house and estate, and they shout this to your face: ‘My dear, use me toward your neighbor as you would want him to act toward you with that which is his.’”

people want to be good for something.

meaningful work is hard to come by.

inherited wisdom is that certain kinds of work are bad for you.

basic principle is to do no harm.

they are not all going to come with their own evident purposes. Supplying that purpose...

Indian philosophy from which Buddhism sprang includes the notion of karma yoga—litera...

point is to do useful work unselfishly, menial tasks can work even better than exalted ones.

“Desire for the fruits of work must never be your motive in working,” says the Bhagavad Gita.

Work connects us to other people.

No work is too small to play a part in the work of creation.

important to leave open the possibility that our vocations may turn out to be things we do for free.

While it is sometimes possible to turn your love into your work—especially if you can figure out how to live on less—that is not always the best idea.

part of the beauty of unpaid work is that we choose to do

One of the reasons I remain a Christian-in-progress is the peculiar Christian insistence that God is revealed in humankind—not just in human form but also in human being.

find something that feeds your sense of purpose, and to be willing to look low for that purpose as well as high.

it is difficult to find many advocates for the spiritual practice of saying no.

Karl Barth once wrote, “A being is free only when it can determine and limit its activity.”

no is a more difficult spiritual practice than tithing, praying on a cold stone floor, or visiting a prisoner on death row—because while all of those worthy activities may involve saying no to something else so that I can do them instead, they still amount to doing more instead of less. Limiting my activity does not help me feel holy. Doing more feels holy, which is why I stay so intrigued by the fourth commandment.

One thing I wish were mine is a proper Friday evening Shabbat service, beginning with the lighting of two candles when three stars can be counted in the darkening

one candle for each of the Sabbath commandments in Torah, both of which call God’s people to be more like God.

first Sabbath candle announces: made in God’s image, you too shall rest.

made in God’s image, you too are free.

“therefores”—a rest candle and a freedom candle—

week, Sabbath practice suspends our subtle and not so subtle ways of dominating one another on a regular basis.

Sabbath is not only God’s gift to those who have voices to say how tired they are; Sabbath is also God’s gift to the tired fields, the tired vines, the tired vineyard, the tired land.

SABBATH IS THE GREAT EQUALIZER, the great reminder that we do not live on this earth but in it, and that everything we do under the warming tent of this planet’s atmosphere affects all who are woven into this web with

Sabbath is the true God’s gift to those who wish to rest and to be free—

Practicing it over and over again they become accomplished at saying no, which is how they gradually become able to resist the culture’s killing rhythms of drivenness and depletion, compulsion and collapse. Worshiping a different kind of God, they are shaped in that God’s image, stopping every seven days to celebrate their divine creation and liberation. And yet those who practice Sabbath, a little or a lot, know that there is another kind of resistance at work.

Gates of Prayer, the New Union Prayer Book, is called “Welcoming Sabbath”

Our noisy day has now descended with the sun beyond our sight. In the silence of our praying place we close the door upon the hectic joys and fears, the accomplishments and anguish of the week we have left behind. What was but moments ago the substance of our life has become memory; what we did must now be woven into what we are. On this day we shall not do, but be. We are to walk the path of our humanity, no longer ride un-seeing through a world we do not touch and only vaguely sense. No longer can we tear the world apart to make our fire. On this day heat and warmth and light must come from deep within ourselves.6

On one side of the paper, list all of the things you know give you life that you never take time to do. Then, on the other side, make a list of all the reasons why you think it is impossible for you to do those things.

At least one day in every seven,

Stay home

Talk someone you love into being well with you. Take a nap, a walk, an hour for lunch. Test the premise that you are worth more than what you can produce—that even if you spent one whole day being good for nothing you would still be precious in God’s sight—and when you get anxious because you are convinced that this is not so, remember that your own conviction is not required. This is a commandment. Your worth has already been established, even when you are not working. The purpose of the commandment is to woo you to the same truth.

WHEN YOU LIVE IN GOD, your day begins when you open your eyes, though you have done nothing yourself to open them, and you take your first breath, though there is no reason why this life-giving breeze should be given to you and not to some other. In the dark or in the light, with a stone slab under your back or a feather topper, your day begins when you let God hold you because you do not have the slightest idea how to hold yourself—when you let God raise you up, when you consent to rest to show you get the point, since that is the last thing you would do if you were running the show yourself. When you live in God, your day begins when you lose yourself long enough for God to find you, and when God finds you, to lose yourself again in praise.

God did not make “man” in the second chapter of Genesis. God made adam—an earthling—from the adamah—the earth. God made a mud-baby, a dirt-person, a dust-creature. Then God breathed into its nostrils, giving it divine CPR, and behold! A living being arose from the ground.

If all life is holy, then anything that sustains life has holy dimensions too.

Pain is provocative. Pain pushes people to the edge, causing them to ask fundamental questions such as “Why is this happening?” and “How can this be fixed?” Pain brings out the best in people along with the worst. Pain strips away all the illusions required to maintain the status quo. Pain begs for change, and when those in its grip find no release on earth, plenty of them look to heaven—including some whose formal belief systems preclude such wishful thinking.

Pain makes theologians of us all.

often harder to sit with someone in pain than it is to feel pain yourself.

difference between pain and suffering,

Pain,

“an unpleasant sensation related to t...

Suffering, on the other hand, happens in the mind.

Theodicy is the oldest religious question in the book: if God is all-powerful and God is all-good, then why do terrible things happen to good people?

uncensored account of the depth of human pain and suffering is more to be valued than any correct doctrinal answer to it.