An Altar in the World Quotes

“To make bread or love, to dig in the earth, to feed an animal or cook for a stranger—these activities require no extensive commentary, no lucid theology. All they require is someone willing to bend, reach, chop, stir. Most of these tasks are so full of pleasure that there is no need to complicate things by calling them holy. And yet these are the same activities that change lives, sometimes all at once and sometimes more slowly, the way dripping water changes stone. In a world where faith is often construed as a way of thinking, bodily practices remind the willing that faith is a way of life.”
― Barbara Brown Taylor, An Altar in the World: A Geography of Faith

“The problem is, many of the people in need of saving are in churches, and at least part of what they need saving from is the idea that God sees the world the same way they do.”
― Barbara Brown Taylor, An Altar in the World: A Geography of Faith

“People encounter God under shady oak trees, on riverbanks, at the tops of mountains, and in long stretches of barren wilderness. God shows up in whirlwinds, starry skies, burning bushes, and perfect strangers. When people want to know more about God, the son of God tells them to pay attention to the lilies of the field and the birds of the air, to women kneading bread and workers lining up for their pay. Whoever wrote this stuff believed that people could learn as much about the ways of God from paying attention to the world as they could from paying attention to scripture. What is true is what happens, even if what happens is not always right. People can learn as much about the ways of God from business deals gone bad or sparrows falling to the ground as they can from reciting the books of the Bible in order. They can learn as much from a love affair or a wildflower as they can from knowing the Ten Commandments by heart.”
― Barbara Brown Taylor, An Altar in the World: A Geography of Faith

“Wisdom is not gained by knowing what is right. Wisdom is gained by practicing what is right, and noticing what happens when that practice succeeds and when it fails.”
― Barbara Brown Taylor, An Altar in the World: A Geography of Faith

“Every human interaction offers you the chance to make things better or to make things worse.”
― Barbara Brown Taylor, An Altar in the World: A Geography of Faith

“No one longs for what he or she already has, and yet the accumulated insight of those wise about the spiritual life suggests that the reason so many of us cannot see the red X that marks the spot is because we are standing on it. The treasure we seek requires no lengthy expedition, no expensive equipment, no superior aptitude or special company. All we lack is the willingness to imagine that we already have everything we need. The only thing missing is our consent to be where we are.”
― Barbara Brown Taylor, An Altar in the World: A Geography of Faith

“Whoever you are, you are human. Wherever you are, you live in the world, which is just waiting for you to notice the holiness in it.”
― Barbara Brown Taylor, An Altar in the World: A Geography of Faith

“What is saving my life now is the conviction that there is no spiritual treasure to be found apart from the bodily experiences of human life on earth. My life depends on engaging the most ordinary physical activities with the most exquisite attention I can give them. My life depends on ignoring all touted distinctions between the secular and the sacred, the physical and the spiritual, the body and the soul. What is saving my life now is becoming more fully human, trusting that there is no way to God apart from real life in the real world.”
― Barbara Brown Taylor, An Altar in the World: A Geography of Faith

“According to the Talmud, every blade of grass has its own angel bending over it, whispering, “Grow, grow.”
― Barbara Brown Taylor, An Altar in the World: A Geography of Faith

“I am not in charge of this House, and never will be. I have no say about who is in and who is out. I do not get to make the rules. Like Job, I was nowhere when God laid the foundations of the earth. I cannot bind the chains of the Pleiades or loose the cords of Orion. I do not even know when the mountain goats give birth, much less the ordinances of the heavens. I am a guest here, charged with serving other guests—even those who present themselves as my enemies. I am allowed to resist them, but as long as I trust in one God who made us all, I cannot act as if they are no kin to me. There is only one House. Human beings will either learn to live in it together or we will not survive to hear its sigh of relief when our numbered days are done.”
― Barbara Brown Taylor, An Altar in the World: A Geography of Faith

“All I am saying is that anyone can do this. Anyone can ask and anyone can bless, whether anyone has authorized you to do it or not. All I am saying is that the world needs you to do this, because there is a real shortage of people willing to kneel wherever they are and recognize the holiness holding its sometimes bony, often tender, always life-giving hand above their heads. That we are able to bless one another at all is evidence that we have been blessed, whether we can remember when or not. That we are willing to bless one another is miracle enough to stagger the very stars.”
― Barbara Brown Taylor, An Altar in the World: A Geography of Faith

“Earth is so thick with divine possibility that it is a wonder we can walk anywhere without cracking our shins on altars.”
― Barbara Brown Taylor, An Altar in the World: A Geography of Faith

“Plato once said that pain restores order to the soul. Rumi said that it lops off the branches of indifference. “The throbbing vein / will take you further / than any thinking.”14 Whatever else it does, pain offers an experience of being human that is as elemental as birth, orgasm, love, and death. Because it is so real, pain is an available antidote to unreality—not the medicine you would have chosen, perhaps, but an effective one all the same. The next time you are in real pain, see how you feel about television shows, new appliances, a clean house, or your resumé. Chances are that none of these will do anything for you. All that will do anything for you is some cool water, held out by someone who has stopped everything else in order to look after you. An extra blanket might also help, a dry pillow, the simple knowledge that there is someone in the house who might hear you if you cried.”
― Barbara Brown Taylor, An Altar in the World: A Geography of Faith

“Human beings may separate things into as many piles as we wish—separating spirit from flesh, sacred from secular, church from world. But we should not be surprised when God does not recognize the distinctions we make between the two.”
― Barbara Brown Taylor, An Altar in the World: A Geography of Faith

“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, An Altar in the World: A Geography of Faith

“To see takes time, like having a friend takes time. It is as simple as turning off the television to learn the song of a single bird. Why should anyone do such things? I cannot imagine—unless one is weary of crossing days off the calendar with no sense of what makes the last day different from the next. Unless one is weary of acting in what feels more like a television commercial than a life. The practice of paying attention offers no quick fix for such weariness, with guaranteed results printed on the side. Instead, it is one way into a different way of life, full of treasure for those who are willing to pay attention to exactly where they are.”
― Barbara Brown Taylor, An Altar in the World: A Geography of Faith

“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, An Altar in the World: A Geography of Faith

“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, An Altar in the World: A Geography of Faith

“but I know that I have an easier time loving humankind than I do loving particular human beings.”
― Barbara Brown Taylor, An Altar in the World: A Geography of Faith

“The hardest spiritual work in the world is to love the neighbor as the self - to encounter another human being not as someone you can use, change, fix, help, save, enroll, convince or control, but simply as someone who can spring you from the prison of yourself, if you will allow it.”
― Barbara Brown Taylor, An Altar in the World: A Geography of Faith

“Human beings have a hard time regarding anything beautiful without wanting to devour it.”
― Barbara Brown Taylor, An Altar in the World: A Geography of Faith

“This is good, and all good things cast shadows.”
― Barbara Brown Taylor, An Altar in the World: A Geography of Faith

“I no longer call such tasks "housework". I call them the "domestic arts," paying attention to all the ways they return me to my senses.”
― Barbara Brown Taylor, An Altar in the World: A Geography of Faith

“We have just enough religion to make us hate one another,” Jonathan Swift once observed, “but not enough to make us love one another.”
― Barbara Brown Taylor, An Altar in the World: A Geography of Faith

“Anything can become a spiritual practice once you are willing to approach it that way—once you let it bring you to your knees and show you what is real, including who you really are, who other people are, and how near God can be when you have lost your way.”
― Barbara Brown Taylor, An Altar in the World: A Geography of Faith

“Human beings may separate things into as many piles as we wish—separating spirit from flesh, sacred from secular, church from world. But we should not be surprised when God does not recognize the distinctions we make between the two. Earth is so thick with divine possibility that it is a wonder we can walk anywhere without cracking our shins on altars.”
― Barbara Brown Taylor, An Altar in the World: A Geography of Faith

“Whatever I decided to do for a living, it was not what I did but how I did it that mattered.”
― Barbara Brown Taylor, An Altar in the World: A Geography of Faith

“God shows up in whirlwinds, starry skies, burning bushes, and perfect strangers.”
― Barbara Brown Taylor, An Altar in the World: A Geography of Faith

“The miracle is not to walk on water but on the earth. —Thich Nhat Hanh”
― Barbara Brown Taylor, An Altar in the World: A Geography of Faith

“The spiritual practice of wearing skin:

Whether you are sick or well, lovely or irregular, there comes a time when it is vitally important to your spiritual health to drop your clothes, look in the mirror, and say, "Here I am. This is the body-like-no-other that my life has shaped. I live here. This is my soul's address." After you have taken a good look around, you may decide that there is a lot to be thankful for, all things considered. Bodies take real beatings. That they heal from most things is an underrated miracle. That they give brith is beyond reckoning.”
― Barbara Brown Taylor, An Altar in the World: A Geography of Faith