Excerpts from Barbara Brown Taylor, LEAVING CHURCH: A MEMOIR OF FAITH (Harper, 2006)
"By now I expected to be a seasoned parish minister, wearing black clergy shirts grown gray from frequent washing. I expected to love the children who hung on my legs after Sunday morning services until they grew up and had children of their own. I even expected to be buried wearing the same red vestments in which I was ordained.
"Today those vestments are hanging in the sacristy of an Anglican church in Kenya, my church pension is frozen, and I am as likely to spend Sunday mornings with friendly Quakers, Presbyterians, or Congregationalists as I am with the Episcopalians who remain my closest kin. Sometimes I even keep the Sabbath with a cup of steaming Assam tea on my front porch, watching towhees vie for the highest perch in the poplar tree while God watches me. These days I earn my living teaching school, not leading worship, and while I still dream of opening a small restaurant in Clarkesville or volunteering at an eye clinic in Nepal, there is no guarantee that I will not run off with the circus before I am through. This is not the life I planned, or the life I recommend to others. But it is the life that has turned out to be mine, and the central revelation in it for me--that the call to serve God is first and last the call to be fully human--seems important enough to witness to on paper. This book is my attempt to do that."
We are big-time recyclers (and, cyclers!), not just recycling our throw-aways, but giving away what we cannot use and using things others don't want. This space is for recycling words: quotes and material we find in books and magazines and other sources. Posted by your river-rat recyclers, Ruth Tucker and John Worst.
Wednesday, September 17, 2008
Ontogeny Recapitulates Phylogeny
In college I spent many hours with a Rick, a friend who loved philosophical discussions. Among the topics we debated was the truth of the ...
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In college I spent many hours with a Rick, a friend who loved philosophical discussions. Among the topics we debated was the truth of the ...
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NYTimes OP-ED COLUMNIST Harvey, Irma, Jose … and Noah David Brooks SEPT. 12, 2017 Continue reading the main story Share T...
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EASTER HYMN If in that Syrian garden, ages slain, You sleep, and know not you are dead in vain, Nor even in dreams behold how dark and ...