by Barbara Brown Taylor, 2009
Her philosophy on how to find God in the everyday world. I think Danette recommended this book.
- The Practice of Waking up to God – Vision: Long walk on the Big Island along the shore to a calm tidal pool. Jacob’s ladder dream – Surely the Lord is in this place – made his stone pillow into an altar. No lines between the church and the world. “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.”
- The Practice of Paying Attention – Reverence: watching a meteor shower as a little girl on their family’s deck with her dad. “The easiest practice of reverence I know is simply to sit down somewhere outside, preferably near a body of water, and pay attention for at least twenty minutes.” Moses saw the burning bush out of the corner of his eye. He had to turn aside from what he was doing to go and investigate it. “Reverence for creation comes fairly easily for most people. Reverence for other people presents more of a challenge…I have an easier time loving humankind than I do loving particular human beings.” “One remedy for my condition is to pay attention to them when I can, even when they are in my way. Just for a moment, I look for the human being instead of the obstacle.” “I have a variation of this practice that I do on the subway, at least if I have a pair of sunglasses with me. From behind the veils of my dark lenses, I study the particular human beings sitting around me..Every one of them is dealing with something, the same way I am..Sometimes I say the Lord’s Prayer under my breath while I look from one of them to the next, but this is optional. Paying attention to them has already shifted my equilibrium. For all I know, one of them is practicing reverence on me.” “..The practice of paying attention is as simple as looking twice at people and things you might just as easily ignore. To see takes time, like having a friend takes time…” “…Like all other practices in this book, paying attention requires no equipment, no special clothes, no greens fees or personal trainers…All you need is a body on this earth, willing to notice where it is, trusting that even something as small as a hazelnut can become an altar in this world.”
- The Practice of Wearing Skin – Incarnation. A picture in a church of Jesus stepping out of the tomb, naked except for a loincloth. “…He came back wearing skin. He did not leave his body behind.” “…God speaks the language of the flesh…Why else did Jesus spend his last night on earth teaching his disciples to wash feet and share supper?” “…When I hear people talk about what is wrong with organized religion, or why their mainline churches are failing, I hear about bad music, inept clergy, mean congregations, and preoccupation with institutional maintenance. I almost never hear about the intellectualization of faith, which strikes me as a far greater danger than anything else on the list…”
- The Practice of Walking on the Earth – Groundedness. “Not everyone is able to walk, but most people can…To detach the walking from the destination is in fact one of the best ways to recognize the altars you are passing right by all the time…” “…labyrinth is a kind of maze. Laid out in a perfect circle with a curling path inside, it rarely comes with walls…” “Once when a friend of mine wanted me to show him how to ride a horse, he kept asking me questions before he would get on. He wanted me to tell him all about the saddle, the bridle, the reins…the location of the “eject” button on the saddle. “Get on,” I said..”What?” my friend said…”Just get on,” I said…”This is fantastic,” he said. “…Things like that can happen when you give your mind a time-out so your body can embark on the journey.” “…solviture ambulando, wrote Augustine of Hippo…”It is solved by walking.” “Jesus walked a lot…This gave him time to see things…”
- The Practice of Getting Lost – Wilderness. Cattle following exact same paths everyday get off the path – get lost. “In my life, I have lost my way more times than I can count. I have set out to be married and ended up divorced. I have set out to be healthy and ended up sick…While none of these displacements was pleasant at first, I would not give a single one of them back. I have found things while I was lost that I might never have discovered if I had stayed on the path…” “…The Bible gives no reason for God’s choice of Abraham and Sarah except their willingness to get lost.” Getting a flat tire at night on the highway – a type of getting lost. “Your carefully maintained safety net has ripped.” She ran into a tree riding her horse-had a concussion. Was at the mercy of strangers who found her, took her to hospital, and “people took care of me when I could not care for myself.” Also, regarding the concussion: “When I fell asleep, I fell into nightmares so vivid that I fought to stay awake…My head hurt like hell. I had such depraved dreams that I could not imagine where the vile images in them came from…Had the concussion opened a sewer line in my head?” “When someone goes for a walk with no particular destination in mind, willing to go wherever the wind blows him, that person is a flaneur. He saunters…” “…how near God can be when you have lost your way.”
- The Practice of Encountering Others-Community. She is an introvert. “…no one had to tell me why Martha stayed in the kitchen while her sister Mary sat at Jesus’s feet. Martha was an introvert. She found chopping potatoes far less exhausting than talking to people…” “…The hardest spiritual work in the world is to love the neighbor as the self…” “A good way to warm up is to focus on one of the human beings who usually sneak right past you because they are performing some mundane service such as taking your order or handing you your change. The next time you go to the grocery store, try engaging the cashier…Just meet her eyes for a moment when you say, “Thanks.” I was a stranger and you welcomed me. Matthew 25:34-37 Love the stranger – 36 places the Bible commands this. “The Supreme Religious challenge, says Rabbi Sacks, “is to see God’s image in one who is not in our image.”
- The Practice of Living with Purpose – Vocation. When she was struggling with what to do with her life, she prayed for days, weeks, at the top of a rickety fire escape. God answered, “Do anything that pleases you, and belong to me.” Swedish movie: My Life as a Dog: “our vocation may turn out to be the things we do for free.”
- The Practice of Saying No – Sabbath. “…being busy is how our culture measures worth.” “Remember the Sabbath day and keep it holy…” “There is no talk about the loss of the Sabbath, then, without also talking about the rise in consumerism.” Leviticus 25:3-7: “Six years you may sow your field…But in the seventh year the land shall have a sabbath of complete rest.” “Where there is money to be made, there is no rest for the land, nor for those who live on it.” “Sabbath is the true God’s gift to those who wish to rest and to be free…” “According to the rabbis, those who observe Sabbath observe all the other commandments. 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…” “..Sabbath sickness…your welcome rest begins to feel like something closer to a bad cold..what if your energy level drops and never comes back up again?…Plus, how will you ever catch up after taking a whole day off? Just thinking about it makes you tired.” “At least one day in every seven, pull off the road and park the car in the garage. Close the door to the toolshed and turn off the computer. Stay home not because you are sick but because you are well. 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…This is a commandment. Your worth has already been established, even when you are not working…”
- The Practice of Carrying Water – Physical labor (digging potatoes, ice storm-no electricity.)
- The Practice of Feeling Pain – Breakthrough. “Pain makes theologians of us all…” The book of Job: “Like him, they have given up asking the question of why bad things happen to good people. They know that the real question is when.”
- The Practice of Being Present to God – Prayer: “I am a failure at prayer.” Recommends Brother Lawrence’s book, The Practice of the Presence of God.
- Practice of Pronouncing Blessings – Benediction: “…open your arms to what is instead of waiting until it is what it should be.”