An Altar in the World

If Barbara Brown Taylor has moved you in the past, this book will not let you down. If you've never read (or heard of) BBT, as I affectionately call her, this is an outstanding introduction. 

Taylor is a post-modern mystic who believes that God and God's miracles are awaiting in the everyday stuff of our lives. She can take a seemingly routine thing (making a sandwich, going for a walk, talking on the phone) and show us how God, as I love to say quoting Augustine, is closer to us than we are to ourselves. One friend emailed me this week to say how much An Altar meant to him: "I thought each chapter I read was the best until I got to the next one . . . "

Chapter Three, The Practice of Wearing Skin, is one of the better poetical understandings of Incarnation I've read. 

From walking to getting lost, listening to seeing, Taylor has blazed a new path for those of us trying to be tied to the God of Creation and Incarnation as Torah and Gospels teach us to be. 

An example:

At this advanced level, the practice of getting lost has nothing to do with wanting to go there. It is something that happens, like it or not. You lose your job. Your lover leaves. That baby dies. At this level, the advanced practice of getting lost consists of consenting to be lost, since you have no other choice. The consenting itself becomes your choice, as you explore the possibility that life is for you and and not against you, in spite of all the evidence to the contrary.

This rock-bottom trust seems to come naturally to some people, while it takes disciplined practice for others. I am one of the latter, a damaged truster who hopes she has lots of time to work up to the advanced level before her own exodus comes. To that end, I keep my eyes open for opportunities to get slowly lost, so that I can gradually build the muscles necessary for radical trust (An Altar in the World, 80).

Birthing Pains

Here are two of my favorite quotes regarding the birth of Jesus. Both are from Barbara Brown Taylor.

"In our own age of people who raise children without benefit of marriage, the issue of legitimacy sounds a bit quaint, but the heart of the story is much bigger and more profound than that. The heart of the story is about a just man who wakes up one day to find his life wrecked: his wife pregnant, his trust betrayed, his name ruined, his future revoked. It is about a righteous man who surveys a mess he has had absolutely nothing to do with and decides to believe that God is present in it…He claims the scandal and it gives it a name. He owns the mess—he legitimates it—and the mess becomes the place where the Messiah is born," (BBT in Gospel Medicine).

And regarding Mary's status as "theotokos" (the God-bearer, or God-bringer) . . .

". . . You can decide to be a daredevil, a test pilot, a gambler. You can set your book down and listen to a strange creature’s strange idea. You can decide to take part in a plan you did not choose, doing things you do not know how to do for reasons you do not entirely understand. You can take part in a thrilling and dangerous scheme with no script and no guarantees. You can agree to smuggle God into the world inside your own body," (BBT in Gospel Medicine).