Taylor is one of those rare people who truly can see the holy in everything. Since everyone should know such a person, those who don’t can—no, must—read this book, with its friendly reminders of everyday sacred. Taylor’s 12 chapters mine the potentially sacred meaning of simple daily activities and conditions, like walking, paying attention, saying no to work one Sabbath day each week.
Hanging laundry is setting up a prayer flag, for God’s sake. Since Taylor, an Episcopal priest, no longer pastors a church, she can “do church” everywhere: in line at the grocery store interacting with the cashier, walking a moonlit path with her husband.
An Altar in the World is about how faith can be both practical and sensuous.In Barbara Brown Taylor’s hands, the old division between heaven and earth is healed and both come alive. Your mind, your body and your soul will be well fed by this wonderful book.
Taylor gives advice and counsel to those both inside and outside the church on how to become more human and have a richer spiritual life. She reminds us that we need not travel to the shrines of seers in foreign lands but rather that we cannot see the red X that will free us because we are standing on it. In 12 chapters the author covers vision, reference, the Sabbath, physical labor, vocation, prayer– a different topic for each chapter. One of the things so endearing about Taylor’s writing is that she is so brutally honest about herself, revealing details about her life that many people would never talk about: that she shakes hands like a man, that she may like Bombay Sapphire gin martinis too much, that she is a “rotten” godmother, for instance.
Although the author gives a whole litany of the things that Episcopalians bless (“The Episcopalins are fools for blessing things”), she left off pets and fleets of ships. But Taylor is not about words but practices, encouraging her readers to get off the porch– except on Sabbath– and do something. She is dead on in her comments that we should at least make eye contact with the grocery store cashier. Her admonishment that we do absolutely nothing on the Sabbath, not even driving our cars or turning on our computers, is well worth trying to do. We are so busy that we miss what is really important.
This book will woo you away from being dry and dead and stuck and bored and open you to being more alive.
Related Books:
- The Prodigal God: Recovering the Heart of the Christian Faith : Timothy Keller
- The Lost Symbol : Dan Brown
- The Nine: Inside the Secret World of the Supreme Court – By Jeffrey Toobin
