Product Description

In her critically acclaimed Leaving Church ("a beautiful, absorbing memoir."—Dallas Morning News), Barbara Brown Taylor wrote about leaving full-time ministry to become a professor, a decision that stretched the boundaries of her faith. Now, in her stunning follow-up, An Altar in the World, she shares how she learned to encounter God beyond the walls of any church.

From simple practices such as walking, working, and getting lost to deep meditations on topics like prayer and pronouncing blessings, Taylor reveals concrete ways to discover the sacred in the small things we do and see. Something as ordinary as hanging clothes on a clothesline becomes an act of devotion if we pay attention to what we are doing and take time to attend to the sights, smells, and sounds around us. Making eye contact with the cashier at the grocery store becomes a moment of true human connection. Allowing yourself to get lost leads to new discoveries. Under Taylor's expert guidance, we come to question conventional distinctions between the sacred and the secular, learning that no physical act is too earthbound or too humble to become a path to the divine. As we incorporate these practices into our daily lives, we begin to discover altars everywhere we go, in nearly everything we do.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #3001 in Books
• Published on: 2009-02-01
• Released on: 2009-02-10
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 240 pages

Features

• ISBN13: 9780061370465
• Condition: NEW
• Notes: Brand New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark.
• Click here to view our Condition Guide and Shipping Prices

From Publishers Weekly
Starred Review. Author of an acclaimed memoir (Leaving Church) and a gifted preacher, 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. Her candor is another of the book's virtues: she is a failure at prayer, and cannot explain why or how it is, or isn't, answered ("I do not know any way to talk about answered prayer without sounding like a huckster or a honeymooner"). Savor this book. (Feb.)
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Review
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 (Nora Gallagher, author of Things Seen and Unseen and Changing Light )

This book is the most practical but everyday mystical book I have read on spiritual practices. (Kate Campbell, singer-songwriter )

"Taylor serves up beefy soul food.. . . Though she did not write the book to speak to the economic crash, those suffering from lost jobs, homes and status will find plenty to feed thought and faith." (Atlanta Journal-Constitution )

"Taylor's spiritual reflections are original, bringing fresh air to her topics because her spirituality is steeped in everyday life while illuminated by the ancient Christian spiritual tradition." (National Catholic Reporter )

"Leaving Church settled it for me that Taylor, as thinker and stylist, ranks with the best. The new book confirms that. . . . This book is not a page-turner. It's a page-lingerer. I wore out a highlighter marking passages I want to read again." (Dallas Morning News )

"The author seems simply incapable of writing a bad book. . . . Taylor is a great gift to the Christian church. And this volume, which focuses on spiritual practices, simply adds to her growing reputation." (Kansas City Star )

Elegant, wise, and insightful, this book is also sacramental: it mediates the life it describes (Marcus Borg, author of Jesus )

"Taylor writes fluently, with an eye and ear for the striking image and memorable phrase. Many readers, especially the vast numbers of the "unchurched" but "spiritual," will find support and useful counsel." (Library Journal )

This is the most completely beautiful book in religion that I have read in a very long time. Gentle, humbly crafted, lyrical, and deeply wise, Altar is Barbara Brown Taylor as she was meant to be, a pastor who understands that knowing God occurs in a place beyond theology. (Phyllis Tickle, author of The Great Emergence )

"She's deliberately exploring the turf where our feet hit the floorboards each morning - and where the day takes us into the world. Even if you're not a Christian, you'll find a wise friend in Barbara's book." (Read the Spirit )

"An Altar in the World is a delight to the eyes, mind and heart, a book I will certainly return to again at a later time, if only to remind myself of the spirituality of everyday living." (America Magazine )

"Without denigrating altars in churches, Brown helps us discover and honor all the 'altars in the world'--the red Xs that mark the spot, but that we cannot see because we are standing on them. She does so with a depth that readers will appreciate and savor." (-U.S. Catholic )

"Taylor is one of those rare people who truly can see the holy in everything. . . . Savor this book." (Publishers Weekly (starred review) )

"A marvelous book. Barbara Brown Taylor's honesty is so fantastic, and she writes with such wit, that this book is a delight to read and a profound experience ." (ExploreFaith )

"[A] lovely book. One of the best-known preachers in the country offers equal amounts of wisdom and erudition spent longing for more meaning, more feeling, more connection." (Booklist )

About the Author

Barbara Brown Taylor's last book, Leaving Church, was met with widespread critical acclaim including the New York Times, USA Today, NPR's Fresh Air, and others. Taylor spent fifteen years in parish ministry and was named one of the twelve most effective preachers in the English-speaking world by Baylor University in 1996. She became a professor of religion at Piedmont College in 1998 and also teaches spirituality at Columbia Theological Seminary. Still a priest in the Episcopal church, Taylor has traveled the world in pursuit of sacred wisdom, finding most of what she needed in her backyard. She lives on a working farm in rural north Georgia with her husband, Ed.

Customer Reviews

Getting To "No": The Joy Of Reading Barbara Brown Taylor
Barbara Brown Taylor, Episcopal priest, professor of religion, and author of LEAVING CHURCH, a book that resonated with many of us, in her latest work, AN ALTAR IN THE WORLD, does what she does so well: she 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. The most surprising thing I learned about her is that Taylor considers herself an introvert. I would never have suspected that. In addition to her forthrightness, Taylor, an English major somewhere in her studies, always writes eloquently so it is easy to wallow in her words. She is just as much at home quoting Wendell Berry or Rumi as the Old Testament character Job. There are so many beautiful passages here chockfull of truths: her account of when she was seven, watching falling stars with her father from whom she learned reverence as well as her description of the first church she loved, in the Ohio countryside, where the pastor "was the first adult who looked me in the eyes and listened to what I said. He was the first to tuck God's pillow under my head." (You can tip your hat to that image as it is so beautiful!) Many of us were fortunate to have such a person in our lives as well. And we could pick out of a church lineup-- or maybe not-- the lone woman Taylor encountered polishing silver in the sacristy at a church in Alabama merely by Taylor's description of her as a "pulled-together woman."

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. (I'm not sure, however, that I'm ready to bless my bathroom or read a poem aloud to a tree yet.) 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 (we don't have to invite her to dinner) and learn to say "no," in my favorite chapter: "The Practice of Saying No: Sabbath." 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. Finally, Taylor via Brother David Steindl-Rast, an Austrian Benedictine, "recognizes the sacramental value of a homegrown tomato sandwich." For that statement alone, they both can be my spiritual advisors.

Whether you worship within a community or, in the words of Emily Dickinson, "keep the Sabbath staying at home"-- or keep the Sabbath not at all-- you will find much truth here, that if followed, should make you come closer to being a human being, or as Taylor says, "should "give you more meaning, more feeling, more connection, more life."

AN ALTAR IN THE WORLD cries out to be mulled over again and again. Of course reading this writer is always a joy.

Spiritual Practices for Everyone
In recent years, Christians have become more aware that theirs is a faith based in practices--the things we do in the world for the sake of God's beauty, justice and love. In this book, Barbara Brown Taylor opens the language of practice to extend far beyond the walls of the church and directs us to the practices that frame everyday human experience. She finds the divine in all things and invites her readers to intentionally participate in the interplay of the sacred in daily life. In many ways, it is a contemporary version of Brother Lawrence's classic book, "Practicing the Presence of God." As such, Barbara Brown Taylor models how theological reflection is not an arcane or ivory tower exercise. Rather, thinking theologically about our bodies, the ground on which we walk, the laundry that we do, is a holy calling for all people. This is a lovely book, one well-suited for personal growth and for reading groups.

A Spiritual Classic to Be Read Again and Again
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This is probably the most beautiful book about spirituality I have ever read. The experience of moving through the gorgeous, delicious writing was pure joy. I cried at the end. I was profoundly moved.

The book discusses and the spiritual practices of living, of being alive, in a way that will speak to people of any and every faith, and most especially to people who are more spiritual than religious. Each chapter is a separate essay that can stand alone---written on such things as the Practice of Wearing Skin, the Practice of Getting Lost, the Practice of Pronouncing Blessings, and so much more.

This book will woo you away from being dry and dead and and stuck and bored and open you to being more alive. I seldom say this with such certainty, but I know that it will do the same for you.

Highest recommendation.
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