Barbara Brown Taylor: Spiritual Direction in the World
“People can learn as much about the ways of God from business deals gone bad or sparrows falling to the ground as they can from reciting the books of the Bible in order.
They can learn as much from a love affair or a wildflower as they can from knowing the Ten Commandments by heart.” Barbara Brown Taylor, An Altar in the World, HarperOne 2009
I remember this morning this quote from Barbara Brown Taylor in Synthesis. It was a Weekly Resource for Preaching and Worship in the Episcopal Tradition: http://www.synthesispub.com. I look to my right, where my husband bought a new bookcase to house the books closer to me that I want to share with you on this blog. Then I look straight ahead out of a floor-to-ceiling window to the outside and watch a wintry sleeting rain strike at the trees just outside between our house and our neighbors. I can also hear the rhythm of the sleet on the roof above, where there is very little insulation in our “modern” 1960’s home.
I remember having dinner with our children and grandchildren in their new home across the street. What a blessing just to walk across the road to be with grandchildren, our greatest gifts, our most important visitors we will entertain. I learn from them whenever I see them about simple joy, unconditional love, and wide-eyed excitement about life. All of these are learning experiences. I hope to hold on to my gratitude for them, which I learned from Barbara Brown Taylor. She was once a speaker at the Buechner Writing For Your Life Conference in Nashville at Belmont University, which I attended. She is still the amazing writer, speaker, and teacher she was when I first read her over thirty years ago. If you have a chance to hear her, don’t miss it.
She has taught us so much about an awareness of the altars in the world that keep us constantly connected to the God of our understanding if only we have eyes and ears to see and hear and hands to touch and even noses to smell. Yes, the smell of icy winter rain and sleet is not unlike the scent of the well-known costly incense from Smoky Mary’s in Manhattan (Church of St. Mary the Virgin). The sound of the winter piper on the beach is not unlike the prelude from any cathedral organ.
The altars in our churches are also thin places where we especially go to give thanks for our altars in the world.
Joanna joannaseibert.com
