An Altar in the World: A Geography of Faith by Barbara Brown Taylor

An Altar in the World: A Geography of Faith Reviews

• 
  Kate

  I read this for a church book club, and while the book had some solid, even excellent, chapters, in other ways I found it flawed. An Altar in the World is best suited for people who identify as "spiritual, but not religious," and for those who are looking to expand their spirituality outside of their standard worship experience. Taylor tends to dismiss out of hand what religion has to offer outside of a standard (often boring) weekly worship experience, so I would urge those who are working within a faith tradition to explore what their religion has to offer them in terms of religious experiences in addition to reading this book.
  
  In addition to giving religion rather short shrift, Taylor is also writing from a place of unacknowledged privilege. This book is really for people who are somewhat settled in their lives and who live relatively comfortably, and who have lived relatively comfortably in the past. (I don't think someone who has cleaned toilets to make a living would find her anecdote of how She Cleaned Yucky Toilets In A Homeless Shelter This One Time to be as moving as she'd hoped; for that matter, I don't think someone who is or has been homeless would find it so charming, either.) Taylor does avoid romanticizing the poor, but that may be because she's not fully aware (in her writing) of poverty: in this book, manual labor is a thought-provoking change of pace from a yuppie lifestyle, and making do with less is a considered life choice.
  
  Even with these shortcomings, though, An Altar in the World does have some good insights. The chapter on prayer is excellent--one of the best I've read, particularly in terms of its accessibility. The book's focus on finding a connection with God and "the Holy" in the natural world and in our daily lives is also eminently worthy of consideration, and helpful to many people who seek God but have trouble connecting. Overall, the book does have some serious flaws, but it is timely and not without its merits.
• 
  Elizabeth Andrew

  Barbara Brown Taylor is our twenty-first century Henri Nouwen. I'm immensely grateful for AN ALTAR IN THE WORLD, for its elegant, lively prose, yes, but mostly for its practical application of a big-hearted faith. In the prologue, Taylor writes, "What is saving my life now is the conviction that there is no spiritual treasure to be found apart from the bodily experiences of human life on earth. My life depends on engaging the most ordinary physical activities with the most exquisite attention I can give them." This is a profoundly feminine perspective, and profoundly Christian. Later she writes that we don't want more ABOUT God, we want MORE GOD. I love how clearly she articulates the earthly practices by which more God comes into the world, staying rooted in exquisite theology and translating these beliefs for the mundane moments of our days.
  
  This book models for me how powerful spiritual and theological reflections can become when they are grounded in personal narrative. Taylor's every abstract pronouncement about God has its origins in her own experience. The bridge she constructs between life and faith is then strong enough for me to cross as well.
  
  I am happy for practices that bring me back to my body, where the operative categories are not “bad” and “good” but “dead” and “alive.”
  --Barbara Brown Taylor, An Altar in the World, 47
  
• 
  Susan Ideus

  I wondered how I had forgotten that the whole world is the House of God. Who had persuaded me that God preferred four walls and a roof to wide-open spaces? When had I made the subtle switch myself, becoming convinced that church bodies and buildings were the safest and most reliable places to encounter the living God? (p. 4, An Altar in the World)
  
  Thus it is that Barbara Brown Taylor begins finding altars in the world as places where even the most reverent or the most jaded among us can encounter a living God, or creation, or whatever it is that we define as this planet we inhabit.
  
  For over twenty years, Taylor had worked within the structure of organized religion as an ordained Episcopal priest. She loved her churches and her congregants but came away feeling that something was missing, something not quite right. Were Sunday and weekday religious services enough? What about the world outside of the church buildings? That was a lot of world, and wasn't it all God's? Brown eventually left the active ministry, and began teaching religion. Her favorite of her courses was Religions of the World, a course which fascinated her, but made some of her first-year Christian seminary students a bit nervous. As they visited and participated in the services at mosques and synagogues and Masjids, they were forced to look at the world and religion through new eyes, and came away wondering if perhaps there was more than one way to God.
  
  For Taylor, it followed that not only was the God of the World worshipped in buildings other than churches, He could also be found in the world He created long before buildings came to be. God, she reasoned, did not intend to live in a box.
  
  Taylor's "altars" are not places but rather practices that make one aware of the Earth and all that inhabits it. One of her favorites is simply Walking on the Earth. Walking with no agenda, no destination, but rather with eyes and mind and heart wide open to receive the beauty and sacredness of Creation. She suggests doing it barefoot at least part of the time! The desired outcome of this spiritual practice, and others, is "to teach those who engage in them what those practitioners need to know—about being human, about being human with other people, about being human in creation, about being human before God."
  
  In other words, an altar is about being in relationship. Her other altars reflect this theme: The Practice of Waking Up to God (vision), The Practice of Paying Attention (Reverence), The Practice of Wearing Skin (Incarnation), The Practice of Getting Lost (Wilderness), The Practice of Encountering Others (Community), The Practice of Living with Purpose (Vocation), The Practice of Saying No (Sabbath), The Practice of Carrying Water (Physical Labor), The Practice of Feeling Pain (Breakthrough), The Practice of Being Present to God (Prayer), and The Practice of Pronouncing Blessings (Benediction).
  
  Taylor is a Christian, but her focus here is catholic, in the true original sense of the word—universal in scope. She draws on wisdom from not only Christianity, but also Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism, and Judaism; she cites the Bible, the Koran, and the Torah. She finds wisdom in the words of the Desert Fathers, Brother Lawrence, Wendell Berry, Rumi and various rabbis. Everyone we meet, she says, we must assume to be a face of God. What we have most in common is not religion, but our humanity.
  
  Whether being practical (cleaning toilets) or mystical (walking a labyrinth at Chartres), Taylor wants us to know, to really feel, that the world, this Creation, and all of its people are to be treated with respect and honor and humility and awe. The issue is never a ritual, but the relationship. It is living outside of oneself. It is being intentional about all that we do—to walk through our day days causally, not casually. In Taylor's words, it is "to get over yourself." "It is living so that 'I'm only human' does not become an excuse for anything." It is knowing that whatever we do, menial or grandiose, becomes a sacred act if we treat it as such, and to realize that our true shared vocation is to love God and neighbor. Any place we might be is holy ground, hallowed ground, if we but acknowledge the Creator of that place.
  
  This is a small book that carries a big impact. It is not preachy but it informs and teaches. It does not proselytize but rather encourages relation with Creator and created World. In this time, when Earth is reeling from natural disaster, war, and man-made catastrophes, Taylor encourages us to slow down, to really look and see and listen—to be in relationship with everything and everyone around us. Each of us is this Earth's best hope. She fittingly closes with the words of Rumi:
  
  "Let the beauty we love be what we do.
  There are hundreds of ways to kneel and kiss the ground."
• 
  Fiona

  This is a book about some of the different practices of worshiping and recognizing God in our lives. The practices are;
  1. practice of waking up to God
  2. practice of paying attention
  3. practice of wearing skin
  4. practice of walking on the earth
  5. practice of encountering others
  6. practice of living with purpose
  7. practice of saying no
  8. practice of feeling pain
  9. practice of being present to God (prayer and prayers which I read while taking shelter during the tornado warning)
  10. practice of pronouncing blessings
  
  Ideology wasn't preached in this book because these practices are applicable to many organized religions. Instead, the practices are discussed as they are applicable to the Jewish, Islam, Greek Orthodox, Buddhism, & Christianity. The author has been (and still is??) a professor of world religions and is an Episcopalian priest.
  
  In essence, God can be worshiped in many ways in our everyday life. We just have to take the time to realize He is ever present in our lives.
  
  
  
  
• 
  Henry Le Nav

  I am a sucker for any book that has the word geography in the title. I enjoyed this book but ultimately it disappointed me. It does a very good job of helping people with a crisis of church or religion. Her lesson seems to be that one should be and do rather than think. Taylor reminds us that we have a body and the body is Sacred. She shows us many ways to express one's spirituality by stopping and smelling the roses, fully experiencing life, and performing service to others. She states, correctly I believe, that one can find God and the Sacred anywhere in the world and in nature. You don't have be in a church or go off to an ashram. There are altars throughout the world where you place them. Inspiration from a beautiful sunset is an altar that is just as spiritually valid as a ritual performed in a church, if you allow yourself to see that Sacredness. You don't have to discount your own spiritual experience to a religion. Taylor proceeds to then show how we may find God and the Sacredness of our existence in the aspects of ordinary life...our jobs, family, health, pain, and loss. Digging for potatoes can be a spiritual exercise in the value of dirt and remembering that we are made of the same. Hanging underwear and bath towels on a clothes line to dry is flying prayer flags. "Pain makes theologians of us all."
  
  What I found disappointing in the book was that it did not, for me at least, seem to address a crisis in faith. Being fed up with church--the rules and regulations, the obsession with sin, the constant promoting of the brand (to enter the kingdom of God you must do _______), the gossip, congregational politics, national organizational politics, the dinners, Bible classes, ad infinitum--is one thing. Yes! Chuck it all and go find God in nature and self revelation. But a crisis in faith, deeply felt doubts about the existence of God and the debilitating suspicion that you have been hand fed a line of BS is something altogether different. One is not going to look for altars for something that does not exist.
  
  James Fowler wrote
  Stages of Faith: The Psychology of Human Development and the Quest for Meaning, a book that I have, shamefully, attempted to read more than once and set down out of laziness and lack of intellectual discipline. Fowler describes 7 stages of spiritual development, which you can find a nice summary at Wikipedia:
  
  
  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fowler%2...
  
  M. Scot Peck offered a simpler model in
  The Different Drum: Community Making and Peace reducing Fowler's 7 stages to 4 based on his own experience. Peck's description is more compact and easier to understand. You can find a good abridged version here:
  
  
  http://factnet.org/stages-spiritual-g...
  
  
  EDIT 4/29/17 The above website is no longer available. Use this website instead:
  
  
  http://www.whale.to/b/peck1.html
  
  
  
  According to Peck, level 3, skepticism, doubt that may express itself in various degrees of agnosticism or atheism is a necessary stage within spiritual development. One must suffer a period of doubt or disbelief in God as well as organized religion in order to advance to level 4 that of a mystic. While I can not vouch for the general truth of this statement,I can vouch that it reflected my spiritual experience--not that I have approached anything close to a mystic, failed mystic perhaps.
  
  In the abridged version of Peck's stages of faith in the link above we find:
  
  

  Despite being scientifically minded, in many cases even atheists, they are on a higher spiritual level than Stage II, being a required stage of growth to enter into Stage IV. The churches age old dilemma: how to bring people from Stage II to Stage IV, without allowing them to enter Stage III.

  
  
  There in lies the problem for me with An Altar in the World. Taylor seems to solve the age old dilemma by simply ignoring it. She wonderfully provides a solution for those who are fed up with the church, but she does not adequately address the problems of those who are fed up with God. Must we doubt God before we can find Her in a sunset, the flowers of the field, or the joy of hanging wet clothes on a line and see prayer flags? I am not smart enough or spiritual enough to say. But I do know that 50 years ago when the church drove me away with its obsession with sin, rules and regulations, showing me a sunset was not going to persuade me that God exists. I had to have my period of being pissed off at not only the church but God as well.
  
  Perhaps her new book to be published in a few weeks
  Learning to Walk in the Dark will address a crisis in faith.
• 
  Mary

  I read this with my small group (six women, including two widows in their 70's/80's and four "empty nesters" in their 50's and 60's) over the last six weeks; each week, the six of us would meet to discuss two chapters. This is the second book we've read together, so we knew a little about each other before we started. The conversations we had over this book have made a deep and lasting impression on me.
  
  As has this book. It is beautifully written, with just the right mix of Taylor's own thoughts - wow, this woman can write a sentence - illustrations from others (she includes poetry, prayers and other meaningful quotations from a host of "wise" people across centuries) and warm hearted humor.
  
  She says in the introduction "...my hope is that reading [this] will help you recognize some of the altars in this world -- ordinary-looking places where human beings have met and may continue to meet up with the divine More that they sometimes call God."
  
  For me, she certainly succeeded.
  
  I read this with a pencil; most pages show at least a few underlinings, stars, hearts and other marginalia. Looking back over all those pages, I'm struck anew by the power of Taylor's writing. I started reading the book a few pages each day, but soon found I wanted to keep going and had to make myself stop when I'd finished the reading for the week. But when I reached the last two chapters - on prayer and blessing - I didn't want to finish. I read that last chapter just before heading off to my meeting. I loved it most of all. (While I was reading, I also ordered two of the poetry books she cited on those pages - gotta love Amazon on your phone.)
  
  Two days later, the passages I marked on those last pages still evoke the emotion, clarity of understanding and simple grace I felt when I first read them:
  

  "I could argue with myself on this, but I am not sure that you have to believe in God to pronounce a blessing. It may be enough to see the thing for what it is and pronounce it good. For most of us, that is as close to God as we will ever get anyway."

  "God has no hands but ours, no bread but the bread we bake, no prayers but the ones we make, whether we know what we are doing or not."

  "That we are willing to bless one another is miracle enough to stagger the very stars."

  
  and finally - from the very last page:
  

  "I hope you can think of [at least a dozen] more ways to celebrate your own priesthood, practiced at the altar of your own life. As the love poet of all time reminds us both,
  
  Today like every other day we wake up empty
  and frightened. Don't open the door to the study
  and begin reading. Take down a musical instrument.
  Let the beauty we love be what we do.
  There are hundreds of ways to kneel and kiss the ground."
  

  
  (that last bit is from Rumi and that's one of the books I ordered.)
  
  I'm confident I'll feel the same way two weeks, months and years from now. All of this might be a little much for some, but it was just what I (and the other women in my small group) needed. If it sounds remotely interesting to you, please read it. I think you'll love it, too.
• 
  J.L. Neyhart

  This is still my favorite book by Barbara Brown Taylor. This was my third or fourth time reading it. Highly recommend.
• 
  Holden Ehlinger

  A moment i won’t soon forget was reading this book on an airplane while a woman near me was also reading it. I pointed this out to her and we ended up having a very meaningful conversation for 30+ minutes about faith. Turns out she has read this book dozens of times and was able to share all the ways it’s impacted her faith.
  
  -> “‘Honestly,’ he said, ‘I don’t think it through, not now. I tell God what I want. I’m not smart enough or strong enough to do anything else, and besides, there’s no time. So I tell God what I want and I trust God to sort it out.’ Maybe that is what Jesus meant about coming to God like a child.”
• 
  katie

  It's been a long time since I devoured any book in just one day. I was led to this one by nothing less than divine urging, when I was supposed to be reading another book I'd been asked to check out in order to lead a discussion group about it. I felt blocked about that one for some reason, couldn't make myself read it, and instead I obeyed the nudge to the bookshelf, got down An Altar in the World, read the introduction, underlined several things there (haven't done that in a while either), read chapter one, was entirely hooked, thought, "Man, this is the one that needs a book group studying it." Finished at 11:30 that night. The writing is beautiful. The content is beautiful. The humanity in this book is beautiful. Perhaps it's because I ate this book in one sitting as if it were a feast, that I love it so. It resonates. There are ideas I've thought before, there are old reminders in fresh guise, there are new challenging insights. Our work on earth is to build altars, to praise, to find the holy in the commonplace. The commonplace is not always so common. God meets us here, where we are, in our bodies, on this earth. I'm going to go back to this gem and sip from it again. And again.
• 
  Allison Severson

  I put this book on my "read" shelf, though it could also be on my "currently-reading" list, as I have read most of the chapters, albeit not in order.
  
  I loved the chapter on pain and suffering (which sounds strange), but I read it when I had been mildly-ill for a few weeks. Certainly put my illness in perspective, and she really articulated how we are awakened and called to when we're sick (at least that's how I interpreted it having read it months ago now).
  
  The book was a gift from a mentor and friend, and I will continue to read chapters, sometimes twice. I have read the chapter on prayer a few times.... I usually pray throughout my day anyway, but she reminds us... If you talk to God all the time, you're always going to have something to say. I have read it slow, because I'm always thinking a lot when I finish reading parts of it.
  
  I also really like this author, at least from what I've read so far. She seems to me to approach her spiritual writing without a "I am greater than thou" attitude, or even a preacher-type voice. I appreciate her openness and kindness. She seems to me like she would be a peaceful person.
• 
  Kathryn Bashaar

  I'm finding myself in a period of spiritual discernment in my life, so I've added some books on spirituality to my reading list. I'm choosing carefully. I prefer books that are based in Christianity, but I am absolutely uninterested in fundamentalism, Biblical literalism or easy answers of any kind. I'm also not interested in self-serving, comforting woo-woo nonsense.
  
  This book suited my purposes perfectly. Grounded in Christianity, but also drawing a little from other spiritual traditions, it is written by an ordained minister, former pastor, and professor of theology. Taylor writes about how we live and explore faith in our everyday lives. We don't just encounter God at formal altars in church. Our encounters with other human beings are altars. The natural world is an altar. Pain can be an altar. She rejects the Augustinian body/soul dichotomy, and describes a rich physical world in which God is always alive and present.
  
  She doesn't provide answers to the big questions. But I'm not looking for that. I like to ponder those questions, but I'm content to leave the answers to God. I am simply seeking a way to live my faith daily, and Taylor's book was a beautiful and thoughtful step on that road for me.
  
  Like my reviews? Check out my blog at
  http://www.kathrynbashaar.com/blog/
  Author of The Saints Mistress
  https://camcatbooks.com/Books/T/The-S...
• 
  Vannetta Chapman

  My pastor recommended this book for reading during Lent. It was fabulous. I'm not much of a nonfiction reader, so when I say it's really good--that's a huge compliment!
  
  Taylor's approach is a bit unorthodox, but her general idea is that God can be found everywhere, not just within the walls of the church. The book explores that concept. I'd love to read something else by here.
• 
  Kat Coffin

  I liked "Leaving Church" and "Learning to Walk in the Dark", but "An Altar in the World" was the first of Taylor's books to profoundly affect me. So much so, that I decided to incorporate the spiritual practices she discusses into my Lenten observance this year. She is such a graceful writer and there was so much of how she views God that sunk into the marrow of my bones.
• 
  Anne

  This is a very grounding book that I reread periodically just to help keep my head and heart straight.
• 
  debbicat *made of stardust*

  Incredibly insightful. This author speaks to my spirit and soul. Full review to follow.
• 
  Michael

  Marvelous book about the spirituality inherent in the everyday things of our lives. The author writes with both beauty and insight about the holiness of things like paying attention, taking a walk, community, physical work, and practicing a personal Sabbath. I was especially struck by her thoughts on sacraments. She wrote, "Regarded properly, anything can become a sacrament, by which I mean an outward and visible sign of an inward and spiritual connection." In the Catholic Church, a sacrament is defined as a 'visible sign of invisible grace.' The difference here is that only a Catholic priest can bless an object to make it a sacrament, while--for Protestants and their 'priesthood of all believers,' anyone can.
  
  I was thinking about these things today as I was holding the baby daughter of some friends of ours. I love all babies, and this one in particular is beautiful. To me, a baby is a sacrament: she is a sign of all that is good and hopeful in the world; a true blessing, and the embodiment (perhaps even the incarnation) of grace.
  
  If that isn't God, I don't know what is.
  
  These Episcopalians just keep sucking me in.
• 
  Jordan Magnuson

  An Altar in the World is, in many ways, an unremarkable book: it is quiet, it is humble, it spouts obvious truths. Barbara Brown Taylor is not the first person to seek after an undivided life, a holistic spirituality, a Christianity which is more concerned with Christ than with religion... indeed, her own pages, which draw on sources ranging from Desert Fathers to Mystics to Quakers, testify to that fact: we have long sought wholeness.
  
  Yet despite all our postmodern striving towards unity, we still live in a world which dichotomises us at every turn: we are still taught to see our lives as composed of thinking bits, and of feeling bits; of religious bits, and of secular bits; of spiritual bits, and of mundane bits; of holy bits, and of physical bits. Barbara Brown Taylor says stop: it doesn't have to be that way. She may not be the first to say so, but her gentle probing is clear, insightful, and refreshingly practical.
  
  Highly recommended.
• 
  Marion

  I had this book on my "to read" list for it seems like forever. I am so glad I finally sat down with it. I thoroughly enjoyed the twelve different chapters on ways to enhance your spiritual experience grounded in everyday life. These practices are very doable, even in the midst of a hectic, busy life. You just need to pay attention to what is inside and around you. The chapters can be read in order or at random. You can skip around to see what speaks to you. She asserts that "all of life is holy and every activity harbors an opportunity to meet God." In other words, you don't need the four walls of a church or a minister's guidance to find what is sacred in this life.
• 
  Ainsley

  Loved this book's focus on bodies--how it's not accidental that we're born with them--and on everyday embodied spiritual practices. Five big stars for chapter eight, on the practices of saying no, of sabbath, of making space. I will go back and read that again. I find my soul drawn, again and again, to simplicity, to beauty, to connection, to mystery. In Barbara Brown Taylor I found a friendly, funny, grounded spiritual guide who has great experience and insight on how embracing these human, sometimes buried yearnings can lead us to be more fully alive and to connect with the everyday Holy.
• 
  Katy

  What a beautiful book. If you are a poet, if you are a lover of words, if you are a lover of all things beautiful and want to know how this works together with your faith, you should read this. This is a book of doing, of "spiritual practices" like paying attention, wearing skin and getting lost. Get ready, the paperback cover is going to be gorgeous, and you're going to want to buy this book for both the outside AND what's inside.
• 
  KA

  A wonderful, funny, beautiful, moving book. I'll read it again and again. And I highly recommend it to anyone with a spiritual life, including seekers and those struggling with their spiritual life!
• 
  Erin Henry

  I feel like I should read this again slowly. It has so many ideas for practices to see the holiness or goodness in the world. The practice of paying attention, wearing skin, feeling pain and pronouncing blessings were my favorites and I hope to put them into daily practice.
• 
  Peggy Otto

  This is a book I will read again. Each chapter can function alone as a meditation on the holiness of the physical in our lives.
  
• 
  Tony Snyder

  I read this one late into the night and couldn't stop! It resonated with me deeply. This book is for those who yearn and wonder what life's about. I can't recommend it highly enough!
• 
  Carrie

  Barbara Brown Taylor speaks like a friend, who sits with you long after the meal is over, talking about everyday life and somehow revealing its holiness. I savored this book, reading a chapter a day, and sometimes slower than that. I needed time to reflect on her perspective of God.
  
  “To learn to look with compassion on everything that is; to see past the terrifying demons outside to the bawling hearts within; to make the first move towards the other, however many times it takes to get close; to open your arms to what is instead of waiting until it is what it should be; to surrender the justice of your own cause for mercy; to surrender the priority of your own safety for love-this is to land at God’s breast.”
• 
  Laura Kisthardt

  This book was a reminder to me that books find us at the right time. I had a physical copy on my shelves for the past couple years. I ended up listening to the audio version. I really enjoyed this book. I think at the beginning of the book the author says you don’t need to read it cover to cover. But I felt like I was spending time with Barbara Brown Taylor, like she was a wise friend, in listening to the audiobook.
  I recommend this book for anyone feeling like their spiritual life is stale and they would like new ideas for ways to connect to God.
• 
  Emily Abernathy

  I loved this book from cover to cover. The way Barbara Brown Taylor writes about the things of everyday life make me more grateful to be human. This book is for the person who wants to feel more connection to God throughout the day. Household chores, walking, cooking, going to Target...all of these things can be spiritual practices. I plan on reading this book again and again and sharing it with people who want to live a more intentional life.
  
  I especially loved the chapters on community, vocation, and prayer.