Altar in the World, An: A Geography of Faith [Hardcover]

Barbara Brown Taylor (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: February 10, 2009

In LEAVING CHURCH, we followed Barbara Brown Taylor as she left full-time ministry to become a university professor, a decision that allowed her to discover new ways to -keep the faith- outside the orthodox Christian box. Now, in AN ALTAR IN THE WORLD, Taylor shares how she developed new skills for encountering God far beyond the walls of the church. From simple practices (walking, working, getting lost) to deep meditations (on prayer, giving blessings, and on having skin), each chapter reveals meaningful ways to find the sacred in the small things we do and see. Through her expert guidance, we learn to live with purpose, pay attention, slow down, and revere the world we live in. As proven by the success of books like Eat, Pray, Love, Grace (Eventually), and Animal, Vegetable, Miracle, American women crave personal stories about finding oneself in the world. AN ALTAR IN THE WORLD speaks directly to this audience and Taylor-s delicate, thought-provoking prose will appeal to anyone seeking more meaning and spirituality in their everyday lives.

--This text refers to the Kindle Edition edition.

Editorial Reviews

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

“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 )

“While I don’t like long books, this one could have been 500 pages longer with no complaints from me.” (Christian Science Monitor )

“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 )

“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 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 )

“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 )

“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 )

“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 )

“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 )

“Overall… if one can read Taylor’s insights reflectively, with an eye toward Scripture, Altar will serve as a refreshing reminder that the physical world is designed to help us experience the spiritual one.” (ChristianityToday.com )

“Barbara Brown Taylor is a favorite among church members who struggle to connect the sacred and secular, the heavenly and the earthly. These readers appreciate the candor with which she writes about it.” (Raleigh News and Observer )

“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 )

“…[H]er honest elegance... express[es] truths that throw open windows in our everyday lives–allowing fresh perspectives on life. You’ll finish her book with dozens of pages folded over or marked in some other fashion so you can find and re-read favorite lines again.” (Read the Spirit )

“Barbara Brown Taylor penetrates the religious clutter. She comforts. She revives our spirits. With lovely words she finds ‘alters in our world.’” (The Congregationalist )

“[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 )

“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 )

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

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

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

“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 )

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 240 pages
• Publisher: HarperOne; 1 edition (February 10, 2009)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0061370460
• ISBN-13: 978-0061370465
• Product Dimensions: 8.3 x 5.6 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 11.2 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (58 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #106,225 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #38 in Books > Christian Books & Bibles > Protestantism > Episcopalian

More About the Author

Barbara Brown Taylor's first trade book, Leaving Church, was met with widespread critical acclaim by popular media, including the New York Times, USA Today, Publishers Weekly and NPR's Fresh Air. Her subsequent book, An Altar in the World, is now reaching an even wider audience. An Episcopal priest since 1984, Taylor served urban and rural parishes before leaving parish ministry to become a teacher in 1998. While she still preaches and teaches at churches and universities across the country, she writes more and more for the "spiritual but not religious" crowd
among whom she counts many of her own college students as well as a growing number of clergy colleagues. An editor-at-large for The Christian Century and a contributing editor for Sojourners, Taylor lives on a working farm in rural Habersham County, Georgia, with her husband Ed.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

162 of 162 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Getting To "No": The Joy Of Reading Barbara Brown Taylor, February 13, 2009

By 

H. F. Corbin "Foster Corbin" (ATLANTA, GA USA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Altar in the World, An: A Geography of Faith (Hardcover)

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.

61 of 61 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Spiritual Practices for Everyone, February 24, 2009

By 

Diana Butler Bass, Ph.D. "Author" (Alexandria, VA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Altar in the World, An: A Geography of Faith (Hardcover)

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.

82 of 89 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars "welcome to your own priesthood", May 22, 2009

By 

Daniel B. Clendenin (www.journeywithjesus.net) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Altar in the World, An: A Geography of Faith (Hardcover)

In her memoir called Leaving Church; A Memoir of Faith (2006), Barbara Brown Taylor told her story of how after ministering for nine years on the staff of a large Episcopal church in urban Atlanta, where she had lived half of her adult life, she moved to Clarkesville in northeast Georgia, a town of 1,500 people and two stoplights. The prospect of serving Grace-Calvary Episcopal with its tiny sanctuary that seated 85 people was a dream come true for her, or so she thought. Her passion and competence spelled success, and after five years the church had expanded to four Sunday services. In the process she nearly lost her soul, and so she resigned, left church, and in 1998 took an endowed chair of religion at nearby Piedmont College. Since then she has lived with her husband on a working farm, become a regular speaker of note on the Christian circuit, and continued to write.

For those who might wonder, Taylor might have left church but she has by no means left the faith, and in this book she self-identifies as a Christian. This is an important point because her newest book is not exactly or particularly Christian. This is not a criticism but a simple observation. One of her goals is to abolish the distinctions we make between church and world, sacred and secular, spirit and flesh, body and soul. Any place or thing can mediate the sacred, and so we can make an altar in the world as well as in the church. Taylor draws upon her Christian experiences and tradition, but she also incorporates her knowledge and expertise from having taught a world religions course at Piedmont College for ten years--the Buddhist Eight-Fold Path, the Muslim notion of pilgrimage, rabbinic wisdom from Judaism, or the Sufi mystic poet Rumi. She uses the word "God," but also a semantic range of synonyms like the Real, the Really Real, the Sacred, the Holy, and the divine More.

From these sources and her own experiences Taylor commends twelve spiritual practices, but to call them "spiritual" can be misleading, for most of all she commends a fleshly, embodied spirituality. She writes one chapter each on vision, reverence, incarnation, groundedness, wilderness, community, vocation, sabbath, physical labor, breakthrough, prayer, and benediction. Taylor's book raised a cluster of interesting questions for me. Does an authentic Christian life look any different than a Muslim or Buddhist or deeply spiritual atheist? Should it? Beyond obvious similarities, what are the significant differences? People who follow these twelve spiritual practices will live richer lives, and if that's the case then what, exactly, does the Gospel offer them? More of the same, or something that they cannot hope for anywhere else? I appreciate whatever intention Taylor had to write a "cross-over" book to people who want to be spiritual but not religious, but in the end I wondered if this was just another self-help book by a deeply Christian pilgrim. "Welcome to your own priesthood," she says in her introduction, "practiced at the altar of your own life."