Name: An Altar in the World
ISBN: 9780061370465

Barbara Brown Taylor

The author continues the account of her personal spiritual journey while exploring the sacred in everyday life, describing how to render a typical routine more relevant and sharing recommendations for intensive prayer and meditation.

A Geography of Faith

An Altar in the World

Melody Izard

I didn't even want to read this book. It's subtitle is: A Geography of Faith. Poh. 

But it is so appropriate after the Omnivore's Dilemma. She even quotes some of the same people. 

Be aware of the good things in life. Know where your food and blessings come from. Be thankful. Be kind. Things I need to be reminded of. 

When she does get preachy - she backs down and somehow I was OK with it.

The prize winning writer Barbara Brown Taylor opens this stunningly beautiful book by considering a comment that many people make today, 'I'm not really religious but I am spiritual.' While they will often go to extraordinary lengths in search of a 'spiritual experience' she shows that the stuff of our everyday lives is a holy ground where we can encounter God at every turn. For her, as for Jacob in the Genesis story that opens this book, even barren, empty deserts can become 'the house of God and the gate of heaven' - places where a ladder of angels connects heaven to earth and earth to heaven. Our lives are full of such meeting places. In simple practices such as walking, working, resting and waking, Taylor reveals concrete ways to discover the sacred in the small things we do and see. Our vision of the world and of ourselves is renewed and transformed. This ancient spiritual understanding is found throughout the Bible, in Celtic and other great spiritual traditions. As it is explored afresh for our own times we discover that no physical act is too earthbound or too humble to become a path to the divine.

An Altar in the World A Geography of Faith

Reviews

Highlights