I have learned to prize holy ignorance more highly than religious certainty and to seek companions who have arrived at the same place. We are a motley crew, distinguished not only by our inability to explain ourselves to those who are more certain of their beliefs than we are but in many cases by our distance from the centers of our faith communities as well.
Interpretation
The quote emphasizes the value of questioning and the importance of finding like-minded individuals over rigid beliefs.
In this quote, Barbara Brown Taylor expresses her appreciation for 'holy ignorance,' suggesting that it is more valuable than dogmatic certainty in religious beliefs. She advocates for the companionship of those who, like her, embrace uncertainty and distance themselves from mainstream religious norms, highlighting a journey of exploration and understanding rather than strict adherence to established doctrines.
In practice
During a discussion on spirituality, one might quote Taylor to emphasize the value of questioning certainty.
With so much effort being poured into church growth, so much press being given to the benefits of faith, and so much flexing of religious muscle in the public square, the poor in spirit have no one but Jesus to call them blessed anymore.
Whoever you are, you are human. Wherever you are, you live in the world, which is just waiting for you to notice the holiness in it.
Jesus was not killed by atheism and anarchy. He was brought down by law and order allied with religion, which is always a deadly mix. Beware those who claim to know the mind of God and who are prepared to use force, if necessary, to make others conform. Beware those who cannot tell God's will from their own. Temple police are always a bad sign. When chaplains start wearing guns and hanging out at the sheriff's office, watch out. Someone is about to have no king but Caesar
I discovered a version of the sinner's prayer that increased my faith far more than the one that I had said years earlier...In this version, there were no formulas, no set phrases that promised us safe passage across the abyss. There was only our tattered trust that the Spirit who had given us life would not leave us in the wilderness without offering us life again.
The abundance of our lives is not determined by how long we live, but how well we live. Christ makes abundant life possible if we choose to live it now.
The hardest spiritual work in the world is to love the neighbor as the self - to encounter another human being not as someone you can use, change, fix, help, save, enroll, convince or control, but simply as someone who can spring you from the prison of yourself, if you will allow it.
Wrong will be right, when Aslan comes in sight, At the sound of his roar, sorrows will be no more, When he bares his teeth, winter meets its death, And when he shakes his mane, we shall have spring again.
Experience demonstrates that there may be a wages of slavery only a little less galling and crushing in its effects than chattel slavery, and that this slavery of wages must go down with the other.
We depend on our surroundings obliquely to embody the moods and ideas we respect and then to remind us of them. We look to our buildings to hold us, like a kind of psychological mould, to a helpful vision of ourselves. We arrange around us material forms which communicate to us what we need β but are at constant risk of forgetting what we need β within. We turn to wallpaper, benches, paintings and streets to staunch the disappearance of our true selves.
Your "if" is the only peacemaker; much virtue in "if.
Pride, envy, avarice - these are the sparks have set on fire the hearts of all men.
The soul yearns to fly home on the wings of love to the world of ideas. It longs to be freed from the chains of the body.
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