# Leaving Church

## Metadata
- Author: [[Barbara Brown Taylor]]
- Full Title: Leaving Church
- Category: #books
## Highlights
- The only thing worth writing about is the human heart in conflict with itself. WILLIAM FAULKNER ([Location 103](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B000PDZFUW&location=103))
- If you talk to most clergy long enough, you can usually pinpoint the moment when they first received a call to ministry. Nine times out of ten, it did not come straight from God. Instead, it came from a grandmother, a father, a sick sibling, a wounded bird. Sometimes the call came with spoken words, such as, “You’re good at this,” or “I need your help badly.” Other times the words arose inside, such as, “This needs fixing and I think I know how.” The effort to untangle the human words from the divine seems not only futile to me but also unnecessary, since God works with what is. God uses whatever is usable in a life, both to speak and to act, and those who insist on fireworks in the sky may miss the electricity that sparks the human heart. ([Location 361](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B000PDZFUW&location=361))
- As my beloved rector had told me in seminary, being ordained is not about serving God perfectly but about serving God visibly, allowing other people to learn whatever they can from watching you rise and fall. ([Location 497](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B000PDZFUW&location=497))
- “Think hard before you do this,” one said to me when I told him I wanted to be ordained. “Right now, you have the broadest ministry imaginable. As a layperson, you can serve God no matter what you do for a living, and you can reach out to people who will never set foot inside a church. Once you are ordained, that is going to change. Every layer of responsibility you add is going to narrow your ministry, so think hard before you choose a smaller box.” ([Location 522](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B000PDZFUW&location=522))
- “When I wake up in the morning,” E. B. White once wrote, “I can’t decide whether to enjoy the world or improve the world; that makes it difficult to plan the day.” ([Location 576](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B000PDZFUW&location=576))
- Out of the long list of things I had promised to be and do at my ordination, the “wholesome example” part was the one that gave me most pause. I spent a great deal of time trying to be good, but was good the same as whole? ([Location 594](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B000PDZFUW&location=594))
- The roar of the truck engine drowned them out, but when I looked out the shattered back window of the cab, I no longer saw what I was leaving behind. Instead, I saw what Abraham and Sarah must have seen: a night sky that went on forever, under which my small sorrow was already turning to awe. ([Location 732](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B000PDZFUW&location=732))