Given to Matthew Hayes - 05/11/2023

Fantastic! A must read for pastors. Why it isn't 5 stars is that it went on longer than it should have. The Lakota Indian stuff was interesting, but didn't fit the rest of the book. ( )

this was a nice memoir, didn't find it be too special, but i enjoyed it for the most part. Barbara Brown Taylor expresses faith in a way that i can understand. this was candid and tender, and she definitely was giving the readers all her vulnerability. this memoir reads very warmly ( )

A remarkable journey of faith, in which a seeker becomes a shepard, then returns to the flock shorn of certainty, and learns a new path, divergent from the first, but roughly parallel:

As many years as I wanted to wear a clerical collar and as hard as I worked to get one, taking it off turned out to be as necessary for my salvation as putting it on. Being set apart was the only way I could learn how much I longed to be with everyone else. Being in charge was the only way I could learn how much I wanted to be in community.

This is a beautifully-written and intimate book, steeped in wisdom and humility. ( )

Barbara Brown Taylor's Leaving Church tells how she entered and then left full time work as an ordained person in the Episcopal Church. After leaving parish ministry she found herself living a fuller and less restricted life. She did not leave her faith or renounce her ordination but she found that life was really there outside the Church. Should we all( that is we who are ordained persons) leave, or do we need to find healthier ways to do and be Church? I found myself comparing my experience as an ordained person to Taylor's. Of course most of my experience was as a chaplain in prisons and jails. I never got put on a pedestal the way some parish clergy do.