June 21, 2013
What’s Saving Your Life Today?
In her 2006 book, Leaving Church: A Memoir of Faith, and again in An Altar in the World: A Geography of Faith (2009), Barbara Brown Taylor talks about what it is in our lives that is (figuratively speaking) “killing us” and what it is that is “saving us.” Interviewed on this two-and-a-half-minute video from the “Work of the People” website, Tayor is asked to give her own answer to the questions: “What makes your soul sing?” And “What is saving your life today?” She talks about the simple things in life and redefining success to mean freedom to be, rather than constantly working to the point of exhaustion. Related: On the PBS Religion and Ethics Newsweekly website, watch another video from a few years ago (or read the transcript) as Barbara Brown Taylor describes what her workaholism as an Episcopal priest, considered one the of the best preachers in the English-speaking world, was doing to her—even though it was work for God and others. And she talks about the path she took in breaking free of the pressure. Both videos are well worth watching and pondering.