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Rating:  - Helped me on my spiritual journey
I'm one of those "great generation" representatives who fell away from the organized Christian church in my young adulthood after an excellent religious and theological grounding in my youth. I never found a way or reason to return, although I remained very spiritual. This book, which I have read twice now, was very much like being with a fellow traveler although our needs and experiences were different. I strongly recommend that anyone on the religious spectrum read it for an honest spiritual path that is not quite the norm but still on the path.
Rating:  - To Live a Life of Love
This gracefully written narrative tells the story of Taylor's journey toward ordained ministry, her years as an Episcopal priest, and her departure from that life into a new vocation as a college professor. She decides that the most important calling is not to be ordained or to be religious, but to be fully human and to live a life of love. This is a touching autobiography, an eloquent memoir of faith.
Rating: - Too abstract to be a real memoir, but thought-provoking
I read a lot of memoirs these days. In fact they are probably my favorite literary genre. Maybe I should have been warned by Taylor's subtitle - not simply "a memoir," but "a memoir of faith." Because this is not a memoir in the usual sense. There is precious little of Taylor's childhood, youth or young adulthood - no real concrete stories and examples from her life. Too much of this book remains caught in the abstraction of ideas and beliefs, with not nearly enough examples. The people who show up in the book remain undeveloped vague outlines. And I have a hard time identifying with Brown's spiritual "quest," if that is what it is. I don't think it's because she's a woman either. What few facts that do emerge about her life outside this "quest" do not really serve to make her a sympathetic character. Daughter of a psychotherapist, sister of a lawyer, wife of an engineer - all these tidbits add up to what appears to have been a life of privilege and ease, and continued to be even after her ordination, as she speaks of her Saab and Audi and how they didn't fit into her rural community, and goes on at some length about everything she "wanted" in her custom-built home outside of town (in lieu of a parsonage near her church). What comes through in Barbara Brown Taylor's book is a story of a driven overachiever, who in fact drives herself into a near nervous breakdown, which finally causes her to leave her church and the active priesthood. While I do not doubt the sincerity of her quest for her true vocation and place in God's world, I do wonder about her motives. She became more likeable - more human - in the final section of the book, after she had left the priesthood, when she talks about her crisis of faith and things like her fears of inadequacy and the death of her father. Having said all of this, I still have to say that I'm glad I read the book, which has left me with much to think about in regard to my own role in the Church (Catholic in my case)and my relationship with God and my place in His world. I also think that Taylor is a person I'd like to know, but these 200-plus pages have not given me that opportunity. A memoir of faith? Perhaps. A "memoir"? No. - Tim Bazzett, author of Reed City Boy
Rating:  - A memoir of Experience
This book would have been more accurately described in the subtitle as a "Memoir of Personal Experience".
She dismisses orthodox Christian Theology and doctrine as something that the Apostles and Early Church had to "come up with" to explain this or that.
Ultimately it is a story of how the narrow Christian path and Church "didn't work" for her, and many of her thoughts and experiences confirm the fact that women were never meant to be "priests" in the first place (though this fact enrages those who hold to the political language of "equal rights" versus sound apostolic theology).
I found the book pleasant and very readable, but at the same time it was a sad story of how Christ just "wasn't enough". While most in our culture will find it "affirming" or down right "spiritual", it is a disappointment for the orthodox Christian who may wish to read a story about how Christ and the scriptures contain "all things necessary for salvation".
Barbara's approach in later life is gnostic and universalist. In the words of her Presiding Bishopess, "saying Christ is the only way is to put God in too small of a box". Emotions, feelings, and cravings rule the day in the final analysis of her relationship to Christ, and it seems that "leaving" orthodoxy is freeing to her, though I question she was ever there in the first place. Ultimately, God is the final judge of what she has done and what she now teaches.
Her elevation of Native American theology and her fondness of "other paths" leads the committed Christian looking elsewhere for a story of knowing Christ and Him crucified, and following Him in a culture that values personal choice and heterodoxy over all other things.
In the end it is a volume that will find great company with the writings of Spong, Borg, Ehrman, and others who deny the reality of John 14:6 and the authority of Holy Sripture in the name of being on "an authentic journey".
If I have to "put my eggs in one basket" I am going to have to stick with the Apostles and the Church Fathers and leave "other ways" up to Barbara, fine preacher though she is.
Rating: - A Precious Memoir
Over the course of my life I have learned certain things about salad; it has good, nourishing things in it, like spinach, almonds, feta cheese, and olive oil. Sometimes you can add strawberries. With a splash of balsamic vinegar, it sings. Other times it is dressed with slightly less healthy things like mayonnaise or sour cream, but generally its ingredients have a clear line of succession back to something alive; apples, raisins, eggs, potatoes.
Then I moved to South Dakota, where I was introduced to "salad". Unlike what I have just described, this concoction is made of things like Cool Whip and crushed up Oreos. It tastes good in the moment, but by the end of it I am always left slightly nauseous and wondering where it came from.
There's a lot of spiritual "salad" out there. Thankfully, this offering is not in that group. From the moment you crack open the cover, it sings. Her story of earthy, fragrant devotion to God is refreshing and very alive. It breathes the living life of Christ and speaks from the still beating but wounded heart of the church. Thankfully, Taylor veers only briefly into the sordid realm of political hot button issues, and for good reason.
With fifteen years in the pastoral crucible under her belt, and an evident love for all of us, Taylor comes across as someone you can trust. Her words in this precious memoir are nourishing, full of flavor and, like the vegetables in her Georgia garden, entirely organic.
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