Barbara Brown Taylor

In her critically acclaimed memoir Leaving Church, Taylor wrote about leaving parish ministry to become a teacher, a decision that rearranged everything from her wardrobe to her faith. Now in her stunning follow-up, An Altar in the World, she reveals how she learned to encounter the God who does not live in church.

Describing spiritual practices as basic as walking, carrying water, being with other people, and saying blessings, she calls conventional distinctions between the sacred and the secular into question. Delving into darker practices of getting lost, falling ill, feeling pain, and grieving loss, she challenges the notion that God does God’s best work in the light. Throughout this richly personal narrative, she suggests that no physical act is too earthbound to become a path to the divine. The world is full of altars, she says, for those willing to welcome the truth that comes to them in the flesh.