An Altar in the World looks for God in your own backyard
Georgia's Barbara Brown Taylor provides a kind of how-to guide for finding the spiritual in the mundane in her new book, 'An Altar in the World: A Geography of Faith.'
I could probably fill a cathedral with people I know who claim to have a spiritual side, but immediately make the disclaimer that they’re not “churchy” or “very religious.” Barbara Brown Taylor’s book An Altar in the World is a kind of how-to guide for squishily spiritual souls; the type who glance askance at religious fundamentalism, but don’t want to cut God loose and become atheists, either.
Taylor was ordained as an Episcopal priest and served for years at Atlanta’s All Saints’ Episcopal Church, but has wrestled with ambivalence over organized religion. In her 2006 memoir, Leaving Church, she describes how, despite the depth of her faith, she became burned out with the ministry. She currently works as a professor at Georgia’s Piedmont College. While she’s not opposed to church-based worship, An Altar in the World, as the name implies, seeks out sacred meanings in seemingly mundane activities. (Local readers will enjoy her anecdotes set at local venues such as the Atlanta Masjid of Al Islam.)
The book, subtitled A Geography of Faith, walks the reader through different strategies for finding the eternal in the everyday.