An Altar in the World

Finding the sacred beneath our feet

Author: Barbara Brown Taylor

The prize winning writer Barbara Brown Taylor opens this stunningly beautiful book by considering a comment that many people make today, ‘I’m not really religious but I am spiritual.’ While they will often go to extraordinary lengths in search of a ‘spiritual experience’ she shows that the stuff of our everyday lives is a holy ground where we can encounter God at every turn. For her, as for Jacob in the Genesis story that opens this book, even barren, empty deserts can become ‘the house of God and the gate of heaven’ – places where a ladder of angels connects heaven to earth and earth to heaven. Our lives are full of such meeting places.
In simple practices such as walking, working, resting and waking, Taylor reveals concrete ways to discover the sacred in the small things we do and see. Our vision of the world and of ourselves is renewed and transformed.
This ancient spiritual understanding is found throughout the Bible, in Celtic and other great spiritual traditions. As it is explored afresh for our own times we discover that no physical act is too earthbound or too humble to become a path to the divine.

‘This book is the most practical but everyday mystical book I have read on spiritual practices.’
Kate Campbell, singer-songwriter

‘Elegant, wise, and insightful, this book is also sacramental: it mediates the life it describes’
Marcus Borg, (author of Jesus)

‘Taylor is one of those rare people who truly can see the holy in everything. . . . Savour this book.’
Publishers Weekly

Downloads available which relate to this title

Chapter One (Size:75 KB)

Categories: Popular Non-Fiction, Prayer and Spirituality

Publication Date: 27 August 2009 By Canterbury Press

Binding/Format: Paperback Pages: 240

Status: In Stock

Price: £9.99

ISBN: 9781853119903