Finding Our Rhythms In Changing Seasons: Barbara Brown Taylor Prays Us Into 2023

It’s the benediction episode in our “Ending the Year with a Bang” series and what a well of wisdom we have for you. The Dalia Lama of the Christian faith who resides in and walks the trails of beautiful rural Georgia–a For the Love favorite—Barbara Brown Taylor, shares her priceless insights with us. She and Jen talk blueberry pies, retired racehorses who get a second chance at life in her backyard, and making room for friendships when the world wants us, above all else, to be productive. She shares a “Farewell to 2022” prayer that she composed specifically for this podcast community (which might have elicited a tear or two) and how considering new rhythms in our day to day might bring us new life in 2023. Barbara wants to remind us that God created this world to be enjoyed and to heal and nurture us. As we contemplate how we are looking to live in this coming year, BBT has this to say to us all: “be patient with the changing seasons and not insisting that spring be like fall or that winter be like summer; trust the change in them. There's a rhythm that is settling into a pattern and then there's a point at which the rhythm means breaking the pattern to insert a slower rhythm, a more attentive rhythm. It is a great walk of trust.” 

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Thought-Provoking Quotes

“It's been an odd liminal transition space between two heavy pandemic years and then seeing what comes next with really no assurance about what comes next. Which I think for people of faith, it is a great walk, a great kind of trust walk. So my 2022 has been a lot about deciding how much normal I want to go back to and what kind of a tempo I want to live because at this point everything's picking up again and I have found myself rushing and busy and distracted and I remember that too well and there are not enough years left to live like that. So 2022 has been for me a hinge year. It's been a year for coming to terms with age, both the fear of what that means and the invitation that it brings perhaps especially for a woman, I'm not sure about that. But the fear is about the stereotypes.” - Barbara Brown Taylor

“I prayed much differently in my twenties than I did in my thirties or forties or now. So to be patient with the changing seasons and not insisting that spring be like fall or that winter, be like summer, but to be patient with the rhythms and to trust. To trust the change in them.” - Barbara Brown Taylor

“Part of realizing God is with us is giving up illusions. That means that God is very chatty and always available. I mean I'm an introvert so I recognize one when I see one. And sometimes God with us means God's silent and withdrawn and that does not mean God's gone.” - Barbara Brown Taylor

“My understanding of my Christian faith is it's the religion of the neighbor and it's the religion whose prime teacher said, "If you've got to choose between your religion and your neighbor, choose your neighbor…Because I never told you to love your religion.” - Barbara Brown Taylor

“The faith of my childhood did not teach me that God had any interest in our pleasure…in fact the opposite was more true. The harder something was probably the godlier it was. Or the more I denied myself something that felt beautiful or wonderful, that probably meant I was being obedient…God made this world to just be so enjoyed and to heal us and to nurture us. And that feels so crystal clear, true to me now that I'm shocked that it wasn't always.”  - Jen Hatmaker

“I've got to attend to the sustainability of a supple heart. And all of that means as we've been talking about kind of changing closer, further back, local, global, just finding a way to remain present to all the things you just named and more without becoming wooden or completely fatigued beyond any usefulness.”  - Barbara Brown Taylor

“Hope can become a way of not being in the present, a way of refusing what is happening right now and a kind of insistence on a better thing coming. And so I'm real wary of hope unless it functions right here, right now. And so hope becomes really a wish to be more faithful to the reality I'm planted in when it's horrible and when it's lovely.” - Barbara Brown Taylor

“This is the age when all the cliches come true. Life is short and grief is the price we pay for love and all fleshes grass. And guess what? Love, intimacy, closeness, friendship. That's what counts. That's what lasts.”  - Barbara Brown Taylor

 

Guest’s Links
Barbara Brown Taylor Website

Barbara Brown Taylor Facebook

 

Resources Mentioned in This Episode

Rhythm of Prayer Book

 

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