An Altar in the World

I am reading a wonderful book by Barbara Brown Taylor, An Altar in the World: A Geography of Faith. America magazine describes it as a “delight to the eyes, mind and heart.” The title refers to the presence of God in our living world in many natural altars, not merely within church buildings. In a chapter on The Practice of Wearing Skin, she discusses the need for reverence of the body. She observes that the central claim of the incarnation is that “God trusted flesh and blood to bring divine love to earth.”

When Taylor hears about the decline of organized religion, she hears many things, but she thinks the intellectualization of faith is more important than inept clergy, bad faith, and “preoccupation with intellectual maintenance.” She wisely remarks: “In an age of information overload, when a vast variety of media delivers news faster than most of us can digest - - when many of us have at least two e-mail addresses, two telephone numbers, and one fax number – the last thing any of us needs is more information about God. We need the practice of incarnation, by which God saves the lives of those whose intellectual assent has turned as dry as dust, who have run frightenly low on the bread of life, who are dying to know more God in their bodies. Not more about God. More God."

cross-posted at religiousleftlaw.com