An Altar in the World: A Geography of Faith

Barbara Brown Taylor is an Episcopal priest turned religion professor whose book offers a series of spiritual practices rooted in everyday, bodily experience rather than formal religious observance. Writing from the conviction that there is no spiritual treasure apart from physical life on earth, she challenges the assumption that encounters with the divine require churches, creeds, or special settings. Each of the 12 chapters focuses on a different practice, drawing on Taylor's own experiences alongside wisdom from scripture, world religions, and figures ranging from early Christian desert monastics to the Sufi poet Rumi.

In her introduction, Taylor notes how frequently people describe themselves as "spiritual but not religious," a phrase she interprets as expressing a longing for meaning and connection that organized religion has not satisfied. The central problem, she argues, is that most people look everywhere for spiritual depth except under their own feet. She traces this insight to a priest in Alabama who asked her to "come tell us what is saving your life now," freeing her to speak from lived experience. What saves her life, she answers, is ignoring all distinctions between the secular and the sacred.

Chapter 1, "The Practice of Waking Up to God," opens with Taylor walking along lava cliffs in Hawaii and finding a tidal pool with three upright stones resembling an altar. She connects this to the biblical story of Jacob, who fled his family, slept on a stone pillow, and dreamed of a ladder reaching to heaven. She traces her own history through beloved churches and describes how congregants who craved deeper connection with God often defaulted to more church involvement, only to feel emptiness once they left the building. Drawing on Saint Francis of Assisi, the medieval Christian saint known for his reverence toward the natural world, she argues that the divine can erupt anywhere.

In Chapter 2, "The Practice of Paying Attention," Taylor presents reverence as a discipline of attentiveness. She recalls watching a meteor shower with her father as a child, an experience that taught her reverence as the proper attitude of a small human being in a vast world. Drawing on philosopher Paul Woodruff's definition of reverence as recognition of something beyond human creation or control, she proposes sitting outside for 20 minutes and paying close attention to three square feet of earth. She extends the practice to other people, describing how engaging a grocery store clerk or studying strangers can shift one's sense of connection.

Chapter 3, "The Practice of Wearing Skin," addresses the Christian doctrine of incarnation, the belief that God chose to be revealed in human flesh. Taylor traces Christian discomfort with the body to Greek dualism, Descartes, and the Protestant Reformation. She argues that Jesus's last-night instructions to his disciples, washing feet and sharing supper, were deliberately physical acts. She describes a workshop in which participants enacted the Beatitudes, Jesus's blessings from the Sermon on the Mount, in physical tableaux that demonstrated how embodying scripture can surpass intellectual understanding.

In Chapter 4, "The Practice of Walking on the Earth," Taylor presents walking as one of the most accessible spiritual practices. She recounts walking a labyrinth for the first time, noting her impatience with its switchbacks and her discovery that she noticed far more when she was not preoccupied with arriving. She introduces Thich Nhat Hanh's walking meditation at Plum Village, the Vietnamese Buddhist monk's community in France, and surveys walking as sacred practice across traditions: the hajj pilgrimage to Mecca, the Via Dolorosa in Jerusalem, and Buddhist prostrations.

Chapter 5, "The Practice of Getting Lost," reframes disorientation as a spiritual opportunity. Taylor traces sacred lostness through scripture: Abraham and Sarah setting off without a map, the Israelites wandering 40 years in the wilderness, and Jesus's 40 days of testing in the desert. She recounts a severe concussion from a horseback riding accident and two discoveries she made during recovery: that strangers cared for her when she could not care for herself, and that she felt held by a safety beyond her pain and fear.

In Chapter 6, "The Practice of Encountering Others," Taylor argues that encountering other human beings, especially those who are different, is among the hardest spiritual disciplines. She introduces the Desert Fathers and Mothers, fourth-century Christian hermits and monastics who fled to the deserts of Egypt, Palestine, and Arabia, recognizing that even solitary monks needed community. She discusses the biblical concept of philoxenia, love of stranger, and describes taking seminary students to five houses of worship in one week. She recounts participating in a Jewish Shabbat hand-washing ritual that gave her new understanding of the gospel passage in which the Pharisees, Jewish religious authorities of Jesus's era, criticized Jesus's disciples for not washing their hands.

Chapter 7, "The Practice of Living with Purpose," argues that vocation is not about finding the single thing God wants you to do but about bringing purpose to whatever work is at hand. Taylor recounts praying on a fire escape during seminary and receiving an unexpected answer: "Do anything that pleases you, and belong to me." She cites Martin Luther, the 16th-century Protestant reformer, and his teaching that no livelihood is dearer to God than any other, and introduces the Hindu concept of karma yoga, the work path to God.

In Chapter 8, "The Practice of Saying No," Taylor presents Sabbath-keeping as a countercultural act of resistance against productivity and consumerism. She describes the Jewish practice of lighting two Shabbat candles: one for the creation commandment in Exodus, recalling that God rested on the seventh day, and one for the liberation commandment in Deuteronomy, recalling that God freed the Israelites from slavery in Egypt. She highlights Leviticus 25's radical Sabbath economics, which call for freeing slaves, forgiving debts, and letting the land rest every seventh year, and describes her own practice of saying no for one whole day each week to work, commerce, and the internet.

Chapter 9, "The Practice of Carrying Water," argues that physical labor connects human beings to the earth and constitutes a reliable spiritual path. Taylor narrates a multi-day ice storm that knocked out power to her rural home, teaching her how much she could accomplish without electricity. She connects physical labor to the Hebrew creation account, in which God made adam, an earthling, from adamah, the earth, and gave the earthling the job of tilling the ground before the fall, not as punishment.

In Chapter 10, "The Practice of Feeling Pain," Taylor argues that pain, while unavoidable, can serve as a route to encounter with the divine. She recounts a night of excruciating pain from a torn cornea, during which she progressed from bargaining with God to turning toward the God who stayed with her through the suffering. She provides an extended reading of the biblical book of Job, in which a blameless man loses everything, demands an explanation from God, and receives instead 43 unanswerable questions about creation that reposition him within a vast world he did not make and cannot control.

Chapter 11, "The Practice of Being Present to God," redefines prayer as waking up to God's presence in ordinary life. Taylor confesses she is "a failure at prayer" and introduces Brother David Steindl-Rast, an Austrian Benedictine monk who taught that prayer means being fully alert to whatever is in front of you. She also introduces Brother Lawrence, a 17th-century Carmelite lay brother who worked in a monastery kitchen and found such joy in maintaining awareness of God during ordinary tasks that he called it being "nursed by God." Taylor describes taking students to diverse worship settings, including the Vedanta Center, a Greek Orthodox cathedral, a Reform synagogue, and an African-American Muslim masjid, or prayer hall, where she tried Islamic prayer postures and felt her bones bend in surrender.

The final chapter, "The Practice of Pronouncing Blessings," argues that anyone can and should pronounce blessings, recognizing the holiness already embedded in all things. Taylor introduces the Jewish tradition of brakoth, daily blessing prayers, and recounts officiating at house blessings as a parish priest. The book closes with a scene from her father's death, during which her husband, Ed, knelt beside the dying man, placed his head under the old man's hand, and asked for his blessing. Taylor presents this as a benediction anyone can request and anyone can give, closing with Rumi's lines: "Let the beauty we love be what we do. / There are hundreds of ways to kneel and kiss the ground" (209).