Archive - Coming Down to Earth with Barbara Brown Taylor

Reverie Saves the Day

As often as I say I believe in the primacy of being over doing, my actions call me out. If a person's Higher Power can be described as whatever she…

Jun 24 •

Barbara Brown Taylor

Every time I walk this land, I find more signs of those who lived here before me. The barbed wire was no surprise when Ed and I bought the place in…

Jun 10 •

Barbara Brown Taylor

May 2025

The Marker Tree

Here it is May, when high school seniors are being asked a dozen times a day where they are going to college. Someone told me that her daughter was…

May 27 •

Barbara Brown Taylor

Words Made Flesh

Why say “salvation” when I can talk about how it feels to be let out of a hot car trunk and led to a waterfall? Why reach for “hermeneutics” when I can…

May 13 •

Barbara Brown Taylor

April 2025

If you live in the country, stray dogs wash up in your yard like jetsam on a beach. One day, the coast is clear, and the next, a tan hound is lying on…

Apr 29 •

Barbara Brown Taylor

How to Find Your Footing

Pain doesn’t always mean something is wrong. Sometimes it just means I’m not paying attention—or that there’s a reasonable price to pay for the kind of…

Apr 15 •

Barbara Brown Taylor

Life after Death in the Woods

The morning after Hurricane Helene ripped through Georgia, I gave thanks that the white oak outside my bedroom window had held. But then I took the path…

Apr 1 •

Barbara Brown Taylor

March 2025

Childless Chicken Lady

I’ve heard it said that people who can’t get along with other people bond with animals instead. Maybe so. All I know is that these chickens, like other…

Mar 18 •

Barbara Brown Taylor

Irrepressible Life

If you’re looking for comfort right now, you might try spending as much time noticing what’s coming into the world as you do mourning what has gone for…

Mar 4 •

Barbara Brown Taylor

February 2025

The Natural Pace of Change

I have a picture in my head of the way things ought to be, but the picture in front of me never matches up. The pace of change is too slow, so why am I…

Feb 18 •

Barbara Brown Taylor

When the land is thirsty, so am I. When it is quenched, I am too. What happens to the land for miles around goes straight into my body, since my water…

Feb 4 •

Barbara Brown Taylor

January 2025

Guinea Fowl, Plural

Guinea fowl cannot say “I.” They can only say “we.” Even if you tried to explain individuality to them, they would have no frame of reference, since a…

Jan 21 •

Barbara Brown Taylor

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