I have just finished reading Barbara Brown Taylor’s book Leaving Church: a memoir of faith. I believe I may have mentioned this book here before. To be honest it is a book that has taken me over a year to read….mostly because I found it threw the mirror up too closely to my face, exposing many things I haven’t wanted to look at or examine. All that said, it is a powerful look at someone who has given much of her life to the work of the Church and how that changed who she is and now who she is becoming.

In the final chapter she tells of being introduced at a church gathering with the words:"Tell us what is saving your life now." Now there is a statement that stops a person in their tracks! (Note to self….always ask the person who is introducing you for a hint about what they might say.) Brown Taylor goes on to say that it was such a significant question that she has continued the practice of asking others that question as she continues to search for her own answers.

Pointing out that most of us can make long lists of what is "killing us"…..stress, the pace of our lives, grief, fear, envy, hopelessness….the list goes on. But what is "saving us"? Unfortunately in the church we have packed the word "salvation" into a pretty tight…and small…box. Much of the time many of us shy away from even using the word because of its constricting definition. But the reality is that what is saving us….what is making us whole…what is moving us closer to the radiance of our relationship with the Holy…is present and deserves our voice and our gratitude.

While I continue to live into this question, I invite you to do the same. Here are Barbara Brown Taylor’s ‘acts of salvation’. Maybe hers will help jog our minds and move us to that place of deep gratitude."Teaching school is saving my life now. Living in relationship with creation is saving my life now.Observing Sabbath is saving my life now. Encountering God in other people is saving my life now. Committing myself to the task of becoming fully human is saving my life now."

Perhaps today is the day to stop giving energy to the list of those things that are ‘killing us’ and begin instead to name those things that are saving us. Salvation…wholeness…humanness….holiness…..maybe they are closer than we think.

"What we are all more or less lacking at this moment is a new definition of holiness."
       Pierre Teilhard de Chardin