Learning to Walk in the Dark

Barbara Brown Taylor is a great writer. Her exploration of darkness was, ironically, illuminating! Do yourself a favor and read it!

The darkness does not hide us just as the light is not a twenty four hour phenomenon.Thank you Barbara Brown Taylor for wanting to know more and for exploring a part of life, darkness. that almost no one wants to talk about or to guilt others when they do talk about experiencing it.

Bishop John Shelby Spong and the Reverend Barbara Brown Taylor, my two favorite members of the clergy, to me are the yin and yang of all things spiritual. Bishop Spong, with all the fervor of an Old Testament prophet, blasts the Christian fundamentalists with all their craziness in a heartbeat;-- I love him for that--- Barbara Brown Taylor, on the other hand, always leaves me feeling as if she may have almost as many questions about what it is all about as I do. And for that I love her just as much if not more. Now she has written yet another thoughtful and thought-provoking book LEARNING TO WALK IN THE DARK. Her premise is simple: contrary to what we have been taught, darkness is as good and just as important as light and we should explore that darkness on every level. She says her book is not a "how-to" book, that it is essentially her journal and "may be a book about living with loss."Taylor lets us share her experiences with darkness: a summer night job as a cocktail waitress at Dante's Down the Hatch in Underground Atlanta before and between her school years as a seminary student, a visit to a cave in West Virginia, a trip to Atlanta where she participated in a "Dialogue in the Dark," when she experienced what it was like to be blind, a night spent with only her dog Dancer in a twelve by twelve-foot cabin in the woods with no power where she was not hampered by artificial light, a visit to higher ground to view the last full moonrise of the year. Then there is a chapter entitled "The Dark Night of the Soul," which might just be the best chapter of all. (This "cloudy evening of the soul" that Barbara wrestles with is a little like what the great poet Emily Dickinson, herself no stranger to darkness, might call her "hour of lead.") She also discusses the passages in the Bible that indicate that darkness is good, reminding us that God had Abraham to look up into the night sky and told him that his descendants would be as numerous as the stars, that Jacob's dream occurred at night, not in the day, that in Genesis there was darkness before light. Barbara also quotes theologians and psychologists and provides a bibliography of her research, if that is the right word.All the above is well and good. But what always brings me back to Barbara is that she is so good with words. She is a poet as much as a preacher. I love her imagery: "half-baked images of God," "peepholes into God," "salt sea of grief." How about this sentence? "I cannot say for sure when my reliable ideas about God began to slip away, but the big chest I used to keep them in is smaller than a shoebox now." And her books and sermons are always sprinkled with quotations from poets, some I know and some I don't. This time she introduced me to Li-Young Lee. (As I read this compelling book , I kept thinking of the line from a Robert Frost poem: "but no, I was out for stars" as well as "the woods are lovely, dark and deep," which would indicate that Mr. Frost may have something positive to say about darkness too.)Barbara concludes in the Epilogue that learning to walk in the dark has enabled her to take back her faith and that "Among the other treasures of darkness I have dug up along the way are a new collection of Bible stories that all happen after dark, a new set of teachers who know their way around the dark, a deeper reverence for the cloud of unknowing, a greater ability to abide in God's absence, and--by far the most valuable of all--a fresh baptism in the truth that loss is the way of life." She also writes of her own mortality and the limited time she has left. I for one hope she lives longer than Studs Terkel and has many more books in her like this one. Or should she choose just to plant a garden of night-blooming flowers, that would be fine as well.

A book. for reading. Delivered as expected and in good condition.

As I turned on my nightlight at bedtime last night, I thought over all Barbara Brown Taylor had just introduced me to through Learning to Walk in the Dark. How often I've comforted myself by Isaiah 45:3, "I will give you the treasures of darkness and riches hidden in secret places" and I've discovered Who is calling me as the voice of God as promised in the second half of that verse. Immediately, I was hooked! I'm a far, far cry from being comfortable inside the depths of a blackened cave, however, and I know this because I've tried spelunking and also the tourist version of The Cave of the Winds when the panic set in. I also was unnerved by the author's intentional or unintentional dark cloud surrounding her references, and Gregory's OF God (being darkness), while I greatly appreciated her many biblical and tangible references to the dark cloud itself surrounding God's glory, as well as the details of His voice and miracles occurring so often in the night. My copy of Learning to Walk in the Dark is strewn with underlines, stars, hearts and comments from the peanut gallery. Who doesn't respect someone who asserts experience and research into biblical mysteries, cyclical mysteries, and purposes for moon cycles and living things that grow in the dark? My admiration for this work is sky-high. I'm especially grateful that my husband also read it this weekend giving us plenty of new things to talk about.

There is such a difficulty with our language that must be either one thing or another, when I find most things not black or white, but grey. Taylor befriends the marriage of darkness and light to become mystery in grey, sometimes more light, other times deep and murky grey. Most interesting is the value ladenness of anti-light, or darkness. It is a challenge to sit in the silence of the womb of creation and to wait expectantly for the new birth…what shall I fear? It is the way of life; circular, not binary, ending as it began.

This is the first book of Barbara's I have read. Therefore, I knew very little to nothing about her or this book. I was drawn to it because I am a devoted follower of Christ and because I've been going through a dark season.I truly enjoyed her writing style and the subject of darkness was truly fascinating.I highlighted so many things in certain chapters because they were poignant and true.However, I had expected more Jesus. It's not the author's fault that I didn't get that but there is a portion at the end of this book that feels almost unnecessary. Near the end of this book, I felt I could have stopped reading it.Worth the read though!

Super amazing book. A must read.

Learning to Walk in the Dark is a reclamation of lived realities that we usually seek to avoid. Barbara Brown Taylor journeys with the reader into places we all need to go, but are reluctant to acknowledge.Darkness is not evil, nor is it particularly good it simply is. Brown Taylor demonstrates that it is our willingness to embrace the darkness that shapes us for good or ill.

This is a beautifully descriptive book full of spiritual wisdom and insight. Barbara describes her search for the treasures of darkness through various experiences such as spending time in a wild cave and watching the rising of the full moon. She also gives valuable comments on the current state of the western church and on the dangers of full solar Christianity. A profound and mature journey of a true seeker after truth.

It is easy to see why Barbara Brown Taylor was such a powerful preacher in her day. She writes beautifully and with real clarity. In this book, she turns traditional dichotomies which say light = good and dark = bad! and turns the, on their head. Intriguingly she shows how God often shows up in the dark, and examines Christian history and writers in the light of this.I warmly recommend this book - both for those who find traditional Church answers too easy, and live with their own darkness, but also for anyone who likes to think outside the box and be challenged to look differently.

Barbara Brown Taylor has again written a deeply moving narrative of the particular lessons she learned about finding God in the nighttime or darkness. She proposes that “lunar” spirituality is where much truth about the Divine resides - that which cannot be experienced in the brightness of day.

I was told by God in a dream to wait while he gave me the,Cyrus announcing,this look has revealed that the,treasures He will give me in the darkness are for me alone to discover.Great book to pro one thought however some if her viewpoints were confused in the culture of her writing style . Too metaphoric when a,clearer idea of her thoughts in plain English would have been better for me to understand what she,was trying to inform the reader