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An Altar in the World: A Geography of
Faith, by Barbara B.
Taylor. Harper One. 2010.
Taylor offers her readers ways to encounter God beyond the walls of any church as she invites them to walk with her in the ordinariness of daily life with eyes attune to the wonders of all of creation. She admits that at times when she leaves the building of the church, she feels empty and can only evoke enthusiasm for life by looking for and finding the something more she needs in the “whole world of the church”. These encounters do
indeed satisfy her longings and she finds the Divine in the everyday of life.
The author finds courage in the words of St. Francis of
Assisi who read the world as reverently as he read the Bible. She seeks a single bird and counts it as truly a messenger of God as is a cloud of angels. “Earth is full of divine possibility.”
She treats reverence as the virtue that keeps us from acting like God. “To forget you’re human, to think you can act like God, is the opposite of reverence.” She advocates a quiet time before a stream as a way to begin practicing reverence. She notices the pebbles, the weeds in the water, the quiet movement, and bids her readers sit alone beside the stream. “Go slowly. No hurry. God is
near.”
Everything can become an altar in this world; even getting lost can be a holy exercise. “You have to ask for help, you need to find a
new route, you meet new people, you have time to pray.” She says getting lost can take various shapes. One may be lost finding one’s way home, looking for love, between jobs, looking for God. “Take heart. Others have found their way in the wilderness with angels all around.”
Taylor speaks of others as not those one can use, change, fix, help, save, enroll, convince, or control, but as those who can spring you from the prison of yourself. “This is indeed dying to self.”
Her chapters on blessings, keeping the Sabbath, offering hospitality, and saying no, speak especially to readers who are in earnest in making “the world their altar.”
(Thanks to Sr. Irene Hartman OP for this
review.) Paperback, Kindle, Hardback
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St. Marguerite Bourgeoys: January 22. 1620 - 1700.
Born the sixth of 12 children in Troyes, France, Marguerite at the age of 20 believed that she was called to religious life. Her applications to the Carmelites and Poor Clares were unsuccessful. A priest friend suggested that perhaps God had other plans for her.
In 1654, the governor of the French settlement in Canada visited his sister, an Augustinian canoness in Troyes. Marguerite belonged to a sodality connected to that convent. The governor invited her to come to Canada and start a school in Ville-Marie (eventually the city of Montreal). When she arrived, the colony numbered 200 people with a hospital and a Jesuit mission chapel.
Soon after starting a school, she realized her need for coworkers. Returning to Troyes, she recruited a friend, Catherine Crolo, and two other young women. In 1667, they added classes at their school for Indian children. A second trip to France three years later resulted in six more young women and a letter from King Louis XIV, authorizing the school. The Congregation of Notre Dame was established in 1676 but
its members did not make formal religious profession until 1698 when their Rule and constitutions were approved.
Marguerite established a school for Indian girls in Montreal. At the age of 69, she walked from Montreal to Quebec in response to the bishop’s request to establish a community of her sisters in that city. By the time she died, she was referred to as the “Mother
of the Colony.” Marguerite was canonized in 1982.
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