An Altar in the World

Short Review: Finding spiritual practices for those that have become dead to spiritual practices. Fans of Ann Lamont will like this. There were very good sections, but there are number of other books that are similar and only 5 years after it was published, this feels dated already.

I noticed that many others that have not liked it, did not like it because of its particularity. It is written to people that are middle/upper-middle class, fairly well educated and primarily mental workers (professors, pastors, office workers.) It talks a lot about poverty, and does it well, but talks about poverty to people that are not poor. It talks about the benefits of physical labor to people that do not do physical labor. So the poor and the physical laborers will not likely not see physical labor and poverty as spiritually beneficial. Barbara Brown Taylor says that in the book and acknowledges that part of the spiritual benefit of deprivation or labor is that it is unusual and in some ways chosen and different. If you are always poor or always do labor then other practices will be beneficial.

We can't have a world where speaking to the particular is somehow wrong. There are of course, good and bad ways to speak to the particular. And I think this is mostly one of the books that does a good job of speaking to the particular.

My full review is on my blog at http://bookwi.se/altar-world-geography-faith-barbara-brown-taylor/