Home By Another Way

Barbara Brown Taylor is an Episcopal priest. She holds the Harry R. Butman Chair in Religion and Philosophy at Piedmont College in northeastern Georgia and serves as adjunct professor of Christian spirituality at Columbia Theological Seminary in Decatur. Recognized as one of the twelve most effective preachers in the English language by Baylor University in 1995, Taylor has published numerous collections of her sermons and theological reflections, including Mixed Blessings, The Preaching Life, Home By Another Way, The Luminous Web, Speaking of Sin, and Gospel Medicine.

On busy days filled with interruptions and stress, I often fantasize about escaping to an island paradise. Which is precisely what author Robert Benson and his wife have customarily done each year on their anniversary. Over the decades, they have polished this yearly trip into a fine art. Benson takes us along in Home By Another Way.
Having raised children, attended church, and built careers, Benson and his wife holiday on the islands and bring home with them a piece of paradise. "Not only is our calendar a little skewed," Benson wrote, "we do not even operate on what others would call a normal workday schedule, either. In the first place, we both work at home, and our workday does not begin with a traffic report. My commute is about thirty-five steps to my studio in the back garden. Sara does not even leave the house; her office is in the little parlor at the end of the hall." Back home in Tennessee, the Bensons have learned to live on island time.
An incurable romantic, Benson helps readers find the holy in the ordinary. Home By Another Way celebrates the simple things in life including family heirloom furniture, appreciation for our personal preferences, and the comfortable conversation traditions between people who have spent a lifetime getting to know each other. In between the picturesque descriptions of beach, sunset, and birds are the witty observations and gallant humor of the all-grown-up son of beloved writer and speaker, the late Bob Benson and self-proclaimed nester and winsome speaker, Peggy Benson. – PeggySue Wells, Christian Book Previews.com

Taylor is extraordinarily skillful at bringing the biblical message to life and linking it to human experience. She does not hover on the surface of either text or experience, but instead probes both deeply, bringing text into ever broader and deeper resonances with life and vice versa. She possesses an imaginative vision revealed in her attention to detail—she paints concrete biblical portraits and landscapes and then invites readers in. She makes the bible stories seem ‘real' in compelling ways. In effect, she tells us that the lives and struggles of these colorful characters from millennia ago are not all that different from our own. -- The Anglican Theological Review

Sermons have been thought of as an art form for a very long time, but rarely have they been pure storytelling. Stories have embellished sermons for a variety of reasons and in this way have served to edify, inform, and inspire. Professor/priest Barbara Brown Taylor has elevated the pure story form and given it a new place in the pulpit. And she does it with the skills required of storytellers. . . . One would hope that this book will start a revolution in homiletics. -- Christianity and The Arts

Another set of superb sermons by an Episcopal priest known for her preaching. These read remarkably well for what is meant to be an oral form. Hearing them must be a gift of another kind, a gift this reader would dearly like to have. -- Sisters Today

Taylor brings several extraordinary gifts together in this book. She is a first-class storyteller, a wonderful writer and rewriter of her sermons. . . . Barbara Brown Taylor has worked and worked to become as good as she is. Those of us who preach should read and study what she does with texts and stories. Those who sit in the pew will find these sermons quite wonderful. -- Episcopal Life

Barbara Brown Taylor is a dynamic, skilled storyteller. Her crisp, down-to-earth language is engaging, provocative, and accessible to the widest possible audience—a sine qua non of good worship. -- The Anglican Theological Review

Convicted of our constrictedness as human beings and our exceptional possibilities as children of God, Barbara Brown Taylor provides an invitation, a map to follow, and ideas, images, and topographies to companion us on our journey. -- Encounter