An Altar in the World: Finding the Sacred Beneath Our Feet - Softcover

'This is a book that, without doubt, will inject some "fizz" or even some Semtex into your spiritual life! ... This book will appeal to anyone who feels that conventional religious systems have grown rather tired. Some activities are not for the "risk averse". You may well read this book twice or more, not because you have to, but because you want to. The subtitle is "Finding the Sacred beneath our feet", and leads to adventure and exploration.' -- Robert Russell

The prize winning writer Barbara Brown Taylor opens this stunningly beautiful book by considering a comment that many people make today, 'I'm not really religious but I am spiritual.' While they will often go to extraordinary lengths in search of a 'spiritual experience' she shows that the stuff of our everyday lives is a holy ground where we can encounter God at every turn. For her, as for Jacob in the Genesis story that opens this book, even barren, empty deserts can become 'the house of God and the gate of heaven' - places where a ladder of angels connects heaven to earth and earth to heaven. Our lives are full of such meeting places. In simple practices such as walking, working, resting and waking, Taylor reveals concrete ways to discover the sacred in the small things we do and see. Our vision of the world and of ourselves is renewed and transformed. This ancient spiritual understanding is found throughout the Bible, in Celtic and other great spiritual traditions. As it is explored afresh for our own times we discover that no physical act is too earthbound or too humble to become a path to the divine.