2024/09/25

Late bloomer - Wikipedia

Late bloomer - Wikipedia

Late bloomer

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

late bloomer is a person whose talents or capabilities are not visible to others until later than usual.[1][2][3] The term is used metaphorically to describe a child or adolescent who develops slower than others in their age group, but eventually catches up and in some cases overtakes their peers, or an adult whose talent or genius in a particular field only appears later in life than is normal – in some cases only in old age.

Children

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Thomas Edison as a boy

There are many theories of the way in which children develop, proposed by authorities such as Urie Bronfenbrenner,[4] Jerome Bruner,[5] Erik EriksonJerome KaganLawrence KohlbergJean Piaget,[6] and Lev Vygotsky. Although they disagree about how stages of development should be defined, and about the primary influences on development, they agree that a child's development can be measured as a predictable series of advances in physical, intellectual and social skills which almost always occur in the same sequence, although the rate may vary from one child to another.

When a child falls behind their peers at some stage of development, their teacher may perceive that the child is "backward". There is strong evidence that this perception may become self-fulfilling: although the child catches up, the teacher may continue to rate their performance poorly, imposing a long-term handicap.[7][8] Thomas Edison's mind often wandered and his teacher was overheard calling him "addled." This ended Edison's three months of official schooling. His mother then home schooled him.[9] Edison may have had some form of Attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), which the American Psychiatric Institute says affects about 3–5% of children.[10]

Albert Einstein in 1893 (age 14)

A notable example of a child who overcame early developmental problems is Albert Einstein, who suffered from speech difficulties as a young child.[11] Other late-talking children who became highly-successful engineers, mathematicians, and scientists include the physicists Richard Feynman[12] and Edward Teller.[13] Neuroscientist Steven Pinker postulates that a certain form of language delay may in fact be associated with exceptional and innate-analytical prowess in some individuals.[14]

Dyslexia is a learning disability that may affect 3–10% of children. It is thought to be the result of a genetically inherited neurological difference from "normal" children, and has been diagnosed in people of all levels of intelligence.[15] Studies indicate that 20% to 35% of U.S. and British entrepreneurs have the condition: by definition, late bloomers. Researchers theorise that dyslexic entrepreneurs may attain success by delegating responsibilities and excelling at verbal communication.[16] Richard Branson, known for his Virgin brand of over 360 companies is a notable example,[17] as is Charles R. Schwab the founder and CEO of the Charles Schwab Corporation.[18] Pablo PicassoTom Cruise, and Whoopi Goldberg are other examples of dyslexics, considered "slow" as children.[19]

The autism spectrum of psychological conditions affects about 0.6% of children, characterized by widespread abnormalities of social interactions and communication, severely-restricted interests, and highly-repetitive behavior.[20] Notable individuals with autism spectrum disorders include Tim Page, a Pulitzer Prize-winning critic and author[21] and Vernon L. Smith, a Nobel Laureate in economics.[22]

Adolescents

[edit]
Portrait of young William Butler Yeats by his father, John Butler Yeats

During adolescence a youth goes through physical and mental changes that lead to them becoming an adult. Adolescence is usually considered to start with the first stages of puberty and to continue until physical growth is complete, although the World Health Organization defines adolescence simply as the period between ages 10 and 20. There is a wide range of normal ages, but generally girls begin the process of puberty between the ages of 8 and 13,[23] while boys usually start between the ages of 9 and 14.[24] The entire process of puberty typically takes up to 4 years,[25] with girls usually finishing around age 14, and boys at age 15–16.[26]

"Late bloomer" can refer to children who suffer from delayed puberty, who are late in reaching their full height. W. B. Yeats (age 30)[27] and Pierre Trudeau (age at least 28),[28] are all "late bloomers" in this last sense.

In most public educational systems, children and adolescents of the same age are put in the same classes. Because of the wide variance in the onset of adolescence, this means that one class may include individuals who have not yet started puberty, others who are sexually mature but not fully grown and yet others who are effectively adult. During this period, there is a high risk of an adolescent dropping out of formal education (due most commonly to laziness, intellectual boredom, bullying, or rebellion) without having achieved their full learning potential.[29] The term "late-bloomer" may refer to such an individual who develops serious intellectual interests in their 20s or 30s and enrolls in college, where he or she performs particularly well and subsequently establishes a professional career.

Adults

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A late blooming adult is a person who does not discover their talents and abilities until later than normally expected. In certain cases retirement may lead to this discovery.

Although there is a common perception that intellectual development peaks in a young adult and then slowly declines with increasing age, this may be simplistic. Although the ability to form new memories and concepts may indeed diminish, the older person has the advantage of accumulated knowledge, associations between concepts, and mental techniques that may give them an advantage in some fields.[30]

Some notable examples of late bloomers in different fields follow.

Acting

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It is common for many actors to not get their big 'break' into the film industry until their late twenties or well into their thirties. Meryl Streep did not graduate Yale School of Drama until the age of twenty-seven. The actor Alan Rickman did not begin his career until he was twenty-eight, having operated a graphic-design company before then. He did not get his first real break into theatre until he was in his forties. Danny Aiello did not start acting until he was forty. Peg Phillips might be one of the best examples as she first pursued acting as a professional after her retirement from accounting; she started acting professionally in her late sixties.[31] Although not a noteworthy actress, Clara Peller might be noted for having an even later start in entertainment, in her eighties.[32] Richard Farnsworth became an actor after forty years as a stunt man, although he had had a few small uncredited roles when younger.[33] Ellen Albertini Dow obtained her first screen credit when she was sixty-eight.[34] Rodney Dangerfield was an actor/comedian who did not really start until he was forty-two. He had done clubs when he was younger, but stopped in order to work as a salesman.[35] Zelda Rubinstein was forty-eight before she had her first role, a minor part in Under the Rainbow, but is more known for her "debut" in the Poltergeist film series starting the following year. Chicago native Chi McBride, best known for the role as the principal in the series Boston Public, only got into acting when he was thirty-one.[36] Danny Glover had a brief stint in the career of politics before he had involved himself in acting at twenty-eight.[37] BAFTA winning British actress Liz Smith did not become a professional actress until the age of fifty. Kathryn Joosten also got a late start, beginning acting at age forty-two in community theater.[38] Television star Judd Hirsch from Taxi and character actor Bill Cobbs became active at the age of thirty-six. George Wendt who played Norm on Cheers became active at the age of thirty-two. Brian Dennehy had dreams of stage and screen at an early age, but chose to first pursue other interests such as service in the U.S. Marine Corps prior to becoming active at the age of thirty-eight. Irish actor Brendan Gleeson, who appeared as Mad Eye Moody in the Harry Potter films and alongside Colin Farrell in In Bruges, started acting professionally at thirty-four, having previous work as a school teacher. The Indian (Bengali) actor Paran Bandopadhyay is another late bloomer, who started his acting career in television and films at the age of sixty, after retiring from his government job. Jerry Doyle, of Babylon 5 fame, did not start acting until he was thirty-six after working as a stockbroker and pilot. Sylvester Stallone was thirty when he wrote and starred in the first Rocky. All throughout his life, he has pushed his body through rigorous training routines for his film roles. Most notably at age forty-three, he developed his now-famous Rambo 3 physique which got him named as "body of the '80s". The veteran Indian (Malayalam) actor Sathyan started his career at the age of forty, after resigning from the Police Service. He later came to be known as one of the greatest Malayalam film actors, and the actor Thilakan did not have much success until he was well into his forties, despite having started his film career at the age of thirty-seven after having worked in a drama troupe.

Art

[edit]
Grandma Moses

In art, "late bloomers" are most often associated with naïve art. This term is used for untrained artists, and so fits those who start later in life without artistic training. Hence the classic late bloomer is Grandma Moses whose painting career began in her seventies after abandoning a career in embroidery because of arthritis.[39] There is also Janet Sobel, a painter whose career started mid-life, at age forty-five.[40] Beryl Cook is another example; she had no artistic training and did not become a serious painter until her forties.[41] An older example is Bill Traylor who started drawing at age 83.[42] Another painter who started late in life is Alfred Wallis, who began painting after his wife's death in his 60s.[43] Mary Delany produced her "paper mosaiks [sic]" from the age of 71 to 88.[44] Then there is Carmen Herrera, who did have artistic training, but who sold her first artwork in 2004 when she was 89 years old, after six decades of private painting.[45]

Vincent van Gogh (March 1853 – 29 July 1890) was a Dutch post-impressionist painter who posthumously became one of the most famous and influential figures in the history of Western art. In a decade, he created about 2,100 artworks, including around 860 oil paintings, most of which date from the last two years of his life.

Business

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In business Irene Wells Pennington became best known in her nineties when she helped straighten out irregularities in her husband's oil business after he went senile in his own 90s.[46] Colonel Sanders began his franchise in his sixties and can also be deemed a late in life financial success.[47] In his mid-50s Taikichiro Mori founded the business that made him, for a year or two, the richest man in the world. He came from a merchant family, but had been a business professor before his 50s.[48]

Dance

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Misty Copeland was considered a prodigy who rose to stardom despite not starting ballet until the age of 13. Japanese dancer and choreographer Kazuo Ohno did not undertake formal dance lessons until his late twenties and was 43 years old when he performed his first recital at Kanda Kyoritsu Hall in Tokyo in 1949. A decade later, he and colleague Tatsumi Hijikata would achieve worldwide acclaim as the nucleus of the Butoh dance movement.[49] Martha Graham dancer David Zurak took his first dance class at the age of 23 and built a successful career in New York City.

Games and sports

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Oscar Swahn at the 1912 Olympic Games, aged 64

In athletics Philip Rabinowitz set a sprinting record for centenarians.[50] As well, Ida Keeling began running in her late sixties, and among other accomplishments on April 30, 2016 became the first woman in history to complete a 100-meter run at the age of 100. Her time of 1:17.33 was witnessed by a crowd of 44,469 at the 2016 Penn Relays.[51][52][53][54]

In basketball, Hakeem Olajuwon did not touch a basketball until he was 15, but his athleticism and fundamentals from the sports, football and handball, helped him advance as one of the greatest bigmen to ever play in the NBA.[55]

In baseball Josh Hamilton, a former number one overall draft pick, did not make his major league debut until the age of 26 due to years of serious drug and alcohol abuse. He was an all star several times and won the 2010 American League MVP award.[56] A few pitchers who are members of the Baseball Hall of Fame are examples: Dazzy Vance did not win his first major league game until he was 31, but then became the most dominant pitcher in the National League for the next decade.[57] Hoyt Wilhelm was already 29 when he first played in the majors, but by the time he retired, at 49, he had set a record for most games pitched with 1,070 and had gained recognition as one of the greatest relief pitchers ever.[58] Among contemporary players, Edwin Encarnacion has been described as a late bloomer because he had a completely unremarkable career until the age of 29, after which he turned into a prodigious slugger.[59] Pitcher Randy Johnson, who made his Major League debut at 25, but did not reach superstar status until he was 30, might also be considered a late bloomer.[60]

In boxing, heavyweight champions Ken Norton and Rocky Marciano did not take up boxing until their twenties, but both enjoyed successful careers at the highest level of competition.

In chessRani Hamid started playing at the age of 34, and later became Bangladesh’s first Woman International Master in 1985, among other accomplishments.[61][62]

In cricket, Dirk Nannes who once was played for Delhi Daredevils ahead of the great fast bowler Glenn McGrath made his first class debut at 29.[63]

In field hockey, the great player Dhyan Chand did not play any hockey in his life until he joined the Indian Army.

In football, Kurt Warner, who entered the NFL at age 28, went on to become a two-time MVP and Super Bowl champion.[64]

In mixed martial arts, Francis Ngannou began as a professional fighter in 2013 at the age of 27, and two years later he would sign with the Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) promotion, where he obtained a 12–2 record and won the UFC Heavyweight Championship at the age of 35. All this in less than a decade and after having overcome extreme poverty.[65]

In ice hockey, Tim Thomas, an American professional ice hockey goaltender played for several years in the minor leagues and Europe, before making it to the NHL at age 28, with the Boston Bruins. He finally emerged as the Bruins' starting goaltender at age 32. Thomas is a two-time winner of the Vezina Trophy (2009 and 2011) as the league's best goaltender, and was a member of Team USA in the 2010 Winter Olympics in Vancouver. Thomas won the Conn Smythe Trophy as the most valuable player in the 2011 Stanley Cup playoffs. He became the oldest player in league history to win the Conn Smythe at age 37.[66]

In shooting, there have been two figures of note whose accomplishments occurred in their sixties or later. Joshua Millner of Britain was 61 when he won his Olympic gold medal in Free rifle, 1,000 yards.[67] Swedish marksman Oscar Swahn won two Olympic gold medals at the age of 60 and one at the age of 64. He won his last medal, silver, at 72 making him the oldest medalist.[68]

In squash, Jonah Barrington overcame alcoholism to later become a six times British Open Squash champion, and was regarded as one of the fittest men on the planet.[69]

In tennis, Angelique KerberLi NaStan WawrinkaFrancesca SchiavoneFlavia PennettaJana NovotnaGoran Ivanišević and Andrés Gómez are famous late bloomers who won their first Grand Slam Singles titles after age 28.[70][71]

Association football

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Didier Drogba did not sign a professional contract with a club until the age of 21.[72] It was not until the age of 26, when he joined Chelsea, that he showed his real talent as a world-class player. Drogba scored the equaliser, and then the winning penalty, in the 2012 UEFA Champions League final at the age of 34.

Jamie Vardy was twenty-five years old when he made his English Football League debut.[73] He has since made over three-hundred football league appearances for Leicester City, was part of their 2015/16 Premier League winning side, won the Premier League Golden Boot[74] and has made 26 appearances for the England national football team.[75]

The career of Junior Messias is one of the most incredible in football history. Messias come back to football in the early 2010s, starting at amateur level through Unione Italiana Sport Per tutti. A few years later, he become a professional footballer and was even able to score on his debut, a match winning goal in the Champions League, at the age of 30 while he was on loan at AC Milan.[76]

Although he played a few matches for the U-16 and U-21 Portuguese national team, Pauleta is considered a late bloomer in terms of his development as a player. He made his debut in the First Division and the national team at the age 24, and went on to become the top goalscorer for Portugal. He scored his first two goals for the national team at the age of 26.[77]

Mathematics

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George Green, working as a miller and with no formal education in mathematics, published his famous An Essay on the Application of Mathematical Analysis to the Theories of Electricity and Magnetism in 1828, at the age of 35.[78]

Alexandre-Théophile Vandermonde started to study mathematics at 35, and began to publish in this field the same year.

Eugène Ehrhart started publishing in mathematics in his 40s, and finished his PhD thesis at the age of 60.

Marjorie Rice, an amateur mathematician with no formal education in mathematics beyond high school, born in 1923,[79][80] discovered four new types of tessellating pentagons in 1976 and 1977, in her fifties.[81][82]

Caspar Wessel published his only mathematics paper at the age of 54.[83][84]

Yitang Zhang submitted a paper to the Annals of Mathematics in 2013, at the age of 58, which established the first finite bound on the least gap between consecutive primes that is attained infinitely often. This work led to a 2013 Ostrowski Prize, a 2014 Cole Prize, a 2014 Rolf Schock Prize, and a 2014 MacArthur Fellowship. Zhang became a professor of mathematics at the University of California, Santa Barbara in fall 2015.[85][86][87][88][89]

Roger Apéry proved Apéry's theorem at the age of 63.

Leonardo da Vinci did not apply himself to higher mathematics until he was between 30-40 years old.[90][91]

June Huh, a high school dropout and amateur poet who started to study mathematics seriously at age 24,[92] was later awarded the Fields Medal in 2022.[93]

Music

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Musical ability is inherent in almost all people, to a greater or lesser extent.[94] However, those who develop it to a high level are generally encouraged to play an instrument or to sing at an early age. Late bloomers in music are generally composers or artists who became prominent later in life, but had displayed musical ability much earlier.[95]

Anton Bruckner is an example of a musical late bloomer. Although he played church organ some in his twenties he did not become a composer until his 40s.[96] Singer K. T. Oslin released her first album at age 47 which was a major country music success.[97] Al Jarreau is also an example, who released his first album at age 35.[98] AERIA Recording Artist Colie Brice released his 10th solo album Late Bloomer at 39. Elliott Carter did not achieve compositional maturity until his Cello Sonata (1948), when he was 40. César Franck and Leoš Janáček also matured late as composers: Franck at 56, with his Symphony in D minor; and Janáček at 50, with Jenůfa (1904). Iannis Xenakis did not even begin studying composition until 30, with Messiaen. Leonard Cohen did not release his first album until he was 33 years old. Doug Seegers did not reach fame until he was 61–62 years old. American composer Eric Whitacre didn't learn to read music until he was 20 years old, and composed his first piece "Go, Lovely Rose" for SATB chorus at 21.

Filmmaking

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Manoel de Oliveira

Though many filmmakers begin directing in their late 20s or early 30s, many of the most notable directors in film history waited until their mid-to-late-30s to direct their first feature. These directors include Nicholas RayAlain ResnaisEdward YangMichael MannFrank TashlinRobert AldrichSatyajit RayAnthony MannTerry GilliamJerry LewisTsai Ming-liangDon SiegelRidley ScottMelvin Van PeeblesGaspar NoéLloyd BaconAlexander KlugeMrinal SenJean-Marie StraubIda LupinoSam MendesAlexander PayneAng Lee and Jacques RivetteDavid Mamet directed his first feature at 40, having already found success and been awarded a Pulitzer Prize as a playwright. Éric Rohmer directed his first feature film at 39, though he did not become a full-time filmmaker until he was in his late 40s.

Many notable directors started even later: Robert BressonJacques Tati, and Takeshi Kitano directed their first features at 42; Maurice Pialat at 43; Michael Haneke at 47; Jim Sheridan at 40; and his peer and collaborator Terry George at 46. Yevgeni Bauer at 48. Clint Eastwood, the oldest person to win the Academy Award for Best Director, directed his first film at 41.

One of the most shining examples of late bloomers in filmmaking is the Portuguese director Manoel de Oliveira. Born in 1908, he worked sporadically in filmmaking from the 1930s. He completed his first feature film in 1941 called Aniki-Bobo. Due to circumstances beyond his control (difficulty in financing, having to deal with his family's business), he did not complete his second feature film until 1971 (when he turned 63). Two years later, he completed his third feature film, Benilde or the Virgin Mother (1973). Five years later, he made his breakthrough film (originally commissioned by Portuguese TV) called Doomed Love. After his critically acclaimed film Francisca (1981), he became a full-time filmmaker (at the age of 73).[99]

Politics

[edit]
Winston Churchill performed poorly in school exams.

It is common for politicians to achieve prominence late in life, often after a career in business, law or academia. For example, in the United States Congress of January 2009, of 540 elected officials, 215 had worked in the legal profession, and 189 had worked in private sector business. The average age of senators was 62.[100] Also, Donald Trump was the first U.S. President to reach the age of seventy prior to his election to the presidency and first to reach seventy years of age before entering office,[101] as well as the first U.S. President to assume the office without any prior military or political experience.[102][103]

Some highly successful politicians come from more unusual backgrounds.

Václav Havel, born in 1936, was a playwright and writer with an interest in human rights. He became the voice of the opposition in Czechoslovakia in the 1980s and President of Czechoslovakia at age 53 after the collapse of the communist regime in 1989.[104] Ronald Reagan, a former actor, union leader, and corporate spokesman, was first elected to public office at 55 when he became Governor of California and was the oldest man to have served as U.S. President until Biden's presidency. Melchora Aquino was an uneducated Filipino peasant woman, the mother of six children, who became an activist in the fight to gain independence from Spain. Known as the Grand Woman of the revolution, she was 84 when the Philippine Revolution broke out in 1896.[105] Marjory Stoneman Douglas's career might also fit. Her first environmental work of note occurred when she was almost 60, at 78 she founded "Friends of the Everglades", and she continued until she was over age 100.[106]

Religion

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A. C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada

A. C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada, a proponent of Gaudiya Vaishnavism, founded the International Society for Krishna Consciousness (a.k.a. the Hare Krishna movement) in 1966 at the age of 70. Within the final fifteen years of his life, Prabhupada translated over sixty volumes of classic Vedic scriptures (such as the Bhagavad Gita and Bhagavata Purana) into the English language.[107]

Mary Baker Eddy, born in 1821, founded The Church of Christ, Scientist in 1879 at the age of 58.[108][109]

Augustine of Hippo, as he detailed in the Confessions, was a frequent loser in the battle with lustful passions from the age of 16 to 32.[110] At the age of 31 he converted to Christianity and began to pray to overcome his passions and lust.[citation needed] He eventually went on to lead a life of celibacy and became one of the most influential bishops in the history of the Church.[citation needed]

Writing

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Many writers have published their first major work late in life. Mary Wesley might be a classic example. She wrote two children's books in her late fifties, but her writing career did not gain note until her first novel at 70, written after the death of her husband.[111] At the age of 74, Norman Maclean published his first and only novel, the 1976 best-selling book A River Runs Through It, which fictionalizes Maclean's memories of the early twentieth century in Montana.[112] Harriet Doerr published her first novel at age 74, and went on to great praise.[113] A possibly more well-known example might be Laura Ingalls Wilder. She became a columnist in her forties, but did not publish her first novel in the Little House series of children's books until her sixties.[114] Charles Bukowski wrote his first novel in 1971, when he was 51 years old.[115]

Memoirist and novelist Flora Thompson was first published in her thirties but is most famous for the semi-autobiographical Lark Rise to Candleford trilogy, the first volume of which was published when she was 63. Frank McCourt didn't publish his first book Angela's Ashes, which he later won the Pulitzer Prize for, until he was 66. Children's author Mary Alice Fontenot wrote her first book at 51 and wrote almost thirty additional books, publishing multiple volumes in her eighties and nineties.[116] Kenneth Grahame was born in 1859 and joined the Bank of England in 1879, rising through the ranks to become its secretary. Although he had written various short stories while working at the bank, it was only after his retirement in 1908 that he published his masterpiece and final work The Wind in the Willows.[117] Penelope Fitzgerald launched her literary career in 1975, at the age of 58, when she published a biography of the Pre-Raphaelite artist Edward Burne-Jones. She won the Booker Prize for 1979 with Offshore, and in 2012, The Observer named her final novel, The Blue Flower, as one of "the ten best historical novels".

Richard Adams's first novel, the bestseller Watership Down, was published when he was in his fifties. The Marquis de Sade published his first novel, Justine, after turning 51. Raymond Chandler published his first short story at 45, and his first novel, The Big Sleep, at 51. Paul Torday published his debut novel Salmon Fishing in the Yemen at the age of 59, after a career in the engineering industry. Jean Rhys is best known for her novel Wide Sargasso Sea, which was published in October 1966, when she was 76.

Aron Ettore Schmitz published his first novel, Senilità, in his 38th year. However, it was not until he published Zeno's Conscience that he made a breakthrough, aged 61. Even this was self-published.[118]

In other areas of writing, historian Gerda Lerner, born in 1920, published her first book, The Grimke Sisters from South Carolina, in 1967, when she was either 47 or 46 depending on her birthday.[119][120] Poet Wallace Stevens started poetry late in life after years as an insurance salesman and executive. Although he was first published at 38, his "canonical works" came out in his fifties.[121] In philosophy Mary Midgley had her first book when she was 56.[122] Edmond Hoyle wrote a booklet on whist in his late sixties. To avoid unauthorized copies he wrote the copyrighted A Short Treatise on the Game of Whist at age 70.[123]

The Indian writer and polymath Nirad C. Chaudhuri wrote his autobiography The Autobiography of an Unknown Indian at the age of 54. He wrote a sequel to it Thy Hand, Great Anarch! at the age of 90. He published his next work (and his final work) Three Horsemen of the New Apocalypse at the age of 100.[124]

Jane Juska’s first book, A Round-Heeled Woman: My Late-Life Adventures in Sex and Romance (2003), documented her search for sex at 67 years of age by putting a literary personal ad in the New York Review of Books.[125]

See also

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References

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  1. ^ "Late Bloomer Definition & Meaning | YourDictionary"www.yourdictionary.com.
  2. ^ "Late bloomer Definition & Meaning | Dictionary.com".
  3. ^ "Late bloomer definition and meaning | Collins English Dictionary".
  4. ^ "Urie Bronfenbrenner, father of Head Start program and pre-eminent 'human ecologist,' dies at age 88" Cornell University 26 September 2005
  5. ^ Bruner, J. S. & Goodman, C. C. (1947). Value and need as organizing factors in perception. Journal of Abnormal Social Psychology, 42, 33–44. Available online at the Classics in the History of Psychology archive
  6. ^ *Piaget, J. (1977). "The essential Piaget" ed by Howard E. Gruber and J. Jacques Voneche Gruber, New York: Basic Books
  7. ^ "Early Teacher Perceptions and Later Student Academic Achievement" Journal of Educational Psychology, 1999
  8. ^ Heatherton, Todd F., ed. (2003). The social psychology of stigma Chapter 13: Stigma and Self-Fulfilling Prophecies. New York: Guilford Press. ISBN 1-57230-942-3.
  9. ^ "Thomas Edison biography" ProjectShum.org. Retrieved 8 January 2008
  10. ^ "Why does the worldwide prevalence of childhood attention deficit hyperactivity disorder matter?" American Psychiatric Association. Retrieved 8 January 2009.
  11. ^ Sowell, Thomas (2001). The Einstein Syndrome: Bright Children Who Talk LateBasic Books. pp. 89–150ISBN 0-465-08140-1.
  12. ^ J.J. O'Connor & E.F. Robertson (August 2002). "Richard Phillips Feynman". University of St. Andrews. Retrieved 9 November 2006.
  13. ^ Stanley A. Blumberg and Louis G. Panos. Edward Teller: giant of the golden age of physics; a biography (Scribner's, 1990)
  14. ^ Pinker, Steven. "His Brain Measured Up"Harvard.edu. Archived from the original on 11 December 2006. Retrieved 4 December 2006.
  15. ^ "A Conversation with Sally Shaywitz, M.D., author of Overcoming Dyslexia". Archived from the original on 29 February 2008. Retrieved 21 April 2008.
  16. ^ Bowers, Brent (6 December 2007). "Tracing Business Acumen to Dyslexia"The New York Times.
  17. ^ Branson, Richard. Losing My Virginity: How I've Survived, Had Fun, And Made a Fortune Doing Business My Way, 1999, Three Rivers Press. ISBN 0-8129-3229-3
  18. ^ Charles Schwab's Secret Struggle Archived 15 August 2007 at the Wayback Machine Stanford Magazine: March/April 1999. Retrieved 7 January 2008
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2024/09/24

당신도 대기만성형 인물일 수 있다 - David Brooks Late Bloomer

당신도 대기만성형 인물일 수 있다 - PADO
당신도 대기만성형 인물일 수 있다
기사이미지
폴 세잔(1839~1906)이 만년에 그린 '베레모를 쓴 자화상'(1898~1900) /사진제공=Wikimedia Commons

2024.08.02 14:52

The Atlantic
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19min

편집자주
우리 사회는 최대한 빠른 시기에 어떠한 성취를 이루기를 기대합니다. 교육에서도 늘 '조숙한' 영재들이 찬양을 받곤 하지요. 하지만 이제 거의 100년 가까이 펼쳐지는 인생, 좀 더 길게 볼 필요도 있습니다. 뉴욕타임스 칼럼니스트 데이비드 브룩스는 2024년 6월 애틀랜틱에 기고한 글에서 '일찍 꽃피운 사람'과 '뒤늦게 꽃피는' 대기만성형 사람을 대비합니다. 핵심은 자신이 진정으로 원하는 게 무엇인지를 발견하는 데 있습니다. 조숙한 영재들은 대부분 부모와 교사가 원하는 바를 빠르게 파악해 지름길을 타고 그것을 성취하는 데 익숙합니다. 문제는 그 이후죠. 타인이 내게 바라는 것을 추구하기에 바빠 자신이 진정으로 원하는 것이 무엇인지를 살펴볼 시간이 없어, 이른 성취 이후에는 그대로 정체되는 사람들을 다들 주변에서 한번쯤 접한 바 있을 겁니다. 브룩스는 노벨상 수상자들이 중대한 발견을 한 나이가 평균적으로 44세라는 점을 상기시킵니다. 다른 사람들의 성취에 흔들리지 않고 진득하게 자신이 진정으로 원하는 게 무엇인지를 자문하고 평생 배우기를 게을리하지 않는 것, 브룩스가 권하는 미덕입니다.



2024/09/22

Barbara Brown Taylor. "Holy Envy: Finding God in the Faith of Others"

(2) Happy 73rd birthday, Barbara Brown... - Marginal Mennonite Society | Facebook



Marginal Mennonite Society

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Happy 73rd birthday, Barbara Brown Taylor (born Sept. 21, 1951).
Episcopal priest. Feminist. Teacher. Writer. Ecumenist. Graduate of Emory University (1973). Graduate of Yale Divinity School (1976).
In the 1980s, Barbara was the rector of Grace-Calvary Episcopal Church in Clarksville, Georgia. She later left the ministry and accepted an invitation to join the religion department at Piedmont College in Demorest, Georgia. 

Her experiences teaching a world religions class at Piedmont resulted in her book "Holy Envy: Finding God in the Faith of Others" (2019).

Her other books include: "Leaving Church: A Memoir of Faith" (2007), "An Altar in the World: A Geography of Faith" (2009), and "Learning to Walk in the Dark" (2014).

Born in Lafayette, Indiana. Lives in Georgia.
~The Marginal Mennonite Society Heroes Series
#barbarabrowntaylor




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Holy Envy: Finding God in the Faith of Others Paperback – 24 March 2020
by Barbara Brown Taylor (Author)
4.7 4.7 out of 5 stars 1,623 ratings




New York Times Bestseller

The renowned and beloved New York Times bestselling author of An Altar in the World and Learning to Walk in the Dark recounts her moving discoveries of finding the sacred in unexpected places while teaching the world's religions to undergraduates in rural Georgia, revealing how God delights in confounding our expectations.

Barbara Brown Taylor continues her spiritual journey begun in Leaving Church of finding out what the world looks like after taking off her clergy collar. In Holy Envy, she contemplates the myriad ways other people and traditions encounter the Transcendent, both by digging deeper into those traditions herself and by seeing them through her students' eyes as she sets off with them on field trips to monasteries, temples, and mosques.

Troubled and inspired by what she learns, Taylor returns to her own tradition for guidance, finding new meaning in old teachings that have too often been used to exclude religious strangers instead of embracing the divine challenges they present. Re-imagining some central stories from the religion she knows best, she takes heart in how often God chooses outsiders to teach insiders how out-of-bounds God really is.

Throughout Holy Envy, Taylor weaves together stories from the classroom with reflections on how her own spiritual journey has been complicated and renewed by connecting with people of other traditions--even those whose truths are quite different from hers. The one constant in her odyssey is the sense that God is the one calling her to disown her version of God--a change that ultimately enriches her faith in other human beings and in God.


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Print length

256 pages

Review


"At a time when many people are entrenched behind the walls of familiar traditions, this book is a literal godsend." -- Retailing Insight

"This indispensable book guides us through America's rapidly diversifying religious landscape, highlighting resonances between different religions, narrating moments of spiritual inspiration, and always emphasizing moments of human connection." -- Eboo Patel, author of Out of Many Faiths

"Engrossing, delightful...In short, it is a timely and important book." -- Psychological Perspectives

"I've long wanted a book like this to be written. And Barbara Brown Taylor is the perfect guide to finding God in other faiths. Her new book reminds us that God is bigger than any one religion. Prepare to come to know God in a new way." -- James Martin, SJ, author of Jesus: A Pilgrimage

"There are few people writing today who I esteem more highly than Barbara Brown Taylor. In an age in which religion sometimes seems weaponized, furthering the distance between us, I can't think of a more important offering than this beautiful book." -- Shauna Niequist, New York Times best-selling author of Present Over Perfect

"In showing up for the complex beauty of all the world's great wisdom traditions, Barbara finds her way home to her own faith. Among the finest memoirs I have ever read of the life of a teacher." -- Mirabai Starr, author of God of Love

"Taylor nudges her students away from spiritual appropriation and comparison, moving them instead toward challenging discernment of their faith and the faith of others. Taylor, like the best faith leaders, is a great storyteller. . . . Highly recommended." -- Booklist (starred review)

"In Holy Envy, once again, Barbara Brown Taylor does not disappoint with this capacious engagement of our religious and spiritual neighbors. The book is like a breath of fresh air that scatters the dust off the surface of my faith, and I am rejuvenated and hopeful." -- Mihee Kim-Kort, author of Outside the Lines

"In simple and sharp prose, Taylor, a former Episcopal priest who teaches religion at Piedmont College in Athens, Ga., explores how teaching an introductory religion course has influenced her own views on faith and Christianity...[a] fluid book." -- Publishers Weekly

"Taylor acknowledges that none of us has a corner on the transcendent, that we each have something to give and receive while remaining true to our faith. She reminds us that religion is more than beliefs, that it involves our deepest selves and is the fabric of our shared lives." -- Library Journal

"Taylor asks us to see these other ways of approaching a mysterious divine, to embrace 'the God just beyond our understanding.' . . . she writes with an authenticity and self-awareness that few non-fiction books possess." -- Spectrum magazine

"Heartfelt, thoughtful, and beautifully written, Taylor's book will give readers who are undertaking their own spiritual journeys a sense of purpose and perspective." -- BookPage

"Taylor is by any measure a glorious writer. . . . Her willingness to explore new worlds of meaning and her high respect for all faiths offer a noble example." -- Spirituality and Health
About the Author


Barbara Brown Taylor is the author of thirteen books, including the New York Times bestseller An Altar in the World and Leaving Church, which received an Author of the Year award from the Georgia Writers Association. Taylor is the Butman Professor of Religion at Piedmont College, where she has taught since 1998. She lives on a working farm in rural northeast Georgia with her husband, Ed.

Product details
Publisher ‏ : ‎ HarperOne (24 March 2020)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Paperback ‏ : ‎ 256 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0062406574
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0062406576
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 13.49 x 1.47 x 20.32 cmBest Sellers Rank: 295,582 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)145 in Jewish Theology
628 in Comparative Religion
901 in DevotionalsCustomer Reviews:
4.7 4.7 out of 5 stars 1,623 ratings

RUJustWondering
5.0 out of 5 stars Brilliant!!
Reviewed in Canada on 19 November 2023
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I had been waiting with great anticipation to read Holy Envy for some time. It was exciting to finally get to sit down with it & read Taylor’s profound thoughts & experiences while teaching Interfaith & religion to the younger generations.

There was so much affirmation in these pages to the similar experiences I have had over the years while building relationships with both the main stream & new religious movements in my city.

Holy Envy should be required reading for all & I must say, the epilogue was nothing short of genius!! I look forward to discussing this book in the years ahead with groups in my area!!
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Sherri
5.0 out of 5 stars What a great book!
Reviewed in the United States on 29 May 2024
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This book taught me alot about other religions, myself and other people. Very well written. I found it very interesting and would highly recommend it!
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lasynch
5.0 out of 5 stars A Glimpse into a life of faith?
Reviewed in the United States on 1 April 2019
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For some unknown reason, I had not visited her web site before - (barbarabrowntaylor.com).
“Hello, I’m Barbara Brown Taylor. I say things you’re not supposed to say.”
Then follows a quote from TIME magazine that compares her spiritual nonfiction (in its poetic power) to that of C. S. Lewis and Frederick Buechner. Then follow pictures of the covers of her four latest books and then a tab for more books. Then a short biosketch that lists some of her most recent kudos (same as the one here on Amazon).

Was it unholy envy that I experienced? Maybe, maybe not. I certainly felt sad when I saw all this, for I am somewhat of a fan and have read almost all her books. I recognized quickly (and I hope correctly) that her web site is probably the work of a publicist who has convinced her that this is the way to sell a lot of books and get lots of speaking engagements – to tell the world how acclaimed and accomplished you are, how influential you have been through your writing and lectures.

Forgive me if I am wrong, but this is not who Barbara Brown Taylor really is, deep down, unless what she has written over the past decades in hundreds of pages is a cover for a quite different personality than shines through in them, including the most recent book (Holy Envy). I ordered Holy Envy from Amazon the day it was released.

The BBT I meet in this book is a gentle child of God, unsure of how to assimilate and integrate what she stumbles on when she embarks on teaching Religion 101 at Piedmont College, despite all the credentials and honorific titles she brings. She communicates beautifully the doubts and hesitation that you encounter when you begin teaching, and plunge into topics that involve major religions of the world that you have never really explored in depth. If you are honest and open minded, you find that you have begun a wrestling match with God, even though you may not have thought of it that way. Of course you are no match for G-d (neither was Jacob), and years of wrestling leave you exhausted at times, exhilarated at others. Finally, your brain is scrambled and body is tired and you realize that your years of active wrestling are limited. It is time to fall back onto somewhat familiar territory, even though the landscape may have changed quite a bit in all the time that you spent wrestling and learning a few basic facts and ideas. For you attempted to explore topics that have taken hundreds of years and millions of lives and “books” to evolve into their present state.

The book is full of lovely memories and experiences as well as unsettling ones, giving a glimpse into the complexities and difficulties of tackling living, active faiths and religions. You emerge with anecdotes but you realize how little you truly know and understand, even when you are hailed as one of the most influential thinkers in the world!
The chapter on Holy Envy towards the beginning of the book introduces Krister Stendahl to the reader along with his three rules of religious understanding. This alone made my purchase of the book worthwhile. This book is not an introduction to the major religions of the world. Huston Smith’s book (World Religions) is excellent, and BBT recommends it here. When I read that book many decades ago in an earlier incarnation, it made me want to become a follower of each of the faiths it described in its chapters. You could tell right away that Smith had followed Krister Stendahl’s rules; even better, he was a person who had actually immersed himself in the faith for a prolonged period of time before attempting to write about it.

There are also nuggets such as the ones in the chapters (towards the end) about being Born Again and Divine Diversity where BBT tackles passages from scripture and expresses ideas that make you think all over again about stories that you were puzzled by at some time. Here one gets a glimpse of the BBT that one saw in her earlier books of sermons; those were scattered with lynx-eyed observations and unexpected perspectives. I usually ended reading those with tears in my eyes.

Holy Envy does mention instances where people underwent transformations they may not have foreseen as a result of encountering different faiths. My personal experience was a transformation from a staunch atheist to a follower of Jesus in midlife. It was Jesus who opened my eyes and heart to other faiths and made me understand that he himself appears often as a stranger to people who call themselves Christians.

May people of different faiths learn to live together in peace and harmony. In the words of an Irish sage (John O’Donohue)

May the space between us be blessed with peace and joy
May the nourishment of the earth be yours.
May the clarity of light be yours,
May the fluency of the ocean be yours.
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Anne Gowans Blinn
5.0 out of 5 stars it will open our minds, heal the separation between religious traditions...
Reviewed in Canada on 28 March 2019
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Barbara Brown Taylor is a wonderful author...I learn so much from her writing for she explains things so well...the flow of her writing pulls you into the message...she also has a wonderful sense of humor...a great writing style and she is a wise teacher...
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JOCELYN
5.0 out of 5 stars Good read
Reviewed in Canada on 6 November 2020
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Good read, seeing other sides!
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Chris
5.0 out of 5 stars thought provoking
Reviewed in the United States on 17 March 2024
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A beautifully written and thought-provoking work. Excellent read for anyone in the Christian faith looking to better understand their own faith and the faiths of others
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Paul A. Laughlin
4.0 out of 5 stars I Have Other Sheep in the Fold!!!!
Reviewed in Canada on 21 June 2022
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Faith is not a competitive sport with one mainly white only winner.
Sadly today that is the motto in most of western society.

We ,from the pulpits deny that there could be other sheep or folds but only my church,my dogmas and my creeds. I have all the knowledge and we have the only gate.
Here, she looks outside our box and examines what the other sheep really are. From both learning and direct contact.-our best to their best.
" The God of our understanding is just that: The God of our understanding. We need the God just outside of our understanding!!!"

Spirituality is the active pursuit of God, the God we did not make up.

Her story is for many our story from inside the church out
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Jane Marshall
4.0 out of 5 stars Good book
Reviewed in the United States on 20 August 2024
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Very thought provoking but only read if you have an open mind.
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Susan Smith
5.0 out of 5 stars Great book.
Reviewed in Canada on 9 May 2019
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Love Barbara Brown-Taylors books and her style of preaching.
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CHRISTOPHER W. KEATING
5.0 out of 5 stars A solid contribution to Barbara Brown Taylor's work
Reviewed in the United States on 23 June 2019
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Barbara Brown Taylor's most recent book, Holy Envy, is a glimpse into the college classrooms where she taught world religion for more than 20 years. Or rather, perhaps it is a glimpse into her study where she reflects on the work of building bridges between different faith groups. In her words, “Part of my ongoing priesthood is to find the bridge between my faith and the faiths of other people so that those of us who draw water from wells on different sides of the river can still get together from time to time, making the whole area safer for our children.”
Holy Envy explores those rivers, revealing the joy Taylor found as she encountered different faiths. Navigating these tributaries took her beyond stereotypes and left her with a deeper appreciation for the religious practices of Buddhists, Muslims, and Jews. At times she wonders if she might stay on the other side of the river and not return to Christianity. But she plunges forward, and the result is a stunning book. Her evokes dialogue, making this a solid choice for church reading groups or book clubs. Those churches fishing for the millennials or the ever-elusive spiritual but not religious cohort would do well to give consideration to Taylor's thoughtful reflections.
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Ircel Harrison
5.0 out of 5 stars Learning as Spiritual Formation
Reviewed in the United States on 20 December 2021
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When I grow up, I want to be like Barbara Brown Taylor. I long ago realized that Taylor is one of the finest Christian writers of our time but reading Holy Envy: Finding God in the Faith of Others reminded me of the humility and inquisitiveness that makes her work engaging.

This book recounts not only Taylor’s experience of teaching world religions to undergraduate students in a liberal arts college, but her own growing understanding of what it means to learn from other faiths, embrace truths that enrich one’s own spiritual journey, and wonder how far “holy envy” can be indulged without becoming covetous! Simply put, holy envy is discovering that another’s faith tradition may provide something that is missing in one’s own.

Early in the book, Taylor quotes the late Krister Stendahl’s three rules of religious engagement:

When trying to understand another religion, you should ask the adherents of that religion and not its enemies.
Don’t compare your best to their worst.
Leave room for holy envy.

Taylor attempted to adhere to these rules in her teaching of world religions—exposing her students to practitioners of various faiths, give other traditions an unbiased reading, and being open to learn something that might strengthen one’s own faith. Her accounts of the first action are engaging and sometimes amusing. The second and third steps had as much impact on Taylor as on her students.

As she pursued her own journey in relationship to other traditions, she began asking these questions:

What does it mean to be a person of faith in a world of many faiths?
If God is revealed in many ways, why follow the Christian way?
Is Christian faith primarily about being Christian or becoming more fully human?
How does loving Jesus equip me to love those who do not love him the way I do?
What do religious strangers reveal to me about God?

In the Epilogue, Taylor recounts that she eventually gave up teaching world religions as a course. She became aware of the impossibility of really engaging other religions in a fifteen-week course. The best she could do was “desiccate them, reducing each to its skeletal outline with enough names and dates to anchor a ten-point quiz.” She became convicted that religion as such could only be understand by engaging with religious persons who incarnate a faith tradition.

Holy Envy is a gift and invitation. The gift is walking with Taylor through her own journey of discovery. The invitation is to embark on our own journey.
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Marlene Holst
5.0 out of 5 stars Developing an Interfaith Spirituality
Reviewed in Canada on 30 March 2019
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CC
5.0 out of 5 stars A great one to read and share
Reviewed in the United States on 11 December 2023
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I’ve now bought 3-4 and have recommended to numerous people…including comparative religion classes at high school.
I thought I knew about other religions…found that I didn’t. This comes with the added precious benefit of patience, love and compassion…even for those of “our own” faith.
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Margie M
5.0 out of 5 stars Well written, uplifting, inclusive book
Reviewed in the United States on 24 December 2023
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I recommend this book for anyone who is looking to strengthen their own faith, while at the same time gaining respect for and understanding of people of other faiths. It has sparked lively conversations at my book club at church.
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Sheila Anderson
4.0 out of 5 stars Well written and informative
Reviewed in the United States on 25 July 2023
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I like that the author is willing to put her own thoughts and feelings out there. Very enjoyable read, thought provoking
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davidjordan84
5.0 out of 5 stars Her best yet
Reviewed in the United States on 23 March 2019
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As an enthusiastic reader of all this author’s work, it isn’t even a little surprising that I love this one as much as I do. Brown Taylor’s spiritual journey is reminiscent of my own, and I found much to appreciate in the way she describes her devotion to and preference for the Christian faith in which she has flourished, while simultaneously expanding her knowledge of and appreciation for other religions and their means for attempting to define and worship a dine being. The broadening of her religious mind that has come as a result of her interaction with people of radically different religious faiths (even other Christians) has allowed her to appreciate and envy the most meaningful and beautiful aspects of others’ devout faith.
It’s a wonderful book that is encouraging to the evolving faith of the contemporary Christian who wants to be more “authentically human” in the experience of receiving and sharing the life-changing love of God. This is one of those titles that will stick with me as I attempt to exemplify the values of the generous Christian in a multicultural, multi-religious, and ever changing spiritual world.
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C. Simmons
5.0 out of 5 stars excellent
Reviewed in the United States on 14 April 2023
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This one captured me full on. I DO admire people of other faiths. It’s amazing how alike we are. It makes me sick that those in power push so hard at our differences to divide us. We are all humans just trying to worship as we know how. Ms. Brown is quickly rising to the top of my list of spiritual directors.
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Laurie
5.0 out of 5 stars Humble, Profound, Enlightening
Reviewed in the United States on 13 April 2019
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I always wanted to take a college level class on the great religions of the world. When I saw an advertisement for this book, I decided it was the next best thing. Now that I have read it, I hardly know what to say. The author is Episopalian, a former practicing priest, and for 20 years a teacher of Religion 101 at a private Christian liberal arts college. I would say her primary messages are that (1) there is something to love about all religions and (2) how you live is more important than what you believe. It is so much more than that, but how can you explain such a profound book in a short space? What I am most moved by, though, is her humble presentation and continuing quest to understand God. She doesn't proclaim to be an all-knowing authority on anything; just a normal person trying to be the best human she can be. Wow -- so glad I read it. Barbara Brown Taylor, you are my new hero.
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PJNuttleman
5.0 out of 5 stars Enlightening and affirming
Reviewed in the United States on 25 April 2023
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I've often wrestled with certain aspects of my faith and have had tremendous curiosity about other faiths. This book was a great look into other faiths and helped me to understand that it is OK that I don't understand or even necessarily agree with all aspects of my faith. The journey with an open mind brings the possibility for deeper understanding and builds bridges.
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Katelyn Beaty
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February 17, 2020
I’ll start by saying that the aims of this book are admirable, given Western Christians’ general ignorance of what people of other faith traditions believe and/or their unwillingness to learn. I absolutely think there’s so much good that other traditions illuminate and that Christians can honor without feeling threatened or that they have to give up their own beliefs and practices. I am very much on board with the premise of this book!

Having said this, it struck me that HOLY ENVY provided a surface treatment of the four non-Christian faiths it sets out to honor. Taylor spends little time explaining the beliefs of Hinduism, Buddhism, Judaism, and Islam. Instead, the book explores each through field trips taken by Taylor’s Religion 101 class. I love the idea of learning about religions through spending time with its adherents. But the overall effect seems to suggest that beliefs—core truth-claims about the nature of God, humanity, reality, the material vs. spiritual world—don’t really matter, as long as you are becoming a good, loving person adhering to them.

The effect is that Taylor fails to seriously grapple with the *particularity* of other religions—which, in my view, is not honoring its adherents. The notion that all religions are several paths up one holy mountain does not honor the exclusive truth claims of many of the world’s religions, including those observed here. It doesn't make sense, for example, to claim that Hinduism and Islam are two streams leading to the same ocean; so fundamentally different are each’s teachings, they are more like separate oceans unto themselves. Ironically, by finding much to honor in other religions, Taylor in my view doesn’t really *see* other religions for what they are. The result is a kind of diminishment of the uniqueness of other religions in favor of more generalized practices of love and kindness that happen to accord well with a white educated Western worldview.

Finally—and this highlights why I’ve never been a huge BBT fan, although I know and respect plenty of people who are—throughout this book, references are made to a *type* of Christian over and against which Taylor defines her own spirituality. Those Christians are too dogmatic; they haven’t done enough higher criticism so they are thus ignorantly literalist when reading the Bible; they’re just a bit too obsessed with Jesus and the cross. They are too fearful. Taylor recounts several anecdotes in this book of Christians who serve as a foil to a more enlightened Christianity, one the author claims as her own. I kind of want to say: Do your thing, Barbara! No one at this point in your career is going to confuse you for these other Christians. Why the need to define your faith as over and against? To be fair, toward the end of the book Taylor grapples with her own impatience with other Christians; I guess for someone of Taylor’s clout and eloquence, I’d expect a bit more love and tolerance—the very qualities she admires in other religions.

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Michael Austin
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March 31, 2019
Barbara Brown Taylor is perhaps the best thinker and writer that I ever blew the chance to hear live. Several years ago, I attended a conference at which she and Miroslov Volf were the featured speakers. Volf was the opening plenary speaker, and Taylor was the closing plenary speaker. I was not familiar with Taylor at the time, and I had a fairly small menu of flights to choose from when I booked the flight. So I chose an evening flight back home that required me to miss the closing session. To make up for it, I bought An Altar in the World and read it in the flight. By the time I landed, I realized what a mistake I had made.

Since then, I have come to see Barbara Brown Taylor as an indispensable Christian writer. She combines depth and clarity, which are two traits that are rarely found together in any kind of writing. Other Christian writers I admire are deep without being clear (Miroslov Volf, for example) and clear without being particularly deep (Rachel Held Evans fills this category for me). Taylor is both. She has enough theological sophistication to write profound--and unread--treatises for fellow academics. But she writes like, well, a writer. And a really good one.

Even though I knew this about her--her book Learning to Walk in the Dark was one of the best things that I read last year--I was fully prepared not to like Holy Envy. I don’t much like the term to begin with. Almost every time I have heard it used, it describes a sort of religious tourism that either 1) overly romanticizes distant religious practices (“look at all those noble savages worshipping God in their state of nature”) or just assumes that everything that another culture does is inherently superior to our own (“why can’t my Church look like the Sistine Chapel and have music by Bach?”) . Both of these attitudes drive me nuts.

Not only does Taylor not adopt these attitudes. She tackles them head on and talks about the ethics of learning from other people’s religions. We cannot simply appropriate other people’s beliefs into our own--lifting them from their original context and adding them to our spiritual practice to show how open-minded we are. I mean, we can, but it is not a very ethical way to treat others. Holy Envy is not the same thing as spiritual imperialism. Taylor calls this "spiritual shoplifting," and it is not a good thing.

Brown works out a much more nuanced approach. She grounds herself firmly in the Christian tradition, while, at the same time, acknowledging that this tradition is not uniquely or exclusively representative of God’s will. This is a very tricky position to occupy, since it involves reading against a fair bit of that tradition itself and very carefully interpreting its sacred texts. But she pulls it off and says something like (and I am paraphrasing here), “I am a Christian, and this is the context in which I experience God. It is a beautiful tradition, and I believe that it can lead me to God. But it is a tradition that works for people who have a specific set of experiences--and there are equally valid traditions that can lead people in different who experience the world differently to the same God, who is too big to be captured in any particular aspect.”

Learning from other traditions, then, requires empathy, understanding, respect, and a lot of effort. It requires us to learn what other people believe, why they believe these things, and what aspect of God they address. When we do this, we can see some of the gaps in our understanding that grow out gaps in our experiences. A religion is basically a set of narratives that help us make sense of our relationship to things that are outside of ourselves--including divinity, nature, history, the universe, and other people. These are such big things that no set of narratives can say everything (or even most things) about them. So there is value in understanding the ways that other people, and other cultures, try to grapple with the “big questions.” They are big questions precisely because they support many answers.

Perhaps the best metaphor for how Taylor sees religion is language. We all learn a language, and most of us are more comfortable using our own language than one we learned from others. However, learning another language can help us see things differently and understand concepts that we could never quite make clear in our own language. And usually, understanding another language teaches us things about our own language. (I never really understood how the subjunctive worked in English until I tried to learn how it works in Spanish). As Taylor puts it, “As natural as it may be to try to translate everything into my own religious language, I miss a lot when I persist in reducing everything to my own frame of reference” (34). Learning from the faith of others is very similar to learning from the language of others. And neither one can really be done without going to new places and meeting new people.

The main body of the book is highly reflective memoir of Taylor’s experiences teaching a Survey of World Religion course to students at Piedmont College. A typical semester involved teaching five major world religions: Hinduism Buddhism, Judaism, Islam, and Christianity. She documents her experiences with mainly Christian students encountering these religions for the first time. She addresses some of the aspects of these religions that have helped her supplement blind spots in her own point of view: the Muslim relationship to prayer, for example, or the Hindu embrace of multiple spiritual paths.

But she presents this as real work, not a tourist's vacation. We have to understand, not just the religions, but the people who practice them. She also flips the lens at the end of the book and shows the things about Christianity that can teach things to people of other faiths. Because this really isn’t a book about learning from other religions at all. It is a book about learning from other people who have religions. It is part of having humility and learning to love other people and to see them as fully human moral agents whose interactions with the divine are as valid and important as our own.
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Sarah
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March 25, 2024
I’ve always been the jealous sort, which is something I’m working on. I don’t have problems giving space, or even letting go of one sort of love to embrace another. I do - however - have problems letting go.

I’m essentially still in love with the first woman to lasso my heart, and the same is true for the first man. I’m just not built for leaving.

Said another way, I’m jealous for the finish line. For a lifetime of loving, regardless of impracticality and - as regards my first female love - laughable incompatibility.

This holds true with the God I’ve known from my mother’s womb. The one who sent his son to die as a gesture of humility & love for his own creation.

I do transcendental meditation twice a day when I can. Every alternate day of the week, I intentionally commune with the feminine divine in place of the masculine father I was raised to imagine. I do Buddhist chants to release suffering. I read sacred texts from the 5 “major” religions, and I constantly ask people to teach me how they encounter God in ways I don’t yet understand.

But at the end of the day, I’m a lot like this author, whispering goodnight to Holy Spirit, Jesus, and a Father much like my own, who sometimes feels emotionally distant in spite of texting me this a couple hours ago (I’m transitioning to tech during a tech layoff. Should I settle or stick to my guns!?):

I can’t help it, really. Jesus speaking with the Samaritan woman is my rockstar. God the Father’s banner over me is love. And Holy Spirit is constantly hovering over the surface of [my] waters.

For this reason, I expected to love Taylor’s book (she's a lot like me in stepping past boundaries yet admitting to a mother tongue of the heart). Sadly, my expectations met with disappointment.

If this book had strictly consisted of a survey of five world religions, it would have rocked. Most “re-interpretations” of scripture the author provides rock me to my core.

But this author chose to interweave memoir without becoming sufficiently vulnerable to make that fly. I couldn’t connect to her on an emotional level because she never let me. I didn’t even know she was married until the last few chapters!

If she’d been a professor, I’d have loved her for it. But she tried to be both professor and more, significantly failing at the latter.

There are nuggets worth mining in this offering, but I left hungry for something more authentically human in delivery.

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Charity
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March 15, 2019
If you want to have some aspects of Christian elitism challenged, read this book.
If you want to face up to the fact that we are not always right, read this book.
If you want to find more understanding for other religions, read this book.
If you want examples from Barbara's Religion 101 class, read this book.
If you want to take an interest in other religions, read this book.

But I expected to learn more than I did.

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J.L. Neyhart
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August 29, 2019
I really love this book.

Here are some of my favorite quotes:

“Ask anyone what she means when she says 'God' and chances are that you will learn a lot more about that person than you will learn about God.”

"Love God in the person standing right in front of you, the Jesus of my understanding says, or forget the whole thing, because if you cannot do that, then you are just going to keep making shit up."

“Religions are treasure chests of stories, songs, rituals, and ways of life that have been handed down for millennia - not covered in dust but evolving all the way- so that each new generation has something to choose from when it is time to ask the big questions in life. Where did we come from? Why do bad things happen to good people? Who is my neighbor? Where do we go from here? No one should have to start from scratch with questions like these. Overhearing the answers of the world's great religions can help anyone improve his or her own answers. Without a religion, these questions often do not get asked.”

"Existential dizziness is one of the side effects of higher education, and it affects teachers too.”

"The only clear line I draw these days is this: when my religion tries to come between me and my neighbor, I will choose my neighbor. That self-canceling feature of my religion is one of the things I like best about it. Jesus never commanded me to love my religion.”

“I asked God for religious certainty, and God gave me relationships instead. I asked for solid ground, and God gave me human beings instead—strange, funny, compelling, complicated human beings—who keep puncturing my stereotypes, challenging my ideas, and upsetting my ideas about God, so that they are always under construction.”

“The problem with every sacred text is that it has human readers. Consciously or unconsciously, we interpret it to meet our own needs. There is nothing wrong with this unless we deny that we are doing it, as when someone tells me that he is not 'interpreting' anything but simply reporting what is right there on the page. This is worrisome, not only because he is reading a translation from the original Hebrew or Greek that has already involved a great deal of interpretation, but also because it is such a short distance between believing you possess an error-free message from God and believing that you are an error-free messenger of God. The literalists I like least are the ones who do not own a Bible. The literalists I like most are the ones who admit that they do not understand every word God has revealed in the Bible, though they still believe God has revealed it. I can respect that.

I can respect almost anyone who admits to being human while reading a divine text. After that, we can talk - about we highlight some teachings and ignore others, about how we decide which ones are historically conditioned and which ones are universally true, about who has influenced our reading of scripture and how our social location affects what we hear. The minute I believe I know the mind of God is the minute someone needs to tell me to sit down and tell me to breathe into a paper bag.”
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Rebecca
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February 28, 2019
(3.5) After she left the pastorate, Taylor taught Religion 101 at Piedmont College, a small Georgia institution, for 20 years. This book arose from what she learned about other religions – and about her own, Christianity – by engaging with faith in an academic setting and taking her students on field trips to mosques, temples, and so on. The title phrase comes from a biblical scholar named Krister Stendahl who served as the Lutheran bishop of Stockholm. At a press conference prior to the dedication of a controversial Mormon temple, he gave a few rules for interfaith dialogue: “1. When trying to understand another religion, you should ask the adherents of that religion and not its enemies. 2. Don’t compare your best to their worst. 3. Leave room for holy envy.”

Taylor emphasizes that appreciating other religions is not about flattening their uniqueness or looking for some lowest common denominator. Neither is it about picking out the aspects that affirm your own tradition and ignoring the rest. Of course, the divisions within Christianity are just as noticeable as the barriers between faiths. This book counsels becoming comfortable with not being right, or even knowing who is right. A lot of Evangelicals will squirm at this relativist perspective, but this book is just what they need. Releases March 12th.

Some favorite lines:

“To walk the way of sacred unknowing is to remember that our best ways of thinking and speaking about God are provisional.”

“Once you have given up on knowing who is right, it is easy to see neighbors everywhere you look. … when my religion gets in the way of loving my neighbor, I will choose my neighbor.”

“I asked God for religious certainty, and God gave me relationships instead. I asked for solid ground, and God gave me human beings instead—strange, funny, compelling, complicated human beings—who keep puncturing my stereotypes, challenging my ideas, and upsetting my ideas about God, so that they are always under construction.”
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Melora
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June 6, 2019
I haven't been "wow-ed" by all Barbara Brown Taylor's books -- some of them have seemed a bit fluffy -- but this is a good one. While I don't agree with everything she says, I do agree with her mostly, and she makes me think about why I believe as I do, which is always a good thing.
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Ivonne Rovira
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June 3, 2020
“Holy envy” is what author and Episcopal priest Barbara Taylor Brown calls the appreciation of the best of religions other than one’s own. While so many fear that learning about other major religions might shake one’s religious commitment, Taylor Brown found that it made her realize the commonalities among the world’s great faiths and caused her to appreciate all adherents. A wonderful read.

Special thanks to Lucy Waterbury for introducing me to a fabulous Sunday School and this book.


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February 14, 2021
Barbara Brown Taylor is an Episcopal priest, a World Religions professor, and an accomplished author. This is the first book of hers that I have read. I read and discussed it with my husband.

Holy Envy, as Dr Taylor explains, is seeing the practices of other religions and wishing you had them in your own. Roughly. She shares her journey as a professor, and how it led to the opening of her mind and heart to the practices of other faiths. She describes many odd little moments when she would see God, or Jesus, in the practices of their faiths. I loved her descriptions of those moments. And her prescription for being a neighbor.

This book is sometimes profound and sometimes angering, but it is never boring. I get the feeling she doesn’t mind if I disagree. And I loved the ending.

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Krista
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January 23, 2021
I found this book to be incredibly enlightening. I don't agree with everything the author writes, but I find her goal honorable because for the most part her entire narrative is based around this precept: "to find the bridge between my faith and the faith of other people so that those of us who draw water from wells on different sides of the river can still get together from time to time making the whole area safer for our children." (part 1 of 8, 47 minutes) As a teacher and librarian in a middle school that includes students from 47 different countries, I value this global perspective as I look on these children through the filter of their culture, trying to bridge any gap they may have that would impede their education. Any help I can get to see better into their world is welcome. My favorite quote comes near the end: "The unity of the Creator is expressed in the diversity of the creation." (part 7 of 8, 32 minutes). What a beautiful philosophy and one to which I personally prescribe: UNITY!! And the beauty of diversity. To anyone who wants to grow spiritually, I heartily recommend this book.
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Holy Envy: Finding God in the Faith of Others
Reviewed by Diane Reynolds

November 1, 2019

By Barbara Brown Taylor. HarperOne, 2019. 256 pages. $25.99/hardcover; $15.99/paperback; $12.99/eBook.

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Barbara Brown Taylor’s Holy Envy is reminiscent of Marcus J. Borg’s Meeting Jesus Again for the First Time as a story of circling back in a richer way to a faith of origin. In her fine book, Taylor describes embracing more fully her own Christianity—albeit a gentler version—through her exploration of the other major world religions of Hinduism, Buddhism, Judaism, and Islam.

Taylor explains her move from Episcopal pastor to religion professor at Piedmont College in Georgia, where for 20 years she taught comparative religion. Encounters with other religions led her to what she calls “holy envy” (a term borrowed from biblical scholar Krister Stendahl). This is a longing to possess the practices or beliefs from other faiths. If only, for example, Taylor says, Christianity encompassed Hinduism’s many paths to God, Judaism’s Sabbath day of rest, and Buddhism’s concept of impermanence. Yet for all her yearning toward aspects of other faiths—and sometimes distress with her own—she ends up discovering that she is “Christian to the core.” Interfaith study didn’t send her hurtling toward another religion or into universalism but instead sharpened her vision and her respect for limits: “What I see in the neighbor’s yard does not belong to me, but it shows me things in my own yard that I might otherwise have overlooked.”

It also, paradoxically, softened, though not eradicated, her boundaries: Holy Envy is in part a friendly guide to interfaith dialogue. Leaning into her own experiences, Taylor notes the ways she has sometimes unconsciously offended other faiths—until this was gently explained to her by an adherent. Again citing Stendahl, she offers three rules of religious understanding: (1) “When trying to understand another religion, you should ask the adherents of that religion and not its enemies.” (2) “Don’t compare your best to their worst.” (3) “Leave room for holy envy.”

Quakers have much they can learn from Taylor. I remember some years ago Quakers inadvertently offending Native Americans by using sweat lodges out of context—and the debate that erupted over the boundaries on appropriations from other faiths. That which we desire, we might not have a right to take. None of this is easy, and none of us, no matter how pure we try to be, can anticipate our every blind spot. She offers good reminders too that it is easy to hate: for some Christians to equate all nontheists with the worst excesses of Stalinism—or Satanism—while it is equally easy for some nonbelievers to angrily reduce all Christians to the worst kind of fundamentalists. The more respect we can have for those who differ—especially those others who represent the “shadows” in ourselves we might not want to acknowledge—the better off we will be. As Taylor emphasizes, the diversity even within faiths is profound. We need above all, she reminds us, not to talk but to listen.

On a more personal note, Taylor’s book is autobiographical—about her experiences teaching and of growth in faith. As one who has taught comparative religion myself (and even, like her, used Huston Smith as a text, despite his essentialism), I was fascinated by the differences in privilege. Taylor taught at a small residential college, whereas I taught at commuter schools or a community college: no field trips 70 miles away for my busy students, despite Taylor’s belief in such trips’ centrality. This points to the importance of Taylor’s granular approach: the more details we learn about other lives, the more likely we are to be startled by seeming innocuous differences, to ask questions, and to come to a wider understanding.

This is a book worth reading, for, in Taylor’s words, as we expand our love toward other faiths, our own “box will turn out to be too small,” at which point we will build one with “more windows in it.”

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Barbara Brown Taylor
A Review of Barbara Brown Taylor’s “Holy Envy”
Religion 101
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Jan 2, 2020
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“Holy Envy” Book Cover
“Holy Envy” Book Cover
Barbara Brown Taylor is one of my favourite theological writers simply because she’s so plain and honest with her words. Whether she’s struggling with faith as she does in Leaving Church to struggling with the darkness in Learning to Walk in the Dark, I’ve found something of the profound in her works. Well, Holy Envy is a bit of a different book — it’s lighter in tone for one thing — as it is a memoir of the time she spent teaching a first-year undergraduate course at university on world religions. As she notes in the book, trying to teach five or six major world religions in the span of 15 weeks is a huge undertaking, so much so that she didn’t teach the same class twice. Still, she did the best she could and this book is a look back at how her teaching and endless field trips to places of faith in religions other than Christianity changed her and her students.

The first half of this book is a rear-view mirror into the places she visited in and around the Atlanta area where she lives, and the second half of the book is more focused on how her “holy envy” — or picking and choosing desirable parts of other faith traditions and claiming them for herself as one — deepened her Christian faith. Of course, there are dangers in doing this (which Brown Taylor recounts at length) but the ultimate moral of the book is that teaching the course and her own discovery of other religions such as Hinduism, Islam and Judaism ignited her own spirituality in lively ways. Even at a tick more than 200 pages, this is a dense book. You may have to read it twice to really pick up on the things that Brown Taylor has to say, which makes it utterly recommendable and indispensable.

If you were to push me, I’d say that the chapters that Brown Taylor and her students play tourists on the field trips they go on held the most fascination for me. I’m lucky to belong to a church that borrows from other faith traditions in its services, but it feels somewhat perfunctory and we don’t go into something as, say, Celtic Christianity with any sort of depth — it’s more an acknowledgment that we have other ancestors in the faith, and a way to bring other traditions from other peoples of the world, such as indigenous peoples, into the church service. That’s why I found these field trips so inspiring. You got to actually experience what people do in mosques for example. That view, being written by someone of the Christian faith (an outsider looking in), was fascinating to me. How the students sometimes reacted was another pleasant surprise to me as I may have reacted in similar ways if I were there in flesh and blood.

The big takeaway from this book, to me, is to love your neighbour — whether they are of the same flavour of Christianity as you, a different flavour, or a completely different religion altogether. This is a posture that I must sometimes remember and work on. If I may indulge you in a story of my own, let me tell you about something that happened to me just before Christmas. As I was coming home from work and crossing a street, a car that was turning was seeming about to barrel right over me! I put out my hand in the universal gesture for stop. However, the owner of the car — a man — had his window slightly open and told me, “Gee, could you walk a bit faster, bud?” To which I responded something along the lines of the right of way pedestrians had. As he drove away, now behind me, I heard him mutter, “Blah blah blah.” So I turned on the spot and started cursing him really loudly.

To say that I’m embarrassed by this behaviour — especially now after reading this book — is an understatement. I wonder if there was another way I could have gotten my view that I was afraid of being run over in a more amicable and friendly manner, one that didn’t feel as I though I had to run after the car and do harm to it or its owner, something I stewed on for hours after this incident. This book taught me that I have a lot of work to do in my capacity as a loving person. (Maybe the problem is I don’t love myself enough, but that’s the subject of a different article or essay.) What’s more, and switching gears a bit, I think I’m going to keep my eyes open and see if I can apply a form of holy envy to my life. What can I learn from others who don’t have the same faith background as me? I’ve always said that there are many ways to God (which gets me in trouble with evangelical Christians who claim that only Jesus is the way to the Father), so perhaps there’s some exploration in order of other ways that are not necessarily connected to the Christian faith at all.

In any event, this is — by Brown Taylor’s usual standards — a finely written book. It is full of warm and humour, but deep, reflective thought as well. There’s certainly a lot of bone to chew on here, especially about how other Christians should view other faith traditions. You don’t have to give up your Christianity to find and respect something about another culture’s way of doing things, as Brown Taylor points out. It may augment your own way of believing in Christ. Brown Taylor has a “whatever works for you” approach (so long as it doesn’t harm yourself or other people), and this is something I fervently believe in when it comes to how I deal with Christ. So my advice would be to read this book, see if Brown Taylor speaks to you in any way, and become a student of the world in this wide-ranging and ever-so-engrossing treat of a book. You may surprise yourself. I know I did, just by reading this.

Barbara Brown Taylor’s Holy Envy: Finding God in the Faith of Others was published by HarperOne on March 12, 2019.

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Get in touch: zacharyhoule@rogers.com

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