Everyday Parables

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List Price: $19.95

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Rediscovering God in Common Things

James Taylor

128 PP | 5" x 8"
Paper
ISBN: 978-1-55145-055-1

Discover the divine in loss and grief and everyday chores with James Taylor's Everyday Parables. In his distinctive way, James writes inspiring and heart-warming prose.

James Taylor, Author

Jim Taylor is one of Canada's best known authors and editors among mainline churches and denominations. He is the author of sixteen books himself including The Spirituality of Pets (2006), An Everyday God (2005), Precious Days and Practical Love: Caring for an Aging Parent (1999), The Canadian Religious Travelguide (1982), Discovering Discipleship (with George Johnston, 1983), Two Worlds in One (1985), Last Chance (1989), Surviving Death (1993) republished as Letters to Stephen (1996), Everyday Psalms (1994), Everyday Parables (1995), Sin: A New Understanding of Virtue and Vice (1997), Lifelong Living (for the United Church's Division of Mission in Canada) (1983), and The Spiritual Crisis of Cancer (for the Canadian Cancer Society) (1984).

He was the founding editor of the ecumenical clergy journal Practice of Ministry in Canada (PMC) for the first 15 years of its publication. He was for 13 years Managing Editor of The United Church Observer. A co-founder of Wood Lake Books, Taylor lives and works in British Columbia's Okanagan Valley.

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On Doorknobs

No matter what their shape or size of the doorknobs, they all have the same purpose. Levers or balls, wood or metal or plastic, warm or cold to the touch, they all exist only to open doors. Perhaps Christians are like those doorknobs. We too come in many shapes and sizes. And some of us are warm or cold, when touched. We like to think we have lofty tasks to perform. But maybe all that matters is that we open doors - to life, to faith, to God - through which others may pass.
We don't need to know how it works. We just have to do it.

Door

One side of a door says "Push," the other says "Pull."

Push and pull are usually considered opposites. But there's no such thing as a door that you can only push, or only pull.

Conventional wisdom thinks of good and evil, right and wrong, sin and salvation, as opposites too. But maybe they're like two sides of a door.

Most of our sins, in fact, are virtues pushed to an extreme. Healthy self-esteem becomes arrogant pride; thrift becomes greed and avarice; the rituals of love become abuse, exploitation, or rape; technology intended to enrich life pollutes the air and causes disease; medical science prolongs life past the point where life matters any more.

Like a door, all these things have two sides.

But the door of life isn't marked. It's up to us to know when to push forward, and when to pull back.