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

Barbara Dark brown Taylor continues her spiritual journey begun in Leaving Chapel of learning what the world looks like after taking off her clergy collar. In& about Holy Envy: Acquiring God in the Beliefs of Others nbsp;Holy Envy, she contemplates the myriad ways other folks and traditions encounter the Transcendent, both by digging deeper into those customs herself and by looking at them through her students’ eyes as she sets off with them about field trips to monasteries, temples, and mosques.

Troubled and inspired with what she learns, Taylor results to her very own tradition for guidance, finding fresh meaning in aged teachings that have all too often been used to exclude religious strangers instead of embracing the divine challenges they present. Re-imagining some central tales through the religion she understands best, she requires heart in how frequently God selects outsiders to teach insiders how out-of-bounds God is really.

Throughout Holy Envy, Taylor weaves jointly stories in the classroom with reflections on what her own religious journey has been complicated and renewed by connecting with people of other traditions-even those whose truths are quite not the same as hers. The one continuous in her odyssey may be the feeling that God may be the one phoning her to disown her edition of God-a change that ultimately enriches her trust in other human beings and in God.