Liturgy of the Ordinary: Sacred Practices in Everyday Life

Summary: Walking through the common events of an ordinary day from waking to sleeping, Warren explores how we encounter in these ordinary things the Christ we worship each Sunday.

I work with people in a university context who struggle to connect the Christ they worship each week with the seemingly ordinary, and often repetitive tasks that make up their days--answering emails, running experiments, attending committee meetings, preparing lectures, holding office hours, and grading papers or exams. In many cases, this occupies the most significant part of their waking hours. And for the ones who are followers of Christ, they often wonder what any of this has to do with the Christ they worship, and are attempting to follow. Time spent in a show more soup kitchen, a prison ministry, a mission trip--that seems closer to the real deal. Some wonder if they should even be doing the stuff that makes up most of their weeks.

There are others who think even the life I've described sounds "cutting edge" compared to spending much of their days feeding, cleaning up after, diapering, entertaining, putting down for naps and getting up again infants and toddlers. Or they work in some form of unskilled or repetitive work. And no matter what our work is, much of life involves a daily round of self-care, home care, and meal preparation, and a host of routine activities--every day.

Let's face it. Much of life is lived in the ordinary and it is to this that Tish Harrison Warren addresses herself. Her book takes the tasks of the "ordinary" day and reflects on how we are met by and may be transformed by the Christ we worship each Sunday. She explores activities like waking, making our beds, brushing our teeth, losing keys, eating leftovers, fighting with our spouses, checking email, getting stuck in traffic, talking to friends, drinking tea, and sleeping. She connects these with the liturgies she participates in each week as an Anglican priest. She writes:

"And every new day, this is the turn my heart must make: I’m living this life, the life right in front of me. This one where marriages struggle. This one where we aren’t living as we thought we might or as we hoped we would. This one where we are weary, where we want to make a difference but aren’t sure where to start, where we have to get dinner on the table or the kids’ teeth brushed, where we have back pain and boring weeks, where our lives look small, where we doubt, where we wrestle with meaninglessness, where we worry about those we love, where we struggle to meet our neighbors and love those closest to us, where we grieve, where we wait.

And on this particular day, Jesus knows me and declares me his own. On this day he is redeeming the world, advancing his kingdom, calling us to repent and grow, teaching his church to worship, drawing near to us, and making a people all his own.

If I am to spend my whole life being transformed by the good news of Jesus, I must learn how grand, sweeping truths—doctrine, theology, ecclesiology, Christology—rub against the texture of an average day. How I spend this ordinary day in Christ is how I will spend my Christian life. "

She connects waking and baptism, as Lutherans often are taught to do in making the sign of the cross and saying, "remember your baptism" upon waking. Making beds reminds of the rituals that form a life. Brushing teeth represents all the embodied tasks that make up our day, and how we meet Christ through the bodily acts of standing, kneeling, and bowing. I particularly loved the chapter on sending email, and the blessing and sending that is part of our worship, and that may be implicit in our responses to our inboxes. She makes drinking a cup of tea a reminder of the enjoyment of all that is good in the sanctuary of God.

She concludes the book with a chapter on sleep, reflecting on the gift of sabbath and our struggle with lives of activism, and a resistance of sleep that may reflect a fear of dying. She poses an interesting question:

"What if Christians were known as a countercultural community of the well-rested--people who embrace our limits with zest and even joy? As believers we can relish sleep as not only necessary but as an embodied response to the truth of Scripture: we are finite, weak creatures who are abundantly cared for by our strong and loving Creator."

Warren writes with an unvarnished realism about her own life, and yet there is also this sense of stepping back from the whirl of ordinary life in the various moments of the day to remember, and listen, and reflect on how Jesus as the Incarnate One brings his shalom into the whirl of the ordinary--whether it is a fight with a spouse, lost keys or a traffic jam. Warren's thoughtful reflections help us move to that same place, a kind of center of quiet where the new creation life of Christ can enter into the ordinary spaces of our days.

This is a book I can give to those wondering if there are greener pastures of Christian activity than the everyday circumstances they find themselves in. It is a book that makes the connection between the extraordinary things we preach and pray and participate in each Sunday, and the ordinary realities of each week. From when we first wake until we lay down our heads at night. And all the spaces between.

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Disclosure of Material Connection: I received this book free from the publisher . I was not required to write a positive review. The opinions I have expressed are my own. show less

UPDATE: Recently finished this book for the second time this year, and it's just as good the second time around. Some of the ideas, I hope, stick a little more this time. It's about time I purchase a copy...

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First Review:
Tish Harrison Warren's Liturgy of the Ordinary is now a favorite that I'm going to try and share with all my friends. Her book is wonderful for a few reasons. 1) It's accessible - easy to read and understand for everyone. 2) It's intensely practical - she's drawing us deeply into the normal things we do everyday. 3) Here's the kicker - she writes in a way that spans the divide between liberal and conservative. I would love to share it with my friends who are "evangelicals-in-recovery" as well as the high school show more youth at my church. Rarely do I buy books but I plan to buy it now and read it again soon.

In short, Warren offers insightful perspective and meditations on our everyday activities arguing that "how we spend our days is of course how we spend our lives," namely our daily habits shape us deeply. She ties these daily patterns to liturgical, Christian practices. I don't remember a book I so heartily agreed with. Here are the activities:

1. Waking up - baptism and learning to be beloved.
2. Making the bed - liturgy, ritual and what forms a life
3. Brushing teeth - standing, kneeling, and living in a body
4. Losing keys - confession and the truth about ourselves
5. Eating leftovers - word, sacrament, and overlooked nourishment
6. Fighting with my husband - passing the peace and everyday work of shalom
7. Checking email - blessing and sending
8. Sitting in traffic - liturgical time and an unhurried God
9. Calling a friend - congregation and community
10. Drinking tea - sanctuary and savoring
11. Sleeping - sabbath, rest, and the work of God

(This is the table of contents, btw.) As I type them up, I'm getting excited about the book again. Every chapter seriously offers refresh insights and important lessons, sometimes critiquing bad theology. For instance, we have bodies, and they are good. So often Christians adopt a pseudo-Platonic dislike for bodies. In drinking tea, she extols the wonder of the every moment and the importance of enjoying the good things in life.

It's a great book. :) show less

A beautiful celebration of how we can find God in every aspect of our lives. It's a reminder to slow down and take joy in the daily tasks that make up our lives.

“Ordinary love, anonymous and unnoticed as it is, is the substance of peace on earth, the currency of God's grace in our daily life.”

“The kind of spiritual life and disciplines needed to sustain the Christian life are quiet, repetitive, and ordinary. I often want to skip the boring, daily stuff to get to the thrill of an edgy faith. But it’s in the dailiness of the Christian faith—the making the bed, the doing the dishes, the praying for our enemies, the reading the Bible, the quiet, the small—that God’s transformation takes root and grows.”

“In reality, the show more church has led the way in the art of enjoyment and pleasure. New Testament scholar Ben Witherington points out that it was the church, not Starbucks, that created coffee culture.4 Coffee was first invented by Ethiopian monks—the term cappuccino refers to the shade of brown used for the habits of the Capuchin monks of Italy. Coffee is born of extravagance, an extravagant God who formed an extravagant people, who formed a craft out of the pleasures of roasted beans and frothed milk.” show less

Excellent! One I will return to on a regular basis. Warren dismantles the erroneous idea that God is only found in cathedrals and temples. She contradicts the heresy of the division between sacred and secular and presents examples for interactions with God in the holy mundane.

This is definitely one of my favorite Christian books! I love the comparisons of holy living to daily and mundane activities. Because life is just a string of regular day comprised of regular activities..how are we seeking God in it all?

It took some time for me to get through this one. I kept being distracted by other works. At the same time, as opposed to other cases where this has happened, I do not consider it a knock against the books quality. The book was filled with many ideas I appreciated and had not considered. My highlights go into some detail.

Thoughtful with drops of wisdom. Not what I wanted or expected but not altogether a disappointment.