Escaping Preference: An Introduction to Our Lenten Book Club

{Lenten Book Club: The Spirit of the Liturgy}

As promised — and I do believe, in keeping with the mission of this blog, which is to talk about what we want to talk about —  we will read The Spirit(s) of the Liturgy as a little book club together this Lent.

First, Romano Guardini’s The Spirit of the Liturgy. It’s free, online. You can also purchase it here.
Then, Joseph Ratzinger:  The Spirit of the Liturgy (yes, same name).
(When you buy something via our Amazon affiliate link, a little cash rolls our way… just a little. Thanks!)
I’ll post on Fridays. I’ll give you your homework, I’ll talk about what we read, we’ll discuss in the comments. You can do this study at any point, but if you want to stay current and join in the convo, that’s how it will go.

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For Friday, read Chapter One, “The Prayer of the Liturgy,” of the Guardini book or flunk out don’t worry because it will all be here in that great organized way we have of offering series. Trying to do better this time. And Chapter Two will be next Friday, so you can look ahead to that (and have a bit more time).

 

Here you can see why I did break down and spend $7 on this book:

 

One more read-through and I think each and every sentence will be underlined.

If it weren’t for you great and wonderful readers, I would never have the sheer cheek to attempt something like this study.

The Spirit of the Liturgy is a rather philosophical attempt to make the case for universal, objective, joyful, and serene worship. It’s an inquiry into what the essence of such worship is and what it ought to be. Guardini offers a fresh way of looking at what it means to worship while being grounded in the most fundamental philosophical and theological ideas.

There are points made in this book that I strongly suspect will be new to you. They were new to me, although instantly recognizable. That’s why I so strongly feel moved to share my reading with you. It’s an exciting book, against all expectations! (And then, just wait for the other one. Swoons of ecstasy!)

 

Probably most of our readers here at Like Mother, Like Daughter are married women who are devoting themselves to building their home. We have a fair number of readers who are unmarried women, some who have already raised their children and like to stop by for a cup of tea and a read, and even some guys — great, thoughtful men who appreciate what we hope is a reasoned and sometimes fun apologia for home life, in which they too are heavily invested. In fact, you could say, it’s what they work for, when all is said and done.

So we have a lot of homemaking things to talk about here, and we love it. I can talk the price of potatoes all day. Want to see what I’m knitting? Glad to show you. Let’s paint a room together!

But I have never for one minute bought the lie that a woman whose path in life can be described as “homemaker” — or even, to use my very favorite un-PC term, “housewife” which is what I call myself on forms — gives up using her mind. “So, if you stay home, will you… stop thinking?” I have been asked this in my day.

There are many silly, thought-free people in the world. Some of them, perhaps, are stay-at-home moms. I am willing to concede that possibility. Some are not, let’s be honest, stay-at-home anythings. They are all too “out there” if you ask me.

But intelligent people can be found everywhere, if you look hard enough, and many of them also love to knit, quilt, garden, and keep bees. So we won’t make any assumptions.

Except for this one: we will assume that readers of Like Mother, Like Daughter are highly intelligent and, furthermore, are up for anything. Including a rather tricky Lenten journey through the wilds of philosophy, theology, and what have you, in order to find some answers to a troubling question.

It’s tricky because your guide, yours truly, lacks all the necessary credentials to be leading you. However, she is left to do it by default. Thus, it must be.

Yes, the reading is daunting. It’s way more daunting than even the most daunting Facebook post. But it will be good for you and I will help you. When I can’t, I’ll find someone who will.

We have to (I hope I can say “we”), because of the troubling nature of the question, as I mentioned. This question is at the very heart of the darkness that I believe has overtaken us as a civilization.

And I don’t mean in the past 10 or even 50 years. I mean in the past… 200 and even 500 (some might say 700) years. It’s crept up on us and now we are living out its inner logic. (We talked a little about it just a little in this post about The Abolition of Man, a book in which C. S. Lewis deals with the question from the different angle of the education of the young, perhaps the most important, after the subject of worship.)

This question has to do with whether something exists outside of ourselves, or whether reality is merely what we shape it to be by our preferences — or by the preferences of those we find we have no power to resist.

Reality. What is it?

If reality exists apart from ourselves, then worship — from all evidence a universal human impulse (as we will see when we go on to Joseph Ratzinger’s Spirit of the Liturgy) — has a different character from what it has if it’s only an urge, arising from the breast of  man (as perhaps the result of collisions of chemicals?) with no goal external to him.

Worship is either preference — a nice add-on to a comfortable life, or the desperate and meaningless expression of a suffering life — or it is our one duty and happiness — the possession of what we are made for and most desire.

Since you are, we hope, living your Lent, simply and peacefully, perhaps you will be able to find time for some deep reading and grappling of big thoughts. I really appreciate you coming along with me!

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