Liturgy of the Ordinary: Sacred Practices in Everyday Life

by Tish Harrison Warren

We’ll have to keep forgiving all day, every time we think back to our argument, every time we’re tempted to pick up the sword again. Peace takes a whole lot of work. Conflict and resentment seem to be the easier route. Shorter, anyway. Less humiliating.

We are quarreling people, but God is reforming us to be people who, through our ordinary moments, establish his kingdom of peace. Believing this is an act of a faith. It takes faith to believe that our little, frail faithfulness can produce fruit. It takes faith to believe that laying down my sword in my kitchen has anything to do with cosmic peace on earth. And it takes faith to believe that God is making us into people—slowly, through repentance—who are capable of saying to the world through our lives, “Peace of Christ to you.”

Discovering the liturgical calendar felt like discovering real time. It gave a transcendent shape to my life. Time was no longer arbitrary—an academic calendar, a marketing ploy, a back to school sale, a Labor Day blowout, a national holiday, a sports season. Now time was sacred. It was structured by worship. It marked the church as a global, alternative people. Time had shape and meaning. All of a sudden, time was a story. And I could live in a story.

We delude ourselves into believing that if we can just get everything done, if we can only tie up all the loose ends, if we can even once get ahead of the crush, we will prove our worth and establish ourselves in safety.

My disordered sleep reveals a disordered love, idols of entertainment or productivity.

But this public health epidemic is indicative of a spiritual crisis—a culture of disordered love and disordered worship. We disdain limits.

The words of the liturgy felt like a mother rocking me, singing over me, speaking words of blessing again and again. I was relaxing into the church like an overtired child collapsing on her mom. When my husband and I would get into the car after church each week and talk about the service, I would say to him, “It feels like chamomile tea.” This was my weird way of saying that worship allowed me to rest, to relax into the ancient practices and words of the church.

Thus embracing sleep is not only a confession of our limits; it is also a joyful confession of God’s limitless care for us.