Liturgy of the Ordinary: Sacred Practices in Everyday Life

by Tish Harrison Warren

His decision to go overseas felt daring and bold, but he was surprised to find that wherever he was on earth, much of his day was spent sitting with people, taking care of business and chores, taking care of his own body, knowing his neighbors, seeking to love people—sometimes succeeding, sometimes failing.

I feel this so much! Life spent as a missionary has a lot more ordinary moments than I had thought it would.

Once a student met with him to complain about having to read Augustine’s Confessions. “It’s boring,” the student whined. “No, it’s not boring,” the professor responded. “You’re boring.” What Jonathan’s professor meant is that when we gaze at the richness of the gospel and the church and find them dull and uninteresting, it’s actually we who have been hollowed out. We have lost our capacity to see wonders where true wonders lie. We must be formed as people who are capable of appreciating goodness, truth, and beauty.

“Everydayness is my problem. It’s easy to think about what you would do in wartime, or if a hurricane blows through, or if you spent a month in Paris, or if your guy wins the election, or if you won the lottery or bought that thing you really wanted. It’s a lot more difficult to figure out how you’re going to get through today without despair.”

Absolutely! I feel so much more prepared for a time in crisis than how much the mundane wears me down

My subculture of evangelicalism tends to focus on excitement, passion, and risk, the kind of worship that gives a rush. Eugene Peterson calls this quest for spiritual intensity a consumer-driven “market for religious experience in our world.”

“there is little enthusiasm for the patient acquisition of virtue, little inclination to sign up for a long apprenticeship in what earlier generations of Christians called holiness. Religion in our time has been captured by a tourist mindset. . . . We go to see a new personality, to hear a new truth, to get a new experience and so somehow to expand our otherwise humdrum life.”

Instead of the focus of worship being that which nourishes us, namely Word and sacrament, the focus became that which sells: excitement, adventure, a sizzling or shocking spiritual experience.

Our Puritan craftsman could make a good chair and then leave it behind and move on to other tasks, rest, or be with friends. He did not face a culture of workaholism fed by a 24/7 world of connection and productivity.

In our modern-day society, when we are blessed and sent to go do the work God has given us to do, we are sent into a culture where work can become all-consuming and boundless.

I totally get this! I have realized that as missionaries, you need to track your hours not so much to make sure you get enough, but so that you don’t go over! That took me by surprise realizing that

third way, a mixed life combining the activity of Martha with the reflectiveness of Mary.” Hilton concluded that “such a spirituality needs to be consciously modeled and taught.”

Never thought of this before! We are to live both as a Martha and a Mary

It is hard for me to believe that checking email could ever be a place of prayer. I want God to call me to other things, things that feel more important, meaningful, and thrilling. But this work, in this hour, is a living prayer that I may “go in peace to love and serve the Lord.”

Very applicable to me as well. I know people who are doing amazing ministry work, but practically how it plays out is through email!

My friend Steven, the farmer-prophet, reminds me that a fallow field is never dormant. As dirt sits waiting for things to be planted and grown, there is work being done invisibly and silently.

Wow! Praise God that he’s always at work on me, even when I feel like I’m not doing enough

Though small practices of enjoyment may seem trivial, the demon sees in them “a sort of innocence and humility and self-forgetfulness.”2

Ah! This is why it’s so important to find pleasure in the “small things “

A culture formed by the gospel will honor good and right enjoyment, celebration, and sensuousness.

Just made me think how nice it is to be at a reformed church, where we can enjoy alcohol together and not have to pretend none of us drinks at all (like in the Baptist church I grew up in).

We have sinned and grown old, and become dulled to the wonders around us. Though it may seem counterintuitive, enjoyment takes practice. Throughout our life we must relearn the abandon of revelry and merriment.

Christian worship trains us to recognize and respond to beauty. We learn to embrace the pleasures of being human and of human culture.

The rigors of motherhood, ministry, and simply being a grown-up in a broken world had hollowed me out. I was brittle, irritable, undernourished, and overextended. Making space for one hour of pure enjoyment began to fill my hollowness with a weighty kind of joy.

Yes! I’m totally there right now and I have made it a practice to go away to the bookstore for a couple hours each week. It’s so great to have this practice reaffirmed.

The cry of “Encore!”—the demand for more and more and ever more—can turn a healthy pleasure into an addiction. We become insatiable. Our ability to enjoy something is diminished to the extent that it becomes a false god.

a warm blanket or in the smell of bread baking. Lewis reminds us that “one must walk before one can run. . . . [We] shall not be able to adore God on the highest occasions if we have learned no habit of doing so on the lowest. At best, our faith and reason will tell us that he is adorable but we shall not have found him so.”

The truth is, I’m far more likely to give up sleep for entertainment than I am for prayer. When I turn on Hulu late at night I don’t consciously think, “I value this episode of Parks and Rec more than my family, prayer, and my own body.” But my habits reveal and shape what I love and what I value, whether I care to admit it or not.

Oooooh ouch!

Our need for sleep reveals that we have limits. We are unable to defend ourselves, to keep ourselves safe, to master the world around us. Sleep exposes reality. We are frail and weak. We need a guide and a guard.

Our powerful need for sleep is a reminder that we are finite. God is the only one who never slumbers nor sleeps.

Christian spirituality calls us, in the words of Saint Benedict, to keep “the prospect of death before your eyes every day.”

Each Ash Wednesday we remember together that we are dust, and to dust we shall return.

When our zealous activism is coupled with a culture of frenzy and grandiosity, the aim of our Christian life can become a list of goals, initiatives, meetings, conferences, and activities that leave us exhausted.

In my work among graduate students, I encourage students to quit working earlier, take care of their bodies, and get more sleep. It’s often the most spiritually helpful and relevant advice I can give.

Ah! Now I know how important that talk on rest was that I have to the grad students! It’s one I hope to give more than once !