Foreword by Andy Crouch
1. Waking: Baptism and Learning to Be Beloved
2. Making the Bed: Liturgy, Ritual, and What Forms a Life
3. Brushing Teeth: Standing, Kneeling, Bowing, 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 the 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
Acknowledgments
Discussion Questions and Practices
Notes
Andy Crouch (MDiv, Boston University School of Theology) is partner for theology and culture at Praxis, an organization that works as a creative engine for redemptive entrepreneurship, and he is the author of The Tech-Wise Family, Strong and Weak, Playing God, and Culture Making. For more than ten years he was an editor and producer at Christianity Today, including serving as executive editor from 2012 to 2016.
Tish Harrison Warren is a weekly contributing newsletter writer for the New York Times and writes a monthly column for Christianity Today. She is a writer-in-residence at Resurrection Anglican Church in Austin, a priest in the Anglican Church in North America, and previously served in campus ministry with InterVarsity Christian Fellowship at Vanderbilt University and the University of Texas at Austin. She is also the author of Prayer in the Night.
"From the photograph of a peanut-butter-and-jelly-sandwich on the
cover, Tish Harrison Warren's debut work, Liturgy of the Ordinary:
Sacred Practices in Everyday Life, signals that it's rooted in the
quotidian, the humble humdrum of day-after-day existence. This is
spiritual guidance for the bed-maker, the teeth-brusher, the
traffic-snarled among us. This is one ordinary day turned inside
out, its hallowed script revealed, liturgical underpinnings
exposed. . . . She beautifully ties making the bed to the Creation
story, to God's making beauty from chaos. . . . It's the
nitty-gritty of daily work where Warren illuminates holiness. She
writes of 'tiny theophanies,' church-bell moments, that jolt
her—and us, her readers—to sacred attention. The purity of her
vision, the clarity of her writing, makes effortless work of the
notion that the small acts of our everydays are what shape us into
the sacred vessels we are meant to be."
*Barbara Mahany, the Chicago Tribune, February 28, 2017*
"Warren's message flies in the face of our culture's love of
distraction and pursuit of extreme sensation. We would do well to
slow down for a bit and hear her out. . . . Liturgy of the Ordinary
isn't the first book written in praise of prosaic moments, and
Warren's isn't the first voice to counsel slowing down. But Warren
admirably explores these themes from both a theological and
practical perspective. Her words can help us grasp what my
grandfather learned through a lifetime of commonsense faith—and a
lot of sweeping: The 'new life into which we're being baptized is
lived out in days, hours, and minutes. God is forming us into a new
people. And the place of that formation is in the small moments of
today.'"
*Jamie A. Hughes, Christianity Today, December 2016*
"To live in the vision that Warren is offering—to find sacredness
in the everyday practices of life—will require that we engage with
these and other institutional realities in our midst. The small
stuff, the daily habits—yes. And we must allow these small, daily
habits to help us reimagine some of the big stuff—otherwise it will
just be small enclaves of quotidian mysterylovers within the larger
structures that inhibit us from receiving the gift of the ordinary
from God's hand and being shaped to seek the good of others in this
world."
*Kristen Deede Johnson, Comment Magazine, December 1, 2016*
"This book asks me to look at the ordinariness of my day with new
eyes. It is not something to be skipped over in favor of some
shining, imaginary future, in which I've magically acquired all the
character and virtue I wish I saw in myself. Instead, by God's
grace, the daily rhythm of life is the venue—the only venue—in
which a recovering idealist can find the beauty and meaning that
she seeks."
*Sarah Puryear, The Living Church, March 30, 2017*
"In her debut, Anglican priest Warren shows readers how to turn the
mundane and often frustrating aspects of daily life into a
reflection on the sacred. Working her way through a typical day—her
morning routine, busywork such as checking email, fights with her
spouse—Warren seamlessly blends together lived realities with
theological reflections. Her writing is lyrical and often humorous,
and she has a gift for making theological concepts seem easy to
understand and (perhaps most importantly) easy to live. Her
struggles with coming to terms with the banality of daily life are
instantly relatable; for example, she frets that she spends most
days doing dishes instead of leading a revolution, or changing
diapers instead of ministering to the poor in some far-off region
of the world. But she reminds readers that while they 'can get
drunk on talk of justification, ecclesiology, pneumatology,
Christology, and eschatology . . . these big ideas are borne
out—lived, believed, and enfleshed—in the small moments of our day,
in the places, seasons, homes, and communities that compose our
lives.'"
*Publishers Weekly STARRED Review, November 7, 2016*
"If you take time to mull over and digest the feast that Warren
offers, then attempt to implement these ideas, significant
formation is bound to occur in your life. I am thrilled at what she
has offered to the body of Messiah and eagerly anticipate the fruit
this wisdom will bear."
*Seedbed.com, June 23, 2017*
"There is much in the evangelical church that appeals to the
extraordinary or radical expression of faith. This book is a
necessary corrective to this tendency by highlighting the
importance of our everyday lives to our formation in Christ. In
addition, it is one of the best books I’ve read addressing the
question of [how] one could live out one’s faith in routine life on
a micro level."
*Mark Friesen, Mennonite Brethren Herald*
"Framed around one ordinary day, this book explores daily life
through the lens of liturgy, small practices, and habits that form
us. Each chapter looks at something author Tish Harrision Warren
does in a day—making the bed, brushing her teeth, losing her
keys—and relates it to spiritual practice as well as to our Sunday
worship."
*in All things, December 8, 2017*
"Christians often find it more comfortable to embrace the goodness,
truth, and beauty of God in faith principles than to transfer the
principles to practice. In reality, more time is spent in the
ordinary than in the extraordinary. God is present with us in
surprising ways through our daily routine, pointing us to his love,
grace, and mercy. This book is an invitation to worship him in
spirit and truth, each moment of every day."
*Sandra Gray, Christianity Today, December 13, 2017*
"Liturgy of the Ordinary is simple without being reductionistic. It
is beautiful without being excessive. It is theological without
being heady. And it is orthodox without being pedantic. Walking her
readers through a very ordinary day (brushing her teeth, making her
bed, fighting with her husband), Warren highlights how all of life
is liturgical. For a culture constantly in fear of missing out,
Warren points to these sacred everyday rhythms as proof that we're
right in the middle of what is happening, if only we’ll take
note."
*Lore Ferguson Wilbert, Christianity Today, December 13, 2017*
"This is an eminently readable and enjoyable book that draws you
into high concept—namely, liturgy in everyday life—through great
writing and infectious charm. Warren takes you through a single
ordinary day, from waking up in the morning to going to sleep at
night, and manages to make connections to just about every
important aspect of the Christian life. She is a gifted writer
whose stories, rife with humor, teach you deeper things without
ever making you feel like you’re being instructed."
*Stan Jantz, Christianity Today, December 13, 2017*
"No matter which chapter you’re reading, it's hard not to suffer
from writer envy. Liturgy of the Ordinary is a gracious,
gospel-oriented, fantastically un-preachy invitation to be a more
integrated believer. Warren takes the most basic components of
everyday life and turns them inside out to reveal the extraordinary
work of God. You don’t have to be liturgically minded to be helped
by her thought, experience, and spiritual depth."
*Anne Carlson Kennedy, Christianity Today, December 13, 2017*
"This is a book that will touch every reader, leading us to develop
the eyes to perceive and ears to detect God’s presence in every
moment of life. A mysticism of the ordinary is the purest
expression of faith."
*Craig L. Nessan, Currents In Theology and Mission, Winter 2018*
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