Liturgy of the Ordinary: Sacred Practices in Everyday Life - Softcover

Warren, Tish Harrison

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1525233580 ISBN 13: 9781525233586

Publisher: ReadHowYouWant, 2017

Synopsis

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 Harrison 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.

About this title

About the Author

Tish Harrison Warren writes regularly for The Well, and her writing has also been featured in Her.meneutics, Churchleaders.com, Anglicanpastor.com, Christ and Pop Culture, Art House America, Mere Orthodoxy, Christianity Today, and the White Horse Inn. After seven years in campus ministry with InterVarsity Graduate and Faculty Ministries at Vanderbilt and UT-Austin, she now works with InterVarsity Women in the Academy and Professions. Warren has a masters in theology from Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary and is a priest in the Anglican Church in North America, serving at Resurrection South Austin. She and her husband live in Austin and have two young daughters.

Review

"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)

"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)

"Sunday liturgy shapes our faith through its mix of prayers, songs, Scriptures, and sermons. We hear from and are shaped by God through these practices. Under Tish Harrison Warren's insightful gaze, our seemingly 'boring' daily routines become a liturgy of their own―calling us to confession and community, Scripture and Sabbath, baptism and embodiment. Some spiritual directors listen for God's invitations in our prayers. Tish discerns God's invitations in our everyday life. She reminds us that God intends to speak, to invite, and to transform us in every situation we find ourselves in. Tish confronts us with the reality that God will not be confined to 1.5 hours on a Sunday. She is the prophet and pastor that our churches desperately need. At least this harried working dad needs her voice. I am approaching the daily routines of housework and homemaking with my wife and kids with newfound expectation and hope." (Gregory Jao, vice president & director of campus engagement, InterVarsity Christian Fellowship)

"Sometimes the difference between drudgery and epiphany is just seeing things from the right angle, a frame that reframes everything, even the mundane. This marvelous little book is that certain slant of light that illuminates the everyday as an arena of sanctification, where the Spirit makes us holy in ways we might miss. You don't need more to do in a day, Warren shows. Instead, reframe the everyday as an extension of worship, and folding the laundry, washing dishes, and even commuting become habitations of the Spirit." (James K. A. Smith, author of Desiring the Kingdom and You Are What You Love)

"This beautiful book will brush the dust from your dingy days and reveal the extraordinary that is to be found in the ordinary. No mundane daily task will be the same once these pages open your eyes to how the work of your hands reflects the ways of the Creator and the rhythms of eternity." (Karen Swallow Prior, author of Booked and Fierce Convictions)

"In this moment in culture, when much feels complicated and shallow, Tish Harrison Warren offers a beautiful and life-giving narrative: a way toward the ordinary sacred. This book is gentle in its simplicity and rich in wisdom. I wish I had read it a decade ago." (Micha Boyett, author of Found)

"If Christianity is to retain its witness in our frenetic and fragmented age, it must take root not only in the thoughts and emotions but also in the daily lives and even bodies of those who call Christ Lord. Tish Harrison Warren has beautifully 'enfleshed' the concepts and doctrines of our faith into quotidian moments, showing how every hour of each day can become an occasion of grace and renewal. If you want to know how faith matters amid messy kitchens, unfinished manuscripts, marital spats, and unmade beds, Liturgy of the Ordinary will train your eyes to see holy beauty all around." (Katelyn Beaty, print managing editor, Christianity Today)

"Tish Harrison Warren is both a priest and a mother who changes poopy diapers. She embodies the high calling of the church and the high calling of the home and in those dual vocations has written a book of tremendous importance. Tish writes with candor, insight, and intelligence about the sacredness of quotidian living. The highest compliment I can offer is that her book inspired me to go back to my dirty sink and my screaming kids with a renewed sense of purpose." (Andrea Palpant Dilley, contributing editor, Christianity Today)

"Tish Harrison Warren shows us what it looks like to be shaped and formed, in a book as down-to-earth and inviting as it is wise. I don't know of any book that's more winsome in commending a life lived in sync with the church calendar." (Wesley Hill, assistant professor of biblical studies, Trinity School for Ministry, Ambridge, Pennsylvania)

"Big gifts often come in small packages―sometimes even a plain cardboard box. Tish Harrison Warren has a talent for unpacking these gifts that God has placed all around us." (Michael Horton, professor of theology, Westminster Seminary California, author of Ordinary)

Edition details

• Publisher: ReadHowYouWant
• Publication date: 2017
• ISBN 10: 1525233580
• ISBN 13: 9781525233586
• Binding: Paperback
• Language: English
• Number of pages: 226