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

Warren, Tish Harrison

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0830846239 ISBN 13: 9780830846238

Publisher: IVP, 2016

Synopsis

• Christianity Today's 2018 Book of the Year Winner - Spiritual Formation
• Christianity Today's 2018 Book of the Year - Beautiful Orthodoxy

In the overlooked moments and routines of our day, we can become aware of God's presence in surprising ways. How do we embrace the sacred in the ordinary and the ordinary in the sacred? 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―making the bed, brushing her teeth, losing her keys―that the author does every day. Drawing from the diversity of her life as a campus minister, Anglican priest, friend, wife, and mother, Tish Harrison Warren opens up a practical theology of the everyday. Each activity is related to a spiritual practice as well as an aspect of our Sunday worship. Come and discover the holiness of your every day.

About this title

About the Author

Tish Harrison Warren is a priest in the Anglican Church in North America. After eight years with InterVarsity Graduate and Faculty Ministries at Vanderbilt and The University of Texas at Austin, she now serves as co-associate rector at Church of the Ascension in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. She writes regularly for The Well, CT Women (formerly her.meneutics), and Christianity Today. Her work has also appeared in Comment Magazine, Christ and Pop Culture, Art House America, and elsewhere. She and her husband Jonathan have two young daughters.

Andy Crouch (MDiv, Boston University School of Theology) is executive editor of Christianity Today and the author of books such as Culture Making and Playing God. Andy serves on the governing boards of Fuller Theological Seminary and Equitas Group, a philanthropic organization focused on ending child exploitation in Haiti and Southeast Asia. He is also a senior fellow of International Justice Mission's Institute for Biblical Justice. His writing has appeared in Time, the Wall Street Journal and several editions of Best Christian Writing and Best Spiritual Writing. Crouch served as executive producer for the documentary films Where Faith and Culture Meet and Round Trip, as well as the multi-year project This Is Our City, which featured documentary video, reporting and essays about Christians seeking the flourishing of their cities. He also sits on the editorial board for Books and Culture and was editor-in-chief of re:generation quarterly. He also spent ten years as a campus minister with InterVarsity Christian Fellowship at Harvard University. A classically trained musician who draws on pop, folk, rock, jazz and gospel, Crouch has led musical worship for congregations of five to twenty thousand. He lives with his family in Swarthmore, Pennsylvania.

Review

"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)

"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)

About this edition

• Publisher: IVP
• Publication date: 2016
• ISBN 10: 0830846239
• ISBN 13: 9780830846238
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 184