Last week while I was logging a book in my Goodreads account, the book Liturgy of the Ordinary came up as a recommendation. I've never paid much attention to the books that Goodreads suggests, but for some reason, this one caught my eye (was I craving peanut butter and jelly?) I immediately searched for the book in Overdrive, and it was available (a rare treat!) I loaded it onto my phone to save for another day.
The next morning, I woke up really early... in a tent... because we were camping... and I needed to pee so bad, but I didn't want to wake up my family by unzipping the tent... so I laid in my sleeping bag and suffered for hours... and to burn some time (and distract from the pain in my bladder that may have resulted in permanent damage) I opened my Audible app and tried to listen to a book. The app wouldn't work, so I closed it and opened my Deseret Bookshelf app to listen to a different book. That app wouldn't work, either. I powered down my phone and turned in back on, trying both apps again. neither would work. I was frustrated. Then I remembered that I'd loaded Liturgy in my Kindle app, so I tried that, and it worked.
In hindsight, I might be bold enough to declare that God was pushing me to read Liturgy of the Ordinary. As I dove in, I realized quickly that it was exactly what I needed. The first few chapters were so heavy with messages that reached my soul. I spent as much time highlighting as I did reading.
The book was written by Tish Harrison Warren, a priest in the Anglican Church. She writes about the sacredness that can be found in the simple, mundane tasks we do every day. The timing of this book couldn't have been better. It addressed so many of the things that have been in my heart lately. It validated me, brought me new ideas, and made me feel capable. I've expressed lately how much I have enjoyed stepping away from regular church attendance during the pandemic. While that remains true (I've benefited from a degree of rest that has come with time away), this book helped me look forward to the day we get to return to worshiping as a congregation. And even though the author and I don't share the same religion, I find that I always learn more about my own religious practices and beliefs from learning about other's - for example, I now understand more about the sacrament I partake of each Sunday because of some of the passages in this book.
As I tried to sift through all of my highlights to find my favorite passages, I had a really hard time narrowing them down, so this is my lengthiest list of favorite quotes yet!
"God made us to spend our days in rest, work, and play, taking care of our bodies, our families, our neighborhoods, our homes. What if all these boring parts matter to God? What if days passed in ways that feel small and insignificant to us are weighty with meaning and part of the abundant life God has for us?" (p. 21)
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"If I am to spend my whole life being transformed by the good news of Jesus, I must learn how grand, sweeping truths - doctrine, theology, ecclesiology, Christology - rub against the texture of an average day.
How I spend this ordinary day in Christ is how I will spend my Christian life" (p.23)
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"In a culture that craves the big, the entertaining, the dramatic, and the shocking... cultivating a life with space for silence and repetition is necessary for sustaining a life of faith" (p. 34).
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"...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" (p. 34)
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"Daily life, dishes in the sink, children that ask the same questions and want the same stories again and again and again, the long doldrums of the afternoon - these things are filled with repetition. And much of the Christian life is returning over and over to the same work and the same habits of worship. We must contend with the same spiritual struggles again and again. The work of repentance and faith is daily and repetitive. Again and again, we repent and believe (p. 35).
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"We learn how our bodies are sites of worship, not as an abstract idea, but through the practice of worshipping
with our bodies."
Quoting the book
Earthen Vessels by Matthew Lee Anderson, "practicing the presentation of our bodies as living sacrifices in a corporate context through raising hands, lifting our eyes to the heavens, kneeling, and reciting prayers simply trains us in our whole person, body and soul, to be oriented around the throne of grace" (p. 43)
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During a time when she was having difficulty with prayer:
"In the midst of this, though words failed me, prayer without words - prayer in and through my body - became a lifeline.
I couldn't find words, but I could kneel. I could submit to God through my knees, and I'd lift my hands to hold up an ache: a fleshy, unnamable longing that I carried around my ribs. I'd offer up an aching body with my hands, my knees, my tears, my lifted eyes. My body led in prayer and led me - all of me, eventually even my words - into prayer (p. 46)
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"When suffering is sharp and profound, I expect and believe that God will meet me in its midst. But in the struggles of my average day I somehow feel I have a right to be annoyed. The indignations and irritations of the modern world feel authentic and understandable. I'm no Pollyanna. In a shipwreck, yes of course, "Be content." But the third day in a row of poor sleep and a backed-up sink? That's too much to ask. In
Letters to Malcolm, C.S. Lewis says that people are "merely 'amusing themselves' by asking for patience which a famine or a persecution would call for if, in the meantime, the weather and every other inconvenience sets them grumbling,"" (p. 54).
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..."failure in the Christian life is the norm. We - each and all - take part in gathered worship as unworthy people who, left on our own, deserve God's condemnation. But we are not left on our own," (p. 57).
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"We are a church, a community, a family. We are not simply individuals with our pet sins and private brokenness. We are people who desperately need each other if we are to seek Christ and walk in repentance. If we are saved, we are saved together - as the body of Christ, as a church. Because of this, I need to hear my forgiveness proclaimed not only by God but by a representative of the body of Christ in which I receive grace, to remind me that
though my sin is worse than I care to admit, I'm still welcome here. I'm still called into this community and loved.
Unkind and condemning thoughts tell me that God's love is distant, cold, or irrelevant, that I must prove myself to God and other people, that I am orphaned and unlovable, that God is tapping his toe, impatient with me, ready to walk out on me. These thoughts are loud enough that I need a human voice telling me, week in and week out, that they're lies. I need to hear from someone who knows me that there is grace enough for me, that Christ's work is on my behalf, even as I'm on my knees confessing that I've blown it again this week. We may confess quietly, even silently. But we are reminded of our forgiveness out loud, with standing and shouting. We need to be sure to hear it," (p. 58).
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"At the last supper Jesus tells his disciples to eat in remembrance of him.
Of all the things he could've chosen to be done "in remembrance" of him, Jesus chose a meal. He could have asked his followers to do something impressive or mystical - climb a mountain, fast for forty days, or have a trippy sweat lodge ceremony - but instead he picks the most ordinary of acts, eating, through which to be present to his people. He says that the bread is his body and the wine is his blood. He chooses the unremarkable and plain, average and abundant, bread and wine.
N.T. Wright reminds us that in the upper room, right before Jesus' death, he didn't offer his followers theories of the atonement or recite a creed or explain precisely how his death would accomplish salvation. Instead "he gave them an act to perform. Specifically, he gave them a meal to share.
It is a meal that speaks more volumes than any theory,"" (p. 62).
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"To have church, all we need is Word and sacrament. And both Word and sacrament are gifts given by Jesus, who calls himself the bread of life. The Word of God and the meal of God's people are intended to point and to make manifest the presence of Christ, who is both the Word and the bread, "(p. 64).
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"There are times when we approach Scripture... and find it powerful and memorable... There are other times when the Scriptures seem as unappetizing as stale bread. I'm bored or confused or skeptical or repulsed. There are times when I walk away from Scripture with more questions than answers...
How should we respond when we find the Word perplexing or dry or boring or unappealing?
We keep eating. We receive nourishment. We keep listening and learning and taking our daily bread. We wait on God to give us what we need to sustain us one more day. We acknowledge that there is far more wonder in this life of worship than we yet have eyes to see or stomachs to digest. We receive what has been set before us today as a gift," (p. 67).
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"God's timing is perfect... there is more happening while we wait than just waiting... God is at work in us and through us as we wait. Our waiting is active and purposeful," (p. 110) Quoted from a friend of the author,
"I always felt like I was waiting for the gift. But I've come to see that the waiting is the gift."
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"When we worship Jesus, we rely on millions of Christians over thousands of years whom God has used to bear witness to himself.
The only reason we know anything at all about Jesus us because his disciples told their friends, neighbors, and enemies about him, the apostles preached and wrote down his teaching and stories about him, and believers have carried his message everywhere they've gone in each generation. The Bible names this process
paradosis - the faithful handing down of the gospel, a process that is always embodied and that happens in real time with real people," (p118).
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"The church throughout history has been the world's leader in showing compassion for the poor, suffering, and rejected. It has brought us wonders of architecture, modern medicine, art, and higher education. Yet the church has also been a place of scandal and violence...
In the sin and failure of the church, we see the darkness and ugliness for which Christ suffered and died. But we also see the spectacular hope that in the midst of sinners, God can bring forth redemption, repentance, and transformation...
I contribute to the brokenness of the church. I have dealt wounds to others... every church leader and church member is, in no significant way, a failure. But... in this body of Christ, we find a place where we can be gloriously and devastatingly human. We find a place where we can fail and repent and grow and receive grace and be made new. Like a family - but even closer than a family - we can learn to live together, weak and human, in the goodness and transformation of God," (p. 123).
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"The people of God are the losers, misfits, and broken. This is good news - and humiliating. God loves and delights in the people in the pews around me and dares me to find beauty in them. To love his people on earth is to see Christ in them, to receive together Word and sacrament," (p. 125).
