Liturgy of the Ordinary by Tish Harrison Warren

There were times when I wanted Warren to see more than what she saw. Jesus needed sleep he needed rest and time alone, he needed friends and community, and he could not have been born without a mother, and he could not have been a human without being a baby that had to be cared for. Our culture wants us to perform and rise above our human limitations, but part of what Christ’s incarnation should show us is that even Christ, the true God made man, was human and had human limitations. Humans are limited creatures and part of Christian discipleship is to embrace the limitations and live within them.

Rev Warren’s discussion about getting into arguments with her husband and needing to seek forgiveness, of having human limitations, of needing others, is part of what it means to be human. There is a lot of grace in the Liturgy of the Ordinary, and that grace is necessary and helpful ordinary life can be hard.

I picked this up as a counterpoint to William Berry’s Finding God in All Things, which is an exploration of Ignatian spiritual practice and very similar in broad theme. Part of that perception of widespread impact is that what is happening in the book is not actually new. So while I assumed going in that this book would be White, middle class, educated reflections, there was still some frustration with falling into stereotypes, and some pleasure when there were sections that I did not expect.Įven though Liturgy of the Ordinary is only three years old, it feels like so many people have previously read it that I can see its impact in other books and especially other articles. We are Christians, not abstractly but within our culture and experience. We cannot make broad reflections that our outside of our culture and experience because they are then not ours. Reflections like this are necessarily personal and encultured. One of my objections to the book is also one of its strengths. The general focus of the book is to seek to find God in the mundane because the mundane is where we are most of the time. Although I ended up cutting the section of my paper that I referenced Liturgy of the Ordinary because it was too long, it did help me focus the essay.

It seemed relevant at the time to the paper I was working on for my spiritual direction class. I also picked it up toward the end of the year when I was already way over my self imposed limit on reading more White authors. I know I shouldn’t do that, but contrarianism is part of who I am. I have been reluctant to pick this up because so many have recommended it.

Summary: Seeking spiritual depth from ordinary life.

Liturgy of the Ordinary by Tish Harrison Warren