While I can (and often do) read a novel in a day, nonfiction takes me a lot longer. Liturgy of the Ordinary certainly did—it released in 2016, and mine is an advance reviewer copy …

There are several reasons for this. One is that I find I have to slow down for nonfiction—I can’t devour good nonfiction in a day the way I devour a great novel. I also find that nonfiction tends to speak to us in different seasons of life. If I’m trying to read a book in the wrong season, it’s like trying to build a snowman in midsummer: I might be willing, but there is just nothing there to work with.

Liturgy of the Ordinary was like that. It’s a book to be read slowly and savoured, not devoured in a day. Ironic, given it’s structured around the activities of a typical day.

Different people will probably read different things into the book (isn’t that one of the brilliant things about writing?). My view is that the overarching theme is that most of us do live ordinary lives … and that’s okay. That’s what God has called us to. That’s how we are to honour God, in the ordinary.

Warren says:
"I’m living this life, the life right in front of me. This one where we aren’t living as we thought we might or as we hoped we would."

(Actually, that makes sense. Ordinary is the opposite of extraordinary. If we were all pastors of mega-churches or world-famous evangelists or sought-after preachers, those things wouldn’t be the extraordinary. They’d be the ordinary, and we’d all be longing for what we now disparagingly call ordinary).

When Warren refers to liturgies, she isn’t just referring to the worship practices of traditional churches. She’s talking about our everyday liturgies … our habits and traditions:

"Examining our daily life through the lens of liturgy allows us to see who these habits are shaping us to be, and the ways we can live as people who have been loved and transformed by God."

She confronts and challenges our subconscious views, our desire to get rid of the boring stuff to live a thrilling, edgy kind of faith. She worries that we’re addicted to novelty and stimulation rather than actively seeking solitude and silence, as Jesus did. She challenges us to be content in all circumstances, even dirty dishes and unmade beds and lost keys. She challenges our impatience, our desire to be happy and fulfilled now, our never-ending quest to control our time and get to the end of the to-do list.

She quotes Dorothy Bass in Receiving the Day:
"We come to believe that we, not God, are the masters of time. We come to believe that our worth must be proved by the way we spend our hours and that our ultimate safety depends on our own good management."

Guilty as charged … I have been tracking my daily mobile phone usage this year, and have discovered (!) that the days where I feel I’ve been most productive are the days when I’ve spent the least time on my phone (who knew, right?).

Finally, Warren challenges us to rest. She points out that while evangelism has produced many positive changes in society (such as the abolition of slavery, the rights of women, and the protection of children), it has also embraced a “culture of frenzy and grandiosity” to the point where we’re all exhausted. We need to reclaim the Sabbath and actually rest.

"We don’t need to go all out, doing all the things, to get Jesus to show up. He’s already here. We just need to slow down for long enough to notice."

We need to rest. So if you’re stuck on the never-ending hamster wheel of doing, perhaps it’s time to pick up Liturgy of the Ordinary and allow yourself to focus on the small instead of the big, on being instead of doing.

Thanks to InterVarsity Press and NetGalley for providing a free ebook for review. And sorry for taking over six years to read it.

This book was provided through NetGalley. Warren is an engaging writer with practical tips for building sacred practices and space into ordinary life, particularly that of the domestic mother.

Tish Warren’s book is a reminder to us to find God in the every day, both the good and the bad, and not only find God on Sundays or in ministry. This is especially evident during COVID-19 when everything excess and routine that is deemed religious is stripped away, the ordinary becomes sacred moments where we struggle to make sense of God’s unfolding story and journey with us in the every day!

What a perfect book for this time of self-isolation! This book looks at the ordinary day to day rhythms and activities and finds a liturgical significance to them about using them to draw you deeper in relationship with the Lord. Simple, ordinary moments have the potential to be powerful.

I read just one specific chapter but found it helpful and the writing easy to read. An interesting topic that may will find helpful.

This practical and highly-readable book is designed to create our own liturgy out of everyday rhythms. The idea is to be conscious of our everyday existence, introducing tiny practical changes to make room for God. She goes through the ordinary things of the day like choosing to make your bed instead of rushing into work, as a discipline of finding order and leaning on Go).

It’s really well-written, sharp and brief; full of interesting quotes and thought-provoking practical ideas. Best for those who are busy with family and work and looking for brief ways to refocus.

*I received a no-obligation review copy. This is my honest review*

I've saved this one for a while now because I wanted to use it as a book club selection for our Wednesday night Bible study group. I love the format of this one. There's a weaving of the elements of worship and faith with everyday activities like doing laundry, looking for lost keys, and leftovers. Life, and church, can at times seem dry and mundane. This book helps us to see God in all of it. I loved this book and can't wait to discuss it!

Liturgy of the Ordinary Sacred Practices in Everyday Life by Tish Harrison Warren is a book that you can buy online or in stores. Published by InterVarsity Press, it's a book of great religious reflections starting from about our ordinary day.

It's impressive for profundity of feelings, thoughts, perception of religion, daily life, each chapter start innocently from a common action. And example? "Sleeping" and the author from this innocent word starts a digression about the meaning of sleeping time, the importance of it, the lack of sleeping time and why we lack sleeping time, how we can better our quality sleeping-time, sleeping seen as a sort od "death door".

What it is more beautiful of this book are the elevation of thoughts.
It's not just a self-help book but this book wants to be a moment for re-thinking our daily life.
The book is written in fact by a campus minister, an Anglican priest, friend, wife, and mother and you feel all her theological erudition when you read each word of each page.

At the end of the book, a special chapter called: "Discussion, questions and practices" suggestions and reflections for the readers.


Many thanks to NetGalley and InterVarsity Press for this ebook.

I grew up in a non-liturgical, pretty much non-denominational evangelical church. Our worship calendar pretty much matched the local school calendar: fall kick-off, Thanksgiving, Christmas, long winter, spring break/Easter, ramp up to summer, summer VBS, then back to fall kick-off. It wasn't until I married a man who had left the Catholic chuch that I began to study liturgical calendars to try to understand the traditions under which he was raised. Somewhere along the line, even long before our daughters were born, a very wise woman planted in me the vision to make every every part of my life holy worship rather than having a divided mindset of these things have a mundane focus and these other things have a holy focus. Because of her wisdom, I have sought every day to point my girls to Jesus one way or another, through every activity one way or another. She also pointed out to me that since all of creation reveals the character of God, quite literally everything means something, if we are open to listening to the Holy Spirit to find the meaning and to seek the character of God in that moment. This book further encourages that focus, and I really liked that!

To be honest, I was a bit skeptical of the author, who is ordained in the Anglican church. I come from a more conservative background that does not allow women to be in positions of authority over men. However, I found myself agreeing with much of her writing. Starting with the cover, the book takes the reader through a very mundane day from waking up to making the bed, eating leftovers, checking email, drinking tea, and so on, all the way back to bed in the evening. It is not a comprehensive analysis of every minute of the day, but it is enough to point the reader in the right direction of looking for God's character, looking for the Spirit, looking for Truth in even the most mundane activities, including brushing one's teeth. Our entire day, every day, is to be saturated and permeated with God, with His touch, with His influence.

This isn't pantheism, but rather, it is a pointing out of the obvious: Jesus spent more than three decades in mundane obscurity, and even before He had done anything spectacular, God declared that He was well pleased with Jesus. I loved that thought! I don't have to win stadiums full of people to Christ. But I do have to be faithful in the billions of small things that God has given me to do each day. And He will give me strength to do so as I seek Him in each of those small things. Although I already had an every-moment sort of focus, this book eloquently encouraged me to further develop that.

I gratefully received this book as an eARC from the author, publisher, and NetGalley in exchange for my unbiased review.

What a breath of fresh air! I've been very interested in the liturgical calendar lately (since I was raised in a Pentecostal denomination, we didn't really follow it) and this was a great resource on how the ordinary parts of our lives can be holy too. That's where the "good stuff" happens. I will be recommending it to friends!

Liturgy of the Ordinary: Sacred Practices in Everyday Life by Anglican priest Tish Harrison Warren was one of the most profound books I have read during the past year. I highly recommend it. Warren takes the reader through an average day full of ordinary tasks and in her eloquent prose shows the reader how God inhabits the routine tasks we do throughout our day from waking up, to checking your email, to a phone call to a friend, to drinking a cup of tea, to going to sleep. As Christians, we know that God is a part of all the moments in our lives, but most of us have probably never paused to see God routinely in these ordinary moments of our day. Warren writes, " 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." This is a book, in my view, for Christians of all denominations. Warren was raised in the Baptist tradition, and became an Anglican priest when she discovered that the ancient liturgical practices of the Anglican Church brought her closer to God. This love inspired her, I think, to look at a typical day as liturgy--to notice that every day is filled with holiness. This book encourages me to disconnect from distractions and from rushing through my day. I would like to share some portions of the book that will speak for themselves : " As busy, practical, hurried, and distracted people, we develop habits of inattention and miss these tiny theophanies in our day. But if we were fully alive and whole, no pleasure would be too ordinary or commonplace to stir up adoration. I have to learn the habits of adoration intentionally—to get out of my head and stop to notice the colors in my daughter’s eyes or the sound of rain on our back porch. Part of me—the Taskmaster General in my brain—can feel guilty about the moments when I slow down to enjoy the beauty around me. Tea and an empty hour can feel frivolous or frittering. I feel guilty about not doing something more important with my time, like laundry, balancing the checkbook, meeting my neighbors, working, volunteering, or serving the poor. Those are, of course, important things to do and good and necessary ways to use time. But it takes strength to enjoy the world, and we must exercise a kind of muscle to revel and delight. If we neglect exercising that muscle—if we never savor a lazy afternoon, if we must always be cleaning out the fridge or volunteering at church or clocking in more hours—we’ll forget how to notice beauty and we’ll miss the unmistakable reality of goodness that pleasure trains us to see." "These moments of loveliness—good tea, bare trees, and soft shadows—are church bells. In my dimness, they jolt me to attention, and remind me that Christ is in our midst. His song of truth, sung by his people all over the world, echoes down my ordinary street, spilling even into my living room." "A comprehensive study in the UK recently revealed that kids learn to rest in the same way they learn to walk, run, and talk.1 Rest takes practice. We need a ritual and routine to learn to fall asleep. Infants learn by habit, over time, how to cease fighting sleepiness. A regular bedtime, dim lights, bath time, book time, rocking—their brains begin to carve out a pattern, a biochemical path to rest. Without a ritual and routine, they become hyperactive and often exhibit behavioral problems. Adults aren’t much different. I’m certainly not. If rest is learned through habit and repetition, so is restlessness. And these habits of rest or restlessness form us over time. There is a profound connection between the sleep we get in our beds each night and the sacramental rest we know each Sunday in our gathered worship. Both our gathered worship and our sleep habits profess our loves, our trusts, and our limits. Both involve discipline and ritual. Both require that we cease relying on our own effort and activity and lean on God for his sufficiency. Both expose our vulnerability. Both restore." Thank you IVP Books and NetGalley for the ARC and for allowing me to review this stellar book.

Spirituality is not just something for the clergy or the spiritualists. Neither is it reserved only for the retreat centers and extraordinary circumstances. It is in fact very practical and can be implemented in ordinary spheres of life. It does not have to be difficult in terms of complicated rituals or requiring great theological training. Covering a 24 hour cycle, author Tish Harrison Warren shows us the way to instilling spiritual sensitivity through our daily activities. She helps us turn work into opportunities for worship. In doing so, she helps us avoid dichotomizing the sacred from the secular. She gives us eleven ordinary activities that we do going through the 24-hour clock framework. We begin with waking up in the morning after a night's sleep. She compares this with the act of baptism, how we are birthed from old to new. Each morning begins with dew of freshness. We see the world from this perspective and to realize that God is constantly forming us as new people each day to see fresh perspectives amid the routine and mundane. We avoid the tendency to cut out life and focus only on the exciting and sensational. Warren is convinced that theology practiced in the ordinary is essentially what the Christian life is about. Our ritual of making the bed reminds us that the things we do so regularly are habit forming. Just like many people whose lives have been changed by technology. They wake up and the first thing they check is their social media updates; their emails; or their messages from various apps. While convenient and fast, such digital devices have subversively lowered our tolerance for boredom. Just today, I read about the talk of a new law in France that gives workers the right not to connect or be contacted by their bosses during their break time. I think there is increasingly a need for some of us who tend to hog the digital waves. In brushing teeth, we learn about maintaining cleanliness and the way Christianity teaches the importance of caring for our physical selves. As we prepare to leave our houses, many of us drive. In our rush, there is always a chance of losing something such as our keys. We retrace our steps. We blame our carelessness. We get frustrated when the search is prolonged. Then and only then do we embark on prayer. It is a powerful reminder of how we take God for granted, leaving God out until we most desperately needed Him. We have such a patient and magnanimous God!


Eating leftovers can be an exercise of appreciating the overlooked nourishment. Like reading the Bible. Some of us tend to prefer reading the opinions of others instead of appreciating the Bible for itself. It's like preferring processed food instead of the natural thing. Warren shares about marital spats and the need to pass the peace in our relationships. Using emails can become a way in which we bless. Sitting in traffic can become a sacred way of resting and maintaining an unhurried posture. Calling a friend points us toward the need for community building. Drinking tea is an opportunity to savor the moment and to dwell in the sanctuary of rest. It also reminds me of the Sabbath keeping. Finally, we come back to the time to go to bed. An important tip is to learn to shut down our busy technology activities an hour or more before we sleep. Doing so not only prepares us mentally and physically, it is a good spiritual practice of recognizing our humanness. We are not computers that can easily shit off at the push of a button. We need time to warm down. Perhaps, that is something we all lack in our busy modern lives. We need to capture the essence of God's work amid the ordinary. Spiritual maturity is very much about seeing the miraculous among the monotonous; the extraordinary amid the ordinary; and the supernatural in our natural world.

Most importantly, we do not have to wait until a specific season like Lent before embarking on any spiritual disciplines. We can do it anytime. Warren has given us eleven ordinary moments of the day to help us do just that. we can surely find our own unique ways to practice the liturgy in what we call the ordinary day. This book is not just a call to work well, it is also an urgent plea for us to rest well. We learn that nearly 30 percent of adults in a National Health Survey tend to sleep less than 6 hours per day. That is why the lack of sleep is increasingly a public health concern. This is linked to our inability to recognize a deeper crisis: A spiritual crisis. For until we learn to see the liturgy among the ordinary, we will fail to recognize the disembodied states we have become in this complex and often busy world.

Tish Harrison Warren is a priest in the Anglican Church. She has spent seven years with the Inter-Varsity Graduate and Faculty Ministries and now works in the InterVarsity Women in the Academy and Professions.

Rating: 4.25 stars of 5.

conrade
This book has been provided courtesy of Inter-Varsity Press and NetGalley without requiring a positive review. All opinions offered above are mine unless otherwise stated or implied.