Liturgy of the Ordinary: Sacred Practices in Everyday Life by Tish Harrison Warren

Author:Tish Harrison Warren [Warren, Tish Harrison]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: religion, Christianity
ISBN: 9780830892204
Google: WTKhDQAAQBAJ
Amazon: B01N2GWBNM
Publisher: IVP Books
Published: 2016-12-02T05:00:00+00:00

Our Puritan craftsman could make a good chair and then leave it behind and move on to other tasks, rest, or be with friends. He did not face a culture of workaholism fed by a 24/7 world of connection and productivity. He did not have a smartphone. In our modern-day society, when we are blessed and sent to go do the work God has given us to do, we are sent into a culture where work can become all-consuming and boundless.

Our frantic work lives are disconnected from the rhythms of the seasons or day and night. We can work constantly. I can check my email twenty-four hours a day, rain or shine. We can feel like we are always at work, since work can follow us everywhere we go. With these changes come an increased temptation to make work and productivity an idol to which we’ll sacrifice rest, health, and relationships.

What might vocational holiness look like when technology can breed habits that feed an unhealthy and ungodly appetite for endless productivity? Like Martha, we can get too caught up in the kitchen, “anxious and troubled about many things” (Lk 10:41). It’s easy to be anxious and exhausted and miss the greater thing, especially when work is always at hand—literally, in our handheld device.

At the opposite extreme of workaholism, I can idealize and exalt escapism into a contemplative ideal. Even though I’d confess with the Reformers that a farmer’s work in a field is every bit as important and holy as a monk’s work in his cell, when it comes to my own mundane work I often want to escape to the monastic cell.

Whether it comes from my youth group drilling into me the importance of a daily quiet time, or my deep respect for monasticism and contemplative spirituality, I still imagine “meeting God” in a silent place, preferably outdoors by the ocean or a still pond, or in a cathedral with stained glass, with my Bible and journal and hours of stillness. That’s how I prefer God to meet me, not through a “ministry of competence” in checking my email. This longing for a contemplative ideal can be a particular burden for me as a young mom, in a home that is typically loud, active, sleepless, and filled with unending requests and needs.

I need a third way—neither frantic activity nor escape from the workaday world, a way of working that is shaped by being blessed and sent. This third way is marked by freedom from compulsion and anxiety because it is rooted in benediction—God’s blessing and love. But it also actively embraces God’s mission in the world into which we are sent.

A fourteenth-century monk, Walter Hilton, wrote letters to a layman involved in commercial and political life who wanted to enter contemplative life in a religious community. Hilton challenged this man to stay in his profession and to embrace “a third way, a mixed life combining the activity of Martha with the reflectiveness of Mary.” Hilton concluded that “such a spirituality needs to be consciously modeled and taught.

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