As a mum (and a single mum at that), a worker bee, middle aged, portly (polite way of saying chubby) woman, it’s hard in this modern world to feel seen. The people who are “seen” are young, thin, athletic, cool. They have rhythm (I suddenly stopped being able to dance seemingly overnight in about 2005). They could dress in a bedsheet and look amazing (whereas I can put on my best bib and tucker and look like I’m wearing a bedsheet).
To a large extent this is just the curated vision of them that is created just for social media. If you asked any senior schooler or young adult if they feel seen I wonder if they would reply in the affirmative. I suspect that they struggle to feel seen as well.
You know why? Because behind everything, we are supremely and dishearteningly ordinary. All of us. We carry our mediocrity like a hair shirt. It’s annoying. It chafes. And of course we know that God is the God who sees us. It’s one of the most beautiful parts of the Bible where, in Genesis 16, Hagar is in the desert where she has run to get away from her situation. She is met by an angel of the Lord “and She gave this name to the Lord who spoke to her: “You are the God who sees me,” for she said, “I have now seen the One who sees me.”” (v13)
That is great and true and beautiful. But when I’m madly packing lunches so the kids don’t miss the school bus I don’t feel particularly seen – or worthy of being seen. In a strange way, being seen by God (in my mind) is what happens when I’m meditating on his word, or in church, or bowing my head in prayer. But of course that is nonsense. It is this mundane and abjectly mediocre world we inhabit that Tish Harrison Warren speaks into in her book Liturgy of the Ordinary: Sacred Practices in Every Day Life.
Harrison Warren is an Anglican in the US and her church follows the fixed liturgy (which we would call “high church”) whereas I am an Anglican in Sydney, Australia. So our practices on a Sunday are different but what we believe, our theology, is the same. She only mentions the liturgy she follows on a Sunday a couple of times but it is not jarring or exclusionary. I felt very much at home in her descriptions of life and church.
Her book goes through all the moments of the day that are our most routine and most ordinary and encourages us to see God there – waking, making the bed, brushing our teeth, losing keys, eating leftovers, fighting with a spouse, checking email, sitting in traffic – all of these make up our day and are rarely the places we see God active and alive. They are the rhythm of our day, day in, day out – a liturgy of its own in our ordinary lives. Not moments where we should invite God in, but moments where God already is.
What really got me straight away was in Chapter 1: “But in those first delicate seconds, the bleary-eyed pause of waking, before tasks begin, before I get on my game, I’m greeted again with the truth of who I am in my most basic self.”
First of all, I love a beautifully written turn of phrase. Her prose is lyrical, almost dancing off the page. But at the same time it is real and grounded. I felt seen. The way that Harrison Warren spoke into my day was almost as if she was living my life.
With this phrase on page 2, I was locked in and hungry for the whole book. And it did not disappoint. Several highlighters ran dry as I read this superbly written book. It is deeply biblical, as it is wise and insightful, engaging and amusing. I genuinely felt closer to God for having read it and I go back to the highlighted portions often to re-remember her wisdom. It changed how I view my day, how I pray, how I read my Bible, how I see God (and see myself through his eyes) when I am at my most ordinary. It helped me make Hagar’s assertion real, and not theoretical. God does see me. All the ordinary and boring parts of my life do matter to God and I matter to God in those moments. All those moments are part of his plan for me (and you) and for the world, as you put all our collective boring and ordinary moments together. “What I in my weakness see as another monotonous day in a string of days, God has given as a singular gift.”
“Today is the proving ground of what I believe and of whom I worship.”
Five stars and highly recommend!!