Beeson podcast, Episode 413 Rev. Tish Harrison Warren October 9, 2018 Announcer: Welcome to the Beeson Podcast, coming to you from Beeson Divinity School on the campus of Samford University in Birmingham, Alabama. Now your host, Timothy George. Timothy George: Welcome to today's Beeson Podcast. "It is a quotidian mystery that dailiness can lead to such despair, and yet also be at the core of our salvation. We want life to have meaning, we want fulfillment, healing, even ecstasy, but the human paradox is that we find these things by starting where we are. We must look for blessings to come from unlikely, everyday places." Those are words of the wonderful writer Kathleen Norris, and they are part of the quotations given in a brand new book by Tish Harrison Warren called Liturgy of the Ordinary: Sacred Practices in Everyday Life, from InterVarsity Press. Today on the podcast, I have the privilege of having a conversation with Tish Harrison Warren, so welcome, Tish, to the Beeson Podcast. Tish H. Warren: Thank you. Thanks for having me. Timothy George: Now, let's begin by just having you introduce yourself. I want people to know several things about you, and you can amplify these. You are a writer in residence at Church of the Ascension in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. That's a church affiliated with the Anglican Church in North America. Your husband Jonathan also has a ministry position there. You have an MA from Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary. You've worked in student ministry. You're a mom. Amplify what I've said about yourself. Who are you, Tish? Tish H. Warren: Yeah, I am an Anglican priest. I'm ordained, and I was in campus ministry at the university for eight years, and then my husband and I came to Pittsburgh to serve as co-associate rectors, which is associate pastors, and we have been job-sharing that. My position recently changed, I mean, like three days ago. I've got a new position as writer in residence, so I'm still serving as a priest in the church, preaching, working with young adults, which is an age group I love, and I'm writing more. I'm starting a second book, and so the church kind of released me to focus on writing for a little while. That's brand new, but I have been serving as an associate pastor there for two years now, year and a half. Tish H. Warren: Yeah, so we live in Pittsburgh, but I am from Austin, Texas, and I am very much ... I'm a seventh generation Texan. My people were over there before it was Texas. Timothy George: Yeah, that's the Alamo time, isn't it, way back then? Tish H. Warren: Yes, yes, yes, yes. My mother would love for me to point out that my great-great-great grandfather was the last surviving veteran of the Texas Revolution. My father, I think his grandfather knew him or something, I mean, had met him. We were generationally connected to Texas becoming a state. My mom would be so proud that I'm remembering the [crosstalk 00:03:37]. Timothy George: Every time I go to Texas, I feel like I'm in a different country. There are these bumper stickers, "Don't mess with Texas" all over the place, and it's wonderful and winsome, and there's a great culture in Texas, and it's also a little bit formidable for us non-Texans to visit there. Tish H. Warren: Yeah, it is kind of its own culture. We're in Pittsburgh now, far from there, and I have two little girls that keep me busy, and write a lot, and yeah, that's what I do. Timothy George: Well, tell us a little bit about this book, Liturgy of the Ordinary: Sacred Practices in Everyday Life. By the way, this won the Christianity Today Book of the Year Award. Those aren't given out to just every book that's published. That's a very special distinction this book has, and it's worthy of it. Tell us a little bit about the book, how you came to write it. Tish H. Warren: Yeah, the book came slowly and came really from my own life and my own struggles. I grew up, I became a Christian fairly young. I took that very seriously, was very involved in my youth group, and in college kind of encountered a movement of younger evangelicals around issues of social justice and taking care of those in poverty and the marginalized. So I was deeply impacted by that part of kind of early, early kind of movement that became like New Monasticism and Red-Letter Christians. I'm not part of those groups, but was sort of in that same crowd and was discovering the writings of Dorothy Day and Rich Mullens and his work with social justice and folks in poverty and that are native people. I got really involved with a campus ministry group that emphasized being world changers, making a difference, doing big things for Jesus, and was exposed for the first time to some sort of ancient parts of faith, was reading St. Francis. Tish H. Warren: I think because of the scriptures, honestly, the biblical call to justice, it's hard to ignore God's call to the poor in scripture. Through that was kind of in a way that I had never been exposed to in the evangelicalism I grew up in, was wanting to sort of be radical and to question sort of the American consumer status quo, which I still want to do, but it was also kind of wrapped up in ideas of kind of being edgy, being radical, kind of rejecting a lot of culture. I worked with folks in poverty for many, many years, and then I ended up getting married. My husband was getting a PhD. We had two little kids. We were living in a mixed-income neighborhood, certainly, but I was so plunged into kind of the very ordinary challenges of taking care of children, trying to be faithful to Jesus, in a way that just didn't look big, didn't look grandiose, didn't look all that interesting. Tish H. Warren: I felt like I had no idea in that context what it meant to be faithful to Jesus. I didn't know how my very normal life, that didn't seem to be doing any kind of splashy ministry, was meaningful to God and was meaningful to Christian discipleship and to the church. And so I started reading all these books. There was a spate of books that sort of came out around this time about the ordinary and ordinary mattering, and they all kind of said, your ordinary life matters. But that wasn't enough for me. I wanted to know how and why. It wasn't enough to kind of just hold in my head as a mantra that my ordinary life matters, but I wanted to understand how and why. Tish H. Warren: Around this time, I wrote a piece for a blog called The Well, which is through InterVarsity Women an the Academy of Professions, called Courage and the Ordinary, about learning to have a life that looks a lot less risky, looks more normal from the outside, and how to be faithful in pursuing Jesus in the midst of that. The blog got huge, huge response. It went viral, and I realized this is a very common struggle. This is not something that only I wrestle with, this is something that I think many, many of us, even I think just on a human level, we kind of wrestle with, does my life have meaning when it looks small? Tish H. Warren: I wanted to sort of wrestle with how and why ordinary life matters, and for even just my own understanding in life and my own ability to keep going with these small children, I wanted to sort of wrestle with that. So that's where I started. Timothy George: Now, the title of your book is Liturgy of the Ordinary. We have a lot of listeners to this podcast, some of whom are very liturgical and others of whom don't even know what that word means. Kind of tell us what you mean by liturgy, because one of the interesting things about your book ... I want to get into this a little bit ... is how you connect these ordinary things to the life of faith, to the life of worship, to the liturgy. What is liturgy? Tish H. Warren: Liturgy is any kind of practice that we do as believers. I want to add one word to that definition, which would be any kind of formative practice. That phrase "formative practice", actually I'm stealing from James K.A. Smith. He talks about these are the things we do, the stuff we do together, the activities we do that form us and shape us. Typically, when liturgy is talked about, what we're talking about is the order of our worship service. As an Anglican, we have a liturgy that draws from very, very old, often thousands of years old, practices and prayers. We say the creed together every Sunday. We take the Eucharist, or some people call it the Lord's Supper, every Sunday. We have a time of preaching. We pass the peace. We stand up and pray together, and we stand up and say Psalms together. So we do the same thing every week. Tish H. Warren: I grew up in a Baptist church, and my church would certainly not have understood itself to be liturgical. It would have really, in some ways, found its identity against being liturgical. Nevertheless, I've said this before elsewhere, but if I happened to be sick one Sunday and had to stay home from church, I could tell you within about five minutes of accuracy what was probably happening in the church service at the time. We have an order of worship. We didn't call it liturgy, but it certainly was a liturgy. It was a formative practice we did together, something that we did that's a practice, that shapes and forms who we are and what we believe. Timothy George: Yeah, and you have applied this not just to what happens Sunday morning in church. Certainly that, but also the everyday practices of life, and your book is kind of organized in a very interesting way, a very readable way, I might say, around these things that probably every listener on this podcast does. Let me mention a couple of them, and maybe you can expound on them. Waking up in the morning, to start with, then making the bed and brushing your teeth. I have to say, I'm not a great maker of my bed, but I do try to do the other two things. You go through your day kind of like that, waking up, making the bed, brushing teeth, and you're drawing from these common everyday practices something that is deeply personal, that is liturgical in the sense that you've just described it, and that is formative for us. Would you expand on that just a little bit? Tish H. Warren: Sure, yeah. The structure of the book takes those things, waking, brushing your teeth, making your bed, and it pairs it with something that we do in our Sunday worship service, especially in my Sunday worship service as an Anglican. But I draw on some other traditions as well. I mean, there's Lutherans, I quote Orthodox priests, I have Baptist pastors in there. But I pair each kind of small activity with kind of clearly spiritual practice or worship practice, and I use each of them to discuss the other. For instance, in the chapter about brushing your teeth, I talk about what it means to be embodied, to have a body, and how that impacts our relationship with God, that impacts our theology, that impacts our Christian spirituality, and it impacts our worship together. Tish H. Warren: And so what does it mean to use our bodies in worship? What's it mean that our bodies actually are instruments of worship? The point [inaudible 00:13:26] of our body is to worship God with our body, and so how does that change everything we do with our body, from running to walking and sleeping, but also brushing your teeth and taking care of your body? I do that with each chapter, kind of take a moment in my life ... and by the way, all of these moments were actually things that happened to me in real life ... I kind of pause and say okay, what is happening here, what is the formation that's happening here, and connect that back to the kind of overt or more clear liturgy that we do on Sundays. Tish H. Warren: When I said before that part of me starting this book was I had a hunch that ordinary life mattered, but I was struggling to believe and understand that, and I needed to know how. The how for me came when I read James K.A. Smith's book, Desiring the Kingdom, and started thinking about the idea of formation. He would say we're formed not just by what we believe, but by our habits, our practices, that those shape what we love and desire. To use a very superficial example, you can believe that you should have less sugar in your life, because you're having too much chocolate, but if every single day you come home and the chocolate is sitting there in your refrigerator, and you reach for it almost by habit, you are pointing your heart in a direction, regardless of your belief. Tish H. Warren: We stand and we claim a creed every Sunday, "I believe in God the Father," but then we have all kinds of liturgies of our culture, liturgies of consumerism, of nationalism, of kind of autonomy, and we are shaped by those, reformed by those kind of liturgies. That "how" question of how does everyday life matter, part of my answer, not my whole answer, but part of my answer to that is well, it in part matters because that's the place of our formation, that's where we are becoming disciples in our ordinary life, in our actual life, starting where we are, like you read from Kathleen Norris. Tish H. Warren: When I pick up the idea of liturgy and try to connect it to everyday life, I'm wanting to look at how these things, the activities we do every single day, shape us in a certain way, make us certain types of people, make us who we are, and make our life what it is. Timothy George: I wish we had time on this podcast to go through every one of your chapters, because they're all very interesting in pointing out these everyday practices that have deeper resonance in our spirituality and in our life, but I do want to ask you about two or three of them. If we can go back to waking up, because that's the first thing most of us do, wake up everyday. Tish H. Warren: We hope so. Timothy George: We hope so. If we don't, we're in trouble, but baptism. What does waking up have to do with baptism, because that's how you tie that into the Christian life? Then I'll ask you about one or two other chapters, but talk about baptism, how important and formative that is in the way you understand it. Tish H. Warren: Yeah, I talk about ... The day starts with waking up, and the Christian life starts with baptism, in terms of our entrance into the church. I began there with the first chapter. I discuss both of those together. Well, I talk about several things in that chapter, but one of them is I talk about the baptism of Jesus. Something interesting to me about the baptism of Jesus is that it begins at the very beginning of his public ministry, and then there's this declaration of the Father's love. The dove descends, and there's a voice from heaven that says, "This is my beloved son." Tish H. Warren: I talk about how when we wake to another day, it's that beginning again. It's kind of like emerging from the waters of baptism, in the sense that we are starting anew, and that we begin in that place of belovedness. We begin from the first moments of our day as those who are marked by Jesus, marked by Jesus's baptism even. So we don't go about our day trying to get to the point where we earn belovedness. I mean, if God the Father was anything like me, he would have waited until Jesus did something really spectacular to show up and declare him as beloved son. But it was before he had done any public ministry. It's before he had fed 5,000, it's before he was crucified, it was before he was raised, and before any of that he was beloved, he was eternally beloved of the Father. Tish H. Warren: And so I talk about what it is to be rooted from our first waking moments in the love of God and how that changes the rest of our day. Instead of having to work towards God's belovedness, what it means to be rooted in that by something we did not do, but because of what Christ has done. But I also bring that into a practice of remembering your baptism. I think I quote ... it's been a while now, but I quote Martin Marty, who every morning- Timothy George: Yeah, you do. Mm-hmm (affirmative). Tish H. Warren: ... the first thing he does is remember his baptism. I talk about the way baptism changes us, it marks us. It's like I think about it when I'm talking to people in my church about it, sometimes I explain it as getting kind of like a big tattoo on your forehead. This has marked you as part of this covenant people of God. Waking up and remembering that mark that you have, remembering that tattoo on your forehead, changes how we understand our day and how we understand everything that we are about to walk into that day. Timothy George: Now, of course you're an Anglican, Martin Marty's a Lutheran. You practice the baptism of infants as a part of your liturgy, a part of your worship. Other Christians are Baptistic, Pentecostal maybe, they don't practice infant baptism in the way you do. But I think what you're saying about baptism has an application across that divide, let's call it, in the Christian way. Do you agree with that? Tish H. Warren: Absolutely, yeah, and I talk in the first chapter about our practice of baptizing infants, but I was baptized as a six-year-old, because I grew up Baptist, and so my baptism was credobaptism. I mean, to the extent you can credo as a six-year-old, but I did it, you know. I mean, in a very simple way, I did believe. I talk about my past baptism and sort of what it is for me to remember my baptism. I mean, we have different understandings, credobaptists and Anglicans have different understandings of what actually happens at baptism, because Baptists understand it more as a sign, as opposed to something where anything kind of spiritually is kind of cosmically, ontologically happening. Tish H. Warren: But we all do, there is some mystery where Paul says we died in Christ, and we're raised again, and so what does it mean to begin your day as someone who has died and who's been buried with Christ in baptism and raised again to eternal life? What does that mean to live a day as someone who is this side of death, is the other side of death? We've died in baptism, and we've been resurrected. So for all of us, whenever you were baptized, we certainly all do agree that we need to get baptized. Baptism is important and essential. And whatever that sort of means, an infant, an adult, we believe in baptism as a church, like universal. Tish H. Warren: I hope that the first chapter can apply, and I have a lot of friends who are Baptists, and my friend Karen Swallow Prior was one of the book's blurbers, and she's baptist, so they found enough in it that they could connect with, I guess. Timothy George: Sure. Okay, go to leftovers, eating leftovers, because you connect that in a very interesting way to the Eucharist, the Lord's Supper. Talk about that. Tish H. Warren: Yeah, I do. Part of it, you know, is leftovers is just about the most ordinary and boring thing that you could think ... well, I can think of, at least. But I do, I connect it to the Eucharist. I talk about the abundance of Jesus and what it means to meet Jesus in a meal. I do think that the fact that the central act of our faith, the thing that Jesus sort of left us with right before he died, was a meal, was people sitting down and eating together. That profoundly transforms every single meal that we eat in our life, even ones that are forgotten, which is the vast majority of our meals. Tish H. Warren: In there, I talk about the Eucharist and also the Word, which is compared to bread in scripture. Both Word and sacrament, so the Eucharist and the sermon on Sunday, but also the scripture. I mean, studying the scripture in the morning in your house or wherever you encounter the scripture. I talk about there's a few very terrible meals in my life that I remember, and there's a few very, very good meals in my life that I remember, but the vast majority of meals are forgotten. But they nurse us. That's how I'm alive, is all of those seemingly quiet and forgettable meals that brought me to today. I think it's the same with feeding on the Word of God. There's a few very, very bad sermons that I remember, and a few very, very good sermons, but most of the time the Lord feeds me a little light manna, like it's just enough for the day, and that's it. We get nourishment for another week. Tish H. Warren: But I also then, I connect that to the Eucharist. Specifically, I use that chapter to talk about justice around food and how the Eucharist calls us to a new kind of ethic, to take care of those that aren't taken care of, that are marginalized, that don't have enough. So I talk about food systems, and I talk about basically how my formation, going back to everyday formation, has sort of taught me to approach food as a consumer, as convenience, that I want whatever's convenient, whatever's easy, and not as someone who's really honoring the gift, the great gift that this is, that for a vast majority of humankind has not been a given, in the sense of having to work very diligently for. And how the Eucharist changes ... I mean, Eucharist literally means thanksgiving, and it changes our approach to life, from one of consumption to one of gift. Tish H. Warren: In doing that, in some ways it acts as a judge of my own sinfulness, my own selfishness, my own propensity to receive life as something that I earn or deserve, and not as a a gift from God that's to be then lavished on others. That chapter, it's I think one of the more complex chapters, but I talk about the way the Eucharist changes our ethics, basically. Timothy George: Right. Now, we're almost out of time, but I have to ask you about one more chapter. You sound like such a very nice person. I can't imagine you would ever get in a fight with your husband, but here is chapter 6 in your book, Fighting with My Husband: Passing the Peace and the Everyday Work of Shalom. Say just a brief word, if you can, about that. Tish H. Warren: Yeah. Well, I have had lots of practice on that, unfortunately. Yes, my husband's great too, but we have strong opinions. So yeah, that chapter is about, I can have these kind of big ideas about peace and peacemaking and pacifism, but actually reconciling and loving and forgiving those actual people in my everyday life, those closest to me, those in my family, close friends, my children, people I interact with all the time at work, that can be far more difficult for me. There's this great Peanuts cartoon. This isn't in the book, but I think it's Linus says, "I love mankind, it's people I can't stand." I think that we, not just me, but I think particularly in the age of the internet, there's a temptation to abstract, to not live in the concrete. Tish H. Warren: So we can kind of hashtag about justice and peace, but actually doing the hard work of loving, repenting, reconciling with those nearest to us in a day in, day out way that's never going to be seen or noticed, that's never going to be public in any way, is really difficult. But I think that is absolutely the place of our formation in and of our Christian life, but I also think it is part of God's cosmic grand work of peace in the world. I talk a lot in that chapter about kind of how our everyday small acts of seeking peace and reconciliation in that chapter, because there's this fight between my husband and I that I talk about, and what it was about to seek reconciliation. Tish H. Warren: In just this kind of everyday way, it wasn't a giant fight or scandal, but just this kind of everyday way that we learn to live with those around us is part of God's work as bringing peace to the world. You have to read the book to see that connection that I try to make, to sort make that connection through our small daily acts of peace-seeking and God's work in the world. Timothy George: The peace of the Lord be with you and also with you. Well, my guest today on the Beeson Podcast has been Tish Harrison Warren. She is an Anglican priest and writer in residence at Church of the Ascension in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. She's the author of a wonderful book, CT Book of the Year, Liturgy of the Ordinary: Sacred Practices in Everyday Life, from InterVarsity Press. I recommend it strongly to all of you, and thank you, Tish, for this wonderful conversation. Tish H. Warren: Thanks. Thank you so much. Announcer: You've been listening to the Beeson Podcast with host Timothy George. You can subscribe to the Beeson Podcast at our website, beesondivinity.com. Beeson Divinity School is an interdenominational evangelical divinity school, training men and women in the service of Jesus Christ. We pray that this podcast will aid and encourage your work, and we hope you will listen to each upcoming edition of the Beeson Podcast.