Little Liturgies

I've been thinking about little liturgies. You know, the prayers and blessings that sprinkle our days.

"Liturgy" means "the work of the people". And it refers, of course, to the work of the people in worshipping God, primarily as we meet together as the church. (Maybe even "exclusively" and not "primarily". I'm not sure, to be honest.)

"Liturgy", then, rightly brings to mind the official liturgies of Sundays and feast days that define our weeks and months and years.

But then there are the smaller habits of prayer that develop differently in each household. These aren't official liturgies, but they serve similar functions in most of our lives, and many of them are utterly commonplace and utterly good.


In our home, it's  the "I love you" and "Jesus bless you" at school drop-off.

It's  "The Lord bless you" "And keep you!" that my husband and I exchange as he leaves for work

It's the "Guide us waking, oh Lord, and guard us sleeping . . ." that we pray with the kids each night



I suppose, in the end, that I'm talking about habits, but particularly those habits that tie us to God and to each other at the same time.

I imagine each Christian household grows its own little liturgies as the years roll on. What are the little liturgies in your home?


Peace of Christ to you,
Jessica Snell

Book Notes: "Mudhouse Sabbath", by Lauren Winner

I know it sounds strange that one of my requirements for recognizing good writing is "It's easy to read", but what I mean by that is not "it's simple" or "it's mindless", but rather that "the author has done her work."

It is hard to explain concepts clearly and hard to write clearly enough that the reader can follow after you without misconception. But good authors do that work. Good authors do the work for the reader.

And Lauren Winner is one of those writers.

"Mudhouse Sabbath", by Lauren Winner, is about the Orthodox Jewish customs that she learned in her youth, reinterpreted through her newfound Christianity. She says that Christians have a lot to learn from their Jewish neighbors and she managed to convince me.

She examines customs surrounding the Sabbath, hospitality, mourning and many others, telling stories and elucidating traditions along the way. It's really written for Christians, I think, but anyone interested in religious traditions would find richness here, I think.

Each chapter examines a different custom. I especially loved her take on mourning, which is something we either address badly in the modern Western world or (worse still) fail to address at all. I think she is right in saying that the Jewish traditions here, which involve a LOT of communal support of the bereaved, have a lot to teach us.

Here are a few quotations that I really loved. In the chapter on prayer, Winner says:

"What I say to Meg is this: Sure, sometimes it is great when, in prayer, we can express to God just what we feels; but better still is when, in the act of praying, our feelings change. Liturgy is not, in the end, open to our emotional whims.  It repoints the person praying, taking him somewhere else." (pg. 61)

And in the chapter on aging, she says:

"I do not look after Mom because it is consistently easy and delightful. I do it because I am obligated. I do it because of all the years she looked after me. This is a sort of holy looking-after. It is not always fun, but it is always sanctifying.  And in this way, perhaps, caretaking is something of a synechdoche of the spiritual life. Most good and holy work (like praying and being attentive and even marching for justice or serving up chili at the soup kitchen) is sometimes tedious, but these tasks are burning away our old selves and ushering in the persons God has created us to be." (pg. 97)

Emphasis mine in both cases.

I read this quickly because it was so well-written, and it's stayed with me because it actually has a lot of substance.  Recommended.


Peace of Christ to you,
Jessica Snell


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Weekend Links: Ebola, Hermeneutics, and more

Some good weekend reading from around the web:

"AAFP Member Describes His Harrowing Experience Overcoming Ebola":

I remember very clearly saying to the nurse standing beside me while being treated for Ebola, "I can't breathe. I am sick. I have no reserve. I don't know how much longer I can keep this up." I was working really hard to breathe. I said, "I don't know how you are going to breathe for me when I quit breathing." (There were no ventilators available.) (Elwa Hospital) had only had one Ebola survivor up to that point and he had never been really sick. So everyone I had ever seen with symptoms like I was exhibiting had died.

"Hermeneutics with Samuel Johnson":

. . . meaning comes from the whole and informs each part. No individual bit, no matter how much you clarify it, can in isolation deliver the work's meaning.

"Finding Faith Through Liturgy":

Grandeur hooked me, but it wasn’t what made me stay. The initial mystique of traditional churches may enchant or repulse us — but we need to look deeper. The aesthetic of traditional churches appeals to me, but the substance behind it anchors me. It accommodates my doubts and eases my grief.

"Advent Books - Links & Recommendations" - This is a terrific list of resources put together by the folks over at Lent & Beyond, and well-worth checking out.

"Science Fiction at Its Best: 'Interstellar' Review" - I'm linking to this solely for this paragraph, which I love:

Good science fiction has never been about rocket ships and lasers, but about people. It’s about using alien settings to tease out the nuances of truth that we can’t look at head-on because they involve such quotidian realities that they fade into the background if we look right at them. Great science fiction though marries that universality with stories about grand ideas, meditations on who and what we are as a species and what our future holds. Good science fiction uses the trappings of the future to tell stories of the present, while great science fiction is one layer more: telling stories of the future that resonate in the present even as they map the future. The difference between the good and the great is the difference between simile and metaphor.

Weekend Links: Lent, Psalms, and more!

A few articles for your weekend reading pleasure:

"The Work of the People":

Habits and disciplines are formed through repetition. Thus, the ritualistic and repetitive nature of Christian liturgy allows us to engage God in a similar manner from Sunday to Sunday and day to day. This repetition transforms us because it is habit forming. In short, our relationship with God becomes habitual and through this habit God does his work in us as we habitually come to him. 

"Lent for a forgetful person":

But I have been happy and perhaps a little startled to find some things that work for me. Things that, even almost three weeks into lent, have helped to keep it forefront in my mind, even in the middle of every day life.

"David and Saul": Usually I excerpt a quotation from the articles I link to, but I'd be tempted to excerpt the entire last half of this one, both because it's short and because it's excellent. So just go read it - read it because of what Anne has to say about the Psalms.

"504 Meeting at the Junior High": Yes, this:

The trickiest part about having a child who is fine ninety five percent of the time, is that I begin to forget why we have all the structures in place. I begin to second guess. I am tempted to do away with the parts of the structure that are time or money consuming to maintain, things like therapy. Everything feels good, but then I have a 504 meeting where I have to list out the official diagnoses. Then I remember that these people in the room and the psychiatrist who signed the diagnosis paper, would have no hesitation in bumping me if they felt that Gleek did not need the resources they are providing. The fact that they recognized Gleek’s need helps me to know I’m not just making this up. I would like it to all be my imagination, because then I could just stop imagining it, problem solved. Instead I get to walk alongside my girl while she treks her way through a long and difficult growing process.

Peace of Christ to you,
Jessica Snell

Before it's too late . . .

. . . happy feast of the Transfiguration! Reading today's gospels I was struck, as always, with the image of Christ standing between the Law (Moses) and the Prophets (Elijah). It's so striking, that picture of him, the fulfillment of all the law and the prophets had to teach us.

And again with the idea of Moses standing, finally, in the promised land.

And then noticing the writer saying that then Moses and Elijah disappeared, and the disciples saw Jesus alone.

Christ alone. The fulfillment of all hope.

I think the Transfiguration, of all the major feasts, might provide the most striking picture to the mind. God is an artist.

Peace of Christ to you,
Jessica Snell

Links! many, many mostly-unrelated things

I recommend this post by Fred Sanders on Cyrus the Great, which, in addition to explaining why that ancient king is important and providing one more good apology for classical education, includes many interesting quotations from Dorothy Sayers. ("Sayers" = must-read, yes?)
If you, like me, have a secondhand bread machine sans manual, you might find this post from the Hillbilly Housewife as helpful as I did. She goes through - in great and welcome detail - exactly how to use and figure out the quirks of your new-to-you appliance.
If you know who Fitzwilliam Darcy and Mark Darcy are, and if you have seen the Harry Potter films, you just might find this imagined conversation as funny as I did (it had me laughing out loud). (Also, I want to see the movie they're promoting. The trailer looks great.)
Speaking of Harry Potter, I'm pretty sure I need a "Make Love, Not Horcruxes" t-shirt.
I wrote earlier about using coconut oil as a moisturizer. If you want to read more about something similar, check out Kelly's post about using jojoba oil. She adds a "steaming" step to her routine, which sounds interesting.
Here's a neat blog post passed onto me by my sister-in-law called "Liturgy of the Home", comparing the rhythm of the author's home to the liturgy of the church, and looking at a few of the connections between them.
I really like this hairstyle tutorial (I'm wearing my hair this way right now, in fact!). It's quick and easy, but it looks very elegant.
This post, by a mother who has recently lost her son, is amazing and terrible and sad and all about the love of God. I don't have better words to describe it, but go read it. And pray for her and her husband, please.
Emily has a post about making your own bouillon which is intriguing.

I hope this week's links didn't give you too much whiplash! Not many of them are very related, but hopefully they provide you some good reading.
Peace of Christ to you,
Jessica Snell