This short book challenges the reader to be the type of person who cheers others on and encourages the good we see in them, rather than one who prefers to point out the real or perceived negatives in others. As one who naturally leans the way of the evaluator at home (yes, that's part of my role as a parent and homemaker, but I can swing too far that direction), I want to become better at being an affirmer.
p. 47, It seems to me that few, too few, of us honor one another. We are too interested in our own welfare, our own successes, our own achievements.
p. 48, Real affirmers are always searching for ways to improve their hearing. Evaluators are always talking.
p. 64, What would happen to our churches, or to the body of believers, if we decided to zipper our mouths against negative, hurtful, or egotistical pronouncements and give ourselves to the exquisite, rewarding task of affirming?
The Christmas Pearl, written by Dorothea Benton Frank
It's been decades since 96 year old Theodora has experienced a Christmas like the ones of her childhood, filled with kindness, excitement, and festive traditions. This year her extended family, a group defined by their dysfunction and hostility toward each other, is gathered under one roof. It could be a disaster, but some Christmas magic changes everything.
Liturgy of the Ordinary: Sacred Practices in Everyday Life, written by Tish Harrison Warren
This book is an encouragement to find the sacred in the mundane, to worship God in the way we view and go about our daily activities. For me, it's also a way to better understand a faith tradition that's different than my own.
This book is an encouragement to find the sacred in the mundane, to worship God in the way we view and go about our daily activities. For me, it's also a way to better understand a faith tradition that's different than my own.
p. 21, We tend to want a Christian life with the dull bits cut out.
Yet God made us to spend our days in rest, work, and play, taking care of our bodies, our families, our neighborhoods, our homes. What if all these boring parts matter to God? What if days passed in ways that feel small and insignificant to us are weighty with meaning and part of the abundant life that God has for us?
p. 27, My morning smartphone ritual was brief - no more than five or ten minutes. But I was imprinted. My day was imprinted by technology. And like a mountain lion cub attached to her humans, I'd look for all good things to come from glowing screens.
Technology began to fill every empty moment in the day. < snip > Throughout the day I fed on a near-constant stream of news, entertainment, stimulation, likes, and retweets. Without realizing it, I had slowly built a habit: a steady resistance to and dread of boredom.
p. 30, In church on Sunday we participate in a liturgy - a ritualized way of worship - that we repeat each week and by which we are transformed. < snip > Even those traditions that claim to be freeform or non-liturgical include practices and patterns in worship. Therefore, the question is not whether we have a liturgy. The question is, "What kind of people is our liturgy forming us to be?"
p. 31, Examining my daily liturgy as a liturgy - as something that both revealed and shaped what I love and worship - allowed me to realize that my daily practices were malforming me, making me less alive, less human, less able to give and receive love throughout my day. Changing this ritual allowed me to form a new repetitive and contemplative habit that pointed me toward a different way of being-in-the-world.
p. 45, Similarly, when we denigrate our bodies - whether through neglect or staring at our faces and counting up our flaws - we are belittling a sacred site, a worship space more wondrous than the most glorious, ancient cathedral. We are standing before the Grand Canyon or the Sistine Chapel and rolling our eyes.
But when we use our bodies for their intended purpose - in gathered worship, raising our hands in singing or kneeling, or, in our average day, sleeping or savoring a meal or jumping or hiking or running or having sex with our spouse or kneeling in prayer or nursing a baby or digging a garden - it is glorious, as glorious as a great cathedral being used just as its architect had dreamt it would be.
p. 54, When the day is lovely and sunny and everything is going according to plan, I can look like a pretty good person. But little things gone wrong and interrupted plans reveal who I really am; my cracks show and I see that I am profoundly in need of grace.
But here's the thing: pretty good people do not need Jesus. He came for the lost. He came for the broken. In his love for us he came to usher us into his foundness and wholeness.
p. 72, We must guard against those practices - both in the church and in our daily life - that shape us into mere consumers. Spirituality packaged as a path to personal self-fulfillment and happiness fits neatly into Western consumerism. But the Scriptures and the sacraments reorient us to be people who feed on the bread of life together and are sent out as stewards of redemption. We recall and reenact Christ's life poured out for us, and we are transformed int people who pour out our lives for others.
p. 76, I can get caught up in big ideas of justice and truth and neglect the small opportunities around me to extend kindness, forgiveness, and grace.
p. 84, Biblically, there is no divide between "radical" and "ordinary" believers. We are all called to be willing to follow Christ in radical ways, to answer the call of the one who told us to deny ourselves and take up our cross. And yet we are also called to stability, to the daily grind of responsibility for those nearest us, to the challenge of a mundane, well-lived Christian life.
p. 85, Peace takes a whole lot of work. Conflict and resentment seem to be the easier route. Shorter, anyway. Less humiliating.
p. 108, The practice of liturgical time teaches me, day by day, that time is not mine. It does not revolve around me. Time revolves around God - what he has done, what he is doing, and what he will do.
p. 117, My best friendships are with people who are willing to get in the muck with me, who see me as I am, and who speak to me of our hope in Christ in the midst of it. These friends' lives become a sermon to me. I don't mean that we give each other pat answers or cheap pep talks - few things are worse than receiving a neat little packaged sermon after we've poured our our fears or embarrassments to someone. Instead, we hold up the experiences of our lives to the Word of truth.
p. 125, We are drawn to those we find lovely and likable. Yet those Jesus spent his time among - and those most drawn to Jesus - were the odd, the disheveled, and the outcast. Those who were winning at life saw no need for this life-disrupting Savior. The people of God are the losers, misfits, and broken. This is good news - and humiliating.
God loves and delights in the people in the pews around me and dares me to find beauty in them.
p. 132, Christians are singing people. From ancient monks chanting the Psalms to Wesleyan hymnody, music has always been a way for the church to hone its theology and practice prayer with artistry and beauty. On every Sunday in every corner of the earth you can find Christians singing. From Gregorian chant to African-American spirituals to acoustic worship bands to Syriac chant to East African kwaya, we hear music echoing from every gathered community of Christians.
p. 136, There 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.
p. 140, 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.
p. 142, My willingness to sacrifice much-needed rest and my prioritizing amusement or work over the basic needs of my body and the people around me (with whom I'm far more likely to be short-tempered after a night of little sleep) reveal that these good things - entertainment and work - have taken a place of ascendancy in my life. In the nitty-gritty of my daily life, repentance for idolatry may look as pedestrian as shutting off my email an hour earlier or resisting that alluring clickbait to go to bed.
p. 152, About one third of our lives are spent in sleep. Through these collective years of rest, God is at work in us and in the world, redeeming, healing, and giving grace. Each night when we yield to sleep, we practice letting go of our reliance on self-effort and abiding in the good grace of our Creator. Thus embracing sleep is not only a confession of our limits; it is also a joyful confession of God's limitless care for us. For Christians, the act of ceasing and relaxing into sleep is an act of reliance on God.
The Master Puppeteer, written by Katherine Paterson
Tension between fathers and the sons who don't meet their standards, a city that's starving to death, a bandit who robs from the rich to feed the poor, a famous puppet theater with a demanding master, and the significance of friendship. I read this to Tyler for school and he'd always ask me to read one more chapter.
The Vanderbeekers of 141st Street, written by Karina Yan Glaser
Faced with the shock of their lease not being renewed, the Vanderbeeker kids are desperate to find a way to stay in the only home they've ever known. It's them and the Harlem neighborhood they're deeply involved in against their reclusive, unfriendly landlord. I didn't realize until after reading this book that it's the first in a series, so I plan on reading the others.
Warriors Don't Cry: The Searing Memoir of the Battle to Integrate Little Rock's Central High, written by Melba Patillo Beals
The way our country treats its citizens can be absolutely appalling at times, including when a handful of black students were chosen to integrate an all-white high school in the 1950s. The violence and harassment they and their families were subjected to because of their skin color was completely unacceptable. Yet they chose it day after day after day so other kids wouldn't have to, for future freedom. The author was one of those students.
p. 3, Black folks aren't born expecting segregation, prepared from day one to follow its confining rules. Nobody presents you with a handbook when you're teething and says, "Here's how you must behave as a second-class citizen." Instead, the humiliating expectations and traditions of segregation creep over you, slowly stealing a teaspoonful of your self-esteem each day.
p. 95, I felt proud and sad at the same time. Proud that I lived in a country that would go this far to bring justice to a Little Rock girl like me, but sad that they had to go to such lengths.
p. 224, I pause to look up at this massive school - two blocks square and seven stories high, a place that was meant to nourish us and prepare us for adulthood. But because we dared to challenge the Southern tradition of segregation, this school became, instead, a furnace that consumed our youth and forged us into reluctant warriors.
** This post contains affiliate links and I'm grateful when people use them. **
