liturgy of the ordinary sacred practices in everyday life

There is a whole genre of books about what I call the “spirituality of the ordinary.” (See a list of a few of them below, which we have for a limited time at 50% off.) We have them on a shelf within our section of books about spirituality but make no mistake: these are not books about meditation and mystical spirituality, not about deep reflection on Scripture or learning to fast or journal or walk a labyrinth. All of life is holy ground and all of life’s moments becomes doorways into deeper spirituality. With this approach, Barbara Brown Taylor’s book title – An Altar in the World – is literally true. Learning to live seamlessly with a sense of being in God’s world becomes a formative opportunity, an invitation to actually walk with God. They can actually find God right there in the lab, in the lecture hall, in the gym, in the library, while writing papers, doing projects, running experiments, planning presentations, taking tests. It all sounds rather heady, I suppose - developing the Christian mind, thinking Biblically, relating faith to learning, doing the work of being a Christian student - but here’s the thing: I tried to help them see that not only do they discover stuff about God’s world and ways as they explore God’s creation in their studies, and what they should be doing as agents of change within their professions or careers, but also that in so doing they can come to know God better. (Derek Melleby & Donald Optiz’s Learning for the Love of God: A Student’s Guide to Academic Faithfulness hadn’t been published yet but I was talking about that sort of stuff. I proclaimed to the students that they can take their faith into the classroom and learn to relate their deepest convictions about God’s principles to their academic work as they study for jobs that can become vocations.

I remember once years ago doing a workshop at Jubilee, the CCO’s college student conference, helping students learn to think Christianly about their studies it is a hallmark theme of Jubilee that God calls all of us to serve the Kingdom of Christ and the common good by being agents of God’s goodness and light in the work-world.

Liturgy of the ordinary sacred practices in everyday life