Friends, I’d Rather Be Reading: The Delights and Dilemmas of the Reading Life is a visually beautiful book which is also a  thoughtful and endearing memoir written

by one who is completely in love with books. Author Anne Bogel, moderator of a  terrific website called Modern Mrs. Darcy https://modernmrsdarcy.com/ and who gives us the thoroughly convivial podcast “What Should I Read Next?”, has produced a volume that is completely irresistible to book enthusiasts. It is 100% book-nip. The first chapter, “Confess Your Literary Sins,” siphons you directly into its pages by revealing the reading indiscretions of bookworms both professional and amateur. This chapter is very, very funny, and makes one’s own reading foibles much more bearable.

Another excellent chapter is “Keep Reading.” This section is about the acknowledgments which are at the end of most books and which many (most?) readers skip entirely. I think that after you read this chapter your interest in a book’s acknowledgments pages will be heightened considerably.

In the chapter “The Books Next Door,” Bogle describes what it meant to her and her very young family to live adjacent to a library. Anne describes their deep attachment to the library, its people, books, and services, with so much heart that if I ever move again I am going to make it a requirement for my new home to be walking distance from a library.

There is plenty to enjoy about “I’d Rather Be Reading,” but what I appreciate most is that, in some C.S. Lewis-ian way, it gives us bibliophiles who are a little shy about our life-long obsession permission to admit that we, like Anne Bogel, are incurably smitten with books.

My friend Jean once told me about the time that she had come home after a full day at the clinic, then an hour’s drive to a hospital in the city to visit her daughter and her ill, newly born grandchild. The preemie boy, her only daughter’s only child, born to Nancy and Greg who were in their forties, was a complete surprise, an unfathomable blessing… and now, would he live?

When Jean turned into her driveway late on that full-mooned, humid, summer night, she was tired and discouraged. She looked toward her long-time home and saw an oddly shaped form hanging from the doorknob of her old, brick, country house. “Oh, bother – what now? Kids pulling pranks?” She sighed and opened the car door. As she wearily walked down the shadowy stone path, a sweet fragrance filled the air. She recognized the scent: “Plums!” she thought with surprise. “Has someone brought me some plums, God bless them?” From the path, she looked carefully at her moonlit door. Yes! Someone had left a paper bag full of plums hanging on her door handle.

With this sudden understanding, Jean’s energy returned. She walked quickly to the door and eagerly reached into the bag of fruit. Her hand found the smooth skinned, soft, fragrant fruit, and she immediately popped a plum into her mouth, remembering only then that she had eaten nothing since lunch. Now she stood there on the mat in front of her locked door eating plums, the spurting juice staining her mouth, her hands, and dripping freely to her feet on the welcome mat.

With the sticky, fragrant, red plum juice clinging to her from chin to toe, Jean let herself into the house. Hope, viscous and sweetly scented, filled her heart.

What comes to your mind when you read the word liturgy? The term unquestionably carries with it images of clerical vestments, brightly burning candles in sacred spaces, repeated prayers, and the fragrance of incense. The word liturgy also rings of church history. It has a backstory that includes the Protestant Reformation which saw the implementation of many changes in the church, including a massive revision of the liturgy. In her book, Liturgy of the Ordinary: Sacred Practices in Everyday Life (2016, InterVarsity Press), Tish Harrison Warren, releases the ancient word from its traditional roots and refurbishes the idea of the liturgy into a heartfelt pursuit of integrating Christ into daily activities. Warren, an Anglican priest, writes: “If I am to spend my whole life being transformed by the good news of Jesus, I must learn how grand, sweeping truths — doctrine, theology, ecclesiology, Christology — rub against the texture of an average day. How I spend this ordinary day in Christ is how I will spend my Christian life.”

In Liturgy of the Ordinary, Warren, whose childhood faith experience was in the Baptist tradition, freely declares her love of the Anglican church’s use of ancient liturgical practices. She also writes that she thoroughly enjoyed her time in seminary, which she describes as an interval of rigorous study and vibrant discussions. Moreover, it was in seminary that she realized the Christian life was not an odyssey to “get the right ideas in my head.” She eventually rejected the kind of Christianity which required that only her intellect be involved. She began to ask, “What would it mean to believe the gospel, not just in my brain, but also in my body?”

Drawing on James K.A. Smith’s book Desiring the Kingdom, Warren writes: “We are shaped every day, whether we know it or not, by practices — rituals and liturgies that make us who we are. We receive these practices — which are often rote — not only from the church or the Scriptures but from the culture… The question is, ‘What kind of Christian is our liturgy forming us to be?’ ” (29)

As she chronicles the events of a single day in her life, Warren shows in Liturgy of the Ordinary that several of her own quotidian routines and responses had become a liturgy adopted from the influences of the current culture rather than thoughtful actions originating from her life in Christ. The author candidly investigates her desire to check-in with social media before she gets out of bed, acknowledges her lack of patience in coping with the frustrations of having small children, and admits to her anger when events at home seem to conspire to disrupt her work schedule. Warren then invites the reader into this question: “Could these menial tasks and trials be the place where one exchanges a faulty liturgy for a better one?”

Throughout the book, the author unselfconsciously writes of her less than glamorous life as a parish priest and mother of two youngsters. As she describes her daily routines Warren employs various liturgical filters to view each activity: the rituals of standing, kneeling, bowing are used to observe the lowly act of brushing her teeth; the presence of scripture and communion are her frames for a meal of leftovers; the practices of blessing and sending come to her aid as she struggles to face the daily irritation of answering emails. By linking liturgical practices with common routines Warren offers a way to transfigure tedious occupations into meaningful actions

Liturgy of the Ordinary: Sacred Places in Everyday Life is not a How-To collection of guidelines, it is a What-If conversation starter for creative changes. What if we brought the liturgy of Sunday worship into our weekday world? What if the fragrance of brewing coffee were the incense that turned our attention to God? What if the ringing of our cell phone were a reminder to pray? What if Jesus took precedence in our regular rituals?

Warren tests the typical understanding of liturgy throughout her book. She asserts the power of liturgy to help reshape daily drudgery into the delight of a Jesus-glorifying life while also dispelling the stiff and formal aura that can surround the traditional notion of the liturgy. The reader’s opinion of what liturgy is and how it intersects with everyday routines is likely to be wonderfully challenged and beautifully changed after considering Tish Harrison Warren’s refreshing book, Liturgy of the Ordinary.