We've been conditioned in our modern era to want the spiritual intensity of meals cooked by celebrity chefs. The 'Eating Leftovers' chapter leads to an interesting reflection that apart from occasional delicious feasts that wow our socks off, most of our home cooked meals are pretty basic, unremarkable fare, just like the grace of God appears to be. And denigrating our bodies by our mirrors is like running down a geographical sacred site. Using our bodies for false worship is akin to using consecrated bread and wine in a Wiccan goddess ceremony. She delivers some good, straight talk here.
There's a chapter on cleaning teeth and all those other mindless rituals which remind us that we're temples of the Holy Spirit. If you're like me, we're gently encouraged to welcome a bit of quiet sameness, and not to bolt away from mild boredom the moment we get a whiff of it. (That looks very familiar, before my feet hit the floor.) Then she realised that she'd set herself up to expect stimulation and entertainment from the get-go. In the chapter on bed making, she describes how she used to begin each day checking emails and social media. She presents fresh ways of thinking of all these moments, and I'll mention just a couple. It's structured in the form of a random, typical day from her calendar, beginning with waking up and ending with going to sleep again. Tish Harrison Warren sets out to explain how there's holiness and dignity in what we easily dismiss as mundane and tedious. Our lives are full of daily, monthly, seasonal and annual repetition.
I love its emphasis on rhythms, routines, cycles, rituals, or whatever else we like to call those things we repeat over and over again.
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