I recently read Tish Harrison Warren’s wonderful little book Liturgy of the Ordinary: Sacred Practices in Everyday Life. For her, the regular, mundane events of our daily lives are practices that shape our souls. She finds the spiritual significance of such apparently unpromising candidates as making the bed, brushing teeth, and losing keys. This post is about the last of those everyday events.

When she loses her keys, Tish begins with rational problem-solving. When she still can’t locate them, she proceeds to self-condemnation, then anger and blaming others. She searches frantically, then tries to regain her equanimity with self-talk and a quick prayer. Finally she lapses into despair. A little while later, she finds her keys under the couch.

We’ve all been there, losing perspective and panicking over some relatively minor aggravation. Warren points out that such events are more than minor inconveniences. They are apocalypses.

An apocalypse is not just an ancient literary genre characterized by extraordinary creatures, destruction, and divine intervention. The root word actually means “an unveiling or uncovering.” Warren explains this apocalyptic character of her lost keys as follows:

“In my anger, grumbling, self-berating, cursing, doubt, and despair, I glimpsed, for a few minutes, how tightly I cling to control and how little control I actually have. And in the absence of control, feeling stuck and stressed. those parts of me that I prefer to keep hidden were momentarily unveiled.” p. 52

I have such apocalypses regularly. Sometimes it’s about losing something, though losses usually don’t make me melt down to the extent that Warren describes. There are plenty of other situations that are more revealing for me:

  • The train from St. Louis to Chicago is running late and I might miss the train to Michigan. I tell myself that the worse result from not getting there in time would be that I would have to reschedule a few appointments tomorrow and spend the night in a hotel that Amtrak is paying for. Still I fret for hours (and end up missing my connection by 10 minutes). Apocalypse.
  • At my mom’s house, I want to use the kitchen sink but my mom is there. I wait impatiently, annoyed that she’s not moving faster. Truth be told, in my pride I think I’m more important than her and should have access to the sink whenever I want it. Apocalypse.
  • The stock market goes into free fall. I am concerned about my investment accounts. I spend way too much time checking the latest price of the stocks I hold. I tell myself that my security depends on God rather than on my account balance, yet I’m acting as if the opposite were true. Apocalypse.
  • I’m out in the yard when a young woman wearing a sleeveless blouse and short shorts strides by. I stop what I’m doing and watch her. What’s going on in my mind? I’m objectifying her. I’m evaluating her attractiveness, as if she is of greater worth if she is curvy and cute than if she is plump and plain. Apocalypse.

I can make excuses for each of these, saying that they are minor faults that don’t hurt anyone. Yet fretfulness and self-importance and greed and objectification hurt me and also affect how I relate to others. Better to do as Warren suggests:

“In these small moments that reveal my lostness and brokenness, I need to develop the habit of admitting the truth of who I am–not running to justify myself or minimize my sin. And yet, in my brokenness and lostness, I also need to form the habit of letting God love me, trusting again in his mercy, and receiving again his words of forgiveness and absolution over me.” p. 56

This twofold process–admitting how we’ve strayed and accepting God’s forgiveness–isn’t original with Warren. It comes from the time of confession found in many worship liturgies. This practice is essential to our spiritual, emotional, and relational well-being. It also prepares us for gratitude and praise. Thank God for ordinary apocalypses–when we respond with confession and trust, they are the means by which we’re being made whole.