Most of us know the disappointment of a TV dinner that looks very different from the box’s advertisement. The packaging of our food creates fixed expectations, and when reality leaves us with a half-baked Salisbury steak the size of a tennis ball, we feel let down. Packaging matters in writing just as much as in food service. How you package the meat of your book, the point you want to make, affects its reception. The package isn’t just about book covers and marketing, it‘s about the words themselves and the tone you use to write. Our writing styles package our meaning, and the way you package the “meat” of your manuscript should match its content.
Anglican priest Tish Harrison Warren has authored a book called Liturgy of the Ordinary: Sacred Practices in Everyday Life that captures this best practice. Liturgy of the Ordinary explores how theology and tradition incorporate themselves into our day-to-day lives; it’s about rhythms, simplicity, and the sacred and ordinary walking hand in hand. To make her point, Warren doesn’t just write about these ideas, she embodies them in her style. She uses rhythm, juxtaposition, and simplicity to bring home her message.
Rhythm and Repetition
Warren employs a rhythm of repetition that mimics repetition in our day-to-day experience. Discussing a hunt for missing keys, she opines, “Outside the window, by my locked car, are naked trees and hopping sparrows, but I will not notice. Everything is worthless. The morning is ruined. Stupid keys. Stupid me. Stupid planet. Stupid universe.” Often, we get caught up in the search for the perfect word, thinking, for instance, “All I can think of is ‘ensconce,’ but ‘ensconce’ isn’t the right word and I used it in the last sentence.” Warren intentionally uses the same word over and over, creating a pattern of recurrence. So what makes this work?
The repetition here is not the inability to find a better word but the use of a frame to look at different ideas through the same context. The repeated word is not the meat of the sentence. In the rhythm she creates, we have a pattern that helps us compare disparate objects. Our brains are pattern-recognizing machines, and Warren engages this function of the reader’s brain.
We rely on the cadence of repetition to put us at ease. Our days, weeks, and months have a rhythm that we look for and cling to as a tool for navigating our lives. When we feel confident in a routine, it opens us up to more freely engage with other ideas around us. The first time you vacuum a new house, you’re probably thinking about the house, “Did I get that corner? Was that trim dinged earlier? Should we re-carpet this?” The fiftieth time you vacuum, your mind is probably elsewhere. Warren uses a building recurrence to relax her readers and take some of the intimidating edge off of her theological topics.
We find another example in Warren’s discussion of growing in holiness. “We can't be holy in the abstract. Instead, we become a holy blacksmith or a holy mother or holy physician or a holy systems analyst.” The idea of holiness is intimidating, but with her rhythm of repetition, Warren makes the subject more approachable. There is a pattern here we understand, one that helps us approach the more complex concepts she wants to address.
Warren applies this same tactic to incomplete clauses. Repeating simple phrases, she creates a lens that brings her ideas into focus. Addressing the incredible ordinariness of her life, she writes,
I’m living this life, the life right in front of me. This one where marriages struggle. This one where we aren’t living as we thought we might or as we hoped we would. This one where we are weary, where we want to make a difference but aren’t sure where to start, where we have to get dinner on the table or the kids’ teeth brushed, where we have back pain and boring weeks, where our lives look small, where we doubt, where we wrestle with meaninglessness, where we worry about those we love, where we struggle to meet our neighbors and love those closest to us, where we grieve, where we wait.
She repeats the phrase “this one” three times and the introductory “where we” eleven times. Again, the recurring clauses are not the main point, but the lenses to view it through. There would be no poetry in repeating “My life is normal” eleven times (without specifics of that normalcy). Warren, however, uses the lens of “where we” eleven times to show eleven disparate settings—all different, yet all tied together. And each repetition strengthens the image she presents. With the simplicity of her repetition, she puts our focus on the simplicity of her life. Once again, her packaging matches her message.
This tactic occurs again when Warren addresses rest: “I’d pray for my work and family, for decisions, for a meeting scheduled later in the day. But mostly, I’d invite God into the day and just sit. Silent. Sort of listening. Sort of just sitting.” By punctuating these modifiers as complete sentences, Warren forces us to slow down. She forces us to recognize the simplicity. She forces us to focus.
Theology and Toothpaste
Warren embodies her message by juxtaposing everyday images and theological ideas. This use of concrete images alongside abstract theology is another way to make theology less daunting, as well as drive home the everyday relevance of its principles. The images we are familiar with put us at ease and take some of the intimidation out of theological terms.
Warren writes, in anticipation of resurrected bodies, “Brushing my teeth, therefore, is a nonverbal prayer, an act of worship that claims the hope to come. My minty breath—a little foretaste of glory.” Later, she writes, “This is not the Valley of the Shadow of Death. This is the roadside ditch of broken things and lost objects, the potholes of gloom and unwanted interruptions.” She ties toothbrushing to our anticipation of glory and contrasts the Valley of the Shadow of Death with an inglorious ditch. This informal look at two vital doctrines invites us to enter into a discussion without fear. The ideas lose some of their mystic distance. If toothpaste and glory are related, perhaps I, too, can understand the beauty of our promised future.
Soup and Simplicity
Throughout the book, Warren pushes for simplicity. And to drive home her message, she packages her ideas in simplicity. As she walks us through the mundane activities of the day—from waking up to going back to sleep, and all of the lost keys, arguments, and taco soup in between—she does so with the assurance that this seemingly inconsequential details are actually the most profound liturgies of our lives. Warren cites Annie Dillard, who wrote, “How we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives.” She offers us a rediscovery of the beauty of the ordinary.
We cannot avoid ordinariness. Warren points out the time we are forced to spend in self-maintenance: “We spend most of our days and much of our energy simply staving off inevitable entropy and decay... Having a body is a lot of work.” She brings us back to the simplicity that's innate in every day and gives us the freedom to stop pursuing bigger and better. The freedom to sit, “Silent. Sort of listening. Sort of just sitting.”
By using her writing style to put flesh on her ideas, Warren creates a thoughtful and hopeful book that captures the essence of a liturgy-filled life. Her packaging matches her message and strengthens her audience’s ability to connect with her ideas. Embracing the spiritual nature and importance of the seeming monotony of our lives, she gives us the gift of simplicity.
Callie Johnson works as Editorial Assistant at Kelli Sallman Writing and Editing with a bachelor’s degree in Theatre Arts and Creative Writing from Calvary University. She previously interned with Kelli for two years, working as proofreader and copyeditor on several manuscripts. Her strange obsessions include kerning, East Coker, and the sound of cows chewing.