Liturgy of Life

Over at the Washington Institute’s website, Madison Perry is writing about a topic that is getting a lot of play these days – the liturgies that shape our lives:

Rather than painstakingly lay out how work’ is a predatory liturgy that seeks to devour all others, it could be better to consider the flip side. Perhaps work is a place where we can be trained to be speak better and to give our limited time its proper value and to love worthy objects with a greater intensity. A day with my father, a long-term attorney in a small town, is a lesson to this end. The days are filled with clients to advise personally and professionally – to love. There is a specialized vocabulary about contracts and evidence that my dad masters in order to tell his clients’ stories with integrity. In his jam-packed days, time is precious because there is too little time to give himself away to so many people.

And so our occupations can intensify our vocabularies and loves in a direction that is good.

The working definition of “liturgy” that I use is slightly different than Perry’s (I think, following James K.A. Smith, of liturgies as habits that shape us in “ultimate” ways–for good or not for good), but the piece is worth a read.