The Magic of a Tuesday
This morning, I woke up. I had set out some gym clothes the day before that didn’t get used (#Monday). They stayed in a crumpled pile on my floor for 24 hours, because the more I walk around them, the more annoyed I am, and the more annoyed I am, the more I go to the gym. I put on the clothes, grabbed my husband and a water bottle and went to the gym. After an hour of sweat equity put into my body and my mental capacities (100 wall balls? Seriously?), I came home, showered, and readied myself for the day. This was all before my kids woke at about 7:15. It’s a normal Tuesday.
Before reading Contemporary Social Theory by Anthony Elliot, I had no idea that my regular, run-of-the-mill Tuesday morning routine had anything to do with society. But, “from a sociological perspective, routines might be regarded as the ‘social glue’ that holds together the flow of daily life.[1] I had no idea that there was such fascination with the mundane aspects of life and how that is mirrored in the organization of entire societal structures.[2]
The work of Anthony Giddens gets almost an entire chapter devoted to his ideologies surrounding structuration. Giddens argues that “Social structure, or ‘society’, is a constant product of our social activities – of our talk, our practices, our doings”[3] Well then I’m pleased as punch to find that any normal Tuesday in the Rouggly household is more than just rumpled gym clothes, constant cereal pouring, and endless lunch supplies.
The magic of a Tuesday sunk a little bones a little bit more as I read through the Liturgy of the Ordinary: Sacred Practices in Everyday Life by Tish Harrison Warren for my annotated bibliography due this week. She said, “We tend to want a Christian life with the dull bits cut out. Yet God made us to spend our days in rest, work, and play, taking care of our bodies, our families, our neighborhoods, our homes. What if all these boring parts matter to God? What if days passed in ways that feel small and insignificant to us are weighty with meaning and part of the abundant life that God has for us?”[4]
It’s easy to feel like my mornings don’t matter, and that I just need to get through them. But I realized today’s did. Today, I took care of my body, I woke up in a house I adore with a family I love even more. I fed my children and let them stay too long in their pajamas. I told my son as he left for school, “Remember that God loves you and so do I. Nothing you could ever do will ever make me stop loving you.” And it hit me today – I’m creating our social structure. I’m privileged to give my children stability and remind them that they are part of the social glue that holds the daily life in the Rouggly household together. And that one day, maybe my sons will be dads, and have regular morning routines in which they make lunches, and go to their gyms and let their own kids stay too long in their pajamas. I’m creating a social structure where my family knows that no matter what we do, be it little or big, nothing we can do will ever make God stop loving us. It’s was a magical Tuesday indeed.
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[1] Anthony Elliot, Contemporary Social Theory: An Introduction (Abingdon, Oxon. Routledge, 2014), 145.
[2] Ibid., 145
[3] Ibid. 149
[4] Tish Harrison Warren, Liturgy of the Ordinary: Sacred Practices in Everyday Life (Downers Grove, IL., InterVarsity Press, 2016), 22.
About the Author
Karen Rouggly
Karen Rouggly is the Director for Mobilization in the Center for Student Action at Azusa Pacific University. She develops transformational experiences for students serving locally, nationally, and internationally. She completed an MA in Intercultural Studies at Fuller Theological Seminary and is passionate about community development, transformational service and helping students understand vocation and service. Karen is also an active member at the Vineyard Church Glendora where she is a small group leader and serves on the teaching team. She is also a mom to two sweet boys, wife to an amazing guy, and loves being a friend to many.5 responses to “The Magic of a Tuesday”
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Karen,
Thanks so much for sharing your Tuesday morning reflections. I love how you made the connection with your “mundane” tasks and the creation of social culture for your family. Your connection of your life and the texts was very effective and very powerful. Blessings on you and yours as you continue to build the Kingdom within the Rouggly household, H
Thanks so much for your kind words, Harry! I am so grateful for how encouraging you are for all of us!
Karen, I love the way you are able to take such a complexity and make it personal. Your post caused me to pause and reflect on our own family’s social structure. Perhaps mornings spent too long in pajamas come to mean more than we know…
Thanks for the encouragement, Rhonda! I am grateful! And honestly, any chance I get to stay in my pajamas, I’m all for it! 🙂
It was great running into you the other day Karen. It’s one of those divine appointments and I’m blessed for it. Not to mention you helped me not be too stressed over some homework I thought required more than what the syllabus said.
Thanks for sharing Giddens with me. I guess I hadn’t read that far yet when we talked. I can add this person to the list of careful reading I’m going to have to do for my dissertation along with Maurice Merleau-Ponty and Pierre Bourdieu. I’m glad we share the same advisor because I know I’ll learn a lot from your own research on culture and contextualization of the gospel.
One of my goals for the dissertation is to use it as a springboard to open doors for me to talk to churches about how each of us can move the sanctification needle further by lovingly acting out our faith in the community. And this must be done in pre-reflexive ways; unconsciously and habitually doing good–very much the way we approach a chair or brush our teeth. How do we set up social structures in our church so that loving our neighbor, helping the poor, having civil discussions, etc. are all normal activities that don’t look out of place and/or coerced. Anyway, just some thoughts.