The Sacrament of Interruption

This small book embraces interruptions, small and large, as sites for the sacred. It teaches a small sacramental way of living by revisiting and reimagining the seven sacraments Roman Catholics enjoy. These ritualized way of looking at transitions enable a sacramental kind of life, while normalizing trouble and transitions. They ritualize and resacralize what has been desacralized and blown apart. When we embrace change and stop looking for or at the past with fear; instead of worrying what big bad will be next - another 9 - 11 or Sandy or Sandy Hook - or worrying about climate change''s nearly guaranteed enforcement of a new way of life - we enter these interruptions with hope. Instead of worrying what small event - traffic, lost passwords, mental congestion, overwork, family difficulties - will make 4 p.m. look too hard without a drink - we enter these interruptions with hope. The book is small because I was moved by former Eerdman''s publisher Jon Pott who said he wanted "fewer words," which articulate more, allowing St. Augustine to engage Brene Braun. (Christian Century, October 2015) Structured sacramentally in baptism, Eucharist and confirmation (the sacraments of initiation) and penance and anointing the sick (sacraments of healing) and ordination and marriage (sacraments of service), it imagines sacramental living as a kind of parabolic Pentecost. There we learn to find a way where there is no way and to allow ourselves to experience the wind as it blows, rather than the ground as it rigidifies. In addition to the sacramental structure and Pentecostal parabolic reliance, in which religious themes will emerge rather than be forced, the readers will find themselves plopped into ordinary life in the early 21st century. A sacrament is a visible sign of an invisible grace. This book is a guide to living towards the holy while drenched in difficulty.