Tapestry of Wisdom: Prayer, a curated collection
How do we pray…
As the seasons of our life shift?
When we aren’t sure if we believe in God?
When we are angry? Brokenhearted?
When our belonging in a community has been revoked?
Beloved pastor Eugene Peterson encouraged us, “Prayers are tools not for doing or getting, but for being and becoming.” As you follow the threads of wisdom in this post, and listen for resonance in your own soul, may you find comfort in this quote from George Bernanos, “The wish to pray is a prayer in itself.”
Spencer LaJoye speaks here about their song (and prayer!), “Plowshare Prayer.” “It was the grandest and rawest outcry from my own soul at a pivotal moment.”
I was feeling guilty about not praying enough when I crossed paths with a teeny, tiny book called “Praying Our Experiences: An Invitation to Open Our Lives to God,” by Joseph F. Schmidt. Schmidt helped me recognize I am praying all the time; it just doesn’t look the way I was taught prayer should look. “I believe praying one’s experiences is exceedingly common among people who, ironically, not understanding it to be prayer condemn themselves for not praying.”
When prayer began to feel particularly challenging for me, as my own faith was shifting, I was drawn to the art of the blessing. A blessing gifts us with words to hold us as we cross a threshold, whether planned or unexpected. Two writers drew me in with their articulation and modeling of this art form,
In her book “The Cure for Sorrow: A Book of Blessings for Times of Grief,” Jan Richardson writes, “When God’s providence seems most difficult to find, a blessing helps us perceive the grace that threads through our lives.” Richardson lost her husband unexpectedly during a routine medical procedure. In this book, she gifts us with language for the landscape of grief and intimately attests to its complexity—the ways it shows up in the everyday-ness of loss, in conversations with those around who aren’t sure how to be with us, and in the most intense heartache and pain.
I was also captivated by Irish poet John O’Donohue the first time I heard him interviewed on the On Being podcast with Krista Tippett. His book, “To Bless the Space Between Us: A Book of Blessings,” offers occasion-specific blessings rich with imagery and grounded wisdom. O’Donohue explains the particular gift of the art form, “A blessing evokes a privileged intimacy. It touches a tender membrane where the human heart cries out its divine ground. In the ecstasy and loneliness of one’s life, there are certain times when a blessing is nearer to us than any other person or thing. A blessing is not a sentiment or a question; it’s a gracious invocation where the human heart pleads with the divine heart. There is nothing more intimate in a life than the secret under-territory where it anchors.”
