Uncommon Prayer

Michael Plekon

Description

In Uncommon Prayer: Prayer in Everyday Experience, Michael Plekon wants to change our minds on what constitutes prayer. In doing so, he makes a theological claim that commonplace aspects of the Christian life are best understood as prayer, whereby encouraging us to see that everyday life carries religious import; prayer and the religious life are not restricted to special places and times, but are open to all believers at all times.

Plekon examines the works of diverse authors, including many who have challenged the status quo of institutional churches. He asks us to listen to what poets, writers, activists, and others tell us about how they pray at work and at home, with colleagues, family, and friends, in all the experiences of life, from joy to suffering, sadness to hope. Among them are Sarah Coakley, Rowan Williams, Heather Havrilesky, Sara Miles, Thomas Merton, Mary Oliver, Christian Wiman, Mary Karr, Barbara Brown Taylor, Dorothy Day, Maria Skobtsova, Paul Evdokimov, Seraphim of Sarov, and Richard Rohr. Plekon argues that prayer encompasses a much wider variety of activity than formal and liturgical prayers and that, by recognizing such aspects of prayer, the believer is made more receptive to transformative aspects of prayerful attitudes.

Sujets

• Religion
• Christianisme
• Christian Living
• Philosophie et théologie
• Sarah Coakley
• Richard Rohr
• Christian liturgy
• Mary Karr
• Spirituality
• Prayer
• Christianity
• Mary Oliver
• Dorothy Day
• Thomas Merton
• Rowan Williams

Informations

• Publié par: University of Notre Dame Press
• Date de parution: 15 septembre 2016
• Nombre de lectures: 1
• EAN13: 9780268100032
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 2 Mo

Extrait

Uncommon Prayer
MICHAEL PLEKON
Uncommon Prayer
PRAYER IN EVERYDAY EXPERIENCE
University of Notre Dame Press
Notre Dame, Indiana
University of Notre Dame Press
Notre Dame, Indiana 46556
www.undpress.nd.edu
Copyright 2016 by University of Notre Dame
All Rights Reserved
Published in the United States of America
Names: Plekon, Michael, 1948- author.
Title: Uncommon prayer : prayer in everyday experience / Michael Plekon.
Description: Notre Dame : University of Notre Dame Press, 2016. | Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2016023749 (print) | LCCN 2016024400 (ebook) | ISBN 9780268100001 (hardcover : alk. paper) | ISBN 0268100004 (hardcover : alk. paper) | ISBN 9780268100018 (pbk. : alk. paper) | ISBN 0268100012 (pbk. : alk. paper) | ISBN 9780268100025 (pdf) | ISBN 9780268100032 (epub)
Subjects: LCSH: Prayer-Christianity.
Classification: LCC BV210.3 .P55 2016 (print) | LCC BV210.3 (ebook) | DDC 248.3/2-dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2016023749
ISBN 9780268100032
This paper meets the requirements of ANSI/NISO Z39.48-1992 (Permanence of Paper) .
This e-Book was converted from the original source file by a third-party vendor. Readers who notice any formatting, textual, or readability issues are encouraged to contact the publisher at [e-mail] .
CONTENTS
List of Images
Acknowledgments
ONE
Introduction: Prayer in Many Places
TWO
The Prayer of Theologians and Others
THREE
The Prayer of a Hermit
FOUR
The Prayer of Poets
FIVE
The Prayer of Forgetting and Remembering
SIX
The Prayer of Darkness
SEVEN
The Prayer of Care for Those in Need
EIGHT
The Prayer of Pirogi Making and Other Food Adventures
NINE
The Prayer of the Classroom
TEN
The Prayer of One s Life
ELEVEN
The Prayer of Contemplation and Action
TWELVE
Conclusion: The Prayer of Incarnation
Notes
Index
IMAGES
Sarah Coakley
Rowan Williams
Heather Havrilesky
Sara Miles
Thomas Merton
Mary Oliver
Christian Wiman
Mary Karr
Author s prayer list
Barbara Brown Taylor
Mother Maria Skobtsova
Dorothy Day
Pirogi making
Seraphim of Sarov
Paul Evdokimov
Richard Rohr
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I want to thank the many friends and colleagues who helped with this book and made possible its publication. First of all, as in the past, I am grateful to Matt Dowd, editor at the University of Notre Dame Press. He believed in it and worked hard to see it through the publication process. I also want to thank the reviewers who assessed the book and offered suggestions for revision, as well as the board and director of the press. Several friends were kind enough to read through and offer comments on early drafts-Jonathan Montaldo, Robert Thompson, John Bostwick, John Hotrovich, and Jennifer Zamansky. Others, too many to be named, were patient enough to listen to me talk about what I was trying to do here. But among them I want to mention colleagues in ministry H. Henry Maertens, Alexis Vinogradov, John Frazier, Nicholas Denysenko, William Mills, and Seraphim Sigrist, along with my spouse, Jeanne Berggreen Plekon. Regula Noetzli of the Charlotte Reedy Literary Agency and Keelan Pacot of Grove Atlantic enabled permission for the use of poems by Mary Oliver. The photographs, which enable you to encounter the faces of the writers we listen to here, were made possible by many of the writers themselves. Sarah Coakley, Heather Havrilesky, Barbara Brown Taylor, Christian Wiman, Richard Rohr, Rowan Williams, and Sara Miles were kind enough to respond to my inquires, allowed use of images and text, and encouraged me. Thanks go to Paul Pearson of the Thomas Merton Center and Phil Runkel of Marquette University Library and the Dorothy Day archive for use of images of Merton and Day.
There are many others who participated in some way to this book s appearance. I am grateful to my colleagues in the Department of Sociology/Anthropology and former students at Baruch College of the City University of New York, who figure in one of the chapters. I also want to acknowledge the members of the community of the parish of St. Gregory, my church home, who are prominent in one chapter here, as well as the members still living and departed of Trinity Lutheran Church, Brewster, New York, who figure in another chapter. If I started to recall all those from other parishes, from the Carmelite order, from my life who taught me to pray and prayed with me and for me, this brief acknowledgment would become a map of my life. So I will conclude with my departed father and mother, who prayed with me at church and before bed every night and especially in their very lives. They somehow knew that there is no part of life that is not a place and time of prayer.
CHAPTER ONE
Introduction
Prayer in Many Places
Religion and Reality
Religions and religious people often disagree with each other, sometimes even violently. In recent years we might be led to believe that there is nothing but dispute and divergence among religions and their members. Stephen Prothero wrote an entire book emphasizing this. 1 There is a tendency to accept, respect, tolerate other traditions in our time, and perhaps this leads some to claims that all religions are the same, that we all have the same God. Anyone teaching or studying world religious traditions in a comparative way cannot help but recognize really striking convergences, as well as equally powerful differences. Some are not surprising at all, for example, that religious traditions concern themselves not just with doctrine or teachings, statements about God, gods, or the origin and end of the world and personal lives. They also have a great deal to say about just how we live those lives, that is, about ethics-what we should and should not do.
Religions generally consider what is taught and believed to be real, for example, how the world came to be or how our own lives will end. Perhaps the metaphors and symbols used are not always to be taken literally, in every detail. Yet behind them, through them, something real and important is being communicated. Alexander Schmemann, the well-known Orthodox priest and theologian, once told a friend that God was as real and as near as the blades of grass upon which they were sitting in a field. And if God were not that real and that close, he said further, then God was of no use. The mystic from the middle ages, Julian of Norwich, saw something similar. Jesus showed her to be holding in the palm of her hand something small, small as a hazelnut. When she asked what it was, the answer the Lord gave was, It is all that is made. In this tiny round object Julian understood three things: God made it, God loves it, God keeps it-everything, all of creation. This little hazelnut-like sphere signified for Julian the immense love God had for each of us and everything in the world. 2 Julian would also say, There is no wrath in God, only forgiveness and love. This vision so permeated her outlook that she could famously say, All will be well, and all manner of things shall be and all will be well. 3 In our own time, writer and monk Thomas Merton had God say: Mercy within mercy within mercy. I have forgiven the universe without end because I have never known sin. 4 With his consistent stress on compassion, forgiveness, and tolerance, Pope Francis has become known as the pope of mercy. 5
Beyond such examples, hearkening back to an often heard line, We all have the same God, at least in the three great monotheistic traditions of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, such a statement, at root, is true, given what these traditions say and believe about God. And in all three, God, for all the commandments, punishments, and wrath, nevertheless is at heart a loving God, one who creates and forgives endlessly. The first and greatest of God s names is that of mercy- al Rahman al Rahim , the gracious, the merciful. Not a few religious writers and visionaries have likewise only been able to experience a loving, forgiving God. This they are not speculating about. It is for real.
Anthropologist Tanya Luhrmann s well-received study directed attention to how belief intersects with people s lives in very powerful ways. 6 She examined evangelicals and Pentecostals intense experiences of the presence and action of God in the world around them and in their own lives. As an anthropologist, she takes seriously the psychological, political, social, and cultural consequences of faith in peoples lives. As with the thinking and acting of any people or tribe, she affirms the powerful reality of what these evangelical and Pentecostal Christians believe and experience in many different ways, from explicit prayer to other events and encounters in their day-today lives.
This book takes for granted Luhrmann s ethnography of faith and prayer, and also uses the work of sociologist Nancy Ammerman and her associates, as well as Diana Butler Bass in charting religion in everyday life. 7 You will read about how people experience communion, encounter with God, and more that is usually considered prayer in less than traditional or typically religious ways. Following Ammerman s lead, there will be stories from people who pray, this being one of her major means of getting at the everyday experience of faith.
Prayer Everywhere
In earlier books, I looked at the search for God, identity, and meaning, a life of holiness and wholeness. I examined the spiritual journeys of a number of writers, theologians, pastors, activists, and others, focusing on a range of examples of the search for holiness. 8 In some cases, the figures and their experiences were very much within classical lines, while in others, they were less than typical, sometimes rather unusual. Over the course of these studies, I wanted to make the point that the call to holiness is for all, that holiness does not require perfection and does not exclude one s humanity, and that failure, doubt, questions, and