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Prayer: Keeping Company with God #2
Prayer in Practice
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
July 6, 2025
The first thing to know about prayer is that we don’t know how to pray, according to the Dominican Simon Tugwell. This should give us a spirit of humility about our prayers. Paul said it: “we do not know how to pray as we ought, but that very Spirit intercedes with sighs too deep for words” (Rom 8:26).
Tugwell recommends many short prayers thoughout the day, rather than long prayers. Many of these will be mental prayers. This is a way of fulfilling the admonition to pray without ceasing.
Most of us find ourselves being distracted when we pray. Tugwell says we have distracting thoughts when we’re in conversation with other humans, but this doesn’t stop our conversation. (As I recall, it was Merton or Nouwen who advised making the distractions the focus of our prayers.)
If we become bored by our prayers, we should assume they bore God too!
Incidentally, if you’ve never read Tugwell’s book on the beatitudes, you should. Mr. (Fred) Rogers said it was one of the most important books he read!
Tugwell recommends many short prayers thoughout the day, rather than long prayers. Many of these will be mental prayers. This is a way of fulfilling the admonition to pray without ceasing.
Most of us find ourselves being distracted when we pray. Tugwell says we have distracting thoughts when we’re in conversation with other humans, but this doesn’t stop our conversation. (As I recall, it was Merton or Nouwen who advised making the distractions the focus of our prayers.)
If we become bored by our prayers, we should assume they bore God too!
Incidentally, if you’ve never read Tugwell’s book on the beatitudes, you should. Mr. (Fred) Rogers said it was one of the most important books he read!
September 3, 2010
This is a great book about Christian prayer. It is full of brilliant insights like: "Prayer is like sleep. Necessary but unable to be taken by storm. Just like we fall into sleep, we may fall into prayer." I enjoyed the 'eastern' sensibility of this book, discussing as such the purpose of Christian meditation and the 'how to's" with clear simplicity, without talking down to the reader. Every page is full of profound realizations about man's relationship to God such as, that the sacrifice of Jesus allowed every man to speak to God, whereas in the old Testament only prophets spoke to God. Also the story is full of funny anecdotes about the prayer styles of numerous saints and nuggets about such eclectic uses of prayer as exorcisms and in combination with the gift of speaking in tongues (An interesting look at WHOM the gift of tongues addresses.) Excellent book. Simple yet profound.
August 3, 2014
love this book, very uplifting I have a better prayer life after reading this
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews