Uncommon Prayer: Prayer in Everyday Experience

by Michael Plekon

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 to understand different aspects of the Christian life as prayer, one encourages everyday life to be understood as carrying 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.

"Many books on prayer, even for a more academic audience, are rather thin on contemporary authors. This book does a fine job of looking carefully at a number of important, contemporary theologians (in a broad sense of this term) who write on this topic. This should be an important book for scholars, students, and thoughtful readers in the field of spirituality and spiritual theology. I think that many scholars and students in the various pastoral and practical theological disciplines would find it interesting and worth reading." —Alan G. Padgett, Luther Seminary
 

253 pages, Paperback

Published January 1, 2016

About the author

Fr. Michael Plekon is an American priest, professor, author, sociologist and theologian. He has published more than a dozen books, as well as hundreds of journal papers, book chapters and reviews on faith and holiness. His works include religious social history, social theory and its connections with theology, the works of Søren Kierkegaard, contemporary Eastern Orthodox theology and theologians of the Russian emigration and saints.
More recently, his research and publications explore persons of faith, seeking identity and God in spiritual journeys. He is also writing about persons of faith struggling for social justice and for ways of rediscovering holiness in ordinary life. He is especially interested in the encounter with God in the everyday.

Reviews

[John Coatney · Rating 2 out of 5]

Stopped reading; I was reading as part of a small group. The book was good for discussion, but I wasn't compelled to finish on my own once we moved and I was no longer part of the small group. My biggest issue, in a nutshell, is that he never really indicates what he means by "prayer," and this makes most of his commentary vague and inapplicable.