A selection of original blessings for the home - praying through your home and neighbourhood will make a difference. When we invite God into our everyday living space we invite God to participate in the little things of our life, the humdrum and the ordinary, even the boring. Those things probably won't suddenly be transformed into amazing spiritual experiences but there will be a difference.
This little book includes ideas for enhancing your personal prayer time and ideas for groups and prayer days.
Mary writes, 'I believe that conversation, both listening to and talking with God, is as vital as breathing and that prayer is a creative expression of communication which enhances and nurtures a closer relationship with God.'
Thomas Merton's classic study of monastic prayer and contemplation brings a tradition of spirituality alive for the present day. But, as A M Allchin points out in his Introduction to this new edition, Contemplative Prayer also shows us the present day in a new perspective, because we see it in the light of a long and living tradition.
Merton stresses that in meditation we should not look for a 'method' or 'system' but cultivate an 'attitude' or 'outlook': faith, openness, attention, reverence, expectation, trust, joy. God is found in the desert of surrender, in giving up any expectation of a particular message and 'waiting on the Word of God in silence'.
Merton insists on the humility of faith, which he argues 'will do far more to launch us into the full current of historical reality than the pompous rationalisation of politicians who think they are somehow the directors and manipulators of history'.
In the Celtic way of prayer, the divine glory was intertwined with the ordinariness of everyday events like the patterns on carvings and in illuminated Gospels.
The modern prayers in this book beautifully recapture that tradition. They were composed in a small parish in the north of England to help individuals and groups rediscover the use of life's simple rhythms in their worship of the Eternal Presence.
Here are prayers for individual devotions and for corporate worship, as well as for quiet days and retreats.
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