Tuesday, July 20, 2010

How do you "pray?"

I'm setting that apart in quotes for a reason. Like me, you may not find most of the conventional ways to your liking any longer. What about liturgical prayer? I know that some use the Divine Office and/or lectio divina.

Are there ways you'd like to share with others? I'm sure there are readers besides me who would be interested.

Next "Raven's Bread" newsletter will be coming your way shortly. . .

So I'm adding a couple of blogs that Karen sent my way. I also submit Meg Funk's work because I like her common sense approach to life as seen through the Benedictine spiritual lense.

Right now I'm reading Field of Compassion: How the New Cosmology is Transforming Spiritual Life by Judy Cannato. (http://www.sorinbooks.com/) She had my attention from the opening paragraph:


This book is for mature readers only. It is not a self-help program. It is not
about building self-esteem. It is not intended to convince you that God loves
you. Neither is it an attempt to tell you about the many potentially deadly
crises that beset our world. . . The purpose of this book is twofold. First, I
want to invite you, my fellow human beings. . . to take up. . .the invitation to
transformation that will change the way our species lives. Second, I would like
to suggest ways that we may walk through this new terrain together. . .Karl
Rahner said that we are 'pressured' from within to evolve.

I like her approach and, for me, she delivers on her promise. She's one of the few popular religious authors I've found who is drawing on the work of Rupert Sheldrake and others interested in "resonant field" thinking. We live in a field of activity that forms us all the time. We change or transform because something enters the field and alters the energy that's there.
It's a "detractor" that sets up a new interest or center. The detractor goes by many names and shapes and forms. Religion often sees it as evil because it threatens to upset the way things have always been.

I'm rereading Martin Buber's I and Thou as part of my own research. He leaves me breathless at times with his grasp of Truth. I love reading a book where I just simply have to stop from time to time to allow its absorption to occur. There is no way I could have appreciated him in my 20's the way I can now. Along with it bought Kenneth Kramer's commentary which greatly deepens the reading for me.