A Year of Living Prayerfully

 A Year of Living Prayerfully by Jared Brock

I honestly wasn't looking forward to reading this. My prayer life had been in a rut for some time and I figured it would be page after page of guilt, but no. It gave me a new perspective, a next step. I learned a great deal from it, and then, not wanting to forget the things he said that spoke so clearly to me, I read it again. Now I'm taking notes from all the parts I underlined. Half the book must be underlined by now and the next time I read it I'll probably underline the other half.

Jared Brock spent a year traveling the world and examining the prayer practices of various faiths. His goal was to learn what prayer meant to them and see how they communicated with God. As much as possible he wanted to experience prayer the way they did. He met with Hasidic Jews in New York, Quakers in Maryland, visited churches in Israel, stayed at a monastery in Greece and a Taizé community in France, and met the Pope at the Vatican. He offended North Korean authorities by not bowing to a picture of their leader, got caught in a hurricane at the end of the Camino de Compostela, visited a nudist church in Virginia, and asked the people at Westboro Baptist why they do the things they do. A roller-coaster of experiences.

His openness to new experiences and respect for people who believe differently than he does took him into situations and communities he might otherwise never have found and never benefitted from their teachings. The things he learned about silence and what it means to pray without words all came as a breath of fresh air to me. Here are some of his own thoughts and what he was taught by others that made, and continue to make, a difference for me:  

"God doesn't need our praise at all. We need it. We need the reminder."

"But prayer isn't a mind game; it's not a pseudo-scientific technique for achieving success in life. It's a deeply intimate form of communication with the Lover of our souls. Prayer isn't about self-improvement. We don't 'gain confidence'; we enter God's.....Prayer can get us through the fiery seasons of life, but it's not the prayer that gets us through - it's the God who's willing to carry us..."

"The third prayer practice is called examen,' he answered. 'You do it in the evenings, and it's a way of going back through your day and seeing where God was at work in your life. God is calling us all day, but we don't usually pick up. Examen is like checking voice mail."

"When I pray for salvation for people far from God, I imagine I'm bowing beside Jesus, and together we're presenting each precious name to the father."

"'I love God as much as the person I love the least.' This idea has really convicted me. I started holding my 'enemies' in the light, and now I love them."

"Fasting helps to express, to deepen, and to confirm the resolution that we are ready to sacrifice anything, to sacrifice ourselves, to attain what we seek for the Kingdom of God...Prayer is the reaching out after God and the unseen; fasting, the letting go of all that is seen and temporal."

A Year of Living Prayerfully is a lively story and an entertaining read, but more than that, it's a way of looking at prayer that has enriched my prayer life and deepened my relationship with God. 

Thank-you, Jared Brock.