prayer
Distracted by our own devices
I’ve become the sort of person who checks her phone constantly. I did not have to go this way.
by Amy Frykholm
Why the world needs Sarah Coakley
Coakley's kind of theology requires more than claims. It needs prayer.
Road: Essays by readers
In response to our request for essays on the subject road, we received many compelling reflections. Here is a selection.
How does one pray about cancer?
And what would happen if we didn't?
Dying faithfully
Whether we're dying or living with grief, there are faithful ways to do so. Marilyn Chandler McEntyre points us in the right direction.
Manufactured disruption: Why we keep checking our phones
We seem to always want something—anything—to happen. This has implications for the life of prayer.
by Jeff Vogel
Wearable worship
Azra Akšamija and Jo Murphy make art that points to things made invisible by fear—both our own fear and our society's.
Transformed
I love a good mountaintop experience. It’s a moment when everything changes. Insight flares up in the mind, illuminating the moment, the experience, the problem in a whole new way. You’re never quite the same again.
One such moment for me happened in prayer when I was on a three-day silent retreat.
Praying strings
I gobble books by musicians. Bruce Cockburn's memoir has more virtues than most.
by Brian Doyle
In the place of Jesus: Insights from Origen on prayer
Growing in prayer is not simply acquiring a set of special spiritual skills. It is growing into Christian humanity.
God’s longing
Micha Boyett writes tenderly about her Southern Baptist background, even as she grafts herself into a more liturgical expression of the faith.
Praying Jane Eyre
My student hasn’t allegorized Jane Eyre as Origen did the Bible. But she wrestles with passages until the text gives her a blessing.
What happens when people pray? Anthropologist Tanya Luhrmann
“When I started out I was focused on whether God was or was not out there. Now I am much more comfortable with ambiguity.”
by Amy Frykholm
Paging God, by Wendy Cadge
Wendy Cadge asks, What happens to religion when hospitals, many of them founded by religious groups, are secularized or otherwise constrained to serve patients beyond their founding communities?
reviewed by R. Stephen Warner
Samaritans at Heathrow: Encounters at an airport chapel
In the pristine white glare of the airport corridor, the linoleum became my prayer rug. But my solitude was short lived.
Answering with thanks
Deo gratias. That’s what the sign in my office says. It’s not fancy, just two words laser-printed on office paper and tacked up over the computer monitor so I can read it dozens of times a day.
The phrase—which means “Thanks be to God”—is the traditional Benedictine greeting that monks offer visitors.
Prayer in the whirlwind
The answer that comes out of a tornado is not the kind of answer we want.
by Rodney Clapp