Finding God in the Verbs: Crafting a Fresh Language of Prayer

Prayer can be formulaic, inauthentic, and boring in a thousand ways, but Isbell (Leading Quakers) and Bill (Mind the Light), both Quakers, take to heart a charge to refresh prayer as expressive language and as a means to speak with and about God. Accessible theology underlies their eminently practical approach, asking pray-ers—those who pray—to take stock of their own assumptions and preferences in developing a way to pray. Both authors give workshops, so the book is chock-full of practical, though-provoking exercises that will help the reader develop not only facility with language but a deeper conception of the Divine and greater self-knowledge. The many examples the authors generate use everyday language, providing patterns and friendly encouragement for the task of prayer. The authors deliver on the subtitle’s promise; this is a fresh, useful approach to a subject much written about. Readers will learn to pray not perfectly but personally. (Mar.)