Article
The study of ancient liturgical materials is a potent antidote to the cultural captivity of Christianity in this or any other culture, for liturgies embody ancient wisdom. One of the most robust veins of wisdom lies in the structures and patterns of ancient prayers. At first blush, structures and patterns seem to have more to …
Book Chapter
Christian prayer can be carried out in the Eucharist: It is an action of the Christian community, a remembering of Christ, a social matter expressing the joy of what Christ has done for us in his sacrifice for us.
Book Chapter
There is no possibility of prayer unless it can be seen to make sense. Our first task, therefore, is to ask how it fits in with the rest of Christian belief. Dr. Harkness discusses prayer in several theological forms: 1. God is personal; 2. God is the all-wise and ever-present Creator and Ruler of the world; 3. God loves and cares for his human children; 4. God has good purpose and destiny for our lives; 5. God judges and seeks to save us.
Book Chapter
Prayer is not an attempt to fashion the world after our own desires, but is attentive communion with God conceived of as Love. Its end or goal is that men and women shall realize and be enabled to express their God-intended potentialities as they are being “made toward the image of God,” in cooperation with and sharing in the divine Love.
Book Chapter
Prayer and peace of mind; psychology and prayer; obstacles to peace of mind; prayer and frustration.
Book Chapter
What stands in the way of happiness and peace of mind? Fear; Loneliness; Grief.
Book Chapter
Liberal thought is often seen to be too marginal a concept. The reality, the pervasiveness, and seriousness of sin cannot be overstated, but needs to be stated in a context which relates it to our total psychic life: Sin and finiteness; guilt and feeling guilty; forgiveness, human and divine.
Book Chapter
Praying for peace: The requirements for peace; prayer and works of good will. Of all the many things the world now needs, none is more needed than an upsurge of vital, God-centered, intelligently-grounded prayer.
Book Chapter
Prayer gives us continuity with our Christian past. We need to know how we can now speak meaningfully about God, so that prayer can be practiced without the feeling that he who prays is running away from the real world.
Book Chapter
The elements and component parts of prayer. Prayer as adoration, thanksgiving and praise.
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The elements and component parts of prayer. Prayer as confession and petition.
Book Chapter
The author discusses various kinds of prayer in the traditional motifs — petition, intercession, confession, thanksgiving and adoration.
Book Chapter
Our praying, whether in word or thought, whether in church or at home, should be grounded in two matters of supreme importance: the reality of God as Love, and the concrete place where we happen to be as human beings.
Book Chapter
The elements and component parts of prayer. Prayer as intercession and commitment.
Book Chapter
The elements and component parts of prayer. Prayer as assurance and ascription to Christ.
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Each person’s religion is one’s own, but purely individualistic religion can be equally dangerous. The Christian community of faith is a living social process that moves down the centuries, handing on its faith from generation to generation.
Book Chapter
The hindrances to prayer: personal attitudes; the social environment; nervous tension and spiritual dryness.
Book Chapter
When prayer is faithfully and regularly engaged in it will be the release of the praying person from bondage to cheapness and superficiality, from slavery to immediate instinct and unworthy desire. The consequence of this will be the growing awareness of a cosmic Love, a cosmic Lover, that holds us tight, that never lets us go, that stays with us in all our problems and troubles and sufferings as well as in our joys and delights.
Book Chapter
The problem of method; times and places; in the morning; at bedtime; grace before meals.
Book Chapter
The period of private devotions; meditation and devotional aids; self-examination; prayer; posture and diction; distractions and wandering thoughts; the test of achievement.
Book Chapter
Congregational must be centered upon God, appropriate, unhurried, combined with alertness and receptivity in the worshiper; it must be intellectually sincere and accompanied by active service to God and other persons. It must be related to the total life of commitment to God in faith. Beauty, symbolism, vocal self-expression, worship by radio are discussed.
Article
When I was first invited to teach a class on prayer at the Iliff School of Theology, I responded eagerly and submitted my course proposal with the title “Explorations in Prayer.” My basic course was accepted, but the title was changed to “Life of Prayer.” My previous excitement turned to fear. I knew I could …
Book Chapter
A new order of peace and justice, abatement of economic and racial tension, the banishment of ignorance, poverty, and disease will not come about solely through prayer. Nevertheless, without the spiritual and moral resources which prayer exists to heighten, the action required for dealing with such issues is likely to go on being as limited and as misdirected by self-interest as we now see it.
Article
Prayer is archaic, anachronistic, against the grain of modern life, solitary and often heartbreaking, embarked on without the certainty of fruit. Prayer does not promise fame, money, and the love of beautiful people. It’s working with blind faith, stubborn hope, dumb love. But the more you pray the better you’ll be. Text: Prayer, we read, …
Article
Prayer the Churches banquet, Angels age, Gods breath in man returning to his birth, The soul in paraphrase, heart in pilgrimage, The Christian plummet sounding heav’n and earth; Engine against th’ Almightie, sinner’s towre, Reversed thunder, Christ-side-piercing spear, The six daies world-transposing in an houre, A kinde of tune, which all things heare and …
Article
Many of us feel we ought to pray more than we do, but we often find praying difficult, — or something we are uneasy about. Why do you think this is? I can think of three kinds of obstacles that get in the way of prayer. The first is that for many of us in …
Continue reading “Learning to Pray: An Interview with Roberta C. Bondi”
Article
My first semester at seminary I was required, along with all of the first year students, to participate in a “spiritual growth group.” The group met once a week for an hour. We got no school credit, no grade, and we didn’t pay tuition for the class, but we had to take it. The intention …
Article
He was praying in a certain place, and when he ceased, one of his disciples said to him, “Lord, teach us to pray, as John taught his disciples.” And he said to them, “When you pray, say: ‘Father, hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdom come. Give us each day our daily bread; and forgive us …
Article
Our neighbors were visiting a cathedral in Italy with their three-year-old son. He saw a woman kneeling in one of the pews and asked what she was doing. “She’s praying,” he was told. “She’s asking God for things.” A few minutes later his parents found him kneeling in one of the pews. In response to …
Continue reading “Not About Me: Prayer is the Work of a Lifetime”
Article
The doctrine of providence is a kind of theological watershed separating Christians. On each side of this great divide people claim to have a better account of how God is present in the world. Each view , of providence, which also entails a corresponding approach to petitionary prayer, bears an insight that we dare not …
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(ENTIRE BOOK) Dr. Harkness discusses first the relation of prayer to the basic structures of Christian faith. The second section book deals with ways of praying and the third with the psychological and social aspects of prayer.
Article
Oddly enough, it was an Eskimo Indian named Nuckkerweener who set me to thinking about metaphysics and prayer. A Wall Street Journal story told of his plight in the Canadian jails. Failing in his attempt to join the white man’s world, Nuckkerweener had turned to crime. Jailed, he was cut off from his roots. No …
Continue reading “Prayer, Metaphysics and an Eskimo Named Nuckkerweener”
Book
(ENTIRE BOOK) For moderns who find difficulty with prayer, prayer is defined as the intentional and attentive presence of God, the purpose being the of alignment of self, in desires and actions, with divine love who is our heavenly Father. It is to open ourselves to God, to link our little selves with God’s divine will.
Book Chapter
Today a very considerable number of people who would profess themselves Christians do not find much meaning in prayer. And yet many young people seem to be much interested in prayer. Prayer is a valid exercise and is at the heart of Christian discipleship.
Article
Go back and tell John what you are hearing and seeing: the blind can see, the lame can walk, those who suffer from dreaded skin diseases are made clean, the deaf hear, the dead are brought back to life and the Good News is preached to the poor. How happy are those who have no …
Article
Christians are people who acknowledge that they belong neither to themselves nor to the age, but to God in Jesus Christ through the Holy Spirit. They are out of step with a society that prizes individuality and autonomy. They are at odds with a culture in which power over persons and property gauges success and …
Article
On a fall day in 1996, a student at Boston University sat in his dorm room, depression his only company. That was until the resident assistants for his floor knocked at the door and asked to be let in. They told him that his actions placed him in jeopardy of being kicked out of the …
Continue reading “Sage, Sweetgrass, and the First Amendment”
Article
Everything God has created is good, and no food is to be rejected, provided grace is said for it: the word of God and the prayer make it holy [I Tim. 4:4-5]. In the past three years I have made a number of road trips between Denver and New Jersey, traversing terrain that has a …
Article
Despite an overabundance of words about prayer, it is not easy to give voice to our prayers. A steady stream of talk about prayer threatens to silence us. All the talk about the necessity of prayer, the power of prayer, the "value" of prayer, the importance of a "spiritual life," can have the effect of …
Article
Book Reviews: For Those We Love But See No Longer: Daily Offices for Times of Grief By Lisa Beicher Hamilton. Paraclete, 188 pp. paperback. Venite: A Book of Daily Prayer By Robert Benson. Tarcher/Putnam, 271 pp., Celtic Benediction: Morning and Night Prayer By J. Philip Newell. Eerdmans, pp. The Prymer: The Prayer Book of the …
