When Poets Pray
Marilyn McEntyre
WILLIAM B. EERDMANS PUBLISHING COMPANY
GRAND RAPIDS, MICHIGAN
Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co.
4035 Park East Court SE, Grand Rapids, Michigan 49546
© 2019 Marilyn McEntyre
All rights reserved
Published 2019
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ISBN 978-0-8028-7658-4
eISBN 978-1-4674-5688-3
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
A catalog record for this book is available from the Library of Congress.
Permission to quote from copyrighted material appears beginning on page 136, which constitutes a continuation of this copyright page.
Contents
“Immortal, Invisible, God Only Wise”
“On Being Asked to Pray for a Van”
Truck Driver’s Prayer by a Young Ghanaian Christian
Praying with Poems, Praying through Poems: An Afterword
In prayer, as in so many other areas of life, we “learn by going where we have to go.” Many of us took our first steps on the path of prayer as children with lines we recited at bedtime or mealtime, or with innocent prayer lists that included blessings for guinea pigs and dolls. We may have come to prayer through crisis or loss, or through those who, when we didn’t even realize what we most needed, offered to pray for us.
Those of us who make a practice of prayer probably share an appetite to deepen or open or broaden that practice from time to time. We may want to reach beyond our denominational traditions and learn from those who pray more formally, or less; from those who pray the lectionary, or don’t; from those whose prayers are anchored in the liturgical year, or from those whose prayers are freshly called forth like morning dew in the moment. “Teach us to pray” is a prayer to keep praying.
Those who teach us are not always parents or priests or pastors. Sometimes we learn from strangers on street corners whose words stay with us. Sometimes we learn from children, who know how to ask in trust that what they need will be given. Sometimes we learn from poets. Poets have enriched my prayer life by giving me lines that lift up my heart, or words for lament, or images that widen my awareness—of the grandeur of God flaming out “like shining from shook foil,” or ...
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About When Poets PrayTwo dozen select prayer poems to learn from and live with
Poetry and prayer are closely related. We often look to poets to give language to our deepest hopes, fears, losses—and prayers. Poets slow us down. They teach us to stop and go in before we go on. They play at the edges of mystery, holding a tension between line and sentence, between sense and reason, between the transcendent and the deeply, comfortingly familiar. |
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