Delete
|
Prayer: A History
[Buy it!] | PHILIP ZALESKI, CAROL ZALESKI | USD 24.95
(Sat Jun 1 12:31:48 2024) | Abebooks | Eighth Day Books, LLC | ISBN10: 0618773606, ISBN13: 9780618773602, [publisher: Mariner Books October 2006] Softcover Religion scholars and writers Philip and Carol Zaleski have incisively constructed, to quote Annie Dillard, 'a grand and human compendium, fascinating on every page.' The content is inclusive, frequently humorous, and keenly written. Provocative, yet scholarly, Prayer>/i> canvasses centuries of history and practice, allowing its inhabitants to speak for themselves as much as possible. Native American prayers for rain accompany mandated prayers by an American general that the rain would stop so his troops could attack. 'There is.nothing strange about prayer erupting in the oddest of circumstances,' write the Zaleskis'. 'We might even say that it thrives on paradox.prayer deals in eternal truth and yet has its fads and fashions.we pray for worldly goods but also pray for freedom from the desire for worldly goods.we seldom pray for prayer itself. Who but a saint prays for better prayer?' After fashioning several chapters devoted to the foundations and history of prayer, the Zaleskis' explore four archetypal figures: the refugee, the devotee, the ecstatic, and the contemplative. Part Three considers the relationship between prayer and culture. Part Four, the science of prayer empirically and in the laboratory of the human heart. And yet ultimately, conclude the Zaleskis', 'All this is beyond our ken.' We may know the effects of prayer, 'sometimes so intense that all motions become genuflection, all speech confession and praise.' But 'in time even this passes away.' The value of prayer, essentially, is the relationship it grows between persons and their God. 415 pp.
[Wichita, KS, U.S.A.] [Publication Year: 2006] |
