Quaker Quicks - Do Quakers Pray?
A brief practical guide for answering basic Quaker questions.
A brief practical guide for answering basic Quaker questions.
A brief practical guide for answering basic Quaker questions.
Christianity (general), Personal growth, Quaker
Do Quakers Pray is a short book for the Quaker Quicks series that considers questions such as “What is prayer?” and explores whether, when and how Quakers might pray. Do we pray together? Do we pray alone?
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Do Quakers Pray by Jennifer Kavanagh is an inspirational book. The hour long silence in our weekly Meeting for Worship can occasionally be ecstatic, but often seems very long. This book has given me a new approach to prayer. It is a small book but full of wisdom. The challenges it presents have so excited me that I have arranged with some other Quaker Friends to discuss together, in depth, its wealth of suggestions. ~ Sheila Hancock
Beautifully sculpted, highly accessible, and so full of wisdom and wonderful quotes, this is a book for anyone interested in the practice of prayer not just Quakers. Reading it can be an immersion into prayer itself. ~ Ben Pink Dandelion, Programmes leader, research, Woodbrooke
This insightful exploration of contemporary Quakers' relationship to and experience of prayer is enriched by the inclusion of a sampling of prayer practices from many faith or wisdom traditions. The narrative illuminates prayer as an active condition of listening, of sensing the Presence of God, and “a movement of the heart.” This brief, beautiful, personal text invites the reader to consider prayer as “relationship with all that is” and as a way of being in the world. ~ Deborah Shaw, Former Assistant Director of Friends Center, Guilford College, North Carolina: author of Being Fully Present to God, SEYM
A useful handbook for those seeking inner peace in a troubled world. ~ Terry Waite, CBE
This book is an encouragement - to reflect on our personal practice (why and how we pray – or don’t), and to initiate group discussions of a topic which we seem to find faintly embarrassing. Jennifer Kavanagh offers a brief overview of prayer in different cultures and traditions but mostly the book is grounded in the perspective and experience of contemporary Quakers. She also looks at the differences and similarities between worship and prayer (and her brilliant, wonderfully inclusive description of what is happening in Quaker meeting for worship is worth the cover price alone). In so many ways this book is an invitation ‘to pray as we can, not as we can’t’. Do Quakers pray? Well, yes we do - [despite a] cautiousness around prayer which this wise, timely (and deceptively slim) volume seeks to address. Written for Quakers it would definitely be of interest to anyone questioning ‘who or what we pray to’. This is an important book, an intelligent and challenging guide for a questioning age. ~ Alex Wildwood, Associate tutor, Woodbrooke. Co-author of Rooted in Christianity, Open to New Light