Henley - Bead by bead: the ancient way of praying made new

Praise for Bead by Bead

Bead by Bead is not just a benign book about an old way to pray; this is a deft and frolicking journey through the history and use of prayer beads. But author and artist Suzanne Henley does not stop there. As Southern raconteur, jarring theologian, and reluctant prayer warrior, she invites us to walk out the door and see the whole world aglow with the shimmering beads of the Holy Spirit.

Sybil MacBeth, author of Praying in Color: Drawing a New Path to God and other books

This book is a work of spiritual art and alchemybrilliant wordsmith meets creative soul! Makes me want to grab a set of prayer beads and allow my life to be enriched and transformed, word by word, bead by bead.

Linda Douty, author of Rhythms of Growth: 365 Meditations to Nurture the Soul

With insight, passion, and wit, Henley shows us how to hold our prayers in our hands as well as our heart.

Richard Rohr, author of Falling Backwards and Immortal Diamond

What a beautiful exploration of hurt and heart, love and loss, gratitude and thanksgiving, all within the fascinating framework of Protestant prayer beads. Suzanne Henley has penned a unique collection of stories that provide healing and hope for anyone navigating the tumultuous twists and turns of life. In other words, this is a book for everyone.

Julie Cantrell, New York Times and USA TODAY bestselling author of Perennials

In Bead by Bead the Holy Spirit rides a Harley, God arrives with the tapping of goat hooves, and Jesus ambles in as Clyde the Carpenter. Henleys delightful book invites us to use a simpleor metaphoricalstring of beads to fall in love with the wonder of life.

Ellen Morris Prewitt, author of Making Crosses: A Creative Connection to God

Suzanne Henley is fresh, illuminating, and wise, singing her journey as a gift for any seeker.

Br. Timothy Jolley, OHC, former prior, Holy Cross Monastery, West Park, New York, Founder of Mariya uMama weThemba (Mary, Mother of Hope) Monastery, Grahamstown, South Africa

A lifelong struggler with prayer, constantly seeking but rarely finding the elusive sweet spot of prayer I have always imagined to exist, I found this fresh new book to be filled with joy and hope. A how-to manual in part, Bead by Bead is infinitely more. Suzanne Henleys keen intuition and insight, often delivered with quirky, laugh-out-loud humor, touched my heart unexpectedly. Never preachy and always with great humanity, her willingness to share details of her own journey, with a light but deeply affecting touch, lifts this book from the ordinary. Its a gem.

The Rev. Buddy Stallings, Retired Rector, St. Bartholomews, New York City

SUZANNE HENLEY

bead by bead

The Ancient Way of Praying Made New

PARACLETE PRESS

BREWSTER, MASSACHUSETTS

For Momma, Daddy, and Jeff;
for my children and grandchildren
Blair, Noel, Kate, and Otto; Sarah and Brad;
Bailey, Walker, Charles, and Hollan; and Walter and Katie;
and for Jim Cole, the prince of my dotage

Prayer is dangerous
and the entrance way to wholeness.

PHYLLIS TICKLE, Prayer Is a Place

The Mystery in anyone may speak to them and heal them in the grocery store. It may speak to us and heal us too. Knowing this enables us to listen to life from the place in us that is Mystery also. Mystery requires that we relinquish an endless search for answers and become willing to not understand. Perhaps real wisdom lies in not seeking answers at all. Any answer we find will not be true for long. An answer is a place where we can fall asleep as life moves past us to its next question. After all these years I have begun to wonder if the secret of living well is not in having all the answers but in pursuing unanswerable questions in good company.

RACHEL NAOMI REMEN, My Grandfathers Blessings

Contents

Rebranding Prayer: The House Guests

I think we are well advised to keep on nodding terms with the people we used to be, whether we find them attractive company or not. Otherwise they turn up unannounced and surprise us, come hammering on the minds door at 4 a.m. of a bad night and demand to know who deserted them, who betrayed them, who is going to make amends.

Joan Didion, Slouching Toward Bethlehem

T his book began as a simple, straightforward primer about the ancient history of prayer beads. Instructions for making them and traditional and modern prayer suggestions would close out the chapters. An easy one, two, three, I thought.

Work on the book seemed to be going as expectedmethodical, predictableuntil the writing decided to take on a life of its own. Loud, uninvited squatters began showing up at all hours at my imaginations front door, disturbing the neighbors, blocking driveways, and making demands.

These gremlins of my mindsometimes unwashed and ill-groomed, some dragging Linus blankets, some with eyelash extensions and pouty lipsmoved in with their heavy baggage, stacks of old New Yorkers, bad breath, and loud voices. They did not knock. They just pushed in, plopped down their backpacks, and set up house with their egos. They waved their cigars, passed gas, and made pronouncements.

People dont just sit around all day with prayer beads in their hands waiting for the Holy Spirit to ride up on a Harley, Sweetheart. We want some action!

And they persisted. So I created some examples of day-to-day, quick activities readers could use to close themselves off from the wrought busyness of the day and pray even when they are without their beads, momentarily erasing the everyday to connect with the timeless. Some examples border on silliness, simply to underscore that praying is fair game anywhere.

But my squatters werent satisfied: Yeah, we like the Desert Fathers and Mothers, and Lady Godivas prayer bead legacy is a good read, and were glad you included Thomas Merton, but we still want more. We want stories! One of my squattersflicking his cigar ashes onto the carpetannounced, Rebranding! Thats what prayer needs. Thats what you need to do! Rebrand prayer. Its gotten a bad rap.

So, because Im from the Southit is not just a clich that Southerners like to tell storiesand because, as William Faulkner reminded us, the past is never dead; we are all stories and tote the history of their imprinted baggage throughout our livesthe book gradually grew to include a few personal narratives I now recognize as experiencessome perhaps unorthodoxof prayer.

Other than liturgy recited at church and a lifetime of blessings at meals, I am a latecomer to serious prayer. I am by no means a prayer warrior, and Im never even quite sure whom or what I think I am talking to. I seem to fling random, unscheduled thoughts into the universe assuming theyre being caught by a God very, very good at playing outfield, a Willy Mays of prayer.

I have no idea whether prayer produces any external results. I have come to believe, though, if nothing else, it is where I most squarely meet myself. I think it is the psychic glue between my conscious and shadow self where we all wrestle with Jacobs angel and count our scars later. It is where we ask, sometimes with fury, sometimes with a whimper, for strength and courage when surrounded by incomprehensible tragedy and unmitigated grief. It is where, sometimes crying uncle, tightly wadding the pillowcase into a tear-limp ball, and other times with childlike wonder, we gasp, Thank you. I have found prayer to be a safari tracking down the wild beasts of my thoughts in tall grass. It is also an adventure like scratching off the boxes on a lottery ticket. It reveals who we are to ourselves. And thats where God often seems to set up shop. Each prayer, when genuine, is a birth, a labored delivery of twins: both a new self and a new face of God.