Sarah Bessey - A Rhythm of Prayer: A Collection of Meditations for Renewal

I GREW UP AND CAME OF age in prayer circles, particularly prayer circles with women. In living rooms and the basements of churches, the women of my lifefrom church mothers to brand-new babies yawning in footie sleepers to earnest youth group leaderswould gather to pray together. We prayed so differentlythere was the lady who prayed exclusively with words from scripture, one who prayed like she was preaching, one who told everyone off in her prayers, another who cried throughout. We spoke in tongues and in silence; we read prayers from other people and made up our own. Sometimes we simply sat together, in the quiet, hands open and waiting like Quakers for the Spirit to move in or through one of us. We prayed for the world, for justice, for the poor, for our nation, and for each other, but we also learned to just sit with Jesus together.

I miss those prayer circles. I miss the feeling of being encircled in homemade prayer with others. Given the nature of my work as both a writer and in co-leading the Evolving Faith community, I hear from people all the time that they dont know how to pray anymore, that they miss prayer, or that perhaps they, too, need to reimagine prayer.

And so I began to dream of this book. A book that could co-create that space for those of us who wander in the wilderness more often than notan open circle where you could pull up a chair and find rest in the prayers of those who also walk with God.

Often when we find ourselves at a crossroad in our faith, rethinking everything from church to scripture to family to art to politics to science to prayer, we think we have only two options: double down or burn it down. So when it comes to prayer, we might mistakenly believe that if we cant pray the way we used to or the way we were taught, somehow that means we cant or dont pray anymore, period.

Many of us were introduced to prayer in one particular way, largely depending on our culture, our religion, our faith tradition, our family. And many of us have lost those old pathways of prayer. There are many reasons for this: perhaps the tradition we inherited was never one we felt comfortable with; perhaps the prayer warrior who once took us under their wing somewhere along the way lost our trust, or any number of good and valid reasons. This can leave us in a disorienting season emptied of prayer, longing for prayer, yet not knowing how to begin again. Sometimes when we lose prayer, it can be for the best: now that we no longer pray as we were taught, we are finally able to pray in both old and new words and silences.

When I first began to envision this book about prayer, I knew right away what I didnt want to give you: a nice and tidy new set of prayers to co-opt for your own. Nope, what I wanted was equal parts example and invitation, permission and challenge, to acknowledge the heaviness of our grief and at the same time broaden our hope.

Frankly, I love to pray, and I think the prayers of people like ushowever we show up to these pagesmatter. Not in spite of scripture but because of it. Not in spite of Church but because of her. Not in spite of our questions and doubts but because of them. Not in spite of our grief and our longing, our yearning for justice and our anger, but because of them.

So no, the point of this is not to give you prayers to pray but to show you: you still get to pray. Prayer is still for you. You still get to cry out to God, you still get to yell, weep, praise, and sit in the silence until you sink down into the Love of God that has always been holding you whether you knew it or not.

I want this to help you feel a bit less alone. My hope is that youll borrow language from these prayers and be reminded that you are heldalways, fully, completelyin the Love of God. I want this to be an act of resistance at this moment in our time, a way for us to fling wide the doors to prayer, to set up a few tables in your wilderness so that we can feast together on truth, justice, and goodness.

So clearly my expectations are very reasonable.

If there is one thing I know about navigating an evolving faith, both through my firsthand experiences and through shepherding many others in this path of wilderness formation, it is this: the work of reclaiming and reimagining is good, hard, holy work.

And its worthwhile.

There is room for your whole self in prayer. You can bring your whole body to this altar, this place where you meet with God with words or with wordless knowing. You dont need to pretend you arent angry, that you arent cynical or afraid, that you arent feeling a bit hopeless or uncomfortable or envious or tired. Thats how a lot of the Psalms came to be, after all. I believe that scripture gives us a more fulsome and complete view of prayer than we were perhaps taught and so I wanted this book to show all of them.

In these pages, we have liturgy and guided meditations; we also have laments and even some imprecatory prayers, which may make you uncomfortable with their honesty. We have thanksgiving and praise, we have cries for justice, challenge, and comfort, we have practices and psalms. Im from a Pentecostal, charismatic background myself, and so I am all the way here for the naming and calling out of what Paul called powers and principalities because in these days I dont know what else to call evils like white supremacy, patriarchy, homophobia, nationalism, colonialism, transphobia, racism. Name them for what they are, Church, and lets take it to prayer, especially as we take it to the streets.

You may sense the invitation of the Holy Spirit to lean into new language, new practices, old longings. Thats okay. I ask only that you stay open to the possibility of healing, to the possibility of hope, of renewal and restoration, perhaps even resurrection, through prayer.