Padraig O Tuama - Daily Prayer with the Corrymeela Community

Soups, probably; something to warm the heart. My recipes are vague about amounts but come with poetry suggestions. When cooking stew, for instance, it is best to read Patrick Kavanaghs In Memory of My Mother (both versions, check out Tom Stacks edited collection) aloud; when making roast pear, chicken and garlic soup (topped with blue cheese) it is always wise to read Marie Howes Magdalene the Seven Devils ; and when you mix red onion, with red peppers, fresh tomatoes and fresh strawberries, topped with a suspicion of chilli, lime, basil and saltflakes, you should always, and only, read Mary Karrs Disgraceland . If youre putting roast butternut squash in a soup with coconut milk, make sure to toast pine nuts, and top the soup with those and a little sesame oil. Read Sen Riordins Oidhreacht Fn Anam while you do it, itll break your heart. Youll need to learn Irish first, but everything good requires effort.

Alternatively, listen to arla Lionairds sung version with The Gloaming. My friend Devin phoned me from California once wanting to know whether a recipe Id written required one clove of garlic or two. He was asking the wrong person, but he was a man in need of detail and he believed that I loved him enough to give him detail even if I didnt have detail to give. How many do you feel you need? I asked him. He laughed and called me an idiot. He asked me again, how many cloves of garlic? Use your imagination, I said, but he wanted to use mine.

I love him dearly, so I made an answer up. It worked, I think. I forget how many cloves. Most of us are in a dialogue when we read a book. I know I am. Thats the point, I think; to listen to the writer, to listen to yourself and to listen to the space between where things said by neither are nonetheless said.

The things we take away are the things that we were already looking for. What you seek is seeking you , said Rumi, and while this is a frightening concept, it can a consoling one if we listen to the desires that will feed us, not destroy us. Rumi asks us to trust that wisdom waits, and might be found in unlikely corners. So read a lot, make pots of soup and use this book however you want. Mix up the prayers, and make your own. Write in the margins, cross words out, fix them, make a solution.

Sometimes I pray the morning prayers and then turn to the day of the month for a text and a collect, and then add in intentions of my own, finishing with the Prayer for Courage. Courage is the mixture between fear and resolution, and only exists when we do something about it. Do not fear, we hear over and over. The prayers in this book are prayers that start with the fear and move toward the doing. Do not only fear, we say. Its a fine beginning, let courage be your moving.

Let prayer help. Ignatius of Loyola said: That level of prayer is best for each particular individual where God our Lord communicates Himself more. He sees, he knows, what is best for each one and, as he knows all, he shows each the road to take. What we can do to find that way with his divine grace is to seek and test the way forward in many different fashions, so that an individual goes ahead in that way which for him or her is the clearest and happiest and most blessed in this life. All of that goes to say: youll need to make your own damned soup, because only you can make it. You know your own needs, or you will.

Take bones and flesh and blood and fruits of the dark earth, put in water, put in salt and put a fire to it. Let it boil, let it cool a little. Season with what your season needs. Eat it, drink it, survive and look around. Be a little bit glorious. Share. Share.

Keep some for tomorrow. Give plenty away. Amen. Reading Pdraig Tuamas marvellous new book is like living inside a prayer. Consoling and inviting, challenging and inspiring, his beautiful meditations and luminous prayers will help you reflect more deeply on Gods poetic action in your life. James Martin SJ, author of Jesus: A Pilgrimage You hold in your hand a months worth of recipes for spiritual nourishment.

They are simple: it will only take a few moments to prepare your heart to make room for them. They are deep: as soon as you have used them for a month, you will want to begin again because each reading invites you deeper. Ive never seen a book of prayers like this one. I think this is just what my soul needs. Brian D. McLaren, author of The Great Spiritual Migration In this beautiful collection of simple lucid prayers Pdraig Tuama invites us to lay our trinkets aside and turn to our treasure.

And this anthology is indeed a treasure: prayers that turn hostility towards hospitality, prayers that help us say what we mean and not we thought we were meant to mean. This book will help any reader to be honest to God, and in that honesty, encounter afresh the love that casts out fear. Each of these prayers offers a rich, poetic response to the words of Jesus, utterly free of cant and religious jargon, a surprising and refreshing companion for all of us on the Emmaus Road. Malcolm Guite, priest, poet, author Parable and Paradox Oh I need this book of prayers! They find me where I am, and as I am alive, human, exiled and resuscitate an ancient way to a true reconciliation within myself, with others, and with a power greater than myself. I do not need to be ashamed. The stones over which we stumble can be made into altars.

And Jesus is returned to me as a person of presence and imagination, able to listen and to heal by his close attention a living guide to the power of radical love. Marie Howe, State Poet of New York (20122014) When the merest mention of religion and politics hints at hopelessness and hostility without end, Daily Prayer from the Corrymeela Community offers us a way forward, conjuring a healing space in which to be human together. As Pdraig Tuama sees it, to pray is to imagine, to take up the art that names our desires, our confusions and curiosities, and gives them form. This collection invites us to experience old rhythms as fresh revelations and new language as deeply in sync with ancient life-giving witness. David Dark, author of Lifes Too Short To Pretend Youre Not Religious and a professor of religion and literature in Nashville Pdraig Tuama 2017 First published in 2017 by the Canterbury Press Norwich Editorial office 3rd Floor, Invicta House 108114 Golden Lane London ec1y 0tg , UK www.canterburypress.co.uk Canterbury Press is an imprint of Hymns Ancient & Modern Ltd (a registered charity)