Margaret Guenther - Practice of Prayer

Volumes in the New Churchs Teaching Series

The Anglican Vision
James E. Griffiss

Opening the Bible
Roger Ferlo

Engaging the Word
Michael Johnston

The Practice of Prayer
Margaret Guenther

Living with History
Fredrica Harris Thompsett

Early Christian Traditions
Rebecca Lyman

Opening the Prayer Book
Jeffrey D. Lee

Mysteries of Faith
Mark McIntosh

The Christian Social Witness
Harold Lewis

Ethics After Easter
Stephen Holmgren

Liturgical Prayer
Louis Weil

Christian Wholeness
Martin L. Smith, SSJE

Horizons of Mission
Titus Presler

The Practice of Prayer

The New
Churchs Teaching Series
Volume 4

Margaret Guenther

1998 by Margaret Guenther

All rights reserved.

The title The Churchs Teaching Series is used by permission of the Domestic and Foreign Missionary Society. Use of the series title does not constitute the Societys endorsement of the content of the work.

Published in the United States of America by Cowley Publications, a division of the Society of St. John the Evangelist. No portion of this book may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any meansincluding photocopyingwithout the prior written permission of Cowley Publications, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data:

Guenther, Margaret, 1929

The practice of prayer/Margaret Guenther

p. cm. (The new churchs teaching series; v.4)

Includes bibliographic references.

ISBN: 978-1-56101-152-0

1. PrayerEpiscopal Church. 2. Episcopal ChurchDoctrines. I. Title. II. Series.

BV210.2.G82 1998

248.32dc21

98-25255

CIP

Scripture quotations are from the New Revised Standard Version of the Bible, 1989 by the Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the USA. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

Editor: Cynthia Shattuck

Copyeditor and Designer: Vicki Black

Cover art by Valerie Reilly, Paisley Patterns, from the Paisley Museum and

Art Gallery, Scotland.

This book was printed in Canada on recycled, acid-free paper.

Third Printing

Cowley Publications

28 Temple Place Boston, Massachusetts 02111

1-800-225-1534 www.cowley.org

Part One
Spirituality and Prayer

Part Two
Praying in the Midst of Life

Preface

Almost fifty years ago a series for the Episcopal Church called The Churchs Teaching was launched with the publication of Robert Dentans The Holy Scriptures in 1949. Again in the 1970s the church commissioned another teaching series for the next generation of Anglicans. Originally the series was part of an effort to give the growing postwar churches a sense of Anglican identity: what Anglicans share with the larger Christian community and what makes them distinctive within it. During that seemingly more tranquil era it may have been easier to reach a consensus and to speak authoritatively. Now, at the end of the twentieth century, consensus and authority are more difficult; there is considerably more diversity of belief and practice within the churches today, and more people than ever who have never been introduced to the church at all.

The books in this new teaching series for the Episcopal Church attempt to encourage and respond to the timesand to the challenges that will usher out the old century and bring in the new. This new series differs from the previous two in significant ways: it has no official status, claims no special authority, speaks in a personal voice, and comes not out of committees but from scholars and pastors meeting and talking informally together. It assumes a different readership: adults who are not cradle Anglicans, but who come from other religious traditions or from no tradition at all, and who want to know what Anglicanism has to offer.

As the series editor I want to thank E. Allen Kelley, former president of Morehouse Publishing, for initially inviting me to bring together a group of teachers and pastors who could write with learning and conviction about their faith. I am grateful both to him and to Morehouse for participating in the early development of the series.

Since those initial conversations there have been substantial changes in the series itself, but its basic purpose has remained: to explore the themes of the Christian life through Holy Scripture, historical and contemporary theology, worship, spirituality, and social witness. It is our hope that all readers, Anglicans and otherwise, will find the books an aid in their continuing growth into Christ.

James E. Griffiss

Series Editor

I am grateful to the Board of Trustees of The General Theological Seminary for granting me a sabbatical semester, a gift of time and spiritual space that enabled me to write this book. I am also deeply grateful to Cynthia Shattuck and Vicki Black of Cowley Publications for their friendship, creativity, and wisdom.

Writing about God is tricky business in these days of heightened linguistic sensibilities concerning gender. For ease of style, I have primarily used traditional language in speaking of the creator-parent God, aware that God created humankind in his image, in the image of God created he them, male and female created he them. All our words are an attempt and an approximation, for we see in a mirror, dimly. God is Father, but the infinite and ultimately unknowable God is also much, much more. God refuses to be reduced to a pronoun. Given the limitations of language, I have tried to honor that truth and hope that I have offended no one.

I would like to dedicate this book to the memory of my father, Otto. And, as always, I am sustained by my husband Jack and his faith in me.

Chapter One

Whats in a Name?

I confess to being daunted by the title of this bookThe Practice of Prayer. What arrogance to presume even minimal competence, let alone mastery of such a topic as prayer! To say nothing of the fact that religious bookstores are filled with shelves of books on how to praywith words and without words, with rosaries and icons, with scripture and saints, using our imagination and suppressing our imagination. My own study has more than its share of such books, each one acquired in the hope that now I will finally get it right, that now I will become an expert pray-er. Should I really add another volume to the genre?

But I am writing about the practice of prayer. Practice is a reassuringly down-to-earth word. We practice because we are not yet perfect, because we know that we have much to learn. To be fruitful, practice must be faithfully sustained over a long period. Practice is rarely exciting, often not