David Torkington - Wisdom from the Christian Mystics: How to Pray the Christian Way: How to Pray the Christian Way

To Bobbie, without whom this book could never have been written, and to my brother Peter who inspired it. A very special thanks to Kevin Grant, former MD and editor-in-chief of the Catholic Universe and MD of the Catholic Herald, for his valuable advice and tireless work in editing the text.

Other Books by David Torkington

Wisdom from the Western Isles - The Making of a Mystic

Wisdom from Franciscan Italy The Primacy of Love

Inner Life A Fellow Travellers Guide to Prayer

A New Beginning A Sideways Look at the Spiritual Life

Dear Susanna Its Time for a Christian Renaissance

How to Pray A Practical Guide

David Torkington has a unique gift of being able to express profound truths very simply. He has used it to good effect in his latest book on the Christian Mystics. He adopts an original approach that allows Peter, a hermit, to become the central character in the story. It is shot through with much autobiographical detail which not only helps the flow but adds greatly to the interest and communicates the heart-warming enthusiasm of the author. There is a particularly moving account of a night spent alone in the Basilica of the Holy Sepulchre which he describes as a life-changing experience.

Like all David Torkingtons books it is about prayer. He takes us right back to the mystical spirituality that Jesus practised with his disciples in their daily pattern of prayer. He then leads us to see how this was continued and brought to perfection after his glorification, giving prayer a new power in, with and through the Risen Lord. This would transform the lives of those early Christians by teaching them the daily prayer that leads to the prayer without ceasing.

He uses the word mystic derived from the Greek word Mysterion to describe those first ordinary Christians who by daily living for God came to experience his hidden mystical love as a by-product of their selfless giving. They follow Jesus in what was known as The Way (Acts 9:2), journeying to the Fathers home and the fullness of life and love. David Torkington leads us to see how this prayer is for all. Inspired by their example we endeavour to put prayer at the very centre of our lives as we seek to be caught up and transfigured in the Risen Lord.

This kind of prayer is very much a journey. We are encouraged to be strict in setting aside time and place; reading the Gospels; invoking the Holy Spirit. All of this helps to lead us to silent God-centred prayer. It will not always be easy and may well result in a dark night that purifies. In the end it is pure gift.

Lest this all sounds rather daunting, there is also a practical guide to prayer based on the Our Father and the acknowledgement that in the end each prays in the way that is best for them. Archbishop Ramsay used to say, There is a God-given space at the centre of each one of us which only he can fill. This book, rich in its teaching and quotes from the Fathers, goes a long way towards helping us to fill that centre-space.

+Thomas McMahon

Bishop Emeritus of Brentwood

He was kind, he was concerned and compassionate, but he was uncompromising too. My condition was incurable and I would be dead before the New Year was out. The doctor had never called me James before, it had always been Mr Robertson, but he called me James on that day as he took my hands in his and spoke to me like a father although he was half my age, and almost half my size. It was only supposed to be just another check-up, so neither my wife nor I had any reason to suspect what had come like a bolt from the blue. In fact, Ellena had gone out for the day fly fishing with a friend without the slightest suspicion that my doctor was going to give me anything other than yet another clear bill of health. I took the long way home through the New Forest to try to come to terms with the news that had turned my stomach into turmoil and my head into a hornets nest. It was the autumn of 2014, the hottest year on record that had been crowned with the most beautiful autumn that I had ever seen, at least in England.

When I was a boy the family had a holiday home in New England that enabled us to escape the pandemonium that permanently prevailed in New York where I was born and grew up. This autumn in the New Forest almost rivalled the fall that never ceased to enchant me as a boy. I had a sudden desire to go back home once more to see the place where I grew up and to visit the magical forests where I fished with my father as a boy and played hide and seek with my brothers and sisters. But it was only a temporary whim. I married and made my home in Southern England and the New Forest became for me what New England had been before. I had in fact married twice. My first wife Jennifer, whom I met at university in the States came from Scotland, so we made our life together in Edinburgh where she died giving birth to our first child who died the next day. I met and fell in love with Ellena almost fifteen years later, on a visit to Franciscan Italy, and we had been married for over thirty years. Jennifer was a Presbyterian, Ellena was a Roman Catholic, but I was brought up an Episcopalian. Thanks to that retreat in Franciscan Italy, we both committed ourselves to living a serious Christian life and actively working to help others do likewise.

Ellena not only had a degree in English, but a theology degree too that enabled her to become the director of a retreat and conference centre called Walsingham House at Chingford, overlooking Epping Forest in North London. The incumbent director asked Ellena to take over his job as director when he was head-hunted to become the Dean of Studies at the National Catholic Radio and Television Centre in London. It was here that we were given the flat that became our first home. This enabled me to continue my academic career as a history lecturer at London University, while helping her at weekends. We so loved walking in Epping Forest that we bought, what was initially a holiday home in Brockenhurst in the New Forest, in Hampshire. It was a wise decision because the flat went with Ellenas job. We knew we would have to give it up sooner or later. It was wise, too, because house prices were still reasonable in the 1980s but they went sky high in the 1990s, especially in Brockenhurst that was in the heart of the New Forest with its fast train link to London. When, after about ten years, circumstances forced the Dominican Sisters who owned Walsingham House to sell up, we were not homeless or jobless either. I could still commute to London to continue my academic career, while Ellena accepted a job teaching at the Brock, as Brockenhurst College was affectionately called. I spent a good deal of time working voluntarily at the Catholic Chaplaincy in Gower Street, and Ellena did the same for a new retreat centre at Sway nearby. The Dominican Sisters who had to leave Walsingham House, eventually, and quite by accident, ended up in their new home only a few miles away from us.

We loved spending our holidays in Italy and usually ended them spending a few days at our favourite place, an enchanting little hermitage known locally as Lo Speco di Narni. St Francis used to go there for solitude and prayer and it was here that Ellena proposed to me and it wasnt leap year either! It was our special place. Having so much in common contributed to the happiest marriage that I could ever have hoped for. But what now, what, oh, what now? How was I going to break the terrible news, not just to my wife, but to my proven soulmate of the last thirty-five years?