Uncommon Prayer ― Prayer in Everyday Experience

In Uncommon Prayer: Prayer in Everyday Experience, Michael Plekon wants to change our minds on what constitutes prayer. In doing so, he makes a theological claim that to understand different aspects of the Christian life as prayer, one encourages everyday life to be understood as carrying religious import; prayer and the religious life are not restricted to special places and times, but are open to all believers at all times. Plekon examines the works of diverse authors, including many who have challenged the status quo of institutional churches. He asks us to listen to what poets, writers, activists, and others tell us about how they pray at work and at home, with colleagues, family, and friends, in all the experiences of life, from joy to suffering, sadness to hope.? Among them are Sarah Coakley, Rowan Williams, Heather Havrilesky, Sara Miles, Thomas Merton, Mary Oliver, Christian Wiman, Mary Karr, Barbara Brown Taylor, Dorothy Day, Maria Skobtsova, Paul Evdokimov, Seraphim of Sarov, and Richard Rohr. Plekon argues that prayer encompasses a much wider variety of activity than formal and liturgical prayers and that, by recognizing such aspects of prayer, the believer is made more receptive to transformative aspects of prayerful attitudes.

"Many books on prayer, even for a more academic audience, are rather thin on contemporary authors. This book does a fine job of looking carefully at a number of important, contemporary theologians (in a broad sense of this term) who write on this topic. This should be an important book for scholars, students, and thoughtful readers in the field of spirituality and spiritual theology. I think that many scholars and students in the various pastoral and practical theological disciplines would find it interesting and worth reading." —Alan G. Padgett, Luther Seminary
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Michael Plekon is professor in the Department of Sociology and Anthropology and in the Program in Religion and Culture at Baruch College of the City University of New York. He is also an ordained priest in the Orthodox Church in America and the author or editor of a number of books, including Hidden Holiness and Saints As They Really Are: Voices of Holiness in Our Time, both published by the University of Notre Dame Press.