Marilyn Sewell, the former senior minister of the First Unitarian Church of Portland, is the author of a handful of books including Cries of the Spirit: A Celebration of Women's Spirituality and Claiming the Spirit Within). We recently reviewed the impressive documentary about her life and ministry (Raw Faith) and heard about her three little books.
Early in this book, Sewell admits that she has struggled with prayer most of her adult life. She recalls what it meant to her as a child growing up in a Southern Baptist home and then ponders what it means to her now: "Prayer is not so much an announcement as a conversation. Some people who have richly developed spiritual lives do not use words at all, but simply come into the presence of the Sacred, ready to receive." But many others, having rejected the prayers of childhood, find themselves adrift as adults, yearning for a connection to the Divine but not sure how to get it.
Sewell, a fine storyteller, shares some personal experiences of her devotional life and turns to the mystics for inspiration about prayer. She is comforted by the presence of a Mystery beyond what she knows and sees. She tells a story:
"The Norwegians have a lovely legend that each soul is kissed by God before being assigned to a living body, and all during life, the individual retains this dark but very powerful memory of that kiss, and every experience in that person's life is subconsciously measured by that remembered kiss. Perhaps that is so. There is some goodness that pulls at us and will not let us go."
In the last chapter of this little book, Sewell wonders whether we are all in a state of prayer more times than we realize. For the desert fathers, all hours of the day were ripe for prayer and the same is true today. When we invest our love in whatever we are doing, it is a heartfelt prayer.
