"How can a man like me, living a typical, harried, busy life in late twentieth-century Western society, learn to pray?" asks Robert Benson, author of Between the Dreaming and the Coming True, a work of Christian devotion. Here is the ideal resource for spiritual directors to give to men and women who are seeking to find stillness and silence in their lives and to weave all the strands of their experience together around a dialogue with God.
"Only he who obeys a rhythm superior to his own is free," wrote Nikos Kazantzakis. With simple prose and creativity, Robert Benson charts his exploration and experience of prayer through the rhythm of worship, the embrace of his own brokenness, his notice of the changing seasons, his participation in retreats and devotional small groups, his delight in sacred reading, and his disciplined use of journals as a way of paying attention to the story of his life. In one of the freshest and finest chapters in the book, Benson talks about the significance of his prayer rug, which doubles as a picnic rug and mat for the celebration of the Eucharist.
The author, an Episcopalian, closes with commentary on the importance of regular practice as the foundation for a prayerful life. "Oh, begin," said John Wesley. "Pray as if everything depended on God and work as if everything depended on you."
