Pray the Bible

Rating:
Summary: Deceptively simple, very useful
Review: Reading the first chapter with it's exercises of trying different places to place the emphasis, combining your breathing with reciting a short Scriptural passage, how to encourage a grateful attitude ..., I thought this book was simply another beginning "pray the Scripture" book by an author who thought lectio divina was beyond the average Catholic and that touchy-feely practices sell at the moment. I was terribly wrong.

The author has an amazing skill at making her methods of praying the Scripture accessible to any person capable of reading the Scripture.

Chapter 2 concentrates on how thoroughly Mass is grounded in Scripture, including a line by line analysis of the Scriptural sources of the Gloria.

Chapter 3 shows how to find in Scripture phrases to use as aspirations, ejactulations or javelin prayers as she calls them.

Chapter 4 looks at how to listen at prayer so that praying Scripture is a life changing experience.

Chapter 5 looks at how various Biblical people prayed; she provides an excellent slant on humility based on its origin as "grounded".

Chapter 6 considers the wordplay and humor in Scripture as a way to emphasize prayer as relationship - with humor, tears, fears, pride, ...

Chapter 7 looks at various images of God appearing in the Scripture warning that mental idols are as inappropriate as metal icons. (Yes, here and there I loved the author's wordplay.)

Chapter 8 is a perceptive consideration of blessings and the Beatitudes, bringing to life what has become trite.

Chapter 9 considers ways to find the meaning in difficult passages - unknown names for people and places, genealogies, vengeful behavior or prayers, legal codes ... Her suggestions here are especially forceful, replacing words that have no meaning to us with words that do. An example: Luke 17:16's "and he was a Samaritan" reworded as "and he was a Commie hippie pinko freak". No, she does not rewrite the Scripture, she simply finds way for us to recover something of the shock value of the statement in its original context.

Chapter 10 borrows from Scripture (Magnificat, Benedictus, Nunc Dimittis) and St. Francis to present ways to make new prayers out of fragments of Scripture that has special meaning to us.

I highly recommend this book - don't let the first chapter mislead you. This is a real gem.