Customer Reviews

Paths to Prayer: Finding Your Own Way to the Presence of God

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Well-written and easy to follow, this is a wonderful collection of prayer styles and techniques used throughout the history of the Christian church. Brown provides an historical overview of each technique, clearly describes any "props" needed to experience the technique, and details step-by-step how to pray in accordance with the technique.

The goal of prayer is to come closer to God, to open oneself up to God's guidance, to enter into communion with God. Each practice described in the book is intended to accomplish just that. Brown includes a self-test at the beginning of the book to help the reader determine which prayer *style* is most likely to achieve the desired result.

There were a few surprises for me, based on my ignorance of Christian history (Praying with Beads, for example, and Praying with a Tallith), but I found a large number of these practices helpful and interesting. I'm planning to incorporate several of them into my normal prayer times. Brown has graciously included additional resources -- books as well as websites -- if you want to pursue further a particular technique.

An interesting and valuable resource for any Christian.

I purchased the book in September and read it immediately. The foreword was helpful in understanding the purpose of the book. It offers a quiz to help you determine your prayer style (or styles). Trish Brown highlights 4 different prayer styles. Then she divides the various prayer methods that you can try based on your prayer style. I would encourage people to try some if not all of them!
The book is well put-together, easy to understand, and very helpful and informative. I have tried some of the prayer methods and continue to go back and read and try more! I recommend this book, it give you tools to use, plus the history and application of each prayer method. As a bonus, Trish give lots of resources and websites for further study. Paths to Prayer is a must have in your spiritual journey!

Finally, I can begin to stop feeling guilty or deficient because I don't get up at 3am and pray on my knees for hours on a stone floor in the cold!Trisha Brown encourages us to explore and find the "how to pray" that works for us as individuals...maybe the stone floor one time, maybe the stream of consciousness conversation while driving down the road at another time.
I lead an adult education group at the church where I serve as DRE and we've been using this book as a resource and guide as we explore "ways and means" of prayer. We have been making our own sets of Anglican prayer beads, a new concept to many of the participants,and in the creation and construction of them we've discovered that that too is a way of prayer.
Thank you, Trisha, for helping to free us from "the one way" and opening doors to deeper, very personal ways to develop our relationship with a living God.

For those who are inside the church and are tired of same-old, same-old ways of praying and for those outside the circle of religious institutions but yearn for fresh ways to connect to your self and the Truth beyond yourself, here is a gold mine. Tricia Brown will stretch you by giving depth and variety. Enter this laboratory of prayer and experimenet with the author as your coach, and you will surely discover new parts of your soul and ways to express love in the world.

This is a wonderful book on prayer. I learned over 40 ways to pray to God including the Wesley Covenant Prayer, Prayer Beads, the Tallith (the Jewish Prayer Shawl) and so many more. I now have a deeper and wider appreciation of the history of the Church. Thank you for this fine book.

By far the best book on different prayer styles I've ever read. Everyone in our study group is of the same opionion.

For th ose of us who want to learn how to pray...better, so to speak, this is a helpful book. I didn't realize there were so many "pathways."

Relationships have tendencies to slip into ruts - even our relationship with God, if we are not mindful. This book's goal is to shake us out of our ruts and walk through our comfort zones into new ways of relating to God.

Brown lays out four basic prayer styles, and, within each style, provides a number of ways to experience the Presence of the Lord. She builds on ancient practices of the Church, and also incorporates ideas and practices from other faith traditions, so that we can come into a more complete relationship with God.

Some of these exercises may make people uncomfortable, because they deal with prayer in a much more open way than the way many of us have been reared, but taking our relationship with God out into the open is a good thing, as long as we are pointing to the Lord, and not to ourselves (see Jesus' discourse in John 14 -17 for His teaching on this matter).

Christian Schwarz, the man who has written so much about church development, recently wrote a book, The Three Colors of Your Spirituality, which would tie in very well with this book. His premise is that our growing edge is in our weakest areas, and that while we leave our comfort zones when we try unfamiliar practices, we have the opportunity to deepen our relationship with God when we do so.

As someone who has worked in revitalization and church multiplication at all levels of the denomination in which I serve, and as someone who serves as a solo pastor to a congregation in the east, I heartily recommend this book for anyone, pastor or lay person, who is looking to deepen their walk with God, and help others to also do so.

It has been a blessing for my congregation, and a blessing for me.

I love this book! I am a chaplain on a chemical dependency unit and one of the tasks I have given myself is to include prayer as part of the Spiritual Care Curriculum. This offers several different types of prayer--prayer is individual and offering different ways to pray provides for clients an opportunity to select their own way of connecting to their Higher Power.

Paths to Prayer: Finding Your Own Way to the Presence of God

This is a very good book. I would highly recommend it to anyone.