Customer Reviews

Prayer: A History

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This magnificent rethinking of humankind's experience of prayer abounds in telling examples. Often the Zaleskis devote two to four pages to a case study - one of the most revealing is that of Alcoholics Anonymous which few others would have thought to include as a mode of prayer - and these portrayals balance against innumerable briefer examples, quotations, and vignettes. In this the structure reminds one of William James, _The Varieties of Religious Experience_. There too major examples stick in the mind as one garners an impression of overwhelming fecundity.

Most useful to me and I suspect helpful to many others, will be the way the Zaleskis differentiate the Ecstatic from the Contemplative. First of all, they differentiate "mysticism" from "spirituality" without relying on those much abused words. Second, they delineate the Ecstatic as a necessary category without implying that it is just an intensification of Contemplation or of some other form of "Spirituality." This book elevates the Ecstatic into a dignity of its own.

I kept wondering, "How are they going to bring this book - so full of mini-climaxes - to a close?" The poet George Herbert provides a brilliant solution by allowing the Zaleskis to compose about him an epitome of the book. Thereby they show that different kinds and occasions of prayer flow into one another and into various sorts of creativity. On a larger scale, the entire book defamiliarizes what we thought we knew, making the intimate open to scrutiny and the banal once agan mysterious.

In that as in so many other ways, the book partakes of classical tradition. This books eschews the trendy, the ephemeral, and the kitschified in favor of the time-tested, the enduring, and the beautiful. It achieves symmetries in composition, it brings clarity to the complex, and it exudes loving respect for the widest range of experience. In a word, it is a "classic."

This "abridged" version of the hardcover is actually two segments from a CBC radio program narrated by Mary Hynes. The first segment is an interview with the Zaleskis (the authors of Prayer: A History), and the second is a recording of a keynote speech given by U2 leader Bono at the National Pryer Breakfast in 2006. While both segments are interesting and worth listening to in their own right, purchasers interested in an abridged version of the book will be disappointed.

Very rarely anymore do I encounter a book that replaces an already existing book in my personal top 10, but this book has easily supplanted some of my earlier favorites. The authors will change your persepctive on the Robinson Crusoe story, reveal the secret devotional life of Salvador Dali, and give you a new pair of glasses with which to view a variety of phenomenon. The authors leave no major faith unexamined. If you weren't excited about prayer BEFORE reading this book, you certainly will be after. At 600+ pages, you would think that it may be a trying text to get through - instead, I found myself wishing that it were a 1,000 pages long. Must read for devotees of any tradition.

There are already a couple of good reviews, so I will only suggest reading the following books on religion in addition to the Zaleskis': a) "The Phenomenon of Religion: A Thematic Approach," by Moojan Momen (astonishingly encyclopedic); b) "Shamans, Sorcerers, and Saints: A Prehistory of Religion" by Brian Hayden (great overview of religion origins and development); c) "God Owes Us Nothing: A Brief Remark on Pascal's Religion and on the Spirit of Jansenism" by Leszek Kolakowski (on predestination); d) "The Book of Miracles: The Meaning of the Miracle Stories in Christianity, Judaism, Buddhism, Hinduism and Islam" by Kenneth L. Woodward (very readable); e) "Sin and Salvation in the World Religions: A Short Introduction" by Harold Coward (somehow dry but also covering Christianity, Islam, Judaism, Buddhism and Hinduism); f) "Alternative Tradition: A Study of Unbelief in the Ancient World (Religion and Society)" by James A. Thrower; and g)"Dreaming in the World's Religions: A Comparative History" by Kelly Bulkeley (I have not bought it yet, it was published on July).