Barefoot Prayers: A Meditation a Day for Lent and Easter
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Overview
Stephen Cherry’s latest book is a sequence of beautifully crafted prayer-meditations, providing simple yet profound spiritual nourishment for the Lenten season. Barefoot Prayers gives an engaging introduction to the different ways that prayer can work in the lives of the busiest of Christians.
- Daily prayer-meditations for Lent
- In-depth introduction on prayer
- Week 1: Gatherings
- Week 2: Awakenings
- Week 3: Occasions
- Week 4: Puzzles
- Week 5: Responses
- Week 6: Virtues
- Week 7: Deeps
- Week 8: Horizons
Top Highlights
“Prayer is not a strain, but a response to grace. It is not us rolling up our sleeves to get on with it, but us waiting patiently and expectantly and inviting God to do God’s thing in God’s time. We can only pray when we let go of the desire, deep-seated in us though it is, to control; when we remember that we are not God.” (Page 5)
“Do not try to think’ and ‘Do not try not to think’.4 It is the space, the poise, between these two sentences that I am trying to describe: the effort of spirituality is the effort of getting yourself out of the way.” (Pages 2–3)
“To be in tune with God’s Spirit, to let God’s Spirit call the tune from the instrument that we are: this is the height of Christian spirituality, Christian living, and Christian service.” (Page 4)
“True prayer is necessarily unguarded and unrefined. It is rough and raw, and reveals to us something about what is going on at the deeper level where God connects with us.” (Pages 6–7)
“It is self-acceptance without self-obsession, self-awareness without self-regard.” (Page 7)
Like the Psalms in honesty and depth, these are poems that can help us pray, and prayers that can awaken us to the poetry in everyday life.
—Dame Laurentia Johns, Benedictine nun, Stanbrook Abbey
The title of this book says it well. Step into the Lenten season with shoes off, feeling the ground of life with senses fully alert to daily encounters in vulnerable ways. Stephen Cherry is a wise and gracious spiritual guide whose prayers magnificently touch the wide range of human experience.
—Sheryl Shenk, spiritual director and founder, Blue Ridge Ministries, Harrisonburg, VA
These quiet, free-form poetic meditations lead readers to find ways to pray about everything, from the busyness of an ordinary day to the great mysteries of Good Friday and Easter.
—Holly Ordway, professor of English, Houston Baptist University
These are prayers with the all-too-rare quality of being freshly minted and imagined in a different register. They’re evocative, playful, and searching, and they demand a return visit.
—John Pritchard, bishop of Oxford
- Title: Barefoot Prayers: A Meditation a Day for Lent and Easter
- Author: Stephen Cherry
- Publisher: SPCK
- Publication Date: 2013
- Pages: 144
Reviews
2 ratings
Dr Johann Joubert
3/25/2015
Glenn Crouch
4/26/2014
I used this as part of my devotions for Lent / Easter in 2014. I really didn't get into the first 2 weeks of reading, and was about to give up, then weeks 3 through 6 really got to me, and then I had trouble "connecting" with weeks 7 and 8. Now this could be because of fault on my part - I will admit that the Poetical approach is not something I come to easily - but I thought I would give it a try for this Lent. I am pleased that I did, and the amount that I got out of the middle of this book almost makes it worth 4 stars.
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