Holy Ground. Julie K. Aageson

Too often we turn prayer into well-intentioned patterns of our own making. Too often we assume prayer is primarily about words. Sometimes there's an almost magical understanding that if we get the words right, if we trust enough or believe enough, God will «answer.» But most of us know that God is not a divine magician or our own personal valet and that prayer is much more than our feeble attempts to make God pay attention to what God already knows. Using the alphabet as a template of descriptive words and actions, Holy Ground: An Alphabet of Prayer invites reflection about prayer as paying Attention, looking for Beauty, showing Compassion, practicing Devotion, celebrating Enthusiasm–all the way to the end of the alphabet and discovering Wonder, X as mystery, and Z as Zeal. These reflections will help readers experience prayer as a place, an action, or attitude, a stance for recognizing and acknowledging God's presence in the midst of ordinary life–something like the sigh of the shoemaker, too busy to drop his worn shoes and kneel in disciplined prayer, but not too busy to sigh his prayer of gratitude. Prayer is so much more than words.