Teach Us how to Pray: A Review of New Books by Episcopal Women:

Teach Us How to Pray: A Review of New Books by Episcopal WomenWearing God: Clothing, Laughter, Fire, and Other Overlooked Ways of Meeting God. By Lauren F. Winner. New York: HarperCollins Publishers, 2015. 286 pp. $24.99 (cloth).A Lot of the Way Trees Were Walking: Poems from the Gospel of Mark. By Cynthia Briggs Kittredge. Eugene, Ore.: Wipf and Stock Publishers, 2015. xv + 100 pp. $15.00 (paper).Learning to Walk in the Dark. By Barbara Brown Taylor. New York: HarperCollins Publishers, 2014. 200 pp. $24.99 (cloth).Grounded: Finding God in the World-A Spiritual Revolution. By Diana Butler Bass. New York: HarperCollins Publishers, 2015. 323 pp. $26.99 (cloth).In Lukes Gospel, in the days when Jesus has set his face toward Jerusalem and has begun to tell his disciples that he must undergo great suffering and be rejected by the religious leaders and be killed and then on the third day be raised, his closest circle of followers ask him to teach them how to pray. He had just gone off by himself to a certain place to pray, alone with God, as was his spiritual practice. His followers notice, and when Jesus finishes praying, they confess to him their need to pray as he did: "Lord, teach us to pray, as John taught his disciples" (Luke 11:1).I like to think that, in that moment, Jesus learned something about his vocation. From the earliest days of his public ministry, Jesus had understood the purpose of his life and ministry to be about healing and proclaiming good news. After his discernment in the wilderness, he had returned to his hometown of Nazareth and stood up in the synagogue, full of the Holy Spirit, to reveal his mission. He would teach about the reign of God, what it was like and what it could be like on earth. He would proclaim that it was coming and already very near, especially for those most in need of it, the poor, the imprisoned, the blind, the oppressed. He would help to bring about the reign of God by his preaching and by his healing of lepers and paralytics, blind and deaf people, and those possessed by demons. He would also help to usher in the reign by suffering and dying. But it may not have been until this moment of expressed need, desire, and perhaps some gentle critique by his disciples of his leadership compared with that of his cousin John the Baptist that Jesus realized his mission also was to be a teacher of prayer.He himself was a man of prayer, in close relationship with God his Father. It is no coincidence that, in Luke's Gospel, Jesus is praying in the moment of his baptism, when the heavens open and the Holy Spirit descends upon him. His prayer and his power in the Spirit for mission are interwoven. His prayer emboldens and strengthens him for proclaiming and healing. But when he commissions his disciples also to go forth into the villages to bring the good news and cure disease of every kind, Jesus may not have realized that they needed instruction in prayer for this ministry. They needed to know how to pray as he did. They needed a relationship with God as intimate as his. When his disciples begin to learn that the mission of Jesus also will involve suffering and death, they become more aware of their need for prayer and beg Jesus to instruct them in nurturing intimacy with God. "Lord, teach us to pray." And so Jesus does, starting with the suggestion that they address God with a name of tender endearment, one used by beloved children. Abba.Because Jesus instructed others in the art of prayer, teaching people how to pray is arguably one of the mission responsibilities of the Christian community. Not everyone within the community can be a teacher of prayer, for the Holy Spirit gives gifts for all kinds of different ministries. But some are so called.Interestingly, from the veiy earliest days of Christianity to now, women as well as men have significantly participated in this mission of Jesus, from the desert mothers and fathers, to Christian mystics of the medieval age, to spiritual directors and teachers of prayer in more recent times. …