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Many people today are creating their own prayer books, collecting in a journal or a computer file favorite prayers from childhood, congregational experiences, retreats, and personal reading. Those of us on a multifaith or spiritually independent path are discovering that we are heir to all the devotional practices and resources of the world's religions, including a wide variety of prayers. The following resources provide access to this rich heritage with new and old prayers that approach life's experiences and the world around us with faith, love, compassion, justice, forgiveness, reverence, joy, and wonder.
In Secrets of Prayer: A Multifaith Guide to Creating Personal Prayer in Your Life(SkyLight Paths, 2007), Nancy Corcoran notes: "Just as we need physical diversity to survive, we also need spiritual diversity — nourishment from a variety of 'soul foods' — to grow spiritually. No one tradition or way of seeing the Divine will fit every human person or feed every human need. And therein lies another secret of prayer: Diversity in prayer is the food of spiritual growth."
Corcoran is a member of the Sisters of St. Joseph and founder of grass/roots: Women's Spirituality Center. In this excellent multifaith resource, she presents prayer practices from many different traditions, adding some fascinating stories on multiple ways of experiencing the Holy. A chapter on the senses as a vehicle of prayer is filled with many helpful spiritual practices.
Stephanie Dowrick is a prolific writer, a trained psychotherapist, and a spiritual leader and teacher. In the opening chapter of Heaven on Earth: Timeless Prayers of Wisdom and Love (Tarcher/ Penguin, 2013) she praises prayer as a restorative process that anchors us, brings life back when our faith has faltered, and opens our hearts to the grace in our lives. It also is a very helpful resource in times of illness, loss, grief, and death.
Dowrick offers the following advice on how to pray: pray in the present moment, make the prayer your own, check what motivates you, choose your prayers spontaneously, let instinct guide you, commit to prayer, pray often, and value the miracle. She uses these two quotations as ballasts for the book: "Prayer is a longing of the soul. . . . and an instrument of action" from Mahatma Gandhi and from Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel: "Prayer cannot bring water to parched fields, mend a broken bridge, or rebuild a broken city, but prayer can water an arid soul, mend a broken heart, and rebuild a weakened will."
In seven chapters, Dowrick shares a treasure-trove of prayers, quotations, and sacred texts from all the world's religions and spiritual paths, giving the reader a chance to connect with God, the mysteries of human nature, the triumphs and tragedies of everyday life, and the ample wonders of light, love, and personal transformation.
God Has No Religion: Blending Traditions for Prayer (Sorin Books, 2005) by Francis Goulart is the kind of resource that should become a staple in these times when people of many traditions are regularly interacting. Blending traditions for prayer can deepen our own faith, as Karen Armstrong has pointed out: "By learning to pray the prayers of people who do not share our beliefs we can learn at a level deeper than creedal, to value their faith."
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