Praying the Psalms

Praying the Psalms
By the Rev. Deacon Patricia Marks
Posted June 5, 2013

The Rev. Deacon Patricia Marks

“Praying the Psalms” is my summer discipline, a way of both weaving the words of the psalms into my life and trying to answer the question of how to pray some of the more difficult passages. This online four-week course is offered by Monasteries of the Heart, a group that I have mentioned before. Each week, it highlights a different psalm with three short audio reflections by Sister Joan Chittister, along with several brief meditations by spiritual guides from a variety of paths of belief. It is one of the ongoing courses offered by the Benedictine sisters, and as I look at the descriptions of some of the others, including “The Gift of Years,” I think I will continue to join in. Whether or not you choose to participate in the on-line discussion, the questions that are posed are provocative and evocative, encouraging a reassessment of one’s direction in life, and calling us, as the Monastery of the Heart prayer says, to have hearts . . .


where all may enter in,

ears to hear your call,

hands to do your will,

voices to sing your praise

and soul enough
 to recognize You

in everything we do.

Book Review: Call the Midwife

Book Review: Call the Midwife, by Jennifer North
By the Rev. Deacon Patricia Marks
Posted April 28, 2013

The Rev. Deacon Patricia Marks

Here is a review of Call the Midwife—no, not the popular BBC series, but the book with pages that rustle when you turn them, a lively and compelling tale set in London’s impoverished East End. More importantly, here is a tale of the author’s spiritual path.

Jennifer Worth began her midwifery career with the Sisters of St. John the Divine, an Anglican order whose members had served in the Crimea with Florence Nightingale. Dressed in wimples and long skirts, they hopped on bicycles, pedaling through crime-ridden streets to deliver babies at all hours of day and night.

There are stories galore. Mary, for instance—she is the fifteen-year old who ran away from her mother’s abusive boyfriend straight into the arms of a handsome hustler. Given shelter at a convent, she was devastated when her baby was adopted. And Len, the Holy Fool, who pretended not to notice his newborn son’s different ethnicity. Ignoring his friends’ jibes, he became a loving father to a loving son. And Conchita, who could speak no English and her husband no Spanish: their 25th baby was premature; refusing hospitalization, she held him close for months, feeding him every half-hour.

Book Review: God Speaks in Many Tongues

God Speaks in Many Tongues: Meditate with Joan Chittister
Benetvision: 2013.
https://www.monasteriesoftheheart.org/

Review by The Rev. Deacon Patricia Marks
Posted January 25, 2013
 

 

 

 

This year, I again offer a book review in the form of a Lenten resolution—to read Joan Chittister’s God Speaks in Many Tongues and to respond to its invitation to do more meditation than reading. It promises to be a way of entering what Sister Joan, a Benedictine nun, calls the “monastery of the heart,” a guide to living “a holy life, a good and happy life in the midst of our everyday activities.” Available as a book and/or set of email meditations, God Speaks in Many Tongues offers selections from the world’s wisdom traditions, along with daily meditations for the season of Lent.

Book Review: Knit One, Purl a Prayer

Knit One, Purl a Prayer: A Spirituality of Knitting
by Peggy Rosenthal. Paraclete Press, 2011
Review by The Rev. Deacon Patricia Marks
Posted January 7, 2013
 

 

 

“Since we are created in the image of our Creator, it follows that we humans are created to create!” That is the thesis of this inspiring book, written by a self-professed skeptic of the prayer shawl ministry who herself became “blessed by the love knit into every stitch” of a shawl given to her at a difficult time. Rosenthal’s insights speak not only to knitters but to all creative people—woodworkers, cooks, painters, basketweavers —you name it.