Awakening to Prayer

Book excerpt: This book is an introduction to prayer, drawing on Eastern and Western traditions. Translated from the original Japanese into Dutch, French, German, Italian, Korean, and Spanish, Awakening to Prayer has already become a modern spiritual classic. In this simple yet profound book, Japanese Carmelite Augustine Ichiro Okumura explores the fundamental nature and root of prayer, the human and divine reality that underlies all praying. Drawing on the images, stories, and insights of Eastern and Western spiritual traditions, the author considers prayer as conversation, as listening, as resting in the divine. In a long chapter on the "anthropology of prayer," he discusses the relationship between prayer times and other daily activities, the need for both repeated ritual and silence, the problem of distractions and deviations in prayer. The book culminates in a moving reflection on Christ's prayer and what it means to pray authentically as a Christian.