BOOKS OR BELIEVERS – PART 1
CHOOSING PRAYERS OF DIFFERENT FAITHS
THE BOOK LAUNCH
The end of October will see the launch of my new book ‘Daily Prayers from the World’s Faiths’. I approach it with some trepidation. No surprise – the potential for getting things wrong and upsetting people is probably limitless.
So how did I dare, and how did I try to get it right?
MY FAMILY AND OTHER FAITHS
I grew up in a solidly Christian, in fact Anglican, culture: prayers at school, youth group in the local church hall etc. At university I made a new commitment of my life to the Holy Spirit. But my home life was more varied.
My father was an agnostic Jew and my mother was a Quaker with great interest in Indian spirituality. So I knew there was another world out there. During my training for ordination I had the good fortune of spending nine weeks in India, mostly in south India, learning about the Hindu and Muslim settings that the church there lived in.
LOCKDOWN & AFTER
During the second lockdown in November 2020 I sent out a weekly blog giving daily prayers from the world’s faiths, largely using my mother’s book, ‘God of a Hundred names’. Then after lockdown I continued writing blogs as part of a new book ‘The Church has a Past = has it got a Future?’ Titles of the blogs/chapters were ‘The Bible is not the word of God – it is more interesting than that’, ‘Jesus – the Facts’ and ‘Death etc.’
At the end of November 2022 I must have been feeling a bit creative, because I suddenly thought of another book, one which I thought I could produce quickly.
This was the series of suggestions for daily prayers from different religions over six weeks which I had sent out during lockdown. It was effectively almost ready to publish, or so I thought!
Whenever I mentioned this to anyone they thought it was good idea. On Tuesday 6th December I led a school carol service for Queens Gate Girls’ School. Afterwards I spoke to the school principal and I mentioned my idea. She immediately asked if she could order 600 copies!
CHECKING THE PRAYERS
It wasn’t hard to update the selection of prayers under the headings: Foundations, Welcoming the Day, Thanks, Sorry, Please and Surrender. (It was only at the tail end of the process that I realised I did not have any prayers for night time). But then I had to contact someone from each faith to check whether my selection of prayers/reflections was adequate.
1. My first contact was Professor Muhammad Abdel-Haleem of SOAS, the School of Oriental and African Studies. It took me quite some time to find his office because SOAS is a confusing campus to find one’s way around. When I go to his office, Professor Haleem was very helpful and encouraged me to use one particular passage from the Qur’an.
2. I was then introduced to Mattur Nandakumara of the Bhavan Cultural Centre, West Kensington, just one tube stop from my home. He introduced me to the wonderful reflection:
- Calamity is no calamity;
- Prosperity is no prosperity.
- Real calamity is when you forget God.
- Real prosperity is when you remember God.
3. St James Piccadilly told me of a Buddhist abbot, H. E. Lelung Rinpoche of the Lelung Dharma Centre, North Harrow. My first attempt to see him was scotched by TFL’s weekend engineering works. We met at my second attempt, and had a delightful time. I particularly treasure the prayer he gave me for welcoming the day; (though Buddhism is non-theistic and so does not strictly have prayers).
I am grateful that I have woken and am still breathing.
May my day be meaningful.
4. Rabbi Helen Freeman of the West London
Synagogue had kindly written a short review of my previous book ‘Jesus the Troublemaker’,
(“interesting and challenging”). I approached her again. We met over a coffee in Gail’s cafe/bakery and she approved my selection of prayers. I already had ‘Forms of Prayer for Jewish Worship, Reform Synagogues of G.B’ so choosing appropriates prayers had not been too difficult.
5. Choosing prayers from my own Western Christian tradition was relatively simple.
6. So was choosing Eastern Orthodox prayers, as I had ‘’A Manual of Eastern Orthodox Prayers’ on a shelf in our smallest room.
7. I already had discovered the spiritual path of ‘Alcoholics Anonymous’ through a 12 step group, Cocaine Anonymous, who used our church in Hackbridge for their weekly meetings. The core of it is the simple prayer. “Your will be done.”
8. I was not sure what to do about Sikhism, (more properly Sikhi). When I talked to someone at the gurdwara in Southall, I realised that Sikh prayers are in fact very lengthy recitations lasting twenty five minutes in the morning. They cannot be split up into separate prayers. Eventually I placed an extract of the oldest ‘bani’, or hymn, at the end of the book.
BETTER THAN A THOUSAND WORDS
The French say that a meal without wine is like a day with out sunshine. (I agree). I think that the same applies to books and pictures. That is why all my books include pictures, either out-of-copyright ones like William Blake’s etchings for the Book of Job, or commissioned ones as in ‘Jesus the Troublemaker’ by my regular illustrator Daniel Gould.
But how to illustrate prayers? I didn’t like the idea of portraits of people looking soupy. To my delight I found eight of my own photos which seemed to fit the bill. They were to some extent abstract but I thought they expressed the point of each type of prayer.
Let’s see if you agree. Here are four of the photos, marked A, B, C and D:
There are seven sections which they could fit into. Here they are:
1 Foundations
2 Welcoming the Day
3 Thanks
4 Sorry
5 Please
6 Night
7 Surrender
Set out the four letters and appropriate number of the section you choose to link it to. Then send it to me at aoroland@gmail.com. Only one attempt permitted. If you get it right I will send you a pdf copy of the book!
THE NEXT STEP
Having got a selection of prayers from around the world, I realised I had only done half the job. Prayers only start to make sense when you get to know the sea they swim in. So I thought that a brief description of each religion, limited to 500 words each, would be helpful and possible enlightening. Also hard to do! How I went about that I will describe next month.
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