Beginning to Pray by Anthony Bloom

  • Beginning to Pray This small vol­ume (114 pages) by an Ortho­dox arch­bishop is one of my very favorite books, and since it doesn’t seem to make into the church book­stores as much as I think it should, I’ll put in a word in time for Christ­mas buying.

    The Amazon.com review of their book on tape ver­sion says: “Based on a 1970 book by a much loved arch­bishop of the Russ­ian Ortho­dox Church in Great Britain (who died last year at age 89), this audio is a splen­didly nar­rated pre­sen­ta­tion of the author’s writ­ing on mercy and hope.” That’s a good start, and I would love to try to fill in more, but I’m at a bit of a loss, and so I think I’ll just quote some of my favorite pas­sages:

    • On the “absence” of God:

      The day when God is absent, when He is silent — that is the begin­ning of prayer. Not when we have a lot to say, but when we say to God ‘I can’t live with­out You. Why are You so cruel, so silent?’ This knowl­edge that we must find or die — that makes us break through to the place where we are in the Pres­ence. If we lis­ten to what our hearts know of love and long­ing and are never afraid of despair, we find that vic­tory is always there on the other side of it.”

    • The “mad­ness” of Chris­tian­ity

      As Chris­tians we are always in ten­sion — the anguish and at the same time in bliss. This is mad, ridicu­lous. But it is true — accept­ing the dark night just as we accept the bril­liance of the day … But, on the other hand, the Chris­t­ian is like some­one who lives in three dimen­sions in a world in which the major­ity of peo­ple live in two.

    • Meet­ing God

      When we read the Gospel and the image of Christ becomes com­pelling, glo­ri­ous, … do we ever say, ‘I am unwor­thy that He should come near me?’ Not to speak of all the occa­sions when we should be aware that He can­not come to us because we are not there to receive Him. We want some­thing from Him, not Him at all. Is that a rela­tion­ship? Do we behave in that way with our friends? Do we aim at what friendhsip can give us or is it the friend whom we love? Is this true with regard to the Lord?

    And I’ll just men­tion that those excerpts are more or less at ran­dom. This is the sort of book you start high­light­ing and then just give up because you’d be mark­ing up every line.


    Related posts:

    1. On silence (again)
    2. Becom­ing Ortho­dox by Peter E. Gillquist
    3. Spir­i­tual Coun­sels by Fr. John of Kronstadt
    4. N-C-C ya later!

    October 31st, 2005 | Grace | 4 Comments |

4 Responses and Counting...

  • Michelle 10.31.2005

    I should re-read that book, I also love it.

  • Grace

    I just fin­ished re-reading it, and I was amazed. I just think it’s got the most won­der­ful advice not only on prayer but on time man­age­ment and on one’s entire rela­tion­ship with God.

    As I said, I’ve never seen it in an Ortho­dox book­store, and it doesn’t usu­ally make the lists of Ortho­dox favorites.. I learned about it by word-of-mouth, so I’m doing the same.

  • Michelle

    My priest men­tioned it to me once (in con­fes­sion) and it’s def­i­nitely in our parish’s bookstore.

    You are right, though it isn’t an oft men­tioned “favorite” although it should be.

  • This Side of Glory » Blog Archive » “Begin­ning to Pray” read­ing on the radio

    […] Quick plug: Mak­ing the rounds, I see that Ancient Faith Radio is going to present read­ings from “Begin­ning to Pray” over the next six Mon­days (sched­ule HERE). Excit­ing stuff! As I said back here, this is one of my favorites. And more than that, the unique mes­sage on how to con­sider the action of prayer offers some­thing for everyone. […]

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