The Path of Celtic Prayer: An Ancient Way to Everyday Joy by Calvin Miller

Discover an ancient way of prayer that leads us to new union with God.

"Long ago," Calvin Miller writes, "when the Celts built their own rustic kingdom of God in what would later be the British Isles, their fervor in prayer washed their world in a vital revival."

In uncertain and dangerous days of high infant-mortality rates, leprosy and plagues, the Celts breathed candid prayers out of the reality of their lives: Desperate prayers for protection. Praise for the God who was king over all creation. Honest prayers of confession.

The author, Calvin Miller, has clearly done a lot of reading and research into the spiritual patrimony of the Celtic peoples, and presents the reader with six distinctive 'types' of prayers that were fundamental to the Celtic Christians and their way of discipleship.

Those six 'types' - Trinity Prayer, Scripture Prayer, Long Wandering Prayer, Nature Prayer, Lorica Prayer and Confessional Prayer - are examined in some detail, yet, as Miller observes, cannot be separated from each other since the Celts themselves had no notion of them being separate 'types' of prayer.

"This book proposes a kind of prayer that can end our amputated feelings of separateness from God," says Miller.

What was true for the Celts is still true for us: "Hunger for Christ keeps us talking to God till our separation is swallowed up in our unending togetherness with him."

As rich as the faith they describe, these pages lead us on an ancient path that gives guidance for present and future prayers, until the day the Celts longed for, when all separation is gone and we live forever in the presence of God.

The Celts had an amazing relationship with nature and the elements and it permeates their prayers. "'The earth is the Lord's and the fullness thereof' (Psalm 24:1, KJV). And we have been given a mandate to care for God's property (Genesis 2:15). If we allow our environment to deteriorate, not only will we have disobeyed God but humans will have no place to live and worship. ...Never did the sun rise but what the Celts saw the triune God in the light." Miller explores Celtic prayer in nature, in journey and in pilgrimage, as lectio divina, and more.

The Path of Celtic Prayer: An Ancient Way to Everyday Joy by Calvin Miller  is a very experiential book, in which we are drawn into a deeper understanding of and experience of prayer.

For anyone wishing to explore the ways in which a deeply religious and spiritual people like the Celts prayed and developed a prayer life that was real and natural, this book provides an easy entrée into their way of being prayerful.

I would recommend it, not only to those who have a love of things Celtic, but also to those who have a love of all things spiritual and prayerful.