Prayers for Women Who Can't Pray
Written by Katharine Smithrim & Melanie Craig-Hansford
In Prayers for Women Who Can’t Pray, Katharine Smithrim and Melanie Craig-Hansford bring the Wintergreen commitment to sustainability into the realm of the soul and spirit. Moved by the observation that there are moments in life which call for more than positive thinking and visualization, they’ve constructed simple phrases to soothe, clarify and inspire. These poems are more accurately described as prayers, but for women who are unsure about our relationship with an organized religion or monotheism, to whom do we pray? This book suggests that the moment itself can be the subject of devotion. These prayers will allow you to whole-heartedly pray for courage to get through a difficult moment, or for beautiful moments to remain as a grounding experience that can be carried through life. For those of us without a bible for a compass, what a comfort this book provides.
Praise for Prayers for Women Who Can’t Pray:
“What a good idea! A book of prayers for women who need a new way to speak to the spirit that is both within and outside their bodies. The writers know that language that converses with the sacred should be sparse, imagistic, clear – as if the prayers are small crystal bells we ring with a breath, with a longing. I’m going to carry this small book in my pocket and pull it out when I need to praise my hands, my daily work, my beloved, when I worry about an animal who is sick, when I feel stressed about my work. Thank you, Katharine and Melanie, for these words of gratitude and praise.”
LORNA CROZIER, Governor General Award winning poet, Distinguished Professor at the University of Victoria, Officer of the Order of Canada, and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada. Author of The Blue Hour of the Day and Small Beneath the Sky.
“In the raw experience of awe, guilt, gratitude, or need, words that might meet our joy or our despairing often evade us. Or the words that do come reflect a belief system we can neither embrace nor bear. Yet silence seems almost irreverent. Smithrim and Craig-Hansford speak into that silence and offer us what we have yearned for: words that set out a hopeful path toward what might be, and offer us the strength and grace to embrace or endure it, come what will. It is a precious gift offered into a world that spins – and we with it – beyond the shelter of unquestioning belief.”
GRETTA VOSPER, founder of the Canadian Centre for Progressive Christianity, bestselling author of With or Without God, and pastor of West Hill United Church in Toronto, Ontario, Canada.
$10.00 cdn | us
5 x 8 pb, 78 pages
poetry/spirituality
isbn 9780986547362
Publication: November 2012
