13 Oct 2017

A New Book from Ireland’s oldest peace and reconciliation centre.

The Corrymeela Community is delighted to announce the release of Daily Prayer, written by Pádraig Ó Tuama. The book published in August 2017 by Canterbury Press, follows the daily prayer schedule of the community, offering new insights into living a life of reconciliation. Other themes include living truthfully in community, sharing meals, arguments and hope at the same table.

You can buy Daily Prayer by contacting Corrymeela’s Belfast Office (028 9050 8080 belfast@corrymeela.org). It is £8.99 plus post/packaging.

All proceeds go to fund the work of Corrymeela.

Pádraig Ó Tuama is a poet and theologian and in this collection, he brings the lens of poetry to prayer, particularly exploring the ancient form of “Collect”. He highlights how form can be a collecting place for the human condition. In a sonnet, one can find the depth to contain uncontainable sentiment. In the form of Collect, with its five steps, one can find a structure to contain hope.

This book offers collects for 31 days, tracking along the 31 short texts from the gospels that the Corrymeela Community uses for its monthly prayer. The book also offers prayers for morning and evening, including innovative segments on “The Seven Nights of Creation” and, most movingly, fourteen Collects for the Stations of the Cross. The collection is introduced by an essay Oremus exploring prayer, form, story, violence and hope.

This book, the fourth publication from Ó Tuama, continues to offer a fresh and contemporary language to the ancient faith and hope of Christianity, and brings the story of Corrymeela to a new readership through these simple–to–use prayers. The prayers are not only for the devout but also for those made anxious by religion who wish to take their faith, doubt and hope seriously. All profits from this book will benefit the work of Corrymeela. corrymeela.org


Reviews for Daily Prayer (Canterbury Press, August 2017) follow:
Reading Pádraig Ó Tuama’s marvellous new book is like living inside a prayer. Consoling and inviting, challenging and inspiring, his beautiful meditations and luminous prayers will help you reflect more deeply on God’s poetic action in your life.
James Martin SJ, author of Jesus: A Pilgrimage

You hold in your hand a month’s worth of recipes for spiritual nourishment. They are simple: it will only take a few moments to prepare your heart to make room for them. They are deep: as soon as you have used them for a month, you will want to begin again because each reading invites you deeper. I’ve never seen a book of prayers like this one. I think this is just what my soul needs.
Brian D. McLaren, author of The Great Spiritual Migration

Oh I need this book of prayers! They find me where I am, and as I am – alive, human, exiled – and resuscitate an ancient way to a true reconciliation within myself, with others, and with a power greater than myself. I do not need to be ashamed. The stones over which we stumble can be made into altars. And Jesus is returned to me as a person of presence and imagination, able to listen and to heal by his close attention – a living guide to the power of radical love.
Marie Howe, State Poet of New York (2012–2014)

These poem–prayers are compassionate, contemporary and formally innovative. Improvising key moments in scripture, they offer a fresh perspective, linguistic rhythms grounded in truth and love. Savour them on the tongue, learn them off by heart, customise them, make them your own.
Patience Agbabi, poet, author of Telling Tales, former Poet Laureate of Canterbury

‘In this beautiful collection of simple lucid prayers Pádraig Ó Tuama invites us to lay our trinkets aside and turn to our treasure. And this anthology is indeed a treasure: prayers that turn hostility towards hospitality, prayers that help us say what we mean and not we thought we were meant to mean. This book will help any reader to be ‘honest to God’, and in that honesty, encounter afresh the love that casts out fear. Each of these prayers offers a rich, poetic response to the words of Jesus, utterly free of cant and religious jargon, a surprising and refreshing companion for all of us on the Emmaus Road.’
Malcom Guite, poet, theologian, priest, literary critic, author of Sounding the Seasons and Mariner