In the foreword to the book, Mark Link S.J., tells a story that is applicable to whether or not this book will be helpful to you.
There's a story about a boy who was watching a sadhu [a Hindu "good man"] praying on the bank of a river. When the holy man finished the boy walked over to the water's edge and asked, "Will you teach me to pray?" The sadhu looked into the boy's eyes for a minute. Then he took the boy's head, plunged it under water and held it there. When the boy broke free and got his breath back, he sputtered, "What did you do that for?" The sadhu said, "I just gave you your first lesson in prayer. When you want to pray as badly as you wanted to breathe when your head was under water, only then will I be able to teach you."This book, like the above story, is not for the casual reader. It is for a reader who is ready to give more time and energy to prayer.
Thibodeaux has broken down prayer lives into four stages. #1 - Talking at God. #2 - Talking to God. #3 - Listening to God. #4 - Being with God. He spends most of his time on stage #3, as he believes people will spend most of their lifetime in this stage. He writes:
"When I get to this stage, my focus shifts from my own agenda (which I bring to God) to God's agenda (which God brings to me). It also demands a gread deal of faith because I am never going to be able to prove to any one - even to myself - that God is really communicating with me. I will not be able to record God's voice or frame one of his letters to me. I may always have that little voice in my head saying, "Psst! You're making all this up!" I am simply going to have to trust that God is present in my prayer. That is part of the surrendering that prayer demands."He cautions that this type of prayer should always take place inside a community of believers. You should be sharing what you learn in prayer to others (Spiritual Director, friend, community of believers) so they can help you sort the "Fools gold" from the real thing, as well as find "Hidden Treasures" - things that may not be readily apparent to you.
He has a whole chapter dedicated to "Dealing with Distractions". I think anyone who has ever attempted to pray longer than three minutes can identify with this hilarious example.
It also has several exercises to pray through and a really great chapter on the "desert experience."
"...Come, Lord Jesus...Come, Lord Jesus...Fred has really been a great friend to me. I hope he wasn't offended when I teased him about his cooking. That was a really stupid thing to say. I can't believe I said that--Come on, Mark, Pray! Sorry, Lord. Come, Lord Jesus...Come, Lord Jesus...Come, Lord Jesus...Shoot! I forgot that ER is playing on TV right now! I hope somebody's taping it. Come, Lord Jesus...Or maybe it's just a rerun anyway...Come, Lord Jesus...Come, Lord Jesus...I can't believe I'm thinking about ER during prayer; what the heck is my problem here? come, Lord Jesus...I guess I'm just distracted. Come, Lord Jesus...as distracted as Mark Green was on ER last Thursday...Come, Lord Jesus...."
Okay, now that you know what I liked about it...As the author is a Jesuit priest, this book is written in with Catholic tradition in mind, but he also reaches out the evangelical/Protestant crowd a couple times in the book as well. There was a section on 'mantras' that he will pray in the beginning of his prayer time to help get his mind and heart focused on God. A mantra is a phrase or a Bible verse that he will repeat over and over. Come, Lord Jesus is the mantra in the above example. I'm not sure how I feel about this exactly, but he also had a section on praying scripture in the same way, so I'm still able to achieve the same results without the mantras.
This is a fantastic book for any stage of pray-er!
