Prayers for Women Who Can't Pray

This is a book of prayers for women who want to pray but can't. Many women feel the urge to pray–when a child is sick, when a loved one is dying, when relationships sour, in the presence of beauty. Our impulse is to say "Oh God, help!" or "Oh God, thank you." But as soon as we think or say the word God, many of us freeze, because we do not believe in a god who intervenes in our lives. We may well believe that there is a spiritual dimension or that life is imbued with the sacred. We may believe in a timeless, mysterious grace that envelops us all. Yet the very word God and the concept of prayer may have lost meaning for us. However, even when our image of divinity is not of a god who helps us, who wants to be thanked and praised, or who judges or forgives us, it is still possible to pray and to think about what prayer means. And so we pray. In this book we offer the kinds of prayers we can still pray. There are one-line prayers, easy to memorize, and to think or say at all times of the day and night, such as when we go to bed, enter our workplace, or wait for the hand dryer to dry our hands. There are also longer prayers to read when we have the time to be still. We hope that you can pray these prayers, and that this prayerful language is meaningful for you, and that you might begin to shape your days with your own authentic and sustaining words of prayer.