The Bible presents a landscape rich with characters whose stories and prophecies, wisdom and woes, parables and prayers describe our very human struggle to know and respond to the love of God. Repeated reading and retelling make these texts familiar, and yet we encounter them anew in these fresh, intimate, and sometimes startling reflections by master storyteller Genevieve Glen, OSB. Sr. Genevieve writes with a vivid and poetic imagination. Drawing on her life of monastic prayer and the practice of Lectio Divina-a life saturated in Scripture-she pulls us deeply into these stories. Sauntering through this holy ground with her we enter small villages and busy towns, sheepfolds and gardens, a nomad's tent and a rich man's house, a stable in Bethlehem and the great temple in Jerusalem. Most of all we encounter the transforming message and mercy of God in Jesus Christ.

This collection of ground-breaking essays considers the many dimensions of prayer: how prayer relates us to the divine; prayer's ability to reveal what is essential about our humanity; the power of prayer to transform human desire and action; and the relation of prayer to cognition. It takes up the meaning of prayer from within a uniquely phenomenological point of view, demonstrating that the phenomenology of prayer is as much about the character and boundaries of phenomenological analysis as it is about the heart of religious life.The contributors: Michael F. Andrews, Bruce Ellis Benson, Mark Cauchi, Benjamin Crowe, Mark Gedney, Philip Goodchild, Christina M. Gschwandtner, Lissa McCullough, Cleo McNelly Kearns, Edward F. Mooney, B. Keith Putt, Jill Robbins, Brian Treanor, Merold Westphal, Norman Wirzba, Terence Wright and Terence and James R. Mensch. Bruce Ellis Benson is Associate Professor of Philosophy at Wheaton College. He is the author of Graven Ideologies: Nietzsche, Derrida, and Marion on Modern Idolatry and The Improvisation of Musical Dialogue: A Phenomenology of Music. Norman Wirzba is Associate Professor and Chair of the Philosophy Department at Georgetown College, Kentucky. He is the author of The Paradise of God and editor of The Essential Agrarian Reader.