When a Pagan Prays

A beautiful book, especially how honest it is and how it shows the growth and journey of the author, the things that bothered me as a hard polytheist with personal close experiences with the divine disappear by the end of the book as the author reveals the fears of undertaking this journey and of it's results.This book was also surprisingly helpful for me as a survival of spiritual abuse who is trying to learn and trust where I stand spiritually and heal from the past.The only criticism I could possibly have is the use of the word crazy without a better care to not offend or stereotype people with mental illness, but it's not the worse I have seen of this and only in few parts of the book.

I returned this book before I finished it because it was just that poorly written. The type of writing in this book was reminiscent of the directionless ruminations of a personal journal. This is the only book on prayer that I have read that turns something relatively simple like prayer into the metaphysical equivalent of trying to maintain full lotus position while balancing on your head. When the the author wasn't making prayer seem more complicated than it is, she was endlessly debating with herself on what prayer is , how it works, and whether or not it works. It was tedious and verbose.

I'm making this required reading for Druid students and Spiritual Direction Clients

This book is not about what it says it's about. This book is really about an atheist druid trying to find a reason to pray. It is basically a depressing and useless book.

well written and thought provoking

Highly recommended When a Pagan Prays by Nimue Brown is an ambitious book, and a courageous one. On my reading it blends two voices. The first offers a cool appraisal of prayer by a Pagan Druid strongly influenced by existentialist philosophy. It tells us that value and meaning are not written in the stars: we have to provide them for ourselves, and it’s our responsibility as self-aware humans to do so. The second voice describes a personal journey, essentially a recovery story centred on re-connection with the “numinous”. This leads to a re-frame of scepticism about prayer and a hard-won willingness to say: “I like prayer. I’m not angry with it any more. I’ll keep doing it, keep asking and searching, doubting and wondering”.I will start with the second voice, for me the predominant voice of the book, though it takes a while to be heard. This is at least in part because of the author’s decision not to make retrospective changes to early chapters in which this “somewhat agnostic Druid took an academic interest in prayer” and had not yet found that this “wasn’t going to work”. The shift came when she began an experimental practice and stayed with it long enough for it to bear fruit. She was helped by Thich Nhat Hanh’s view of how prayer affects us: “when love and compassion are present in us, and we send those outwards, then that is truly prayer”. This allowed a move away from an originally limited framing of prayer as petitionary prayer to named Deity/Deities) into something more spacious and allowing. As a Druid, she was also partly influenced by the idea of kami – the spirits or phenomena revered in Japanese Shinto. As spirits of the elements in nature, or ancestors, or animals, creationary forces in the universe, part of nature and not separate from it, such beings seemed on a scale approachable through attunement, potentially available for conversation.At night and on the edge of sleep, the author decided to see what happened when she opened her heart and sought peace with herself. She wasn’t seeking “grace or purity”, but “wholeness, wellness, connection”. Prayer became “an act of opening awareness”, of being open to the numinous, open to the divine. She stood before the unknown, holding her mind in a state of readiness, not expecting coherence, in a place that is perhaps beyond both doubt and belief. And she was thus willing, both to say “my prayer has had real and discernable effects for me” and that “this proves nothing”. In the end she says: “there are aspects of being that cannot be usefully discussed in terms of ‘realness’. That may be where the gods live”. A voice that at first has been buried, and then emerged in a hesitant way, can now celebrate re-connecting with the felt numinosity of early life, able to let go of the “defensive rationalism” that for a time played a necessary role.The rational voice, the first voice, still has its place. This book isn’t all personal story. It considers the nature of prayer, the ethics of prayer, the social functions of prayer, and practicalities of prayer. It looks at the relationships between prayer and ritual, prayer and magic, and the idea of life itself as prayer if lived prayerfully. The author thinks through prayer as a concept (or set of related concepts), and its context, and how most effectively and ethically to pray. This voice too is an honest voice. It does not make assumptions, or hypnotise the reader into agreement. We are asked to think and reflect. In the end, the first voice becomes the servant of the second. It’s questioning both demands and enables the integrity of the author’s personal experiment in prayer. The resulting fruits of practice, and the conclusions of the book, are owed to the presence of both voices, and the author’s willingness to be loyal to them both through a time when they were as yet unreconciled.

It is said that there are no atheists on the battlefield, or more generally to whom do you turn in your darkest hour? In ‘When a Pagan Prays’, Nimue Brown encourages us to look closely at what we, as individuals, mean by prayer and offers up a valuable insight of how she views the subject as a modern Druid. If we’re honest, most pagans are hampered by the lack of an established creed to guide us when ‘communing with, a god or some spiritual power’ and so we need some sort of guidance in understanding what prayer entails. Generally speaking, most prayer is either a petition or supplication simply because we want something (from the release of pain to winning the lottery), often less frequently a vote of thanks as in counting our blessings. Within the established religions, prayer is generally performed by rote and as the author points out: “Prayer practices are numerous and diverse, from the deeply private, to the public ritual, from the ancient prayer poem to the sudden improvisation. A little reading around about different faiths left me clear that there are many ways of doing it, and that individual preferences and needs are probably the best guide in picking ways of working. After all, if you feel silly, uncomfortable or fraudulent then the odds of having a meaningful spiritual experience are slim.”The charm (if that is the right word) of this book is that Nimue Brown can encourage us to look away from our own attitudes to prayer and study those from other cultures – not in order to highjack those ideas or techniques but to draw inspiration from them. She uses the comparison with Shinto (a faith I grew up in and have often compared with traditional British Old Craft)in that it combines the purity of technique with a highly abstract focus on deity. Prayer, of course, is a very private matter and our own individual way of connecting with godhead, however we see He, She or It and ‘When A Pagan Prays’ reveals how we can bring that personal spirituality into our daily lives. Or simply as my neighbouring farmer commented only the other morning as we stood together in silent contemplation of the early morning blue haze on the mountains, “It makes you feel good with yourself, doesn’t it?”

Over the years I've read many books on prayer from several faith perspectives. I've also taught spirituality and prayer, and studied theology at degree level, and I think this is one of the most important books on prayer that I have read. Nimue Brown is cleared-eyed, wise, practical, yet produces work that has the hallmarks of a modern day mystic. I would love to sit around a kitchen table sharing a coffee with Brown; she's an engaging companion. She is also unflinchingly honest about the problems she faced whilst writing this book; anyone looking for easy, fluffy-bunny paganism needs to go elsewhere.This book obviously appeals to pagans, but Brown's lucid ideas on prayer - why people pray and the ethics of it as well as what we should expect the results to be -or not- should be food for thought for believers of any faith. It should also be of interest to open-minded non-believers too, as it blows some myths about prayer clean out of the water.In spite of my own experiences, I've somewhat lost my way as to prayer and spiritual practice, to the extent that I have wondered if there was any point resuming them. This book couldn't be more timely for me personally and has reminded me that these things aren't only worthwhile, but essential, and for that I thank Nimue Brown hugely.All in all, a rewarding read that deserves a wide readership.

What a marvellous book this is: full of sayings, suggestions, & witty remarks which I've underlined to go back to, & add to my notebook of inspiring quotes. It's both a very personal look at prayer, and, one which draws from many religions & beliefs, not just the writer's Druid ones. While it was particularly fascinating to follow author Nimue Brown's journey from being a Pagan who does not pray, to one who does, this book has persuaded me of the value of prayer as a regular practice, regardless of faith or background.From the "petition prayer" – or, as the author puts it, "Please God, give me a pony" - to questions such as, "Who are we praying to, and why, and what for?", to group prayer, writing our own prayers, and much more, this is a thorough, insightful, and at times amusing look at the topic of prayer.Thoroughly recommended! My top choice as a Yule present to my book loving, Protestant sister.

This is the second book I've read by this author and both have offered plenty to reflect on. Nimue covers both her own, fascinating, experience with prayer and tells us about prayer in a variety of traditions. She also provides practical ideas about how to bring prayer into our spiritual practice. I think this book is useful not just for pagans but for anyone, like me, interested in enriching their spiritual life. Nimue writes in a very clear, assertive style. The cover design is also beautiful. The only thing that makes it a 4 rather than 5 star for me, is that there is a degree of repetition in the book which I found got in the way at times. I noticed this with her other book and I'm guessing that it reflects Nimue's deep thought about the subject, it is as if she is working it through in her writing. Overall I highly recommend and I'm looking forward to reading her other books.

Great for anyone struggling in a recovery program that based in a faith you do not share, for practitioners of non- theistic or polytheistic spiritualities. Thoughtful, honest and well articulated. Addresses most of the conflicts between the monotheistic approach, and pagan praxis.

I was a little disappointed about this book. I thought I would find prayers oder devotionals in it. It was helpful though, the writer gives nice instructions how to perform rituals and devotionals. A recommendable reading.