Close to the Heart: A Guide to Personal Prayer

A real-life approach to prayer Sharing her own life-changing prayer experiences as well as those of others, Margaret Silf invites us to embark on our own adventure in prayer, with promises that we will not be disappointed. In Close to the Heart, she introduces a world of imaginative yet simple ways to approach personal prayer, tempting us to search for “clues to the kingdom” in everyday life. This experiential book, Silf explains, “starts where people really are and encourages them to discover God in their real lives—in the agony and the ecstasy, the glorious and the mundane.”
Breaking through boundaries and stereotypes, Margaret Silf shows prayer as a journey into reflective living. This comprehensive guide helps readers experience prayer as a natural, organic process and offers a powerful vision of what personal prayer can be.
“This is an excellent book on prayer and its relationship to every aspect of life. Writing of ordinary things in simple, lucid prose, . . . the author helps us glimpse God, seamlessly woven into earthy experience.”
—gerard w. hughes, s.j.
“[Silf] has a great gift. . . . She never skirts real life, with its questions, fears, doubts, and desires. She doesn’t clean anything up and make it ‘spiritual and holy,’ for she sees all of life as spiritual and holy.”
—janet schaeffler, Office for Religious Education, Archdiocese of Detroit

Margaret Silf is a popular retreat director and speaker on Ignatian spirituality. She is the author of numerous books, including Compass Points, Inner Compass, Close to the Heart, Going on Retreat. and her forthcoming book The Other Side of Chaos.  She lives in Scotland.