Natural Prayers

All my life has been a relearning to pray-a letting go of incantational magic, petition, and the vain repetition me, Lord, me,' instead watching attentively for the light that burns at the center of every star, every cell, every living creature, every human heart.-from the introduction

Informed by his work as a physicist and astronomer, Raymo strives to connect with that which unifies our intricate world, and thus effectively explores the wonders of what Nikos Kazantzakis called "the dread essence beyond logic." The "natural prayers" that flow from the pages of Raymo's work, then, begin as mere observations and slowly open into profound meditations immersed in the languages of science and literature.

"Physicist Chet Raymo chews up the Big Bang Theory and spits out something that Blake might have written about angels. Spend an evening stargazing with this man and you'll never be the same."-Paul Ingrim, bookseller, Prairie Lights

"Raymo's writing is passionate and compassionate, mixing his reverence for the myriad possibilities of life with his amazement at what science has revealed."-Seattle Times

"[Raymo] approach[es] all of creation with wonder and eloquent delight."-Boston Globe

Chet Raymo is a professor of physics and astronomy at Stonehill College in Massachusetts.

All my life has been a re-learning to pray--a letting go of incantantational magic, petition and the vain repition "me, Lord, me," instead watching attentively for the light that burns at the center of every star, every cell, every living creature, every human heart. What follows is a breviary of "natural prayers," meditations inspired by mindfulness to the natural world, unfolding during the course of the year, following the seasons of sun and moon. They celebrate three different landscapes where I spend part of each year--the island of Exuma in Bahamas, the environs of a New England village, and the wild, rocky Dingle Peninsula in the west of Ireland. Each meditation springs from something seen; my purpose is to discern the extraordinary in the commonplace, to find that "dread essence beyond logic." This book is full of science, because knowledge is a prerequisite for love. "Less and less do I see any difference between research and adoration," wrote the J! esuit theologian Teilhard de Chardin near the end of his life. For Teilhard, as for many poets and mystics, prayer is a meditation on the world, informed by knowledge, open to mystery.