Prayers Before a River: A Beginner's Guide to Prayer

This is a book of prayers, with reflections on the act of praying. The prayers are scenes from daily life touching upon different topics: a prayer for animals; a prayer before a Christmas Tree; a prayer of the agnostic, of the unemployed, and of a college student; and a prayer against pessimism. Prayer is a rapport between heaven and earth, between God and humanity. There is no certified method of praying but some prayers offer a methodology, like the psalms. Your prayers are just you. Learning to pray is like when children learn to dance, to become the wind or a tree. They just let go. Prayer is the creative capacity of every soul, a deep structure, a language art, a reinvention of language that makes it possible for the spirit to sing and speak, to praise, petition, and weep.

John C. Maher is Professor of Linguistics in the Department of Society, Culture, and Media at International Christian University, Tokyo. He has degrees in philosophy and theology from Heythrop College, University of London, and linguistics from the Universities of Michigan and Edinburgh. He was Lecturer in Japanese at the University of Edinburgh and Senior Academic Member of St Antony's College, Oxford. He is the author of several books in the field of linguistics such as Introducing Chomsky (1997), and Multilingualism (2017).