I confess I have never prayed with beads, either the Orthodox kind or the Catholic kind. I confess, though, that I do have a rosary I bought in Asissi and which drapes over a Franciscan cross in my office. So, I was pleased to see that Nan Lewis Doerr and Virginia Stem Owens have now published Praying with Beads. Ever since I developed the Jesus Creed stuff and then wrote Praying with the ChurchI have paid attention to books on prayer like this one.
Question: What is your experience, if any, with praying with beads?
This book reveals a growing tendency among Anglicans to pray with beads and it begins with a nice diagram of beads and then proceeds to provide a year’s worth of prayers. Each prayer session includes a reflection on the cross, an invitatory prayer, a cruciform prayer, a prayer for the weeks beads. Then it moves to the Lord’s Prayer (skipping over my hope that someone will begin to add the Jesus Creed to re-unite us more with our Jewish past) and another cross prayer. There are also noon and evening variations.
The genius of this book is the ability to get each day on one page.
I’ll take this book to my office one of these days and say my prayers with the beads to see how this works — but one need not have beads to use this book.