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| Sister Wendy on Prayer | 
 enlarge | Author: Wendy Beckett
Publisher: Harmony
Category: Book
List Price: $21.95
Buy New: $6.63
You Save: $15.32 (70%)
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Avg. Customer Rating:  (5 reviews)
Sales Rank: 52193
Languages: English (Original Language), English (Unknown), English (Published)
Media: Hardcover
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 144
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.7
Dimensions (in): 8.4 x 5.6 x 0.7
ISBN: 030739381X
Dewey Decimal Number: 248.32
EAN: 9780307393814
ASIN: 030739381X
Publication Date: November 6, 2007
Release Date: November 6, 2007
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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Product Description
Sister Wendy Beckett, adored and renowned art historian, has spent years in silence and contemplation in her calling as a nun. Her celebrated television specials and books about art have led her many admirers to ask about her own faith and practices. For the ?rst time, in this thoughtful examination of the nature of prayer, she reveals her deeply held beliefs about her religion and her intimate understanding of God.
What should I do during prayer? Can prayer really be as simple as a conversation? How do I let God enter my being? Do I need to belong to a religion in order to pray? Sister Wendy answers these and many other common questions, all the while imparting the importance of prayer in our daily lives. No book by Sister Wendy would be complete without art?accompanying her wisdom are thirteen beautiful reproductions of paintings that Sister Wendy has selected because of the spiritual connection she has with each.
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| Customer Reviews:
 Better books on prayer exist December 10, 2008
A bit disapointed with the book. Some may find it helpful, personally I thought it was lacking in depth, focused on art (art isn't a requisite of prayer) and I finally put the book down when she suggested "religion" as unnecessary. As a practicing Catholic I was disturbed that if daily Mass was important enough for her to write this into a contract with a media giant why would it not be an important aspect of prayer advice or council to the interested student. There are better books on prayer, Sr. Wendy lives with Carmelites. Perhaps a prayer seaker might find "Fire Within: Teresa of Avila, St. John of the Cross, and the Gospel-On Prayer" by Thomas Dubay a better selection.
 Sister Wendy's Artful Prayers May 1, 2008
4 out of 4 found this review helpful
Sister Wendy Beckett may have given her "last bow" to public television viewers in her 2001 series, American Collection. Yet the reclusive, Oxford-educated nun continues her one-of-a-kind art ministry in writing. The latest evidence is found in her little book, "Sister Wendy on Prayer."
Her viewers know that Sister Wendy is so focused on art in her television appearances that she rarely "goes religious." Perhaps that is why I was drawn to her 2006 book when it recently showed up among new releases at our local library. As an occasional viewer, I knew the sister to be serious about art, but how serious is she about prayer?
Serious enough to bring them both into union, as in this lovely passage: "Yes, art does matter to prayer. I have only to see a Cezanne, for example, perhaps one of his great landscapes, or a majestic still life, a landscape in its own right, and I am overwhelmed with joy. This is a profound and transforming joy, a call to enter into something beyond what is seen. ... There are no words for this, but I know that I have been lifted out of my smallness into something immeasurably great, something that, however vaguely, seems `holy.'"
And that, fellow pilgrims, suggests one of scripture's most awesome scenes - the prophet Isaiah at prayer, and his vision of seraphs proclaiming, "Holy, holy, holy is the Lord Almighty; the whole earth is full of his glory."
Sister Wendy would be the last one to promise an array of seraphim in response to our prayers. And yet her valuable little book takes the reader in that very direction - into the halls of the holy, which is, after all, a location well outside of ourselves.
 A small volume filled with great insite and reflection. March 24, 2008
8 out of 8 found this review helpful
I recommend Sister Wendy's book to all who seek an insightful experience and vision on prayer. We all pray diferently and could use some guidence. This book is a gentle nudge in the right direction. It is a keeper and a great gift.
Sister Wendy goes as deep as needed.... February 13, 2008
12 out of 13 found this review helpful
Sister Wendy on Prayer
Sister Wendy goes as deep on the subject of prayer as you are prepared to go. This is not a simple little book. It is a masterfully written guide that is meant to help...and it does. I'm sure as I travel on my own spiritual journey I will reread this book and discover things that I never tapped into the first or second or third time around. I gave this book as gifts this Christmas and it was my biggest hit! Sister Wendy is a gem.
Heretical, alas February 2, 2008
7 out of 30 found this review helpful
From page 71:
"Even for Catholics, the Eucharist is something mysterious. It is both sacrifice and celebration, a spiritual reenactment of the Last Supper. Medieval theologians made up a word for what happens and called it 'transubstantiation.' This means that materially, physically, the bread and wine are still there, but in actuality the essence of them has been changed into the true living body of Christ."
Wrong.
Materially, physically, substantially, the bread and wine are no longer there. The substance changes. The accidents (appearances) remain the same.
And "spiritual reenactment" is, I think, not the proper term.
There are other objections to Sister Wendy's book: her views on original sin (p. 101), on homosexuality (p. 117), on the gender of the pronouns we use for God in Christian revelation (p. 77), are at sometimes subtle, sometimes glaring variance with the magisterium of the Church.
On page 116, Sister scorns the simple faith that "thinks with the church":
"I have heard people praising 'simple faith.' What they are referring to is an almost rote reception of mass and the sacraments based on pitifully slight knowledge of the teaching of our Blessed Lord. What they are really describing is ignorant faith, lazy faith [...]"
Etcetera.
I find this passage extremely disagreeable. Here she derides the faith of many holy folk. And given Sister Wendy's erroneous description of transubstantiation, it is she who might be credibly accused of a "pitifully slight knowledge of the teaching of our Blessed Lord."
Sister is disdainful, too, of "rote prayer" without defining the term. "Rote prayer is not prayer at all." Would the Rosary be included? What about the Mass, in which there are innumerable "set" prayers, from the Gloria to the Agnus Dei to the Eucharistic Prayers themselves?
No, it pains me to say that whatever value this book might have as encouragement to those who balk at prayer is counterbalanced by the errors and the heresies. Alas.
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