Prayering: Openings for Contemplation and Personal Prayer

by Virginia L. Collins-English

An experienced spiritual director and teacher, Virginia Collins-English offers us finely tuned insights in this inspired collection. Exquisite. Touching. Intense. Lovely. In poetry and poetic prose, at once deeply personal and accessible, her reflections encourage all of us “prayers” to trust our own ways of praying. Collins-English reminds us that we need not hesitate to approach the God who desires, more than we can imagine, to reveal his kind presence in all that is ordinary.
Father James Palmigiano, OCSO
St. Joseph’s Abbey

This is a book you will return to many times. Wherever you are in your faith journey, there is something to enrich your prayer and reflection. Virginia Collins-English’s reflections touched my heart and my head, calling me to prayer and action. Prayering will truly open your heart to God’s call to pray always and in all ways.
Sr. Paula Robillard, SSJ
Director of Faith Formation, Diocese of Springfield

Prayering: Openings for Contemplation and Personal Prayer is a collection of prose, poetry, and photographs by an experienced spiritual director and retreat leader. Each of the forty-five reflections in prose and poetry and the thirty-six photographs can be enjoyed on its own and also absorbed as a facet of the entire book. In essays, poems, and prayers that are resonant with liminality, the author reveals love shared with God, her parents and husband, and the larger world of human relationships, liturgy, and natural creation. Included are practical teachings on such topics as prayer, forgiveness, gratitude, grieving, spiritual direction, distraction and questioning in prayer, living contemplatively in the world, stillness, suffering and healing. Her tenderly-contemplative photographs distill moments of God’s presence, and draw readers to pause in reflection on the moments of holiness that arise in their own lives. Throughout this book, Collins-English’s vulnerability in sharing her intimate and trusting relationship with God encourages all to enjoy a deeper and more prayerful life.

What Virginia Collins-English has accomplished in Prayering is profound. I have the experience of moving through a gallery or an exhibition of images and thoughts (the two are so similar) that intertwine to create a pathway to prayer. There is truth, gentleness, and honesty in the text and in the images. As a person who is more drawn to reflection by images than by ideas, I commend her for incorporating so many rich images. Read, look, enjoy, journey.
Martin J. Pion, D. Min.
Director, Institute for Theology and Pastoral Studies
Professor of Religious Studies, College of Our Lady of the Elms

With deep roots in Celtic mysticism and a style blending poetry, prose, art, and photography, spiritual director and retreat leader Virginia Collins-English writes a very accessible book. If you believe, or would like to believe, that “prayer is a way to enjoy God and to invite God to enjoy you,” Prayering will be your guide.
The Reverend Dr. Robert E. Price
Professor Emeritus, Springfield College

In Prayering, Virginia Collins-English gives us a beautiful treasure chest of poetry, prose, and images that invite the reader into her prayer life with God. A poet, an artist, a mystic, a prophet, and a spiritual director of profound perception, she offers a voice and a view that are courageously loving, gentle, and generous. Thank you, Virginia Collins-English, for this pearl of great price that will bless its readers in ways beyond imagining.
Theresa Bellacosa
Spiritual Director and Minister of Faith Formation

Readers of Prayering: Openings for Contemplation and Personal Prayer include people seeking a reflective path to meet God in their own relationships and experiences, and in nature and the world around them; spiritual directors and retreat leaders, directees and retreatants, and people of many walks of life who are seeking a deeper, more personal prayer life; people who are grieving, considering a life change, or seeking “deeper life”; people who are religious, contemplative, “spiritual but not religious”; many people – wherever on their faith journey – who desire an accessible collection of reflections in prose, poetry, and photographs. Readers also include clergy, seminarians, and people involved in ministry to others, such as caregivers and health care workers. Prayering: Openings for Contemplation and Personal Prayer has been used in prison ministry, prayer groups, small church communities, and, most of all, in the quiet prayer lives of individual readers.