Dark Prayer - When All Words Fail Paperback

This book brings together the letters David Wood has written over the past eighteen years to the Community of the Three Hours, a network of people who have committed themselves to the hidden task of silent prayer for the peace of the world for some or all of the hours between twelve and three each Friday. To engage in this kind of prayer is to enter dark territory where indeed all words fail, where all one can do it to watch and wait. It is a call to be faithful to the commitment and not to expect to see tangible results. As David Scott writes in his Foreword: 'Believers experience an entry into darkness, a cloud of unknowing which is a test of faith...References to this tradition of prayer are taken from The Cloud of Unknowing, Henry Vaughan's poems, and Meister Eckhart's writings.' But the most powerful references are to contemporary experiences of darkness: Nelson Mandela's, Bosnia, the Shoah, the Twin Towers, and the film Trainspotting. Complementing the letters are contributions from Robert Gallagher, Anna Briggs, Doug Constable, and Stephen Brown.