Primary Speech: A Psychology of Prayer

Westminster John Knox Press, March 2007. Paper Back. Good. Convinced that the urge to pray rises from yearnings often prior to speech, which through the whole of our living experience assume all that we are and strive to ascend to God, the Ulanovs use circularity and repetition, spiraling inward through our psyches (''the region of life's breath and mind, of conscious and unconscious mental processes, intermingled with the soul's life, the opening to being where God speaks to/through/with us'') drawing our attention to all that happens as we assert our own beings in this most intimate of conversations. Persuaded that the prayer God loves us into is also the most direct line of communication we have to our interior reality, the Ulanovs find our desires, projections, fantasies, fears, angers, sexuality and all else wound up deep within us as having the potential of bringing us into authentic communion with God: ''Our prayers tell us in every possible way that God wants a desiring heart, a glad heart, an angry heart, a fearful heart -- our heart just as it is, freely given and fully exposed.'' Appears near-new, but interior shows frequent underlining.