Found: A Story of Questions, Grace, and Everyday Prayer

by Micha Boyett, Ann Voskamp (Foreword by)

Overview

Embracing a new way to pray and an old way to God.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781617952166
Publisher:	Worthy
Publication date:	04/01/2014
Pages:	240
Product dimensions:	5.20(w) x 7.90(h) x 0.80(d)

About the Author

Micha Boyett is a poet, wife, and stay-at-home mom with a Masters of Fine Arts in Poetry degree from Syracuse University. She studies the Benedictine monastic rule and writes for growing digital and print audiences. Boyett and her husband live in San Francisco with their two boys.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments xv

Foreword Ann Voskamp xix

Preface 1

Part 1 Vigils: Midnight: Prayer in the darkness. Keeping watch. Stillness 5

Part 2 Lauds: Dawn: Prayer at the first light of daybreak. Hopefulness 37

Part 3 Prime: Second Morning Prayer: Returning to the work of God. Repetition 65

Part 4 Terce: Midmorning Prayer: Blessing the work of our hands. A reminder of the Spirit's nearness 93

Part 5 Sest: Midday Prayer: The hour of light. Vision. Healing 117

Part 6 None: Midafternoon Prayer: Wisdom. Yielding to the Spirit. Gratitude 145

Part 7 Vespers: Evening Prayers: Grace and mystery. Peace and awareness 171

Part 8 Compline: Night Prayer: Resolution. Quietness of the soul. Trust. 195

Afterword: The Great Silence 223

Notes 227

What People are Saying About This

Rachel Held Evans

With this beautiful book, MichaBoyett opens a door to Benedictine spirituality through which regular, busy people can enter and taste, see, smell, hear, and feel what it means to live life as a prayer.
—RACHEL HELD EVANS, author of A Year of Biblical Womanhood

Sarah Bessey

Micha is singing the longings of all the tired mother pilgrims. Every word is like motherhood: elegant, earthy, loving, and present.
—SARAH BESSEY, author of Jesus Feminist

Mary Karr

I read Micha Boyett's journey into prayer as any blackbelt sinner will, by which I mean anybody will—with sheer delight at her graceful language and riveting struggle for a hard-won faith. In a sense Found is a deep, sweet invitation into God's loving presence. A must read for nonbelievers and believers alike.
—MARY KARR, poet and best-selling author of The Liars' Club and Lit

Addie Zierman

For anyone who's ever gotten prayer all tangled up in performance—this one's for you.
—ADDIE ZIERMAN, author of When We Were on Fire

Adam S. McHugh

If you're like me, you've grown weary of a culture that demands the sensationalistic, the glamorous, the extraordinary. MichaBoyett is in search for the beauty in the everyday, the prayer that hides itself in dinners and diapers and naps. She is as skilled of a tour guide for Benedictine spirituality as she is for her own story, and in these pages you will find that the sacred has been there all along.
—ADAM S. McHUGH, author of Introverts in the Church

Editorial Reviews

03/10/2014
Eat, Pray, Love meets The Cloister Walk in this debut spiritual memoir. California-based mom-blogger Boyett explains that she "lost prayer" when her first child was born. The quiet mornings she had once devoted to listening and to Bible study were gone, replaced by "distraction and exhaustion." So Boyett leaves her 18-month-son in the care of her husband, and heads to a Benedictine monastery. She quickly realizes that "a monk's life is more like a stay-at-home mom's than any other lifestyle I've seen" and proceeds to study the Benedictine Rule, finding wisdom and spiritual nourishment in the Benedictine teaching of stability. Throughout, Boyett blends the Southern Baptist piety of her youth with spiritual direction and the rhythms of the liturgical year (she gives up dark chocolate for Lent), so this volume will appeal to evangelicals, Episcopalians, and everything in between. The prose is lyrical (the author holds an MFA in poetry from Syracuse), though occasionally Boyett's habit of ending the chapters with punch-lines that are presumably meant to be spiritually profound (but are in fact sometimes strained) grows old. A foreword by Ann Voskamp will attract attention to a new writer. Agent: Rachelle Gardner, Books & Such Literary Management. (Apr.)

Publishers Weekly

05/15/2014
Boyett comes to spiritual writing with words of encouragement and praise from the likes of Ann Voskamp (One Thousand Gifts) and Mary Karr (The Liars' Club; Lit). Hers is in certain ways an unremarkable story—finding a reconciliation between the stress and busyness of a wife and mother's life and the focus and peace of a committed spirituality. What is striking and perhaps indicative of broader trends, however, is that in order to find her center, Boyett reaches across the aisle from the Baptist faith of her background to the worship practices of Benedictine monks. Their prayer cycle, including vigils, lauds, prime, terce, etc., is the structuring principle of the book, as the author moves from a perceived loss of faith after the birth of her first child to something richer and stronger. VERDICT Boyett's easy-to-read narrative should appeal to a range of Christian seekers as well as to church study groups; pastors and priests will find use for her openness to the spirituality of the monastic life.

Library Journal