Your Twenty-First Century Prayer Life

by Nathaniel Lee Hansen

Overview

What does prayer look like in contemporary America? With a welcoming tone and plainspoken diction, the forty poems in Hansen's collection explore that question. Including elements of autobiography, Your Twenty-First Century Prayer Life investigates Christianity in the present, depicting a faith in God that is continuously in flux. Readers journey through the seasons of the church year as Hansen recounts doubts, conversions, frustrations, and confessions. Ultimately, these poems are concerned as much with words as they are with the Word.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781532641138
Publisher:	Cascade Books
Publication date:	01/10/2018
Series:	Poiema Poetry , #25
Pages:	58
Product dimensions:	5.90(w) x 8.80(h) x 0.20(d)

About the Author

Nathaniel Lee Hansen is Associate Professor of English at the University of Mary Hardin-Baylor where he edits The Windhover and directs The Windhover Writers' Festival. His chapbook, Four Seasons West of the 95th Meridian, was published by Spoon River Poetry Press (2014). His poetry, fiction, and essays have appeared in St. Katherine Review, Split Lip Magazine, Driftwood Press, Whitefish Review, The Cresset, Midwestern Gothic, Bluestem, The Evansville Review, and South Dakota Review, among others.

Table of Contents

I.

Your Twenty-First Century Prayer Life 2

Some Sundays You Consider Leaping from the Ship of Church 3

Reading Scripture 4

Bad Sermons 5

Prayer Diagnostics 6

Hospitality 7

Prayer ex Nihilo 8

First Things 9

Immobility 10

II.

The Canon 12

Praying in Your Office 13

Preschool Theology 14

Decreasing Heat 15

Adhering Plastic Film on Window Frames 16

Poem as Prayer as Poem 17

Before the Season of Waiting is Waiting 18

Methods of Prayer 19

The First Sunday of Advent in Central Texas 20

Praying in Your Car 21

III.

Questions on Prayer 24

You are dust, and unto dust you shall return 25

Lenten Discipline (I) 26

Stations of the Cross 28

Lenten Discipline (II) 29

Praying Hands 30

March Morning as Impetus for Prayer 31

American Evangelical Thought Crimes 32

Lenten Discipline (III) 33

Golgotha 34

Calcutta to Cannon Beach 35

IV.

That First Easter (I) 38

Decorum 39

That First Easter (II) 40

Some days, it's all you can do not to pray 41

That First Easter (III) 42

Sunday Morning 43

On Your Son's Conversion 45

By the Dawn's Early Light 46

Farming in the Drought 47

Prayerful Hydrology 48

Thanks and Acknowledgments 49

What People are Saying About This

From the Publisher

“Your Twenty-first Century Prayer Life should be required reading for all churchgoers, for all people who have struggled to pray, practice Lenten disciplines, or survive infuriating sermons. ‘Form and content matter,’ Hansen writes, ‘but not/as much as the posture of the heart.’ The quiet, but no less pointedly honest, voice in these poems plumbs the marrow of doubt to reveal the ‘beautiful ache of belief’ that issues from a closely examined spiritual life.”


—Tania Runyan, Author of Second Sky





“In his trustworthy sincerity, his rich and considerate earnestness, Nathaniel Hansen reminds me again and again of none other than George Herbert. Both poets share a hidden-in-plain-sight artistry that kindles in me a new devotion. Here is a book that above all is about ‘the posture of the heart,’ a heart that reverberates ‘the beautiful ache of belief,’ even as ‘your elbows smart, bone against old wood.’”


—Paul J. Willis, Author of Getting to Gardisky Lake





“From the rough and tumble of daily work and children, Nathaniel Hansen carves out time to pray, as well as quiet moments to reflect on what he calls his prayer life. It is a journey fraught with interruptions, redirections, and finally, sometimes, connections with God. It’s a fine companion for anyone who is serious about praying.”


—Jeanne Murray Walker, Author of Helping the Morning: New and Selected Poetry





“Nathaniel Hansen’s prayer life is all of our prayer lives elevated to art: cross-pressured, halting, urgent. These poems achieve intimacy with the transcendent by never taking it for granted. They approach God through a poetics of waiting, of openness, of not not-yet-but-soon. These poems are firmly grounded in the physical world even while reaching toward sacred time. Hansen is the faithful but honest Christian poet we need in this secular age.”


—Benjamin Myers, Crouch-Mathis Professor of Literature, Oklahoma Baptist University

Editorial Reviews

"Your Twenty-first Century Prayer Life should be required reading for all churchgoers, for all people who have struggled to pray, practice Lenten disciplines, or survive infuriating sermons. 'Form and content matter, ' Hansen writes, 'but not/as much as the posture of the heart.' The quiet, but no less pointedly honest, voice in these poems plumbs the marrow of doubt to reveal the 'beautiful ache of belief' that issues from a closely examined spiritual life."

--Tania Runyan, Author of Second Sky



"In his trustworthy sincerity, his rich and considerate earnestness, Nathaniel Hansen reminds me again and again of none other than George Herbert. Both poets share a hidden-in-plain-sight artistry that kindles in me a new devotion. Here is a book that above all is about 'the posture of the heart, ' a heart that reverberates 'the beautiful ache of belief, ' even as 'your elbows smart, bone against old wood.'"

--Paul J. Willis, Author of Getting to Gardisky Lake



"From the rough and tumble of daily work and children, Nathaniel Hansen carves out time to pray, as well as quiet moments to reflect on what he calls his prayer life. It is a journey fraught with interruptions, redirections, and finally, sometimes, connections with God. It's a fine companion for anyone who is serious about praying."

--Jeanne Murray Walker, Author of Helping the Morning: New and Selected Poetry



"Nathaniel Hansen's prayer life is all of our prayer lives elevated to art: cross-pressured, halting, urgent. These poems achieve intimacy with the transcendent by never taking it for granted. They approach God through a poetics of waiting, of openness, of not not-yet-but-soon. These poems are firmly grounded in the physical world even while reaching toward sacred time. Hansen is the faithful but honest Christian poet we need in this secular age."

--Benjamin Myers, Crouch-Mathis Professor of Literature, Oklahoma Baptist University

From the Publisher