Radical Prayers: On Peace, Love, and Nonviolence

This book offers fifty short prayers to encourage, challenge and inspire you on your nonviolent journey. Prayers cover subjects ranging from healing the environment, ending war, gun violence, poverty and racism, gratitude for the blessings around us and strength to continue on the path for peace, justice and nonviolence. John Dear writes in the introduction, Prayer and nonviolence go hand in hand. On the one hand, prayer is a daily journey toward ever-deepening intimacy with the God of peace in the Holy Spirit of peace. Through daily quiet meditation, the God of peace we encounter in our prayer disarms us, heals us and strengthens us to go forth and make peace, practice nonviolence and love others…. Nonviolent people turn to God in prayer throughout the day for protection, security, blessings and fecundity. That is the Christian way, the human ideal. That is the path of the peacemaker. …daily meditation is politically dangerous and a threat to the culture of violence and war. As we combine prayer and nonviolence, in this culture of violence and war, we step into a new kind of dangerous mysticism where we lose our allegiance to the nation/state, and become full time citizens of God’s reign… TABLE OF CONTENTS Part 1: Thanks, Praise, and Adoration Part 2: For Myself Part 3: For All People Part 4: For All Creatures Part 5: For Creation Part 6: For the Global Grassroots Movements for Peace and Justice Part 7: For the World Part 8: For Mature Discipleship to the Nonviolent Jesus Part 9: For the Church Part 10: For the Coming of God’s Reign of Peace and Nonviolence Part 11: For Life in the Holy Spirit of Peace Part 12: For Humanity’s Conversion to Total Nonviolence