Embracing the World: Praying for Justice and Peace

by Jane Vennard

Embracing the World is your guide to finding a deeper relationship with God through prayer and to seeing how your prayers can contribute to healing the world. Author Jane E. Vennard helps you understand how to best use your spiritual gifts and graces to serve God as well as the cause of peace and social justice here on earth. Embracing the World reveals the twofold nature of prayer: as both contemplation and action. Vennard explains that prayer is a cycle where prayer leads to service and service leads to reflection and back to God. Throughout the book, she explores many different forms of outward-reaching prayer and includes a wealth of vivid descriptions, helpful explanations, captivating stories, and biblical and theological reflections.

Genres: Prayer

172 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2002

Reviews

[Cate Tedford]

The cover of this book is truly startling… it looks like some problematic Christian purity book. But I was thankfully relieved when the author writes in the introduction about being apart of the movement for queer celebration in the church—thank god! Read it for my JustFaith Engaging Spirituality book on Creating Sacred Space for Self and Others.

I appreciate how this text incorporates ideas and practices from a variety of religions and traditions for the purpose of centering ourselves to take part in justice and peace-making in a complex and often scary world. Vennard generously captures that there isn’t just one way to partake in this work, either. There’s room for every last one of us to lean into our gifts and passions for the betterment of our hurting world!

I still have a complicated relationship with prayer and typically ascribe to a Mary Oliver orientation toward the concept, but I’m keeping (or at least trying) my mind and heart open!

Learning about kataphatic (full of content) vs. apophatic (without content) prayers was very intriguing, also!

“Bearing witness is about living with questions rather than answers, mystery rather than certainty, not knowing rather than knowing. In Zen Buddhism, this way of being is called living with beginner’s mind. Beginner’s mind allows us to be present to the situation with no idea of what will happen, what we should do, or how to change anything. Beginner’s mind allows us to be fully present.”

“Moving slowly, celebrating, and trusting keeps us attentive to the present moment, opens our eyes to the possibilities along the way and the gifts before us.”

“We could simply say that in praying for discernment, we are asking to be guided by love – God’s love and the love of and for others.”

[Julie · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was a little book with a lot of soul. It asks the tough questions and gives sound spiritual guidance. I particularly liked the sabbath garden meditation exercise. A spiritually rich version of living with intention and attention. And a unique definition of praying for your enemies. Worth the read.

[Laura.bogle · Rating 3 out of 5]

Not as namby-pamby as I thought it would be. Some useful thought on how inner life connects to action in the world.