The Celtic Way of Prayer: The Recovery of the Religious Imagination - Softcover

To explore and recover the Celtic roots of Christianity is to reclaim a forgotten heritage, one that will deepen and enrich our vision of the Christian faith. This book shows how the Celtic way of prayer draws on both the pre-Christian past and on the fullness of the Gospel. Also woven into the book is the liturgy, folklore, and history of the Celtic people. Here is prayer with the whole of one's self.

Esther de Waal introduces the reader to monastic prayer and praise (the foundation stone of Celtic Christianity), to early Irish litanies, to medieval Welsh praise poems, to the wealth of blessings that come from the oral tradition that made praying a part of daily living. We discover that this is not a dead tradition but a living spring, ancient and yet always new.

"In what will undoubtedly be a classic on Celtic spirituality and prayer, Esther de Waal leads her readers to a rediscovery of the beauty and richness of the Celtic way of life."
--Rosemary Rader, OSB

"What Esther has written is superb, because the combination of Esther's own spirituality and early Celtic spirituality is bound to be superb...I have read every word slowly, carefully, enjoying, being nourished. It isn't just that Celtic spirituality with its loving immediacy is appealing, it is that it is necessary at this time of violence and indifference and greed in the Western world. It can, indeed, be our salvation."
--Madeleine L'Engle

"Esther de Waal's unique contribution to Celtic Christian studies is that she is never outside her subject. Her constant ability to apply the life of those earlier centuries to her own devotional life makes it possible for those of us who read her to encounter those people in such a way that their Christian journey can become food and drink for us in the hunger and thirst of our own century."
--Herbert O'Driscoll, author of A Doorway in Time

"A rich tapestry of learning, personal experience of prayer, empathy with monastic endeavor and a real understanding of what inspiration is needed by so many of the laity also in their journey of Christian prayer today."
--Patrick Barry, OSB, Abbot of Ampleforth Abbey