Prayering: Openings for Contemplation and Personal Prayer

Written by Virginia L. Collins-English, M.Ed., CAGS, MAAT, Openings for Contemplation and Personal Prayer is a collection of prose, poetry, and photographs purposed to encourage and guide readers into a more profound and more prayerful life. Collins-English has graduate degrees in counseling psychology, marriage and family therapy, and theology, and a certification as a spiritual director and Ignatian retreat director. Throughout her writing, Collins-English reveals love shared with God, her parents and husband, and the larger world of human relationships, liturgy, and natural creation. Included are practical teachings on topics such as prayer, forgiveness, gratitude, grieving, spiritual direction, distraction and questioning in prayer, living contemplatively in the world, stillness, suffering, and healing. Through her emotionally vulnerable writing and tenderly-contemplative photographs, Collins-English invites and encourages her readers to pause in reflection on the moments of holiness that arise in their own lives and delve into a life of Prayering. "An experienced spiritual director and teacher, Virginia Collins-English offers us finely tuned insights in this inspired collection. Exquisite. Touching. Instnse. Lovely. In poetry and poetic prose, at once deeply personal and accessible, her reflections encourage all of us 'prayers' to trust our own ways of praying. Collins-English reminds us that we need not hesitate to approach the God who desires, more than we can imagine, to reveal his kind presence in all that is ordinary." Father James Palmigiano OCSO, St. Joseph's Abbey