I was hoping for something a bit more useful than this book turned out to be. I think that it is important to think about the different kinds of intelligence we have and to pray them. The thing that this book does well is giving suggestions for prayer. It’s a bit of a compendium of useful ideas divided by intelligence type. What I missed was a sense that I could understand how some of the ideas for prayer actually related to the intelligence: I kept thinking that particular ideas had been miscategorised but I didn’t know why or how they were assigned as they were. I think I was hoping for more guidance on identifying our preferred intelligences and then on thinking more fully about the way that they might affect our praying.

It’s an easy read and probably a good intro to prayer-styles, just not enough depth for me.

I thoroughly enjoyed this book. Mainly because not only does it do a really good job of relating the way that MBTI relates to our praying but it also gives a really accessible way into the theory that underlies it. This meant for me that I now grok the way that dominant, auxilliary, tertiary and inferior functions ‘work’ in the MBTI dynamics. For that alone, a great deal of help to my using insights from MBTI in my pneumacultural work. In addition the examples of how the shadow functions may irrupt into our lives in times of stress were very helpful. There were also some nice generally helpful things said about prayer as the quotes may show.

A quirk of this book is that the author uses different colours for the different styles of prayer: green for sensing; yellow for intuitive; blue for thinking and red for feeling. While I quite like to have pictorial representations, I wasn’t sure whether this actually did much except add a further set of terms to be learnt. I suspect it is a hangover from retreat work which doesn’t really suit this kind of a book format. It feels like a metaphoric framework waiting to be developed but it isn’t. I found myself wondering whether we might talk about colour mixes, but the ones we would want to use we can’t: NT, yellow and blue is green but that’s S already … pity. But it is only a quirk in a really helpful book.

I’ve collected some quotes from the book at http://booklogging.blogspot.com/2006/04/pray-your-way.html

Surprisingly given that the author is a teenaged lad, one of the most interesting and intriguing things about these two books [and it’s set up to follow into the third, if I read the plot aright], is the recognition that evil is not an equal and opposite force to good; that evil is perpetrated by people seeking the good as they see it, or at least choosing an evil for the sake of a greater good. Thus the human hero Eragon bestows a blessing which out of his ignorance blights the life of the child it is bestowed on. Good intentions were not enough and the evil was unintended, in fact good was intended. The dreaded and monstrous kull turn out to be a bit like vikings, only really wanting to be able to live and raise families, bearing no ill towards humans except in as far as humans interfere with their well-being. This emphasis on the ‘humanity’ of the enemy is welcome in a genre more known for simplistic divisions into goodies and baddies. As such it is teaching an important lesson for these times troubled by demonising those designated enemies.

Eragons route into such wisdom is through empathy, beginning to see the world through the eyes of the enemy. Empathy brings understanding and understanding reframes the moral perspective.

So, quite a good way forward and a good story largely well told. If I have a negative assessment it is that the writing can be a bit uneaven. Every so often the style slips, usually because the writer seems to have found his word of the week and is determined to use it regardless of how well it fits. But that really is a minor issue.

There’s an interesting mysticism, and it would seem that the underlying take is that there is no God behind it all. However, it may be that there is more to come since that is simply based on the sympathetic portrayal of Elvish belief. The dwarves’ polytheism is the only other alternative so far and that is not unsympathetically handled but, given our cultural bias against polytheism, it is not given enough ‘oomph’ to make me feel that it is being presented as anything but a statement of ‘fact’ about dwarves. God[s] don’t appear to be on the menu, really.

That said, the stuff about magic seems to be yet another version of a kind of ‘Word’ theology remniscent of Stoicism and of Christian mysticism based on the notion of a ‘force’ that holds things together. It’ll be interesting to see if that’s what becomes of it and how it will play out with notions of good and evil when the final confrontations come.

This book on Amazon.uk
I declare a personal interest in this book: my spouse has been a ministerial student at the training institution that the authors have in common and wrote most of this book from. The book is an introduction to ministerial training for Anglicans and Methodists. The term ‘ministerial’ is understood broadly to encompass lay ministries as well as ordained and part-time modes as well as full-time. It is a comprehensive book and probably goes into enough detail to be useful while still remaining an undaunting size. The basic perspective is of what is “formation” for and individual and how the different dimensions of it are present in the processes of training that the C of E and the Methodist Church of Great Britain offer. So, the book doesn’t only deal with academic matters but also with spirituality, character, community and learning more generally. It sets out what trainees might expect, and offers perspectives and advice for making the best use of what is on offer. It does so against a background of awareness of the common and not-so-common pitfalls and of a holistic understanding of training which is signalled by the use of the word formation (explained in the text). This means that helpful things are said about ‘lifestyle that supports’ formation (p.167). I felt that there was quite a lot of material which was about managing expectations, for example there was quite a lot on the why and how of assessment in a positively critical fashion which put it into a broader frame.

The text is punctuated with personal stories which launch reflections and which are well chosen in terms of their clarity for purpose. There are also points where the reader is invited to stop and to do their own personal reflection, not only is this good pedagogy in principle, but the questions and assignments suggested are helpful in themselves if undertaken as personal reflection. In fact, I got to thinking that I would be happy to give this book to someone who was getting closer to engaging in a formal training process, but that I would give it along with a nice notebook and a pen and or pencil to use alongside and with the encouragement to meet up a time or two to discuss what the book was raising by way of issues and learning (note to marketers; sell this book with a discount offer on a notebook and pen). I would have thought that publishing this as a workbook, with blank pages and spaces would be worth considering.

I would want to be a little more careful in giving the book to those involved in part-time modes of training, as quite a lot of it seemed most applicable to the full-time context, though I would be interested to hear how part-timers might react to it.

There are many wise and practical things written, and a reader who took the time to engage with the suggested exercises would almost certainly find that it enhanced their preparation for formal training as well as their engagement with the initial stages of it. In keeping with a fundamental perspective of the book, they would also find things that would set them up for ministry beyond the initial training phase if they were consistently incorporated into their way of life.

Loads of stimulating essays on reimagining our global futures freer of mental pollution …
https://secure.adbusters.org/orders/

Amazon UK link
I think that we need to operate on grace and a work ethic seems more ‘law’-based while ‘play’ has a sense of grace about it. I want to see if that intuition may be right and hope reading this may help.

Get your own copy here (Amazon UK)
An attempt to think theologically, in a Trinitarian framework, about work integrating contemporary insights about the organisation of work.

Amazon UK copy. Just right for those who are no longer beginners in the MBTI in relation to prayer.

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