Prayers Plainly Spoken

""If anything, these prayers are plain. They are so because I discovered I could not pray differently than I speak. In other words, I thought it would be a mistake to try to assume a different identity when I prayed. I figured (Texans ''figure'') that God could take it, because God did not need to be protected. I think I learned this over the years by praying the Psalms in church. God does not want us to come to the altar different from how we live the rest of our lives. Therefore I do not try to be pious or use pious language in these prayers. I try to speak plainly, yet I hope with some eloquence, since nothing is more eloquent than simplicity.""So writes Stanley Hauerwas in the introduction to this collection of prayers, as inimitable as the widely respected (and argued with) theologian himself. Originally prayed in Hauerwas'' divinity school classroom - on a variety of occasions including war, births, Yom Kippur and the death of a beloved cat - they not only display an invigorating faith but demonstrate how late-modern Christians can pray with all the passion, turbulence and life of the ancient psalmists.