Praying for Others: Powerful Practices for Healing, Peace, and New Beginnings

By Birrell Walsh

To help guide people in their prayer lives, Walsh brings together the practices of many religious traditions, including the wisdom of Buddhism's "keeping company," shamanism's traveling to other worlds to retrieve healing power for others, and the Chassidim's tradition of using "Kabbalah" to heal the world.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0824519493
• ISBN13: 9780824519490
• Release Date: July 2003
• Publisher: Crossroad Publishing
• Length: 192 Pages
• Weight: 0.52 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.5" x 5.4" x 8.3"

Customer Reviews

An inspirational and very interesting read

As it says in the blurb on the cover of this wonderful book by Birrell Walsh, praying is something we all do, whoever we are and whatever method we use. Walsh's accounts of the diverse prayer and blessing practices of different traditions clearly stem from his own deep interest, personal experience and whole-heartedly inclusive perspective. His writing style is easy to read and humerous and makes a challenging topic very accessible. Although I am familiar with most of the practices Walsh describes, there are some, eg Reiki, which I would not previously have included in the prayer category. I personally found these nudges to my existing frame of reference both stimulating and enormously positive. How encouraging it is to think of prayer in the broader context, as a path open and available to all of us everyday, every minute, and absolutly not restricted to the 'religious' sphere. Birrell Walsh's book gently presents us with the sure knowledge that through praying for others there is indeed something we can all do that WILL help. At the present time, with the world as we know it critically threatened by the consequences of human actions, it is good to read of the power and efficacy of prayer and blessing practices, to be reminded that we can ourselves intercede in this way and, above all, to learn somthing of how much praying is actually being done and in how many many different ways.

Praying for Others

I found this book easy to read with exactly the right combination of information and examples. It touched my heart and deepened my personal experience of prayer. It also widened my prayer practice. Ths is a book I will read multiple times in my life and expect I will get something different out of it each time.

A Potluck of Prayer and Healing

Birrel Walsh hits it right on the money when he begins his book by stating that, "Vocations are funny things." He then describes the vocation, or sense of purpose, which came to him in the "red-rock country of western Utah" and resulted in the writing of this book.Books written because of a vocation are different than books written for fame, money or recognition. They have a certain flavor to them that is as authentic as country cooking. Walsh uses many cooking analogies and says of his book "It is a potluck on purpose because it is at potlucks that you learn new recipes to try in your own home".The book is based on interviews with healers from many religious traditions, healers willing to share their recipes for prayer. "You don't have to like them all or even to try them all any more than you need to cook everything in 'Joy of Cooking'. May you find a blessing here that matches your temperament."My own vocation is more of a love story. My relationship to the holy One and to the religious tradition which defines my life has been stormy like most love affairs. It has also offered me an intensity of joy and enduring purpose which cannot help but be a little isolating.To mix metaphors Walsh's book also reminds me of the intergalactic tavern in an early Star Wars movie where creatures from many worlds could come to relax before going back to fight their wars. It's a place where I have met some people from other religious worlds. It's a place I can relax.This book is only indirectly about being in love with the holy, or about vocations. It's only indirectly about adoration, praise and contemplation. Instead it is what it says it is, a book about praying for others. To pray for others (which is not much different than loving others) you must know a little about them. It helps to sit at the bar and listen to the stories around you. This book helps you do that. Love is willing to give up its own spiritual blessings if by doing so it can help others. In this book you will read about that kind of love specifically manifested in different forms, traditions, prayers, stories, and people.I had only one criticism and its one I know the author would understand. Walsh (who was raised a Catholic) attributes the following quote to the Catholic Mass, which is where he would have heard it frequently while growing up."Lord, I am not worthy that Thou shouldst enter under my roof. Say but the word, and my soul shall be healed."A liturgist did not author these words. They are the spontaneous cry of a real live dad seeking a blessing for his family, with all the anguish, self doubt and emotional pain of any parent in a crisis. The words are a quote from a Bible story, and the man who first said them got the help that he needed. The minor mistake in crediting the source is the sort of mistake I might have made myself for I often attribute things to my own religious tradition not realizing that they have a wider origin.Walsh understands the tendency. He reminds us that wh

At Long Last

If I had had the good fortune to come across Birrell Walsh's book, Praying for Others, in my 20's--or 30's or 40's or 50's--I would have gobbled it up and wolfed it down in a day, then gone through it again slowly, savoring the stories and examples, trying out the exercises from various traditions. (As it was, I wolfed it down on a long plane ride and have been nibbling ever since.) This book has marvelous qualities: it is fun and easy to read--whips by like a superior summer novel; at the same time, it is rich with example and detail--a well-planned, delicious--and digestible!--meal of fascinating background information and practical tools. If you have any interest in being of help to those you love, as well as to broader situations that touch us all, this book can give wings to that wish.

The author says

Hello, I'm the author of *Praying for Others.* It is a how-to book, written to help people find a form of intercessory prayer that matches their own temperament.This book comes from the experience of people who pray for others and who told me how they do it -- a Franciscan nun, a Hasidic rabbi, an energy healer, a Southern Baptist minister in Tennessee, a Buddhist teacher, a Mexican shaman, a Christian Science nurse and others -- as well as from scriptures and the writings of the pray-ers of the past.Most traditions have somewhere in their history used many different forms of intercession. It is possible to learn about a form of prayer from outside one's community and then to discover that same practice (dusty and half-forgotten) within one's own heritage. Healing by the flow of energy, for instance, is common in New Age and Spiritualist practices. Many Christians might be surprised to recall that Jesus also spoke of it, and that the fact is recorded in three Gospels (most fully at Luke 8:43). Similarly, prayer for others by carrying their concerns into "Emptiness" sounds (and is) Buddhist, but it is recorded as well in Christianity, Judaism and Islam. Intercessory prayer can also be based on finding the spiritual pattern, singing, the sacrifice of suffering and merit and delight, joining with others, "disappearing into the Divine," and many other methods.The book is conversational and full of stories, but there are eleven pages of end-notes and six pages of bibliography for those who want more information.