Praying Today

“Wikstrom writes about a topic as slippery and elusive as prayer in a style that is both clear and accessible, while maintaining a profound sense of mystery. His guidance is at once down to earth and deeply wise, and his tone both serious and tinged with a sense of well rooted humor bubbling just under the surface.”

~ Ethel Hornbeck, Parish Assistant for Spiritual Formation, Shepherdstown Presbyterian Church, West Virginia

To find out more

Welcome to Praying Today.  You can understand this to be a site about prayer in our modern, multi-religious world where people increasingly draw on a number of faiths to feed their spiritual seeking.  It can also be taken as encouragement not to waste any more time in trying to get everything "just right," but, instead, to simply start praying today!

Whatever it is that's brought you here--the search for like-minded individuals, a hunger for guidance, a desire to go deeper--know that you are welcome.  As the Sufi poet Rumi wrote:

Come, come, whoever you are:
wander, worshiper, lover of leaving.
Ours is no caravan of despair.
'Though you've broken your vows a thousand times.
Come, yet again, come.

August 26, 2009 -- With the fifth anniversary of the publishing of Simply Pray coming up (February 2010), I've decided to write a multi-part series on my blog, A Minister's Musings, dedicated to the prayer bead practice I describe in the book.  I introduced the series today, and each Monday, Wednesday, and Friday (begining this coming Friday) I'm going to take one part of the practice and explore it in detail, not just abstractly but how I actually do it myself.  I hope it'll prove interesting and spark conversation as well.

August 7, 2009 -- My blog, A Minister's Musings, is back up and running after being on a far too long  hiatus!  Check out "Happy Anniversary Monsieur Petit"  Today is Philippe Petit Danced Between The Towers Day. (A high holy day in my house.) Thirty five years ago a combination of imagination, insanity, hubris, holiness, poetry, and prowess combined over a quarter of a mile above downtown Manhattan as a young French wirewalker named Philippe Petit stepped out on a wire cable no thicker than your pinkie . . .

May 14, 2009 -- Skinner House Books hasagreed to publish my next book!  It's currently untitled, but it will be something of a "spiritual survival guide" for lay leaders, offering both theoretical and practical suggestions for transforming the act of serving one's congregation -- which is often experienced as something of a "necessary evil" -- into a lively and enlivening spiritual practice in and of itself. 

March 3, 2009 -- Skinner House Books, publisher of both Simply Pray and Teacher, Guide, Companion, has created a FaceBook page for me as an author.  Now you can become a "fan" and be kept up to date through that medium about new ideas, events, and anything else that might be coming up.  Hopefully we can get some conversations started among folks who've read Simply Pray, too.  Just search FaceBook for the public figure Erik Walker Wikstrom and click to "become a fan."