Radical Prayers: On Peace, Love and Nonviolence
by John Dear
Published by Pace e Bene Press 2017 // 150 pages

John Dear’s latest book from Pace e Bene Press is now available.

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This book offers fifty short prayers to encourage, challenge and inspire you on your nonviolent journey. Prayers cover subjects ranging from healing the environment, ending war, gun violence, poverty and racism, gratitude for the blessings around us and strength to continue on the path for peace, justice and nonviolence.

John Dear writes in the introduction, “Prayer and nonviolence go hand in hand. On the one hand, prayer is a daily journey toward ever-deepening intimacy with the God of peace in the Holy Spirit of peace. Through daily quiet meditation, the God of peace we encounter in our prayer disarms us, heals us and strengthens us to go forth and make peace, practice nonviolence and love others…. Nonviolent people turn to God in prayer throughout the day for protection, security, blessings and fecundity. That is the Christian way, the human ideal. That is the path of the peacemaker. …daily meditation is politically dangerous and a threat to the culture of violence and war. As we combine prayer and nonviolence, in this culture of violence and war, we step into a new kind of dangerous mysticism where we lose our allegiance to the nation/state, and become full time citizens of God’s reign…”

TABLE OF CONTENTS
Part 1: Thanks, Praise, and Adoration
Part 2: For Myself
Part 3: For All People
Part 4: For All Creatures
Part 5: For Creation
Part 6: For the Global Grassroots Movements for Peace and Justice
Part 7: For the World
Part 8: For Mature Discipleship to the Nonviolent Jesus
Part 9: For the Church
Part 10: For the Coming of God’s Reign of Peace and Nonviolence
Part 11: For Life in the Holy Spirit of Peace
Part 12: For Humanity’s Conversion to Total Nonviolence
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Sample prayer:
Help Me To Serve The Global Grassroots Movement Of Nonviolence

Dear God,

Help me to serve your reign of peace
by serving the global grassroots movement of nonviolence
for the coming of your reign of peace here on earth.

Make me an instrument of your peace,
that I might do my small part to help abolish
war, poverty, hunger, executions, nuclear weapons,
systemic injustice and environmental destruction,
to make your nonviolent reign of peace more palpable everywhere.

But more, help me when I’m discouraged,
when I think there’s no hope,
when I give up on others and give up on myself,
when I sense the dread of despair and apathy sneaking up on me.
Raise me up, keep me going, use me for your work for justice and peace,
and most of all, keep me faithful to the lifelong journey of justice and peace.

Let my entire life be a struggle for justice and peace,
one long campaign for a new world of nonviolence.
Let my life bear tremendous good fruit for others,
and inspire others to join that struggle.
Give me good cheer, a good heart,
a sense of humor, a spirit of peace and love,
and that revolutionary patience needed
for the lifelong long-haul work of peacemaking.

Help me like the saints and prophets of old
to live a full life in your service of justice and peace
that I may join them one day in that place
where the nonviolent revolution has come true and is permanent,
that together, we might all praise you and your boundless peace.

Amen.

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For shipment to countries other than the U.S., Canada, U.K., Australia, and Ireland please contact our office to place your order: info@paceebene.org

John Dear is an internationally known voice for peace and nonviolence. He is a popular speaker, peacemaker, organizer, lecturer, retreat leader, and the author/editor of 30 books. John has been nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize after having participated in nonviolent campaigns for three decades resulting in over 75 arrests and more than a year of his life spent in jail. Read more about John Dear here.