3. Punnett
is an Episcopal deacon with a M.Div. and extensive experience as a hospital
chaplain. That experience of dealing with the harsh questions of suffering
comes through. How to Pray is an honest, sensitive, and surprisingly reverent
book. It's big-hearted and gritty. It manages to capture a bit of the deep
resignation and quiet closeness to God that I've felt in my own experiences of
loss and anger. Punnett writes for those pulled to prayer even when the only
words that seem to come are expletives, and he does it well.
He
accompanies his own stories of suffering and tough pastoral ministry with a
liturgy of (mostly) righteous anger. By turns, it's funny, biting, and
profound. For all his surface irreverence,he manages to pull off a book that's
deeply holy, genuinely pastoral, and ok with not having all the answers to the
ancient question of what the hell was that, God? That's not an easy feat.
His
written prayers range from the humorous ("An Angry Prayer for Those Who
Are Cut Off in Traffic") to the quietly sensitive, ("An Angry Prayer
for Someone Suffering From Depression During the Holidays"), to the
furious and even heart-wrenching ("An Angry Prayer for the Abusers of
Children"). Punnett uses Psalm-like language to cut deep to the heart of
multiple agonies: the cold anger, the hot rage, the seething bitterness, the
apathetic, unfeeling numbness of grief and hurt and wounding that we seem to
receive from the hand of God.
Hope
is here, too, but it is mostly the hope of the suffering Psalms, a hope
tenuously tied to a God currently conspicuous only in his absence. Yet, in
tying the specifics of modern suffering to their biblical counterparts, a
sacred light is cast on familiar injustices and inconveniences in unexpected,
refreshing ways.
This
is a book on suffering, prayer, hope, despair, and the difficulties of lived
Christianity. Punnett does what only a talk radio host and a liturgical deacon
could—offer a litany of prayer that heals even as it presses on our bruises,
with a witty, in-your-face aside and a sardonic, gracious smile.
And
in doing so, he's given a rare gift to the church and to our culture.
Why
do we struggle to express the dark feelings of lived faith? I really can't say.
Books like Punnett's—honest and insightful, reverent, and raging at the same
time—are rare. It would be hard to imagine this book (a Random House title)
coming from the catalog of a mainstream Christian publishing house. Yet that's
exactly where it should be.
Maybe
we are so slow to rage at God because we fear that our faith cannot sustain
anger towards its object. Maybe we're afraid that when the pinch comes, we
won't be able to reconcile our mourning with Christianity's deep joy. Are we
scared to utter the words "I think that God did this to me?" Are we scared
to tell him that? To vent feelings of accusation? Maybe we've forgotten the
dark mystery of Job, who, after suffering, angry and without divine
explanation, receives no more than a "who are you?" in response.
Paul
Pastor is the online editor for Leadership Journal.
