Michael Leunig. Common Prayer Collection. Blackburn, Victoria: Harper Collins Publishers, 1993.
Summary Sentence: This book is like a vitamin: a great supplement to prayer, but not enough for a full diet!
Book Review: Leunig’s book Common Prayer Collection includes his works A Common Prayer and The Prayer Tree. He’s clearly one of the great thinkers of our time, unapologetically absurd in his imagery, asking readers to bear with him as he searches for the deeper meaning behind life (in all its absurdity). His depth means that many poems require a few reads to discern the meaning behind them. Some poems require a few more than a few reads! It also means that many are open to interpretation, which can be good and bad. Good, in that it gets you thinking about the world wherever you’re at in life. Bad, in that many of these poems can pretty much mean anything!
The book excels in encouraging and caring for people during tough times. It shows the value of mutual encouragement and growth, a love for nature and music, and appreciating all that’s around us. He captures moods beautifully and it’s a joy to read his poems. It would be a good introduction to someone who has never thought about prayer or the concept of God in depth. And I guess this is Leunig’s strength, in getting the wider world to think more deeply about God, faith and prayer.
However, these poems are not to be taken as gospel (and I’m sure Leunig would agree!). They aren’t authoritative. So when we see Leunig praying towards the middle of the book “Do not forgive them… do not forgive us…” for the way we’ve treated the world, these words can make us think (as they are intended to do) but it’s certainly not a prayer I would recommend us to pray. While there are clear allusions to Jesus, you could easily miss this connection between Jesus being God and the one through whom we pray. Therefore one could read this book and come out with a view of God very different to the one we find in the Bible.
So in summary, I would say that A) this is an encouraging book, looking at prayer and life and challenging us in how we think, helping us give thanks for the little things. Therefore it can work well as a helpful supplement to our prayer life. However B), it is in no way enough to base our prayer life on. We must always look to the Bible to do this as our sole, authoritative text on life and prayer.
By Chris Lynch.