A special virtual event celebrating the publication of Micah Bucey’s The Book of Tiny Prayer and Cláudio Carvalhaes’ Praying With Every Heart
**This is a virtual event that will be hosted on Zoom - you will need access to a computer or other device that is capable of accessing and sufficient Internet access. If you have not used Zoom before, you may consider referencing Getting Started with Zoom.**
Join us on Monday, November 1, at 7pm ET for Praying For & Praying With: Micah Bucey & Cláudio Carvalhaes in Conversation, a special virtual event celebrating the publication of The Book of Tiny Prayer and Praying With Every Heart.
Micah Bucey’s The Book of Tiny Prayer collects 366 pithy prayers written over the course of the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic. When New York City went into lockdown in March 2020, Bucey found the world and himself in desperate need of prayer. While social distancing created disconnect, Bucey began a daily practice of writing a “Tiny Prayer” each morning and posting it on social media, each offering a reflection on what was going on in his own heart and in the wider world. Soon, a solitary practice became a communal one, with others engaging and sharing the prayers that touched them most, suggesting issues and topics for future prayers, and creating connection across a digital divide. Over the course of a year filled with fear and faith, protest and possibility, Bucey composed prayers for frontline workers and activists, those lost to illness and wins for democracy, for civic leaders, celebrities, and everyday emotions. Together, the prayers chronicle a specific moment in time and model a form for everyone to compose their own tiny prayers to engage the everyday around them. The Book of Tiny Prayer recalls a very particular year, but its spirit is universal, inviting all to quiet themselves, name the pain and the joy around them, and recommit to the change required for collective liberation, during the worst times and far beyond.
Cláudio Carvalhaes’ Praying With Every Heart develops an understanding of prayer from a liberation theological perspective. "Praying with" offers a distinctive way of praying that can help orient our prayers around the "where" we pray and "with whom" we pray as the locus of the body's and heart's theological praxis. The book helps create language to pray with people and in situations we are not used to praying with; it insists on praying amidst racism, poverty, violence, and suffering; it calls us to pray at night and at the end of the world when we are overcome by fear, hurt, climate disaster, or economic impoverishment; it ventures into interfaith prayer settings; and it claims a sense of "self" that is not discrete, encapsulated in its own thinking or feeling-rather it understand the notion of the self as entangled with the whole earth and each sentient being. Thus to "pray with" in this book is to take the location of one's prayer more seriously and, individually and collectively, to gain an awareness of our grounding and positionality, therefore creating a theological structure that assumes both the listening of our own heart and the voices of everything around us.
Micah Bucey serves as Minister at Judson Memorial Church in Greenwich Village, a congregation committed to curiously seeking the intersections between expansive spirituality, radical social justice, and uncensored creative expression.
Cláudio Carvalhaes, originally from Brazil, is an artist, eco-theologian, performer and liturgist. He is currently the Associate Professor of Worship at Union Theological Seminary in New York City.
Register for this free event on Eventbrite. When you register for your ticket, you will also have the option to purchase copies of The Book of Tiny Prayer and Praying With Every Heart from our independent bookstore partner, The Word is Change, based in Brooklyn, NY.