In the first days of the COVID-19 pandemic shut-down, the churches were ordered to close. An Anglican priest of a busy parish community who is also the father of four children in a busy family began at that time a practice of composing morning prayers, daily sharing them with his congregation. Soon, those parishioners in turn began to share his searching and often intimate prayers with an expanding circle of family and friends. Where is God, in a time of exile and disruption? What may God be saying to us, even through our experience of God's absence? How are we to remain attentive to the love that dwells in us and calls us out of ourselves?
A Word Shared Between Us is a unique, poetically composed journey of faith, full of wonder and amazement, of theological insight--and above all, of listening for God's Spirit--in a time of vulnerability, when so many personal and social certainties have been shaken. For Travis O'Brian, the questions sharpened by the pandemic are the questions of a world seeking direction and hope. His prayers are the voice of one person's faith confronting this world without blinking: faith seeking truth and understanding.
Industry Reviews
“Christian history has many examples of spiritual reflection written from situations of confinement. Paul in Ephesus, Julian in her Anchoress cell in Norwich, John Bunyan in Bedford Gaol, Martin Luther King in Birmingham Jail, Dietrich Bonhoeffer in Tegel Prison. Fr. O’Brian writes to his people from the contemporary confinement of COVID-19, offering comfort and community in the context of prayer. His ministry is made all the more effective by the level of lyricism his language can reach.”
—Herbert O’Driscoll, Dean, Christ Church Cathedral, retired
“These are private words between Travis O’Brian and God in a difficult time. They are sometimes painful, sometimes joyful. But he has chosen to share them—first, during COVID-19, with his isolated congregation, and now with us, the wider audience of this book. In doing so, with rare honesty and easy intimacy, Travis makes us long to speak words of our own to the Maker and Lover of the universe.”
—Loren Wilkinson, Regent College, emeritus
“Rev. O’Brian’s three-month cycle of prayers presents us with a rich collection that interweaves traditional themes associated with liturgical seasons, progenitors of the Christian faith, and contemporary concerns and issues in a time of pandemic crisis. These prayers capture what it means to be human at such a time and provide wisdom and comfort expressed in a poetic form that powerfully articulates our relationships with God, others, and ourselves.”
—Brian A. Pollick, Centre for Studies in Religion and Society, University of Victoria
“With theological acuity and a deep humanity, O’Brian explores the individual and communal struggles of the spirit in a time of global crisis. In the midst of isolation, his poems offer a prayer to knit us back together in community.”
—Tamsin Jones, Trinity College
