My Life as a Prayer

A Multifaith Memoir

Elizabeth Cunningham

Paperback
9781958972106
US $18.95 IndiePubs Bookshop Amazon
eBook available
November 2023

“One of the most engaging memoirs I’ve read in ages. The wise and feisty voice I've come to know and love in Elizabeth Cunningham’s Maeve Chronicles fills these pages and carried me away. Anyone who has forged an independent path through the luminous moments and deepest shadows of a soul-filled life will recognize their own spiritual adventures reflected here.”—Mirabai Starr, God of Love

In this intriguing spiritual memoir, The Maeve Chronicles author Elizabeth Cunningham traces her dynamic faith journey and its relationship to her writing.

As the daughter of an Episcopal priest, author Elizabeth Cunningham was born into community, sacred story, and the mysteries of prayer. For her, “If a writer is one who writes, then a ‘prayer’ is one who prays.” As such, her praying is dynamic, a dance between many opposites—active vs. contemplative, community vs. individual, human vs. wild—and Cunningham sees the divine as both incarnate and transcendent, an intimate beloved and a vast mystery. When she prays, Cunningham is both audacious and reverent, asking tough questions of God—raging, listening intently, and dancing and singing ecstatically. Her storyteller’s imagination opens a path from the known to the unknowable, from despair to wonder. 

In this nonfiction debut, Cunningham recounts both her lifelong spiritual quest and her ongoing spiritual questions. Her journey takes her from her childhood church, with its ornate liturgy, to the silence of Quaker meeting; from her ordination as an interfaith minister to an eclectic, earth-centered community where she served as priestess before becoming a hermit, of sorts, making a church of her own backyard.

Candid and passionate, Cunningham’s memoir invites readers of all faiths—and doubts!—to explore what it means to live life as a prayer in the beautiful, imperiled world we share.

Novelist and poet Elizabeth Cunningham is best known for The Maeve Chronicles, a series of award-winning novels featuring a Celtic Mary Magdalen. The descendant of generations of Episcopal priests, Cunningham grew up in a small upstate New York town next door to her church and an overgrown, enchanted wood and has spent her life writing stories traversing the worlds of scripture and fairytales. After resisting the temptation to follow in her forefather’s footsteps to become the first woman in a line of priests, she was ordained as an interfaith minister and counselor in midlife. My Life as a Prayer is her debut work of nonfiction. She lives in the valley of the Mahicantuck (the river that flows both ways, aka the Hudson) on land that was home to the Lenape.

“One of the most engaging memoirs I’ve read in ages. The wise and feisty voice I've come to know and love in Elizabeth Cunningham’s Maeve Chronicles fills these pages, and carried me away. Anyone who has forged an independent path through the luminous moments and deepest shadows of a soul-filled life will recognize their own spiritual adventures reflected here.” —Mirabai Starr, Author of God of Love and Wild Mercy

“With the luminous prose we have come to expect from one of our finest novelists, in My Life as a Prayer, Cunningham brings her thoughtful sensibility to bear on her own life. Cunningham’s honest and often deeply philosophical struggles, her exquisite poetry and descriptions of nature, her timely reminders and probing questions, her words of both comfort and heartbreak, make this a gift to the world. Vivid, at times wildly funny, often deeply moving, and always impossible to put down, My Life as a Prayer offers valuable insights to anyone, no matter how they define their spirit path.” —Cait Johnson, author of Witch Wisdom for Magical Aging: Finding Your Power through the Changing Seasons 

“In My Life as A Prayer, Elizabeth Cunningham writes with remarkable candor, humor, and beauty about her constant wrestling with the mysteries of life. She shows us how to examine our own experience through many different lenses, including the stories we love, the stories we create for ourselves, and the stories we wind up living.” —Jack Maguire, author of The Power of Personal Storytelling and Essential Buddhism

“Elizabeth Cunningham's lifelong aspiration to be a writer and to develop an understanding about the purpose and practice of prayer informs this thoughtful memoir. Readers will find inspiration here from a seasoned writer who successfully challenges the structures of religion in both her life and writings in order to express her authentic self in poetry and fiction.” —Tom Cowan, author of Fire in the Head: Shamanism and the Celtic Spirit and Yearning for the Wind: Celtic Reflections on Nature and the Soul.

“More than a seeker of humanity’s place on this planet, Elizabeth writes about our relationship with all beings, and our place and responsibility on earth. In reading her story, you will undoubtedly be prompted to engage in thoughtfully enquiry, which is perhaps one of the greatest strengths of this remarkable work.” —Rebecca Singer, author of Singing into Bone and Earth Practices

“Elizabeth Cunningham's fiction has always indicated that her personal experience with the Divine is complex, sometimes comical and not at all conventional. In My Life as A Prayer, she reveals the journey of the seeker: her youthful inclinations to resist submission, her lifelong relationships with divergent faith communities, and the details of internal ruminations that have enabled her to both respect and revolt from tradition. While her path is, indeed, hers, My Life as A Prayer creates a blueprint for us all to pave our own spiritual road.” —Tim Dillinger, Author of Express Yourself In Me: Black Power, Gay Pride and Disco Heat with a Holy Ghost Touch

“Full of poetry, wisdom, and a remarkable generosity of spirit, My Life as a Prayer is the kind of memoir that takes the reader on a life-changing journey and becomes a constant companion, a guide on the spiritual path for years to come. Highly recommended for just about everyone!” —Barbara McHugh, author of Bride of the Buddha

“Elizabeth Cunningham has written a tour de force, a book that follows the trajectory of her path from an Anglican minister’s daughter, through Paganism and Quakerism, to assume her adult vocations: novelist, interfaith minister and counselor. This fascinating, beautifully-crafted, engaging memoir is the portrait of a highly-spirited, intelligent, and creative woman discovering her whole life as prayer, a meditation that finds a resting place in silence and gratitude.” —Mary Swander, author of The Desert Pilgrim: En Route to Miracles and Mysticism 

“I have been a long-time admirer of Elizabeth’s fiction and poetry. There is almost no one who can take a word and have it dance in all its variations within a single sentence the way she can. There is absolutely no one who can weave the devastatingly tragic with the transformative touch of the hilarious within a single scenario the way she can. It has made reading her fiction a joy. It has made reading her poetry a revelation. And it makes reading her autobiography, this remarkable piece of nonfiction, an absolute delight. Elizabeth tells her own life story with the same characteristic mix of insight and irreverence, piercing perceptions and whetted wit that invites the urge to step into the pages and experience the words with the full range of senses as one feels with her novels. Woven in and amongst the scenes of a life, full and rich in themselves, are illuminating reflections on how to be with Spirit. As Elizabeth illustrates so gracefully, prayer can take many forms and she has gifted us with a precious sharing of how to engage in meaningful, responsive, dynamic relationship with Spirit. My Life as a Prayer is an evocative contemplation on the call and response of Self and Spirit in myriad forms throughout the course of a life. A beacon of encouragement for anyone who has taken—or pondered—the maverick road and a precious, validating narrative for all women who have felt the yearning for a reflection of Spirit that mirrors their own soul. My Life as a Prayer is how you want life itself to be: full of vibrant characters; moments of curiosity and elation; and wisdom won through both courage and grace.” —Tiffany Lazic, author of The Noble Art: From Shadow to Essence Through the Wheel of the Year