Ave Maria Press came up with a terrific logo for Leah Libresco<\/a>\u2018s new book, Arriving at Amen: Seven Catholic Prayers That Even I Can Offer<\/em><\/a>. Against a starswept blue background, there\u2019s a diagram of an atom with circling molecules\u2013and the molecules form the beads of a rosary. I love the science-fiction flavor of this image; and I love the way it captures one of the greatest strengths of Leah\u2019s book, her ability to craft memorable and poetic analogies for the experience of learning to pray as a Catholic. Leah\u2019s a friend, so I will not try to be objective, but I loved this book a lot more than I was expecting to, frankly, so let me tell you why. Here are some of the many great things about Arriving at Amen<\/em>:<\/p>\n * It\u2019s written by a n00b<\/strong>. I admit that when I heard Leah was writing a book \u201cabout her conversion\u201d I was skeptical. Girl\u2019s been Catholic for five minutes, maybe let the holy water dry off first?<\/p>\n But it\u2019s Leah\u2019s awareness of how new this all is to her which makes the book such a joy. She\u2019s writing about the parts of Catholic prayer which are weirdest and hardest for her to understand. She\u2019s totally up-front about how baffling she finds stuff like Mass and the Hail Mary, and how she sort of eased her way into them, not always with the most reverent attitude. It\u2019s endearing, it\u2019s exuberant, it has the curiosity and joy of \u201cbeginner\u2019s mind,\u201d and it helped me to see my own prayer life with new eyes.\u00a0 This process of making prayer feel new was helped along by<\/p>\n * those crazy analogies<\/strong>. Most of the Amazon reviews mention the analogies that stud almost every page. Some of them are beautiful, like the comparison of confession and kintsugi, the Japanese art of repairing a cracked vessel so that the sealed cracks are filled with gold. I think my favorite was the sublimely weird comparison of receiving the Eucharist and being transformed into a mythical Chinese honey mummy. (No, really, it works!) The description of her college boyfriend seeking to model himself on his acquaintances\u2019 best qualities was also really moving\u2013hilarious in that strenuous undergraduate \u201cI have a project!<\/em> My project for this week is: SAINTHOOD. Who\u2019s coming with?\u201d way, but also poignant and inspiring.<\/p>\n * This is a psychologically astute book<\/strong>, largely because Leah\u2019s pretty vulnerable in exposing her own distortions of thinking. We are very different people, but I still recognized some of my own bad mental habits exposed in her book: For example, she talks about imagining people she\u2019s having problems with doing even worse<\/em> things. There\u2019s a kind of perverse satisfaction in reassuring oneself that yes, this person is awful, they\u2019re just the sort of person who would do [thing they totally have not actually done, that you made up]! I read her description of that process and now I catch myself doing it, like, daily.<\/p>\n I was reminded of Henri Nouwen\u2019s Return of the Prodigal Son<\/em>: You may not be inhabited by every weird slithery psychological scuttler that he is, but you\u2019re bound to recognize some of them; and you can learn from the conclusions he draws even in response to experiences you don\u2019t share with him.<\/p>\n (I should maybe say that the introduction, which has some quite powerful psychological material about Leah\u2019s early fascination with the merciless Inspector Javert, is a bit darker and less sparkling in tone than the rest of the book. Don\u2019t let it put you off. As Leah herself has noted when she speaks about the book, her actual conversion story isn\u2019t really the point here. I love the analogy she uses, that asking about her conversion story is like asking the Pevensie children, \u201cNo no, but tell us more about the wardrobe!<\/em>\u201d The land beyond the wardrobe is the thing Leah wants most to talk about, and the thing she describes best.)<\/p>\n This is a short and deeply enjoyable book. I\u2019m trying to use some of Leah\u2019s insights to shore up my ramshackle lectio divina. Arriving at Amen<\/em> is like a great old F\/SF used bookstore, one of those places with names like Moonstone Bookery or Barbarian Books. If you step inside you will find something weird, that you never knew you wanted.<\/p>\n This post is part of a Patheos Book Club discussion<\/a> of Leah\u2019s book!<\/p>\n