Breathing, Parsing, Praying

Abstract

Editor's Note: This fragmented essay is a collage. It grows out of the commonplace book, a practice dating back to ancient Greece and Rome wherein a writer gathers passages, copying them down by hand, passages that she then responds to, ruminates on, returns to again and again, passages that prompt thinking, passages that are internalized, passages whose syntax becomes the writer's own. "Breathing, Parsing, Praying" is to be read within that tradition. The essay draws upon my own commonplace book to think through the relationship between language, the body, and prayer, the keeping of a commonplace book making possible interdisciplinary ways of reading, writing, thinking, and being.