A Book of Uncommon Prayer: 100 Celebrations of the Miracle & Muddle of the Ordinary
About this ebook
Prayers for cashiers and good shoes; for shorter sermons and better senators; prayers for the bruised, foolish, glorious, stumbling, brilliant Church; for chaplains and mathematicians; for idiot authors and muddy dogs: These are the most heartfelt and headlong prayers you will ever read and share—the grinning, snarling prayers we mouth quietly in the car and the shower and the pub, the small chapels of our everyday life.
Doyle said he aimed to write short pieces that functioned like “arrows to the heart.” This book is a quiver full of those sharp arrows, "stealth theology” that explores everyday encounters—from nuns to possums, from Chet Baker to Port-A-Potties—through a Catholic, sacramental imagination.
Since Doyle’s death in 2017 from a brain tumor, enthusiasm for his award-winning writing has only swelled, whether it’s his quirky prayers, kinetic essays, or magical novels such as Mink River and The Plover. This tenth anniversary edition of A Book of Uncommon Prayer includes a new foreword from his wife, Mary, and an afterword from his good friend Peter Boland, who delivered the eulogy at Doyle’s funeral.
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About the author
Brian Doyle (1956–2017) was a best-selling and award-winning author who served as editor of Portland Magazine from 1991 to 2017.Doyle wrote many books of fiction, essays, and poems, including A Book of Uncommon Prayer, which was named one of the Best Spiritual Books of 2014 by Spirituality & Practice and received an honorable mention in the spiritual softcover books category from the Catholic Press Association. Doyle’s novels include Mink River, The Plover, Chicago, and The Adventures of John Carson in Several Quarters of the World. His book Martin Martenwon the 2016 Leslie Bradshaw Award for Young Adult Literature and the 2017 John Burroughs Medal for distinguished nature writing.Doyle was honored with several book awards from the Catholic Press Association, the Christopher Award, three Pushcart Prizes, the University of Notre Dame’s Rev. Robert F. Griffin Award, the Award in Literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and the Foreword Reviews Book of the Year Award. However, his most important award and blessing was being a dad.Doyle’s work appeared in a number of publications, including Orion, The American Scholar, The Sun, The New York Times, Harper’s, Commonweal, America, U.S. Catholic, The Christian Century, National Catholic Reporter, First Things, and Give Us This Day. His essays have been reprinted in several anthologies.
Mary Miller Doyle worked for nearly a decade as a teaching artist with Children’s Healing Art Project (CHAP), a nonprofit organization that remains close to her heart and celebrated its twentieth anniversary in 2026. She can now be found painting in her Portland studio. Mary and her husband, Brian, shared thirty exuberant years of marriage and were blessed with three children.
Peter Boland was Brian Doyle’s best friend and offered the eulogy at his funeral. Boland appears in the final prayer in A Book of Uncommon Prayer as a big otter.
