A Book of Uncommon Prayer: 100 Celebrations of the Miracle & Muddle of the Ordinary

By Brian Doyle, Mary Miller Doyle and Peter Boland

Brian Doyle was a one-of-a-kind author who wrote one-of-a-kind prayers about everyday subjects that help readers change the way they see the world.

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.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Ave Maria Press
• Release date: Sep 1, 2023
• ISBN: 9781933495637

Brian Doyle

Brian Doyle is the award-winning author of many beloved children's books. He lives in Chelsea, Quebec.

Book preview

Foreword to the 10th-Anniversary Edition

Speaking of uncommon, Mr. Webster gives us this definition:

Adjective: 1. Not commonly found; 2. Surpassing the usual. Synonyms: Exceptional, extraordinary, rare, remarkable, singular, unusual.

Once upon a time, when Brian was just beginning to be published, the father of one of our dear friends read a piece he’d written and cried out passionately: "That boy’s a genius!" The children and I (and certain friends) had a pact never to utter that word in his presence. Brian already had a healthy self-confidence. He—honestly—was disappointed he never got to write his autobiography, Thank God for Me! You might think, if you never had the good fortune to meet my uncommon husband or to hear him read or to read his words, that a man of this description would be aloof, cocky, arrogant—an intellectual snob, as Katharine Hepburn famously calls Jimmy Stewart in The Philadelphia Story.

As you delve into this slim, delightful book, you will see that this is not the case. Brian was confident because he was curious; he worked with intention and attentiveness, and absorbed knowledge and remembered everything. He was direct because he had an innate sense that life is short, and he did not like to waste precious time. He was a disciplined athlete because basketball made him flourish, and it nourished his friendships, and he believed that sports endured as a language of community. He was quick-witted and delighted in putting himself and others at ease with humor because he wanted us not to take ourselves so seriously. He adored and exalted music because he saw it as the elixir that transcended all arts. He did not shy away from addressing brutality because he wanted to topple evil by outwitting it, finding beauty even in the beast.

The pen in Brian’s hand was mightier than the sword, to quote Mr. Van Morrison himself. For all Brian’s brilliance and diverse talent, he grew into humility and was always a deeply passionate warm generous laughing soul without ego and bluster and flutter and boast, as he put it in one of the prayers in this book. He wanted to share what astounded and delighted him. We did thank God for him. We do and always will.

I remember Brian talking about how he had committed to creating one hundred prayers, even though he was absorbed in writing his new novel, Martin Marten. His precious writing day was Saturday as he was still working full-time. He went into the office that weekend morning with determination—the deadline was looming—and came home early that evening relieved that he had found the key, as he said. He had figured out the pattern, the gestural shape the pieces would take, and now he could write about whatever subject caught his eye and (in Paul Klee’s words) take a line out for a walk with his grand esprit de corps.

Sometimes, half of the prayer is in the title. The body steps into a pithy dance or a short chess match or a brief basketball game where, once our author has loosened up and played a bit, he sweeps in with a final, grand leap of surprise, leaving us to gape at the moral gem in front of us.

This collection exemplifies Brian’s unabashed faith and familial relationship with the Creator with whom he carried on a running conversation. He wanted to break down barriers and walls and remind us that the Divine is accessible: He is in us; He is love. Sisters and brothers, we are entwined by a universal sense of empathy and compassion, and our only salvation is to practice kindness. I lived with an enlightened, joyful man who witnessed this and told stories of the myriad ways this is so.

You will read in these pages that everything alive is a prayer. Your next breath is a prayer. Even your death will be a prayer, the last in the language of this body. There are no forms. Forms are only ways for us to grapple with That whom we cannot understand. Forms are very small things. We pray by being.

I believe that Brian was expressing a sense of closure here as well. Even though the first edition was published in 2014 and he did not pass on until three years later, Brian was always preparing to meet his Maker. Not in a morbid way, but in a knowing and prophetic sense, as if he had been here before and was not afraid. He knew that less was more. These prayers are espresso cups of thanks and awe to celebrate the Filmmaker or the Breath or the Imagination through people and issues and experiences Brian wanted to address and sing of or, in some cases, apologize to. They are a handful of his deep beliefs and convictions, draped in simple garb yet lush and evocative underneath.

Brian asks of the Conductor, How could You have given us such freedom? But You did, You did; and so my prayer must be finally for me, to work harder against the dark, to sing louder, to find more teammates, is that right?

What a gift to hold the honor of this anniversary edition, proclaiming all the wonder and hope and wisdom my lovely Genius wrote in order to elevate You. To Ave Maria Press, we bow in