A slim volume can nonetheless take on a weighty subject. Embodying Prayer, while slim, takes on nothing lighter than how we live and move within the world. Jennifer Fox Eades is a student of both Franciscan spirituality and the Alexander technique of motion. Her book articulates a vision of how these two disciplines can guide a more healthy, fluid, and full life.

The book is both general and specific. It is general in taking on the most overarching topics, such as why we live, how we believe, and our purpose. The true meat of the work is when the author takes these general ideas into specific moments of living to provide a guide for how to exist in a spiritually unhealthy and physically healthy fashion in real moments. For readers not already familiar with Franciscan spirituality or the Alexander technique, it can be difficult to feel full understanding at times. Even without that understanding, however, the book provides useful insight into finding balance and sustenance in both spiritual and physical motion.

The book works through a series of important topics. It explores the need for leisure and quiet. It discusses how to achieve meaningful rest and to resist temptations to restlessness and the sense that any of us can “do it all” or do it all by ourselves. It offers insight on how to live in healthy relationship with other people, including how to be both teacher and learner. It offers a call to simplicity and joy in life.

Embodying Prayer is a slim work but weighty in its impact. For anyone seeking to enrich their spiritual life, it is a book worth reading and contemplating. It offers deep insights that a thoughtful reader will revisit repeatedly, and which will offer comfort and guidance in periods of spiritual desolation or uncertainty.