Rediscovering the Prayer Wheel with David Van Biema

by Swanson

Click here to see the prayer wheel in English

“This bold recovery of a long-forgotten path to prayer, expertly situated in its historical context and made accessible for modern-day believers, makes for absolutely fascinating reading–for the devout and doubtful alike.”

– James Martin, SJ, author of Jesus: A Pilgrimage

Imagine a wheel, a wheel with nesting concentric circles within it. Each circle holding the sacred text and ancient contemplative practice of a devoted community of monks. This sounds a lot like something pulled from Lord of the Rings or Harry Potter, but actually I am describing a book, and contemplative practice, called The Prayer Wheel: A Daily Guide to Renewing Your Faith with a Rediscovered Spiritual Practice.

My guest today is David Van Biema. David and I explore a lot of terrain in this conversation. First we dive into the origins of why David became a religious writer (a story that reminded me of the film ‘O, Brother Where Art Thou?’, his discovery of the Prayer Wheel at an art gallery in New York, and how the Prayer Wheel can be a devotional practice for those in the Christian Tradition, plus much, much more.

David is the author of Mother Teresa: the Life and Works of a Modern Saint and co-author of The Prayer Wheel: A Daily Guide to Renewing Your Faith with a Rediscovered Spiritual Practice. Van Biema worked at Time magazine from 1993 until 2008, the last 10 years as chief religion writer. He is currently writing Speaking to God: A Cultural History of the Psalms.

You can learn more about David Van Biema and download an image of the the Prayer Wheel here. You can join the The Prayer Wheel discussion book on Facebook here.

 


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EPISODE SHOW NOTES

Resources by David Van Biema

Resources Mentioned

People

  • Jana Riess
  • Patton Dodd
  • William Faulkner
  • Richard Thompson
  • David Bromberg
  • Leonard Cohen
  • St. Augustine
  • Bennedictine
  • Liesborn Monastery
  • Psalms

Highlights

  • From your past work, you seem to have a keen interest in religious art of today. Was there an initial experience with a piece of art that started you on this path?
  • Do you have any practices that you engage in your personal life?
  • If someone were going to teach a class on the formation of David Van Biema what 3 works that formed you would definitely be on that syllabus?
  • How did you first hear of or come up on the Prayer Wheel?
  • I thought this line from your February article in America Magazine about the Prayer Wheel encapsulated the spirit of your work, “The trick of the Wheel is to introduce you to unfamiliar connections between familiar ideas.” Can you further unpack that sentence for us in relation to your work?
  • Richard of St. Victor called these type of diagrams a ‘the third mode of seeing.’, why do think that is?
  • What projects are on the horizon for you?
  • We always pair an episode with a drink, what drink of choice goes best with this conversation?

 

Photo credit: prayerwheelbook.com