top of page

Thy Sheltering Arms My Spirit Take: Praying the Hours with the Patients of Utica Asylum by Amy Panton

 

This listing is for the e-book version of the text. You will receive a link to download the file after checking out :-) 

 

This book is an invitation to prayer. Not the kind that neatly resolves or easily comforts, but prayer that emerges from complex places, prayer that holds contradiction, that speaks in whispers and fragments. In Thy Sheltering Arms My Spirit Take: Praying the Hours with the Patients of Utica Asylum, Amy Panton invites you to enter a contemplative space where the voices of Utica asylum patients, preserved in the pages of The Opal magazine (1851โ€“1860), might be heard not as historical curiosities, but as meaningful spiritual expressions that still resonate across time.

 

Panton employs a "palimpsestic" theological method as a way of engaging historical theological reflections that emerged under institutional constraint. A palimpsest is a manuscript often made of parchment or vellum that has been scraped or washed clean and written over, yet traces of the original text still remain. These ghostly remnants, partially visible beneath newer layers, offer glimpses into what came before, and the tensions between erasure and endurance.

 

๐Ÿ•ฐ๏ธ The book follows the monastic Hours of Prayer:

 

  • Matins โ€“ Beginnings, Awakening

  • Lauds โ€“ Praise and Wonder

  • Prime โ€“ Work and Daily Life

  • Terce โ€“ Community

  • Sext โ€“ Struggle and Persistence

  • None โ€“ Lament and Protest

  • Vespers โ€“ Reflection and Wisdom

  • Compline โ€“ Rest, Surrender, and Ending

 

Each hour includes a short spiritual reflection and a curated selection of writings by patients from The Opal, inviting the reader into breath, prayer, memory, and meaning-making.

 

Thy Sheltering Arms My Spirit Take gathers the words of mad people, and is curated and held by a mad theologian. It is a mad prayerbook for mad people. It is also for spiritual care workers, chaplains, companions, and quiet witnesses, for anyone who has sat in silence, unsure whether they were praying or surviving โ€“ or both.

 

Thy Sheltering Arms My Spirit Take: Praying the Hours w Patients of Utica Asylum

C$14.99Price

    Mad & Crip Theology Press

    Micro-Publishing (in Crip Time) in Toronto, Canada

    • Instagram

    Sign up for our newsletter

    Thanks for submitting!

    © 2024 by Mad and Crip Theology Press Inc. Proudly created with Wix.com

    bottom of page