Christians have been using prayer beads for centuries as a tangible aid to their prayers, and a tool to help them enter contemplative space.
In the process of encountering different Christian traditions, I became intrigued by the use of prayer beads, where they came from, and how they enhance spiritual life and practice. Part of the fruit of this research was a thirty page booklet, designed for use with Anglican prayer beads. It incorporates material from a variety of Christian prayer traditions, as well as the long-established traditional prayers of the Rosary (Catholic) and the Jesus Prayer (Orthodox).
My approach to the prayer beads draws on a wide body of sources, but differs from all of them in approach and audience. I do not assume that my reader has any attachment to prayer bead traditions of any kind, and I work from the ground up, rooting the practice in Scripture and Christian tradition.
The project, in its present incarnation, was written for the fairly specific purpose of producing a handful of sets of prayer beads as gifts at the end of last year. Nevertheless, I hope to revisit it in the future. Certainly this pamphlet can be revised, expanded, and adapted in a variety of ways. But I want to preserve the overall tone: it is simple, entry-level, and practical.
You can download the pamphlet by clicking the image of the prayer bead booklet on the right.
If you do take the time to read it, please leave a comment or send me an email. I would be interested in your perspectives on its continued development.
Making Christian Prayer Beads
You may also be interested in this short guide I have written on how to make Christian prayer beads.
Nathaniel - I've only read through your booklet briefly but I'll be reading it again much more thoroughly. My professional interest, jewelry, led me over the past year to a personal interest in the prayer beads of various traditions, because they are so like jewelry but are for such a different purpose than simple personal adornment. I was really pleased to come across your booklet this evening. It fills in many of the gaps in my understanding of Christian prayer beads. Your treatment of the different Christian traditions with balance and fairness is quite striking, as in your introduction to the Rosary - Christians all too often polarize over the points that you discuss.
By the way, your good writing and overall presentation of the material was the icing. I'm trained as a technical writer and editor, and my former work was in science and engineering documentation - manuals. It's a way of thinking I'll never get away from. I can't tell you how cool it was for me to find a topic I'm so interested in laid out in a format like this. Your respect and love for the topic really show.
May I print out the booklet to share with my mom? She and I were talking about this subject the other day when we were looking at a family heirloom rosary, and since she's nondenominational she felt she was missing a lot of the meaning.
Suzanne, thank you for your kind and encouraging words. Please feel free to print the booklet and use it in any way you find helpful.
You might also enjoy Basil Pennington's book on the Rosary entitled Praying by Hand. It's out of print now and a little hard to track down, but is a good resource on that particular tradition.
I have more or less shelved this particular project while in India, although India probably uses more prayer beads than the rest of the world combined. And I did buy a nice (very large) rosary made out of rudraksha, as I found it interesting interreligious artifact.
But perhaps it would be something worth revisiting when I return to the US.
I just sent you an email with some questions. Did you receive it?