Gandhi called prayer "the key to the morning and the bolt of the evening." But what is prayer? Rufus Goodwin-writer, linguist, and former United Press correspondent to the Vatican-examines numerous traditions of prayer through the ages. He discusses practices ranging from the ancient Indian yoga of sound to the Christian monastic rules of prayer, and he offers examples of the various religious litanies that ritualize and celebrate the sense of a higher life. Goodwin intends to get at the essential technique and attitude of prayer as a key to an active inner life and to an experience of the higher self. He shows how prayer can restructure our cognition to give us greater access to renewal, imagination, inspiration, and intuition, and provide an anchor for meaning in daily life. About The AuthorRufus Goodwin went to Yale and Georgetown universities. He has been a United Press International correspondent to the Vatican, author, freelance journalist, poet, and novelist. He lives in Boston.