When we were little, my sister and I said our prayers every night before bedtime. By my teenage years, I had started falling asleep before we had finished. I am pretty sure the failure of peace talks between the US and Russia in the 1980s was my fault.

I never had the transportive sense that, as reported by the Christian female mystic Julian of Norwich, “all shall be well, and all manner of things will be well”. I only ever felt the deep certainty that I would never get it right.

When I left the institution of Catholicism, I thought I had left prayer behind too. Prayer, for me, had become a meaningless repetition of a creed I did not agree with. The words that were supposed to bind people together in community were making me feel more and more alone.

Psychological research has shown that people tend to feel happier as a result of the following types of prayer: conversational prayers, prayers of adoration and of thanks, or simply a prayerful attitude of opening oneself up to a sense of connection with mystery. These kinds of prayers are also associated with a relaxation response in the brain and an increase the kind of cortical activity that is typical of........

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