Prayers For All Peopleis a collection of prayers from around the world, and from a variety of religious traditions over the past five hundred years-a book for anyone seeking a sense of spirituality and comfort in a world that grows increasingly chaotic each day. The prayers are centered on life's major passages: birth, comming of age, confronting illness, marriage, the quest for God, commitment to spirituality, arriving at elderhood, death. They come from a variety of the world's major religious traditions and cultures, including Judaism, Christianity, Islam, Buddhism, Hindu. Celtic, Mayan, Native American, and Zoroastrian.Prayers For All Peoplecontains familiar prayers, some rarely seen in the West, and some that have never before been published. The previously unpublished prayers come from disparate sources; some were written specifically for this book by leading scholars and contemplatives, such as Professor Huston Smith, Brother David Steindl-Rast, Sri Eknath Easwaran, and Mother Tessa Bielecki, and others were translated especially for this volume from a variety of languages and cultures. There are prayers that have been handed down for thousands of years, such as the Zoroastrian prayer for marriage and the Jain prayer for forgiveness, and prayers that are contemporary, such as "Psalm of a Torture Victim" from Central America and a sixteen-year-old gangster's prayer.Prayers For All Peopleoffers something for everyone-and provides a way to celebrate and commemorate life's journey.