Paradise Now: Living the Lord’s Prayer
The New York Times Book Review has called Jay Parini “one of those writers who can do anything.”Across a career spanning poetry, fiction, criticism, and biography, Parini has repeatedly examined how enduring texts shape moral imagination.
Now, Parini turns to one of the most enduring texts in Christian life: the Lord’s Prayer. For Christians, the prayer stands at the center of both belief and practice. Spoken in churches, whispered in hospital rooms, recited at baptisms and gravesides, it remains one of the most widely shared acts of faith in the world. It’s this familiarity, Parini argues, that has dulled its true meaning.
In Paradise Now: Living the Lord’s Prayer (Morehouse Publishing, 10/20/26), Parini moves line by line through the prayer, examining its theological claims, poetic construction, and ethical implications, asking how words spoken daily might serve as instructions for living. Engaging a wide range of literary and theological sources—from Shakespeare to Mary Oliver—and informed by such thinkers as Carl Jung and Joseph Campbell, Paradise Now brings a sustained, probing attention to the Lord’s Prayer, asking what the words mean and what they require in practice.
Drawing on the distinct versions found in the Gospels of Matthew and Luke, Parini approaches The Lord’s Prayer not simply as liturgy, but as a framework for thinking and living; one that organizes attention, clarifies moral responsibility, and supports deep reflection. It challenges readers to move beyond passive faith and into active participation—to align their lives with the values the prayer demands.
Ultimately, Parini demonstrates that “paradise” is not a distant promise but a present possibility. The prayer calls readers to inhabit a state of awareness and responsibility that can be practiced now, through forgiveness, humility, attention, and ethical action in the world. Both intellectually expansive and deeply practical, Paradise Now turns a too-familiar text into a tool for transformation.
Author Bio
Parini’s novels include Benjamin’s Crossing, The Apprentice Lover, The Passages of H.M., The Damascus Road, and The Last Station—a portrait of Leo Tolstoy’s final days that became an Academy Award–nominated film starring Helen Mirren and Christopher Plummer and was praised as “one of the best historical novels of the last twenty years” by Gore Vidal. His six books of poetry include The Art of Subtraction and New and Collected Poems: 1975–2015. Parini’s nonfiction works include The Art of Teaching, Why Poetry Matters, Promised Land: Thirteen Books that Changed America, and The Way of Jesus.
His most recent book, Borges and Me: An Encounter, was selected as a New York Times Editor’s Choice and was developed into a feature film featuring Fionn Whitehead, Luis Gnecco, and Alan Cumming (releasing summer 2026).
His contributions to literature have been recognized with a Guggenheim Fellowship, the Chicago Tribune–Heartland Award, and honorary degrees from Lafayette College, the University of Scranton, and Sewanee: The University of the South. He was the Fowler Hamilton Fellow at Christ Church, Oxford University, and a Fellow of the Institute for Advanced Studies at the University of London.
His journalism, criticism, and opinion pieces appear widely in such publications as The Guardian, The New York Times Book Review, The Wall Street Journal, The New Yorker, and The Chronicle of Higher Education, and on CNN, Salon, and The Daily Beast. He recently appeared in The New Yorker and on NPR to discuss the discovery of an unknown Robert Frost poem, underscoring his continued presence in national literary conversation.
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