Leaving the Shore: Experiencing Poetry as Prayer

5 Star Review

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Editorial Book Review:

By Austin McLean

Colette Lafia wrote the title poem of this collection after a spring night when she couldn't sleep. Resting in the quiet darkness, she felt a sense of Divine Presence gently pulsing within her and an overwhelming urge to surrender to it. When dawn broke, fear gripped her instead. That small, honest moment, the pull toward the sacred and the retreat from it, is the emotional and spiritual territory this entire book inhabits, and it is the reason the poems feel so unmistakably human.

Leaving the Shore is not simply a poetry collection. It is a contemplative practice disguised as one, and that distinction matters. Each poem arrives accompanied by guided Lectio Divina, sacred reading practices drawn from the Christian mystical tradition, and journaling prompts that invite the reader to do more than receive the poem and move on. The book slows you down deliberately. It creates what Lafia calls a holy spaciousness around experience, the kind of attentive stillness that most of us spend our days efficiently avoiding.

Richard Rohr described the collection as a book that reveals how God's enduring love is present in all we experience. James Crews observed that through Lafia's gentle guidance, the worn and dented kitchen table becomes an altar, and the simple act of changing clothes in front of a mirror becomes revelation. That is precisely the tradition Lafia is working in, the one that insists the sacred is not elsewhere but here, embedded in the ordinary moments we keep rushing past without noticing.

Her background as a spiritual director and graduate of Richard Rohr's Living School gives the contemplative framework real depth, but the poems themselves never feel like theological exercises. They feel like a woman paying very careful attention to her life and then finding the right words for what she found there. That combination of discipline and tenderness is what gives the book its particular beauty.

For anyone longing to slow down, to pray without quite knowing how to call it prayer, or to encounter their own life as something worthy of reverence, this book is an extraordinary companion.

About the Author

Colette Lafia

Colette Lafia is a San Francisco-based writer, spiritual director, speaker, and retreat leader. A graduate of the Spiritual Directors’ Institute at Mercy Center in Burlingame, California, Colette recently completed the Living School program in the Christian contemplative and mystical traditions at the Center for Action and Contemplation, guided by Father Richard Rohr, Reverend Cynthia Bourgeault, and Dr. James Finley. 

Colette designs and facilitates both online and in-person retreats, and is an adjunct faculty member at Mercy Center in Burlingame. She also has an active in-person and virtual spiritual direction practice.

Colette is the author of Comfort and Joy: Simple Ways to Care for Ourselves and Others (Conari, 2008), which was named one of the best spiritual books of the year by Spirituality & Practice, and Seeking Surrender: How My Friendship with a Trappist Monk Taught Me to Trust and Embrace Life (Sorin Books, 2015). Her new book is The Divine Heart: Seven Ways to Live in God's Love, (Monkfish Publishing, 2021). 

Colette has a passion for helping people connect more deeply with the presence of the sacred in their daily lives and honoring their authentic spiritual journey. Please visit her website at colettelafia.com.