One of my regrets from my seminary days is not being more fully present to my studies.

Perhaps it was the multiple hundred-mile round-trip treks to serve as a youth pastor each week, or the constant catching up with the hundreds of pages of theology, church history and biblical language studies each week, or just trying to figure out who on earth I was and where God might be leading me, but much of what I read escaped my brain as soon as I wrote it down for an exam or typed it for a paper (of course, in reality, it was probably some combination of the three, plus many other factors).

Recently, I am rediscovering many theologians whose writing & thoughts I did not have the time to engage deeply while I was a seminary student.

These days, some thoughts from Jurgen Moltmann on prayer have gotten my attention:

Real prayer to God awakens all our senses and alerts our minds and spirits. The person who prays, lives more attentively.

Theologian friends, any thoughts on Moltmann?

My theology reading is painfully slow (I think reading Karl Barth has permanently damaged the theology-reading part of my brain. Seriously, I would have to read a paragraph of his, like, five times over just to catch a glimpse of what he was saying), so any insight would be appreciated!