In more recent years I have loved reading and praying written prayers in the morning (something quite radical from my own anti-liturgical baptist tradition). Reading through the Book of Common Prayer has been a joy and I can add to that reading through two other books of collected prayers every morning: Karl Barth and Walter Brueggemann.
Karl Barth
Fifty Prayers
Trans. David Carl Stassen.
Louisville/London: Westminster John Knox, 2005
Available from Amazon.com (USA)
Available from Alban Books (UK)
In this book we get a glance, not of Karl Barth the towering theologian, but Karl Barth the Christian and the Pastor. For the Barthophobes out there (I was once one of them) there is no prayer for: "I thank you god for your non-propositional revelation, for your modalistic trinity, and for some kind of quasi-universalism that I cannot make up my mind on". These are prayers you could find on the lips of any Reformed Pastor and they are poignant and moving all at once. The prayers are based around a number of themes like Christmas, Epiphany, Good Friday, Pentecost, Trinity Sunday, Ascension, Funerals, etc. Consider this (# 21):
"Lord, our God, here we are gathered, before you and with one another, to celebrate Easter, the day on which you revealed your dear Son, our Lord Jesus Christ, as the living Saviour who took upon himself all of our sins and, with them, all of our human poverty and even death itself, paid the penance and suffering in our place, and once for all adn forevermore conquered them all and set them all aside".
Reading this was refreshing to my soul!
Walter Brueggemann
Prayers for a Privileged People
Nashville: Abingdon, 2008
Available from Amazon.com (USA)
Available from Alban Books (UK)
This collection of prayers by Brueggemann is for those who live in the privileged situation of North America and it deals with issues that this privileged people face (privilege and entitlement, injustice and violence). The prayers cover a number of areas: collect for purity, well-arranged lives, the world is not safe, brick production, can we risk it?, and choirs of hope. All of the prayers have a poetic rather than prose quality about them. I have to say that many of the prayers are oh-soooo-american it's not funny, e.g. prayers for "Super Bowl Sunday" and "The State of the Union". Indeed, to some extent, the book could be regarded as one long prayer of repentance for American affluence and arrogance! Consider this Christmas prayer:
And while we wait for the Christ Child,
we are enthralled by the things of Caesar -
money ... power ... control
and all the well-being that comes from
such control, even if it requires violence
But in the midst of the decree will come this long-expected Jesus
innocent, vulnerable,
full of grace and truth,
grace and not power,
truth and not money,
mercy and not control.
We also dwell in the land of Caesar;
we pray for the gift of your spirit,
that we may loosen our grip on the things of Caesar,
that we may turn our eyes toward the babe,
our ears towards the newness,
our hearts toward the gentleness,
our power and money and control
towaard your new governance.
I don't expect Joel Osteen or the chaplain to the GOP to pray this one in the near future. I did not enjoy Brueggemann's book of prayers as much as Barth's, but it does have some good and stirring stuff at points. It also makes us think how our western affluence and privilege should effect our devotional and liturgical life.
