Prayer Books for the New Year

For the past four years I have posted weekly prayers on the blog Prayers & Creeds (http://prayersandcreeds.wordpress.com/). While I often come across the prayers on various websites and blogs, many come from various prayer books that I have collected in recent years. I thought I would post the titles and links, in case anyone is looking for a prayer book for the new year. Most are available in Kindle versions, as well. Please post any additional recommendations in comments to this post! Just click on the book title below.

Yours Is the Day, Lord, Yours Is the Night: A Morning and Evening Prayer Book

Edited by Jeanie and David Gushee 

Common Prayer: A Liturgy for Ordinary Radicals 

By Shane Claiborne, Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove, Enuma Okoro

Celtic Daily Prayer: Prayers and Readings From the Northumbria Community

Guerrillas of Grace: Prayers for the Battle 

By Ted Loder

Awed to Heaven, Rooted in Earth: Prayers of Walter Brueggemann 

By Walter Brueggemann

Prayers for a Privileged People 

By Walter Brueggemann

The Book of a Thousand Prayers

Compiled by Angela Ashwin

Hearts on Fire: Praying with Jesuits 
Compiled by Michael Harter

For those on Facebook here is a great page of prayers from Christine Sine..."LIKE" it! 

Light for the Journey

Merry Christmas!

Shepherds. James B Janknegt, 2011. 

Taken from: http://adventinart.org/

Prayers for Advent

This will be my fifth year posting weekly prayers on Prayers & Creeds. This year I am posting prayers that go along with the Revised Common Lectionary each week of Advent. Each week also includes a link to Art that goes with the readings. You can check it out here:
Vanderbilt Divinity Library, Revised Common Lectionary Readings for Advent

Below the prayer links some of my favorite Advent prayers posted in years past. Just click on the prayer title...

Advent Prayer by Ted Loder

O Antiphons – An Advent Litany

Awaiting the Christ Child ~ Esperando el Niño Jesús

Advent Prayer for Hope

Prayer for Welcoming Advent

Advent Collect for Southern Hemisphere

Advent Prayer from Walter Brueggemann

Advent Prayer from Henri Nouwen

Awaiting the Christ 

Hope Revived

The Advent Desert

"The desert is not a place of isolation, but one of encounter."

~ Andre Neher, 1988

As my calendar year of Patient Trust draws to a close, it is appropriate to also begin the new liturgical year with a posture of patient waiting during Advent. The below Advent reflection speaks to the posture and attitude (and work) of the Advent desert we may experience. Personally, I’d mush rather experience a warm and fuzzy Advent season. But, it is in the hard desert places where our hearts are open to prepare the way of the Lord to enter more fully into our lives in deeper ways. This is the patient trust I hope to be attentive and open to this Advent season.

“…From John the Baptist we learn the desert is a place for cleansing, for conversion, for fasting, for silence, for self-discovery, and ultimately for healing. It is a place to let go of our multiple earthly attachments, making room for the Lord by allowing God to enter fully into the innermost of our lives, yes, of our broken lives in utter need of his compassion and healing. 

The desert is also the place for pursuing the ‘patient waiting’ attitude that God demands from each of us. This patient waiting attitude is similar in many ways to that of ‘patient endurance’ counseled by the Apostle Paul. It demands true patience, and it also means hard work. This patient waiting attitude is inspired by deep faith and trust in God, and is the work of constant prayer under the guidance of the Holy Spirit. During this time of patiently waiting for the Lord’s arrival, he asks from each of us complete trust and openness to his particular designs for our lives, complete and total cooperation with that which he wishes to accomplish in us. When Christmas, the Lord’s day, arrives, we shall then discover the truth of God’s prophetic words: ‘The wilderness and the parched land (of our hearts) will exult; the Arabah (desert) will rejoice and bloom.’”

Taken from: Monastery Journey to Christmas
By Brother Victor-Antoine D’Avila-Latourrette

Advent: Dream Big and Imagine Wildly

“The hard work of Advent reflection and waiting is mingled with the gift of time and space to dream new dreams, to bathe in pools of hope, and to stretch the canvas of our imagination wide enough for God to paint God’s own visions for our lives. Advent is a season for our imagination to run wild as we contemplate a God who becomes human. We are given a wider glimpse of God when we allow Advent to be an invitation to dream beyond our comfort zones of what we think can happen in our lives and what God can do. In Advent we receive four weeks to dwell on what God’s vision might be for us and for those we touch. Four weeks to dwell on how the courage of expanding our imagination might feed into the growing kingdom of God. Four weeks to gather our wits about us for another year; preparing our bodies, minds and spirits to receive the Christ child and take him out into the world for others to see and praise, worship and obey; the Christ with whom we dream big and imagine wildly.”

Taken from the Preface of Silence and Other Surprising Invitations of Advent
By Enuma Okoro