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

by Brueggemann, Walter

• ISBN13: 9780800634605
• ISBN10: 0800634608
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2003-01-01
• Publisher: Augsburg Fortress Pub

Summary

A collection of startlingly fresh and meaningful prayers from Walter Brueggemann, the leading Christian thinker and scholar.

Author Biography

Walter Brueggemann is Professor of Old Testament in the William Marcellus McPheeters Chair at Columbia Theological Seminary, Decatur, Georgia.

Table of Contents

Editor's Foreword	xiii
Preface	xv
And then you --- Facing God
And then you	3	(1)
At the dawn	4	(1)
You live at the hinge	5	(1)
Stunned by the morning	6	(1)
We wait for you to ache	7	(1)
You . . . and therefore us	8	(1)
A thousand, a million, a trillion tongues	9	(1)
For how you hope	10	(1)
We say ``Yes, yes''	11	(1)
You with ears bent close to our lips	12	(1)
The other side of the street	13	(1)
Not at our beck and call	14	(1)
You sweep away what we treasure	15	(1)
No more sinking sand	16	(2)
Before the day is out	18	(1)
Three times holy	19	(1)
The place where you are curbed	20	(1)
Our true home	21	(4)
A people with many secrets --- Truth-telling confession
A people with many secrets	25	(1)
Like an endless falling	26	(1)
We treasure what you end	27	(1)
Not always for you	28	(1)
You who command	29	(1)
We also live double lives	30	(1)
An answering and refusing	31	(1)
Yours, and not ours	32	(1)
We are takers	33	(1)
Fashioning better guarantees	34	(1)
The God we would rather have	35	(1)
But now you know	36	(1)
Even on such a day	37	(4)
Against your absence --- A hidden God
Against your absence	41	(1)
Our despairing hope	42	(1)
No newness yet	43	(1)
You are known in hiddenness	44	(1)
You stay hidden within that misery	45	(1)
With or without you	46	(1)
Against a closed sky	47	(4)
We are ready to listen --- For illumination
We are ready to listen	51	(1)
Your command is garbled	52	(1)
Ears but do not hear	53	(1)
We would know more of you	54	(1)
The voice we can scarcely hear	55	(1)
The din undoes us	56	(1)
The grace to be haunted	57	(1)
Give us Saturday ears	58	(1)
Reach us	59	(2)
That we may change	61	(1)
Re-text us	62	(3)
Move off the page --- While reading texts
Move off the page	65	(1)
Before us	66	(1)
We try, as best we can, to live by bread alone	67	(1)
You turn tables	68	(1)
Teach us how to weep	69	(1)
Your world-forming speech	70	(1)
Your word	71	(1)
Our mother tongue	72	(1)
How you inhabit this text	73	(1)
Your new news	74	(1)
After the bitterness	75	(1)
When the world spins crazy	76	(1)
The poems conflict us	77	(1)
Soak our lives in it	78	(1)
Alabaster cities	79	(2)
We are children of another world	81	(4)
Awed to heaven, rooted in earth --- For the church in mission
Awed to heaven, rooted in earth	85	(2)
Not the God we would have chosen	87	(1)
Re-brand us	88	(1)
And we are different	89	(1)
A hard, deep call to obedience	90	(1)
Yes	91	(1)
We do not want to be arrested	92	(1)
Do not fear	93	(2)
Give us appropriate yielding	95	(1)
We are much drawn to circuses	96	(1)
Our right names	97	(2)
Be our primary disease	99	(1)
The anguish and burden of the message	100	(1)
With all the graciousness we can muster	101	(2)
Deliver us from amnesia	103	(1)
Demanding all, not too much, but all	104	(1)
Kingdoms rage . . . and we are called	105	(1)
Move us beyond ourselves	106	(5)
Start again --- For a bruised world
Start again	111	(1)
The threats do not wane	112	(1)
Their plowshares are beat into swords	113	(2)
Reform our deformed lives	115	(2)
Work your wonders	117	(1)
In the midst of all the pushing and shoving	118	(1)
Come to our shut down places	119	(1)
We are all in hock	120	(1)
While the world says ``not possible''	121	(2)
We are not self-starters	123	(1)
Be your powerful, active, sovereign self	124	(1)
Friday is your day of entry	125	(1)
Into our several hells	126	(1)
Is there a balm . . . in Gilead or anywhere?	127	(2)
Ours is a seduced world	129	(1)
Ceding our end to you	130	(3)
We will not keep silent --- Cadences of gratitude
We will not keep silent	133	(1)
You give . . . and we receive	134	(1)
The God who yearns and waits for us	135	(1)
The gratitude we intend	136	(1)
We are second and you are first	137	(2)
With you it is never ``more or less''	139	(1)
Giver, Giver, Giver	140	(1)
Larger than fear	141	(1)
We notice your giving	142	(5)
Occupy our calendars --- Praying the Christian Year
Occupy our calendars	147	(1)
The grace and the impatience to wait --- Advent	148	(1)
In violence and travail --- Christmas	149	(1)
There is a time to be born, and it is now --- Epiphany	150	(2)
Not yet as light as hope --- Shrove Tuesday	152	(1)
Loss is indeed our gain --- Lent	153	(1)
Revise our taking --- Lent	154	(1)
Or did we get it wrong --- Lent	155	(1)
In the name of the bruised one --- Holy Week	156	(1)
Held back --- Holy Week	157	(1)
The pivot of hope --- Maundy Thursday	158	(1)
The terrible silencing we cannot master --- Good Friday	159	(2)
Not the kingdom of death --- Easter	161	(1)
We are baffled --- Easter	162	(1)
You who stalk the earth with new life --- Easter	163	(1)
But not held --- Easter	164	(1)
Easter us --- Easter	165	(2)
To make things new that never were --- Pentecost	167	(1)
We wait . . . but not patiently --- Reign of Christ	168	(1)
In these very late days --- Reign of Christ	169	(1)
Index of biblical references	170