From a friend:

Just wanted to draw your attention to Walter Brueggemann's latest book "Prayers for a Privileged People" which is full of stunning, insightful, subversive, thought-provoking prayers from a First World perspective. It's about praying with eyes wide open to our context of wealth, power and privilege and how we might pray our way into God's alternative culture. And because it comes from perhaps the world's foremost Hebrew Bible scholar, it is steeped in Biblical stories of redemption, justice and liberation. There are prayers here for the high holy days of the church year, and the high holy days of the world's year - from Epiphany to Superbowl Sunday, Yom Kippur to the G8 conference. I'm finding it a magnificent resource. Here's just one example:

Holy Regime Change

We speak easily and glibly of "regime change"

We imagine it is some regime other than our own;

We imagine our rightful capacity to make such change elsewhere.

But then you in Scripture,

you making regime change,

you overthrowing long-established priestly power;

you moving against things holy and treasured among us;

you causing endings that we had never thought possible;

you making newness beyond our conjuring.

And just behind old Eli and his loss of regime

comes this Other Voice from your inner circle,

summoning to radical newness,

summoning to "repent," and then,

a new regime: "The Kingdom of God is at hand."

And all our old regimes -

of heart and of mind,

of money and of power,

of privilege and entitlement -

all are in one instant placed in jeopardy.

Give to us courage to hear your summons;

Give to us freedom to relinquish old regimes that have gone stale in

hardness and in disobedience;

Give us ease to receive new governance that reshapes everything,

even our deep treasures

We live by your word; we await your news,

but we do so tentatively, reluctantly,

knowing the cost to all that is settled and old.

So come, Power of newness, come here, come soon.

Brilliant stuff. I commend it to you.

Blessings of peace,

Simon