Kitchen Table Spirituality 46 - Ash Wednesday

Twelve Enough

A weekly devotional with Charley Eastman and Jonathan Malone. Please, do not “Ash and Dash,” but instead take your time in devotion and commitment to this beginning of Lent. And try fasting - it will do you good!

Here is the prayer that Jonathan and Charley read:

Catch Me in My Scurrying

From Guerrillas of Grace, by Ted Loder

Catch me in my anxious scurrying, Lord,

and hold me in this Lenten season:

Hold my feet to the fire of your grace and make me attentive to my mortality that I may begin to die now to those things that keep me from living with you and with my neighbors on this earth;

To grudges and indifference,

To certainties that smother possibilities,

To my fascination with false securities,

To my addiction to sweatless dreams,

To my arrogant insistence on how it has to be;

To my corrosive fear of dying someday which eats away the wonder of living this day,

And the adventure of losing my life in order to find it in you.

Catch me in my aimless scurrying, Lord,

And hold me in this Lenten season:

Hold my heart to the beat of your grace and create in me a resting place,

A kneeling place,

A tip-toe place where I can recover from the dis-ease of my grandiosities which fill my mind and calendar with busy self-importance,

That I may become vulnerable enough to dare intimacy with the familiar,

To listen cup-eared for your summons,

And to watch squint-eyed for your crooked finger in the crying of a child,

In the hunger of the street people,

In the fear of nuclear holocaust in all people,

In the rage of those oppressed because of sex or race,

In the smoldering resentments of exploited third world nations,

In the sullen apathy of the poor and ghetto-strangled people,

In my lonely doubt and limping ambivalence;

And somehow,

During this season of sacrifice,

Enable me to sacrifice time and possessions and securities,

To do something…

Something about what I see,

Something to turn the water of my words into the wine of will and risk,

Into the bread of blood and blisters,

Into the blessedness of deed,

Of a cross picked up,

A savior followed.

Catch me in my mindless scurrying, Lord,

And hold me in this Lenten season:

Hold my spirit to the beacon of your grace and grant me light enough to walk boldly,

To feel passionately,

To love aggressively;

Grant me peace enough to want more,

To work for more and to submit to nothing less,

And to fear only you…

Only you!

Bequeath me not becalmed seas,

Slack sails and premature benedictions,

But breathe into me a torment,

Strom enough to make within myself and from myself,

Something…

Something new,

Something saving,

Something true,

A gladness of heart,

A pitch for a song in the storm,

A word of praise lived,

A gratitude shared,

A cross dared,

A joy received.