Gather Me To Be With You

Over at Blue Eyed Ennis, Phil has posted a prayer by Ted Loder.  It was from while pondering this coming Sunday's gospel that Loder's prayer came to mind for her. 

I suspect that all of us will find something of our own circumstances in Gather Me To Be With You and some of us may find a lot.  Loder's language is tight, bare boned, honest: a prayer text meets you were you live.

(Do you know what was gathered up in Sunday's gospel?)

Gather Me To Be With You

O GOD, gather me now to be with you as you are with me.
Soothe my tiredness;
quiet my fretfulness;
curb my aimlessness;
receive my compulsiveness;
let me be easy for a moment.

O LORD, release me from the fears and guilts which grip me so tightly;
from the expectations and opinions which I so tightly grip,
that I may be open to receiving,
to learn something refreshingly different.

O GOD, gather me to be with you as you are with me.
Forgive me for claiming so much for myself
that I leave no room for gratitude;
for confusing exercises in self-importance
with acceptance of self-worth;
for complaining so much of my burdens that I become a burden;
for competing against others so insidiously
that I stifle celebrating them and receiving your blessing
through their gifts.

O GOD, gather me to be with you as you are with me.
Keep me in touch with myself,
with my needs,
my anxieties,
my angers,
my pains,
my corruptions,
that I may claim them as my own
rather than blame them on someone else.

O LORD, deepen my wounds into wisdom;
shape my weakness into compassion;
gentle my envy into enjoyment,
my fear into trust,
my guilt into honesty,
my accusing finger into tickling ones.

O GOD, gather me to be with you as you are with me.

- Ted Loder


Image: 12 Baskets by Amos Langdown  

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