Grace at Table

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Grace at Table advocates prayer at table as a way to solve everything. By everything we mean the dismay, dis-ease, and fear of the future that permeates way too many human souls. Addiction is one response to the moment, fear another, and despair a third. Widespread immobility and lack of focus come to mind as indications of over-stimulation by the negatives and under-stimulation by the positives. Prayer at table stimulates the positives. It is a pause that refreshes the spirit, reorienting us to a sense of gratitude and grace for whatever we may face. Prayer doesn't have to be hands folded or knees bent--although there is nothing wrong with folding hands or dropping to our knees. Instead, prayer here is understood as pause to give thanks, to look around, to interrupt constant action with reflection, allowing the table and our food to be our nudge. Changing the general atmosphere of despair and decay to thanks and appreciation is a big change, made in a small way. Like a wheelbarrow, prayer carries the heavy load, lightly, giving us the lift we need to manage what we fear we cannot. Prayer at table resolves the appreciation deficit disorder, which goes on to make us strong for climate change, recession, and a mounting sense of debt. It replaces shame and blame with gratitude and grace. "Pastor Donna Schaper takes what is all around us, namely food and eating food, and joins it to what is deeply but invisibly within us, a hunger for meaning and joy. She develops an imagination that lives the unity between the inner and outer: namely, prayer. Read this witty and generous book. There is not a dull sentence in it, [the] words will quicken your taste buds and revive your spirit." --Eugene H. Peterson, Professor Emeritus of Spiritual Theology, Regent College The Rev. Dr. Donna Schaper is Senior Minister of Judson Memorial Church in New York City and the author of thirty books, mostly about keeping Sabbath while gardening and being an activist. Best known for being dismembered by a garden club, she spends her days loving parish ministry in New York City. She also grows a great tomato and gathers sticks to build evening fires at her country shack in Fishkill, New York.