Lord's Prayer

 

Today, I want to offer you three versions of the Lord’s Prayer.

“Whoa,” you say.  “I didn’t sign up for the advanced placement class on the Lord’s Prayer.”  I want to offer three versions to deepen our exploration.  Insert your mumbling about homework here.  Or your thought that these meditations were so much better last month.

You can engage these versions in whatever order you’d like.  You might read all three right now.  You might read just one today, another tomorrow, and the third this weekend.  However, as you encounter and engage these words, I invite you to continue to notice and name what happens as you pray these words.  

As I said earlier, often the first time through a different version of the Lord’s Prayer might seem too strange to stir the sacred.  The words below might feel like a tight shoe on our soul.  I offer these versions for you, as always, to hold lightly and see how God might be found in the syllables and spaces of each translation.  Prayer: May God’s presence hover and hold together our hearts each day we continue to pray the Lord’s Prayer at noon each day.  Amen.

 

Nazarene Transliteration of the Lord's Prayer

Oh Thou, from whom the breath of life comes, who fills all realms of sound, light and vibration. May Your light be experienced in my utmost holiest. Your Heavenly Domain approaches. Let Your will come true - in the universe just as on earth. Give us wisdom for our daily need, detach the fetters of faults that bind us, like we let go the guilt of others. Let us not be lost in superficial things, but let us be freed from that what keeps us from our true purpose. From You comes the all-working will, the lively strength to act, the song that beautifies all and renews itself from age to age. Sealed in trust, faith and truth, I confirm with my entire being.

 

A womanist version used at Grace Cathedral at the Beyonce Mass. Author: Rev. Yolanda Norton.
Our Mother, who is in heaven and within us, we call upon your names. Your wisdom come. Your will be done, in all the spaces in which you dwell. Give us each day sustenance and perseverance. Remind us of our limits as we give grace to the limits of others. Separate us from the temptation of empire, and deliver us into community. For you are the dwelling place within us, the empowerment around us, and the celebration among us, now and forever. Amen.   

 

Ben Franklin’s Version of The Lord’s Prayer.

Heavenly Father, may all revere thee, and become thy dutiful Children and faithful Subjects; may thy Laws be obeyed on Earth as perfectly as they are in Heaven: Provide for us this Day as thou hast hitherto daily done: Forgive us our Trespasses, and enable us likewise to forgive those that offend us. Keep us out of Temptation, and deliver us from Evil.