The Lord's Prayer, as Translated from the Aramaic

We all have days —and sometimes, even long stretches of days— when our sight has become clouded, our hearts deadened, and our wills shaky, at best. These are the days it becomes clear we really cannot hold ourselves up. We need to be held —and even carried— by our Beloved. There are many ways we might seek out and experience this holding. Perhaps it the arms of a loved one, or maybe it's a quiet sit against the trunk of a beloved tree.

We may also find that holding in the well-worn words of a treasured scripture or ancient prayer. Within the Christian tradition, the Lord's Prayer has often been one such prayer. Speaking vulnerably, though, I'll admit that the Lord's Prayer, as I learned it, has not been nurturing to me for a long time. From the start, it presents the exclusively male image of God that has warped our understanding both of who God is and who we are, feminine and masculine beings made in God's image and likeness.

As our image of God shifts, our prayers and songs and rituals will shift as well. This can be disconcerting and challenging. How do we stay faithful to the goodness of our spiritual roots even as we open ourselves to new ways of seeing and relating to the Beloved? Neil Douglas-Klotz's book, Prayers of the Cosmos: Meditations on the Aramaic Words of Jesus, offers us guidance.

Working from the Aramaic rather than the Greek, as our English translations do, Klotz offers us translations from the layered and storied foundation of Jesus' mother tongue. These translations provide a new entry into this prayer and reveal a mystical, feminist and cosmic Christ. This is a prayer in which I can join Jesus wholeheartedly. These words hold and heal, guide and graft.

I invite you to consider taking them to your own meditation. Over the next 10 weeks, I'll be sharing what comes to me with each of the phrases and invite your response as well.

O Birther! Father-Mother of the Cosmos,

Focus your light within us—make it useful:

Create your reign of unity now—

Your one desire then acts with ours,

as in all light, so in all forms.

Grant what we need each day in bread and insight.

Loose the cords of mistakes binding us,

as we release the strands we hold

of others' guilt.

Don't let surface things delude us,

But free us from what holds us back.

From you is born all ruling will,

the power and the life to do,

the song that beautifies all,

from age to age it renews.

Truly—power to these statements—

may they be the ground from which all

my actions grow: Amen.