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Before the Ending of the Day by Andii Bowsher in Religion & Spirituality

2012-01-10T21:14:00.000Z

Till the end of January, money off my Complines:

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Before the Ending of the Day by Andii Bowsher in Religion & Spirituality

Why pray?

2012-01-07T19:23:00.000Z

A very nice meditation on prayer through the lens of the the phrases that make up the Lord's Prayer. Definitely worth spending time with. It's here: Faith and Theology: Why pray?:

I was particularly taken by the 'daily bread' bit:

The stuff of my life is hunger, need, and lack. Technology and affluence blind me to this truth, but one day – a single morning – without food is enough to show me the truth of what I am. I live by lack: God lives by fullness. I am only hunger: God is only food.

Lord's Prayer Rosary -new cycles

2011-12-12T19:12:00.000Z

This comes with an apology to those from the Peterborough Diocese who attended my workshop at Swanwick the other day. I had hoped to put these notes up towards the end of last week, but failed to do so. Anyway, what follows is the revised plan of use for a Dominican rosary where the cycles of reading and reflection are based on gospels and other biblical books within each book.

Lord’sPrayer rosary

Starting.

Holdingthe cross:

[Jesus]was praying in a certain place, and after he had finished, one of hisdisciples said to him, ‘Lord, teach us to pray, as John taught hisdisciples.’ ²Hesaid to them, ‘When you pray, say:

(Luke 11:1-4)

Fivebeads between the cross and the main circle of the rosary:

Prayingeach bullet point on each bead. However, do so slowly, reflecting onthe kind of prayer each phase of the prayer involves.

Father,^* hallowed be your name.
Your kingdom come.^*
Give us each day our daily bread.^*
And forgive us our sins, for we ourselves forgive everyone indebted to us.
And do not bring us to the time of trial.’

Thejunction of the circle and the strand leading to the cross:

Atthis point you consult the first reading in the cycle of readings:read it, reflect on it and then move on to praying the first decadeof beads using the words ‘Our Father in Heaven, hallowed be yourname.” You will then come to a bead set apart from the decade you've just prayed and from the one that follows. The second bead calls on the second passage ('Will done") and the following decade associates with the phrase, on each bead, 'Your Kingdom come, your will be done on earth as in heaven'; the third reflection bead calls on the 'daily bread' passage and is followed by praying on each bead of the following decade 'give us today our daily bread'. This pattern of usage is followed for the fourth, 'forgive us our sins as we forgive those who sin against us' and the fifth decade with 'save us from the time of trial and deliver us from evil'.

Matthewcycle

Hallowing

Arenot two sparrows sold for a penny? Yet not one of them will fall tothe ground unperceived by your Father. ³⁰Andeven the hairs of your head are all counted. ³¹Sodo not be afraid; you are of more value than many sparrows. [Mt.10:29-31]

will-done

Whenhe saw the crowds, he had compassion for them, because they wereharassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd. ³⁷Thenhe said to his disciples, ‘The harvest is plentiful, but thelabourers are few; ³⁸thereforeask the Lord of the harvest to send out labourers into his harvest.’[Mt. 9:36f]

daily bread

[Jesus]answered, ‘It is written, “One does not live by breadalone,
but by every word that comes from themouth of God.” ’ [Mt 4:4]

forgiving

Whoeverloves father or mother more than me is not worthy of me; and whoeverloves son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me; ³⁸andwhoever does not take up the cross and follow me is not worthy of me.³⁹Thosewho find their life will lose it, and those who lose their life formy sake will find it. [Mt.10:37-39]

Trialtime

Donot put the Lord your God to the test (Mt 4:7)

MarkCycle

Hallowing

Anda voice came from heaven, ‘You are my Son, the Beloved;^*with you I am well pleased.’ [Mk.1:11]

will-done

It[the Kingdom of God] is like a mustard seed, which, when sown uponthe ground, is the smallest of all the seeds on earth; ³²yetwhen it is sown it grows up and becomes the greatest of all shrubs,and puts forth large branches, so that the birds of the air can makenests in its shade.’ [Mk.4:31-32]

daily bread

Jesussaid, ‘Truly I tell you, there is no one who has left house orbrothers or sisters or mother or father or children or fields, for mysake and for the sake of the good news,^*³⁰whowill not receive a hundredfold now in this age—houses, brothers andsisters, mothers and children, and fields, with persecutions—and inthe age to come eternal life. [Mk.10:29-30]

forgiving

Andhe said, ‘It is what comes out of a person that defiles. ²¹Forit is from within, from the human heart, that evil intentions come:fornication, theft, murder, ²²adultery,avarice, wickedness, deceit, licentiousness, envy, slander, pride,folly. ²’[Mk.7:20-23]

Trialtime

Thosewho are ashamed of me and of my words^*in this adulterous and sinful generation, of them the Son of Man willalso be ashamed when he comes in the glory of his Father with theholy angels.’ [Mk.8.38]

Luke cycle

Hallowing

Mysoul proclaims the greatness of the Lord and my spirit rejoices inGod my Saviour, ….⁴⁹for the Mighty One has done great things for me, and holy is hisname. [Lk.1:47-49]

will-done

Andhe answered them, ‘Go and tell John what you have seen and heard:the blind receive their sight, the lame walk, the lepers^*are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, the poor have goodnews brought to them. [Lk.7:22]

daily bread

hehas filled the hungry with good things, and sent the rich awayempty. [Lk.1:53]

forgiving

‘Donot judge, and you will not be judged; do not condemn, and you willnot be condemned. Forgive, and you will be forgiven [Lk.6:37]

Butthe tax-collector, standing far off, would not even look up toheaven, but was beating his breast and saying, “God, be merciful tome, a sinner!” [Lk.18:13]

Trialtime

Jesus^*said to his disciples, ‘Occasions for stumbling are bound to come,but woe to anyone by whom they come! ²Itwould be better for you if a millstone were hung around your neck andyou were thrown into the sea than for you to cause one of theselittle ones to stumble. [Lk.17:1f]

John Cycle

Hallowing

But toall who received him, who believed in his name, he gave power tobecome children of God, who were born, not of blood or of the will ofthe flesh or of the will of man, but of God. [John 1.12-13]

will-done

The thief comesonly to steal and kill and destroy. I came that they may have life,and have it abundantly [John 10.10]

daily bread

Jesusanswered them, ‘Very truly, I tell you, you are looking for me, notbecause you saw signs, but because you ate your fill of the loaves.Do not work for the food that perishes, but for the food that enduresfor eternal life, which the Son of Man will give you. [John 6.26-27]

forgiving

Andwhen [the Other Counsellor] comes, he will prove the world wrongabout sin and righteousness and judgement: about sin because peopledo not believe in me ... [Jn. 16:88f]

Trialtime

I amnot asking you to take them out of the world, but I ask you toprotect them from the evil one. They do not belong to the world, justas I do not belong to the world. Sanctify them in the truth; yourword is truth.As you have sent me into the world, so I have sent theminto the world. And for their sakes I sanctify myself, so that theyalso may be sanctified in truth. [Jn.17:15-18]

RomansCycle

Hallowing

youhave received a spirit of adoption. When we cry, ‘Abba!* Father!’it is that very Spirit bearing witness* with our spirit that we arechildren of God, and if children, then heirs, heirs of God and jointheirs with Christ [Rom.8:15-17]

will-done

daily bread

If Godis for us, who is against us? He who did not withhold his own Son,but gave him up for all of us, will he not with him also give useverything else? [Rom.8:31-32]

forgiving

Thereforeyou have no excuse, whoever you are, when you judge others; for inpassing judgement on another you condemn yourself, because you, thejudge, are doing the very same things. [Rom. 2:2]

Trialtime

Donot be conformed to this world,* but be transformed by the renewingof your minds, so that you may discern what is the will of God—whatis good and acceptable and perfect. [Rom. 12:2]

Sermon onthe Mount Cycle

Hallowing

yourFather in heaven ... makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good,and sends rain on the righteous and on the unrighteous. [Mt. 5:45]

will-done

Isay to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you,[Mt.5:44]

daily bread

strivefirst for the kingdom of God^*and his^*righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well.[Mt.6:33]

forgiving

Forwith the judgement you make you will be judged, and the measure yougive will be the measure you get. [Mt. 7:2]

Trialtime

‘Donot store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust^*consume and where thieves break in and steal; ²⁰butstore up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth norrust^*consumes and where thieves do not break in and steal. ²¹Forwhere your treasure is, there your heart will be also. [Mt.6:19-21]

Finishing.

Havingprayed all the way round the circle, you will find yourself back atthe junction between the circle and the strand leading to the cross.At this point you hold the junction point, preparing to pray ‘out’of the circle.

Thejunction of the circle and the strand leading to the cross:

Forthe Kingdom, the Power, and the glory are yours, now and forever.

Fivebeads between the cross and the main circle of the rosary:

As yousay or think each bulleted section, do so slowly and reflectivelybearing in mind the rest of life that you will be rejoining afterthis prayer time.

Jesus said, ‘The first [commandment] is, “Hear, O Israel: the Lord our God, the Lord is one; you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart,
and with all your soul,
and with all your mind,
and with all your strength.”
The second is this, “You shall love your neighbour as yourself.” There is no other commandment greater than these.’

Holdingthe cross:

Jesussaid

...remember, I am withyoualways, to the end of the age.

East African famine: preventable and prayable

2011-07-29T18:57:00.000+01:00

As I read this, East Africa: The preventable crisis | Oxfam International Blogs: "Governments in eastern Africa must act differently on their policies that can change how agriculture is done to ensure food security. The international community must support initiatives to reduce the risk of disasters and not wait for a life or death situation. In face of these droughts, farmers in Eastern Africa cannot only look to their government given the global effects of climate change and donor countries who are the main greenhouse gas producers must also pay." I was very much considering what it means for us who pray 'give us today our daily bread'.

This is a question for all of us because, in the first instance, the prayer is corporate and it's corporateness is without borders. At least I think that we have to consider it universally in the light of Jesus' teaching on who our neighbours are. "Us" and "our" must surely include anyone whose lives our lives touch. And, in this globalised age of less than six degrees of separation, anyone is potentially our near neighbour, all are our less-near neighbours. This is especially so when we consider how the reach of our financial transactions extends to the uttermost parts of the world -hence the need to consider Fair Trade.

Thus, when we pray "give us ..." we are praying inclusively in principle: if our food can come (as it does) from the furthest parts of the world from where we live, then we cannot shrug our shoulders and say that this is nothing to do with us. If our money can call forth food and drink from Australia and New Zealand (those of us in Western Europe, that would be, Perhaps South Africa or central Asia for those in America) then we realise that we are contemplating a problem with the way that food is produced and distributed. That is a political, economic and humanitarian matter.

So, we pray "give us today our daily bread" recognising that the global food production and distribution system has made easier the answer to that prayer for us but made it harder for many in east Africa. I don't believe we can simply accept it for ourselves without both questioning why it doesn't allow east Africans to have their prayer answered and acting to help by offering aid now and in the longer term to work to re-engineer the global systems of food production and distribution. We need to act to be the answers to our own prayer on our neighbours' behalfs -and in so doing do something towards enacting our prayer for God's will to be done as well as prayers for daily bread. Don't you love it when prayers come together?

Prefiguring of the Lord's Prayer in the OT

2011-02-24T09:25:00.000Z

In morning prayer today we read;

‘But will God indeed reside with mortals on earth? Even heaven and the highest heaven cannot contain you, how much less this house that I have built! Have regard to your servant’s prayer and his plea, O Lord my God, heeding the cry and the prayer that your servant prays to you. May your eyes be open day and night towards this house, the place where you promised to set your name, and may you heed the prayer that your servant prays towards this place. And hear the plea of your servant and of your people Israel, when they pray towards this place; may you hear from heaven your dwelling-place; hear and forgive.
-2 Chronicles 6.1-21

I was first caught by the use of the phrase 'the place where you promised to set your name' because it was there that prayer was to be directed. That connection between name and a focus of prayer seems interesting to me. The name is a kind of localising, a way of condensing the presence of God (who 'otherwise' fills and overflows the whole of creation) so that we finite and localised beings can get enough of a grasp on the matter to address ourselves to God.

So in this bit of the passage, there is a naming of God in God's attributes and project here. The tone of this naming is respectful and awed: it is a hallowing of God's name.
Then there is a petition for God to indeed make this place a 'sacrament' of God's audience and attention to the People of God. And note that there is also a plea to forgive.

In this passage, then, we see a hallowing of God's name which recognises the 'name' addressed as where our petitions go, including our pleas for forgiveness. Something of the shape of the first half of the Lord's Prayer is there.

Before the Ending of the Day

2010-09-06T21:21:00.001+01:00

I have just made the compline prayers available in book-form, both paper and electronic. Here's the gen:

Blending ancient and modern, these brief services of night prayer, otherwise known as 'compline', draw our day to a close with God. Comforting ancient words combine with more recent insights and concerns to produce orders of service with variety and spaciousness. The set prayers help us to pray when we are tired and provide a framework to cradle times of reflection on the day that has passed. In these services of prayer, the order of compline has been reorganised to better reflect the pattern of the Lord's prayer

It's only £6 for the one and £3 for the other.

Before the Ending of the Day by Andii Bowsher in Religion & Spirituality:

Lord's Prayer Complines: beta testing

2010-08-17T13:52:00.000+01:00

I've been working on some Compline services informed by the Lord's Prayer shape. I'm hoping that you, dear reader, might try them out and let me know 'how they pray' with you. Details further down on how to help and feed back.

I was concerned to do a handful of things as I put these together. One was to keep the services recognisably in the compline tradition. This I have done by using certain common texts: the Nunc Dimittis (ie. the Song of Simeon drawn from Luke 2), Te Lucis ante Terminum (the song 'Before the Ending of the Day'), and some collects and responsories.

One of the other things was to produce new materials which would be resonant and push the language boundaries a little and hopefully have some poetic qualities at some points. You'll have to judge whether I have succeeded.

Another thing was to avoid reproducing copyrighted material where it was not, in effect, creative commons (as the traditional texts I've used are). This has meant that some things I have reworked and in some cases quite extensively.

I've also tried to build in times when various kinds of reflection on the day can take place; first looking back and identifying with thanks the good things and any recognition of God's presence. A little later on the chance to bring our concerns before God and later still noting what may need forgiving of us and by us. Some of this may correspond somewhat to the Examen.

What I'm hoping is that you, dear reader, would be willing to copy and paste and print out these services and to use them for a month or two. I'm not suggesting any particular way of doing this except -obviously- that they be used in the evening at some point before going to bed or going to sleep. There are five orders of service. You could either use them one each day in turn or you could take one order per week or every few days, depending on your own routines. The 'normal' conventions apply, typographically speaking: bold type for things that are said together, italics for instructions.

When you think you've had enough exposure to one or more of them, please go to the survey to feed back. Click here to take survey
I'm hoping to be able to look at the responses by the end of September 2010; your co-operation is appreciated.

Lord's Prayer Compline: (a)

Your steadfast love, O God, extends to the heavens,
your faithfulness to the clouds
All your works shall give thanks to you,
and all your faithful shall bless you.

Time to reflect on what we have seen of God in the past day.

Other prayers for the church, the world and society may be added here.

Gracious God, as we sleep may your kingdom grow and our prayers be like fruitful seed through Christ Jesus. Amen.

We lie down and sleep;
We wake again, for the Lord sustains us.

O God, you faithfully sustain our world and our lives in gracious providence: nourish us and flourish us, inspire us and work in us. Keep us mindful of the toil of others and the work of nature on which we depend for our welfare and the common good. Amen.

Time may be taken to reflect on the everyday blessings and providence of the day, ending with:

God our provider, may all these things continue to be added to us
Give us always the bread of the morrow and the bread of Life.

Search me, O God, and know my heart; test me and know my restless thoughts.
Look well whether there be any wickedness in me.

Pause to recognise wrongness in our lives today; both what we've caused and what we need to forgive.

Holy God,
holy and strong,
holy and immortal:
have mercy on us.

Let us attend: God breathes forgiveness on us.

a moment to recollect our forgiveness and to release it to others...

From our wrong and wronging we walk.
lead us in the way that is everlasting.

This song may be sung.

Time to reflect on what we have seen of God in the past day.

Now, Lord, you let your servant go in peace:
your word has been fulfilled.
My own eyes have seen the salvation
which you have prepared in the sight of every people;
A light to reveal you to the nations
and the glory of your people Israel.

Hallowed be the Father, through the Son, in the Holy Spirit: as in the beginning, so now and for ever. Amen.

Seeing the light and glory of the salvation prepared, let us dare to dream that God's will be done.
Bless the poor in spirit;
your will be done,
On earth as in heaven.
Bless and comfort those who mourn;
your will be done,
On earth as in heaven.
Bless the meek that they inherit the earth.
your will be done,
On earth as in heaven.
Bless and fulfill those who hunger and thirst for righteousness;
your will be done,
On earth as in heaven.
Bless the merciful to receive mercy;
your will be done,
On earth as in heaven.
Bless the pure in heart to see you, O God;
your will be done,
On earth as in heaven.
Bless the peacemakers;
your will be done,
On earth as in heaven.
Bless those who are persecuted for righteousness' sake;
your will be done,
On earth as in heaven.

further prayers for the world and church may be voiced or added silently.

O God, you faithfully sustain our world and our lives in gracious providence: nourish us and flourish us, inspire us and work in us. Keep us mindful of the toil of others and the work of nature on which we depend for our welfare and the common good. Amen.

Keep us as the apple of your eye
Hide us in the shelter of your wings.

Let us recognize where we have laboured and longed for dreams not sent by God.

Pause to recognise wrongness in our lives today; both what we've caused and what we need to forgive.

Show us your mercy, O Lord;
And grant us your salvation.
Make our hearts clean, O God;
and renew a right spirit within us.

Let us attend: God breathes forgiveness on us.

a moment to recollect our forgiveness and to release it to others...

Be sober, be vigilant, because your adversary the devil is prowling round like a roaring lion, seeking for someone to devour. Resist him, strong in the faith.

This song may be sung.

Before the ending of the day,
Creator of the world, we pray
That you, with steadfast love, would keep
Your watch around us while we sleep.

From evil dreams defend our sight,
From fears and terrors of the night;
Tread underfoot our deadly foe
That we no sinful thought may know.

O Father, that we ask be done
Through Jesus Christ, your only Son;
And Holy Spirit, by whose breath
Our souls are raised to life from death.

Lighten our darkness, Lord, we pray, and in your great mercy defend us from all perils and dangers of this night; for the love of your only Son, our Saviour Jesus Christ. Amen.

Lord's Prayer Compline (c)

Maker of all, you invite us into your sabbath;
Hallowed be your name
In Christ you fulfill all things
Hallowed be your name
Your Spirit brings us peace,
Hallowed be your name

Time to reflect on what we have seen of God in the past day.

Now, Lord, you let your servant go in peace:
your word has been fulfilled.
My own eyes have seen the salvation
which you have prepared in the sight of every people;
A light to reveal you to the nations
and the glory of your people Israel.

O God, make speed to save us.
O Lord, make haste to help us.
Hold Your people, God, enfolded in Your embrace.
Hide them in the shadow Your wings.
Be their light in darkness.
Be their hope in distress.
Be their calm in anxiety.
Be strength in their weakness.
Be their comfort in pain.
Be their song in the night.

further prayers for the world and church may be voiced or added silently.

Show the wonder of Your great love,
Save by Your right hand those who take refuge in You from their foes. Amen

We lie down and sleep;
For you alone Lord give us rest in safety.
Save us, O Lord, while waking,
and guard us while sleeping,
that awake we may watch with Christ
and asleep may rest in peace.

In restlessness we have strayed from God; let''s call to mind what needs to be forgiven of us and by us.

Pause to recognise wrongness in our lives today; both what we've caused and what we need to forgive.

Forgive our misguided or willful effort
Take from us the offences we carry
Secure our hearts in your grace
Ease our anxious striving
Give us rest from our misdoings;
And grant that we wake to right action

Let us attend: God stills our restlessness and takes our burdens as Jesus assures us: 'I will give you rest'.
Thanks be to God. Amen.

Be watchful, be vigilant, for your adversary the Devil, prowls about like a roaring lion. Resist him firm in your faith.

Before the ending of the day,
Creator of the world, we pray
That you, with steadfast love, would keep
Your watch around us while we sleep.

From evil dreams defend our sight,
From fears and terrors of the night;
Tread underfoot our deadly foe
That we no sinful thought may know.

O Father, that we ask be done
Through Jesus Christ, your only Son;
And Holy Spirit, by whose breath
Our souls are raised to life from death.

Save us, O Lord, while waking, and guard us while sleeping, that awake we may watch with Christ and asleep may rest in peace.

Keep us Lord as the apple of your eye
Hide us in the shelter of your wings.

Lord's Prayer Compline (d)

God, you created rhythms of night and day
And you saw that it was good
You formed the world with seasons of fullness and fallow
And you saw that it was good
You fashioned the world with cycles of work and rest
And you saw that it was good
You made us for night and day.
And you saw that it was good

We reflect on what we have seen of God's goodness during the past day.

Now, Lord, you let your servant go in peace:
your word has been fulfilled.
My own eyes have seen the salvation
which you have prepared in the sight of every people;
A light to reveal you to the nations
and the glory of your people Israel.

Hallowed be the Father, through the Son, in the Holy Spirit: as in the beginning, so now and for ever. Amen.

O God, arise to scatter all ill-will
And put to flight all spiteful powers
Confound and confuse the forces of violence, all unjust workings and all unright visions
Work into life justice, joy and peace for all
Let the rhythms of life be honoured and nurtured,
May the whole earth live in the heartbeat of your care
Give hope to those wearied by injustice
And rest to those vicitmised by tyranny
Let the voice of Wisdom be heard in all the earth
and the Gospel not return to you empty

Other prayers for the church, the world and society may be added here.

Faithful One, sustain our world in your providence:
nourish our lives in rhythms of grace,
flourish us in season
and rest us without,
inspire us and form us:
Uphold us in your purpose.
Keep us mindful of the toil of others and reverential of the work of nature
for they support our common good.

For everything there is a season and a time for every matter under heaven.
Yet we have countered the rhythms of God's making and missed the heartbeat of God's grace. Together, let us repent.

Pause to recognise wrongness in our lives today; both what we've caused and what we need to forgive.

Timely and timeless God, our times are in your hands: forgive us our forethought wrongs, blot out our misconceived responses and overrule our misspent efforts. Amen.
We likewise set aside offences, remove ourselves from grudges and seek peace and integrity. Amen.
So, forgiven and forgiving, freed and freeing, graced and merciful we embrace reconciliation. Amen.

Let us attend to the Good News of forgiveness:
The Lord is compassionate and gracious, slow to anger, abounding in love. Amen.

Before the ending of the day,
O Holder of our times, we pray
that by our sleep and by our rest
our souls and bodies be refreshed.

May we put aside from thought
any cares the day has brought,
and find repose in your strong calm
trusting that we're safe from harm.

O Father, that we ask be done
Through Jesus Christ, your only Son;
And Holy Spirit, by whose breath
Our souls are raised to life from death.

There is a time for every purpose under heaven
May we know the our times aright and live in their goodness
We will lie down and take our rest,
for you, God, make us dwell in safety.

Lighten our darkness, Lord, we pray, and in your great mercy defend us from all perils and dangers of this night; for the love of your only Son, our Saviour Jesus Christ. Amen.

Lord's Prayer Compline (e)

You call us , O God, into your light
In your light, we see light.
We are invited into Christ's rest
For God gives to his beloved rest.
The One on whom the Spirit rests
breathes upon us the Spirit of peace.

Time to reflect on what we have seen of God in the past day.

Now, Lord, you let your servant go in peace:
your word has been fulfilled.
My own eyes have seen the salvation
which you have prepared in the sight of every people;
A light to reveal you to the nations
and the glory of your people Israel.

Hallowed be the Father, through the Son, in the Holy Spirit: as in the beginning, so now and for ever. Amen.

O God, make speed to save us.
O Lord, make haste to help us.
O God; refashion our ways to carry your will.
open out your salvation among all peoples.

Renew your people in Life and Christliness:
and awaken us to the joy in your service.

Form and redeem the decisions and deeds of the nations, corporations and agencies of this world
that justice and peace may prevail and the wholeness of the earth be strengthened.

Let the needy not be held at the margins:
Nor the the poor remain excluded.

further prayers for the world and church may be voiced or added silently.

O God, you faithfully sustain our world and our lives in gracious providence: nourish us and flourish us, inspire us and work in us. Keep us mindful of the toil of others and the work of nature on which we depend for our welfare and the common good. Amen.

O Lord, you have searched me and known me. You search out my path and my lying down and are acquainted with all my ways.

Pause to recognise wrongness in our lives today; both what we've caused and what we need to forgive.

Gracious God,
Gracious and compassionate,
Gracious, slow to anger and abounding in love:
have mercy on us.
Pass over our frailty and wrong.
Love us into abundant life.

Let us attend: God whispers forgiveness to us.

a moment to acknowledge our forgiveness and to release it to others...

O God, we are your workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works which you have prepared beforehand to be our way of life.

Before the ending of the day,
Creator of the world, we pray
That you, with steadfast love, would keep
Your watch around us while we sleep.

From evil dreams defend our sight,
From fears and terrors of the night;
Tread underfoot our deadly foe
That we no sinful thought may know.

O Father, that we ask be done
Through Jesus Christ, your only Son;
And Holy Spirit, by whose breath
Our souls are raised to life from death.

Save us, O Lord, while waking, and guard us while sleeping, that awake we may watch with Christ and asleep may rest in peace.

Keep us Lord as the apple of your eye
Hide us in the shelter of your wings.

Daily bread and receiving our being from the other

2010-08-02T14:46:00.001+01:00

It's been a little while since I had an entry for this blog, but I saw this in the last Church Times and so went in search of the speech. There is some really intriguing and helpful comment on the theme of the conference 'Give us today our daily bread': "It is a prayer to be reminded of our need: let us never forget, we pray, that we have to be fed, and that we cannot generate for ourselves all we need to live and flourish. And at the same time, it is a prayer that we shall not be ashamed of our mortality, our physical and vulnerable being. We start from need – where else can we start? But that is a way into understanding how and why we matter, why we are valuable. The prayer poses a critical question to anyone who imagines that they can begin from a position of self-sufficiency;"
I think that ih is very important to notice that the prayer, at this point, is a tacit rebuke to our self-sufficiency. This can often show up when we pray this part of the prayer mindfully, so to say: it can, for westerners with a regular income, feel a bit odd to ask God for something that we have just bought or can just pop out to buy shortly. It is at this point that we need to recognise a deeper meaning such as +Rowan alerts us to. The point is that our ability to earn is not our own, really. The point is also that the bread (or whatever else it may be) is only there to be bought because we are heirs to generations of development of systems of commercial supply and that development is itself resting on what is finally 'other-sufficiency'. Our supply rests with others -whether human others or ecological others (okay, both are ecological others) ultimately. It may be hidden from our immediate apprehension, but we do rely on others; we are indeed not self-sufficient.

And so this inter-relatedness, and interdependence means that "we should ... pray to be kept awake to what we owe to the neighbour in terms of gift; their humanity depends on ours as ours does on theirs. "
This reminds us of the interrelatedness of the different parts of the prayer: the thankfulness for our neighbours and the part they play, knowingly or otherwise, in provisioning us and in giving us some of our humanity and dignity; recognition of the need to forgive and to be forgiven as part of retaining and maintaining the bonds of provision and dignity. Indeed: "The person who asks forgiveness is a person who has renounced the privilege of being right or safe; he has acknowledged that he is hungry for healing, for the bread of acceptance and restoration to relationship. But equally the person who forgives has renounced the safety of being locked into the position of the offended victim; he has decided to take the risk of creating afresh a relationship known to be dangerous, known to be capable of causing hurt. Both the giver and the receiver of forgiveness have moved out of the safety zone; they have begun to ask how to receive their humanity as a gift."
So it starts to become clear how forgiveness and daily bread hold together. They are not simply unrelated petitions, there is a logic and a flow to the prayer. " it may be that willingness to be forgiven is no less the mark of a humanity touched by God. It is a matter of being prepared to acknowledge that I cannot grow or flourish without restored relationship, even when this means admitting the ways I have tried to avoid it."
With that comment we see the parallel between accepting our physical vulnerability in the form of needing food and therefore the service of the people and world around us on the one hand and on the other hand the need to accept our spiritual and psychic vulnerability in the the relations around us and forming us; our daily bread implies also the affirmation of human relating to us and because of that it requires the exercise of forgiving and being forgiven or reforming and refreshing human relating in as far as it lies with us.
"When I am forgiven by the one I have injured, I both accept that I have damaged a relationship, and accept that change is possible. "
+Rowan goes on to affirm the relatedness of this petition to its context: "we can connect the prayer for daily bread directly to what goes before it as well as after it in the Lord's Prayer. We ask for the Kingdom to come and for God's purpose to be realised as it is in the liturgy of heaven, in the heavenly Temple, where our basic calling to love and praise is fulfilled. And in the light of that, we pray for today's and tomorrow's bread, for the signs among us of the future of justice and reconciliation, above all as this is shown in mutual forgiveness. "

I muse that this really does reinforce my point about the flow of liturgy in relation to forgiveness; the confession-first norm of so many liturgies needs to be questioned. Forgiving and being forgiven is a subset of the inbreaking Kin-dom of G-d, and it is implied by the deeper resonances of asking for daily bread. It is well to keep it in sequence thus.

The Archbishop of Canterbury - Archbishop of Canterbury's keynote address at Lutheran World Federation Assembly

Lord's Prayer Rosary

2009-12-29T21:15:00.001Z

I've been doing a bit of work to produce small prayer book offering a way to pray the Lord's prayer using a rosary -or is that a way to pray the rosary using the Lord's prayer? - either way an initial stage has been to consolidate and edit a series of posts on a former blog which offered reflections from my own experience of using a series of short Scriptures to 'prime' each of the five sections of the prayer. So if you'd like to have a go or at least have a look, then go here Lord's Prayer Rosary | zinepal.com: you can download an e-zine formated document of the posts which should contain full-enough instructions and readings with reflections for five 'rounds' of prayer.

I'd love to hear any constructive comments either here or at the Zinepal page. I'd suggest you have a go for a week or two for the best effect of the way of praying but if I've missed anything typo-wise or similar, do let me know sooner.

"There are different forms of rosary. This guide and set of reflections uses the 'normal' Dominican rosary consisting of fifty beads on the main loop separated by further single beads. ..."

How to pray with a rosary

2009-12-29T14:55:00.000Z

There are different forms of rosary. This guide and set of reflections uses the 'normal' Dominican rosary consisting of fifty beads on the main loop separated by further single beads. This gives a formation on the main loop of 10-1-10-1-10-1-10-1-10. In addition it has a short string coming off the main loop which has a further 5 beads in a 1-3-1 formation. There is normally a cross on the end of this short 'branch'. There is sometimes a medallion at the junction point between the loop and the branch parts of the rosary.

Using this configuration of rosary for praying the Lord's prayer works basically in the following way. Each bead is held while the corresponding prayer phrase is said or reflection takes place. So, the routine of prayer would begin with the cross at the end and move, bead by bead, up the branch string and then onto the main loop.

In brief, there is a phrase to reflect on corresponding to the cross; each of the beads beyond the cross and leading to the main loop is associated with each of the main clauses of the Lord's prayer (in the Lukan form). Then at the junction or medallion the first reflection is read followed by ten repetitions of
"Our Father in heaven hallowed be your name", once for each bead. The next bead is separated from the preceding decade and signals the second reflection which is followed by ten repetitions of "Your kingdom come, your will be done.". The third reflection follows and the decade of beads prompts ten repetitions of "Give us today our daily bread.". Then the fourth reflection is read, followed by "Forgive us our sins as we forgive those who sin against us" ten times, once for each bead on the decade. And finally the fifth reflection is read introducing the phrase "Lead us not into temptation but deliver us from evil" (or whichever version you are using) said once for each bead in the decade.

At that point one can either go around the loop again in a similar fashion but with the next set of reflections introducing each decade, or one can pray down the string towards the cross to finish. If that is the case then it is suggested that each of the five beads along the 'branch' string corresponds to 1. For the Kingdom, 2. the power, 3. and the glory 4. are yours 5. now and forever, amen. And that as the cross is held to close the biblical phrase is repeated: "[Jesus said=] I am with you always to the end of the age."

This way of praying using a rosary enables Christans who have questions about or objections to using the 'Hail Mary' to use a rosary. It also makes for a helpful way of meditating on scripture and turning it into a way of prayer that is rooted in Jesus' own commended prayer.

Fifth time around

2009-12-28T12:56:00.051Z

First lection, fifth round, on the junction point/medallion:

Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! By his great mercy he has given us a new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead,and into an inheritance that is imperishable, undefiled, and unfading, kept in heaven for you

This passage spans, by language and topic, the Hebrew and the Greek worlds. Our being children of God is from the action of God in Christ and it is a living hope. So we find ourselves hallowing God's name because of the resurrection and the fact that this interruption into history of the life and action of God guarantees for us life that has no expiry date. Our hope for life beyond the grave is not in some notion of 'natural' immortality, but of our re-creation according to God's all-knowing of us. Our experience would be to die and next to know an awakening in a God-soaked environment where entropy is no more.
Hallowed be the name of the everliving, eversharing God.

Second decade.

"Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything that I have commanded you."

We might respond to this passage by praying for mission in the sense of making disciples. This includes evangelism; so we may sometimes find we are led into praying for particular people to come to Christian faith. Sometimes it means that we could hold wider issues in mind and heart as we say the words "Your kingdom come ...", things like projects to understand the challenges of proclaiming Christ in western society, particular church planting initiatives, mission agencies and so on.

We could, also, pray this passage knowing that making disciples is not the same as making converts, so we may also end up praying about the way that churches help people grow and develop in their appreciation and application of Christ's teaching. This may include local church programmes, learning materials for children and adults, people involved in soul friendship, spiritual direction etc. and ministerial formation of various kinds.

Third decade: living bread.

I am the living bread that came down from heaven. Whoever eats of this bread will live forever; and the bread that I will give for the life of the world is my flesh.

A a lot of early commentators on the Lord's prayer among the church fathers, tended to link the petition with the Eucharist and this passage makes some sense of that link. In using this passage as part of praying 'give us today our daily bread', we might focus on the idea that Christ is the true and living bread and that he gives his life for the life of the world. So the prayer for daily bread is transformed by this passage into requesting eternal life and the food that lasts, sustaining eternal life within and around us. Christ is our Life, and day by day we ask for a renewal of Life within us. Actually this might be done by asking for the Holy Spirit, whose function it is, among other things, to form Christ within us and convey to us the benefits that Christ has won for us. So, praying for this daily bread involves asking for our spiritual needs to be met, particularly that we will have the grace and strength of the Spirit and keep our spiritual fervour.

We might think of the opposite of spiritual fervour to be something like a loss of spiritual appetite. However, spiritual fervour does not have to show up as buoyant, upbeat and loud. Sometimes our emotional resources don't run to that. But our emotional resources are not necessarily a guide to our spiritual health; the spiritually healthy person may be quiet and undemonstrative by nature and their style of spiritual fervour should not be looked down on; their depth of commitment and quiet perseverance even in hard circumstances is testimony to the work of the Spirit within them.

Fourth decade: God's forgiveness.
Usually to end the forgiving round there is this verse.

When he saw their faith, he said, "Friend, your sins are forgiven you."

We may want to consider using this in two ways. One is as an assurance that we are forgiven, so that the words "Forgive us our sins as we forgive ..." are given a background sense of assurance as they are said; a sense that the asked-for forgiveness is being granted.

The other way is to appropriate the words in relation to people that we may hold a grievance against; and so the words then foreground the phrase "... as we forgive those who sin against us". Sometimes with each bead a person is thought of along with the phrase 'your sins are forgiven. It is salutary to acknowledge that in many cases we would only be playing catch-up with God's own forgiveness, in any case. And if God either forgives as a present reality or at least stands ready to forgive, who are we to hold out?

And what of the corporate dimension? -The fact that it is 'us' and 'we' means that we need to be forming communities where forgiveness is practiced and encouraged. It also seems to me to imply that there are dimensions to forgiveness that may be corporate. This is a big and contested issue at the moment, but I think that the corporate language of the Lord's prayer not only encourages a solidarity of confession but perhaps the recognition that human groups as groups may need to be factored into our forgiving.

Fifth decade; common testing.
The verse to use here is a comforting verse in both the reassuring and the challenging sense of 'comfort'. It can reassure us that God is providentially guiding our life so that whatever times of test, challenge or temptation we may face, there will always be a way through. There lies the challenge too: we can't get away with claiming there is no alternative but to sin which can be the easier thing to want to say.

No testing has overtaken you that is not common to everyone. God is faithful, and he will not let you be tested beyond your strength, but with the testing he will also provide the way out so that you may be able to endure it.

First off, it's good to reflect on our solidarity with the rest of the human race: we are all prone to temptation and testing, and in fact it all derives from the same set of drives and concerns that we all share to varying degrees. We may not all be tempted to lust after David Beckham, but we have all experienced desire and that desire can be inappropriate to who we are or our situation. We may not suffer the trial of finding an unlocked car and finding it all to easy to drive off in it, but the possibility of passing up having something that is not rightfully ours when an apparently victim-free opportunity presents itself is far from foreign to most people, even if it is only the extra change we are given on the bus home.

Then we might want to think about what lies ahead recalling that God is faithful: there is nowhere we can go, no situation we can be in which is God-forsaken (much though it may feel like it, or much though we might want it to be, sometimes). God's resources to meet our hour of trial are always available whether it is strength or a way to sidestep. Sometimes our biggest trial is actually to be willing to look for God, God's strength or God's exit strategy. This is not to say it will not still be testing; clearly it is the case that the trial is severe, but we can take comfort that it is not, in principle, beyond us.

Fourth round of praying

2009-12-28T12:51:00.001Z

you, O Lord, are a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness.

As we contemplate these words in praying the paternoster rosary, there is a real banquet of things to reflect on. Too much really for one session. Each word or phrase is capable of long meditation. So we might generally just wait with the phrase in heart and mind for a little while until one part or another catches our inward eye or connects with something within us. Then we could just hold the name/word in mind while we say "Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name".

Sometimes the word is 'gracious', perhaps making common cause with a reflection from one of the earlier passages. Sometimes it could be 'steadfast love' reminding us -with wonder- how God not only loves us but that love is constant and committed (the Hebrew word 'khesed' has connotations of covenant loyalty) not shifting or fickle -reinforced by 'faithfulness'.

"Slow to anger", links up with Paul's characterising of love in 1 Cor.13.4-7; 'not easily angered'. God isn't looking for an excuse to zap us for infractions; God wants us to do well and to do good; God wants us to be the best we can. Anger is a response of love to the marring of what is beloved: see the reaction of a mother to a dearly loved child who narrowly avoids a road traffic incident. She is angry and relieved at the same time. Where's the anger from? -Loving the child and nearly losing her.

These names of God echo what Moses heard when the LORD proclaimed God's name in Exodus 34.6.
The Lord passed before him, and proclaimed, "The Lord, the Lord, a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness,
Hallowed be his name.

Next decade: the kingdom among us

[Once Jesus was asked by the Pharisees when the kingdom of God was coming, and he answered,] "The kingdom of God is not coming with things that can be observed; nor will they say, "Look, here it is!' or "There it is!' For, in fact, the kingdom of God is among you."

This quotation from the gospel is often better known as "... the kingdom of God is within you" and individualised as a result. It is a possible translation, but "among you" is better. Jesus is probably pointing to the fact that he is among them and has been showing, with signs, that the kingdom of God is breaking in on them in his ministry. So this passage picks up a thought about the centrality of Christ. What I tend to do with it in my own praying of the Lord's prayer in rosary style, is to take it to be a situation which is continued through the ministry of the church. The church is meant to be a body of people among whom God's agenda and action is demonstrated; The kingdom is among us by the Spirit. The ministry of Christ is supposed to be continued by the church.

So that's what we might pray for; the demonstration of God's will in and through the church; that the church and churches will show Christ in the way they act among themselves and in our action in the world; that we will be the good news.

Clearly sometimes this means we might pray for particular churches, sometimes groups of churches or denominations or the worldwide scene, eg Christian-Muslim relations or consumerism or aid.

As we read or hear the words of this passage, let them call out in each of us situations relating to the calling of the church to demonstrate Christlikeness and the will of God and hold them in our hearts as we pray, "Your kingdom come, your will be done on earth as in heaven."

Daily bread: the bread of heaven.

He who did not withhold his own Son, but gave him up for all of us, will he not with him also give us everything else?

This sentence might encourage us to think, when praying the daily bread round on the paternoster rosary, of how much there is in our lives that we do not own, earn or even deserve but which enriches us and keeps us well and sane and even brings us joy: the air we breathe, the view, sun and wind and rain, relationships with people who love us, and so on and so on. This is what is potentially triggered in our thoughts by the "everything else" of the passage.

The context is a reassurance of God's love and salvation. So probably we are meant mainly to be thinking here about calling, justification, sanctification and glorification. However, thinking about those things also means that we need to think about the provision God makes to enable us to continue in a life of growing sanctity, including the material things and including our share in the 'free' benefits of our island planet home.

Corporately we might pray that God will somehow work things to the good; that the free benefits will continue to sustain us and that the instruments of governance and commerce will work for the common good; that the life systems that give us our daily bread may continue to do so.

Forgiving others: the next decade.
The main gist of the passage can be found in the previous 'forgiveness' passage. However there are some considerations that this one brings that are worth reflecting on over and above the issue of forgiving others.

So when you are offering your gift at the altar, if you remember that your brother or sister has something against you, leave your gift there before the altar and go; first be reconciled to your brother or sister, and then come and offer your gift.

When we reflect on this passage as part of praying the Lord's prayer, I could focus not so much on the principle of forgiving others which is implicit in the previous passage as well as the this section of the Lord's prayer ["Forgive ... as we forgive ..."] as on the idea of reconciliation which is more active than simply attitudinal. It drives us to consider both an urgency about taking steps to be reconciled: don't put off to tomorrow what can be done today and the importance to God; it's something that ranks above specifically religous acts, as if God in Christ is saying, "don't make me an excuse for not doing right by your neighbour."

I am reminded of the story told about Festo Kivengere the former Anglican archbishop of Uganda, who it is said one day had an argument with his wife which led to him leaving for a church event in a state of some enmity with her. As he was leaving he sensed God's urging to be reconciled with her before he left, but protested that he would be late for the meeting. He then felt that God was saying in effect, "You go on then, I'll stay here with your wife." That stopped him in his tracks and he went back to her.

Sometimes it may not be possible or appropriate to act in total conformity with this plan, but the principles of urgency and not waiting for the other to act (note, it's if 'your brother or sister has something against you' not the other way round). You may need to wait for them to wake up as a phone call that wakes them in the wee small hours may be counterproductive of reconciliation. You may have to simply try to make it known that you are seeking reconciliation because at that point they do not wish to be reconciled (Paul in Romans wisely adds 'so far as it depends on you ...'). So might take this as a call to reflect on whether there is any unfinished reconciliation business and to plan how I am going to take it forward and even to ask God's help in carrying it forward. Sometimes that may mean making a phone call straight away. But it should not be vague, rather specific, measurable, attainable, realistic and time-defined. This is part of our prayer: to plan such things in the acknowledged presence of God. This is part of forgiving and being forgiven. God did not simply have forgiving dispositions towards us, but actively embodied and suffered loss in order to effect reconciliation with being who frankly often don't give a damn ... Now there's a thought.

Last decade this round: common testing.
This is a comforting verse in both the reassuring and the challenging sense of 'comfort'. It can reassure us that God is providentially guiding our life so that whatever times of test, challenge or temptation we may face, there will always be a way through. There lies the challenge too: we can't get away with claiming there is no alternative but to sin which can be the easier thing to want to say.

No testing has overtaken you that is not common to everyone. God is faithful, and he will not let you be tested beyond your strength, but with the testing he will also provide the way out so that you may be able to endure it.

Third time around

2009-12-28T12:45:00.001Z

As we return to the start of the cycle, we consider the first:

See what love the Father has given us, that we should be called children of God; and that is what we are.

When we reflect on this as part of the Hallowing part of the cycle, we might have in mind also the NIV's "See what love the Father has lavished on us..." reminding us of the gracious, free, exhuberance of the love of God. So sometimes , we might be praying 'Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name" with a rejoicing of heart because we're delighted that God loves freely and without stint and not because we deserve it but because that's what love and God are like. Sometimes we might even substitute other phrases for 'Our Father in heaven'; 'loving God' or 'gracious, giving Father' or 'Lover of my soul' etc.

Sometimes we might pray the words 'Our Father in heaven hallowed be your name' feeling awed and grateful that God really has become, by God's own design and action in Christ, our Father. This is not merely a pious fiction but somehow, in the deep structure of the way things are, a change has taken place in the way that we are related to the heart of all things, so that we are not peripheral flotsam on the western edge of a not-particularly noticible galaxy in an expanding universe, rather the Force that brought it all into being and maintains it in exstence (as it would seem to us, spacetime-bound as we are) notices us and claims us in love.

Decade two: praying justice.

"But woe to you Pharisees! For you tithe mint and rue and herbs of all kinds, and neglect justice and the love of God; it is these you ought to have practiced, without neglecting the others"

The reason for the inclusion of this passage was to provide a reflection on the nature of God's project on planet earth with humanity so that our praying can be an increasingly good fit with the spirit and nature of that project. The verse serves to remind us and warn us that justice and the love of God are foundational in the outworking of the Kingdom of God. The danger that the Pharisees whom Jesus criticised here fell into, was that they were making second-order matters in the law more significant than the most important things, in fact, the context shows that the criticism goes further; some were using these parts of Torah to sidestep the demands of justice and love of God.

When we pray this verse, let's, then, regard it as a call to keep the big picture in mind; to consider global discipleship as a world Christian. Doing so then often results in praying for those working on the aspects of Make Poverty Hisory (fair trade, debt cancellation, better aid). Sometimes we may also find ourselves musing over the way that local churches are being agents of justice and mercy in God's name, as we say "Your kingdom come, your will be done on earth as in heaven".

Decade three: not by bread alone ...

But he answered, "It is written, "One does not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God.' "

This actually links strongly to the final comment for the equivalent part in previous round. If our provision is linked to being in God's will, or at least striving to make God's ways the priority in our lives, then learning God's will is a priority too. In the sentence quoted, Jesus is resisting the temptation to grasp at provision (of bread, literally) that is not meant for him at that time and in that way. He does so by quoting '... not ... by bread alone...', indicating that God's revealed will is prior. So part of our provision, our daily bread, is encounter with God's will. That encounter is life-giving and will lead us or keep us on the path of God's provision.

I'm interested too, that in the context of this passage, we have an example of Christ refusing provision because although it was on offer and was needed, it was not going to be obtained by right livelihood (to quote Friederich Schumacher in Small is Beautiful, and recognising the usefulness of this Buddhist phrase to describe what I mean). This is an attitude that we in the consumerist west need to reflect on more fully, I think: capacity does not constitute a right to use.

So, aswe pray "Give us today our daily bread" we are often going to be praying for the provision of guidance and life-giving words from God to help us on our way, particularly in circumstances where there seems to be a snarl-up or the way forward seems unclear, whether for ourselves personally, as a family, or church-wise.

Decade four: the temptations of judging.
This is a challenge but a necessary one as it spotlights the attitudes for praying the second part of the forgiveness section of the prayer.

"Do not judge, so that you may not be judged. For with the judgment you make you will be judged, and the measure you give will be the measure you get. Why do you see the speck in your neighbor's eye, but do not notice the log in your own eye?

Sometimes it happens that as we reflect on the previous two cenfession-related passages, we may be reminded of ways in which we think ourselves to have been sinned against, and so we may have already begun to reflect and to pray actively about the kind of thing that this passage recalls us to. However, it is worth remembering that the faults we think we discern in others are often seen because we actually know them well from the inside. Or it can be that we are suffering from the 400 kilo gorilla thing: there it is in the corner of the room, taking up space and eating our fruit but we don't talk about it and even stop noticing it while we happily chunter on about the hamsters or goats that our neighbours seem to be keeping. If we approach the sins of others with an attitude of being aware of how easily we find ourselves either doing the same kind of things or the things that could lead to them or different things that nevertheless require that others are merciful and gracious to us, it can make forgiving others quite a lot easier. When we find ourselves criticising others perhaps we need to take it as a call to self examination. Likewise, when we find ourselves excusing our own actions, perhaps it is time to reflect on how much slack we cut others and whether we make similar allowances for others as we hope are made for us.

Decade five: the temptation to test God.
It may be a bit shocking at first in a set of readings designed, more or less, to help us to pray the line "save us from the time of trial", to come across and be asked to pray with this line:

Jesus answered him, "It is said, "Do not put the Lord your God to the test.' "

But a little reflection should help make things clear. The context of the verse is the tempations of Christ in the wilderness, Satan has just suggested that Jesus should throw himself from the temple because God will order the angels to catch him in accordance with the scriptures. This line is Jesus's reply. I take it to mean that God's promises for things like protection (or even provision) are not meant to be wrested from the context of a life being formed in God's way. This temptation is to arrogate to oneself the promises of God aside from the overall will of God. It is presumptuousness; presuming God will serve us.

It seems to me that a good example of the temptation today is prosperity teaching which essentially starts well -in God's promises of provision- but slides out of a resposible contextual trust into a fairly selfish and narrow view which seems to expect the world to run for 'me' and mistakes the contingency of living in a prosperous society for a universal spiritual template for wealth attraction. Similarly, to live irresponsibly using God's protection as a pretext seem presumptuous too: not to look before stepping into to road because 'God will protect us' is irresponsible and is putting God to the test. Trusting God to provide but not being prepared to be the agent of at least some of that provision is also not faith-full but rather ducking out of our responsibilities.

So here we might be praying about not being presumptuous and making sure I am doing my bit or playing my part in God's providence.

Save us from the time of trying God's patience and that of those who have to clear up after us ...

Second time round lections

2009-12-28T12:40:00.002Z

Back at the junction of the rosary, or at the medallion.

At that same hour Jesus rejoiced in the Holy Spirit and said, 'I thank you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because you have hidden these things from the wise and the intelligent and have revealed them to infants; yes, Father, for such was your gracious will.

It is worth noting one or more of the following from this verse. One thing is that Jesus rejoiced in the Holy Spirit. Another thing is the titles by which Jesus addresses God. Yet another thing is the grace of revelation. Any or all of these draw us into worship as we contemplate them. In the first case, the recognition that the same Spirit is at work in us ([not to the same degree in terms of our responsiveness, probably) and that the Spirit creates praise and worship within us. It is connected, too, to the thought that we name God 'Father' by the power of the Holy Spirit takeng from what is Christ's and giving it to us.

Jesus addresses God not only as Father but also as 'Lord of heaven and earth', which is a fairly traditional Hebrew way to address God in prayer and so links to the hallowing of the name in the Lord's prayer. It's a title that emphasises God's majesty, 'bigness', and authority. It could be linked to the "in heaven" bit of the Lord's prayer.

The rest of this verse deals with the fact that God reveals his ways not to those who tend to get all the insights and work at it but to those who have not even the means to be clever about spiritual things. This is important in reminding us that the kin-dom of God is open to all not just clever religious professionals or castes or ascetics. It's not about desert at all, otherwise -actually- we none of us stand a chance of knowing God as 'Father' in any really meaningful way; it's about God's will to reach out to everyone, not just or even principally to those thought best able to understand God's ways. Grace is about giving to us what we do not -cannot- earn. Thanks be to God for his indescribable gift.

Second decade: praying for enemies.
Having held that in mind as we prayed on each of the first decade of beads 'Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name", we come to the bead before the second decade.

"You have heard that it was said, "You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.' But I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you,

When we pray the next few 'Kingdom comes' with this passage in mind, we might generally taking it pretty much at face value. However there are a couple of ways that we could take 'enemy' and each affects how we might pray in a different way.

Sometimes we could take 'enemy' personally, that is to say recognising 'enemy' as referring to someone who has taken against us [as they say in Yorkshire], in which case we might pray with an image of them in mind as we say the phrase "Your kingdom come...", sometimes the prayer might turn to a kind of blessing of them, sometimes a cry that they might repent, sometimes that their hearts might be softened (to use a phrase from an Anglican litany). There are times when praying this phrase as a kingdom come prayer involves us in reckoning with the way that we may have taken against someone, in which case we may also be praying for them to know the kinds of riches that we hope God wants for me.

'Enemy' can also be nationally or corporately defined; our governments define enemies, our companies define competitors. So we must pray for terrorists, drug barons, political or commercial opponents; that God's will be done in them, remembering God loves them too and wills to bring them to repentance...

"Those who persecute us: now, we in the West don't (thanks be to God) suffer much persecution. But we in the church universal /catholic do. So sometimes we might remember Christians under pressure for their profession of faith as we pray "Your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as in heaven...."

Praying the third decade: your kingdom come.

Jesus said to them, "They need not go away; you give them something to eat."

This is taken from the story of the feeding of the five thousand. Here are the apostles confronted with human need on a pretty big scale, and no visible means to meet it (hence they want to send the crowd away to provide for themselves) and that's what Jesus says.

As I reflect on that sentence in preparation to pray "Give us today our daily bread", I usually find myself focussing on a couple of things either together or singly; you might consider doing the same. One thing is that there is an implicit offer to provide through them. In other words, the apostles are being told that they can meet this need because God wants it to be met through their cooperation. So one line of thought is that God will provide for us to do things that seem out of our means at the moment. I rather suspect that this way of thinking is what lies behind Paul's affirmation in 2 Corinthians 9 that God will provide for us to be generous.

This prompts some reflection on what we already have and how it is to be deployed. The assumption that what we have is for us exclusively is an assumption that we should be prepared to challenge, as with the lad who had the loaves and fishes. Another line of thought then, is that we might be the vehicles of provision for others, either in terms of offering what we already have or in anticipating gaining more to give away. In fact it may be that we will find our provision in meeting the needs of others. The ox is indeed not muzzled as it treads the threshing floor.

This prompts us to think also of the will of God. Knowing that provision will be there if the will of God is served may encourage us to pray also that we may know God's will, that we will live by discernment of God's guidance. But that is a matter for a later reflection on a following passage, but it is well to note the link.

Fourth decade: forgiving.
The next reading follows on from the previous, being the second bit of the passage, made famous by its use in weddings, on love.

[Love] does not rejoice in wrongdoing, but rejoices in the truth. It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.

As we pray this with the words "Forgive us our sins as we forgive those who sin against us", I could do so in way similar to the previous passage: holding our life in company with those words and noticing what emerges. I think they are challenging in that they make uncomfortable reflection in the face of how we relate to those who differ from us or oppose us. When we don't really like someone (take an easy case like a political leader) it is all too easy for us to experience schadenfreud (literally 'shame-joy'; a pleasure in the misfortune of others) if and when they do something wrong. However, we don't normally have this reaction when we love someone, when a loved-one 'falls' or fails, we experience disappointment, or embarrasment or shame arising from identification with them. From those core responses flow others like anger or sorrow. The delight in wrongdoing tells us that we we are not regarding that person with God's love and is a call to realign our attitudes with regard to that person. Rejoicing in the truth is also a test we can use. With those we love, we are delighted when they tell the truth. With those we oppose without love we are disappointed we don't have something on them or the chance to expose their duplicity. Love is about celebrating truth wherever it is found, even if it is uncongenial to us or our position on something.

The bearing, believing, hoping and enduring all things needs a little care. It could be read to mandate that an abused person continues to be abused, for example. These characteristics are not to be read as absolutes, but as examples of what love may do. In the case of someone who suffers chronic abuse (for example), there comes a time when it should be recognised that to allow the abuser to continue in sin without challenge is not love but complicity in evil. How to act then is a hard thing to give general rules about best dealt with using the aid of a wise help-mate and with much prayer. The point of what Paul says here is that in situations of ordinary human disagreement, grumpiness and frailty, love acts with patience and by going the second mile in order to allow or even encourage the best and most loving from the other: it seeks to be part of the solution rather than augmenting the problem.

Usually I have found that situations when I haven't been reacting as part of the solution or where my reactions demonstrate that I am regarding someone or some others with hostility have come to mind in contemplating these words. That has been what is in mind as I pray the words of forgiveness.

Fifth decade: the temptation of what we treasure.
This too might seem to be a verse not immediate in its relevance to the part of the Lord's prayer "Save us from the time of trial and deliver us from evil".

For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also

The basic way that we might use this sentence is to ask ourselves, "what do I treasure", and the answer becomes an invitation to recognise that it is at the points in our life where we most treasure things, people or principles that we may be in the greatest danger of putting the cart before the horse or outrightly making wrong decisions.

For example, if you treasure the good regard of people around you, you may be in danger of 'people pleasing', that is putting saving face or maintaining reputation before doing God's will. That's not to say that reputation is wrong: it could serve the gospel, for example. However, if desire to be thought well of is too prominent, it could stop you drawing back from an invitation to do something 'important' when you are really being called to serve your sick wife or to make a phone call to a friend.

First round lections

2009-12-28T12:35:00.001Z

First passage. On some rosaries this should be read or recalled at the junction point between the main round part of the rosary and the 'offshoot' piece that has the cross at the end. Some rosaries have a kind of medallion at this junction, in which case as you hold the medallion, read or recall the first passage:

"My soul magnifies the Lord, and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior, ... for the Mighty One has done great things for me, and holy is his name.

Now recall that this is about using these words in conjunction with praying the Lord's prayer on the Anglican prayer beads and reflections of my experience of doing that. So it isn't an in depth exegesis or anything, just a few notes on how it happens and feels.

Read and say these words quietly or in your head a few times and just for a while keep company with them. Sometimes a phrase will come forward in your awareness: keep that in mind as you say "Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name" on each of the small beads in the decade that follows. That phrase may then pick out other things as you say the words from the Lord's prayer; things from your life, your concerns, the news, whatever you may have been in touch with in some way that in some way resonates with the passage. It can be quite exhilerating sometimes to have the words and the images and the emotions all caught up into these moments of prayer and connection with God.

Sometimes you may reminded of some 'great thing' that you feel God has done for you, such as giving the family you have or the privilege of helping people to grow in relation to God, themselves or relationships. Your may bear that thing on your heart as you say the first part of the Lord's prayer on each of the following small beads. Sometimes you may just have a sense of the emotional resonance of the words and hold that in your heart as you repeat the words -offering it to God with those words.

You may find the coming together of the passage, the words from the Lord's prayer and the things from your own life very often very fruitful and satisfying.

Next decade. After the first ten beads ("decade") there is a further bead separated from those either side (either by a bigger space or being a larger size or sometimes both). This signals that it is time to change the phase of the prayer and so another passage is recalled relating to the 'your kingdom come' phase of the prayer.

And he answered them, "Go and tell John what you have seen and heard: the blind receive their sight, the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, the poor have good news brought to them. And blessed is anyone who takes no offense at me.

There are two or three ways that you might use this passage as you pray round the prayer-phrase beads/knots. One is to reflect on the actions of Christ as demonstrating the priorities of God; God's agenda, so to speak. Another is similar but different in focus: to let each of the kinds of action remind you of those for whom you are concerned and to bring them to God as you pray the phrase "Your kingdom come ...". And the third way is to focus on the last phrase "And blessed is anyone who takes no offense at me." to remind us that it is Christ who is at the heart of God's kingdom.

If you pray using the first way, then it tends to mean that you're praying more globally for things like trade justice, aid, healthcare, social justice and so forth. This contrasts with a more local and personal way of praying using the second approach. The third approach tends to engage us in holding in mind people and situations where Jesus's Christhood needs to be acknowledged.
The Kingdom of God is demonstrated in Christ, God's will is done in and through Christ, to whom all authority is given ...

The next decade bead is for 'daily bread'.

But strive first for the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well.

Now we come onto the decade relating to "Give us today our daily bread".
Praying this phrase with that sentence in mind, reminds us right at the beginning of this round of prayer that we pray for our daily bread (standing for the necessities of life) in the context of praying and indeed living towards God's will, in the context of a life being tuned to God's music and shaped by God's agenda. "All these things" are what it is legitimate for us to have in the pursuit of God's kingdom. It is not carte blanche for getting whatever items on the western consumerist shopping list handed to us by the advertisers. In that sense God does NOT want us rich: God wants us faithful with enough to live, to serve, to be thankful and joyful and to be generous. It is hard to justify lifestyles that would cost 3 or more planet earths were everyone to aspire to them as being God's will and covered by this prayer.

So let's reflect on what we most need to continue our ministries (including the ministry of almsgiving) and think of those before God as we pray the words. Let's try to be alert to the possibility that our imagination for how those things might be provided may be limited and that God may have ways to provide that as yet we are not aware of. So while we may pray for work to provide an income, it may be that for the time being, God provides by other means. On the other hand we don't, either, have the right to presume that, because God has provided one particular way in the past, we have the right to expect it will ever be that way.

Forgiving ...
With this passage we begin to pray "Forgive us our sins as we forgive those who sin against us". It can be interesting how the two parts of this passage of the prayer interlock, especially when we realise how little of our corporate liturgical prayer acknowleges explicitly the issue of forgiving others. So it may be that this passage and the following may remind us of things directly in our own relating to other people, or sometimes it reminds us of how we may have been treated (or not) by others. In the case of being reminded how we may have been treated, we could take it that if something in someone else's behaviour raises our indignation, thenweI should be extra aware of the possibility that Iwe ourselves are guilty of it and that the subconscious recognition and repudiation produces a desire to push it away. So the behaviour of others becomes the lightening rod for my own inner conflict and guilt. A later passage in this round of readings asks us to look at that explicitly. Anyway to the actual passage.

Love is patient; love is kind; love is not envious or boastful or arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful;

It's interesting to use this characterization of love as something to measure ourselves by. God is love and so, as people aspiring to imitate Christ, we need to measure ourselves by God's love. In a way each of these characterisations of love would be sufficient to reflect on, and it may be a strategy for regular prayer to visit one or two each time and so over time to cover them all.

What we could do is to see which of the characteristics draws us and to explore why; 'what am I being reminded of in my life?' and that becomes the matter that we hold in mind as we pray "Forgive us ....".

One other thing we could reflect on as we consider these marks of love is that they are not prescriptive, that is to say that they are not necessarily invariable guides to action. For example, "Love does not insist on its own way" can be interpreted in such a way as to mean that we always give way to another person's opinion or ideas and never put forward our own. What I think we should take from it is that if we act lovingly we will not want the other person to be dominated by us. However, we should note that there may be times when acting lovingly, that is in the best interests of the other person[s] and for their welfare, love may require us to be tough with them, and insist on 'our' way because it is important that their way is challenged or not followed through. We could think of when to allow a child their own way with regard to bedtimes or sweet consumption would be not an act of love but of sentimental weakness, for example.

Then on to the final decade of the round which reflects "Save us from the time of trial and deliver us from evil" (or whichever version you prefer). The first passage to use with this decade is this:

Come to me, all you that are weary and are carrying heavy burdens, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me; for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light."

I suspect that at first that passage may look a bit tangential to the matter at hand, to say the least, but bear with it.

The yoke would have been readily understood by many first hearers and readers as relating to the rabbinic characterising of taking up with a Rabbi as his disciple to learn the Law from him. This was taking up the yoke of the Law to learn from it. So Jesus is putting himself in place of the Torah (Law of Moses) as humankind's guidance. It is probable that the heavy burdens were the kinds of things that Jesus criticises in other places; in a word the legalism that imposes burdens but lifts not a finger to help.

One way to pray this is to think about the temptation to do things by rote and rule rather than living relationship to God and neighbour. The rules may be religious or they may be some other kind of rule but if they come before the demands of justice and mercy, Christ had hard words for that. Rules are good servants but bad masters. God, not the rules is supposed to be the ruler (pun intended).

The other way that for me this can inform our praying, is in reminding us that Christ's leading is gentle and not burdensome. Sometimes, in a time of trial, we are tempted to think that God's will is too hard. With these words is an implicit promise that God will support us as we attempt his way; we are not on our own.

Another angle is to focus on firding rest: in our society lack of proper sabbath in our lives leads us into unnecessary temptation and trial. Our frenetic chasing after more, sometimes artfully disguised as serving our nearest and dearest (when in fact we are colluding in their discipleship to hurrydom), deprives us of God's commanded gift: rest. In Christ we rest from the labour of trying to earn heaven. God has created us to function best with regular rest, we ignore thatt at our peril because make ourselves vulnerable to trials. When we are tired, we are less able to muster our intelligence or energy to spot and resist wrong. Tiredness may often be the enemy of wisdom.

Starting the prayer time

2009-12-28T12:27:00.001Z

Hold the cross and pray these words.

"Lord, to whom can we go? You have the words of eternal life. We have come to believe and know that you are the Holy One of God." (John 6.68)

Threshold bead (opening). Jesus ... said to them,

"When you pray, say: Father, hallowed be your name. Your kingdom come. Give us each day our daily bread. And forgive us our sins, for we ourselves forgive everyone indebted to us. And do not bring us to the time of trial." Luke 11.1-4

These first bits are a kind of scene-setting. The words that are associated with the cross remind me that we pray like this because, at the root of it all, Jesus teaches us and Jesus invites us to share his relationship with his heavenly Father. It is also a declaration of faith; we go to Christ because he can connect us to God. We fly to him to lead us The threshold bead uses the Lukan version of the Lord's prayer. This is partly because it is the less familiar, less used version and so it has the potential to waken us up to the prayer rather than being a rote recitation. It also reminds us of the structure of what we are about to undertake in this version of the rosary. Because it is an unfamiliar version it is easy to see what it has in common with the well-known, well-used version, which is mainly the structure. The Lukan version is simpler without the 'semantic rhymes' and expansion phrases of the Matthean. So it makes more visible the main outline of what we are about to do. It can be like a map of what we are about to explore.

Reflections on using a rosary to pray the Lord's prayer

2009-12-28T12:20:00.001Z

In a blog consolidation exercise I transferred posts wholesale to Nouslife. But some of them really ought to come here. So I'm having to do it 'by hand' so to say.

I have been praying the Lord's prayer using the Anglican prayer beads for a little while and have been finding it very fruitful. It has occured to me that it might be helpful to me to jot down some of my reflections on praying in this way and also arising from the specifics of using, as I have been doing, what I have called the 'discipleship cycle' of readings. So watch out over the next couple of months or so as I offer short reflections on this way of praying the Lord's prayer.

I think I may have a go at commenting on five passages each cycle rather than four so that the comments might be useful to readers who are having a go on a dominican rosary with five reflection points rather than the four of the Anglican rosary. So there will be a blog post for each time round on a dominican pattern: first decade reflecting on a passage relating to 'hallowed be your name'; second relating to 'your kingdm come'; third to daily bread; fourth to forgiving and fifth to delivery from evil.

I guess one of the problems that some people with an evangelical background have to this way of praying is the repetition of prayer phrases. It smacks of flouting Jesus's injunction against piling up empty phrases "When you are praying, do not heap up empty phrases as the Gentiles do; for they think that they will be heard because of their many words. Do not be like them, for your Father knows what you need before you ask him." .

I think some care is needed with what Jesus is on about here, though. He has in view, it seems, practices where a deity -whichever god gentiles were conceiving of- is assailed by a torrent of eloquence, promises, bargaining and so on designed to persuade that god[dess] to grant the will of the petitioner. In the passage in Matthew 6 we see Jesus is first of all denying the implicit view of deity in that practice in favour of one who is caring and attentive to our needs, thus undercutting all the attention-getting practices and cajoling. What Jesus is actually discouraging here is the idea that we say stuff to get Godde's attention or to persuade God to act according to our desires and will.

These aims are not in view when using repeating phrases in rosary and meditative prayer. Usually the point of repeating phrases in meditative contexts is to occupy the linguistically related parts of the mind-brain in order to allow and encourage other parts of the mind to work more fully and be engaged in relating to and with God and the things of God.

Anyway, Jesus's words here do not disallow repeating phrases in meditation. Unless of course the meditator is hoping that the mere repetition will force God to grant a meditative highlight or some kind of reward for the effort. That's not how it works.

As I have been using the 'Lord's prayer rosary' I have noticed that the repeated phrases that I use on the littile beads interact with the verses that go with each intervening large bead. What this means is that as I have the ideas and/or words in mind from the large bead reflection, the words of the relevant section of the Lord's prayer tend often to illuminate or to point up meanings. Sometimes this helps to bring to mind situations that I need to bring to God. What seems to be happening in such cases is that the repeating of the phrase is anchoring the reflection and helping it to fruitfully interact with my life and concerns. It's interesting because it seems to mean that there are three things going on at once (who says men can't multitask?) rather than what is aimed for in a lot of meditation where learning to focus on one thing is the point. In this, in my experience, the repeat phrases don't just become occupying background noise but the kind of background noise that actually sets the mood and supports the foregrounded activity. The best kind of ambient music.

Need, greed and the global food crisis | Ekklesia

2009-12-01T06:26:00.001Z

Ekklesia's website has this brief but helpful comment on the global food crisis: Need, greed and the global food crisis | Ekklesia: Given my interest in a spirituality of the Lord's prayer, this doubly got my attention. The opening sentence goes to the heart of the issue that I flag up in the "Praying the Pattern" book (see side bar on this blog). "'The Lord's Prayer highlights that having enough to eat is, and has always been, central to the Christian idea of a world shaped by justice and mercy,' observes Sushant Agrawal, Director of the Church's Auxiliary for Social Action (CASA) in India. 'If God's will was done, no one would go hungry.'" In fact, I would say that we should have a theology of work that is developed in relation to a global perspective on the daily bread petition in the Lord's prayer; if we don't, it is an inadequate theology of work. So the final sentence of this article is also worth pondering: "Nearly 500 years ago, Martin Luther explained "When you ask for your ‘daily bread', you ask for everything that is necessary in order to have and enjoy daily bread and on the contrary, [protection] against everything that interferes with enjoying it". Churches continue to take action to change systems that hinder people from having the food they need to survive."
I hadn't come across the Luther quote before, but I think it is vitally important and links our praying with our acting for justice (such that, in my view, the latter becomes a form of prayer).
Need, greed and the global food crisis | Ekklesia

Remembering as we encounter people

2009-09-05T14:48:00.001+01:00

Written for the Greenbelt festival, but the kind of thing I try to remind myself when Jean-Paul Sartre's phrase is starting to seem all to applicable "Hell is other people". I would suggest we carry it around as a template for 'time of trial' praying. Htt maggi dawn: a festival prayer: "Help us remember that the idiot who cut us up in traffic
is a single Mother who has worked nine hours that day
and is rushing to Greenbelt to cook a meal and settle the kids down so they can have a good first day at the festival
and spend a few precious moments with her friends
who have saved hard to get to Greenbelt.
Help us to remember that the pierced, tattooed, disinterested young man
who can’t handle his change correctly is a worried YMCA Hostel resident who is behind in his rent and cannot afford the cheapest hotdog on site.
At the same time balancing his apprehension over his fear
of not getting on well with the group he came with.

Remind us Lord, that the scary looking young woman
rolling her eyes and cannot stop moving her body,
is a recovering slave to addictions
that we can only imagine in our worst nightmares.

Remind us that the scars of the self harming woman,
scarred for life,
is just like me with my scars
that hinder and equip at the same time.
And remember that we, maybe,
can just hide ours better.

Help us to remember that the old couple
walking annoyingly slow through the festival site
and blocking our process
are savouring this moment,
knowing that, based on the biopsy report she got back last week,
this will be the last year that they will be at Greenbelt together.

Creator God, remind us each day that, of all the gifts you give us,
the greatest gift is love.
That it is not enough to share that love with those we hold dear.
But those for who,
on first impressions,
make us shudder, or sigh or grunt with irritability.

Open our soul and press your finger tip right on that part,
the part to raise your love to the surface.
So it touches the practical.
The proactive.
The love department

© Pip Wilson"

Prayer on eco-justice and ecological debt

2009-09-05T14:00:00.001+01:00

Statement on eco-justice and ecological debt:
"Creator and creating God,
in the exploitation of your world we recognise our human-centeredness and greed.

We confess our sin before you.
We acknowledge our need for each other as part of your global family from North and South
And so we pray, “Forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors”.

Accept our confession O God and offer us your forgiveness
empowering us to transform our lives as individuals, churches and nations,
proclaiming your love for the earth and its people,
enacting the principle of ‘Jubilee’ in our relationships with one another and the earth,
repaying our ecological debts in ways in ways which affirm your justice and shalom."

Good Work

2009-09-05T12:30:00.001+01:00

Htt Skye Jethani for posting up a reflection on Martin Luther's take on work and vocation which centres around the petition for daily bread in the Lord's prayer. Good Work - SKYEBOX: "“When we pray the Lord’s Prayer, observed Luther, we ask God to give us this day our daily bread. And He does give us our daily bread. He does it by means of the farmer who planted and harvested the grain, the baker who made the flour into bread, the person who prepared our meal. We might today add the truck drivers who hauled the produce, the factory workers in the food processing plant, the warehouse men, the wholesale distributors, the stock boys, the lady at the checkout counter. Also playing their part are the bankers, futures investors, advertisers, lawyers, agricultural scientists, mechanical engineers, and every other player in the nation’s economic system. All of these were instrumental in enabling you to eat your morning bread."
It's credited to Gene Edward Veith God at Work: Your Christian Vocation in All of Life
It helps to to realise that the petition is inescapably plural: '... us ... our' and that the connection between this petition and the preceding about God's will being done is strong also: in carrying out normal day-to-day commerce and work, many people are doing God's will to help answer prayers for daily bread. And if we understand daily bread more broadly, we include more people in God's will being done...

A prayer ... - Brian McLaren

2009-09-03T09:53:00.001+01:00

Brian McLaren recently posted a meditation on Matthew 5:1-12: It seems to me that this prayerful meditation on the beatitudes is a good 'lead us not into temptation but deliver us from evil' prayer.

God, our Creator, thank you for the gift of Jesus. He walked among us embodying your creative and life-giving Word in his body, his life, his words, his deeds, his sufferings, his death, and his resurrection. When we see him loving the outcast, forgiving the sinner, confronting the hypocrite, and teaching the crowds a new way of life, we see your heart, your compassion, your mercy, your character. To know Jesus is to love him, and to love him is to know him, and to know and love him is to know and love you.

So help me, Lord, to be among your disciples who come to you to be taught.

Help me, Lord, to be among the poor in spirit, to see and know that your kingdom is my homeland even now ...

Help me, Lord, to be among those who mourn, to join you in your sadness for all that's wrong and broken in this world, and in joining you, to find true comfort.

Help me, Lord, to be among the meek, those who find strength in weakness and power in vulnerability, to never fear lack or want, because when I have your love, I have all the world.

Help me, Lord, to desire justice, rightness, goodness, fairness, cleanness, clearness, and integrity more than I hunger for food or thirst for water ... and so let me find the truest fulfillment and satisfaction.

Help me, Lord, to be among the merciful. Help me to be a true friend to those who are hated, misunderstood, rejected, excluded, disregarded ... just as you, God of Mercy, are. When others fail - when they fail me - help me show the same mercy you show to those who fail you ... including me.

Help me, Lord, to be among the pure in heart. May your pure light shine in my heart and dispel every shadow, every layer and fold that conceals or pretends. Since it is only the heart that sees you, remove from my heart everything that keeps me from seeing you.

Help me, Lord, to be among the makers of peace. Many build walls. Many sow fear and distrust. Many spread rumors. Many inflame conflict and profit from it. Help me to be even among them an agent and messenger of your peace and reconciliation, and so bear your family likeness, God of peace.

Help me, Lord, not to fear being among the persecuted, but rather, to rejoice in having the honor of standing for your restorative justice and rightness, so I will see that your kingdom is my homeland, even now.

Help me, Lord, to be among those who suffer wrong well and with grace. Help me not to resent it, not to fear it, not to seek to escape it. Instead, help me to find joy in it ... when others insult me, make my life more difficult, or falsely malign me because of you. Help me to see through the momentary, light trouble to the lasting and weighty reward, even now, for your kingdom comes by suffering rather than by making others suffer.

So help me, Lord, to be among your disciples who come to you to be taught. I am a limping, broken sinner and beginner, far from these realities, but this is where I want to go. In your mercy, lead me in this path. Amen.

Lead us not into temptation ...

2009-08-03T21:21:00.001+01:00

An interesting piece of research that seems to underline the importance of identifying our temptation points and praying into the future and doing so by co-operating with God by planning to avoid them as far as possible. The article reporting the research is here: Temptation More Powerful Than Individuals Realize And here's a salient summary sentence: "People are not good at anticipating the power of their urges, and those who are the most confident about their self-control are the most likely to give into temptation,' said Nordgren. 'The key is simply to avoid any situations where vices and other weaknesses thrive and, most importantly, for individuals to keep a humble view of their willpower."

Benedict XVI on God’s Name,

2009-03-10T18:45:00.001Z

I think it's a shame that Benedict Ratzinger kept uncritically to a certain trend of interpretation of the Lord's prayer whereby the first bit is interpreted as a petition rather than -in line with the Jewish heritage- as a doxalogical start to prayer; a Qaddish. However part of the meditation on it is worth taking on board:
"this plea - that he [God] himself take charge of the sanctification of his name, protect the wonderful mystery of his accessibility and constantly assert his true identity as opposed to our distortion of it - "
It reminds us both of God's own sovereignty and pre-eminence and also that in our act of turning to God in prayer the first task is a re-orientation of ourselves to God (in Christ). If I may borrow a term from Islam which is basing its practice, I reckon, on Christian and Jewish precedents, our qibla (direction of prayer) is restored and as we focus on the true God, we are implicitly, thereby, dethroning the idols we set up. However, if the idol of our heart is wearing the name and we believe is the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, then we need God to set us right. In our worship we need to cultivate an openness to God challenging our comfortable or at least familiar (sometimes they are not so comfortable) misapprehensions of God. Worship always carries the possiblity of transformation of the worshipper. Actually, that should be stated more strongly: it carries the actuality of some degree of transformation. Our naming of the name is about recognising the God who is and who, therefore, is always both apprehended by us because of gracious self-disclosure but also is always beyond our apprehension. We have to be aware that there can be a moment when the apprehension which was so life-giving to us because it was new and opened our inner eyes to God more fully, can become death-dealing because we come to rely on it to insulate us from God doing the same again with us. Yesterday's revelation can become today's idolatry as we try to contain God within God's own revelation. God is always bigger than revelation and Self-disclosure. When we forget that and act on our forgetting, we slip into idolatry.
Htt: Benedict XVI on God’s Name, Idolatry, and the Lord’s Prayer � Theology Forum

Jesus’ Model Prayer

2009-01-08T16:02:00.001Z

This is a nice exposition of praying the Lord's Prayer as a pattern prayer. As regular readers or readers of the book will know, one of my litmus tests for assessing how the prayer is handled and understood is how the 'hallowed be your name' clause is treated. This posting does well: Jesus’ Model Prayer � Yours!: "By saying ‘hallowed be your name’ in our prayer is for the sanctification of our heavenly Father, and as an expression of praise and love:"
The other thing I like about this is that there a a selection of scriptures for each phase of the prayer to aid reflection and prayer. Some of them are quite insightful, I think. Go and have a look, pray it even.

Summary

2008-04-11T15:30:00.002+01:00

Have a look at this posting BAPTIST GIRL: WHAT IS THE LORD'S PRAYER: THere's a very nice one paragraph summary that seems to get even the 'hallowed be' bit right. "the Lord’s prayer should be understood as an example, a pattern of how to pray. The Lord’s Prayer teaches us to pray. It gives us the “ingredients” that should go into prayer. Here is how it breaks down. “Our Father in heaven” is teaching us who to address our prayers to, the Father. “Hallowed be your name” is telling us to worship God, and to praise Him for who He is. The phrase “your kingdom come, your will be done on earth as it is in heaven” is a reminder to us that we are to pray for God’s plan in our lives and the world, not our own plan. We are to pray for God’s will to be done, not for our desires. We are encouraged to ask God for the things we need in “give us today our daily bread.” “Forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors” remind us to confess our sins to God and to turn from them – and then also to forgive others as God has forgiven us. The conclusion of the Lord’s prayer, “And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from the evil one” is a plea for help in achieving victory over sin and a request for protection from the attacks of the devil."

The only thing I would quibble with in any way, really, is the idea of ingredients that should go into prayer. Not because I don't think that's a good image because it is. Rather because it could be taken to mean that the order of the elements is immaterial. Now I'm not fundie about this: clearly there are times when we pray when it need not be Lord's prayer shaped. But as a regular and general rule it should be and the order is part of the psycho-spiritual dynamics of the thing: the fact that the order is repeated but not the exact words between Matthew and Luke seems to point to that.

Men Have A Harder Time Forgiving Than Women Do

2008-03-05T12:59:00.001Z

How interesting a piece of research is this? Men Have A Harder Time Forgiving Than Women Do:

"Men have a harder time forgiving than women do, according to Case Western Reserve University psychologist Julie Juola Exline. But that can change if men develop empathy toward an offender by seeing they may also be capable of similar actions. Then the gender gap closes, and men become less vengeful."

So much in that little bit: the place of empathy in forgiving, the implications for theological reflection on atonement and forgiveness (including on gender constructions and Deity), gender itself ... Not to mention that it seems to validate Jesus' approach about recalling our own sins and being forgiven as a help in forgiving (the parable of the unmerciful servant is a major example).
To explain a bit more

people of both genders are more forgiving when they see themselves as capable of committing a similar action to the offender's; it tends to make the offense seem smaller. Seeing capability also increases empathic understanding of the offense and causes people to feel more similar to the offenders. Each of these factors, in turn, predicts more forgiving attitudes.
"Offenses are easier to forgive to the extent that they seem small and understandable and when we see ourselves as similar or close to the offender,

It certainly seems to forground empathy and self-knowing humility as key building blocks to the ability to forgive. Wise indeed of the Lord's prayer to put forgiving and being forgiven together.

The Lord's prayer bodily sequence 01 - Comic Strip

2008-02-19T12:40:00.001Z

At last I've found a way to produce comic-strips on the web. The reason I've been looking is to have a go at producing just this sort of thing possibly for use in future publications.This is a sequence of pastures and gestures to pray the Lord's prayer. In the book, I used a set of postures that implicitly said that God is up and above us. I wanted to see if it is possible to get away from that kind of metaphor. I think that this sequence does that (provided you understand the last set of gestures on a par with cheering at a football match!).

The Lord's prayer bodily sequence 01 - Pixton™ - The User-Generated Comic Strip

A series on the Lord's Prayer

2008-02-16T13:11:00.001Z

This posting flags up a series of 6 meditations on the prayer which may appeal to and help some. I felt the length was about right and I enjoyed the links with other scriptures. The main downside is the not uncommon missing that the first clause is best understood as a variety of qaddish and so, performatively, as praise rather than petition for God's glory to be known.Praying the Lord’s Prayer � Chris’ Considerations

A really nice musical reflection

2008-02-15T11:28:00.001Z

It's a multilingual, a lovely soundscape and a great way to reflect on the Lord's prayer for a few minutes prayer break. And better yet; it's free. TheLordsPrayerClip.mp3 (audio/mpeg Object)

P's in a pod

2008-02-02T12:36:00.000Z

There are a number of intersting and helpful points in this blog post. I have a few minor quibbles but not enough to pass over it without mentioning the post overall. The folksy framewok is endearing:

it jumped out at me that this was like “Peas in a Pod!”
“Father, hallowed be your name, your kingdom come” - this is praise;
“Give us each our daily bread” - this is provision;
“Forgive us our sins, for we also forgive everyone who sins against us” - this is penitence;
“And lead us not into temptation” - this is protection! “P’s in a Pod!”

I was just surpirsed at the omission of 'petition' from the pod and the collapse of it into 'praise'. It's an interesting reversal as it stands of the medieval approach which saw hallowing as a form of petitionary prayer; here petitionary prayer is subsumed into praise. However, you may want to look more at the post itself to see that petition seems to end up in with providence in the commentary rather than with praise. Readers of the book will know that I see a definite 'flow' between hallowing, petition and providence and I think here we see an example of that flow.

There's also a helpful collection of Hebrew Bible names for God at the end.

Whose kingdom come?

2007-12-23T18:02:00.000Z

With charity advertising well-esconced on our tv's and in our newspapers, clearly they run the risk of falling into the celebrity paradigm

Some [charities] just aren't 'sexy'. And then there are those which are bound to raise moral outrage in some quarters whenever money finds its way to them. Bolton-based charity Befriending Refugees and Asylum Seekers (Brass) shies away from rattling tins on the streets of the Lancashire town, perhaps wary that not everyone might be sympathetic.

So perhaps it is a Christian duty to search out the less 'sexy' in order to make sure that there is a counter-balance to the modern version of those who shout loudest getting the attention [those who shout sexiest?]. It certainly should get us asking what should be our priorities for charitable giving. One of the reasons that I'm a little cautious about things like red-nose day, is that it seems to me that while they undoubtedly promote a lot of good, the habits of mind they are playing, actually reinforcing, are not those that would promote the kind of regular focus on the needs of the world that are really required in order to make a real difference. Giving as an occasional pass-time is good as far as it goes but in order to really change the world we need to find ways to encourage people to engage with the real problems, of which we are actually a part of creating in too many cases. The irony of events to fund projects in the two-thirds world with methods that are deeply rooted in the system that has gone a long way to creating the conditions that the charities are seeking to remedy ...

Anyway, the other point I wanted to make, on the back of this, was that I have been for a long time convicted that as Christians our praying is rather the same. We pray for the latest and neediest matter off the tele, or from the 'papers but what about the things that don't make it to the papers? Are our prayers and prayer priorities to be led, in effect, by the editorial biases of the BBC news or ITN news -or Rupert Murdoch's empire?

Now that's not to say we shouldn't pray for Maddy to be found, but it is to say that we might consider the other parents who's children have been abducted; not least the thousands in central Africa whose children have been both abducted and brutalised into slave armies, for example. We need to allow our prayerful imaginations to be led wider and deeper. We need to give space for God to really open up the hearts of compassion for the wider world beyond the 'human interest' instincts of news editors. Who will look for the God interest in the wider world of human interest, I wonder?
"Whom shall I send?"

When we pray "your Kingdom come, your will be done..." surely we can't just leave it to the journos to dictate the focus? We need to be more firmly rooted in a sense of God's priorities than that. Our news is increasingly dictated by a sense of what will sell. Praying for the kingdom is far too important to be left to second-guesses as to what an idealised general public would like to hear about, or would be suitably sentimentalised about to feel sympathy, indignation or moral superiority about. I would suggest that we need to set time and head-space aside to linger before God enough to let God 's priority for our part in praying in his kingdom to become evident to us and we need to then make that our priority.

It may be that, from time to time, God will use the news to call us to more sustained and focussed prayer. But until then, I would suggest we give some time to things from the news that grab us but dwell more fully in prayer for the important, less 'sexy' topics and projects that don't grab the headlines or their fifteen minutes of fame. Fame isn't really a good indicator of God's priorities. actually, it seems to me that most often it's the reverse; the most significant things are being achieved in [as the nativity stories remind us] out-of-the way backwoods among the terminally unsexy, most uncelebratiful and least likely to be truthfully conveyed in the sound-bite prefab storylines of popular journalism.
BBC NEWS | Magazine | Giving to a lost cause?:

Loving God, willing the good: blessing and hallowing the Name.

2007-12-21T11:18:00.000Z

My search feed directed me to this from Divine Intimacy, by Fr. Gabriel of St. Mary Magdalen, O.C.D.

The love which will lead us to God does not consist in sentiment; it is an act of th will. To love is to 'will the good'; to love God, is to 'will good to God.' The good which we can desire for God is that which Jesus Himself taught us to ask of our heavenly Father: 'Hallowed be Thy name; Thy will be done.' Since God is the infinite good upon which everything depends, the good that He desires and that by which He is pleased is none other than His own glory and the acomplishment of His holy will.

This goes some way to dealing with the issue about whether praising God is something that God would desire; it seems to us to be so fraught with narcissicism. I think I'd have to add that it needs to be understood in a Trinitarian framework, or it does seem more difficult. However, this quote does open up the possibility of seeing theologically how loving God begins to issue in praise.
Dominican Idaho: Because it never hurts to remember::

Mind/body wholism: holding on and dying

2007-12-11T18:45:00.000Z

It's not that hard, from my experience as a parish priest in funeral work, to find anecdotal evidence that people seem to hang on for certain things to happen or be said before they die, as if they couldn't "let go" until the conditions were right. Well, this fascinating article trailers this years Christmas lectures, the scientist giving them, Hugh Montgomery (a medic) says, "more work is needed on the notion of the will to live. 'But when you come - as I often do - across two patients who seem to be in a similar condition and have the same strengths and weaknesses, but one dies and one lives, I'm convinced there is a will to live and that it's important in deciding who survives'"
So how is this related to prayer? Well, I suspect that prayer also, collaterally so to speak, activates the same sort of psychological and biofeedback mechanisms as may be involved here in the 'Will to live'. So research on the effects of prayer certainly does have to deal with this in order to factor it out. It seems to me to be likely to be related to the placebo effect at that level.

On the other hand, given some of the examples in the article, the sense of God's permission to 'go home' may be important in releasing someone even via some kind of last rites. Save us from the time of trial, indeed: that we may not fall into the trap of lingering beyond our time or of giving up to soon. It may be that those last words of forgiveness and reconciliation could be granted by whatever mechanisms underlie the phenomenon (assuming it is real and not selective memory).
Death? It's just a state of mind | Health and wellbeing | Life and Health:

The tool which is the Lord's prayer

2007-12-10T20:02:00.000Z

A blogger going under the nom-de-plume 'Rev Sarah': "Reciting the words of the Lord’s Prayer verbatim isn’t the intent behind them. I don’t think Jesus ever meant for his disciples, or for those who followed, including us, to use these words as ‘the’ only way to pray. If it was, I don’t think that there would be two different versions of this prayer within the Bible, one in Matthew, which we use every Sunday, and the version in Luke which we heard this morning. Instead, Jesus gave them, and gave us, this prayer as a ‘tool’, a method for structuring our prayers to God."
The metaphor of a tool was arresting but apposite. She uses, rightly in my view, the Lukan version to disrupt our normal reading/hearing of the prayer with its starker wording. I was a bit surprised to see 'your kingdom come' taken together with 'hallowed be your name' but the focus on the latter as praise-words was welcome. However, I do think that we should see 'kingdom come' as praying 'into the world' for God's right to prevail ever more fully and link to the daily bread section in a way reminiscent of 'Seek first God's Kingdom and righteousness and all these things will be given you as well.'

The forgiveness section is linked, again helpfully, with -well read for yourself: "We have heard the Golden Rule all our lives: “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.” In all truthfulness, we want others to forgive us when we sin against them. Therefore, we should forgive them too."
Minister's Musings:

Teaching idea

2007-11-25T14:58:00.000Z

Seems to me that this is an adaptable as well as an adoptable idea for helping people, particularly young ones, in learning about praying the Lord's prayer

Divide group into two teams provide each team with posterboard strips each strip should contain one line of the prayer.
Present situations to the teams, they must determine which line applies, grab it and send one person with it to a designated spot. First team to get it right gets a point. After the game discuss the ways this prayer can guide all we do.
Situations
Our Father, who art in heaven, Hallowed be thy name.
*You’re eating lunch with friends and one of them uses God’s name in vain.
*You feel really great and shout out “Praise God!”
Thy kingdom come.
*A person who has broken the law, been hurtful to others suddenly accepts Jesus as his/her savior
*Praying for people or friends who don’t know God’s Love
Thy will be done on earth, as it is in heaven.
*Your family stops to help someone whose car is broken down
*A visitor comes to church, and you greet them with a smile and introduction
Give us this day our daily bread.
*Your family and friends get together every month to share a meal together.
*Your parents are out of work, and you’re worried about how they will pay the bills
And forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors.
*A kid on your soccer team pushes you down and doesn’t stop to see if you’re okay.
*You talk back to your parents, then apologize, and they forgive you
*Your best friend says something really mean about you
And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil
*Someone drops their wallet at the mall with lots of money in it.
*Your teacher leaves the answers to tomorrow’s test on her desk
For thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, for ever. Amen.
*The awesome power of a hurricane
*The beauty of a sunset

Brief but good

2007-11-21T21:31:00.000Z

Came across this which puts briefly a good understanding of the Lord's prayer and some nice ideas or reflections for developing our praying. I particularly commend these two bits: "hallowed be your name, PRAISE /ADORATION God You are... God, Thank You For... 10your kingdom come, PERSPECTIVE Have you been so concerned with God fixing your situation that you haven't taken any time to to allow God to show you His perspective? Pray that God will allow you to see what it is he wants you to see."
NMC SENIOR HIGH: Wednesday Night Message Recap:

The Prayer of Prayers

2007-10-28T14:37:00.000Z

Here's a nice little reflection on the 'deliver us from evil' part. Ending with this helpful prayer-summary. "Lord of Heaven and Earth. Sometimes You need to sift us, just like You had to sift Peter. Lord, even though those times can be very draining and discouraging, I know that You make us stronger through them. Lord, the only thing I ask is that You keep me close to You and help me not to loose faith — no matter how bad it gets. I cling to the promise that You will never leave or forsake me. In the precious name of Jesus ~ Amen."
Laced with Grace � The Prayer of Prayers:

Quick exposition of the Lord's prayer

2007-10-21T16:04:00.000+01:00

While I'm not sure I would express things as the final sentence of this quote does, at least it gets the praise-orientation of this part of the prayer right. "“Hallowed be your name” means He’s more than just your Father, He’s your God. He’s worthy of your love but He demands your respect. How should we approach God? With our complaints, our demands and our wish list? No: “Enter his gates with thanksgiving and his courts with praise; give thanks to him” (Ps 100:4 NIV). Gratitude gets God’s attention every time!"

Word for You Today:

Mount of Olives - Cloister of the Convent of the Pater Noster

2007-10-04T21:33:00.000+01:00

"Named for the 'Our Father' prayer (Latin: Pater Noster), the Church of the Pater Noster stands on the traditional site in Jerusalem where Jesus taught his disciples how to pray. Constantine built a church over a cave here in 4th century, and this has been partially reconstructed. Plaques in the cloister bear the Lord's Prayer in 62 different languages."
Mount of Olives - Cloister of the Convent of the Pater Noster on Flickr - Photo Sharing!:

sinning, sinned against and forgiving

2007-10-02T20:21:00.000+01:00

I thought that this was an interesting reflection. "What’s interesting is that this prayer seems to teach us something different. More than that, it seems to suggest that sin is almost like eating for us in that we will do it every day. Its like God knows that we desire to live a good life but that we also have this thing in us that makes it impossible for us to not sin. The way to break the cycle is not by castigating ourselves when we mess up but to forgive those who will inevitably sin against us in the same way we would have God forgive our sins."
In recognising the liklihood of our sinning, we recognise the likelihood of being sinned against: to do as we are done by means to forgive as we are forgiven, or would hope we are forgiven. In this way, forgiving can be seen to be a particular and important outworking of the command to do to others as we would have them do to us.
Dangerous talk � paulconnors.wordpress.com:

frugality, abundance, scarcity and daily bread

2007-09-27T07:39:00.000+01:00

I thought this was a very interesting reflection on the terms in the title. "being frugal can be a deliberate choice to be selective about what you take from the abundance. You see no need to buy and keep things because you know they will always be available to you when you need them - a kind of faith that the universe will provide, and in fact expressed in those famous words in the Lord’s Prayer - “Give us today our daily bread” - inviting trust that it will be there when we need it"
I think that there is something to it. However, it may be cold comfort to prayists of the Lord's prayer in less abundant economies. It would've been interesting to know how the writer might think about this in the context that they came from before coming to the west. How far is western abundance a call to share?
frugality, abundance and scarcity � simply good:

The L-rd's Prayer is Jewish

2007-08-30T21:28:00.000+01:00

"'[t]his special prayer is merely a shortened form of the third, fifth, sixth, ninth, and fifteenth of the Eighteen Benedictions'"
L'olam Va-ed!: The L-rd's Prayer is Jewish:

Forgive us our trashbaskets ...

2007-08-16T14:10:00.000+01:00

As is often the case, a child's mis-hearing can be enlightening.

forgive us our trash baskets,
As we forgive those who put trash in our baskets.
Lead us not into temptation,
But deliver us from E-mail.

Miracle in Rwanda

2007-08-09T11:04:00.000+01:00

I've been in Edinburgh enjoying several plays a day at the Festival. One of the plays really deserves a heads-up for the rest of you if you get a chnace to see it, the eponymous play is brilliant. Here's the mise-en-scene:

Immaculée's family was brutally murdered during the three-month slaughter that began in April 1994. Miraculously, Immaculée managed to survive. For 91 days, she and seven other women huddled silently and cramped together in an undiscovered extra bathroom in a local pastor's home.

Probably the most dominent theme is forgiveness, beginning with Immaculée having to do a deal with God about praying to forgive trespasses in the Lord's prayer as she tries to say her rosary. This is why I've flagged up the play on this blog as the Lord's prayer, at this point, is really centre-stage as Imaculée literally cannot pray the words "...as we forgive those who trespass against us".

The rest of the play returns to her praying various of the mysteries of the Rosary which act as a theological comment on the events and usher in a couple of visions one of Christ and another of Mary. It is well written and an excellent performance which conveys -albeit briefly m(it's an hour-long performance)- something of the psycho-spirituality of forgiving.

I'm thinking of getting the book as there must surely be more to reflect on around the theme of forgiveness in it.
Sneak peek at Miracle in Rwanda
Filed in:

Hello, what's your name?

2007-06-28T12:32:00.000+01:00

An amusing nugget from a talk on cell-church and mission.

a friend of mine actually heard a little girl of that age trying to pray her own version of the Lord’s prayer and she said ‘Our father who shouts from heaven, hello what’s your name!’

Found via Anglican Cell UK

Buying "Praying the Pattern: The Lord's Prayer as Framework for Prayer and Life"

2007-06-17T13:56:00.000+01:00

I have set thing up so you can buy "Praying the Pattern" via Paypal. I can also do international postage. I'm encouraging this way of doing it because it's cheaper for you the buyer and I get a bigger cut of the revenue.
So... go on, give it a click, you know you want to. (And of course if you did, for some reason, want to get it on Amazon, you can).
And here's a quick guide to what it's about.

It's about time we got seriously interesting when praying the Lord's prayer. It's all too often repeated word-for-word as a set prayer, which is a shame because it is a whole lot better prayed as a pattern -and arguably that was Jesus' intention. Using it as a kind of trellis or framework can let it blossom into our whole life. Making the change from thinking of it as a set prayer to using it as a living skeleton for the flesh of everyday prayer is perhaps made more difficult by us not having any 'handles' on how to do it. Well, that's where this book comes to the rescue. Here are creative ideas for individuals for prayer groups, retreats and worship: there are ways outlined for praying with the body, with organisers, scrapbooks, stones, cards, labyrinths, lifestyles and liturgies. And to help even more there is a website for further materials and methods and also the means to add your own ideas and comments. You can find it at on the book's website. There's a few pages of new ideas that have been written up since the book was published as well as some more liturgies.

Books on the Lord's prayer tend to be one of two kinds. On the one hand there are scholarly books which go into the history, theology and literary things. On the other hand there are 'devotional' books with thoughts and meditations on the the prayer. There seem to be few books that take the insights about meanings and structure of the prayer and turn them into practical strategies for praying. Praying the Pattern fills the gap between noting that the 'Our Father' is supposed to be a framework for prayer and the usual practice of recitating the prayer while using other patterns to shape everyday prayer.

Here's some nice things some readers have said.

"It is the best book I’ve seen on teaching how to use the Lord’s Prayer as a pattern for prayer. Bowsher’s little book not only teaches, but provides an abundance of examples and suggestions. ... Now here’s what this book does: it thinks about prayer, dwells on prayer, and teaches all about prayer through the lens of the pattern of the Lord’s Prayer. Worth having."
-Scot McKnight

the book is FANTASTIC. I recommend it wholeheartedly!" -Simone

Andii Bowsher’s little book Praying the Pattern, The Lord’s Prayer as a Framework for Prayer and Life, is an interesting and very practical book that explores ways that we can use the Lord’s prayer to deepen our prayer life. I particularly enjoyed the chapter that looks at different body movements for each part of the prayer.-Christine Sine.

Organising our prayers

2007-06-17T13:50:00.001+01:00

Another approach to praying that uses the Lord's prayer helpfully. It seems to me that it should work as a spirituality and not just a 'liturgy' (that is a framework for praying).

Like many prayer mobilizers, I've spent years trying to get believers to pray with a kingdom focus. It's not easy—for me either—to get out of the "Auntie Em's arthritis" and "thanks for the food" prayer rut.
A breakthrough came for me from a talk on the Lord's Prayer by Dr. Scott Hafemann of Wheaton College. He encouraged us to look at the prayer as a series of four pairs of statements. Doing so really brought into focus the kingdom mind-set of Jesus.

The statements are:-

Honor the King :"Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name" (Mt. 6:9).
Increasingly So : "Your kingdom come, your will be done on earth as it is in heaven" (Mt. 6:10).
What Do I Really Need? : "Give us today our daily bread. Forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors" (Mt. 6:11–12).
Make Your Escape Routes Clear : "And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from the evil one" (Mt. 6:13).

It's interesting to see daily bread and forgiveness lumped together. I wonder whether that's fair though given that the heading is what "I" need... somehow I still feel that forgiveness deserves a category of its own; a fivefold pattern.
I'll leave you to the article to follow up the contents' conceptualisations in more detail.
The article goes on to describe a physical and an electronic organiser. The former is rather like one of the ideas I pass on in 'Praying the Pattern'.

3 Ways to Organize Your Prayers

Technorati Tags: Lord's_prayer, paternoster, prayer

ekklesia: The Lord's Prayer

2007-06-16T20:12:00.000+01:00

I thought that this approach was interesting. It comes from Packer (via Wayne Shih and Justin Taylor) and looks at the LP via a set of questions.

"The Lord’s Prayer is offering us model answers to the series of questions God puts to us to shape our conversation with him. Thus:
“Who do you take me for, and what am I to you?” (Our Father in heaven.)
“That being so, what is it that you really want most?” (The hallowing of your name; the coming of your kingdom; to see your will known and done.)
“So what are you asking for right now, as a means to that end?” (Provision, pardon, protection.)
Then the “praise ending” answers the question, “How can you be so bold and confident in asking for these things?” (Because we know you can do it, and when you do it, it will bring you glory!)"
Which is quite a good way to think about the prayer, I think. However, I would just have a quibble; and it is the quibble I seem to have with a number of postings and approaches I've seen. It's that the name-hallowing part seems to be lumped in with the petitionary dynamic rather than learning from the Qaddish-origins and seeing it as praise. Of course the praise ending is not part of the prayer as we have it in Luke, so it distracts from the fact that the praise section is really at the head of the prayer. Therefore, I would suggest that hallowing the name be put with the "who do you take me for ...?" or the question "How can you be bold ...?" or even conceived to answer a question like, "How do you respond to what I am to you?".

ekklesia: The Lord's Prayer:

Daily bread

2007-06-15T12:13:00.000+01:00

Nice quote on Kata Fox's blog. "This prayer calls Jesus’ followers everywhere to recognize that our ability to work and earn our food comes from God’s hand. —Marvin Williams"Kata Fox - The Lord's prayer:

Your Kingdom come; some reflections from Brian McLaren

2007-06-12T15:47:00.000+01:00

Worth giving three and a half minutes to.

Htt.

daily bread: pictures of inequality

2007-06-07T13:39:00.000+01:00

A picture really is worth many words, I think that this shows it. The blog entry referenced here raises the important issues around praying for daily bread in an unequal global situation. "we get so much more than the basic necessities - we get dessert too.
Jesus also taught us to pray, 'Give US today our daily bread.' Our prayers are so often self-centred, how often do we pray, and then act on behalf of the hungry?
Here's a couple of pics from a photo essay ... They show what a family in the UK eats in a week, and a family from Chad - along with the relative amount spent on food per week."
Try using these pictures in our prayers?

3:17: Give us today our daily bread: See also here for a photo essay on the matter.

Abwoon D'Bashmaya - The Lords Prayer in Aramaic

2007-06-01T17:14:00.001+01:00

Slight differences in pronunciation to what I have memorised, but really nice setting and well put together video. Worth putting aside a few minutes to contemplate and pray with.

A model prayer

2007-05-14T15:19:00.001+01:00

I love the attempt to do this and I generally like the way they've gone about it: it's always good to see people attempting to take the Disciples' prayer seriously as a way of praying more generally.

How to use it as a pattern to follow when praying for others

I'd want to ask a few questions to reflect a bit further on how we do this, though. Principally to take seriously the different kinds of praying that each section represents. In this prayer they have tended to become all variants on the petitionary theme. So with the hallowing the Father phase, we see petition for the friend to know God as Father. I would ask whether it might be better to move that petition to the 'your will be done' phase (perhaps as a linking phrase from hallowing the name) and focus here, instead, on things like thankfulness for the friend being made in God's image and loved by God, for the signs of God being at work and being responded to ... ? Perhaps, also, in the daily bread phase, praying for the resources to represent Christ to the friend?
Oh, and I note that all of a sudden, when it comes to asking forgiveness, we're addressing Jesus rather than Father ... ? I'm thinking about the forgiveness asking on someone else's behalf, but I'm sure that thinking about our own forgiving and being forgiven in relation to the friend is also important, isn't it? Similarly with the next phase.
But it's a great wrestling with using the prayer.
Prophet, Priest and Pirate... ARGH!!!: Praying the Lord's Prayer FOR SOMEONE ELSE

Technorati Tags: wholeprayer, model

Meister Eckhardt on daily bread

2007-05-09T12:28:00.000+01:00

I have been reading Matthew Fox's Sins of the Spirit, Blessings of the Flesh. In it we are given a short extract from Matthew Fox's work on Meister Eckhart. What is said is very pertinent to what I've written and deserves quoting here.

Not only bread but all things which are necessary for sustaining this present life are given to us with others and because of others and given others in us. Whoever does not give to another what belongs to the other, such a one does not eat his own bread but eats the bread of another along with his own. Thus when we justly eat the bread we have received, we certainly eat our bread, but when we eat evilly and with sin the bread we have received, then we are not eating our own bread but the bread of another. For everything which we have unjustly is not really ours.

"Father/Mother" in Aramaic

2007-04-29T12:45:00.001+01:00

Quite a valuable little piece of checking. Today seems to be the day of Aramaic translation on this blog!

this rumor: "Aramaic, the language Jesus spoke, uses the same word for father and mother, so when he gave his disciples the Lord's Prayer, the line 'Our Father, who art in heaven', what he was really saying and what his disciples understood was 'Our Father-Mother, who art in heaven'". I did some google searches, and it's not true. Aramaic has different words for father and mother. http://www.peshitta.org/cgi-bin/lexicon.cgi (search for "father" and "mother", you get completely different results).

You may need to remove everything after the .org and then use the tools menu to access the lexicon. You will find that the Aramaic for 'mother' is actually "ama" with the root 'ma' (allowing for the strange orthographic conventions based on US English pronunciation). Not surprising as that is one of the few linguistic near-universals.
Lighting The Way Worldwide: The "Hidden" Gospel of the "Father/Mother" God

Technorati Tags: Aramair, translation

Aramaic idioms

2007-04-29T12:02:00.001+01:00

Aramaic Thoughts with Benjamin Shaw on StudyLight.org
It is easy to make this mistake and it is a typical error of those who reuse the so-called translations of the Lord's prayer from the Aramaic. One of those is the guy referenced here.

something that George Lamsa fails to do in a number of the "idioms" in the Bible that he seeks to explain. The first idiom he finds in the Bible is God's statement, "Let there be light" in Gen 1:3. This Lamsa explains as meaning, "Let there be understanding." It is true that in Aramaic (as well as in Hebrew and English) "light" can sometimes be used figuratively to indicate understanding. But by calling this an idiom, Lamsa really says that any time Aramaic uses "light" it really means "understanding." That is patently false. Lamsa failed to pay attention to the context of the expression.

Technorati Tags: translation, Aramaic

Simplicity vs gnosticism

2007-04-29T07:37:00.001+01:00

This was challenging, and I think has enough truth in it to deserve thinking about a spot more.

Every few years another fad invades the evangelical church. It is always presented as the secret to a life of happiness, blessing, sanctification, and so on. The word for this way of thinking is gnosticism. The Gnostic claims to have secret knowledge that goes beyond ordinary religious experience. Anyone who gains this knowledge breaks through to a whole new level of spiritual experience. -Dr. Philip Ryken
Jesus gave his disciples a model for prayer - the Lord's prayer:

I suspect that the rest of the site has too much of an animus against contemplative spirituality but there is a point ...
Prayer Fads vs the Lord's Prayer :: Prayer :: Contemplative Spirituality

Technorati Tags: wholeprayer, spirituality

Mini review of Praying the Pattern

2007-04-18T15:15:00.001+01:00

Christine Sine has reviewed a handful of books relating to spirituality and justice issues. Among them is Praying the Pattern. This is what she wrote.

Andii Bowsher’s little book Praying the Pattern, The Lord’s Prayer as a Framework for Prayer and Life, is an interesting and very practical book that explores ways that we can use the Lord’s prayer to deepen our prayer life. I particularly enjoyed the chapter that looks at different body movements for each part of the prayer. I read some years ago that connecting actions to words actually creates neural pathways in the brain and facilitates our learning processes.

I think that there is something in that. I'd go further too: if, as seems likely, Antonio Damasio is right about the way that our emotions and ultimately our consciousness depends on our bodies, then embodying our praying is potentially a very deep engagement with prayer. Time and time again people find that particular actions, gestures or sequences of movement undertaken before God seem to connect very powerfully with emotional depths they often didn't know were there ...

Reference: Godspace

Technorati Tags: review, Praying_the_Pattern, book, Sine

Review Praying the Pattern?

2007-04-16T19:02:00.001+01:00

I discovered that there is a site looking for a review. I'm wondering whether any intrepid reader is willing to give it a go.

Rate the book
Write a review and share your opinion with others. Try to focus on the content of the book. Read our instructions for further information.
Praying the Pattern

Praying the Pattern - Reviewscout.co.uk

Wol's amplification

2007-04-15T16:40:00.001+01:00

This is a nice little prayer outline using the Lord's prayer. It even gets the intent of that tricky little 'hallowed be' clause right. This is a good meditative expansion of the prayer that could be used for a brief prayer-break in the midst of a busy schedule. Kudos to 'Wol' who seems to identify as a Reformed Christian in the UK -so I'm wondering whether the nom de plume is possibly a reference to 'The Ongoing Theology of Winnie the Pooh' published in the late 70's in Third Way magazine ... ?

Our Father in heaven
Come and meet with your children.
Hallowed be your name.
You alone are worthy of our praise and worship.
Your Kingdom come; your will be done on earth as in heaven.
Open our eyes and hearts to your world!
Give us today our daily bread
Nourish our faith as you have nourished our bodies with good things.
Forgive us our sins, as we forgive those who sin against us.
Renew us. Restore us. Release us as we release those who have hurt us.
Save us from the time of trial, and deliver us from evil
Lead us to your green pastures and still waters. Restore our souls.
For the kingdom, the power and the glory are yours, now and forever.
Amen.

mustard seeds: for what it's worth ...

Technorati Tags: wholeprayer, meditation

Pechstein: Lord's Prayer woodcuts

2007-04-14T16:08:00.001+01:00

These are also definitely worth looking at and reflecting on. Thanks again to Paul Kiler. I won't reproduct them further here. Go and look.

prints of the Lord's Prayer, by Pechstein

Artis Divina - Where Artists find ways to follow God

Poetic meditation on the Lord's prayer

2007-04-14T15:57:00.001+01:00

The whole reflection is worth a look and a think about. Some of the insights are helpful and certainly well-expressed. Take a look at this bit.

Your kingdom,
that has come with Jesus,
will come in unimaginable dimensions.
Your kingdom, that means
neither the realm of politics, nor of business.
Neither the realm of science, nor of culture.
Not the realm of the churches,
and definitely not my realm.
Your kingdom wants our kingdoms:
our nations and enterprises, our universities and museums,
our libraries and concert halls and theatres,
our churches and my own private kingdom
to pierce, to penetrate, to change
with love and justice.

Thanks Paul. I'll be dropping by more often now I've found this blog!
Artis Divina - Where Artists find ways to follow God

Technorati Tags: wholeprayer, Lord's_Prayer, poetry, reflection, meditation

Give Us Today Our Daily Bread

2007-04-05T08:33:00.000+01:00

I liked this post on the daily bread clause of the prayer. Particularly:

If Jesus were a modern American he would have said, “Give ME MY bread”, but he doesn’t. Perhaps God has provided for us, not me. So, who is “us”? Could it be all creation? And if the supply of food is “ours”, what does that mean if I eat more than my share while others go hungry? Perhaps this prayer has implications for our view of consumption.
Today/Daily Bread: We reflected on the Jewish story of manna. God would give enough for each person for one day (with the exception of Friday when they would collect two days’ worth to avoid collecting on the Sabbath). If they got greedy and gathered too much or tried to hoard it, it would go bad. So, what does it mean to ask for “today’s” meal? Was God telling us something in the story of the manna?

That last point is telling, I think. Room for further reflection in that, definitely.

The Nameless Church � Blog Archive � Give Us Today Our Daily Bread

Luther amplifies the Lord's prayer

2007-04-01T12:38:00.000+01:00

Aside from using the "hallowed be your name" clause as a peg for an intercessory style of praying and so omitting the praise element of the prayer, this is an interesting reflection on the Lord's prayer with some material to help those who compile prayer scrapbooks ...
I particularly find helpful his interpretation of the final clause of the biblical version.

“Lead us not into temptation. Keep us fit and alert, eager and diligent in Your Word and service, so that we do not become complacent, lazy and slothful as though we had already achieved everything. In that way the fearful devil cannot fall upon us, surprise us and deprive us from of Your precious Word or store up strife and factions among us and lead us into other sin and disgrace…
“And deliver us from evil. This wretched life is so full of misery and calamity, of danger and uncertainty, so full of malice and faithlessness… but You, dear Father, know our frailty. Therefore help us to pass safety through so much wickedness and villainy…”

Technorati Tags: Luther, Lord's_prayer, wholeprayer

our eyes look to You

2007-03-10T14:27:00.000Z

It's good to find a blog post that mulls over the possibilities of the prayer for daily bread being unanswered.

Provide today, our Father, the needs we have today. It's a prayer we keep praying...sometimes because we see him answer; sometimes in spite of the fact that we don't think we need an answer; sometimes when we don't receive an answer. But we pray it still, not just because we have need of things, but because, at the very heart of it all, we are in need of him. We don't know why he gives as he does, nor why he withholds.

"why he withholds", is an issue that I explore a bit in Praying the Pattern. My own response is that because of the interconnected nature of the world the possibility exists for accumulation at the expense of others. In other words, some can benefit from systems of providence that don't help, and may actively exclude others. If there are those of our brothers and sisters in Christ whose prayers for daily bread are being routinely sidelined by our systems of trade and food supply, then praying "your will be done" must become a self-participatory answer: we must work to change the way the human Powers work in order to compell them more nearly to enact God's design: that all who pray that pray may participate in a positive answer to it.
the story room: our eyes look to You:Filed in: daily_bread

Prayer Tools: Lord's Prayer and Prayer of Jabez

2007-02-22T17:51:00.000Z

While I'm not sure I like the USAmerican patriotism (hey, I'm a different nationality: entitled to a different view of the world), I do like the summary this post gives of the Lord's prayer. Not least because it seems to corroborate the five-fold structure that I have used and it does so in ways that Praying the Pattern sets out.

Acknowledge the Father's Character.
Acknowledge the Father's Kingdom, His will.
Ask for the Father's provision.
Ask for the Father's forgiveness and forgive.
Ask for the Father's guidance and protection.

If you check the original you'll note I've excerpted to focus on the new content, so to say. I've also added ' to those s's after Father ...
Romans 15:4 Project: Prayer Tools: Lord's Prayer and Prayer of Jabez:Filed in: structure, prayer, Lord's_prayer, wholeprayer

To whom do we pray?

2007-02-17T17:11:00.000Z

Pretty much the same question as I was asked at a Lord's prayer workshop day a while back.Only this was more focused on the legitimacy of addressing prayer to Christ. I actually said that I hadn't really thought much about it at that point but that I shared the question. My gut feeling was pretty much what Scot McKnight's colleague Brad Nassif says of Basil of Caesarea's approach.

Basil of Caesarea had weighed in on this one and had urged that a fullly Trinitarian theology will advocate the primacy of the Father, but that prayers could be addressed to the Son and the Spirit. Both the Eastern and Western Church traditions have prayers addressed to Son and Spirit.

I think that I would find it hard to say that we should only pray addressing the Father, after all the NT has other kinds of praying exemplified. But, on the basis of the Lord's prayer being commended by Christ, I would have to say that our default prayer position would have to be 'patricentric'.
Scot goes on to ask.

Do you think it matters? Do you think anything is seriously at stake?

And the comments following are all very interesting.
I left reading the discussion feeling that the position of Basil and my own feeling about the matter is about right. More, I was reminded that to address God as Father following Christ, is to pray in a Trinitarian way, the very address is taken from Christ and is made in solidarity with Christ and can only truly be accomplished by the enabling of the Spirit. To pray in this way is to come into something of the life of God in Christ; to be caught up in the ongoing relationality of the Godhead ...
Jesus Creed � To whom do we pray?:Filed in: prayer, Father, Son, Spirit, addresse

Belle, Acts and Cats -who goes to the ball of our praying?

2007-02-12T20:38:00.000Z

A further article on the Lord's prayer is now published, this one in The Turning. My basic direction with the article might perhaps be gauged from this quote:

It seems that the Lord's Prayer does not significantly shape the praying consciousness of Christians. It is the real Cinderella of Christian praying; it should be the Belle of the ball but tends to be left behind while the step sisters Acts and Cats go instead. The lack of use of the Lord's Prayer in ordinary practice as a pattern or framework prayer seems strange given that we are meant to be following Christ's teaching and that this is a twice-repeated piece of practical-example teaching from Jesus himself.

There's a lot of it which is reworked material from the book, so it may help as an intro and ?incentive...
Lord's Prayer Filed in: Lord's_prayer paternoster, prayer, article

Praying without ceasing: lifestyle prayer

2007-02-11T13:57:00.000Z

I've just had an article published on emergingchurch.info. It's an adaptation of some of my book, but I thought I'd share it and give you a taster...

... ask ourselves whether there is a way of understanding the command to pray ceaselessly in a way that doesn't conflict with loving our neighbour. Paul may have meant his readers to pray as much as they could, whenever they could. However that would be to read a meaning into the text based, perhaps on a sense of realism faced with an understanding of prayer that involves giving God full and exclusive attention. We don't have to be bound by that interpretation. I'm going to suggest a deeper fulfilment of the exhortation. One that makes contact with Paul's command to his Roman readers to offer their bodies as living sacrifices to God (Romans 12.1-2). Perhaps Paul was suggesting making life into prayer rather than making prayer into a life

emergingchurch.info > reflection > andii bowsher
Filed in: prayer, Lord's_prayer, Praying_the_Pattern, paternoster, article, lifestyle, rule

Emerging Women pray "O Cosmic Birther"?

2007-02-03T14:54:00.000Z

I'm a little concerned now that emerging types are swallowing the myth of translation. As here.
I have posted a comment here to alert readers to the wider issues. I was actually quite pleased with what I wrote so I'm reproducing it here. Please note that I am a friend of the emerging church movement; I might even be regarded as a founding participant.
Anyway, here's my comment.
I agree that some of the words and phrases are really evocative, helpful and beautiful. However, there is a problem with calling the ensemble 'a translation' on a par with the KJV cited (or any normal translation of the scriptures). Because strictly it isn't; it's a kind of midrash; a very loose 'giving the sense of' mixed with commentary-on-the-fly. It can be very useful. In this case, though, the provenance is the Creation-centred spirituality network (most famous members being Matt Fox and Starhawk) which should alert us to an ideological bias in the commentary and even perhaps why some might want us to think of it as a translation rather than an interpretive prose-poem loosely based on the translation into Aramaic and heightening the standing of the potential connotative resonances of the Aramaic.
Emerging Women
Filed in: Klotz, Cosmic, abwun, wholeprayer

Hallowed Be Thy Name

2007-01-28T18:27:00.000Z

I have been reflecting on this on and off for a week or more.

when we pray the prayer, "Hallowed be Thy name," we recognize that in a sense there is no way that we can hallow God's name any more than it has already been hallowed. By shedding His blood on the Cross for sinners such as you and me, Jesus Christ hallowed the name of the heavenly Father to the highest degree possible, infinitely and forever. Any good deed that we might perform, any prayer that we might pray, any sacrifice that we might make, is but a feeble Amen to the Jesus' mighty cry of victory from the Cross:
"It is finished!"
Nevertheless, the fact is that Jesus taught that we should pray this prayer. Perhaps the only way we can pray this prayer "in spirit and in truth" is not only to say the words, but to live them.

I think that this perspective of praying the Lord's prayer being somehow linked to living in Christ is important. What really struck me was the hallowing of God's name accomplished by Christ's sacrifice. That hallowing of the name of God was costly and total. It does put our hallowings into perspective. But I also want to say that it does not negate them, perhaps it fills up what is lacking in them. I think it is important to spend time and effort renewing an attitude of awe, wonder, acknowledgement and thankfulness which should, naturally, affect the way that we live out our lives. After all in Romans 12:1-2 the self offering of real worship begins with a response to the mercy of God ...
Journey Home: Hallowed Be Thy Name: The Lord's Prayer III: Filed in: hallowing, name, Christ, lifestyle

Naming GOD

2007-01-13T16:31:00.000Z

This article is a really nice reflection on how we address ourselves verbally to God. Worthwhile reading, I think. The kind of approach is not dissimalar to the one that informs my own position in Praying the Pattern, perhaps well summed up in this nearly final sentence.

the name I call to God with determines the guise in which I come to this task, duty, privilege of prayer. In naming God, I am in some way —far beyond my incomplete understanding— determining my own identity. Naming God ends up defining not him, but me.

Quite so. Whatever, God is still God; the naming is about our approaching and being aware of the effects that naming has on our drawing near -or not! God knows the secrets of our hearts, and so doesn't need to 'hear' a name to know to whom we are addressing ourselves. "Abba", 'father' is in the Lord's prayer to remind us, I think, that whatever we call God, we have the privilege of sharing in Christ's being Son; of beginning to 'try on' for ourselves and grow into the relationship between Jesus and His Father. Other namings can either help or hinder that; that's a matter between us and God -and anyone we seek counsel from. The issue is: does this naming help me/us to relate to God well?
Christianity Today: Article Naming GOD | Seek First: Filed in: God, naming, hallowing, prayer

Prayers of the Cosmos. Some notes towards a review.

2006-12-29T20:30:00.000Z

I've recently been reading this book because a big chunk of it deals with reflections on the Aramaic version of the Lord's prayer. Now, I do have to say that I quite like some of the renditions of some of the lines. And I felt that the treatment of the 'Lead us not into temptation' bit was particularly helpful with what most prayists find a difficult line to interpret and use effectively.

Where I am concerned is Klotz's persistent employment of the etymological fallacy that a previous or root meaning might tell us what something means in another context. This is a bit like my claiming that I had not meant to demean someone when I said that they were "silly" on the basis that the word used to mean something like 'nice' does today. Or it would be like by saying a compliment is "nice" I really meant that it was "cutting" because, etymologically, the word 'nice' comes from a Latin root having to do with blades. Unfortunately this is the kind of reflection we are given on several occasions. The main effect of this is usually to recast certain Christian notions into thought-forms that are more conducive to what many might label 'new age'.

Sometimes, too, he practices a little sleight of hand with the sounds too: so because in Aramaic the word for 'heaven' shares two phonemes with the ord 'name' [shamaya and shem, respectively] the two are linked. Now I'm pretty sure that their sound similarities are coincidental, and even if not the etymological fallacy still applies. A coincidence of sound does not indicate a relationship of meaning, for example, in English the word 'bank' [the side of a mound or of higher ground] is, in sound terms, identical with the word 'bank' [an institution for holding monetary deposits] but in fact the two words have arrived at their similarity from different etymologies and it would not be at all useful to attempt to infer something meaningful about them from their similarity of pronunciation.

So I would say that this book is worth reading for some of the helpful re-phrasings, but be wary whenever the author basis the paraphrase on a root or old meaning: that's often simply a device to bring in another meaning more conducive to the esoteric thought world of the author and intended audience.

Technorati Tags: Abwun, Aramaic, Douglas-Klotz

Qaddish and the Lord's prayer

2006-12-26T17:31:00.000Z

As much because I keep finding posts on the first phrase[s] of the Lord's prayer that seem to want to interpret according to grammatical literalness rather than phrasal function, I feel the need to provide links to posts that helpfully put it in its literary and orality context. Like this one:

The first petition "hallowed be your name" corresponds to the Jewish Qaddish prayer "Exalted and hallowed be his great name in the world which he created according to his will". Qaddish is the prayer praising God, which is spoken at the conclusion of each section of the Jewish service. Five different forms of it are used for special occasions, such as when mourning for a death.
The same Qaddish prayer continues, following Marshall still, with an emphasis on the sovereignty of God, "May he let his kingdom rule in your lifetime and in your days and in the whole lifetime of Israel, speedily and soon", which is clearly parallel to "Your kingdom come". So far, the two prayers are essentially the same, except that the Christian version has been simplified and (especially in Matthew) is presented in the context of the eschatological assumption that the kingdom of God is at hand.

Alright, so the word 'petition' is used, but it is clear from the context that the initial phase of the prayer is being interpreted as a 'praising' function rather than an 'asking' function.

Now, let me re-iterate about grammatical literalness being misleading without contextual clues being attended to. If you are in a hospital and a nurse or doctor appears at your bedside and asks; "And how are we today?" despite the grammatically-marked person of the enquiry being first person plural, the intent and function is to elicit a reply from the second person singular. Iow: 'we' refers to 'you', in reality. Similarly the apparent question; "Would you pass me the salt?" is not really a question but a polite order: "Pass me the salt [but I'm saying it nicely so you will think me pleasant and well-mannered]". Another analogy is the way we use "hallelujah". It literally means 'praise the Lord', but its usage in English speaking circles is as a word to express appreciation of God or what God has done; praise itself, in fact.

So, just because the phrase 'hallowed be your name' looks like a petition, doesn't mean that its intended function in the prayer is petitionary. The background knowledge of Jewish praying at the time alerts us to the praise function it is almost certainly fulfilling. A further clue is in the structure of the prayer. If we leave off the later addition of the doxology, where is the praise section of the barebones version of the prayer, as in Luke, for example? It's hard to believe it's not there at all in the prayer being commended as a pattern to follow. Praise has to be there. And it is if we understand the first bit of the prayer from the perspective of Jewish prayer patterns.

The ChaliceBlog: LINGUISTFRIEND PUZZLES OVER THE LORD'S PRAYER: Filed in: prayer, hallowing, kingdom, qaddish

Posada reflection

2006-12-23T16:08:00.000Z

In those days a decree went out from Emperor Augustus that all the world should be registered. This was the first registration and was taken while Quirinius was governor of Syria. All went to their own towns to be registered. Joseph also went from the town of Nazareth in Galilee to Judea, to the city of David called Bethlehem, because he was descended from the house and family of David. He went to be registered with Mary, to whom he was engaged and who was expecting a child. While they were there, the time came for her to deliver her child. And she gave birth to her firstborn son and wrapped him in bands of cloth, and laid him in a manger, because there was no place for them in the inn. Luke 2.1-7

I am interested to note how much we tend to read into the story. There's no harm necessarily in that. I think that the stories of scripture are light on detail in part to allow us, providentially, greater scope to speculate and to draw parallels to our own lives. However, we err if we become too attached to our readings-in. So every so often we need to remember that the folkloric details that accrue to the popular re-tellings are just that, and are not in the barebones story. We often cannot retell the story unless we fill in those details, but those details are reconstructions to enable the story to be recast into the media of our reflection. So in our picture, we do find the donkey though not in the story in Luke. Though the donkey is not an unreasonable supposition. There is a hint of it being frosty in the picture, but we don't really know what time of year the journey may have taken place. We assume that there was no place at the inn because there were a lot of people being 'censused', but we don't know for certain that hint is pointing us to that idea. A lot of popular readings assume that Mary would have been around 13 because that would have been normal-ish. But we don't know, really. Similarly, the story only mentions 'the inn', presumably Bethlehem was a small place and may only have had one inn, rather than the several of many a nativity play. Well, the dramatic tension of several refusals is a well-used narrative device ... but it may not reflect well what the text seems to hint.

Now, this post is on a blog that concentrates on a Lord's prayer spirituality, so the focus here is on how this might fit with the story at hand. I hope the reading-beside is illuminating to some degree, but it is just a way to reflect on the text in order to pray it. One of the ways of praying scripture is to have a set of prayer tasks to fit to reading and reflecting on a passage. I'm developing a set of questions to help pray scripture through the pattern of the Lord's prayer.
So here they are with some example reflections of mine in response, just to help you get the idea.
Relating to "our father in heaven, hallowed be your name? : What might this passage help us to appreciate about who God is? For me, this passage reminds me that God has a big picture and has not abandoned the world to wind down into fallenness and frustration (Rom 8). Even if this passage does not explicitly name God, yet it is framed by God and the working out of God's purposes which somehow respect human finitude and foolishness and weave them into the greater design and the wider pattern. Hallowed and blessed be the name of the providential God ruling the universe in the loving ways of redemption".

Relating to "Your kingdom come, your will be done on earth as in heaven": How might this passage help us to reflect on God's ways on earth and pray for God's agenda and values to become more fully a part of the life of this world? God may not approve of the oppression and the misery that can result from imperialism, yet there are also benefits. God works through it all; to use the latter does not mean to approve the former. And neither is being in the very eye of God's design any protection from the ill that stalks the world east of Eden. In fact, because God's design lies in eroding the forces of Despite, being at the heart of God's agenda may face us with the difficulties that arise from being close up and intimate with those forces. Here the rightful Heir suffers from the marginalisation of his father's and his Father's family and Agenda in the ways of the Imperium. And yet that is the way that God's ways are brought intimately into the sweep of history. The recentering of the cosmos takes place in ways the usurping forces cannot quite get hold of, at the edges of their grasp on reality. When our praying turns to desiring spectacular and visible vindications or victories, that is when, perhaps we should be worried that our imaginations have been captured by the rulers of this dark age. Our praying may often be concerned with the seemingly marginal when it is most in the heart of God.

Relating to "give us today our daily bread": Does this passage highlight any area of our own lives where we need particular gifts or provision, particularly in respect of our continuing to live by God's agenda? God's provision may not be what we would choose and sometimes requires creativity and imagination to grasp: a manger becomes a cradle, a stall becomes a room for humans. And yet they are enough. If God wants us rich it is with riches that the world may or, more often, may not afford. In teaching I am learning to focus on the outcomes and to be pragmatic about the means. In provision, sometimes the same attitude is needed. Not that we should forget that the means and the ends are inseparable, but sometimes that our experience of means or our identification of ends is not as helpful as it may be. Sometimes God needs to provide us with a wake up of imagination. God give us the ability to see what is important and the wisdom to know your provision.

Relating to "forgive us our sins, as we forgive those who sin against us" Does this passage highlight any areas or remind us of ways of straying from God and particularly ways in which we judge others harshly and unfairly? Indeed, God. Forgive us our slowness to change and make difficult journeys. Forgive us when we let conventional ideas about You and your ways get in the way of what you actually seem to be doing. As we forgive those who misunderstand or even mischaracterise our attempts to do right by you. It's funny how often we fail to see how alike we are!

Relating to "Save us from the time of trial and deliver us from evil". Does this passage alert us to the possible pitfalls we face that could draw us from the Good Old Way? Save us God from insisting on our comfort. Shake us from the slumber of imagination which only countenances finding your will or provision in the Approved ways of respectability, cool or street-credibility

Aramaic Lord's prayer tats

2006-12-10T13:24:00.000Z

Now, I wear a thumb ring which I use as a reminder that I have undertaken to pray the Lord's prayer regularly, other things being equal, three times daily. I have heard that other people use tatoos to signify spiritual commitments. I don't claim that this one is any such thing, but I find it interesting. Not only because of the words, but because of the 'mantra'. I supect that what is meant is a mandala rather than mantra ...

However, it has got me thinking about visual representations of the prayer ...

A single section prayer cord

2006-11-26T20:42:00.000Z

The 72 'station' cord is a bit bigger than some would prefer. So picking up the idea from a Dominican rosary where there is a version consisting of one decade which you simply go round as often as you need to. So the shorter Lord's prayer rosary is a single section of 1+12 knots or beads with a lead-in stretch of five and a cross at the end.

Now the 'clever' part is that the lead-in stretch is actually a way of keeping your place in the prayer if you may be prone to wandering mind syndrome at any time. Basically, you keep your place by holding the relevant knot or bead as you go round the loop. The secret is to make sure that there is sufficient length of cord and spacing to allow that to happen. Again, anyone interested should contact me and I'll arrange for a basic string cord to go to you if you will report back to me on how it is to use it...

New configuration for the rosary prayer cord

2006-11-25T19:47:00.000Z

I've been reflecting on the Lord's prayer rosary in the light of my experience of using it quite a bit on and off over the last year or so. If you click on the title of this post, you'll get pointers to the kind of configuration that I have been using, alternatively you could visit the wiki.

One of my major reflections on using the format of 5 sections each with 6 or 7 beads /knots is that the section tends to feel too short a time to engage with the passage as fully as I would like. So with that in mind I am about to try out a new configuration and I'd be happy to send a "knotted string prayer-thing" to any others [up to five people] who'd like to give it a trial-go and are willing to write up their experiences before Easter 2007.

The new configuration is to have a loop of five sections. Each section consists of one knot/bead for the reflection-verse and 12 beads /knots for the relevant prayer phrase. The part of the cord outside of the loop has a cross and five knots /beads. There is one knot /bead at the junction between the looped section and the free section which ends in the cross. This makes a total of 72 'points' [including the cross] on the whole thing.

The basic way of using it remains the same: on the looped section a passage is read and then followed by repeating the relevant phrase of the Lord's prayer whilst reflecting on and praying over the verse or verses just read.

There is a slight difference in the lead in. As with the shorter cord, the cross has a declaration of faith in Christ, currently suggested "Lord, to whom can we go? You have the words of eternal life. We have come to believe and know that you are the Holy One of God." (John 6.68).
Then the five knots or beads following would be to pray or reflect more slowly or individually on each section of the Lord's prayer as a kind of reminding ourselves what each section is about and of the flow. The junction knot /bead is then to remind us either which section is about to be prayed [ie the 'Our father' section, or the 'kingdom come' section and so forth] or for the doxology ['for the kingdom, the power, and the glory are yours, now and forever'] if each section of the loop is to be a different phase of the Lord's prayer.

At the end the junction is the doxology (for yours is the kingdom ... etc) and the five knots on the hanging cord can be used to pray each of the phrases /sections of the Lord's prayer and the cross could be used with the phrase "I am with you always to the end of the age" (Matthew 28:20).
I am thinking of perhaps finding five of Jesus sayings on prayer to use on the final five knots/beads ... open to suggestions there...

The wiki link above would lead you to the passages and verses that could be used.

Pattern

2006-11-16T19:56:00.000Z

Definitely worth flagging up this one-page summary of using the Lord's prayer as a pattern for prayer. One of the best of it's kind I've yet found; it even gets the 'hallowed' bit right.
The inspiration for a solid post apparently comes from an old friend of a site which is referenced on the AbbeyNous wiki but I don't think I've given it a mention on this blog, so here goes:
http://www.ntwrightpage.com/Wright_Christian_Prayer.htm
The Upward Way Press � Blog Archive � Pattern
Filed in: Lord's_prayer, paternoster, learning, wholeprayer, summary, abwun

'Your Kingdom Come' = "Set the world right."

2006-11-05T19:46:00.000Z

God is looking for justice and fairness and peace. One Bible scholar says that 'Your Kingdom Come' should be translated "Set the world right."

and

as Barbara Taylor says, "Jesus needs followers, not admirers."

How do we follow Jesus in our praying; that seems to me to be the key question and, in relation to the 'your will be done' section of the prayer, leads us into looking hard at the world, noting where it needs to be set right and then thinking with, before and about God as well as waiting for wisdom, insight and compassion in order to begin to pray aright and with subtlety and finesse the actual next steps in any situation ... that's hard. It's much easier to pray blanket prayers. But they are more often about our need to express sympathy or dismay or some other human response than they are about entering into God's compassion, pain and true desire for the situation and those loved-ones caught up in it. So much of my own praying in this heading at the moment is about holding the matter before God and myself awaiting insight ...

Technorati Tags: kingdom, Lord's_prayer, paternoster, abwun, will

Hallowing the name

2006-11-04T14:45:00.000Z

Percival Lowell’s observation of his own eyes’ vascular structure, mistaking his blood vessels for canals on Mars, tells us something important about our relationship with God. Often we ascribe to God aspects of our own make-up, without realizing we project our own stuff onto God’s self. Often we see God as we are. I think because we’ve said "The Lord’s Prayer" so often, we glide past the revolutionary aspects of this teaching on prayer from Jesus. I think we speak to God about who and what we are, but miss who God is and what God intends for us.

I found the first part of this article quite thought provoking. I tend to think that hallowing God's name is inviting us to recognise who God is and that must be something we do in relation to our own perceptions. Of course, the danger that the paragraph I've quoted flags up is that we only see what we bring to the encounter. How do we make sure that we hallow God's name and not merely our naming? That is, how do we grow in our perception, appreciation and understanding of who God is and not stay stuck in or with our own speculations and tired 'old' ideas.

I suspect we have to do a handful of things. One is put ourselves in the way of constant learning from scripture, the experience of others, the world around us and so forth. A learning disposition and a humble learning is important. I think too that we have to treasure questions and allow them to point the way to new insights and appreciations in due course -though it is not easy to see their outcomes.

Using the prayers of others can help.
Being suspicious of the limits that our present namings can impose.
I think we need also to pay attention to our own feelings in terms of when ways of naming God have gone dead on us. That may be a call to move on.

The thing I liked less about this article was the way that hallowing shifted into something about praying for the will of God. It confuses the qaddish structure and gets us back into the bad old habit of asking for stuff at the expense of being awed by and thankful to God.

Technorati Tags: hallowing, name, God, learning, spirituality

The hippy version

2006-11-01T21:03:00.000Z

While I'm not, like, cool, y'know, with all the like sentiments in this 'take' on the Lord's prayer. It's still, like, quite funny? And one or two of the lines are quite nice, actually.

Imagine if a commune of Diggers from a raggedy-assed old house near Porter Square in North Cambridge, Massachusetts back in 1968 had composed the Lord’s Prayer? What if they had re-invented the entire Liturgy?

Well, for one thing ... the Communion Wine would be ‘MATEUS’in more affluent parishes ... and ‘BOONE‘S FARM APPLE‘ everywhere else..

Our Father who art in Heaven

Oh wow! ... old Man up there

Hallowed be thy name.

You are - y’know? - so far out.

Thy kingdom come Thy will be done

When you show up here ... they’ll be some major butt to kick, man!

On earth as it is in heaven.

You can, like, make yourself at home and do your own thing, big dude ... if that’s your bag.

Give us this day our daily bread

As long as you help us cop some serious scratch ... and score with some chicks.

And forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those

And give us, like, a break when we, like, bum people out ... and THEN we’ll give a break ...

Who trespass against us

To, like, dudes hassling us with negative karma

And lead us not into temptation

And while you’re at it ... keep us away from bad trips, man.

But deliver us from evil

And please tune-out those weird busts and, like, acid flashbacks

Amen.

Dig it?

Technorati Tags: prayer, Lord's_prayer, hippy

God: awesome and intimate

2006-10-29T17:50:00.000Z

This puts well something that still blows me away when I let myself reflect on it carefully and quietly:

Think about the tension between this notion of a God closer to us than we are to ourselves, who is in charge of all things and who has all the power, and we call Him, "Daddy." What a terrific, empowering sort of notion that we have access to that God.

Technorati Tags: Lord's_prayer, prayer, Father, God, address

Another liturgical resource

2006-10-29T14:00:00.000Z

I quote here a snippet from a fuller community liturgy based on the Lord's prayer. It's worth tracing back to source and looking at the whole series.

Leader:Our Father In The Heavens
All: We are a community
gathered around God our father of the Old and New Testament,
who is present in our lives and is present within the world.
We see that God calls all to himself
and so we accept our call to welcome all
into our praying and worship community of Christ,
regardless of who they are,
what they have done
or how much they are unlike us.

Interesting that it's a Quaker source, too.

Technorati Tags: Lord's_prayer, paternoster, liturgy, quaker, abwun

Booklet worth using

2006-10-28T15:41:00.000+01:00

This site commends a pdf booklet about using the Lord's prayer in public worship. The booklet is commendable: it is too the point and reasonable. It makes the kinds of points that visitors to this very blog and readers of "Praying the Pattern" are likely to be familiar with. The producers even leave the back page blank for you to add your own church's details. Very open source.

Here are a few excerpts.

we frequently pray in a manner something like this: “Our Father in heaven, give us this day our daily bread” (!) Because we instinctively think about ourselves first, we can easily skip the place in which our prayers should begin, namely, in adoration of the Father and petition for his kingdom.
...
We should become so familiar with this prayer that we easily and naturally use it to structure and shape our personal communication with our Father in heaven. The order of the Lord’s Prayer should bring order and priority to our devotional praying so that our prayers are not scattered and disorganized in thought.
...
This prayer is not full of empty phrases; rather, it contains the most important aspects of our communication to our Father in heaven, namely, adoration, confession and petition ....

Technorati Tags: prayer, Lord's prayer, pattern, whole, Reformed, protestant

Praying the future into the now...

2006-10-27T16:22:00.000+01:00

here's a useful quote to consider in praying the kingdom phase of the Lord's prayer.

Heaven is described as the place where God’s purpose is totally embraced. The kingdom of God comes to the earth when God fulfills HIS PURPOSE in the face of every other alternative (i.e. your will, my will, our will, the devil’s will). In other words, the kingdom of God is heaven happening on earth. It is the future happening in the present.

It's a good post to consider more fully. Go and have a look for yourself.

Technorati Tags: Lord's-prayer, kingdom, spirituality

... in heaven ...

2006-10-27T16:04:00.000+01:00

It's been sitting in a tab in Firefox for a few days now, and now I can post and comment on it. The most especially helpful bit is this:

The next phrase, “in the heavens” as Willard translates, should be understood not as “our Father who is somewhere out there disconnected from us,” but instead should be closer to “the sense Jesus intended, ‘…Our Father always near us.’” This not only sets the “configuration of reality in which we pray,” and the petitions of the rest of the prayer, but also declares the imminence (nearness) of the Father. The father Jesus refers to here desires to be intimate with his people, near and available to them.

Which I found really helpful and thought provoking. I have tended to view the phrase as a transcendent balancing to the intimate 'abba'. But it is probably wise to note that some of the connotations of "Father" are somewhat awe-inspiring and that, with this quote, some of the connotations of "in heaven" are intimate. It's a bit like the words of Psalm 139 which we can take as comforting nearness or scary ungettable-away-from-ness!

Technorati Tags: prayer, Lord's_prayer, paternester, abwun, heavens, spirituality, Christian

Reunderstanding prayer

2006-10-26T09:39:00.000+01:00

I was just alerted to something I wrote a while ago about this topic, before I'd created this blog. But it really does belong here.
“"prayer as a natural conversation with God - not a "follow this pattern" is an interesting statement. I kind of warm to it but I think it is also a sentiment that can be misleading and inhibit our spiritual growth in certain circumstances. I deal with the issue in "Praying the pattern" but let me just overview some of the issues.
First, don't hear me to say that I don't think that we shouldn't try to relate to God 'naturally', I just am not sure what that really means beyond the sloganeering.
*Jesus expected us to use a pattern to relate to God at least some of the time: that's what the Lord's prayer is.
*What is 'natural' about conversing with a being whose normal vocabulary and speech usually includes things that are beyond the human vocal tract and can and does transcend speech?
*Do we acknowlege that mostly what we mean by 'conversing naturally' is actually only a part of our conversational repertoire and may not always be relevant to God-communing?
*Do we realise how idealogical/mythical is this meme about prayer?

To help understanding my position, perhaps I should say that I very much agree with the whole thing about prayer without the drama -I think: I'm working on a book/ big article about group prayer on the assumption that God is already in on the conversation before we 'deign' to turn to prayer. In doing so I analyze the dynamics of normal conversation and show how prayer isn't normal conversation and how we might make it more that way.”

Nouslife: Reunderstanding prayer: Filed in: prayer, pattern, conversational

Forgiveness as Jubilee

2006-10-22T20:04:00.000+01:00

The part of the Lord's prayer that calls on us to forgive as we are forgiven has tended to be one that causes the most perplexity in terms of how the two parts hang together. This snippet helps, I think. It sees the petition as reflecting the Jubilee of the Jewish law. In this way it can help us to see forgiving as part of living in a 'realm' where forgivess of debts is the order of the day; where we both benefit from forgiveness but by the same token are required to extend it. It's part of the same deal to live forgiven we live in the realm of forgiving; do as we would be done by. The realm of God is about reciprocity.

when we pray, "forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors" we pray the Jubilee and we give release to those indebted to us, just as the Jew was taught in earthly terms to release debts owed by the poor, and we also ask that God release our debts owed to him. For the Jew to obey the Jubilee was to not only be released of his debts but to release the debts owed to him. We in the New Testament do the same, yet now it is everyday, for Christ has brought the true Jubilee to us in our lives and in the Church. Thus, the purpose of praying the forgiveness of debts and debtors is to believe, confess, and proclaim the Jubilee of Jesus Christ!

Orthodox Lutheran: Filed in: prayer, forgiveness, jubilee, debts

Your dream be done ...

2006-10-22T13:12:00.000+01:00

It's often nice to find someone else propounding an idea independently of ones own but which is pretty much the same. Well here's one for me talking about the phrase 'your will be done'.

...the word is more like our word 'wish' i.e. the wish of God, the dream of God the longing of God to come and be done. It reminded me of how God has a wish, a dream for the world, for me, for the people, places, cosmos and indeed the whole of creation. That rather than my own individual wish and dream for me and my life God is inviting me to give that up, put that aside and accept, follow, be part of in and believe in his dream. What is the dream of God? Well I think part of the hint is the reference to heaven, that earth comes fully a part of God's dream just like heaven currently is, or no more...
decay, deterioration, death....
fear, failing, fatigue...
poverty, pain, pride...
injustice, insiders, independence...
sickness, sin, shame...
worry, war, "whatever generation"...
hunger, hurt, hypocrisy...
loneliness, lust, loss...
tears, terrors, trials...
All gone... in the meantime we live in the tension of that dream being revealed and completed, we get to be part of the unfolding of the dream, part of the wish in the making, part of the revelation that there is another way, that through Jesus we can be...
bringers of life, bringers of hope, bringers of peace doers of God's justice, mercy, love, carers of creation, oppressed/poor and sick...

That's certainly the kind of understanding I have and that informed the writing ofo the liturgies in Praying the pattern. I would have to add that the dream metaphor is explicit in one of the liturgies and is one that I have often found helpful, provided it is understood in the MLK 'I have a dream' sort of way rather than an unreal escapist kind of thing. That's no way in view in this article but is a possible misunderstanding of the intent of the metaphor. I do find it an interesting and really inspiring way of informing the 'will be done' part of my praying. I commend these words as a way of opening up our praying even further.

Thanks Paul Meyers One for the road...: The wish of God...: Filed in: will, God, prayer, Kingdom, dream, wish

The Lord's Prayer Line by Line

2006-10-15T18:15:00.000+01:00

Just to flag up what looks like it could be a good set of writings reflecting on the Lord's prayer line by line. I hope to read through them over the next week or so and maybe blog some of what I find...
The Lord's Prayer Line by Line - explorefaith
Filed in: Lord's_prayer, paternoster, course

Praying for Parking Spaces ??

2006-10-10T18:25:00.000+01:00

I've sometimes thought that the danger with the daily bread bit of the Lord's prayer is that it could be taken to be an endorsement of parking space praying. Of course in a wider context we would see that kind of praying for personal advantage needs putting in its place. As Jolleyblogger David Wayne says in this rather good posting:

In the Lord's prayer, Jesus tells us that, when we pray for ourselves, we are to pray for our most basic needs, like food. He doesn't give us an example of praying for other things which are to our advantage, and certainly not when something to our advantage would put someone else at a disadvantage.

The wider ecology of the prayer includes noting that daily bread is requested in the context of praying for God's will [as Jollyblogger says

this admonition to pray about details like parking spaces may take our minds off of bigger things like the kingdom of God. If the Lord's prayer teaches us anything it teaches us to make the coming of the kingdom of God the primary thing in our prayers.

] to be manifested and is framed on the other side by confession and praying not to be led into evil. Part of that means recognising when we are privileging our agenda to the exclusion of wider considerations.

Pray for a parking space by all means, God does care. But will we hear if God says that he hates what car owership is doing to the planet and our society? Or if God tells us someone else needs it more, take the train next time? Or if God tells us that the real issue is our exercise of patience or need to plan better ... ?

JOLLYBLOGGER: Praying for Parking Spaces ??:
Filed in: Lord's_prayer paternoster, prayer, daily_bread, personal, advantage, holistic

The Gospell Entyseth Draweth and Sheweth

2006-10-08T16:21:00.000+01:00

I found this fascinating. Initially what drew me in was the bold assertion that Tyndale had translated directly from Greek and Hebrew into English and so exposed the development of English to their influences. This is true and counters the idea going round that translations of the Lord's prayer that we use in English are from the Latin translations of the Greek which are alleged to be translations of the Aramaic. It's worth noting in passing that the Hebrew influence goes beyond words, semitisms have entered English via bible translation. An example of a semitism would be, I suspect, the mainly poetic use of post-nominal adjectival phrases using 'of': "Sky of blue, sea of green [in our yellow submarine]". This seems to echo the way that classical Hebrew does things. Arguably.

Anyway, what next grabbed my interest was the exposition of Tyndale's dialogue meditation on the Lord's prayer. It makes interesting reading because:

Tyndale’s theology, with a few anglo modifications, is Luther in English. So he uses the law to drive the synner to the gospell, which functions altogether differently: “The gospell entyseth draweth and sheweth from whence to fetche helpe and coupleth us to God thorowe fayth.” Faith grasps the gospell, and only faith can pray. “Prayar ys the effecte and worke off fayth,” but “they never praye which fele not the workynge of the lawe in their hertes.”

And it's interesting to see just how that theology affects the sense of the God with whom we relate in prayer. I found Tyndale's dialogue to be, at least as quoted, rather heavy on the unworthiness of humans. Now I don't have any quarrel with the notion of that unworthiness, what I find interesting, however, is how that approach effectively brackets out or significantly delays the boldness, affection and itimacy of 'Father' against the background of Jesus' use of the term in the gospels. It seems to me that something significant is lost if the Lutheran 'Law then Gospel' theme is the only one and ends up ousting grace by constantly repeating the Law even to those who have come to grace.

It's good if one already has a sense of unworthiness such as Luther began with. I'm less sure that it is healthy as an ongoing spirituality. And I'm even less convinced that it is implied by the Lord's prayer.

Middlebrow � The Gospell Entyseth Draweth and Sheweth: Filed in: Lord's_prayer paternoster, prayer, gospel, Luther, Tyndale, Father

our daily bread and our simplicity

2006-10-05T19:59:00.000+01:00

I have been wondering where I saw this verse, but having forgotten hwo it went couldn't find it on the Bible search websites. So it was good to find this piece and the reflection on it.

we could also be saying, "Please, God, don't give us too much!" Let what he gives us today be enough. Be content. Proverbs 30:8 says, "Give me neither poverty nor riches, but give me only my daily bread." This is a call to simplicity if I've ever heard one.

It fits with the perspective of making sure that we pray for our own daily bread in an acknowledged context of an interdependent world where praying for the will of God to be done means praying for daily bread for someone else. And the implications of prayin thaty be to recognise that the systems of supply and demand that bring us our own daily bread may be acting against the prayer for others' daily bread and indeed the prayers of those othrs for their own daily bread. A working towards fair trading and compassionate aid for development in a sustainable manner is implied in this prayer and we need to live our prayer if is to be more than just babbling like "pagans".

Obviously, there is more on this in Praying the Pattern! [See panel right].
Nebraska_thegoodlife's Xanga Site - Give us this day our daily bread...:
Filed in: Lord's_prayer, paternoster, daily_bread, Bible, simplicity, wealth

Hallowed Be Thy Name

2006-10-01T17:02:00.000+01:00

I think that I may be formulating a hypothesis about where the idea that 'hallowed be your name' is a petition. These Lutheran catechisms have it as such. And looking at them you start to see where categorising them as petitionary starts to get you.

Here is what our catechisms have to say about this part of the Lord’s Prayer: Q 122: What does the first reqest mean? A. Hallowed be your name means: Help us to really know you, to bless, worship, and praise you for all your works and for all that shines forth from them: your almighty power, wisdom, kindness, justice, mercy, and truth. And it means: Help us to direct all our living- what we think, say, and do- so that your name will never be blasphemed because of us but always honored and praised. The WLC: Q 190: What do we pray for in the first petition? A. In the first petition, (which is, Hallowed be thy name), acknowledging the utter inability and indisposition that is in ourselves and all men to honour God aright, we pray, that God would by His grace enable and incline us and others to know, to acknowledge, and highly to esteem him, his titles, attributes, ordinances, word, works, and whatsoever he is pleased to make himself known by; and to glorify him in thought, word, and deed: that he would prevent and remove atheism, ignorance, idolatry, profaneness, and whatsoever is dishonorable to him; and, by his over-ruling providence, direct and dispose of all things to his own glory.

As I say in 'Praying the Pattern', we should rather interpret the phrase as an expression of praise in line with the way that the prayer seems to echo the Kaddish form of Hebrew praying. The problem is that if we see it as petitionary, we end up with a big overlap of meaning and potential referents with the 'Kingdom come/will be done' section of the prayer. It also means that a praising component of the prayer disappears, and it is hard to think that the pattern prayer for Christians would do without one of the essential 'prayer food groups'.
Hallowed Be Thy Name � Green Baggins:

Filed in: Lord's_prayer, paternoster, learning, hallowed, name, petition, praise

Lords Prayer in Klingon

2006-09-30T19:00:00.000+01:00

Having learnt the Lord's prayer in Aramaic, where next? Well, there's always Klingon ... I have a dictionary someone bought me for Christmas a couple of years or so ago.... I'm not sure whether the sound of the language would suit it, Klingon always sounds like barking orders.

vavma' QI'tu'Daq, quvjaj ponglIj:
ghoSjaj wo'lIj, qaSjaj Dochmey DaneHbogh
tera'Daq QI'tu'Daq je.
DaHjaj maHvaD DaHjaj Soj yInobneS,
'ej yemmeymaj tIbIneSQo'
maHvaD yembogh nuvpu' DIbIjbe'moH.
ghotlhu'moHneSQo', 'ach mIghghachvo' ghotoDneS.
reH SoHvaD wo', HoS je, batlh je.

Mayberry Meets Star Trek - Now this is interesting.:Filed in: random_nonsense, Klingon, Lord's_prayer

Abba, Father ....

2006-09-17T18:56:00.000+01:00

Abba is quoted in Aramaic three times in the NT. Here's the low down on the meaning of the word. Is it best translated 'Daddy' or 'Father' or what?

The Jewish father was not the tyrannical autocrat that was often characteristic of Roman culture. But neither was he the "older brother" that the Western society father often seems to think desirable. He was the ruler of the house, and was expected to be honored and obeyed. There was certainly affection and love, but not frivolity nor flippancy

How does this affect the way we pray to Abba?

In 'Praying the Pattern' I tried to hold on to the tension of both intimacy and awe, which I judge to have been represented in the use of the word Abba and also Matthew's 'in heaven'. The rest of the NT seems clear that we can approach God with boldness, but there is also awe. Take a look at Hebrews to see both represented. We need to avoid the casual familiarity which makes God in effect less than ourselves but on the other hand the fear and trembling that robs us of any sense of a welcome and belonging with God.

Aramaic Thoughts with Benjamin Shaw on StudyLight.org
Filed in: abba, Aramaic, Newer_Testament, NT

Way of a Pilgrim: On the Lord's Prayer by John Bunyan

2006-09-16T10:50:00.000+01:00

Came across this rather nice poetic paraphrase of the Lord's prayer by John Bunyan. With hat-tippig thanks to Randy Williams of Way of Pilgrim.

Our Father which in heaven art, Thy name be always hallowed;

Thy kingdom come, thy will be done;Thy heavenly path be followed By us on earth
as 'tis with thee,We humbly pray;

And let our bread us given be, From day to day.

Forgive our debts as we forgive those that to us indebted are:

Into temptation lead us not, But save us from the wicked snare.

The kingdom's thine, the power too, We thee adore; The glory also shall be thine for evermore.

Way of a Pilgrim: On the Lord's Prayer by John Bunyan: Filed in: Bunyan, paraphrase, versified, Lord's_prayer

Aboun from Syrian Orthodox church

2006-09-15T12:24:00.000+01:00

if you have a sound player that can cope with ogg files [and if you don't, complain to Microsoft or whoever, ogg is open source so there's no excuse not to include it in the codecs], here's a sung version of the Aramaic Lord's prayer as traditionally sung in the Syriac Orthodox Church. The accent is a bit different from some other versions you might come across.
Aboun.ogg (application/ogg Object)
Filed in: sound_file, ogg, Abwun, Syriac, sung