Our Father...who always stands with the weak, the powerless, the poor, abandoned, the sick, the aged and the very young, the unborn, and those who by victim of their circumstance bear the heat of the day.
Who art in heaven...where everything will be reversed, where the first will be last and the last will be first, where all will be well and every manner of being will be well.
Hallowed be thy name...may we acknowledge always your holiness, respecting that your ways are not our way, your standards not our standards. May the reverence we give your name pull us out of the selfishness that prevents us from seeing the pain of our neighbor.
Your kingdom come...help us create a world where beyond our own needs and hurts, we will do justice, love tenderly, and walk humbly with you and each other.
Your will be done...open our freedom to let you in so that the complete mutuality that characterizes your life might flow through our veins and thus the life we help generate may radiate your equal love for all and your special love for the poor.
On earth as it is in heaven...may the work of our hands, the temples and structures we build in this world, reflect the temple and the structure of your glory so that the graciousness, tenderness, and justice of heaven will show forth within all our structures on earth.
Give...life and love to us and help us see always everything as a gift. Help us to know that nothing comes to us by rights and that we must give because we have been given to.
Us...the truly plural us. Give not to just our own but to everyone, including those who are very different than the narrow us. Give your gifts to all of us equally.
This day...not tomorrow. Do not let us push things off into some indefinite future so that we can continue to live justified lives in the face of injustice because we can make good excuses for our inactivity.
Our Daily Bread...so that each person in the world may have enough clean water, enough clean air, adequate health care and sufficient access to education so as to have the sustenance for a healthy life.
And forgive us our trespasses...forgive us our blindness toward our neighbor, our self pre-occupation, our racism, our sexism, and our propensity to worry only about ourselves and our own.
As we forgive those who trespass against us...help us to forgive those who victimize us. Help us to mellow out in spirit, not to grow bitter with age. To forgive the imperfect systems that wounded, and ignored us.
And lead us not into temptation...do not judge us only by what we have not done to help, but give us instead more days to mend our ways, our selfishness, and our systems.
But deliver us from evil...that is from that blindness that lets us continue to participate in anonymous systems within which we need not see who gets less as we get more.
For thine is the kingdom, the power and the glory forever
Amen
-Anonymous
Ascher 5 Year Interview
6 years ago
