As we move closer to Holy Week, I feel especially grateful to have undertaken the study of Prayers of the Cosmos, with a group of fellow Jesus-followers each Sunday of this Lenten season. This book of commentary and translation by Dr. Neil Douglas-Klotz is subtitled “Reflections on the Original Meaning of Jesus’ Words.” I can truly say the author’s elucidation of the Aramaic words of Jesus has blown my mind in all kinds of ways. It has given new breath, meaning, and energy to my praying “The Lord’s Prayer” from my past recitations.
The Prayer is found in Matthew and Luke’s gospels, with the shorter version in Luke. If you should ever have an opportunity to do a wiki search for the prayer, you might be as amazed as I was by the way the traditional language has been over-spiritualized in interpretation. Aramaic, the first language of Jesus of Nazareth and those who would have been his early followers is a vastly nuanced language— earthy, sensual, and rich in meaning. It seems to carry a paradigm of human life as one of ripe or unripe fruitfulness. This is a far cry from the concepts of morality or “moral living” that we typically interpret in life today.
Still, everyone knows how the prayer is usually prayed these days. Our Lord taught his disciples to pray this way, and we gallop through it like we’re off to the races, stumbling through the words we have come to say by rote. I often wonder if we realize that it is a prayer and that we are praying to the Great Mystery of LIFE. Studying the book has opened my eyes to the words I am saying and opened my heart to the joy and delight of saying them…even moving me into SILENCE.
I am writing to share with you the culmination of my understanding of the words we have been given from the Aramaic in a way most meaningful to me. Thank you for reading them.
With Love,
Freda Marie+
Abwoon d’bwashmaya (Our Father which art in heaven)
Most Holy ONENESS of the Cosmos: Source of LIGHT and SOUND and Breath; You birth me and ALL that is!
Nethqadash shmakh (Hallowed be thy name)
Clear the space of my Heart so that YOU may LIVE within me.
Teytey malkuthakh (Thy kingdom come)
Your “I CAN” O Holy ONE, is my “I can,” so birth this new image in and through me!
Nehwey tzevyanach aykanna d’bwashmaya aph b’arha (Thy will be done in earth, as it is in heaven)
As YOUR desire is in heaven, make it so in all the earth…especially in the earth that is my body.
Hawvlan lachma d’sunqana yaomana (Give us this day our daily bread)
Produce with life and soul, food for our eating, and an illuminated measure of insight and understanding for this day…moment by moment.
Washboqlan khaubayn (wakhtahayn) aykanna daph khnan shbwoqan l’khayyabayn ( And forgive us our debts, awsw we forgive our debtors)
Return us to our original state of slender ties—releasing and letting go with every breath, the tangled threads that bind us—just as we release (and no longer hold on to) the tangled threads of others’ guilt. Help us to FLOW and let go!
Wela tahln l’nesyuna Ela patzan min bisha (And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil)
Do not let us enter into anything that causes us inner vacillation or agitation from our true purpose in life. Give us freedom to act at the right time and produce good fruit.
Metol dilakhie malkutha wahayla wateshbukhta l’ahlam almin. Ameyn. (For thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, for ever. Amen.)
For Your “I CAN” is the Life Force energy of the Cosmos, giving Light and Sound to ALL that IS; in harmony and balance from age to age (as in a Dance)! Amen.