The People's Prayer

A variation on the Lord's prayer by Shannon May and Peggy O'Neill that we read in class today.


Oh Sister and Friend and Lover in Heaven
Your Name is many names and All names and they are holy.
You own no kingdom, for you are
not a king. Your Will will not be done for
your Will is an ever increasing, growing, expanding process, not
a single event from on high. Your
Will will take years to accomplish, for it includes EVERYONE
and everyone is a lot...
Your Will forgets no one, refuses
No One
and inclusion takes passion and courage and
a long time...

Your earth will be loved one day, for someday
the greedy of the world will understand their reliance
on the soil and trees and water you created and freely gave.
And they will have to apologize to those who died for lack of resources, when

Heaven comes, justice alive on earth, power and food and wealth
Re-distributed so no one should have
Nothing while some hold the riches of the world...

Your gift of daily bread is your continuing life,
life that you formed in your own womb and when the time came
pulsed and pushed and birthed all that is and is to come.
With this bread we will feed your children, those who have been
denied food and drink, because some have too much.
Help us to feed the world, because we can, you
have given plenty of food.

Forgive our giving up, our fixation on being comfortable and powerful
as a nation, a church, a people
from specific privileged social
locations who would like to keep things this way most of the time.
Forgive out inability to see beyond our street and experience,
thereby denying the lives lived by others,
and denying the power and complexity that is you.
Forgive our insistence on locking you in a box,
a wall, a room-
We have trespassed on your fullness,
your design, your sacred spaces. Forgive our self-made
boundaries
that deny who you are...

Teach us the ways by which we can forgive
others when they are unfair, unjust, and
hurtful. You are the forger and refiner of friendships, the one
who spoke into Creation
all that is and all that will come. You
sew together quilts of relationships that we can
share in order to keep the world warm and safe and at
Peace. Help us find the tools of
conflict-mediation so we can express the
Unique Power of You: you the peace-maker,
relationship binder, lover of diversity and all the
Children you birthed and nursed
and loved and listened to...
Teach us to care so that we may know the joy that is
completeness, and the letting go of hatred and
bigotry and discrimination.

We are tempted by the worldly promises of power and satisfaction and
popularity and freedom and money and fame. Draw us into memory.
Memory of the freedom that comes when we
are not tied to material wealth, the joy that rises when we join with
you, the jubilee-bringer, the sister- lover- friend
who shows us that only right relationships
can make the world safer and more passionate, more
centered on the needs of others, and more
Life- affirming.
Help us to avoid the temptations of easy lives.

Evil cannot overcome you for you are
truth and fire, water and nature, the life-giver,
life-sustainer, gardner, singer, rain-bringer, teacher, guide,
safety-net, healer, toucher, strengthener, and
while our collective sin and the
evils of greed and objectification make you
Weep, these forces
can never drown your
Song. Your voice cries in pain WITH ours,
will not just remain Silent in the
face of injustice, will not let violence strip
Love from Life.

For you are the Creatrix, the season-changer, the maker of snow,
the center of hope,
a friend for the journey, a helper amidst troubles, a
Spectrum of Aliveness.

For you are a man looking for a lost child, a woman grinding
corn for tortillas, a
child laughing and singing and running in the wind, a grandmother
crying in sorrow, a bride nervous about the life she is
Beginning.
You are a boy searching for meaning after losing parents,
You are the Mothers
of the
Disappeared marching for the truth to be told.
You are the ministers striving to make a story real for people, though
it has been so distorted for centuries.

For you are those with jobs that pay too little, that are not respected,
you are the child care-giver and the homemaker who
feels isolated and inadequate, you are the hungry, the sick,
the marginalized, the afraid, the battered, the powerless,
the minority voice and color
and race and creed.
You are the woman who loves another woman
and is despised for it.
You are the man who is feared because some men
rape. You are the prisoner, the immigrant,
the migrant worker.
You are Afghanistan and El Salvador and Ethiopia
and all the world.

Forever is a term we cannot comprehend, and that makes it
not meaningful. What we do know is that you
Will survive the
floods and disasters, famine and war, hatred and paternalism
and will exist when we all see more clearly than now.
What we do know
by heart
is that your Life-force makes mountains rise up from
plains, makes wheat and grains plentiful
each season, that your love and desire sends the rain and heat
that nourishes Your Creation.
Love never fails, indeed. Your friendship, like all
True Friendships, is the motion
of the
World, driving each day, delivering each
newborn. bleeding with every woman, wounded person, tree,
and animal, singing in perpetual
and infectious
Hope.
Your very Presence is our courage to continue the path you cleared...

AMEN.