The Jesus prayer – the one he taught to his disciples – is the one we so often recite by rote, knocking it off between a hymn and a scripture without thinking much about it. That’s what repetition can do; we become immune to the words we speak over and over. On the other hand … repetition is good. Important things are worth repeating. And important prayers, like the Lord’s Prayer, have a long, long shelf life.

One way that we can reclaim the Jesus prayer is to pray it in an “amplified” way, that is, praying between each petition. You can do this for yourself but here is a version I prayed and wrote one day. I commend it to you, but not nearly as much as the one you have to write for yourself.

Our Father

            The one Jesus called Abba, or daddy … the intimate Semitic address of a young child to their father – the original, archetypal, primordial parent who is and is for us; Source of our belonging, of the same being, from whence we have come and to whom we return, in whose core essence we are created.

Who art in heaven

            Heaven – an ancient way to conceptualize and talk about that which is beyond what is seen and known, hidden and yet present. Our address goes out from our being to a power deeper and broader than my own vapor of life. My life is folded into the fabric of a much larger design.

Hallowed be thy name

            Hallowed, holy, sacred is the name we use, the naming of the unnamable. You are holy, ineffable, and mysterious. It is time to take off my shoes and bow down before it - right on this trail where I walk – holy ground. And we try to express it all with mere words, sounds dashed off into the stellar night. Holy, I said, holy.

Thy Kingdom come

            We wait, we plead, we long for a fabric of holy, creative love to descend upon this planet and every planet, a fabric of love that will know when it finds what is sacred and awaken to it. Let every longing for the peaceable kingdom stir and shape and inspire hearts and souls and minds until every creature sleeps secure, with no regrets, hopeful for the morrow. Let the time of a new way that is not our way come!

Thy will be done

            Let your purposes, woven into the creation in love, be reflected in patterns of justice and peace. Not our will, often guided by self-interest and mixed motives, but a higher purpose that exceeds our own, be done. Help me to cast aside my own plan in the interest of a more compelling and excellent way that is shown to me.

On earth as it is in heaven

            Let the ways we now see match the ideals that are yet to be realized, hopes for the world that are out of sight, slumbering in the silent mystery of God, unfolding but undeveloped. In our prayer, in our communion, in our living, let things visible match those unseen.

Give us this day our daily bread

            We, creatures, dependent, fragile, needy, seek the staff of life, bread for the table, bread for the journey, the bread of life. Without absolute certainty, we ask for today’s portion, trusting that we will have what we need.

And forgive us our debts

            …for there are many. And they can’t be repaid. There are no do-overs. We cannot live, we cannot have a future, without the freedom of forgiveness and the new beginning it brings. Wipe our slate clean. Deliver us into the next chapter unburdened from the one that preceded it. 

As we forgive out debtors

            …for there are many who have wronged us. Help us to see them in the light of eternity, and free them from the burden of guilt even as we depend on the same freedom. Help us to be merciful to those who hurt us by intent or clumsiness or without knowing it. Bless them and keep them.

And lead us not into temptation

            We are not virtuous, but only want to be. We are not temptation-proof and can easily waver through our weakness. There are aspects of our souls, not proud ones, that are exceedingly selfish and cowardly. Keep us from plunging into those depths, and help us instead to plunge into the life-giving depths of the spirit.

But deliver us from evil

            There is plenty to go around, evil. And it terrifies us when we see it in others and it terrifies us when we see reflections of it in ourselves. It’s big, it’s ominous, and we need to be pulled from its edge like a pedestrian on the curb who is about to step into the path of a speeding bus.

For Thine is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever. Amen.

            And the end is praise, and bowing down, and leaping up, and knowing that the power of creation and life and spirit hold us like swings sweeping above ground, and that we will never be alone, and need not fear, and are children of the peace that passes all understanding. Amen.