Michelle DeRusha

Every Day Faith. Faith Every Day.

Prayer

Why the Plural Pronouns in the Lord’s Prayer Aren’t a Fluke

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Not long ago, I took it upon myself to edit the words of the Lord’s Prayer. That’s right: I rewrote the prayer written by Jesus himself. It wasn’t a complete rewrite, mind you; I simply tweaked the pronouns.

I decided the prayer would work better for me with singular rather than plural pronouns. For example, “Our father, who art in heaven,” became “My father, who art in heaven.” Likewise, “Forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us,” became “Forgive me my trespasses, as I forgive those who trespass against me,” and so on.

After all, I reasoned, the whole purpose of faith and religion is to encourage a personal relationship with God and, ultimately, personal salvation, right? What, then, was the point of praying in a plural voice? The “us” aspect of the prayer seemed to complicate the matter.

The funny thing was, I couldn’t do it. Every time I tried to pray my new individualized version of the Lord’s Prayer, I tripped over the words. Suddenly, the lines I’ve known by heart for decades refused to flow. My mind went blank, and I forgot whole sentences of the prayer I’d been praying since the second grade. Without the familiar plural pronouns in their rightful places, the prayer didn’t work.

The reason for this, of course, is the fact that, in the same way any habit is formed, the repetition of the same 70 words traveling the same neural pathway day in and day out over decades of recitation had firmly etched the Lord’s Prayer into my brain. Old habits die hard.

That said, though, the failed experiment gave me the unexpected opportunity to consider the question of why Jesus taught his disciples to prayer the Lord’s Prayer in the plural in the first place.

Turns out, the plural pronouns weren’t a mistake or even a fluke. Jesus taught his disciples, and us, to pray the Lord’s Prayer in the plural voice because our lives here on Earth aren’t about you and me individually, but rather, about you and me – us – here together.

Jesus knew that community is an integral component of faith. He knew that we need one another and that, ultimately, we are better together. When I pray the Lord’s Prayer, both alone and with others in communal worship, I am reminded that my relationship with God extends beyond myself. I am reminded that all of us together are Christ’s body. My daily bread is given, and I give daily bread to another. I am forgiven, and I forgive another.

Truth be told, I like my version of the Lord’s Prayer better, because on most days, I’d rather it be all about me. Living in community isn’t always easy. Our co-workers vote for the candidate we don’t like. Our neighbors think Creeping Charlie is a fine substitute for grass. Our family members leave their dirty socks on the living room floor (I’m speaking hypothetically, of course). Our friends hurt us, our loved ones betray us.

I don’t necessarily want to share my bread. I don’t necessarily want to forgive. I don’t necessarily want to see “the other side” of an argument.

Which is exactly why I need Jesus’ version rather than my own version of the Lord’s Prayer. I need to be reminded again and again as I pray the familiar words that it’s not just about me. It’s about us.

This post originally ran in the Lincoln Journal Star on July 14, 2018.

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When Walking is Prayer

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Though I’ve never met her in person, I’ve admired Hilary Yancey for a long time. She’s a deep thinker and a beautiful writer, and, lucky for all of us, she’s recently released her first book, Forgiving God: A Story of Faith – a memoir about becoming a mother to a child with disabilities and the impact that experience has had on her faith and on her relationship with God. I haven’t finished the book yet, because it just arrived in the mail today, but let me simply say that I picked it up while I was sitting here at my desk, read the opening few pages, and really, truly did not want to put it down. It’s a privilege to welcome Hilary to the blog today; I know you will be touched by her words.

Post by Hilary Yancey

I remember the first time I prayed with my eyes open. It was on a drive home from high school, late in the winter of my senior year. I had just gotten my driver’s license and was nervously winding my way down the same roads I had been traveling for years. I could feel the car swing into the familiar right turns and how my foot anticipated the next stop sign. But my eyes darted from side to side, my hands sweated at “10 and 2” on the steering wheel and out of my mouth slipped a decidedly complex prayer: “Lord Jesus do not let me die on this road I JUST got my license!”

I’ve always been the kind of person who prays with her eyes closed. I found it easier to concentrate on the ideas of my prayers, to imagine how they were being sent upwards and meeting Jesus in heaven. I prayed in this way to stop being distracted by the things I saw around me, by a book I wanted to read or a pile of laundry I was supposed to do. I thought that by closing my eyes I could close out the world and so through my prayers ascend somewhere else, wherever it was I thought God was.

A few years ago, my prayer life changed. I was pregnant with my first child; we’d received a challenging medical diagnosis at our 20-week ultrasound; I’d never needed to pray more. But when I closed my eyes, it was darkness. There were no feelings of ascent, no sure footing. The world had interrupted my old patterns and it was impossible to close out the world because the world had shrunk to the space of my body expanding for my son and the world was with me everywhere I went.

By the time my son was born, I had given up praying with my eyes closed; I had almost given up the practice of praying. But I walked: to and from his crib in the NICU, to and from the family lounge where doctors met with us to share further diagnoses, treatment options, to and from my bed to the shower to the hallway again, and around the outskirts of the hospital building when I would call my friend to cry. I could not speak to God directly, except to yell, and so I walked.

And my footsteps became words, they became prayers, but open-eyed prayers, prayers of pressing into the world instead of pushing away. My footsteps took me both where I hadn’t wanted to go and where it turns out I needed to, to the place of being surrounded, immersed in the very experiences I had once prayed to avoid.

I walked my son to the doors of the OR, I walked the floorboards of our house listening to the breaths in and out of his new trach, I walked us around the lobbies of his follow up clinics and through the hospital hallways too many times to count, memorizing the turns – up one floor, left then right and around to the desk where they check your ID, down the hallway, slight right to the sink and then left and then Jack, my son, is on the right – all of this walking and I emerged with prayers carved into my feet, with prayers left on those floorboards and hallway tiles, echoes of what my mind couldn’t say but my body could.

I am still at the very beginning of learning to pray. I am still working on finding a new rhythm of conversation with God. But now, when I can’t find a way to say what I mean, when I close my eyes and feel only quiet dark, I start walking. And the footsteps become words, and the words become prayers.

I turn the corner and I am somewhere new.

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Hilary Yancey loves good words, good questions, and sunny afternoons sitting on her front porch with a strong cup of tea. She and her husband, Preston, and their two children, Jack and Junia, live in Waco, Texas, where Hilary is completing her PhD in philosophy at Baylor University. Her first book, Forgiving God: A Story of Faith was just published by FaithWords. You can read more of her writing on her website and follow her on Instagram at @hilaryyancey.

When You Don’t Get the Exact Answer You’re Looking For

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I recently made a startling discovery. As I hunched over a stack of crumpled pay stubs, invoices, and receipts and punched calculator buttons until my fingertips were numb in an attempt to prepare my 2015 taxes, I realized that I’ve earned less total income this year than last. This is not good for a person who makes her living as a self-employed writer.

The realization immediately prompted a flurry of questions and panicky prayers. Should I start looking for a traditional job? I asked God. Should I wait out this season of uncertainty? Should I try to eke out more freelance work? What’s your plan for me?

The more I prayed, the more specific my prayers got. Tell me what to do, I pleaded. Give me a sign; show me which steps to take.

Moses had a similar heart-to heart with God when the Israelites were wandering in the wilderness. Things hadn’t been going particularly well for the new leader. Not only had his people crafted a golden calf to worship, they were also grumbling non-stop, pestering Moses about where they were headed and blaming him for their miserable existence.

Frustrated, Moses laid it all on the line with God. “You have been telling me, ‘Lead these people, but you have not let me know whom you will send with me,” he said. “If you are pleased with me, teach me your ways so I may know you and continue to find favor with you.” (Exodus 33:12-13)

Moses demanded specifics – “Whom will you send with me?” – as well as a clear strategy – “Teach me your ways.”

God heard Moses’ plaintive questions and his yearning for specifics, yet he answered in a way Moses did not likely expect. “My Presence will go with you,” the Lord assured his devoted leader, “and I will give you rest.” (Exodus 33:14)

Like Moses, I didn’t receive a specific answer, detailed instructions, or even the answer I desired from God the day I blurted my panicky prayers. Instead, I was reminded of God’s promise to his people – the promise he made to Moses in ancient times, the promise he still has for us today.

We may want the step-by-step plan, but we get something even better, something that will carry us through even the most challenging circumstances. We get God’s presence.

God is who he says he is: Emmanuel — God with us.

A Prayer to Start Your Week

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Yesterday my church celebrated a special global worship service with amazing prayers and songs from around the world. We opened the service with this prayer, written by Japanese theologian Masao Takenaka. It was so beautiful, so appropriate for our time, and such a perfect way to start the new day and the new week, I thought I’d share it here today.

Peace for your day, peace for your week, friends.

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Eternal God, we say good morning to you —
Hallowed be your name. 

Early this morning,
before we begin our work, we praise your glory.
Renew our bodies as fresh as morning flowers. 

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Open our inner eyes,
as the sun casts new light upon the darkness
which prevailed over the night.
Deliver us from all captivity. 

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Nebraska plains sun

Give us wings of freedom
like the birds in the sky to begin a new journey.
Restore justice and freedom,
as a mighty stream running continuously as day follows day.

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Temperance at Sunset

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We thank you for the gift of this morning,
and a new day to work with you.

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Amen.

Prayer is the Attention that Comes First

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A few weeks ago during the Q & A session after a book reading, my friend Kori asked me what I thought about prayer. I stumbled over the question, admitting that my definition of and approach to prayer is broader and more fluid than it used to be.

These days, I told the audience, my prayers are often wordless. My best prayers, the ones that feel most genuine, are simply those moments I stand in my backyard, glimpsing the early morning slant of light, pausing to catch the melodious call of an unseen oriole. I don’t say anything. I don’t even really think anything. I just simply am.

“In those moments I don’t consciously realize I’m praying,” I said to the audience, “but I think that’s essentially what it is: a wordless prayer, a moment of silent praise and thanksgiving to God, a tuning-in to my surroundings and to him.”

At the time, perched on a stool in the local bookstore, my answer felt like a cop-out and not nearly “religious” enough.

Recently I sat in a weathered deck chair overlooking Lake Superior and watched a spider skate from her gossamer threads to the sun-warmed rail. Just beyond the deck, two Canadian geese flew side-by-side like a single, sleek body, low over the still, blue water. The lake was calm, the sun sizzling off the surface like a Fourth of July sparkler.

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I was reading poetry that morning, a rarity for me – a volume of Mary Oliver poems I’d picked up in a local bookstore. I turned to a poem entitled “The Real Prayers are Not the Words, but the Attention that Comes First,” and I knew, right then, that was the answer I had awkwardly tried to offer the audience at my reading weeks earlier.

Prayer is often wordless acknowledgement, attention, silent awe. Prayer is standing still in order to open myself to God. Prayer, for me, is often the moment that comes before the words. The moment I watch two geese fly as one and a spider dance from web to rail. The moment I pause in my backyard to listen to the oriole singsong from the river birch tree.

I think this is what God conveys when he says, in Psalm 46, “Be still, and know that I am God.”

We miss him in the flurry of day-to day-activity, our eyes fixed on our smartphones, iPod cords dangling from our ears. We miss him as we hurtle across town, dashing into the grocery store to pick up a frozen pizza for dinner, squeezing in a quick call to mom as we scurry toward the automatic doors. And then we wonder why our prayers feel empty and dry when we finally pencil in a few moments for quiet contemplation with our Bible and our journal.

When we offer God only a fraction of ourselves, we experience only a fraction of him.

We deprive ourselves of the fullest, deepest experience of God’s love when don’t allow ourselves ever to be fully present with him and in him.

Mary Oliver and the psalmist are onto something important. They know that the truest, most genuine connections with God often come not in the helter-skelter of daily life, and perhaps not even in the words of prayers whispered, recited or thought, but in the moments we quiet ourselves enough to notice where and who we are.

Moments so pure, so untainted, they precede even language itself.

{the poem that inspired the blog post}:

The Real Prayers are Not the Words, but the Attention that Comes First

The little hawk leaned sideways and, tilted, rode
the wind. Its eye at this distance looked like green
glass; its feet were the color of butter. Speed, obviously,
was joy. But then, so was the sudden, slow circle
it carved into the slightly silvery air, and the squaring
of its shoulders, and the pulling into itself the long,
sharp-edged wings, and the fall into the grass where it
tussled a moment, like a bundle of brown leaves, and
then, again, lifted itself into the air, that butter-color
clenched in order to hold a small, still body, and it flew
off as my mind sang out oh all that loose, blue rink
of sky, where does it go to, and why?           — Mary Oliver

{As we prepare to leave for the north woods, I am reposting this reflection that ran last July. I’m hoping to squeeze in a little time and maybe a few poems on that deck again this year}.