One morning in the Philippines, i was meditating on the traditionally labelled ‘Lord’s Prayer’ that Jesus teaches His disciples and just started scribing my own version. Just kinda happened. When i told Val later that’s what i had done, she had on the same day without any kind of connection with me done exactly the same thing. So we read our prayers to each other and this is mine:

Our Fathe… Creator! Our Creator!

God who reigns unchallenged in the realms above and presences God’self on earth

Hallowed be Your name

Holy, Set Apart, Divine, Recognised, Praised, Awe-inducing be Your name

Your Kingdom of Love and Forgiveness

Of second chances and redeemed stories

Your Kingdom of transformation, of creativity, of third ways, of alternative endings,

Kingdom of narrow paths and bridges over deep chasms,

Be here on earth in all its fullness and realness,

Honesty, possibility and significance.

As above, so below.

Your Kingdom uncaptured by men and war and dispossession and the false idle of religion with all its colours and sounds

and smoke concealing the lonely powerless man behind the curtain.

Provide for us this day and every day

Just enough to satisfy our bellies and the empty stomachs of those who would die at our doors.

And refuse to entertain for a minute all that we have done to tarnish your nature and heap ridicule on to your redemption story of enough.

Reflect that image of forgiveness back at us that we might mirror the same to those we consider to have hurt us, those who withhold the petty sum of change they still owe.

Keep us strong and on your path when seductive whispering voices and the illusion of things would have us stepping to the side.

Deliver us from the scheming plans of the evil one who seeks not to disappoint or upset us but see our very destruction take place.

For it is all yours. And long may we remember and echo that. Kingdom, power, glory, church.

Yours and yours alone. Ours to steward and watch over and testify to and love.

For all time that has passed and that which You are still to witness.

So be it. Let it be so. Amen.

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[For another one of my poems, titled ‘They Hide’ click here]