Actually, kat, I just happen to have a beat-all--to-hell copy, which pretty much goes with me everywhere, of the book that it came from, Neil Douglas-Klotz's Prayers of the Cosmos, which approaces both the Lord's Prayer and the Beatitudes from a view which tries to unlock their inner truth through basically riffing on the many layers of meaning which would naturally be present in their original Aramaic rendering. Klotz himself is Sufi, and a student of Middle Eastern mysticism and its history way back to pre-monotheistic times. He makes a pretty convincing case that Jesus didn't intend his prayer in any kind of patriarchal/denominational way.

I think it's pretty cool that Kelida is able to see a rendering of the Lord's Prayer as not being specifically Christian. For me, that's kind of the whole point of it.

Anyway, your calendar abridged Klotz's version considerably, kat. The original:

O Birther! Father-Mother of the Cosmos,

Focus your light within us--make it useful:

Create your reign of unity now--

Your one desire then acts with ours,
as in all light, so in all forms.

Grant what we need each day in bread and insight.

Loose the cords of mistakes binding us,
as we release the strands we hold
of others' guilt.

Don't let surface things delude us,

But free us from what holds us back.

From you is born all ruling will,
the power and the life to do,
the song that beautifies all,
from age to age it renews.
Truly--power to these statements--
may they be the ground from which all
my actions grow: Amen.

And even that doesn't do justice to Klotz's translation, because he calls it only "one possible translation", where in point of fact he takes apart each line of the old prayer into five to eight or so possible parallel, noncontradictory meanings, any of which you could combine together to create your own "Aramaic Prayer of Jesus."

Liberating stuff.

The Aramaic on which this is based is so beautiful that I include it below. I include the original Aramaic prayer in my daily meditation. In January I attended a mens' creations spirituality retreat at which we sang the opening lines of the prayer in Aramaic while dancing for Universal Peace in circles...amazing....

The Lord's Prayer (Aramaic)

Abwoon d'bwashmaya

Nethqadash shmakh

Teytey malkuthakh

Nehwey tzevyanach aykanna d'bwashmaya aph b'arha

Hawvlan lachma d'sunqanan yaomana

Washboqlan khaubayn (wakhtahayn) aykana daph khnan shbwoqan l'khayyabayn

Wela tahlan l'nesyuna

Ela patzan min bisha

Metol dilakhie malkutha wahayla wateshbukhta l'ahlam almin

Ameyn

All of the quotes above are from Prayers of the Cosmos: Meditations on the Aramaic Words of Jesus, Neil Douglas-Klotz, Harper San Francisco, 1990.

Ameyn,

Chris