When translated from the original language of Jesus, "The Lord's Prayer" is beautiful, and very different from what I had to say in school every morning as a child! I especially appreciate the idea of god as both verb and feminine and masculine.
The Prayer of Jesus in Aramaic
O Birthing! Fathering-Mothering of the Cosmos!
You create all that moves in light.
Focus your light within us - make it useful: as the rays of a beacon show the way.
Create your reign of unity now - through our firey hearts and willing hands.
Grant what we need each day in bread and insight:
subsistence for the call of growing life.
Loose the cords of mistakes binding us,
as we release the strands we hold of others' guilt.
Don't let us enter forgetfulness
But free us from unripeness
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 source from which all my actions grow.
Sealed in trust & faith. Amen.
the Peshitta (Syriac-Aramaic) version of Matthew 6:9-13 & Luke 11:2-4
You can't order a poem like you order a taco.
Walk up to the counter, say, "I'll take two"
and expect it to be handed back to you
on a shiny plate.
Still, I like your spirit.
Anyone who says, "Here's my address,
write me a poem," deserves something in reply.
So I'll tell you a secret instead:
poems hide. In the bottoms of our shoes,
they are sleeping. They are the shadows
drifting across our ceilings the moment
before we wake up. What we have to do
is live in a way that lets us find them.
Once I knew a man who gave his wife
two skunks for a valentine.
He couldn't understand why she was crying.
"I thought they had such beautiful eyes."
And he was serious. He was a serious man
who lived in a serious way. Nothing was ugly
just because the world said so. He really
liked those skunks. So, he reinvented them
as valentines and they became beautiful.
At least, to him. And the poems that had been hiding
in the eyes of the skunks for centuries
crawled out and curled up at his feet.
Maybe if we reinvent whatever our lives give us
we find poems. Check your garage, the odd sock
in your drawer, the person you almost like, but not quite.
And let me know.
- Naomi Shihab Nye
It Happens Like This
