The Lord's Prayer

O Birther! Father-Mother of the Cosmos
Focus your light within us - make it useful.

Create your reign of unity now
through our fiery hearts and willing hands.

Help us love beyond our ideals
and sprout acts of compassion for all creatures.

Animate the earth within us: we then
feel the Wisdom underneath supporting all.

Untangle the knots within
so that we can mend our hearts' simple ties to each other.

Don't let surface things delude us,
But free us from what holds us back from our true purpose.

Out of you, the astonishing fire,
Returning light and sound to the cosmos.

Amen.


Happy Easter!! I would like to share this translation of The Lord's Prayer from Aramaic to English taken from the book, Prayers of the Cosmos by Neil Douglas-Klotz (Sufi Saadi Shakur Chisti and student of Sufi mystic Samuel L. Lewis). There are several translations below each line of the prayer. The Aramaic is in Bold letters and The King James V version is in parenthesis. There is so much more in this book than appears on this page, so if you enjoy this translation please buy the book. You will not be disappointed.

1. Our Birth in Unity
Abwoon d'bwashmaya
(King James V version: Our Father which art in heaven

O Birther! Father-Mother of the Cosmos, you create all that moves in light.
O Thou! The Breathing Life of all, Creator of the Shimmering Sound that touches us.
Respiration of all worlds, we hear you breathing--in and out--in silence.
Source of Sound: in the roar and the whisper, in the breeze and the whirlwind, we hear your Name.
Radiant One: You shine within us, outside us--even darkness shines--when we remember.
Name of names, our small identity unravels in you, you give it back as a lesson.
Wordless Action, Silent Potency--where ears and eyes awaken, there heaven comes.
O Birther! Father-Mother of the Cosmos!

2. Clearing Space for the Name to Live
Nethqadash shmakh
(King James V version: Hallowed be they name)

Focus your light within us--make it useful: as the rays of a beacon show the way.
Help us breathe one holy breath feeling only you--this creates a shrine inside, in wholeness.
Help us let go, clear the space inside of busy forgetfulness: so the Name comes to live.
Your name, your sound can move us if we tune our hearts as instruments for its tone.
Hear the one Sound that created all others, in this way the Name is hallowed in silence.
In peace the Name resides: a "room of one's own," a holy of holies open, giving light, to all.
We all look elsewhere for this light-- it draws us out of ourselves--but the Name always lives within.
Focus your light within us--make it useful!

3. The Creative Fire
Teytey malkuthakh
(King James V version: Thy kingdom come)

Create your reign of unity now-- through our fiery hearts and willing hands.
Let your counsel rule our lives, clearing our intention for co-creation.
Unite our "I can" to yours, so that we walk as kings and queens with every creature.
Desire with and through us the rule of universal fruitfulness onto the earth.
Your rule springs into existence as our arms reach out to embrace all creation.
Come into the bedroom of our hearts, prepare us for the marriage of power and beauty.
From this divine union, let us birth new images for a new world of peace.
Create your reign of unity now!

4. Heaven Comes to Earth: Universal Compassion
Nehwey tzevyanach aykanna d'bwahmaya aph b'arha
(King James V version: Thy Will be done in earth, as it is in heaven)

Your one desire then acts with ours, as in all light, so in all forms.
Let all wills move together in your vortex, as stars and planets swirl through the sky.
Help us love beyond our ideals and sprout acts of compassion for all creatures.
As we find your love in ours, let heaven and nature form a new creation.
Unite the crowd within in a vision of passionate purpose: light mates with form.
Create in me a divine cooperation-- from many selves, one voice, one action.
Let your heart's fervent desire unite heaven and earth through our harmony.
Your one desire then acts with ours, as in all light, so in all forms.

5. The Blessings of Earthiness: The Next Step
Hawvlan lachma d'sunqanan yaomana
(King James V version: Give us this day our daily bread)

Grant what we need each day in bread and insight: subsistence for the call of growing life.
Give us the food we need to grow through each new day, through each illumination of life's needs.
Let the measure of our need be earthiness: give all things simple, verdant, passionate.
Produce in us, for us, the possible: each only-human step toward home lit up.
Help us fulfill what lies within the circle of our lives: each day we ask no more, no less.
Animate the earth within us: we then feel the Wisdom underneath supporting all.
Generate through us the bread of life: we hold only what is asked to feed the next mouth.
Grant what we need each day in bread and insight.

6. Letting Go, Heartbeat by Heartbeat
Wahboqlan khaubayn (wakhtahayn) aykanna daph khnan shbwoqan l'khayyabayn
(King James V version: And forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors)

Loose the cords of mistakes binding us, as we release the strands we hold of others' guilt.
Forgive our hidden past, the secret shames, as we consistently forgive what others hide.
Lighten our load of secret debts as we relieve others of their need to repay.
Erase the inner marks our failures make, just as we scrub our hearts of others' faults.
Absorb our frustrated hopes and dreams, as we embrace those of others with emptiness.
Untangle the knots within so that we can mend our hearts' simple ties to others.
Compost our inner, stolen fruit as we forgive others the spoils of their trespassing.
Loose the cords of mistakes binding us, as we release the strands we hold of others' guilt.

7. Remembrance: The Birth of New Creation and Liberty
Wela tahlan l'nesyuna Ela patzan min bisha
(King James V version: And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil)

Don't let surface things delude us, But free us from what holds us back (from our true purpose).
Don't let us enter forgetfulness, the temptation of false appearances.
(To the fraud of inner vacillation-- like a flag tossed in the wind-- alert us.)
But break the hold of unripeness, the inner stagnation that prevents good fruit.
(From the evil of injustice-- the green fruit and the rotten-- grant us liberty.)
Deceived neither by the outer nor the inner--free us to walk your path with joy.
Keep us from hoarding false wealth, and from the inner shame of help not given in time.
Don't let surface things delude us, But free us from what holds us back.

8. A Celebration of Cosmic Renewal
Metol dilakhie malkutha wahayla wateshbukhta l'ahlam almin. Ameyn.
(King James V version: For Thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, for ever. Amen.)

From you is born all ruling will, the power and life to do, the song that beautifies all-- from age to age it renews.
To you belongs each fertile function: ideals, energy, glorious harmony-- during every cosmic cycle.
Out of you, the queen- and kingship-- ruling principles, the "I can" of the cosmos...
Out of you, the vital force producing and sustaining all life, every virtue...
Out of you, the astonishing fire, the birthing glory, returning light and sound to the cosmos...
Again and again, from each universal gathering-- of creatures, nations, planets, time, and space-- to the next.
Truly--power to these statements-- may they be the ground from which all my actions grow: Sealed in trust and faith.
Amen.

___________________


The following textual notes relate to the first words in the prayer, Abwoon d'bwashmaya:

The prayer begins with an expression of the divine creation and the blessing that emanates from all parenting. The ancient Middle Eastern root ab refers to all fruit, all germination proceeding from the source of Unity. This root came to be used in the Aramaic word for personal father -- abba -- but still echoes its original ungendered root in sound-meaning. While abwoon is a derivative of this word for personal father, its original roots do not specify a gender and could be translated "divine parent." These roots reveal many levels of meaning. Bwn shows the ray or emanation of that father/ motherhood proceeding from potential to actual, here and now. In Aramaic, the character for b may also be pronounced w or include shades of both. An Aramaic scholar, the Reverend Mar Aprem (1981), notes that the same root (ab) may stand for personal father or spiritual father, depending on whether the w (for personal) or the b (for spiritual) is emphasized. No doubt, Jesus meant there to be an echo of both, as Aramaic is rich in this sublime wordplay. Further, according to the mystical science of sounds and letters, common to both Aramaic and Hebrew, the word abwoon points beyond our changing concepts of "male" and "female" to a cosmic birthing process. At this level of interpretation, abwoon may be said to have four parts to its sound-meaning:

A: the Absolute, the Only Being, the pure Oneness and Unity, source of all power and stability (echoing to the ancient sacred sound AL and the Aramaic word for God, Alaha, literally, "the Oneness").

bw: a birthing, a creation, a flow of blessing, as if from the "interior" of this Oneness to us.

oo: the breath or spirit that carries this flow, echoing the sound of breathing and including all forces we now call magnetism, wind, electricity, and more. This sound is linked to the Aramaic phrase rukha d'qoodsha, which was later translated as: "Holy Spirit."

n: the vibration of this creative breath from Oneness as it touches and interpenetrates form. There must be a substance that this force touches, moves, and changes. This sound echoes the earth, and the body here vibrates as we intone the whole name slowly: Ah-bw-oo-n.

The rest of the phase completes the motion of divine creation. In d'bwashmaya, the central root is found in the middle: shm. From this root comes the word shem, which may mean light, sound, vibration, name, or word. The root shm indicates that which "rises and shines in space," the entire sphere of a being. In this sense, one's name included one's sound, vibration, or atmosphere, and names were carefully given and received. Here the "sign" or "name" that renders Abwoon knowable is the entire universe.

The ending -- aya shows that this shining includes every center of activity, every place we see, as well as the potential abilities of all things. In effect, shmaya says that the vibration or word by which one can recognize the Oneness-God's name-is the universe. This was the Aramaic conception of "heaven." This word is central to many of the sayings of Jesus and usually misunderstood. In Greek and later in English, "heaven" became a metaphysical concept out of touch with the processes of creation, It is difficult for the Western mind to comprehend how one word can have such seemingly different meanings. Yet this was the worldview of the native Middle Eastern mystic.

In the first line of Jesus' prayer, we remember our origins -- not in guilt or imperfection, but in blessing and unity, in both vibration and stillness. For the divine breath (rukha) touches even the' absence of what we can measure as "light" or "sound!