Father's Day 2013

Our father in heaven ….

Today is a good day to pray the Lord’s Prayer. When I was younger, I used to resist the idea of praying written prayers. During the seven years Debbie and I battled cancer prayer become work, I am sorry to say. I don’t know if I can explain this adequately, but we gradually developed “battle fatigue” and got weary of desperate prayers. At the same time, in some mysterious way, our faith in God’s providence deepened and strengthened.  By the last two years of Debbie’s life, we became quiet. Our morning prayer together (the most treasured 30 minutes of our day) was most often spent in silence, sipping our respective coffee and tea.

During that time, two written prayers became precious to us. One was St. Patrick’s Breastplate (which I never quite succeeded in memorizing). I developed a hobby of carving Celtic crosses drilling a hole in the bottom in which I would place a rolled up copy of St. Patrick’s prayer.

The other prayer was the Our Father. It was the one simple prayer we would pray in unison every morning together. It says it all. Sometimes we would add the short prayer of Jesus in the Garden, “Not my will but thine by done.”

I really miss those morning prayers with Debbie.

Our Father in heaven,
Reveal who you are.
Set the world right;
Do what’s best—
    as above, so below.
Keep us alive with three square meals.
Keep us forgiven with you and forgiving others.
Keep us safe from ourselves and the Devil.
You’re in charge!
You can do anything you want!
You’re ablaze in beauty!
    Yes. Yes. Yes.

(The Message)