The more we learn about deep time and evolutionary cosmology, the more abstract ideas and images of God become. It is easy to lose our grasp, to wonder exactly what we mean by the word God, and therefore how we communicate with it. What is it that you picture when you pray? Do you use images, sounds, words — all of the above? We are going to spend the next couple of weeks unpacking the Lord’s Prayer, probably the best known prayer in Christendom, and try to imagine how it applies in today’s world. The syntax of our prayers can change the meaning entirely: God? or God!! These have two different implications.

We want to explore how prayer can hold paradox — intimacy and mystery, grief and hope — all at once. In Hebrew, the word prayer derives from the reflexive verb lehitpallel, which means “to examine oneself.” The Latin, precare, means “to ask earnestly, to beg.” To pray, then, is simultaneously to look within and outside of the self for understanding. I wonder, then, if we can use prayer and contemplation to find that balance between the enlarged self and the infinite cosmos.

We are on a journey, folks! Looking at old things with new eyes to find some solace about how to live in the in between. Thanks for listening!