There are days, of course, when the lip-service pieties must be observed and respected. And then there are other days, when you see what mincemeat we Moderns have made of the Reality behind the pious mutterings. And so you attempt to devise a prayer - if that is the right word - more in keeping with the general disillusionment. Or the greater wisdom, or wiser sophistication, or more sophisticated Global Bastardliness or whatever. And since the emphasis is on the word attempt, here's mine:
Our fathers on earth . . .
May they be thoroughly useless and undependable
so that their names may be vile and execrated.
(As for the rest of us)
Man's Kingdom come,
Man's Will be done
in heaven even as it is on earth.
Let each one of us earn our daily bread by the sweat of our brow
with no help from anyone else.
That being accomplished,
may we DEMAND to be understood, forgiven and loved (after all we've earned it, right?) -
Even as we carefully ration and withhold love and forgiveness and understanding from others (who may not have earned much of anything).
But ABOVE ALL, deliver us not from evil:
Rather leave us to confront and conquer it boldly by our own strength:
So that the Kingdom
and the Power
and the Glory
at last may be ours
now and forever.
Amen.
(Edited.)
