Here we go again, ! !
Two versions of the Our Father, read by Catherine Bates on Sunday 7th May. This reading and the following address by Maud Robinson arrived within a day of each other. Coincidence ? ! ?

Version 1 – adapted for her Canadian congregation
by Reverend Jane Bramadat
Our Father or Mother, who art either in heaven, nirvana, limbo, sheol, Mecca or Salt Lake City, hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdom come, thy will be done, providing thy will is that Canada and the United States are always the big winners. Give us this day our daily white bread, black bread, roti, Italian bread, Jewish rye, English muffins, or tacos,.... And lead us not into any temptation that will be discovered and punished and deliver us from evil - particularly the evil that those others have the temerity to try out on us. For thine is the kingdom and the power and the glory, especially for people who still use words like 'thine.'
Version 2 - by Reverend William R. Murray

Our Mother, who art the earth,
Sacred are you and all life that comes from your womb.
May your benevolent and nurturing ways
Become the ways of all your offspring whose
Being is rooted and grounded in you.
Out of the bounty of your abundance give us
Who depend upon you this and every day
Sustenance for our lives.
Forgive us for wasting and polluting your rich
Resources even as we resolve to be more
Respectful of all life that springs from you.
And so nurture us that we may not be tempted
To harm you and your other children;
For to you belong beauty and grandeur and
Majesty so long as we in our greed do not
Desecrate and destroy you.
Amen.

The use of the prayer of Jesus can be contentious among some Unitarians. But it seems to me that although the traditional words of the prayer may not make sense to many people’s lives, the pattern of the prayer lays out in a simple and accessible form all of the main kinds of prayer. Praise; contemplation of things eternal; hope for the future of our world; intercession on behalf of ourselves and others; acknowledgment and repentance for shortcomings; petition for support in the difficult task of living an honourable and compassionate life. The one great mode of prayer, which I think it lacks is that of thanksgiving for all the wonder and blessings which surround us.
A matter hotly contested within some Christian circles is whether it is permissible to alter the language of the prayer – to, for example, substitute a different name for God than the ubiquitous – and troublesome for some – Father. Some have looked to a version of the gospel such as the New International Version, in which Jesus is reported as saying “This, then, is how you should pray.” This has been interpreted as saying that these are the words that Jesus used and therefore they should not be messed around with. Others however would look to versions such as the King James or the American Standard, which both translate this line as “After this manner therefore pray ye” adherents to this version of the Bible could argue that Jesus was setting out a pattern which is a useful guideline as to how prayer can be structured. This tiny point of difference in translation, I cannot opine on, as I am not a Greek scholar, however it gives an idea of why there will be food for study, debate and discussion for New Testament scholars for many millennia to come. For most Unitarians, of course, the exact wording of Christian scripture, while not utterly without interest, certainly is not prescriptive and therefore such arguments are moot.
“Our Father, who art in heaven
Hallowed by thy name”
For many women the fact that this most important prayer of the Christian faith very firmly identifies God with a masculine metaphor can make it seem excluding and somehow not to speak for them. I regularly use the prayer of Jesus in its traditional form but at times like to try to look at the words afresh by using a form, which maintains the sense of the prayer but reinterprets the language in a way that might help to think about the meaning of the words more deeply. How about addressing God as Mother, instead of Father – surely God does not actually have a gender – the word Father is simply a metaphor, a convention to give some kind of form to something which is actually beyond the scope of human language to describe.
Thinking about using the word Mother instead of Father; thinking of approaching a feminine image of the Divine – surely this will in some ways bring forth a different kind of prayer – possibly more gentle and nurturing; more motherly in its concerns. Maybe this could open up a whole new way of contemplating the Divine – of which we can, of course, only catch glimpses of, through a glass darkly.
Please join with me in saying the words of a reinterpretation of the prayer of Jesus written by Patricia Lynn Reilly.
Our Mother, who art within us, we celebrate your many names.
Your wisdom come.
Your will be done, unfolding from the depths within us.
Each day you give us all that we need.
You remind us of our limits and we let go
You support us in our power and we act with courage.
For thou art the dwelling place within us,
the empowerment around us
and the celebration among us.
Now and forever more.
Amen

Jesus’ prayer continues with the words “Thy kingdom come.” There seems to be a lot of discussion by contemporary theologians about what can be meant by ‘the Kingdom of God’ or ‘the Kingdom of Heaven.’ Many want to stop thinking of ‘the Kingdom’ in terms of some eschatological (end of world) future, of which we can know nothing in this life. Liberation theology uses the language of ‘the Kingdom of God breaking into history.’ This human history they perceive should be worked out according to God’s ‘preferential option for the poor.’ Liberation theologians suggest that living Christian lives should involve a belief in, and a working toward, the arrival of ‘the Kingdom’ here and now in this inequitable world of ours, an arrival which will never be completed in this world but which all Christians are obliged to work towards.
Praying the prayer of Jesus with this vision of the Kingdom of God in mind can again present us with a new and more compassionate view of what God might be – and surely as spiritual travellers this is what we should be doing – enlarging our vision of God. Surely in each generation one of our tasks is to break through to ever wider and deeper visions of what God might be. Maybe a great part of that task for our generation could be to take up again the convictions of the Liberation theologians of Latin America and commit ourselves – each in our own small way – to work towards the building of ‘the Kingdom of God’ in this world, among our fellow broken and bruised human beings.
In his version of the prayer of Jesus the Unitarian Universalist minister Jacob Trapp prays “May thy kingdom come to be in the life of all humankind. May it come with peace, with sharing, and in a near time.” Though we may see that as an impossible aspiration, nonetheless we should pray for it and work towards it. Let us pray now for the coming of the kingdom in this lifetime, as we join together in saying the words of the prayer of Jesus in the version by Jacob Trapp.
O Thou, whose kingdom is within, may all thy names be hallowed.
May no one of them be turned against the others to divide those who address thee.
May thy presence be made known to us in mercy, beauty, love and justice.
May thy kingdom come to be in the life of all humankind.
May it come with peace, with sharing, and in a near time.
Give us this day our daily bread, free from all envy and alienation,
broken and blessed in the sharing.
Keep us from trespass against others,
and from the feeling that others are trespassing against us.
Forgive us more than we have forgiven.
Deliver us from being tempted by lesser things
to be heedless of the one great thing:
the gift of thyself in us.
Amen.

The last lines of Jesus’ prayer proclaim “For thine is the kingdom, the power and the glory, for ever and ever.” For some – this line smacks too much of some super-human being sitting all-powerfully on a throne, it seems just too concrete an image to be taken metaphorically, as many people take it. Although I often use the prayer in its traditional form there are times I have felt this jarring of an image too concrete for any conception of God, which I can feel comfortable with. I have recently discovered the theological term panentheism – a term describing something beyond pantheism. Whereas pantheism interprets God as being synonymous with the universe and its phenomena, panentheism says that, “all is in God.” We could say that God is all there is, and then some. The universe is God's body, but God's awareness or personality is greater than the sum of all the parts of the universe. This seems to make some kind of sense to me, we see God in the world all around us, but there is also a part of God, which will always remain an ineffable mystery. Anyway, I’m using it as my current working hypothesis for what God might be. With that in mind I have devised my own interpretation of the prayer of Jesus, which sees the power and the glory of God in all things all around us. I hope in the last line of acknowledgement of the awesome power and glory all around us that I come in some way towards filling that omission which I mentioned at the beginning of a prayer of thankfulness. I invite you now to join with me in prayer, with this third version of the prayer of Jesus.
Eternal Spirit, ever present, if only we have eyes to see.
We stand in awe in the presence of the Universe.
In its proper time may the mystery unfurl before us.
Though fettered by our earthly lives,
may the depths of the Spirit be present to us.
May the great gifts of the Earth sustain us.
May the Universe forgive our faults and follies,
And may we in equal measure be forgiving.
May we ever turn our eyes towards the light
to dispel the darkness, which would engulf us.
The strength of the Universe is all about us,
It abounds with power and glory,
beyond our greatest imaginings.
Amen

In conclusion I would like to share with you one more version of the Prayer of Jesus – as it is translated into Gaelic. I want to do this to, I hope, reflect another great truth of the spiritual life, that it transcends language – that even if we cannot all understand the words of another it does not mean that we cannot enter into worship and praise with each other.
Ár nAthair, atá ar neamh go naofar d’ainm
Go dtaga do ríocht
Go ndéantar do thoil ar talamh mar a dhéantar ar neamh.
Ár n-arán laethúil tabhair dúinn inniu,
agus maith dúinn ár bhfiacha,
mar a mhaithimid dár bhféichiúnaithe féin.
Agus ná lig sinn i gcathú, ach soar sinn ó olc
Óir is leatsa an Ríocht agus an Chumhacht agus an Ghlóir,
trí shaol na saol
Áiméan

And in parting I encourage you all to go and write your own version of the prayer of Jesus – what does it mean to you? For most of us it has been internalised since early youth and therefore must have very different connotations for each of us – what better way to really understand a text than to re-write it as it really speaks to you.
Maud Robinson
May 2006