Thoughts on my Lord's Prayer Translation

Sleeping as Forgiveness

I've been using the alternative translation I wrote of the famous prayer Jesus taught his disciples, typically called The Lord's Prayer or Our Father, for quite awhile now.

I have a couple reflections after a year of using it.  The first being: I really like it!  I like it so much better than the original language that I use it all the time, even in church, where I quietly whisper key words from it while everyone around me says the standard version.  When I do this, I feel like I'm transforming dead words that smack of superstition into words that enliven and connect elements of my own understanding where such connections were not previously as clear.

One such connection is one that I perceive between "forgiveness of debts/trespasses" and sleeping. 

 I was very much influenced by Rudolf Steiner's writing when I wrote this translation, which is why I added the words, "in waking and sleeping" to the prayer.  This augments the words "forever and ever," which after all weren't part of the words Jesus taught the disciples anyway. I added it to emphasize that our lives each day (the single day for which we ask for our bread) consist of a daily cycle, a rhythm of waking followed by sleeping.  

I also chose the phrase "wipe the slate clean" to replace "forgive our debts/trespasses".  These two changes together have awakened for me a meaning that I didn't see before as clearly. 

 Jesus in his life and teachings repeatedly emphasized the day as the dimension of time within which to primarily live one's life. "Give no thought for tomorrow." Furthermore, he emphasized the forgiveness of debts of all kinds.  Much has been written about this phrase; it can have monetary meaning (as in forgiving a loan that is owed), social meaning (forgiveness of a perceived wrong) and many other meanings besides.  But, taking the two together I see now that I believe Jesus taught this prayer specifically to emphasize that forgiveness was an action we each could take every day in the human world that exactly mirrored something that happened in the natural world and in our own bodies every day.

Jesus said many things about this: Consider the lilies of the field…do not worry about what you will wear or what you will eat…today's troubles are enough for today…it is not what goes into the body that defiles but what comes out of it…

And Jesus said many things and told many parables about forgiveness and jubilee.  The parable of the laborer, of the greedy landowner, of the talents, etc.

Every day we operate in wakeful activity; we seek out our daily bread. We take actions that are purposeful and purposeless; we do things that are quite consciously undertaken, and we do things that happen without any conscious thought (like blinking or bowel movements, or stretching, or tapping our toes); we eat foods that nourish us, and we eat foods that are harmful, and we often eat food hardly noticing the food at all. We are kind to some people, dismissive or rude to others.  We notice some things and ignore many things.  We feel all kinds of feelings about everything we encounter during our days.  We give hugs and high fives, and we have conflict and anger.  When each day ends, we have "accounts," biological and spiritual, that have become swollen with entries.

Then we seek sleep.  In sleep, all of the good, bad, and in between is taken into unconscious sleep life.  It is taken into our very biology, and the body through many complex and mysterious processes brings healing and a Great Reset to our entire physiology.  Basically our bodies and souls in sleep “reconcile all the accounts,” absorb everything we did, and "forgive" it all.  I once heard a Steiner lecturer describe the body like a city, and the body's many sleeping processes (liver cycle, adrenal and kidney cycle, digestive and endocrine, healing, growth etc), as the hidden street sweepers, garbage collectors, lamplighters, construction workers, law enforcement and other hidden helpers who work, usually unnoticed, so that when you awake in the morning, you find a city freshly set back in place, tidied, washed, scrubbed, safe and covered in dew, for you to explore all over again.

I believe that Jesus was pointing out the way God works, the way we are given this gift of life. It is through daily cycles of activity and then rest, rest which creates a clean slate, every day.  We should therefore mimic this behavior if we want to get more in touch with the kingdom of heaven (literally the "reign of the air") which Jesus said over and over was "at hand," meaning "right here, right now". 

I love thinking of sleeping and waking up for a new day as a model of forgiveness that I myself am free to emulate.  What happened before is done.  Today is a new day, literally.  Morning has broken, like the first morning.  Anything we hang onto from previous days is our prerogative but it will likely only burden us, weigh us down.  The body renews itself every morning, takes what experiences we gave it the day before and transforms them into experience, skill, memories, growth, calluses, cramps, new strength and new flexibilities. If we work with our sleep life in this way, we can work in our relationship life this way, too.  Wipe the slate clean, every day, and expect new growth to come through this Reset.