The Lord’s Prayer and the Human Form

The words “Thy will be done” bring the form that we have been developing to a kind of culmination. In order that will can become deed, the human being needs limbs. By contrast to the round form of the head, the limbs radiate out into the world; and this is also the basis of the phenomenon of an act of will, which originates in a being and sends its effects outward. When we turn to the heavens, we can experience the radiating warmth and light of the sun, but we can also experience the forces that, radiating from the moon bring about the tides. Closer to us but also bearing the radiating quality of will, are the phenomena of the weather: of wind, rain, and lightning.

Immediately following the sentence “Thy will be done” come the words “as above in the heavens, so also on the earth.” Most often they are simply taken as a continuation of the particular sentence; the King James translation renders the sentence: “Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.” In fact, the words can be appended to each of the sentences that we have considered so far. They form the basis for the prayer, which looks not for personal release from earth into heaven, but for the incarnating of heaven into the earth. The words relate to our addressing our Father, to his hallowed name, and to his approaching kingdom, as well as to his will, though we may feel them closest to our call upon the will. With the words “Thy will be done” we bring the archetypal human form to completion: with the words “as above in the heavens, so also on the earth” we begin the incarnation process.

As incarnated beings we come into a relationship with the world which we can recognize in a threefold form at the physical level. The relationship of which we are most conscious is through our senses. Through our senses we become conscious in the first place that we are in the world. But our senses to a large extent keep the world at a distance. We can be particularly aware of this in our sense of sight, which is the one that most characterizes our waking consciousness. When we have pondered our sense relation to the world, we may become aware of a more intimate relation to the world through our breathing. We don not notice the process so closely; except under extreme conditions we become conscious of breathing only by decision. And we do not notice the finer aspects of the exchange of air which is constantly going on when we inhale and exhale. Even more intimate but also less conscious is our third point of contact with the world: we take the world into ourselves and make it part of us through the process of digestion. Beyond the fact that we know that we need to eat, we are unaware of the processes through which matter in the world is transformed into matter in our body. But we can know that we interact with the world in three ways: we sense the world, we breathe the world, we digest the world.

It is the third of these interactions that is addressed in the words “Give us this day our daily bread.” When we repeat the words, we become more and more aware of how dependent we are on grace that we have what we need to eat. The acts of grace may be veiled from us when it becomes simply a routine of going to the store to buy what we need and like. It is clearer when we ourselves are the ones who toil in the fields to raise the food that we or other people will eat. Certainly the sweat of our brow is involved, but we are also completely dependent on factors beyond our control. Planting seeds is an act of faith—once the seeds are sown, they are at the mercy, not only of our faithful care for them, but also of all that may or may not come in the way of drought, flood, wind, frost, and all of the other caprices of the weather. We are truly dependent on the grace of God for our daily bread.

With the words “forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us” we may ponder the consequences of the fact that we breathe. First of all, we realize that we have no choice in the matter—we simply have to breathe. Second, there is no separation between the air that we breathe and the air that everyone else is breathing. Finally, each time we inhale we take oxygen out of the air, and each time we exhale we poison it somewhat by adding carbon dioxide to it. But so do all other human beings, and through this we are all constantly trespassing against each other. Normally we are not made aware of the fact that we are thus constantly in need of forgiveness and just as constantly called upon to forgive others. We also forget the divine forgiveness expressed through the plant world, which takes up the air we have poisoned and restores it to health.

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