Sometimes, I am asked to work on the text of a
prayer and one such assignment came my way recently. Formulaic prayers are not really my forte, so
I looked up the books and put the words together in the traditional way. But we also cater to the now generation and I
had to contemporize! I struggled and how. Personally, I am spontaneous in my
communication and after I encountered ‘Hey God! This is Anna’, I never looked
back. That was the way I would always get in touch with my Maker. And the
connection is unbroken (unlike that of my network supplier!)
The present exercise made me take a look at the
oldest prayer, the Our Father. How would it sound in the modern idiom?
Something like this????
Hey God, somewhere up there in the Universe, our
lips are blessed each time we say your name. We’d like to see heaven happen
down here too in real time, right now. You can do it. Yes you can. And while
you’re about it, we’d like some food – the real thing (you know, like Coke, Pizza
and Big Mac) and when we’ve been real bad, just take care of that, huh? Please? As for those who’ve been mean to us,
we’ll try doing things your way (the operative word being ‘try’!). And when the
bad guy tries to grab attention, just take him out, okay? Thanks for the time!
I tried sms and twitterspeak versions and am in
danger of suffering serious brainfreeze.
Nah! It does not have the same feel and resonance.
Some things are best left unchanged.
Old is indeed gold. The original article is the
genuine thing.
And we have God to thank for that!
No comments:
Post a Comment