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The Lord’s Prayer
Our Father, which art in Heaven, and therefore art Heavenly, and thus our Heavenly Father, and also Dear, and thus our Dear Heavenly Father,
Hallowed be thy name, which we think means Holy or Sacred or more accurately means held as such by me and everyone else,
Thy Kingdom come when it’s time and everything, and not before or after, upon which score we’ll just have to trust thee, not knowing the hour or the day,
Thy Will be done, even when it comes to our current circumstances, though we have some specific suggestions about that, and have appended them herewithal for thy review, if thou hast time and inclination,
On earth as we presuppose it is also done in Heaven, which supposition we take on Faith, having forgotten everything what with the veil and all.
Give us this day and the next and the next our daily bread, which we mean both literally and figuratively, since man cannot live on bread alone, or stones, or dough, or any of the metonymically situated objects we might think of, and really, when it comes to that, we mean more than just basic subsistence, though we’ll take sufficient for our need in the absence of surplus or rather variety,
And forgive us our trespasses, among which are temper tantrums, a loss of patience, a loitering in places we ought not to be, a tendency to forget thee except at certain times of the day or, as now, when we are in need, and every other practice not hallowable, as is thy name, but is, rather, a profanation of such,
As we forgive those who trespass against us, except Sister Johansen, whose comportment yesterday still mightily offends us, and therefore inasmuch as the mode and method of this request is comparative, we ask thee to forgive us as we forgive when we really and adequately and appropriately forgive, and not as when we don’t, as in this case, for we are mightily offended and sorely perturbed, though we intend to get over it in the next week or two.
Lead us not into temptation, which we know thou wouldst never do, exactly, though thou dost not always lead us away from it, either, but lettest us, in our ignorance and blindness of mind, stumble into occasionally, and therefore lead us away from temptation and where this is not possible, owing to agency and everything,
Deliver us, on those occasions we stumble, from evil, and more especially from whatever harm or accident might befall, beset, or bedevil us, as both harm and accident really are more likely than intentional evil-doing, at least by us, if not by Sister Johansen, whose comportment yesterday still mightily offends us,
For thine is the Kingdom which will come when it’s time and not before or after, we trust,
The Power of the Priesthood which is thine and the Glory of the Lord which is also thine, thou being the Lord and all, but which we would like around us, please, and even around Sister Johansen,
Forever and ever and on into whatever extensible eternities there be,
Amen.
Jonathon Penny is a poet, a scholar, a husband, a father, a cruncher of data, and, in relative poverty of spirit and blindness of mind, as much a disciple as he can manage. He has been published in Tyler Chadwick’s Fire in the Pasture, Dialogue, Victorian Violet Press, Mormon Midrashim, Sunstone, Everyday Mormon Writer, Gangway Magazine, Lowly Seraphim, and at Wilderness Interface Zone. He has several chapbooks in development, and will soon be publishing literary prose and poetry for children and youths of Percival P. Pennywhistle, PhD, and other fortunate souls under Pease Porridge Press.
To read more of Penny’s poetry, see here and here.