Such a simple prayer, the only prayer that Jesus asked us to pray. And we do, by rubric, faithfully knowing that as liturgists and worshippers we shall not partake of the consecrated bread until we have prayed for our daily bread and God's will to be done on earth as it has been fulfilled in heaven.

Do you say this dear little prayer with all the hope & believability of a child? Does one particular word or phrase ever catch you off guard like a familiar song that surprises you in the elevator taking you back a decade or two? Can you open yourself up to the power of the person's voice next to you, hearing which words they need to hold onto for just a syllable longer & remember to pray for them tonight?

The Lord's Prayer was my childhood prayer. It is a prayer I pray with you at your hospital bedsides and the prayer that near comatose people will mouth when I pray out loud with them at the time of their dying. During a long stretch of grieving back in 1992, when I couldn't sleep at night and loss was my bed companion, I'd pray this prayer over and over until I'd find myself in the morning, feeling held through the night, in safety, with strength to face another day. The Lord's Prayer is the last prayer of my night and the first prayer of my morning; it is included in my noontime prayers; this prayer sustains me when nothing else and no one else can. I suspect this prayer will take me home. That is power, the center and centrality of life...and Jesus gave us this gift, so simply, so lovingly, so long ago.

We're hungry for the fulfillment of this prayer. We long to see the words of this prayer fleshed out among each of us...and when we walk around Dupont Circle, catching glimpses of joy and despair, loneliness and new love, the searching for the fulfillment of the Lord's prayer should haunt us in the faces and stories of people we do not know. Because we pray this prayer and we mean it or we don't. This prayer has the capacity to deconstruct your life...for God will enter your life, little by little, breath by breath, which each verse until you find who you are in God, and that God resides in you. And the more God resides in us, the less we are scornful and judgmental and the more we are reverent to each person we meet and respectful with each aspect of creation, as we find ourselves sitting in the presence of God, more whole and more fully aware. This little prayer contains secrets of learning and becoming and brings clarity to what you believe at your center, the deep reality that shapes your life. For as Episcopalians, prayer shapes what we believe and I hope each of us wants a little more of that...a God nurtured prayer life that shapes us every day, day by day, prayer becoming as natural as breathing.

It is with these convictions that I take my prayers for and about you with me to the mountains and beaches of North Carolina this August for vacation. Prayer forms and shapes our lives together-prayer changes us. Our prayers together form and shape this community. Prayer forms and shapes the soul of St. Thomas' Parish and overflows into our worlds of family, friends, vocations; we, as Christian community, have the prayer-power to form and shape the soul of the Dupont Circle area and beyond...in concentric circles, ever widening, ever living, ever formative, as Sunday by Sunday, Wednesday-by-Wednesday, Episcopalians and others who share the Eucharistic bread of daily life whisper-proclaim-sing The Lord's Prayer.