Most days I take a circular walk round the village. I pause at the church-yard, sit on a bench and practise my morning meditation. Before me are rows of graves, many beautifully tended. I scan names and dates, soon aware that I have lived longer than most of these lovingly remembered villagers: a sobering thought. I have also been present when friends have been laid to rest here in this same good earth.
There is great sadness sometimes recorded on the gravestones, of children and youths who died much too young. There are also a few centenarians. This is serious earth, but ultimately its mood is not melancholy. The presence of scores of trees hundreds of years old makes this a place of life. They have lived through many wars, pandemics, disasters, revolutions, economic failures and depressions. They have asserted their own vitality, outlasting so many human generations. Harming no one, unhesitatingly they carry on their great work of freshening and purifying the air we all breathe. Every springtime they burst out in fresh green and then blaze with their beautiful flowers and later their glorious autumn colouring.
Apparently, so scientists now tell us, trees can communicate with one another through their intricate root systems. Left alone they will renew themselves. Truly they will never desert their post and every spring will cheer us with their ever-reliable resurrection: they ‘come afresh, afresh, afresh!’ Simply to sit among these trees is a blessing, a moment of joy.
Trees constitute one of the greatest and most lasting religious symbols, not confined to any one religion, and still inspiring to those who say they have no religion. Whatever you believe or don’t believe, they shout, ‘Life! Life! More Life!’ and we are all the better for them. My meditation is very basic, simple, straightforward. I begin with the prayer attributed to Jesus, the Lord’s Prayer. I learned it a long life-time ago and it instinctively speaks itself. It is ancient, brief, springing directly from the human heart. It has been uttered by billions throughout the centuries and still by billions today. It joins me to a vast assembly who cry out in their deepest human need. Because it can do that, I welcome it. I do not find it sectarian or out of date. We shall always need our daily bread and deliverance from evil.
All the same, I can understand why some are critical of some aspects of this prayer. Isn’t it sexist in picturing ‘God’ as a male parent in an imaginary supernatural setting? (But remember, even Pope John Paul II, most conservative Catholic that he was, nevertheless surprisingly said, ‘Heaven is not a place!’) We need not take the words so literally. Jesus seems to have offered these words as a model, not intending the wording to be frozen exactly the same for ever.
In any case our English version is a translation and every translation is an interpretation: few today follow his original Aramaic. More than one version is possible. I have attempted an interpretation free from traditional religious phraseology. I do not pretend it is exactly the same as the historic prayer of the New Testament. It is just one attempt. It may well seem too wordy and I could wish for a fresher, more poetic version than mine. It is offered simply for consideration. Here it is:
We are alive, alongside countless others with whom we share the gift of existence. We respect the universal flow of life of which we are a part. It forms and supports us. We account it the highest value, for without it we could not be: daily it bears us along. We all make mistakes and need to put ourselves right and be accepted, just as we accept others who like us have missed the mark. Destructive ways often attract us and we need to be freed from their alluring spell. We welcome, encourage, support loving communities everywhere: they are the Beloved Community we long for. Always we stand in awe of the power and the glory that surround, uphold and enthral us.
The recitation of the prayer of Jesus is like the unfurling of the flag of the Christian evolution in this harsh, cruel world that is full of horrors. We can sing it as a song of protest against this world’s relentless evil.
After silently saying the prayer in the traditional words that come so spontaneously, I pray for healing and health for everyone, then for the peace of the world. I remember my children and grandchildren and their needs. I call to mind all I know who are in distress of body, mind or spirit, praying for their comforting, relief, renewal. Finally I fall silent, listening to the immemorial murmur of the trees: ‘live afresh, afresh, afresh!’
I know all this is but one infinitesimally tiny part of our deep desire for peace and healing. It is not magic, simply human. Are such prayer and meditation useless? If purely self-regarding, can they become pointless fantasy? A helpful answer to these questions was given two and a half thousand years ago in the opening words of the Buddhist text The Dhammapada (The True Path of Life):
‘What we are today comes from our thoughts of yesterday and our present thoughts build our life of tomorrow: our life is the creation of our mind.’
These words may take us back to the original teaching of the historical Buddha. Good thoughts are seeds that may grow into good actions. Jesus’s prayer reflects humanity’s universal longing for peace, healing, justice. Without this longing humanity would be inexpressibly impoverished and unrecognisable.