This will be the first in a series of non-consecutive, non-homiletical, non-hermeneutical, non-exegetical postings on the Lord's Prayer. I'm not doing this because I have something to prove, or, frankly, something to teach. Just something to share. Do with it as you see fit. WIth Weekend Updates and other informational Blog posts, it may take some time to run the whole series. The series is centered on my life with the Lord's prayer. It will be in 13 or...um, 25 parts. This is part one.
I didn't grow up in church. I suppose, as a child, I probably attended a wedding or two that took place at one, but outside of some vague references to "find your own way", by my father - probably fueled by the fact that he grew up Southern Baptist and converted to Episcopalian after earning a Purple Heart in WWII, only to see the Catholic Church excommunicate my mother for marrying him because once before, for a brief time, he had been married, who could blame him for being confused as hell about religion - I knew nothing of church and less of Christ.
At 9 years old we moved for a year and a half to England and I was enrolled in the fourth grade at St. Peters school in Poole (near Bournemouth). The school was a CE school. I didn't know what that meant. They made me wear a coat and tie and shorts (yes, shorts, even in the winter), grey socks and black shoes. I never wore a uniform before for school. My mother thought it was adorable and took several thousand pictures with a Kodak Brownie. I didn't see the attraction. I found out the first day what CE meant. It stood for Church of England. It was a...Christian school.
The first day of school I got in several fights, being the only "Yank" (whatever that meant) my classroom. At recess, I met a decent sort of kid who told me where the 'bog' was. He asked me if I needed to use it. Unsure of what a 'bog' was, I said, "Uh...I think so". A few minutes later I was standing with several other boys in a dank poorly lit room in front of a long porcelain trough. "Ahh...the bog", I thought. Somehow I didn't quite need the bog...yet. Back to class. "I'm sorry, Latin? No, we didn't have Latin at Ben Franklin Elementary in Littleton, Colorado. But I'll try. e pluribus unum. Does that count?" It went downhill from there.
Lunch came. I might as well have been on Pluto (sorry, not a planet, right?) as in the lunch hall, for the territory could not have been more unfamiliar. I followed the crowd to tables of twelve, settling in around a table where, apparently, the poor and wretched of St. Peter's ate silently in their misery. It was the only table with room left. A tall gangly kid with a very long nose, an extraordinarily fat boy (think Augustus Gloop), and a girl in a matted gray cardigan sweater who wore eyeglasses, smelled very strange, and never looked up...and me. We stood for an inordinately long period of time, while old hunched-over women in white aprons and hair nets brought "lunch" and metal water jugs. Lunch looked like something that was savagely ripped from the inside of a cow, and hastily wrapped in dough. The water looked fine. As if on cue a bell was rung, and the the room grew silent from the chatter of more than a hundred grade school kids. A large man in a necktie that stopped a foot and a half short of his belt bellowed, "For what we are about to receive may the Lord make us truly thankful". And then in chorus, everyone in the lunchroom, except the "Yank", began to chant. And that's the very first time I remember hearing it,
"Our Father, which art in heaven, hallowed be thy name..."
