I was quite tickled earlier this year when Pope Francis made a little tweak to the Lord’s Prayer—saying that God never leads us into temptation, so why ask Him (on a daily basis!) to refrain? The Pope said the real translation should be, “do not let us fall into temptation,” which he says is much closer to how it is said in other languages, and perhaps how it was in the Aramaic or Greek itself. It’s a half-step, but I like it.

I, too, being a Taoist-Jewish-Buddhist-Vedantic-Catholic-Quaker-Sufi-Episcopal-Methodist-Bahai-Neo-Advaitist free cowboy, (Buddhist Methodist, for short) have been personally (secretly) “tweaking” the Lord’s Prayer for over fifty years, just trying to understand it better, follow it better. Glad to see that I’m not alone in this.

Let’s start quickly with “Our Father.” (I promise not to go through the whole thing. That could take several books!) I’ve heard it said that if one could truly, deeply understand just those first two words of the Lord’s prayer, then the rest of the prayer all falls into place. Indeed, need not be said. So one of my first, earliest, most obvious tweaks was “Our Father-Mother.”  I mean, duh.

And then over the years, Abba, Allah, Amma, Nityananda, Brahma Da,  (Hallowed be Thy Name.) “That which can be named is not the real Tao,” Lao Tzu cautioned, as did the early Jews, who thought saying, pronouncing the word of God out loud was sacrilege. (Maybe Her real name is Silence. Or at least one of Her real names.)  It would have been easier—maybe– if Jesus had spoken English.  Maybe not.

At any rate, with the Pope tweaking the Lord’s prayer, which is said on a daily basis—in one language or another— by more than 2.2 billion people, it sort of opens the door (at least for those of us not bound by vows of obedience to the church rather than vows of obedience to love—which I take as the first and most basic name for God, as well as the basic action of God!)—with the Pope’s tweaking it opens the door, sets an example for the rest of us to work with the Lord’s prayer in ways that serve God best, or at least our understanding of God.    

Not that we needed the Pope’s permission, but still . . .

My own tweaking of the phrase, “lead us not into temptation” is the simple reminder, “She is with us when we are tempted.” Wholeness, integrity, health, wisdom, clarity is with us at all times, if we will stop and listen for Her. But we get so caught up, I get so caught up—so tempted—to feel fragmented, to cut corners, to disparage myself, go around in a cloud, a funk —welcome to modern life—that I often fall, yield to such worldly, unhelpful temptations. Jesus reminded us, through his prayer (His prayer?) that we have help when faced with such personal chaos, those moody temptations.

The galaxies are moving in orderly, harmonious, unstoppable ease, even as they smash into each other. It’s good, on occasion, to remind ourselves of the larger picture. That’s what Jesus was helping us do with his (His) suggested prayer. Such suggestions, seems to me, are worth checking out.