...kingdom

Then there's that bit right after "holy is your name," which goes "your [or thy] kingdom come." This troubles me on a couple of levels. First of all I've already tried to stop gendering God as masculine, so why a kingdom? (Though, in fact, I think queens get to rule kingdoms too, so maybe that's not such a big deal.) But more important for me is the image it creates of, again, a place, and a place that has a certain hierarchical structure. I don't mind being less than God, of course. That's fine. But human kingdoms really haven't worked well, and the idea that we're working towards a future that looks like a kingdom seems limited, really. Unimaginative.

Not that I can do a whole lot better. But I'm trying. Sometimes that sentence goes this way for me: "your fulfilment come, your will be done on earth as in your perfection." It's my best shot, though I think it could still be better. Language is so slippery, so inadequate, finally, to express the inexpressible. So we struggle along. In one of the hymns in the Episcopal hymnal we sing: "time makes ancient good uncouth." I like that. We do our best in the moment, then we revise.

Sometimes, of course, time makes us uncouth and we need to go back looking for those ancient goods again. But not always.