Blessed are those who plant peace each season
.
Another story is gathering in my head. It's another one-off, separate from the main series I've been writing. It's intense. (SHUT. UP.) So much so that my main problem is working up the courage to start writing it. I think it's gonna hurt, frankly.
But that's not what I'm here to talk about. I'd like to present to you a book I've had for many years, one that is little known, but revolutionary in its impact. It's a small book, and it's fundamentally a work of translation. It's called Prayers of the Cosmos, and it's by Neil Douglas-Klotz, who writes about religion and psychology and is also a poet and artist.
The book is very simple. It takes the two best known Christian prayer-passages (the Lord's Prayer and the Beatitudes), gives you the original Aramaic (with the King James version on the facing page), then a phonetic breakdown. After that, the book takes each line separately and gives you first the Aramaic, then the English, then a list of possible translations (more on that below), and then a little essay on that line and its components, the syllables and sounds in the words and their meanings. Then as a nice addition, there is an exercise in breathing and tuning you can do to use the line as a meditation point or mantra.
I tell you, the book is a revelation. I had no idea of the scope of the divide separating us from the original words of this man. It's unbelievable. Here's just one example:
-------------
1. Our Birth in Unity
Abwoon d'bwashmaya
KJV version: Our Father, which art in Heaven
O Birther! father-Mother of the Cosmos,
you create all that moves in light.
O Thou! The Breathing Life of all,
Creator of the Shimmering Sound that
touches us.
Respiration of all worlds,
we hear you breathing - in and out -
in silence.
Source of Sound: in the roar and the whisper,
in the breeze and the whirlwind, we
hear your Name.
Radiant One: You shine with us,
outside us - even darkness shines - when
we remember.
Names of names, your small identity
unravels in you, you give it back
as a lesson.
Wordless Action, Silent Potency -
where ears and eyes awaken, there
heaven comes.
---------
That is a list of different ways those two Aramaic words could be translated. According to this gentleman, who has been working with the language for years, Aramaic is wildly different from English in that it does not have the rock-hard literalism of our language. Every word has layers and echoes and threads of meaning, more than one interpretation, and sentences aren't so much lines of blocks as they are webs of intersecting strands.
Look at that list again. Look at how incredibly different those phrases are from the one you've always known. That one isn't wrong, mind you. It's a legitimate translation. It's just very small and very, well, hardened. And think about the attempts to translate the original differently that you've seen in other contexts. They've still the same problem - they're trying to solidify the meaning of the phrase, when the original depends for its power on the fact that you can't solidity it. Its multiple shades and layers are an intrinsic part of its meaning - strip them out and it becomes pointless. Every one of those translations up there is a solid translation of the original text. Poetic, to be sure, but then, so was the King James bible. (James himself told the translators that if they came up against a choice between correct and beautiful, he wanted it beautiful.) So is all religion, really, something that way too many people either forget or don't want to know.
If asked which book I would recommend to deepen one's thinking about these ubiquitous texts, I would point to this one without hesitation. Few of us don't know these prayers, after all. Hell, even if you're not Christian, you've still heard these words in a cultural context. They float around all over the place. This will explode the way you look at them. Like Yashoda opening her little son Krishna's mouth and seeing the entire universe within it, it will crack open those solid, immovable little phrases and let you see the enormous spiritual tides and forces in them.
Seriously, this is mind-blowing. And it's only 88 pages, which includes an introduction by the lovely Matthew Fox. (NO, not that Matthew Fox. Ew.) If you're a Christian and you'd like to take the next step in the way you look at the words you cherish, or even if you're aren't, this book is essential. (I really do recommend it if you're not Christian. It's so short, and it changes one's outlook on the original words that have been so misused and cheapened and sullied by the unscrupulous and the hateful. Beauty is always worth redeeming.) It'll make you think about all the other words, too, the ones not discussed in the book. Makes me itch to know what "Woman, what have I to do with thee?" actually sounded like and meant. That's one I've always been suspicious about.
.
Another story is gathering in my head. It's another one-off, separate from the main series I've been writing. It's intense. (SHUT. UP.) So much so that my main problem is working up the courage to start writing it. I think it's gonna hurt, frankly.
But that's not what I'm here to talk about. I'd like to present to you a book I've had for many years, one that is little known, but revolutionary in its impact. It's a small book, and it's fundamentally a work of translation. It's called Prayers of the Cosmos, and it's by Neil Douglas-Klotz, who writes about religion and psychology and is also a poet and artist.
The book is very simple. It takes the two best known Christian prayer-passages (the Lord's Prayer and the Beatitudes), gives you the original Aramaic (with the King James version on the facing page), then a phonetic breakdown. After that, the book takes each line separately and gives you first the Aramaic, then the English, then a list of possible translations (more on that below), and then a little essay on that line and its components, the syllables and sounds in the words and their meanings. Then as a nice addition, there is an exercise in breathing and tuning you can do to use the line as a meditation point or mantra.
I tell you, the book is a revelation. I had no idea of the scope of the divide separating us from the original words of this man. It's unbelievable. Here's just one example:
-------------
1. Our Birth in Unity
Abwoon d'bwashmaya
KJV version: Our Father, which art in Heaven
O Birther! father-Mother of the Cosmos,
you create all that moves in light.
O Thou! The Breathing Life of all,
Creator of the Shimmering Sound that
touches us.
Respiration of all worlds,
we hear you breathing - in and out -
in silence.
Source of Sound: in the roar and the whisper,
in the breeze and the whirlwind, we
hear your Name.
Radiant One: You shine with us,
outside us - even darkness shines - when
we remember.
Names of names, your small identity
unravels in you, you give it back
as a lesson.
Wordless Action, Silent Potency -
where ears and eyes awaken, there
heaven comes.
---------
That is a list of different ways those two Aramaic words could be translated. According to this gentleman, who has been working with the language for years, Aramaic is wildly different from English in that it does not have the rock-hard literalism of our language. Every word has layers and echoes and threads of meaning, more than one interpretation, and sentences aren't so much lines of blocks as they are webs of intersecting strands.
Look at that list again. Look at how incredibly different those phrases are from the one you've always known. That one isn't wrong, mind you. It's a legitimate translation. It's just very small and very, well, hardened. And think about the attempts to translate the original differently that you've seen in other contexts. They've still the same problem - they're trying to solidify the meaning of the phrase, when the original depends for its power on the fact that you can't solidity it. Its multiple shades and layers are an intrinsic part of its meaning - strip them out and it becomes pointless. Every one of those translations up there is a solid translation of the original text. Poetic, to be sure, but then, so was the King James bible. (James himself told the translators that if they came up against a choice between correct and beautiful, he wanted it beautiful.) So is all religion, really, something that way too many people either forget or don't want to know.
If asked which book I would recommend to deepen one's thinking about these ubiquitous texts, I would point to this one without hesitation. Few of us don't know these prayers, after all. Hell, even if you're not Christian, you've still heard these words in a cultural context. They float around all over the place. This will explode the way you look at them. Like Yashoda opening her little son Krishna's mouth and seeing the entire universe within it, it will crack open those solid, immovable little phrases and let you see the enormous spiritual tides and forces in them.
Seriously, this is mind-blowing. And it's only 88 pages, which includes an introduction by the lovely Matthew Fox. (NO, not that Matthew Fox. Ew.) If you're a Christian and you'd like to take the next step in the way you look at the words you cherish, or even if you're aren't, this book is essential. (I really do recommend it if you're not Christian. It's so short, and it changes one's outlook on the original words that have been so misused and cheapened and sullied by the unscrupulous and the hateful. Beauty is always worth redeeming.) It'll make you think about all the other words, too, the ones not discussed in the book. Makes me itch to know what "Woman, what have I to do with thee?" actually sounded like and meant. That's one I've always been suspicious about.
.