Lakota Prayer

Sioux Prayer
by Chief Red Cloud, Oglala Lakota Sioux

Oh Great Spirit, whose voice I hear in the winds;
and whose breath gives life to all the world,
hear me!  

I am small and weak,
I need your strength and wisdom.

Let me walk in beauty, and make my eyes ever behold the  red and purple sunset.

Make my hands respect the things you have made, and my ears sharp to hear Your voice.

Make me wise so that I may understand the things You have taught my people.

Let me learn the lessons you have hidden in every leaf and rock.

I seek strength, not to be greater than my brother, but to fight my greatest enemy- myself.

Make me always ready to come to You with clean hands and straight eyes.

So when life fades, as the fading sunset, my spirit may come to You without shame.

This should be in the bible:

Come, Come, Whoever You Are
Wonderer, worshipper, lover of leaving.
It doesn't matter.
Ours is not a caravan of despair.
Come, even if you have broken your vow
a thousand times
Come, yet again, come, come.

~Rumi

 

What Is

This is a special Islamic prayer called a du'a.  I believe it's universal enough to be prayed by every faith:

O Allah
Enlighten what is dark in me
Strengthen what is weak in me
Mend what is broken in me
Bind what is bruised in me
Heal what is sick in me
Straighten what is crooked in me
And revive whatever peace and love has died in me.
Ameen

The Lord's Prayer

The translation is based upon research by Dr. Neil Douglas-Klotz, an expert in the Aramaic Christian, Jewish mystical and Sufi traditions. He translated the prayer as if it came directly from the Aramaic (via):

O Breathing Life, your Name shines everywhere!
Release a space to plant your Presence here.
Envision your “I Can” now.
Embody your desire in every light and form.
Grow through us this moment’s bread and wisdom.
Untie the knots of failure binding us, as we release the strands we hold of others’ faults.
Help us not forget our Source, yet free us from not being in the Present.
From you arises every vision, power, and song, from gathering to gathering.
Amen: may our future actions grow from here!

And here is the traditional King James version, Matthew 6: 9-13:

After this manner therefore pray ye:

Our Father which art in heaven, Hallowed be thy name.
Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done in earth, as it is in heaven.
Give us this day our daily bread.
And forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors.
And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil: For thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, for ever.  Amen.

Prayer

Excerpt from Gerda Weissmann Klein's autobiography, All But My Life ©1957:

But later, much later, I thought about my way of praying.  It started in school with a play about ancient Egypt.  Each character uttered a prayer:  the mighty Pharaoh prayed for a victory, his opponent asked for his own success, a sick man begged for health, the doctor asked for people to be ill, and each prayer, clean and swift, like a white bird, shot upward.  In Heaven, it met with the other prayer that had asked for just the contrary.  They turned against each other in bloody battle, and usually both fell back lifeless to the earth.  A large number of girls had taken part in that play.  I thought I had a beautiful role.  I was a poor little boy, the son of a fellah.  My mother told me to pray, but I didn't know how.  I had no wishes, so I just looked at the river that fertilized our field, at the warm sun, at the ripe fruit in our garden, and I said, "Thank you, God, for the warm sun, for the blue Nile, for my father and mother," and my little-boy prayer, like the others, sailed straight up to the throne of God.  Nobody defied my prayer, and nobody else thanked the Maker.  They were all asking Him for things.  He turned his face upon the little barefoot boy…

I was about twelve years old at the time.  From then on I had always thanked God for the gifts He bestowed upon me, and they were many.