Archive for the 'Prose' Category

Physics Writing

Friday, April 28th, 2006

I used to work at the Franklin Institute as a sysadmin for the web site server(s). We would get “ask the expert” type questions from teachers and students that i often answered (as the member of the web staff with a science rather than writing background). For a while I answered questions on the “Mad Scientist Network” — i enjoyed the research and writing quite a bit.

http://www.madsci.org/cgi-bin/search?query=Judith+E.+Bush

I suppose once i go through and collect all my poetry in this blog, i might be able to find those science questions to re-post here as well.

Essay: I Pray As I Have Learned

Friday, March 1st, 1996

My senior year in high school, I grew distant from my church. Perhaps because I was a Presbyterian, [JEB 2006-04-19 Oh, heavens. This little toss off could stand editing!] I heard less of the Good News and more of how sinful and displeasing we all are to our Creator. I couldn’t believe in a Creator so dissatisfied with the creation, and my last year in attending services was spent being frustrated with the language of our prayers of confession, which always ended with the Lord’s Prayer.

Years later I remembered a lesson taught in children’s choir. Our leader told us that the Lord’s Prayer was a model upon which all prayers could be based, and she discussed praise and confession and intercession. I thought over the prayer and realized that the intent was still meaningful to me, but that the words had grown heavy as they bore connotations against which I struggled.

The first word I wanted to revise in the Lord’s Prayer was was “Lord.” The title was revolutionary when servants and laborers and slaves applied it to Jesus Christ. As power structures became “Christianized,” I feel that the revolutionary use was turned upside down as it was used to enforce oppression. In our current democratic society, it is meaningless at best. Jesus Christ is my Teacher, and it is He who taught me to pray this way. Thus, I refer to this prayer as how I have learned, as opposed to how I recite. I don’t really think of this as “An Alternative Lord’s Prayer.” For me, it is the essence of the lesson Jesus taught as recorded in Matthew 6.

“Our Father” became “My Mother” as I usually say this prayer alone, and the challenge to patriarchy has healed some wounds. Since I have written it, I have become just as comfortable with Father, or MotherFather God (as is a friend’s preferred address).

I believe in an immanent God, not an eminent God “who art in heaven.” As a physicist I have given thought to a heaven which exists out of time — which is eternal — and what I can conclude just from that premise. I find my conclusions comforting, and find that Eternal Love makes more sense to me than eternal will.

The request for daily Bread will always be meaningful to me as I continue to learn to live in faith, trusting that God will provide for all my needs. The experience I have had of Grace has helped me to understand what people are talking about when they speak of “forgive us our debts,” but those words will forever be tainted with the image of a stern, unforgiving God for whom we will never be good enough. Instead of living forgiveness, I intend to live Grace.

The language of the Society of Friends (Quakers) leads me to speak of Clarity and Right Action instead of focusing on the temptations I wish to avoid. It is not clear to me that a life free of temptations is one filled with Grace. The trust I place in God in helping me to discern my life’s work, for instance, goes beyond simply trusting to be lead from careers that will fill me with vanity or cause harm to the earth and society. I trust that right action will bring me to employment in which I an fed spiritually and materially and in which I can also do the work I am called to do. In discerning that calling is my search for clarity.

I have shared this prayer with my worship community several times. Each time it speaks to some people very deeply. Others feel freed to listen to the original version in a new way, for what speaks to them. I suspect most people learn the prayer as soon as they’re able to recite, as they hear it repeated in church every week. That’s learning the words though. I think that Jesus was teaching fundamental theology to the disciples in his simple prayer, and I encourage everyone to make their own study to see what they have learned to pray.

This essay and the prayer were published in the March 1996 issue of Ailanthus: An Occasional Journal of the National Association of College and University Chaplains.