Once again, I was reading through the letter to the Ephesians. At the end of chapter 3, one of my favorite prayers occurs. And so, since I have never made a public translation of it, I decided to translate it and post it on social media as "A Prayer for us all". Here it is:
Because of this gift, I bow my knees before The Parent [of us all], from whom all parenthood in the heavens and on the earth is named: I pray, according to the riches of his Glory, that God would give to you all the power to be strengthened through his Spirit within the depths of your personhood, so that The Chosen One may dwell in your hearts, through his faithful [promise], [that you may] be rooted and grounded in Divine Love, so you are empowered to grasp, with all those set apart [by God], what is the width and length and height and depth [of Divine Love], and also to know the Divine Love of the Chosen One which surpasses knowledge, so that you may be filled up fully with all the fullness of God! (St. Paul’s prayer in Ephesians 3.14-19, my translation from Greek)
Very soon after posting, a good friend of mine asked why I used "Parent" in verse 14 rather than "Father", since Father is the common translation and most direct rendering of the Greek πατήρ (Pater, from which we get words like paternal, patriarchy, patriotism, and by a long derivation, Father). This is a really good question, which cuts right to the heart of the nature of how we use language about God, as well as how we understand God in relation to gender. And so, what started as a quick explanation turned into this:
