Our Father

 It takes me ten minutes or more, these days, to say the Lord’s Prayer. And often I run out of time and have to rush the end. This prayer, commanded and taught by Jesus, just keeps going deeper.
    Consider only the first two words, “our Father.” To say those words is to express a mystery beyond human the grasp of the human mind. We fail to be sensitive to this mystery because the words are familiar, even ordinary: people have been saying these words for centuries. Yet they bespeak a profound mystery. Simply to talk to God is to do something that it seems should be impossible. God is the author of our being, and characters do not speak to their author!
    Recently I read again The Comforters, a novel by Muriel Spark. There is a character in that novel who realizes she is a character in a novel, and she doesn’t like it. She feels it takes away her freedom. But the reader can see a truth that the author hints at, that the freedom of a character is not diminished by the fact that she is a character. We have heard authors tell us that their characters take on lives of their own. It seems to be a common experience of good fiction writing. Characters can surprise their authors in what they do, whether they be aware or unaware that they are characters. In a similar way, we are free.
    Yet we can talk to our author. That in itself is amazing.
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    But there is more. We are taught to speak to our author as “Father” by Jesus for whom God really was his Father. Somehow Jesus has invited us into his family. We get to use the same words that Jesus used. To be part of the family means that we are brothers and sisters of Christ.
    When I start this prayer, I am at once reminded that Jesus is my brother.

    And there is still more. We have that plural word, “our.” He isn’t my Father only, nor is Jesus brother only to me, but there is a group of us. Who knows how big that group is? It includes everyone who ever says or has said (or will say) this prayer.
    Which is to say, right at the start I am reminded that I never pray alone. Whenever I start praying, I am invoking a vast company of fellow-prayers.
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    There’s a lot more to the prayer. But merely two words of it, you see, can take us into far-reaching marvels.    
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    Out & About. Sunday, March 24, is the spring theology lecture, on what good is suffering: 6 p.m. at Incarnation, 3966 McKinney Ave., Dallas. In the church, with reception following.
    I am to preach at Incarnation’s traditional services on March 31: 7:30, 9, and 11:15 a.m.
    Sunday, April 7, will be the next “Good Books & Good Talk” seminar. Our text: One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich by Alexander Solzhenitsyn. Anyone who reads the book is welcome to the conversation at 6 p.m.

Can Clones Be Friends?

We were discussing Never Let Me Go, the haunting novel by Kazuo Ishiguro. It’s an alternative present: a world in which a number of diseases have been eliminated, thanks to the availability of organs from clones. The novel tells of a humane effort to improve their lives, giving these children education and encouraging their artistic abilities. The movers behind the effort were trying to show that the clones had souls, that they were capable of emotions and thoughts just like the rest of us. But the vested interests (in the availability of organs, in the conquering of disease) were too strong to be overcome by such efforts.
     Yet the novel shows that these children (and then young adults) are, apart from their infertility, quite ordinarily human. They have crushes; they have hopes; they try to understand what other people are thinking; they are curious about the world. Their lives are largely insulated from those of normal humans: they live in special homes, they make their “donations” and ultimately “complete” in a world that is kept as separate as possible. And yet . . .
     Some people try to overcome their revulsion towards them. The revulsion is understandable: these children, these people, have been brought into existence only to provide organs for donation; after a few donations, they will “complete” (the euphemism for dying). To allow oneself to touch such a person, to allow oneself to teach, even to care for, such a person, is to make an immense move outside ordinary reality.
     From a moral perspective, I would say, they should not exist: no humans should be brought into existence merely for the advantage of others. Nonetheless, these clones do exist. They are just as individual, just as really human (apart from their engineered infertility) as any person reading these words.
     Can they be friends? Yes: we see them as friends with one another, and they experience, even in their abbreviated lives, such friendship.
     Can they be friends with us? That, it turns out, is the most important question of all.
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     It’s “only” a novel, but it points to many moral and theological questions.
     Can free people be friends with slaves? (Yes, one wants to say, but only by thereby undermining the institution of slavery.)
     Can rich people be friends with poor people?
     Can single people be friends with married people?
     Can Episcopalians be friends with Baptists?
     Can Trumpers be friends with Never-Trumpers?
     Might any human be a friend with any human?

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The Rev. Canon Victor Lee Austin. Ph.D., is the Theologian-in-Residence for the diocese and is the author of several books including, "Friendship: The Heart of Being Human" and "A Post-Covid Catechesis.: