(both images provided by The Drifter)

Give Us This Day

“The bar was our altar.” – Caitlin Thomas

“There’s a slow, slow train coming – up around the bend.” – Bob Dylan

“This whole world’s gotta buy you a drink, man / Gotta take you to the edge and watch you throw it up / Every morning, I could give a damn what you did last night / Just tell me how far to kick this can…”

– Conor Oberst, “No One Changes”

“Christ’s religion is essentially poetry – poetry glorified.”

– Elizabth Barret Browning

The Drifter (myself) took his last drink of alcohol almost exactly twenty years ago from today: on August 5, 2005. (I write this on August 1, 2025.)

The story of my drinking, its history, its reasons and motivations, its progression, its hilarity, its adventures (many, many, and many more, including good company, bad company, and dangerous company), and the eventual fall into total addiction in my mid-30s (drinking hard liquor sometimes combined with red or white wine all day every day and never drawing a sober breath, plus other related problems like catastrophic depressions, weight loss, liver problems, heart problems, heart palpitations, malnutrition, emergency-room accidents, vicious, pain-filled, suicidal hang-overs, crushingly embarrassing behavior and psychological humiliations, near-death occurrences and much more, none of which were improved by also smoking two to four packs of Marlboro Lights per day along with the liquor) will be gone into in more detail in the near future in another column.

Because alcohol is a subject I still love to talk about, even though I haven’t had a single sip in almost twenty years.

For today, in honor of my drinking and in honor of all drinkers, addicted and not, and in honor of the one thing that has kept me sober perhaps more than any other, I will briefly explain what I think the Lord’s Prayer means.

This column is not for so-called “Christians Only.” Nor is it only for alcoholics who are looking to quit drinking. Nor is it only for ex-alcoholics who have already done so.

It is for writers and writer-friendly peoples everywhere, especially since writers are known to be, as a group, prone to drinking alcohol more so than the general population (which is a lot, especially in America, land of the binge drinker); and also for anyone interested in surviving this life (as long as possible) and living a good one while you’re here.

Because the Lord’s Prayer can even be said and studied by atheists vastly to their own enhancement at almost every single human level we can possibly imagine.

I do not presume (very far from it) to have the final answer/s about these words, unlike many of the pastors, priests, and ministers (so-called) afoot in America these days (not all, but many).

These are simply my (brief) reflections, today, on a prayer (a poem) that has saved my life.

I never could’ve gotten myself sober without this.

This column is also meant to defamiliarize the Lord’s Prayer in a personal way, so it can be renewed in at least a few of us.

(Disclaimer: This piece may sound a tiny little bit like a sermon in certain places (in the manner of John Donne) but it’s Sunday, after all…)

*

Our Father who art in Heaven: hallowed be thy name.

Thy Kingdom come.

Thy will be done, on earth as it is in Heaven.

Give us this day our daily bread.

And forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us.

And lead us not into temptation.

But deliver us from evil.

For thine is the Kingdom, and the Power, and the Glory: forever and ever.

Amen.

*

In the first part of this poem, which is the first sentence, Yeshua (hereafter called Jesus in this work) was asking humans to do something.

He was asking them to acknowledge the eternal existence of something greater than themselves.

In so doing, not only the Creator of the Universe is worshiped. Humanity itself, including the speaker of the prayer, is worshiped.

He is our Father, after all. And He is in Heaven. By hallowing (making holy) his name, we make holy everything there is, including all the pain, all the death, all the suffering, all the murder, all the disease, all the killing, all the death, death, death, death.

We let it go (like saying “So it goes”), and give it back to Him. Jesus believed he was waiting to receive it. Walt Whitman later said, “All goes onward and outward; nothing collapses; and to die is different from what anyone supposes; and luckier.”

In the second sentence of this poem, which is only three words long, Jesus asks for The Kingdom to come.

It’s key to remember, or point out, that elsewhere he said, many times, “The Kingdom is inside you,” when talking to a few of his small bands of disciples and followers on the lakeshore or in the hills. (The Book of Acts says there were “about a hundred and twenty” believers after his death; the first person to see him after he died was Mary Magdalene.)

When he says “Thy Kingdom come,” he means after death, yes. But he also means, and maybe more importantly, right now, and right here, while we are alive on the earth. And it isn’t outside you, it’s never outside you, it’s right in your guts, in your brain, and in your heart, like it was in Mary Magdalene’s. Or it should be.

In the third sentence of this poem, Jesus acknowledges that we are not in charge of ourselves and we do not necessarily create our own circumstances.

This sentence is about what we call in the modern world “acceptance.” Buddha and Muhammad had similar messages. We may be born blind or we may be born with a disease that will kill us before we reach the age of twenty. Such people are more beautiful, not less beautiful, than the rest of us.

In sentence four, it’s crucial to meditate on (think about) what he means when he says “this day” and “our daily bread.”

We are not supposed to hoard possessions or money like Scrooge, and we are not meant to live on the earth forever. If we have enough today it is enough; tomorrow, as he says elsewhere, has enough worries of its own. Worrying about the future is a sin, because it diminishes the present.

“Our daily bread” does not just mean food, although it also does mean food.

It also means whatever we need for today, like strength, endurance, imagination, courage, stick-to-itiveness, a purpose, a reason for being.

It’s also meaningful to isolate the phrase “give us this day.”

For sentence five, we need to define “trespass.” Trespass means SIN.

Too many modern people these days get salty when you tell them they are sinners. And too many people of the cloth (pastors, ministers, priests, etc.) have NO IDEA what sin really means, these days.

It is not the old-fashioned thing. This world is rampant with sin. The people in the White House in the USA are great examples of this.

Greed and not caring are sins. Getting drunk or “cheating” on your spouse are personal choices (maybe bad choices, but not necessarily “sins”). (And maybe the spouse being cheated on is too greedy of your own personal time; and maybe you getting drunk is sacrificing yourself for your own artistic inspiration; everything depends upon the context.)

Jesus also emphasizes what a profound, life-changing, freeing personal event it is when you forgive someone. Forgiveness is for the other person, but it is for you first. Also, we can’t expect mercy and compassion when we don’t give unto others.

Send out mercy and compassion and you’ll soon find it will come right back at you (“instant karma”).

An example would be giving an authentic smile (not a sales person’s smile) to someone on the street, instead of ignoring them. And they smile back, in a surprised and genuine way.

For sentence six one needs to define “temptation” and “lead us.”

In this sentence of the poem, is Jesus intimating that it is God Himself who leads us into temptation? If so, doesn’t that make God a bad person? And why would he want to tempt us into something that isn’t good? Did Eve eat the apple first because she was smarter and more adventurous than Adam, or because she was more underhanded? Does temptation mean a temptation to despair, which is nihilism and a lack of faith in life, which lead to greed and not caring because you have nothing better to do or focus on?

At this point in the prayer-poem, it’s time to really realize that part of one’s job in all this is thinking, and thinking deeply, and long and hard, over years, about what it all means.

And it is NOT something one shares with others, at least not in any overt kind of way (until, maybe, much later) but the thinking itself changes who you are, and it changes you for the better.

No exceptions.

Number Seven is the penultimate sentence of this poem-prayer, and it is not Number Seven for no reason, either. (Seven = Heaven.)

The last sentence was tacked on by Martin Luther (a personal hero of mine, and a person well worth reading about, whom Harold Bloom once called the most “important” person in the West since Jesus himself, although Martin also wasn’t perfect, like all of us) much later, and it deserves to stay where it is.

It’s very, very, very similar to what the Buddhists mean when they talk about attachment – being too attached to the things that are only of this world, which equals suffering for yourself, which equals suffering for others, which equals suffering in the world.

We should attach ourselves, instead, to the things that can’t be stolen by the thieves, or corroded by the rust. Instead of being outraged by what the thieves stole from you (whether it be the “white collar” thieves or the “regular” ones), attach your mind, heart, and soul to what they can’t get at. (Any other reaction is, again: sin.)

It’s up to us to decide what those things are for us – like Jacob wrestling with the angel.

“AMEN” means Let it be.

DRIFTING END NOTE: An example of a drinking adventure I had was the time I traveled to the White Horse Tavern in New York City which is the last bar Dylan Thomas ever drank in and where he consumed the oceanic quantities of liquor that helped kill him.

I went to the White Horse Tavern specifically to get spectacularly drunk in the manner of Dylan Thomas, in order to celebrate the roistering poet spirit of Thomas in a way that was living the life, not just writing about it. (And back then I was much better at living the life than I was at writing about it, although I was working and practicing at both, every single day of my life.)

And I managed to accomplish my goal. I did in fact get spectacularly drunk in honor of Dylan Thomas. My guess is that I drank at least six pints of dark beer backed up with at least one or two shots of whiskey per beer – plus nonstop Marlboro smoking – all on an empty stomach. (I never ate when I drank since drink was my food; not even a single mouthful.)

I had to be led out of the bar and back to my friend’s apartment by my drinking companions who were also spectacularly drunk (but a little less so than I, at least on that particular occasion).

I was a bit cautious that night because I didn’t wish to jinx myself and end up dead like Dylan Thomas.

(I will eventually of course, just like we all will: but not yet for any of us).