Gud som haver barnen kär,
se till mig som liten är.
Vart jag mig i världen vänder
står min lycka i Guds händer.
Lyckan kommer, lyckan går,
du förbliver, Fader vår.

My friend Robin has been reflecting on prayer here.  That got me thinking about mY childhood.  It was quite startling to remember that at bedtime each night, my parents gathered my older brother and me to say a prayer in Swedish that’s hundreds of years old. At the end of the prayer, still in speaking in Swedish, we’d ask God to bless Mormor, Morfar and Mormor’s Mor–my mother’s parents and her grandmother. Then we’d switch into Spanish and thank God for lots of other things. What is so amazing to me is how far into agnosticism my family drifted and how completely that ritual faded from our family’s memory and conversation.  Yet it was at the tip of my tongue as soon as I thought of it.

The prayer is simple: “God who loves the children well, watch over me who am so small. Whatever corners of the world I may wander, great my joy if I be in God’s hands. Joy may come and joy may flee, You abide, Father of ours.

That is my faith.

What is your earliest memory of prayer?