A Prayer in Today’s Language, a Note by Mohammad Reza Jalaeipour

Mohammad Reza Jalaeipour: Every generation of believers needs prayers that are close to the unadorned language in which they think and feel, with whose content they can connect, and in which they can see their own requests and aspirations. However, despite the importance of individual prayers and collective supplication rituals in the Islamic tradition, composing prayers in modern Persian for a contemporary audience is not very common. This weakness is more noticeable when compared with the tradition of composing prayers in everyday language in Protestant Christianity, Turkish and Arabic Islam, and modernist Judaism. The rich tradition of composing poetic prayers and rhymed prose prayers in Persian within Khorasani Sufism and mysticism has also, for various reasons, not been transmitted to modern Persian and the contemporary era. It seems one of the reasons for the weakness of prayer literature in today's Persian language is the prevalence of reciting supplications in Arabic within Iranian Shiite Islam. Weak Persian translations of famous supplications have also compounded the problem. In recent years, efforts such as Ali Mousavi Garmaroudi's translation of "Sahifa Sajjadiya," Karim Zamani's translation of "Zobdeh Mafatih al-Jinan," and Seyyed Mehdi Shojaei's translation of the "Arafah Supplication" have been successful examples of readable translations of the rich heritage of prayer in the Islamic tradition. But even these translations have not filled the void for prayers with contemporary content and language. The prayer by Mohammad Reza Jalaeipour that follows is an example of prayers that are both in simple and fluent modern Persian and compatible with the semantic world of modern-thinking and contemporary believers.

- Beautiful God! Help us to create our personality, character, and life like a beautiful, original, renewing, and creative work of art, with desirable details and elements and a well-composed whole that You can take pride in.

- Judging God! Help us to be better spouses, children, fathers, mothers, sisters, brothers, friends, colleagues, classmates, neighbors, fellow citizens, compatriots, fellow humans, and cohabitants of the environment, and to deliver more goodness and joy through us to our family, friends, acquaintances, Iranians, contemporaries, and those who are not our contemporaries.

- Assisting God! Grant us aid to be at peace with our psychological type, our body, our incapacities, our family and society, our past, and everything that is not in our hands.

- Beauty-loving God! Train us in such a way that while detesting sin and wrongdoing, we can show affection and kindness to sinners and wrongdoers.

- Heart-ravishing God! Ravish our hearts too, and make us magnanimous, tranquil-hearted, cheerful-hearted, and lively-hearted.

- Lovable God! You are as we love; make us also as You love.

- Near God! Make us successful in the "search for truth" and "service to creation."

- Life-building God! Make our lives more enjoyable, more benevolent, more valuable, and more spiritual.

- Kind God! Acquaint us better with Yourself, Your lovers, and the paths of earth and heaven.

- Beloved God! Cast Your affection, the affection of Your lovers, and the affection of everything that brings us closer to You, more than ever into our hearts.

- Perceptible God! Help us to see Your word, sign, message, manifestation, and image in the mirror of all the visible and invisible components of existence, and to feel the warmth of Your presence in our lives.

- God, nurturer of love! Increase our love for truth, goodness, beauty, animals, humans, nature, and You.

- O gentle God! Grant us the flourishing experience of love with a good and suitable partner and spouse, and make our lovemaking ever more giving, more ecstatic, more altruistic, more passionate, and more auspicious in its outcome.

- O adorable God! Let us taste, more than ever, the sweetness and pleasure of Your remembrance and invocation, supplication, intimacy with spiritual texts, performing prayers, repentance, silence, keeping vigil at dawn, fasting and breaking habits, spiritual retreat, meditation, and all forms of worship and spiritual exercises.

- God, creator of illumination! Protect us from the "art of always being right," grant us the success to understand that we do not possess the whole truth, and help us to remain open to "other" beliefs and horizons in a truth-seeking and experimental manner, and to be courageous, ready, and eager to learn, change, and reform our beliefs and character.

- O heart-expanding God! Increase our share of delightful and invigorating recreations, memorable and routine-breaking journeys and experiences, life-enriching acquaintances and friendships, heartwarming nature excursions, intimate, joyous, and laughter-filled evening gatherings, soul-stirring poems, readable stories, and beautiful, transformative, and imagination-nurturing artistic works of cinema, music, theater, and visual arts.

O teaching God! Grant us the success to read and see more and better, and may what we read and see be pleasurable and instructive, and be translated into a better life.

- O wise God! Help us to use new technologies and modern communications to meet our important needs and do more good work at less cost, and to prevent them from creating new false needs for us, becoming time-sinks, and destroying the solitude, slowness, and simplicity of our lives.

- O forgiving God! Help us to say "I don't know," "I made a mistake," "I apologize," and "I love you" more easily and more often.

- O healing God! Grant us aid so that with "regular exercise," "healthy food, drink, and air," and "calm and sufficient sleep," we may have a more vibrant body, and through persistence in worship and spiritual exercises, we may find greater spiritual vitality.

- O nurturing God! Cultivate our precision, skill, spirit, and art for the grateful enjoyment of all kinds of things to taste, smell, see, hear, and touch.

- O God, increaser of sustenance! Help us, while being well-fed, neat in appearance, enjoying suitable housing, efficient communication devices, and comfortable vehicles, to dress, eat, and consume in such a way that we do not distance ourselves greatly from the average and lower classes of society, do not cause the sighs of the deprived, and spend our surplus income on charitable economic, cultural, and spiritual affairs.

- O God, lover of the pious! Keep us away from extravagance in shopping, excessive talking in person and online, overeating, and oversleeping.

- O helping God! Help us to be good-natured, righteous, and of good influence in our online social networks, mobile messengers, and electronic communications.

- O God, the Veiler of faults! Help us that our hidden virtues may increase, that we may be more pleasing in Your sight than in the sight of people, that after deep and close acquaintance we may become more lovable than we appear from afar, and that our "being" may be more beautiful and valuable than our "appearance" and our "possessions."

- O God, Lover of goodness! Grant us the success to generously and unstintingly give more of our economic, social, cultural, and symbolic capital, our time, our share of Your blessings, and whatever we love most, to others.

- O All-Seeing God! Help us not to compare ourselves with others; to remain immune from the arrogance, envy, and suffering arising from this comparison; and to compete only with ourselves in virtues and in tranquility, contentment, and joy.

- O God, Nurturer of imagination! Let us taste that the imagination of the world is better than the world itself, and that imaginary pleasures are more intense and subtle than non-imaginary ones; increase our share of blessed experiences and imaginary pleasures; and by strengthening our imagination through literature, art, and imaginative exercises, help us to better appreciate our blessings through "imagining deprivation from them" and to derive more enjoyment and benefit from them, to more easily imagine ourselves in the place of the "other," and in pursuit of greater empathy and compassion with others, to live more ethically.

- O Immortal God! Make us believe that we will surely die, and make us "death-aware" so that before the death of our body, we may live better.

- O Strengthening God! Grant us the insight to accept the unchangeable undesirables, and give us the strength to reform the changeable undesirables within ourselves and society.

- O God, Creator of mystery! Help us to make peace with the reality that many matters remain of the nature of secrets and enigmas, that our cognitive faculties are insufficient for finding definitive and final answers to many questions, and that in these cases, our responsibility is only silence or attention to the stronger conjecture and supposition.

- O Forgiving God! Help us not to wrong ourselves or others, and if we do so unintentionally, grant us the opportunity to seek forgiveness and make amends.

- O All-Knowing God! Help us to know our limits and not to transgress them.

- O Eye-Opening God! Open our eyes to Your blessings, cultivate our art and skill for enjoying and benefiting from Your blessings, help us to be righteous and reformers while benefiting, and grant us the success of appreciation and of verbal and practical gratitude for Your blessings.

- O Wealthy God! Increase our outward and inward pleasures, both small and great, and diminish our outward and inward pains.

- O God, Bestower of insight! Help us to avoid pleasures that lead to greater outward or inward suffering, or that deprive us of a greater outward or inward pleasure.

- O Forgiving God! Help us, for greater enjoyment and benefit, not to yield to what is morally, spiritually, or legally impermissible.

- O God, Bestower of blessings! With every blessing and pleasure, grant us the success of gratitude and attention to You, and with every deprivation and suffering, grant us the capacity for patience.

- O All-Hearing God! Help us to act upon Your "moral" commands, which the common wisdom of humanity is capable of discerning, and to be followers of Your "spiritual" commands, which we recognize through the prophets, revelation, Your saints, and inner experiences.

- O Benevolent God! Forgive our past errors and sins, and teach us that following Your moral and spiritual commands is a source of greater good and of outward and inward pleasure.

O Forgiving God! Help us so that we no longer wish, nor are able, to violate the ethics of servitude and friendship with You.

- O Wise God! Aid us in purging our religion of the anti-ethical beliefs, behaviors, and elements that are not pleasing to You, and in recognizing and promoting a religion that serves "ethics" and "spirituality" and is compatible with "rationality."

- O Patient God! Save Your religion from unethical promoters, outwardly pious oppressors, and anti-rational, spirituality-eroding imports that do not recognize the independence of "science," "philosophy," "ethics," and "just law" from Your "religion."

- O Compassionate God! Aid us so that we may act upon the primary "moral duties" of fidelity, beneficence, reparation, gratitude, non-maleficence, justice, and self-improvement, and whenever we find ourselves in a situation of conflict among these duties, grant us the ability to discern and intuit the more important duty and to act upon it.

- O Good God! Grant us the success to strengthen within ourselves the "moral virtues" of honesty, diligence, humility, contentment, modesty, altruism, thankfulness, fidelity, chastity, moderation, self-control, benevolence, perseverance, patience, kindness, lovingness, purity, forbearance, fairness, tolerance, cheerfulness, simplicity, clemency, dignity of the soul, courtesy, generosity, courage, liberality, detachment, forgiveness, and compassion.

- O Able God! Help us to have greater moral sensitivity and responsibility towards the "foreseeable consequences" of our choices, and to live in such a way that brings about greater good, pleasure, and happiness for a greater number of human beings.

- O God, Cherisher of Your servants! Grant us aid so that, in increasing our share of the social benefits of wealth, knowledge, power, lust, status, and popularity, we do not violate "ethics," and help us build a society and a world where living ethically incurs fewer costs.

- O God Who Answers! Grant us greater inner purity, peace of mind, inner joy, and deep contentment, and teach us that these unlimited individual blessings are more desirable than competing over the limited resources of social benefits.

- O Hope-Giving God! Increase our hope in You, and grant us the success to believe that hope in other than You is a source of bitterness.

- O One God! Redouble our ability to give hope, create joy, and bestow peace upon others.

- O Transformative God! Help us to live in the "present," to be free from the "sorrow of the past" and the "fear of the future," and to leave the home of "now" only as much as is necessary for "planning for the future" and "learning from the past."

- O God, the Sustainer! Help us so that the time and energy we devote to professional work and the acquisition of wealth, status, power, and knowledge do not encroach upon the time and attention we must dedicate to our spouse, family, ourselves, our joys, You, and the “common good.”

- O God, the One! Grant us success in dividing our time and attention in a balanced way among “solitude,” “home,” “workplace,” and “society,” and help us to have more delightful “solitude” and loneliness, a secure personal space, and greater silence; let our “home” remain a center of tranquility, leisure, pleasure, and love; let our “job,” in addition to providing the income needed for an independent and comfortable life, bring more goodness and pleasure to others and ourselves; and let our “society” and city build a foundation for a peaceful, pleasant, and ethical life.

- O God, the Creator! Help us to be more committed to marital ethics, the ethics of friendship, business ethics, the ethics of our specialized profession, and civic ethics.

- O God, the Praiseworthy! Help us, in addition to the “ethics of conduct” and the “ethics of speech,” to also be committed to the “ethics of belief,” the “ethics of emotions,” and the “ethics of desires”; to not hold “belief without reason”; to not spread sorrow, despair, anger, hatred, anxiety, and other “negative emotions” in ourselves and others; and to not have “unjustifiable desires” of ourselves, others, and You.

- O God, the Granter of Success! Grant us the success of a less erroneous understanding of the prophetic spiritual tradition and a more diligent adherence to this tradition.

- O God, the Opener! Help us to distinguish the spiritual and sacred teachings of the Prophet from the non-sacred elements and components of the law and custom of the society of the Prophet’s era, and to place these “spiritual teachings” for believers not as a substitute for, but in peace alongside, a “just and trans-religious law” and a “pre-religious ethics” for all.

- O God, the Self-Sufficient! Grant us a greater share of the blessings of health, a long and blessed life, a charming and good spouse, healthy and righteous children, pleasant and effortless sustenance, and pure, pleasant, empathetic, and benevolent intimate friends!

- O God, the Healer! Keep us away from physical, psychological, and spiritual illnesses.

- O God, the Bestower of Well-being! Exempt us from trials beyond our capacity.

- O God, Who can be encountered! Elevate our spiritual “experiences” and expose us more to the “testimony” of Your true prophets and saints regarding their spiritual experiences.

- O God, the Guide! Do not deprive us of the pleasure and benefit of the company of Your friends, of being included in their prayers of goodness and spiritual nurturing, and of adopting their insight and following their character.

- O God, the Acceptor of Repentance! Help us to more precisely recognize the moral, emotional, psychological, economic, political, social, and epistemological obstacles to our spiritual wayfaring and experience, and to remove them with greater seriousness and success.

- O God, the Helper! Grant us the success of greater love for all, more compassion for those we know, and outstanding kindness to our father, mother, spouse, and friends, and help us not to forget that a warm, affectionate, and equal relationship with our spouse, family, and friends, greater empathy and sympathy with acquaintances, and greater love for our fellow human beings are more desirable than most apparent blessings.

- Just God! Help us, to the extent we can in the course of our daily lives, to strive to reduce economic, gender, religious, cultural, ethnic, racial, and political discrimination, and to build a more just world at national, transnational, and subnational levels.

- Great God! Help us, through our individual and collective daily steps, to gradually build a world with less hunger, absolute poverty, war, killing, physical and mental illness, discrimination, and ugliness, and where its human beings have a better bodily and spiritual life, are kinder to the environment, other animals, and humans, and find greater success in living a happy and peaceful life, ethical conduct, and the expansion of their spiritual experiences.

- Merciful God! Help Iranians and non-Iranians to attain greater welfare, freedom, justice, democracy, order, and security in their country at a lower cost and in a shorter time.

Liberating God! Bring closer the freedom of the innocent seekers of justice from confinement and imprisonment, and in the remaining days of prison, make their condition and that of their families more pleasant.

Peace-giving God! Increase our faith, righteous deeds, and piety not according to the measure of our worthiness, but to the extent of Your own desire.

- God of beautiful names! Choose, nurture, and build us for Yourself.

- God of beautiful attributes! Make our death easy and timely. Amen!

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