Last week, my daughter (finally) finished a short, star-crossed run as the Mother Superior in a production of Lilies of the Field, the main fruit of which being Little Michael running around the house yelling, “Ja, Schmidt!” many times a day.
Anyway, a tale and a question.
In one scene, the nuns (five in all) were to recite the Lord’s Prayer in German. During early rehearsals, before they’d actually learned the prayer, they filled in the spot with reciting it in English.
Katie was the only one who knew it all the way through – the other four would peter out after the first two lines.
I know nothing about the religious practices of any of the other girls, but it struck me as highly unlikely that they were all non-churchgoers (particularly in this part of the country where – no joke – I saw two guys at a pizza place bow their heads and say grace over their pizza and beer one night). Perhaps they were.
But then I thought..even those that might have been, say, evangelical Christians…since they don’t have liturgical prayer as such…might there be a chance that a memorized Lord’s Prayer isn’t part of their religious vocabulary either? I mean, in a way, it doesn’t make sense because memorized Scriptures are such a part of evangelical religious life, but maybe?
Any input? Experience? Responses to my curiosity?