"For thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory"

In the older English translation of the Lord's Prayer, the prayer typically closes, "For thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory." Those words are not in the version recorded in the gospels as coming from Jesus, as is well-known to Roman Catholics who do not include it when praying the Lord's Prayer. I'd never looked into its origins, on the view that as far as closing words to a prayer go, I don't see a problem with it, though it's helpful to know this part of the prayer is an addition to the original prayer. 

Then this week I stumbled across a prayer that is strikingly close: 

"Yours, O LORD, is the greatness and the power and the glory and the victory and the majesty, for all that is in the heavens and in the earth is yours. Yours is the kingdom, O LORD, and you are exalted as head above all." (1 Chronicles 29:11) This was recorded as David's prayer at Solomon's coronation. 

A search turns up another similar phrase: "You, O King, the king of kings, to whom the God of heaven has given the kingdom, the power, the might, and the glory ..." (Daniel 2:37). Though this latter is not addressed to God but to Nebuchadnezzar. 

So the extended version of the Lord's Prayer seems to have taken its additional materials from ancient Jewish prayers, possibly dating as far back as the time of King David. 

Tolkien's lever

"Give me a place to stand, and a lever long enough, and I will move the world." - Archimedes

Many people have wanted to move the world, and lacked that place to stand outside of it. J.R.R. Tolkien solved the problem with Middle Earth: a place outside this world but still near enough to touch it. And through that he moved our imaginations, where we can see civilizations that are beautiful and kind instead of merely efficient, civilizations that grow from compatibility with the natural surroundings. He built a world in which the forest-dwellers write with scripts shaped in the flowing lines of trees and leaves, where mountain-dwelling miners chisel writing with the crystalline angle of minerals, and where to all of them the beauty and integrity matter. Living among these peoples, even simply in our imaginations, gives us the place to stand to see our own world more clearly. 

Memory eternal to Professor Tolkien! 

d. 2 Sept 1973