While on an Ignatian retreat at Mepkin Abbey this summer, I stumbled across Henri Nouwen’s book, With Open Hands. I was struck by the opening story describing an old woman who is brought to a psychiatric center. She swings at everyone around her and the doctors take away all of her possessions, except for one small coin. She clenches this coin in her fist with all her power, and it takes two doctors to pry the coin from her hands.

The old woman saw her identity in the coin—if the coin was taken away, she would have nothing more, and be nothing more.

The person who prays is invited to open her tightly clenched fist and give up her last coin. Nouwen beautifully writes, "To pray means to open your hands before God. It means slowly relaxing the tension which squeezes your hands together and accepting your existence with an increasing readiness, not as a possession to defend, but as a gift to receive.”

When I first started attending the Catholic Church, I found a sense of comfort in the Lord’s Prayer. Coming from a Protestant Church, these were words and a part of the liturgy that I knew by heart and could fully participate. However, I immediately noticed the embodied difference of holding our hands wide open when proclaiming this part of the liturgy. I felt curious and drawn to these open hands, and found myself experiencing this prayer in a new way—deepening in my humility, openness, and trust.

The words of Jesus in this day’s Gospel reading are imprinted in many of our hearts. We can say these words at a moment's notice, and perhaps unconsciously open our hands and raise our arms. This prayer invites us into, as Nouwen says, receiving our lives as gifts and opening our clenched hands to receive what the Triune God gifts us.

This openness is revealed in the beautiful rhythm of the Gospel’s reading. The first part of the passage embodies a movement of us towards God—thy name, thy kingdom, thy will. The last four petitions invite God’s movement towards us—give us, forgive us, lead us, deliver us. There is an intimate dance that Jesus invites us into through his words. It is a dance of reciprocity of our longing for God, and God’s longing for us.

While praying with the Gospel’s reading, I am reminded of a mantra that a monk at New Camaldoli Hermitage once invited me to pray, “I am yours. You are mine.” In each outbreath, I would say “I am yours,” and in each inbreath, I would say “You are mine.” While praying this, I encountered this dance of mutuality that we see in the Lord’s Prayer.

Today, I invite each of us to experience this dance. A dance we see when we unclench our hands and release those little coins in our lives. A dance we join when we open our hands before God.