The prayer I remember learning after "Jesus, tender shepherd, hear me," is "God is good," the table grace. I think I learned it in kindergarten, but maybe I learned it from my mother. Or maybe I learned it from Romper Room, which was, perhaps, the 1950s equivalent of Mr. Rogers.
In any case, we said it in kindergarten. We were only there for half a day, but we had a snack. Every day we each had one of those little milk cartons, and some crackers. (I hated milk. After the day I threw up as soon as I finished my carton, my teacher didn't make me drink it anymore.) But before we ate & drank, we folded our hands, bowed our heads, and said together,
"God is great, God is good,
Let us thank him for our food.
Amen."
It was a prayer that, in that day, place & age, we could all say -- Baptist, Lutheran, Mennonite, Quaker, Roman Catholic, Presbyterian, Jewish, Episcopalian. I don't remember having any Muslim classmates. For atheists, I imagine God was still like Santa Claus: a story that little children were allowed to enjoy.
And we still had a few years to go before we decided G-d should not be limited to maleness. At that point, those of us who lived on farms knew that a cow was a girl cow or a boy cow and a bull was only a boy cow; a ewe was a girl sheep and a ram was a boy sheep; and I knew that a bitch was only a girl dog, but a dog was a girl dog or a boy dog, and how to tell the difference. Some of us might have known that a boy horse who couldn't make babies was a gelding, a boy horse who could be a daddy was a stallion, and a girl horse was a mare. That was enough to sort out for a few years.
As a child, I enjoyed having a being who looked after us all and that we could all thank for the gifts in our life. And it didn't matter to us that we worshiped in different settings (or didn't worship). On the negative side, maybe it reduced thanking God to some part of our civic life or part of having good manners. But I think it was also part of learning to be thankful for life, and of sensing that something bigger than our community made us equal to each other.
Once I knew the words, saying grace at the dinner table became my job. Except on Sundays. But that's a story for another time.
Meanwhile, do you have any prayers for meals you learned as a child (or later) in your faith tradition? You are welcome to share them in the comments!
