A friend sent me two prayers, both by John Archer, of Huddersfield, in the UK. I'm guessing they might be 100 years old.
The Prayer of the Landless.
O THOU, who didst decree all things, and who didst breathe upon us, giving us life, for what purpose didst Thou create us?
For we are aliens upon the soil which gave us birth, and we are trespassers in the land of our fathers.
Thou didst fashion us in nakedness, and didst bid us break the bread we eat in the sweat of our brows. But though we would fain comply with Thy command, we may not do so without the consent of others.
And the price of such consent is so exacting that our lives are made bitter by hard bondage.
We plough the fields and scatter the good seed o'er the land, but a mere pittance of the golden grain is our portion of the harvesting.
We spin and weave, but it is the bodies of others which are kept warm by the cloth our hands doth make.
We build ships and carry over the face of the deep the fruits of the labours of our brethren, and we return laden with the fruits of Thy beneficence and other men's labours in the lands we have visited, but others than ourselves and our brethren appropriate the fruits of our activities.
Down, down we go into the deeps of the mind, and through danger attended with discomfort we dig and hew the coal which shall give warmth and glow to the hearthstones of our homes; but divers rents, royalties and wayleaves impoverish the hire of our labour in order to enrich the exchequer of those who neither toil nor spin.
The rights of the birds of the air and of the beasts of the field to their place on this planet of Thy creation is acknowledged, but ours is challenged. We have not where to lay our heads, we have not where to place the soles of our feet -- without permission. And we may only secure such permission by the payment of annual tribute known as ground-rents.
Jesus, our elder Brother, who taught us to believe that Thou art equally the Father of us all; didst also command us to render to Thee the things which belong to Thee.
The earth, created Thou it! Hast Thou given the title deeds thereof to those who refuse to us the right of a standing and a resting place thereon, unless we pay rent to them annually?
If Thou hast bestowed on them the title deeds, wherein have we sinned against Thee, and wherein have they so pleased Thee, that they should be thus lifted above compliance with Thy decrees and ordinances, and we be so penalised that our children languish for lack, their mothers droop and die, thus causing many of us to curse the day we were born.
If these things be not of Thy ordering, so incline the hearts of all Thy people to the issues of justice, that they may be made to realise they but mock Thee with vain petitions when they pray, "Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven," until they right this wrong which dishonours Thee and which enslaves and destroys Thy disinherited children. Amen.
It may not be immediately obvious to those who haven't thought about this before that the alternative is for every individual who possesses land to pay to the commons each year the annual value of the land itself -- that size lot in that location. Each pays for what he uses, and thus keeps for himself no more than what he is actually using. This creates an economy in which valuable sites get used for valuable purposes, not held out of use as someone's nestegg for their children or grandchildren. No one grows wealthy off others' labor, and this flow of land rent gets used for common purposes rather than pouring into the portfolios of a select few.
Click on this link to see all the Landlord and Landless prayers I've got on a single page.
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