EACH MORNING of my public school days in Baltimore, my class recited the Lord's Prayer.

It wasn't until college that I understood that this exquisite, profound and thoughtful prayer was not of my Jewish faith.

Still, due to its clarity, in times of confusion I often reflect on its words, never more so than to reconcile the commandment "Thou shalt not kill" with our divisive decision to go to war in Iraq.

In recent months, our country has found itself in relative isolation in the world due to that decision. And 900 men and women have returned to their families in flag-draped coffins while thousands more have been wounded.

Since this prayer has been such an important part of my youth,I'd like to share how it has meshed with specific chapters of my life and helped to bring personal clarification and direction.

Our Father, who art in heaven, Hallowed be thy Name.

My childhood rabbi, Uri Miller, taught his students that G-d is so holy and all-powerful that His name may not be written out in its entirety. Rabbi Miller's sermons used biblical references to teach ethics and morality. He was chosen to offer the closing prayer in the 1963 March on Washington.

Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done, On earth as it is in Heaven.

"I have never had a feeling, politically, that did not spring from the sentiments embodied in the Declaration of Independence."

- Abraham Lincoln

"We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness..."

Give us this day our daily bread

"Make us worthy, Lord, to serve those people throughout the world who live and die in poverty and hunger. Give them through our hands, this day, their daily bread, and by our own understanding love, give them peace and joy."

- Mother Theresa

And forgive us our trespasses,

"The legitimate object of war is a more perfect peace...

"Glory is all moonshine. It is only those who have neither fired a shot nor heard the shrieks and groans of the wounded who cry aloud for blood, more vengeance, more desolation. War is hell."

- William Tecumseh Sherman

As we forgive those who trespass against us.

All human beings sometimes err in judgment and action. Life has taught me how essential it is both to learn to feel and to understand where acts of unkindness, betrayal and cruelty come from. Only then can there be thoughtful forgiveness - and, as important, an enlightened awareness of who it is safe to trust in love and friendship, as well as to be led by in order to make a better community and society.

And lead us not into temptation,

"Fanaticism consists in redoubling your efforts when you have forgotten your aim..."/"Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it."

- George Santayana

But deliver us from evil.

In what will be remembered among the most dangerous and bewildering Supreme Court decisions of all time, court decides a president will not be distracted from his responsibilities by an examination of his sex life.

Following the dire findings of the 9/11 Commission, calling for immediate action, Congress takes a six-week hiatus.

"The psychic development of the individual is a short repetition of the course of development of the race."

"When the wayfarer whistles in the dark, he may be disavowing his timidity, but he does not see any the more clearly for doing so."

"The voice of the intellect is a soft one, but it does not rest until it has gained a hearing."

- Sigmund Freud

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

"It is only with the heart that one can see rightly/What is essential is invisible to the eye."

- Antoine-Marie-Roger de Saint-Exupery

For ever and ever.

"Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired, signifies in the final sense a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed."

- Dwight Eisenhower