What is news? The prayer may become extinct!
Newspapers, and their offspring history books, emphasize the violent and exceptional as against the prosaic dreams and labors which constitute the day of the ordinary - and also the exceptional - man. The habits and toils of the masses are ignored, but they are like the swelling and ebbing tide.
The waitress at the local diner, the clerk at a convenience store, the secretary seated at a computer console, the travel agent, etc., all contribute as much to history as do generals and commanders-in-chiefs. But these obscure people are not glorified, and do not receive lavish funerals like bishops and governors.
We speak of government "of the people, by the people, and for the people", while the people are in fact despised and puny. Money rules. This has almost always been the case. It is natural that in any given area, there should be leaders who are first among equals. But if the "first" is based on "filthy lucre" instead of good sense, then the robber barons are back at the old stand.
Wars are funded by money. The fat cats at the top make a profit from it. As long as it is funded, we are guaranteed more wars. Yet we continue to pay our taxes meekly. One way to avoid paying federal taxes to fund the military is to make less than the amount for filing a tax return. But taxes are all around us, so we are all complicit.
If we are like the Buddhist monk, who ordering a hotdog asked, "Make me one with everything", we should not be taken back by the inherent defects in the way of things outlined above. But that is a misreading of both Buddhism and Christianity. It is not reconciliation with the world that is required, for that would be reconciliation with the world's evil.
We need to find peace in a creative discontent. We must strive, and yearn daily for something higher.
It is apathy to forsake desire altogether. That is a misconstruing of the message. No, we must be utopians, ever striving that "your will be done on earth as it is in heaven." A very utopian prayer, the Our Father.