Ship of Fools recently held a very interesting competition.
The competition was for re-writing the Lord's Prayer for the mobile phone, using just 160 characters or less. It was judged for Ship of Fools by the Churches' Broadcasting Conference. The task itself was not easy. The traditional version of the Lord's Prayer is 372 characters long, so whittling it down to 160 characters meant cutting the prayer by more than half but without losing anything important.
Third Place: Rev. Stephen E. Moore, Bellevue, Washington, USA (WOO HOO!! Go Vicar of all Bellevue!). Here's what he wrote:
God@heaven.org, You rule, up and down. We need grub and a break. Will pass it on. Keep us focused. You totally rule, long term. Amen.
Second place: Steve Seymour, Bristol, England:
r pa in evan, respect 2 u, may u rain ear as in evan. giv us r needs, 4giv rsin as we 4giv r nmes. resq us from the evil 1. 4 ur always the most xlent dude. yo
THE WINNER – out of a strong field of over 100 entries, Matthew Campbell, a history student at York University, came up with the winning entry, which is...
In 1st place: Matthew Campbell, York, England
dad@hvn,ur spshl.we want wot u want&urth2b like hvn.giv us food&4giv r sins lyk we 4giv uvaz.don't test us!save us!bcos we kno ur boss,ur tuf&ur cool 4 eva!ok?
7 comments:
Ths s so cnvnynt. thnk r pa unrstnds?
I'm not into texting, but those are fun to decipher.
What a great idea! I'm copying this for our youth class. It might be neat to try a similar experiment with them and see what they come up with. Even try a different prayer, perhaps. It's great because it makes them think about what the prayer is saying and what it means before they can try to reduce it to a text message.
Thanks for sharing this!
I thought that contest was a bit longer ago? Ah, well, I've been running around those boards for so long (Dec. 03) that it all kind of blurs together after a while.
Meh. Kid stuff.
When they get the Athanasian creed down to 140 characters, THEN I'll be impressed. :)
If you use the Lukan version, which I prefer as I believe it is closer to the original, it is not difficult to put into normal speech:
Father, Holy be your name, your Realm come, give us our daily bread, forgive our sins for we forgive others debts; save us from the time of trial.
I think this contest may have been held as early as 2001. An internet and email chestnut.
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