So I'm having a conversation with a coworker (okay - not exactly. We're IMing each other, or iChatting, or whatever you want to call it - our local message client is Microsoft Office Communicator, which is acronymed to "MOC" so around here we say that we are MOCing each other - but that doesn't sound very nice) and he interjects the word "thy" into our discussion, thusly:

"UNLEASH Thy publishing insanity AT WILL!!!"

(N.B. - he's referring to a loadtest that I run, that causes his websites to be published at a high rate of speed. It's not really "insanity" - and I don't know who Will is).

Now, the young feller in question is quite bright and literate; however, I couldn't help but ask him if he should be using "thou" with me. He responded that he wasn't using "thou", but that he was using "thy".

So I had to point out that "thy" was the possesive of "thou"; he allowed as to how he hadn't thought about that, but that he really thought that "thou" was a really cool word, and he referred to Darth Vader using the term when referring to his Master.

That seems to be a pretty normal response; I find that some folks really like "thou", and some folks really hate it. Those who like it often associate it with literature (often SF or fantasy), while those who hate it usually associate it with religion (specifically, the King James Bible). But, as far as I can tell, most folks have no idea what it means.

Actually, I hadn't thought about it myself, until after I heard enough folks complain about "all the 'thees' and 'thous'" in the Third Step Prayer in the Big Book. The first time that I responded to such a complaint was actually quite a favorable situation; a young man in Salt Lake was saying how much he hated that stilted language, but that he was willing to say the prayer the way that it was written, because doing this program his way hadn't worked so far.'

But then I started noticing how so many folks have a negative connotation associated with "Thee" - especially when it's in upper case. And eventually I noticed that they were talking about how it was "stilted" - I heard that term several times - and I realized that they were seeing it as being demeaning, since they were feeling forced into a situation where they were speaking "formally" with the Almighty.

That's when I started wondering - myself - why we use "Thee" in prayer. The most intrusive example is (of course) the Lord's Prayer - "hallowed be Thy name". I've got a bit of background in studying languages (note: this is not the same thing as learning languages. I'm not fluent in any language except Southern English, although I got to where I could think in Besoffenes Deustch (Drunken German) just a little bit.

But I noticed that both the Romance languages (those derived from Latin) and the Teutonics (those associated with German) had two forms of the second person pronoun ("second person" means the person being spoken to - in normal English, the pronoun "you") - they have both a formal and an intimate form.

In German, it's "Sie" and "du" (notice how the formal term is capitalized). In Spanish, it's "Usted" and "tu", and in French, it's "vous" and "tu". Often the  formal term will also refer to the plural of the second person, or the verb being used will be in the third person - in the latter case, it's similar to the formal address that one might use with one who is of much higher station - as in "Would the General like his coffee now?" when one is actually speaking to the General himself.

And then I realized that English - which is derived from both the Romance and Teutonic languages - more than likely had, at one time, had both a formal and intimate second person pronoun, but that it had been lost in common usage; and that makes sense, when one figures that the language would be following the culture, and we have moved to a more democratic (note the lower case), egalitarian way of speaking, now that any man's opinion - no matter how ignorant he might be - is considered to be as good as any other's.

Declension               First Person          Second Person Formal/Plural               Second Person Intimate/Singular
NOMINATIVE                    I                                       You                                                  Thou   
OBJECTIVE                      Me                                     You                                                  Thee
POSSESSIVE                    My                                     Your                                                Thy


So I put that information together with what I know of the New Testament and Shakespeare, and I realized why we use "Thee" when referring to the Higher Power.  And then I started discussing this with pigeons¹ when we were working on Step Three - but I would always do so by laying a trap:

Me: "Okay, now you understand that, when the King James Bible was written, English had a formal and informal way of saying "you", right?"

Pigeon: "Yeah, I understand that - sure!"

Me: "So now, do you know why we say "Thee" and "Thou" when we pray?"

Pigeon: "Yeah - it's so that we can be more formal, and show God respect, right?"

Me: "Nope! No, not at all - Thee is the INTIMATE form of the second person. When Juliet talks to Romeo, she says "Wherefore art thou, Romeo?" We use Thee because there is nobody in the world who can know us better than God." ...I like to draw them out, to let them see that they've been hating the terms because they actually had the opposite idea of their real meaning. As a good sponsor, it's my job to help a pigeon learn how screwed up his thinking has been : )

When we pray, we're speaking to somebody who sees us on the toilet - who sees us at our best and at our worst - who can see our very secrets, even the things that we're still keeping secret from ourselves.










¹ Another term that can cause a lot of discord amongst the newcomers; we call 'em "pigeons" because
    a) they're soft and fuzzy, and
    b) we have to keep them boxed in, and
    c) once we get 'em trained, we hope that they're going to carry a message.