Life offers its wisdom generously. Everything teaches. Not everyone learns. - Rachel Naomi Remen

I think prayer may be less about asking for the things we are attached to than it is about relinquishing our attachments in some way. It can take us beyond fear, which is an attachment, and beyond hope, which is another form of attachment. It can help us remember the nature of the world and the nature of life, not on an intellectual level but in a deep and experimental way. When we pray, we don't change the world, we change ourselves. We change our consciousness. We move from an individual, isolated making-things-happen kind of consciousness to a connection on the deepest level with the largest possible reality.

Women have always been present at these times, at death and birth and in many of the other transitions in life. Women have gathered at the transitions, as comforters and companions, as witnesses, to mark the importance of the moment.

I am no longer as inspired by expertise as I once was. Perhaps the worth of any lifetime is measured more in kindness than in competency.