I awoke at 6:25 A.M. with this inspiring dream:

Women from all parts of the world gather and pray for peace.

This glimpse into my psyche, cast in pastel blues waves, opened me to a different kind of power, one that seeks compassion, intimacy, and trust in the Invisible; one that softens rough edges, listens with the heart, that laughs merrily with life’s twists and turns. So profound is this power that violence shirks her company and flees like disturbed bats in underground caves dripping with slime.

Such transformations happen within the school of prayer, to which Women from all parts of the world devote themselves, unsparingly. In my perception of the diseased, truncated Planet Earth, only God’s intervention, with one psyche at a time, can facilitate some kind of restoration—a new creation, if you wish. Living around the edges of Life no longer works.

So what kind of prayer are we taking about? One that accepts the arduous work of rooting out the stale furniture in our psyches, one that tracks our wolf-like instincts and squelches them from another kill, one that quests for authenticity, one that prompts us to pal with like-minded individuals and rebuild the broken.

Only within the present moment, in prayer, can we be so touched. Such inflames more courage to face and live in the truth where we traipse boundless shores, where we hike mountain paths, where we are set free, our birthrights fully actuated.