When we imagine someone praying to God, we commonly imagine someone asking for things like riches or success. But I find that my best prayers are always for other people. Friends who are sick, who have loved ones who are sick. Friends facing difficult decisions. People I love, who are still here, or who've passed away. I pray for unborn children and distant strangers, people I've never met, who suffer from injustices I play some part in, and must strive to correct.

It's not a question of being selfish or selfless in prayer, which misses the point, I think. Perhaps, as the sufis say, it's a matter of obliterating the self altogether, submitting to the divinity of unity, the truth that we are each a part of something vast and whole. I'm not a sufi, and I don't really know if that's what they mean. But I know the feeling when prayer falls into that space.

Anyway. I'm getting old (we all are) and these are the things I think on the first day of the holy month, as life, the collective life, goes on in the midst of everything. Ramadan Kareem.

--April 13 2021