It happens while we're not looking. First, there is a woman with a need. And a plan. She connects to a few other women with a need, but maybe not such a coherent plan. And they grow together. And more come and they bring others. And just like movements become, just like the wagons of women from generations ago became a movement to unite and to free, we have become and are becoming.

Once these women, who are as close to me as skin, once they were strangers. It's so simple. And it's profound. It gets to be old hat to me. It gets to be just my life. These women, my "chosen" family, are mine and I just expect it. But every year, I see in the faces of new women, of new sisters, a sense of wonder and awe that they found this path.

This is not a religion, although some talk of worshiping a goddess, some a god. Sometimes we worship a sunset on a lake michigan beach or a warm fire under the stars. We often worship a feast's deliciousness as it makes love to our tongues, leaving juice on our lips to soften our kisses.

Or maybe it is a sort of religion, in that we worship each other, and ourselves. We are praying to each other in tears, we are singing praises of each other's beauty in the moonlight. We are studying the holy scriptures of collective evolving stories.

Wrapping up in this connection cocoon of unconditional love and acceptance is to fully immerse in the human experience. Although it feels safe initially, it is also dangerous to be so intimate and vulnerable. As the kisses are sweet, so are the bites bitter.

But we cannot stop it. We cannot help ourselves. The mysterious flow contains us and connects us and there is no mercy. I don't want mercy anyway.

amen