When we were little, my sister and I said our prayers every night before bedtime. By my teenage years I had started falling asleep before we had finished. I am pretty sure the failure of peace talks between the US and Russia in the 1980s was my fault.
I never had the transportive sense that, as reported by the Christian female mystic Julian of Norwich, “all shall be well, and all manner of things will be well”. I only ever felt the deep certainty that I would never get it right.
