"The pilgrimage is a process by which we change what we think and transform who we are. Prayer is the pilgrim's walking stick. We pray for the capacity to forgive, to see the innocence in people and to surrender all things to God. We pray to enter the mystery, to remember now, to no longer forget," writes Marianne Williamson, who has been lecturing on metaphysics and spirituality since 1983. She is the author of the bestselling A Return to Love and A Woman's Worth.

In this devotional work, she has assembled a collection of thoughts, prayers, and rites of passage. Here you will find prayers for the soul, the body, relationships, work and creativity, and for the world. Williamson ranges far and wide in these nondenominational prayers. They appeal to the spiritual seeker who is open to mystery and attuned to higher consciousness. A closing section on rites of passage contains devotional material on newborns, puberty, marriage, midlife, divorce, and a memorial service.

We like the holistic perspective that Williamson brings to these prayers. For instance, after a Prayer for the Victim of Violence is a Prayer for the Perpetrator. And just before A Prayer for Leaders, the author observes: "A politician listens to his or her constituents; a leader listens to whispers in the wind."

Dear Lord,
We pray for the leaders of this country and every other.
May they not be swayed by politics but listen instead to the spirit of truth.
May they not harken to the false and bitter voices of a frightened world, but instead hear the angels who minister unto them.
May the world make room for their leadership and resist no more their growth into greatness.
May their virtue shield them.
May their lack of virtue be forgiven and corrected.
May their words be true.
May their strength go before them, to cut like a sword through all illusion.
May they see the innocence and the brotherhood in those who oppose them,
May they grow beyond a shallow fight.
And thus may we all be taken with them into new light, new peace, new politics, new hope for all the world.
Amen.