A Daughter came to the preaching cloister and asked for Meister Eckhart.

The doorman asked:
	"Whom shall I announce?"

	"I don't know," she said.

	"Why don't you know?"

	"Because I am neither a girl, nor a woman, nor a husband, nor a
wife, nor a widow, nor a virgin, nor a master, nor a maid, nor a servant."

The doorman went to Meister Eckhart and said:

	"Come out here and see the strangest creature you ever heard of.
Let me go with you, and you stick your head out and ask: 'Who wants me?' "

Meister Eckhart did so and she gave him the same reply she had made to the
doorman.  Then he said:

	"My dear child, what you say is right and sensible but explain to
me what you mean."  She said:

	"If I were a girl, I would still be in my first innocence;  if I
were a woman, I should always be giving birth in my soul to the eternal
word;  if I were a husband, I should put up a stiff resistance to all
evil;  if I were a wife, I should keep faith to my dear one, whom i
married;  if I were a widow, I should be always longing for the one I
loved;  if I were a virgin, I should be reverently devout;  if I were a
servant-maid, in humility I should count myself lower than God or any
creature;  and if I were a manservant, I should be hard at work, always
serving my Lord with my whole heart.  But since of all these, I am neither
one, I am just a something among somethings, and so I go."

	Meister Eckhart went in and said to his pupils: "It seems to me
that I have just listened to the purest person I have ever known."

	This example is entitled "Meister Eckhart's daughter."