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Prayers From a Nonbeliever

Review

Prayers From a Nonbeliever



Like many people who study religion as a vocational choice and who
often get painfully serious about it, the very term "spirituality"
can send shivers up my spine. It's one of those literary categories
that always seems to cover too much, yet include too little of
substance, or (at worst) elevates really trivial writing to places
where even angels fear to tread.

So I cautiously backed into Julia Cameron's PRAYERS FROM A
NONBELIEVER, wondering what liberties would be taken with the
elements of faith and soul work that I hold dear as an Anglican
(Episcopal) Master of Divinity student, let alone an "ordinary"
Christian of any particular denomination.

As I began reading her Dear God... entries, set in the form
of a 21st-century pilgrim's diary, I asked myself this question:
just what does one of America's most sought-after multimedia
creative artists have to offer the "every-person" spiritual seeker,
the doctrine-devouring theology student, or anyone else to whom
religion is more than an abstract term? After all, it would seem on
the surface that someone like Julia Cameron "has it all."

Appropriately, my fundamental question wasn't answered right away.
Neither is Cameron's existential plea for a bona fide sign that God
is --- period. Instead, both reader and author are deeply and often
jarringly self-reflected in these brief meditations about the vast
and minute nuances of life.

God is indeed within the details, as Cameron shows us when she
acquires something as inconsequential as a shower stall "gizmo" to
hold her tumbling toiletries; the result being a few extra moments
of unhampered relaxation in which she meditates on new and better
ways to connect with her Creator. But God is also amid the glories
of a universe too big even for the most fertile imaginations, and
Cameron is just as courageous as Captain Kirk (of Star Trek
fame) about going boldly into the cosmic unknown --- albeit kicking
and screaming on occasion.

In such ways, PRAYERS FROM A NONBELIEVER goes many steps further
than the usual spiritual self-help guide, helping us to recognize,
reclaim, and celebrate the existential out-theres and intimate
in-heres of our true lives as human spiritual beings. It isn't just
about nurturing warm fuzzies and feel-good notions, or about
tweaking the edges of fashionable simplicity and meditation. Simply
put, this can be a very challenging and sweetly humbling little
book (it's only 128 pages) that bears reading over and over again
until a subtle, yet unmistakable, awareness of God's presence sinks
in.

As Cameron comes to realize, and so eloquently shares in this
richly colored mosaic of her thoughts, connecting with God for the
long run is all about enlightened patience. And that places PRAYERS
FROM A NONBELIEVER among the best of today's genuine devotional
literature.

Reviewed by Pauline Finch ([email protected]) on January 22, 2011

Prayers From a Nonbeliever
by Julia Cameron

  • Publication Date: November 30, -0001
  • Genres: Nonfiction, Spirituality
  • Hardcover: 128 pages
  • Publisher: Tarcher
  • ISBN-10: 1585422134
  • ISBN-13: 9780641740688