"I do not have an easy relationship to you, God. I am confused by your press. I have read so much about you, from so many quarrelsome experts, that I do not know who you are — if you are. And yet I suppose you are — something made all this — and so I thought I would try to make contact," writes Julia Cameron, the best-selling author of The Artist's Way and many other books. In a series of informal prayers arising out of her feelings and circumstances, she ponders the quality of her life.
She is unhappy about not having a significant other. She believes her "inner world" is off-kilter and she's right. Writing prayers brings her face-to-face with her negativity and her propensity to always see the cup as half-empty. She laments her co-dependent behavior which results in people standing on her feet instead of their own. She feels overworked and is experiencing insomnia.
In the midst of this malaise, Cameron confesses that she finds it hard to grasp the concept of surrendering to God. Yet by the end of the book, that's exactly what she does. Preferring the idea of the Creator as "some form of spiritual electricity," she inches toward a feeling that God cares about her and is looking after her.
This laid-back collection of prayers by a nonbeliever will not set the world on fire but it does have its charms. It reveals how grace has meaning even to someone with a "cushy, privileged, nicer-than-most life."
