/cloudfront-us-east-1.images.arcpublishing.com/bostonglobe/37INRYOJHJBZJN3XU77664P2TE.jpg)
Julia Cameron, whose 1992 bestselling guide “The Artist’s Way” has been a groundbreaking path to creativity for millions of readers, realized that although she’s discussed spirituality in much of her work, she’d never written a book about the role of prayer in her life.
She has rectified that omission with “Seeking Wisdom: a Spiritual Path to Creative Connection” (St. Martin’s Essentials). “I just realized that it was such an important part of my process that it was almost unconscious, I used it so continuously,” said Cameron on the phone from her home in New Mexico.
She realized that not everyone feels comfortable with prayer. “I wanted to write a book that sort of demythologized prayer, and I hope I’ve done that,” she said. Cameron writes of her own conversation with God that began when she got sober. “I wanted people to understand that I wasn’t speaking to them from some pedestal,” she said. “That was why I started with my sobriety story: I wanted them to understand that I came to prayer almost literally over my dead body.”
Raised Catholic, Cameron said her childhood idea of prayer was “very formal” and not one she felt comfortable turning to as she battled alcoholism. “I found myself protesting, ‘Oh no, I can’t pray,’” she said. The one thing she found she could believe in, in a spiritual sense, was a line from a Dylan Thomas poem: “The force that through the green fuse drives the flower.” It was, she said, “a creative energy source,” and it became the higher power she could imagine.
Advertisement
More than 40 years (and 40-some books) later, Cameron still prays daily. “I write morning pages, and I find those to be a sort of concentrated form of prayer,” she said, referring to a tool from “The Artist’s Way” in which one writes three pages, longhand, on any topic, first thing in the morning. She notes that prayer doesn’t require a firm belief in God, nor does this new book. She hopes readers “find the sense of a benevolent force that they can tap into. And that’s why I don’t think it matters if you’re an atheist or an agnostic; if you do the practices, you will connect,” she said.
Advertisement
“I had one man say to me, ‘I’ve been writing morning pages for 23 years. I’m an atheist, but I’ve written 13 feature films,’ and I said to him, ‘Well, clearly you don’t believe in God, but God believes in you!’”
Julia Cameron will read at 7 p.m. Thursday, Jan. 13, at a virtual event hosted by Brookline Booksmith.
Kate Tuttle, a freelance writer and critic, can be reached at kate.tuttle@gmail.com.