A Great Big Belly Laugh

I am feasting on another Julia Cameron book. She is my favourite author on creativity and The Vein of Gold and The Sound of Paper have helped me though the first half of this year. Now I am reading God Is No Laughing Matter and am chuckling with each turn of the page.

Cameron warns the Very Spiritual People at the very start of this book that 'you may not find the book you hold in your hands very spiritual...but you will find it very sprited.' And from thereon, she proceeds to gently poke fun at every single serious strand of spirituality in a hilarious, thought-provoking collection of short essays.

I'm very sure that many Christians would make a bonfire of every single copy of this book if they could but that's exactly Cameron's point - why so serious? Cameron herself is a believer, having also written two books on the subject - Blessings and Transitions - and paying tribute to God in many of her other books too.

I'm enjoying this book because it reminds me not to take spirituality too seriously. So forget being vegetarian, forget celibacy, forget elaborate prayers, forget transcending pain and anger, forget meditating for 12 hours a day and watching your mind like a TV set, forget being humourless because God is a serious matter, forget believing that God only sets obstacles for us....forget all the man-made rules about spirituality.

The best spiritual path is not one that you create from an combination of underlined sentences in various self-help books, but the very path you are walking on right this very minute.