She always seems to find the right words

Most anyone who knows me knows that I have been an avid follower of "The Artist's Way" by Julia Cameron for many years.  Pretty much any book Julia Cameron writes, I'm on it.  I am currently reading Faith and Will - Weathering the Storms in Our Spiritual Lives.  At first, I did not like this book.  It's not in Julia's usual style...but I trusted my long relationship with her work and kept reading.  Now, I feel such synchronicity with this book and my own life.  

I don't wear my "faith" on my sleeve.  My spirituality is a big part of me but not some slogan or catch phrase that you might find on a t-shirt.  I wrestle with it.  Prayer for me is a running dialogue I have with the Great Creator.  My prayers, of late, have been of epic old testament proportions!  Fear and trembling...and all that jazz.

And then I read small words that lead to big truths in my life.  Here's why I love Julia Cameron and why I dream of spending time with her some day.

     "Perhaps when we say 'thy will be done,' we are committing ourselves to a life of adventure.  Perhaps God's will involves expansion and not constriction.  Perhaps we will be asked over and over again to commit to becoming larger and more generous.  Perhaps God views us as capable of endless growth and renewal, endless diversity and creativity.  Perhaps God expects us to fulfill our fullest potential and will actually cooperate with any plans that make of ourselves that which we dream of being.
     What if that which we dream of being is actually God's will for us?  What if we are the ones who hold back, setting an arbitrary limit on what God's power in our life will be?  What if we are the ones who decide 'this is too good to be true?'  What if we turn back God's gifts over and over and over again?
     ...Unless we are careful and alert, we automatically presume God will be adversarial to our plans, not cooperative, and so we set about  trying to accomplish our dreams under our own power, using our own limited resources.  And what happens?  Our dream often remain beyond our grasp.  For all of our trying, we are not able to wrest success from the Universe.  We grow tired and very often we grow bitter.  In our bitterness, quite often we blame God.  We act as if it is God's fault that our dreams were not fulfilled when we never asked God for help in fulfilling them.  More often we may have actively barred the door to any help from God, and yet we seldom see that.  We are like angry children who would not allow God to join our game and then are angry at the game's outcome. 
     ...God does know our dreams, spoken and unspoken, but that does not mean that we are not to speak our dreams.  In the act of articulating our dreams for ourselves and for God, we reach a necessary humility.  We make ourselves right-size when we acknowledge that there are dreams beyond our reach that we yearn for.  When we ask God to expand our lives, we acknowledge that God is an expansive power.  We become as the tiny mustard seed, holding a world of potential."

Faith and Will - Weathering the Storms in our Spiritual Lives by Julia Cameron (excerpts from pages 138-140)