Customer Reviews

Faith and Will: Weathering the Storms in Our Spiritual Lives

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

She opens her heart and God spills out on every page. Honest sharing for those times when we "think" God has gone missing from our lives. What a comfort this book is. Chocked full of stories and more simple prayers to connect...re-connect to God, The Universe, or your Higher Power.
Having lost my connection with God I often wished I had left a trail so I could find my way back...Thankfully by Julia sharing her own and others paths I remember where I am now. Awesome book!

Faith and Will is about what to do when the plans we make for ourselves don't work out. Cameron uses the word "faith" to mean we should believe in a loving, caring God who has a purpose and plan for us - even if we can't see it -- especially when we can't see it. And she uses the word "will" to mean we should get out of the way and let God lead us to His plan, whatever it might be. Unfortunately, Cameron doesn't look at all aspects of desire. She never addresses why some people get their personal desires and plans fulfilled and why others don't. How come a child abductor can find an unattended child to snatch when a harmless, church-going jobless person can't find a job? Does the child abductor have stronger personal power? Did he focus more deliberately or fervently? Make a better bargain? Is God like a great big Amercan idol judge in the sky, either granting or withholding our desires? What's the trick?

I wish Cameron would have used her good mind and fearlessness to talk about how we either co-create or block creation with the thoughts we hold in our mind. Instead, she sticks to the same old cliches and Christian party line. What's new about the message to "let go and let God?" Without a complete, logical discussion of the mechanics of desire, it's impossible to buy into Cameron's promise of greater comfort and joy by settling for God's Plan B, which frankly sounds a little bit like the booby prize.

Then there's the formatting. Faith and Will is written like one long journal entry that never ends. Cameron doesn't organize her material into chapters or topics, and this is mildly annoying because the reader has to do the work of figuring out what's going on. It also gives Cameron the flexibility to meander and weave in and out of the same topic several times throughout the book. Personally, I prefer it when the author gives me a tidy package and makes it easier for me to follow along. Cameron also relies heavily on quotes from Christian scripture and to a lesser degree, 12-step thought, to make a point, and people with an affinity for these sources of inspiration will like Faith and Will more than others.

Gripes aside, Cameron offers the reader several practical tools for dealing with life's disappointments. Find a way to commune with God (Cameron does it through writing). Reach for the next step. Concentrate of what feels right. Express gratitude for what you already have. Pray. These are simple steps anyone and everyone can take to get unstuck and to hold a higher, more helpful thought.

I found the book was able to restore my faith at certain times and I find that I can go back to specific areas and read to enhance my spirtual journey.
All in all a very good read! As I read the book again it made me realize that I'm not that much different then Julia and to find god you must spend time with him.

Julia Cameron does not prefer her titles as teacher and healer over artist. She is, however, a wonderful teacher, who through the intimate journey in Faith and Will allows her readers to expand their journeys with faith and their personal concepts of God. The book was written as a stream of consciousneess without chapters. This lends to the intimacy of the book. Your personal journey with your faith and God will be enhanced. I am most grateful for this outstanding teacher.

This book is a wonderful way to remind me of the right ways to hold on when I want to give up

Faith and Will is one of Julia Cameron's faith-based books, which complement her more well-known Artist's Way series. Unlike those larger guidebooks, filled as they are with steps and graphics and other signposts, Faith and Will is formless and featureless. No subheads, no chapters, no quotes in the margin, it reads like a 220-page "morning page" writing exercise, a long, heady meditation where musings about the nature of the universe and the will of God are interspersed with concrete examples featuring very real people. It's a fast read, a great, rattling freight train of prose that carries you from word to word, sentence to sentence. You hurtle along and you know you are speeding, yet the momentum is too great and you can't stop. Paragraphs fly by, with short pauses as you slow down slightly to savor the anecdotes. And then you are done, and you realize the book was like an extended sigh and you are ready to read it again, maybe in bits and pieces this time. But first, you return to the book's evocative first line: "I would like to begin at the beginning, but I do not know what the beginning is anymore." Exactly.

-- Fran Gardner, New Connexion

A bit of a slow start to the book, with way too many platitudes. Exciting stories of success and unique guidance. The most encouraging words came in regard to dying to self, as illustrated with the following quote.

"Whenever we get our heart set on a certain agenda, we run the risk of having our self-will separate us from God." (p.22)

I did anticipate a kind of New-age view of spiritual guidance. Cameron is incorrect in assuming that all who experience this guidance are experiencing God; the God of the Bible. Therefore, she concludes that God is different to everyone and at different times. The truth is that God never changes. It's our perception of God that changes. First of all, God can lead the unsaved in particular ways (e.g., Balaam and the Ass), but to assume that this means the one guided or who is experiencing the supernatural or spiritual is "saved" is a cursed lie. Secondly, one is perfectly able to be guided by and experience the supernatural at the hand of the devil and his demons. Without salvation through faith in Christ's atoning sacrifice, there can be no salvation! The "good" person who is guided in a "good" work by a "good" voice or set of circumstances is eternally lost...if no choice for Christ occurs.

In the same vein, I find it amazing that the author never addresses sin as a hindrance to being guided by or hearing God's voice, or salvation as a correction for the problem.

Yet, I was encouraged through reading "Faith and Will", especially in light of my current season of personal trials.

The good news is that there is a good amount of insightful information contained in Ms. Cameron's journal styled book on her journey of faith. If you love to read spiritual, self-help, self-improvement books, as I do, you'll have heard many of her insights a hundred times before. But they are concepts we need to hear over and over again so I never have a problem with that.

But what spoiled the book for me, were two grossly misinformed opinions. I was enjoying the book until she went in those directions.

The first had to do with the story of a friend who interprets (rationalizes) the peace she feels after aborting her baby, as "God's will." While I agree that "God holds the longer view" I feel confident in saying that God is all about love and aside from the rare occurrence of having to save the mother's life, killing a baby would never be acceptable to Him under any circumstances. And other than the aforementioned rare occurrence, adoption is the only truly moral alternative to taking the life of an innocent baby. Add to that the fact that many hopeful to-be parents are forced to adopt out of the country because of the red tape of US adoptions.

I have too many girlfriends who have never emotionally, psychologically, and spiritually recovered from having had an abortion. And all of them, ALL OF THEM - are now passionately pro life. I also now understand when life does begin and it's not just a blob of cells at ten weeks and earlier even; it is a fully formed human being.

Sadly, I recognize that many good and loving people, are simply not informed enough to understand the reality. I was one of the uninformed at one time. So I'm sure you can understand that anyone who understands what abortion is and has faith in a loving God, would be repulsed in thinking that crushing a baby's skull would be okay with God. Either way you slice it, an abortion being "God's will" is weak, weak, weak. And I ain't buying.

The second huge misguided "insight" was the Garden of Eden musings. She equates the chastisement Adam and Eve received from eating the apple (rightly received BTW), as an example of one of the "crippling ways in which we have been raised..." If only God had been sweeter, more supportive, we'd be more inclined to love him. She doesn't seem to understand that Adam & Eve had only one off-limit area and they deliberately disobeyed God. They did the ONE thing He asked them not to do. And their (our) free will and desire to "have it all" caused them to turn their back on God.

It's a bit ironic because Ms. Cameron speaks so eloquently about how "we must work to allow God to be the parent..." and "must conscientiously curb our desire to run the show..."
Then when God was being the parent and Adam and Eve disobeyed by trying to run the show, she states it negatively affects our adult view of God and hinders intimacy. That was a pretty big contradiction (as well as inaccurate theology).

Does she believe that "God must call the shots" as she writes or not? Because when He does call the shots, He's only being "punitive." She tells us we must ask ourselves: "What kind of God could I believe in?" Fair enough. It's a good question. But the creation story doesn't need to be re-written, as she suggests we do, to fit our idea of a benevolent God. It needs to be understood and folded into our faith journey. Personally, I need to know God has expectations of me and rules to help me live well. And those rules do not negate His love for me; they enhance it. Bringing it close to home, my mom disciplined me because she loved me. She knew I needed guidance to grow straight and tall. And sometimes that guidance involved a little "pruning." No rain, no rainbows...
In a nutshell, Ms. Cameron apparently missed the true meaning of the Biblical story entirely.

As previously stated those two glaring misinterpretations, negatively colored my reading experience. I hoped to learn something. If not new, at least not spiritually misguiding.

To end on a positive, there is some good material if you can get past a couple of things. I could not. And it is a beautiful little book. The cover art is lovely and it feels good to the touch. :-)

That's my story and I'm stickin' to it.

This is the thrid time some sponsor has given me one of this ladys books to read and even though this is about something different and not being an artist or not being fat it is the same old nothin. I guess it must be nice to think all of these thoughts when youre sitting on a big ranch in taos and wathcing horses jump and all that stuff, but its not too easy when you have to work 80 hours a week and get tested for drugs and try and get your kid out of foster care and cash checks at a place that charges you extra and not a bank. Everytime I have let go and let god in my life i got burned - first by my hometown priest who messed around with my mother and we got run out of town not him - the next time i joined a church i wound up in some kind of cult being used and used until i was an addict and picked up for all sorts of stuff. I got saved again and the man who i met at the church wound up hooked on oxycontin and black tar and tried to set my hair on fire - so now I think all this talk about god this and god that and find a quiet place to talk to him and just believe and it will come true and have faith...well i had faith and my kids got taken away...i had faith and my job got cut...i had faith and my front teeth got knocked out...i had faith and i wound up with nothing. so i guess maybe i just have sour grapes but i think if you have the moeny to spend on this junk then you should give it to a good casue instead of reading it to try and feel more spiritual - this lady has enough money and doesnt have much to say anymore - so let go ...just let go