Finished: The Artist’s Way - Introduction by Julia Cameron. 📚
Cameron’s introduction is very introducey, setting a foundation for understanding the work of The Artist’s Way and explaining her own story. My favorite quote from this section is probably “Accumulate pages, not judgments.” (p. xv)
Cameron spends a fair amount of time here talking about her use of the term “God” in the book, and how it’s there because this is a spiritual path but you don’t need to be a theist to follow it. She suggests substituting something like “good orderly direction” or “flow” if “God” makes you uncomfortable.
I think I’m going to substitute “Cosmic Art Mom.”
I am agnostic, humanist, and a bit witchy. I haven’t identified as Christian for a very long time, and I’m no fan of the idea of a sky bully, but from a tiny age I believed in a Sky Mom, and I kind of still do.
My earth mom is a theologian by training, and taught me a lot about who God is supposed to be before I ever went to church. When I finally went to a church and they kept referring to God as “he,” I was outraged. I said, “No! God is a Mommy!” because everything my mom said - creation, unconditional love - these things were, in my mind, things moms did.
I didn’t know I was doing the toddler version of Goddess Spirituality, but I pretty much was. In spite of my agnosticism, I still fall pretty squarely somewhere on the Goddess movement spectrum. I have an intuitive sense that there is a Sky Mom - or maybe I’ll just stick with Cosmic Mom from now on - out there looking out for me. I can get a bit Deist about it at times because obviously stuff goes wrong for me specifically and the world at large - but especially now that I’m a mom, I kind of get it. Moms mess up. Our attention wanders sometimes.
Like many ancient deities, Cosmic Mom can bear a variety of epithets. I’ll probably imagine Cosmic Art Mom, who, for the record, is pretty much a deified Carrie Fisher, as I work through The Artist’s Way.
What do you think of when you see “God” in The Artist’s Way?