SPEND SOME LOVE

A guide offers a broad view of spirituality-infused daily life.

“The longer we are on earth,” Dulaney writes, “the more opportunities we have to discover that we are all essentially on the same journey, each of us capable of all things human.” Throughout her narrative, the author draws on stories from her own life, the experiences of friends, and the writings of various theologians and philosophers like Franciscan priest Richard Rohr and Ralph Waldo Emerson. Dulaney distills a holistic worldview from these disparate sources, asserting that sometimes the rules of life can appear quite simple. Undergirding all of these thoughts is the author’s idea of omnipresent divinity. Some of Dulaney’s conceptions will be recognizable to the atheists she frequently professes wanting to reach. The foremost is the equating of God with love: “My suspicion is that if we could all substitute the G-word for the L-word (LOVE) we would find common ground. Think of it: Love, like God, is impossible to prove, yet we have all felt love.” This will probably not convince atheists who have directly experienced love and felt no need to involve God. But if Dulaney’s true target audience is her fellow Christians, those readers will find a great deal of brightly worded, sincere, and upbeat reflections revolving around her very inclusive vision of Christianity. Encouraging sentiments like “It seems that all those wounds, all the little hurts and slights, can be used for good” are sprinkled throughout. Although some of her species chauvinisms (asserting, for instance, that only humans can appreciate flowers aesthetically) will be irritating to some readers, the overall sentiment of finding the divine in daily life is uplifting.

A heartfelt, positive, but familiar vision of a highly spiritual world.