SPIRITUAL FOCUS ON BOOKS November 29, 2010 Issue

PRAYER AS A FORCE FOR GOOD

TONY LOBL,—LONDON, ENGLAND

HOPE WILL FIND YOU records a spiritual journey that begins with a mother's shock at receiving a call telling her that her daughter has a fateful degenerative disease. It then traces her emerging willingness to get beyond waiting for an elusive, outlined outcome, and to awaken instead to an ever-present tapestry of good always at hand.

Naomi Levy is not just any mother. She was in the first class of women to enter the Conservative rabbinical seminary, and, as spiritual leader of San Francisco's Nashuva community, has been named by Newsweek magazine among the 50 top rabbis in America. The cast of her autobiographical book includes her daughter. Noa, other family members and friends, and strangers in waiting rooms who are prophets and angels to the author.

In Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, the book that resulted from another woman's spiritual journey from real-life challenges to spiritual leadership, the author, Mary Baker Eddy, writes "Honesty is spiritual power" (p. 453). Rabbi Levy's book evidences this. Her frankness about her mental foibles and failing faith—as she self-consciously assumes the burden of wanting to "fix" her disabled daughter—results in a spiritually powerful book. She also bluntly details the naysaying encountered along the way, whether other people's harsh predictions or her own despondency. Yet she finds an authoritative way to deal with mental negativity. She says, "I asked myself, Whose voice is that inside our heads? And then I found my answer: it doesn't matter whose voice it is. Don't listen to it! I can promise you one thing. It's not God's voice."