Founding minister of the Living Enrichment Center in Wilsonville, Ore., Morrissey (Building Your Field of Dreams) focuses on teaching "spiritual principles" for "finding and living in perfect love" in her second book. She offers run-of-the-mill advice harvested from the Bible and A Course in Miracles, addressing such topics as forgiveness, prayer, generosity, listening and rituals. The chapters conclude with "Thoughts That Transform," summarizing each topic with an edict, and "Practices," such as visualizations, writing exercises and asking "What would Love do?" in sticky situations. Unfortunately, Morrissey's approach demonstrates only a superficial awareness of both psychology and crucial relationship issues. Her pronouncements that "with God, there is nothing beyond your capacity to create" and "We create whatever we focus on" encourage the simplistic expectation that people and circumstances can be changed easily by a shift in one's own perspective. Morrissey declares that "We have the power to make relationships great" with anyone, any time, yet her examples of relationship difficulties often seem trite. While her own story is compelling—a homecoming princess, she got pregnant at 16, was expelled from high school, was married for 26 years, became the mother of four children, divorced, remarried and is now a stepmother in her 40s, having founded a ministry to boot—she doesn't reach outside her realm of experience to address common plights like addiction, abuse, crime, poverty or disease. Nonetheless, her sensible if prosaic counsel will please many devotees of the spiritual self-help genre.(Aug. 7)
