Miracle Prayer

May 15, 2006
We are all potential saints with the capacity to make miracles—or this seems to be the case in this follow-up to Shumsky's first book Divine Revelation
. Yet the other-centered miracles usually associated with sainthood are definitively not
the kind of miracles that Shumsky hopes to help readers create. The author, who received a Doctor of Divinity from the San Diego's Teaching of Intuitional Metaphysics, consciously draws from a well of New Thought metaphysics, but trivializes this heritage by positing God as merely a wish-fulfillment machine. She says that the root of miracles is scientific prayer, a method of prayer that assures a person's goals or wishes—from the relational to the financial—are granted by God. The first major step to miracle making, says Shumsky, is to realize that "God is an infinite shipping department, whose only mission is to fill your orders. Your deepest unconscious beliefs are like order forms, demanding to be filled.... God is a wish-fulfilling tree that gives you everything you believe you deserve." Get-rich-quick advice is prominent throughout Shumsky's miracles-made-easy approach to prayer and the divine, as she offers yet another contribution to the burgeoning genre of self-serving spirituality.