Speaker to talk about finding meaning in life

Author, journalist and spiritual coach Nina Amir, a former Batavia resident, will speak about creating a sacred space and putting meaning into spiritual practices May 30 in Geneva.

Amir's presentation will follow a Jewish Shabbat service at 7 p.m. at Fox Valley Jewish Neighbors, 121 S. Third St. in Geneva. She says her message is for people of all faiths.

Amir will present "How to Create Sacred Space and Invite the Divine to Dwell Within It" and "7 Simple Steps to Transforming Empty Rituals into Meaningful Practices."

Calling herself an "everywoman," she draws from personal experience and from her study of psychology, Judaism, Eastern religions, human potential techniques and metaphysics.

Amir said she went outside Judaism and studied the human potential and New Age movements to find out more about practical spirituality.

"Later, I found out that most of what I discovered outside of Judaism was available in the Kabbalah, which is what the Jewish mystics believed about God," Amir said, interviewed by telephone from her home in Los Gatos, Calif.

"I think that a lot of people from all religions are having a hard time finding a spiritual tradition," Amir said. "There is a way to make religion meaningful and spiritual. For example, we can look at what's underneath the prayers we say. Where do they come from? Why is the Sabbath important?

"We go through life experiencing the mundane," she added. "We need to experience the sacred to know what it is. But most of us don't have a sacred space in our lives. There are a lot of little things we can do to create a sacred space, to create a divine presence."

Amir was a freelance journalist and nonfiction editor when she lived in Batavia from 1997 to 2002. She moved to California when her husband Ron Lacey accepted a position there. They have two teenage children.

There is no charge for the event, which is sponsored by Fox Valley Jewish Neighbors and the Aurora Jewish Welfare Fund.

For more information on the event, visit www.fvjn.org.

For more information on Amir, visit www.purespiritcreations.com.