My brother became a bar mitzvah in a convent.

Okay, it wasn't exactly a convent, it was the library of a Catholic school. And this wasn't a weird new modern interfaith religion, either. It's just my way of explaining that my religious background was a little different from the norm.

Though my parents chose not to join a synagogue after they married and started their family, they still wanted their children to grow up respecting and knowing something of their Jewish heritage. As it happened, there was a nonsynagogue-affiliated organization in our area that offered High Holiday services and a children's Hebrew school. So every Sunday, my brother and I learned our alefs and bets, sang the Israeli national anthem and nibbled our Purim hamentaschen in church basements and schoolrooms or whatever space the board was renting that year.

My family celebrated Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur inside a Presbyterian church, the modern stained-glass Resurrection images beaming down on us as we held our little black Union Prayer Books and sang songs asking God to be merciful and forgive our sins. It didn't seem all that strange to me. The Sunday school teachers had taught us that God was everywhere, so I didn't feel as though my prayers were being ignored simply because I wasn't in the right house of worship.

But when my seventh-grade class separated into two groups -- those who would receive intensive tutoring toward their bar and bat mitzvah ceremonies and those who would continue their basic education and graduate with a simple ceremony the following year -- I demanded to stay in the group that offered the path of least resistance.

Why? Because at twelve, I was a major brat. Hormones, boredom and a wide rebellious streak were kicking in at full force, and now that I could see the light at the end of the tunnel of religious education, I saw no need to knock myself out learning an entire Torah passage when I had struggled mightily for seven years just to be able to read abba ba ("Father is coming" -- the equivalent of "See Spot run") in Hebrew.

But there was a part of me that also recognized the hypocrisy of preparing for a coming-of-age passage meant to propel me into becoming an active member of a culture I had barely bothered to try to understand, much less love. To me, Judaism was a handful of small rituals: candles on Friday nights, costumes at Purim, a ten-minute lesson on freedom at Passover just before the Seder meal, the agony of starving on Yom Kippur and feeling awkwardly conspicuous every winter when ours was the only house in the neighborhood not blazing with colored bulbs and plastic Nativity figures.

My parents tried to instill a love of their heritage in me -- the faith my father had been born into and the one my mother had proudly chosen when she converted at marriage. But somehow, I never felt a compelling sense of spirituality: being connected to a people, to a tradition or to a great and awesome Power at the center of the universe. I was too absorbed in keeping up my grades, reading Judy Blume novels and despairing of getting a date before the end of the decade to care much. I was a daughter, a sister, a friend, a student, a writer, an actress -- but not a spiritual being. Why did I need God, anyway?

Still, there was something of Judaism that clung to me, like a piece of stubborn lint on a sweater. I went to a highly respected college in a Southern town not known for its vast Jewish population. This meant that not only did I know the heady thrill of being away from home for the first time, but I was also free to live a liberated, religion-free life. It should have been exciting; instead, it was isolating.

Being around so many non-Jewish students, many of whom had strong ties to their own churches, made me realize not only how different I was, but how much I missed being connected to the traditions I had grown up with. They may have been a little unorthodox, but they were traditions nonetheless. It wasn't long before I sought out the small Jewish student union, and almost immediately, I felt like less of an outsider.

But it didn't stop there. I couldn't bring myself to eat bread at Passover (not even the bagels offered by our well-meaning but uninformed cafeteria). I lit my menorah at Chanukah and taught my roommate how to say the Hebrew blessing. I skipped classes to attend High Holiday services in the college's little temple. I even fasted all the way to sunset on Yom Kippur -- and believe me when I say that this was a big deal. I used to dread the thought of being hungry all day more than the idea of not being absolved of the past year's sins. I could have easily blown off five thousand years of tradition and sneaked out to Baskin-Robbins.

And yet there was something that felt so... right about it. Maybe it was the familiarity of continuing the tradition. Maybe it was the maturity of young adulthood that allowed me to realize that going without food for a day wasn't the end of the world. But most of all, celebrating the holiday made me feel a very comforting connection. I was connecting to my family, a few hundred miles away, doing the same thing. I was connecting to Jews all over the world, sitting in temples both magnificent and humble, intoning the same chants and in the process creating a larger song of humanity and community. I was connecting to Jews thousands of years ago, for whom the ritual was still new and evolving.

And, I realized, I was connecting to God. By taking time out from my hectic school schedule and separating from the world for a few hours, I was focusing on something greater than myself. Without the comfort of a full stomach, I could reflect more easily on the discomforts I had caused to others and become more repentant of them. In the tiny sanctuary, there was a sense of awe that filled the room, and I was part of it. And because I had chosen to worship of my own free will, that made the day all the more important. I think my prayers were more heartfelt for it. (Okay, I admit that some of those prayers were pleas to make sunset come quickly so I could head to the caf before they ran out of Salisbury steak. A saint I'm not.)

I wish I could say that I graduated from college a more committed and observant Jew. But it didn't quite happen that way. Life went off into a gallop. I moved back home, landed my first journalism job and then got transferred to New York a year later. There, I met the nice Catholic man who would become my husband. With one thing and another, spirituality got crowded out again.

Still I held tight to the holiday traditions, which were even more of a comfort after I moved north. Even though I knew only a handful of people, somehow I always got invited to seders, and there was no problem finding a temple for the High Holidays.

Then, about five years ago, I came across a synagogue in midtown Manhattan that advertised itself as being open to all newcomers, as well as interfaith families. The temple shared space with a Unitarian church, so right away, the atmosphere felt familiar. I was drawn to their emphasis on music, and the sounds of the cantor, choir and organ swelling and rising toward the high brick ceiling seemed to fill my soul to overflowing. This was what it was like to worship with joy and song. All of a sudden, I felt the connectedness again.

It took me another two years to decide to attend an occasional Sabbath service there, but when I did, I discovered a wonderful sense of peace deep within. It was magical to be able to leave the hectic office and step into the calm of the temple. In just an hour's time, I could forget about the past week -- and all I had to do was listen, learn and drink in the atmosphere of gratitude. After sharing wine and challah bread with the congregation, I would leave, feeling as refreshed as if I'd just stepped out of a hot bath.

The following year, the rabbi announced that he would be conducting Hebrew lessons for adults who wanted to brush up on their skills. By then, I was eager to learn enough about the language to be able to follow the prayers, and I was surprised to learn that it was easier than I'd remembered it being when I was ten.

When Rabbi Goor suggested that I study for my bat mitzvah, I knew the time was finally right. For once in my life, I wanted to step up and take my place among the congregation and to show my parents that I had chosen to follow the course they had set for me. More than that, though, I wanted to make even more of a commitment to my own soul and to its relationship to God.

It wasn't the elaborate ceremony you sometimes read about in the papers. I didn't have three hundred guests, and the reception afterward consisted of fruit and cookies in the temple social hall, not at the Waldorf-Astoria with a Renaissance theme and a four-tier cake. But it meant more to me than any birthday party I'd ever had. It could have taken place in a convent, an ashram, a hogan or under the stars on a mountaintop, and it would have been just as special.

Yet even before the big day, something was happening within me that seemed both unfamiliar and comfortable. I couldn't tell you exactly when it happened, but I started becoming more aware of everything -- from the seasons to the taste of wine to the feel of a hot morning shower. It wasn't a "Wow! Look at this!" realization, but a gradual slide into awareness.

Going to temple had become such a part of my weekly routine that it didn't surprise me when I caught myself singing Hebrew songs while doing the dishes. More surprising was feeling the urge to pray even when I wasn't seated in a pew. Slowly, I went with the feeling, sending a few quick thoughts heavenward on the bus during my morning commute.

The peace I felt during worship felt so good that I looked for ways to replicate that sense of calm at other times. At the time, I was using my lunch hour to get some exercise by walking twenty or thirty blocks; it wasn't long before I realized that my daily strolls were a peaceful experience. Being around nature helped, too -- I could lose myself in watching a spider spin a web, watching the late summer sky turn to pink and purple or checking out tree branches to see if I could catch the exact moment in which their buds unfurled into leaves.

I was finding my own sense of spirituality without even trying. And it felt wonderful.

I'm an editor and writer for Ladies' Home Journal. At the time I was studying for my ceremony, the magazine was running a series of articles on various ways to become healthier, less stressed and more informed in the course of thirty days (on the theory that it takes a month to establish a habit firmly). Since the subject of spirituality hadn't yet been covered, I suggested that we do it as part of the series. Luckily, my editors liked it and assigned the story to me. Using what I had already discovered for myself, with extremely helpful input from spiritual authors and clergy members, I put together a four-week plan -- and learned a lot along the way.

When an agent who read the article called me to suggest that it had the potential to be a book, I realized he was right. The story covered some ground, but not nearly all of it -- and what it did cover was restricted by space. More important, however, I realized that there might be readers out there who would be curious to learn still more about simple spirituality.

These days, it seems that more and more of us are looking for a satisfaction in our lives that goes beyond having a successful career, a comfortable lifestyle and access to the latest high-tech gadgets and conveniences. Increasingly, we're looking to the spiritual world for the answers we can't find anywhere else.

But most of us have never been touched by an angel and probably wouldn't realize it if one were poking us with a nail-studded two-by-four. Wearing crystals and carrying totems may be spiritually fulfilling for some people, but for others, these types of rituals may seem too unfamiliar to bring us closer to our concept of a Higher Power. It's hard enough finding the energy to clean the house on a semiregular basis, much less clean our chakras. And though we may put in an appearance at church or temple every so often, are we coming away feeling refreshed down to the soul, or just satisfied that we've done our duty for the week to rack up some heavenly brownie points in an unseen ledger?

That's where this book comes in. Incorporating concepts from the original LHJ article, plus additional insights and ideas, this guide is designed to help you find personal, comprehensible ways to tap into your spiritual side in every aspect of your daily life. Growing closer to God means not only communicating through prayer and meditation, but understanding and appreciating ourselves and our world, as well. It's discovering all the holy moments in the day that we often overlook -- and creating some of our own. It's in the way we act toward others, conduct our business, even express our physical love.

This book is divided into four one-week sections, each emphasizing a different spiritual theme. Each section has a number of exercises, ranging from very basic ones that need little or no effort to more involved ones that may need more thought and commitment. Some are rituals that should be done every day for the full month; others can be done a few times a week; and others are long-term projects that you can begin now and continue long after the month is over.

It may be easiest to begin on the first of the month, but you can start your Week 1 whenever you like. You don't even have to start on a Sunday or Monday. If you'd rather launch your spiritual month on a Thursday, go for it; just remember to start the Week 2 exercises the following Thursday.

You can try as many or as few of the exercises as you like, but once you choose one, commit to doing it regularly until the month is over. Don't worry if they feel awkward or unusual at first. Habits take time to develop. You'll find that it becomes much easier with practice to pray, walk mindfully or develop a personal ritual. However, if you miss a day or a week, don't agonize over it, and don't say, "Well, I blew it -- I might as well forget the whole thing." Just chalk it up to the process of learning and start fresh the next day. Part of being a spiritual person is learning to be gentle with yourself.

On the other hand, if there are any exercises that make you feel totally uncomfortable, don't force yourself to do them. This is supposed to be an enjoyable month. (You might want to ask yourself why you feel this way about that particular project, however. You might learn something interesting about yourself in the process.)

Don't expect miracles, either. You're not going to find ultimate enlightenment in just one meditation session or, for that matter, in a hundred. The point isn't to become perfect or more "religious" -- it's to increase your awareness of yourself as a spiritual being and, I hope, to bring you closer to God as you perceive Him. You may not feel utterly transformed, but chances are you'll at least feel more peaceful, less stressed and eager to continue exploring your spiritual path.

That's what happened to me. I'm hardly a perfect person as a result of all this. (Just ask anyone who knows me. Anyone.) I'm nowhere near absolute divine enlightenment, and there are those who would even consider me a less than devout Jew. That's fine with me. It's much more fun to be imperfect and learn more about myself, my beliefs and God on a daily basis than to claim I know everything there is to know on the subject. That's why this book focuses on achieving a "more" spiritual life. There's always room for more.

A Couple of cautionary notes: In writing this, I put forth the assumption that there is a single force, energy, spirit or Higher Power in the universe that has at least some control over the world. For the sake of simplicity and because it's the term I'm personally most comfortable with, I refer to it as "God." If you prefer to call this force by another name, by all means, do.

The exercises also draw from a number of faiths and traditions; some of them will be familiar to you, others less so. If you're looking for a guidebook that will tell you exactly what to believe, or if you feel you may be offended by a spiritual book that doesn't operate by the precise principles you believe, to be true, then you'd probably be better off looking elsewhere for guidance. Though I obviously come from one particular background of faith, I've tried to keep an open mind here, and I hope you will do the same.

Let's start the journey.