A few snippets from Anne Lamott’s new book, Grace (Eventually): Thoughts on Faith
Often the people with the deepest insight looked as ordinary as any old alcoholic or serial killer. They might look like Siddhartha or Ananda Mai Ma, but odds were they resembled your bipolar cousin Ruth, or Mr. Burns from The Simpsons.
. . . It really is easier to experience spiritual connection when your life is in the process of coming apart. When things break up and fences fall over, desperation and powerlessness slink in, which turns out to be good: humility and sweetness often arrive in your garden not long after.
I will never known how hard it is to be developmentally disabled, but I do know the sorrow of being ordinary, and that much of our life is spent doing the crazy mental arithmetic of how, at any given moment, we might improve, or at least disguise or present our defects and screw-ups in either more charming or more intimidating ways.
That’s me, trying to make any progress at all with family, in work, relationships, self-image: scootch, scootch, stall; scootch, stall, catastrophic reveral; bog, bog, scootch. I wish grace and healing were more abracadabra kinds of things; also, that delicate silver bells would ring to announce grace’s arrival. But no, it’s clog and slog and schootch, on the floor, in silence, in the dark.
It’s so hopeless. What are we going to do? I don’t know. But I suppose, while we are on the subject of weight, we might as well address the neck. The neckage. The situation is deeply distressing: the wattle and the wrinkles that gather like Roman shades. The liver spots. The soft pouch like a frog’s vocal sac, or the gular pouches of Komodo gragons that now connect the chin to the neck. But it could be so much worse, as is usually the case, because at least the neck is recessed. God recessed the neck for a loving, caring reason. While the face is right out front, She set the neck back, out of direct light, in the shadows. Sure, you can still see that gravity is having its say, because the neck is where it all shows — it’s like the thighs of the head.
Joy is the best makeup. Joy, and good lighting. If you ask me, a little lipstick is a close runner-up. . . . Pretty lipstick makes you look so much less tense and mean.
I have this book….I obviously need to get it out and read it…since it is written about me!
Can’t wait to read this one. Pretty much sums it up for me.
I never leave home w/o lipgloss!
I think that it is interesting how many women have responded to your post about Anne Lamott…she is wonderful….would love to sit down and have dinner with her.
qb can’t help but wonder if the Copester’s rolling a subliminal grenade into the room with that excerpt. “God” as the antecedent for “She…?” -lol
qb
“It really is easier to experience spiritual connection when your life is in the process of coming apart. When things break up and fences fall over, desperation and powerlessness slink in, which turns out to be good: humility and sweetness often arrive in your garden not long after.”
So true, but I wonder why it has to be this way?
And I agree, lipstick is essential!
Glad to see the transition is going well. Also good to know you have good help with Greg.
“…and that much of our life is spent doing the crazy mental arithmetic of how, at any given moment, we might improve, or at least disguise or present our defects and screw-ups in either more charming or more intimidating ways.”
This is just such a profound description to me. I have read and re-read this line. It so accurately describes my obsessive thinking patterns and finally gives me that relief that comes when you realize other people do the same things I do. Thanks for sharing Mike. I am heading over to Amazon now to get this book!
I’m looking forward to more. Grace is magnified in the valley…when life comes apart. I see God more clearly now than ever in my life…and yet I have so much more to see and to learn. I have only caught a glimpse…
Anne Lamont is responsible for me wanting to read spiritual literature written my women.,…I was just not relating to the other stuff…well meaning but not reaching any part of my struggle…Annie I love you.
Just reading the Grace chapter from “Traveling Mercies”. But the previous chapter on Forgiveness had me in stitches and then tears. She really gets through to where I live.
Love that first line “Often the people with the deepest insight looked as ordinary as any old alcoholic or serial killer”. Having recently started treatment for an alcohol addiction, it’s really great being lumped in the same category as a serial killer. Yes, church of Christ people can have alcohol addictions.