| She's sassy,
yet compassionate.
Arrogant, yet self-effacing.
Deadly serious, yet hysterical.
Self-centered, yet giving.
Brilliant, yet.......brilliant.
Traveling Mercies: Some Thoughts
on Faith (1999), takes us on a tour of the inside of Anne
Lamott's head as she goes about the normal events of her life,
making comments and judgments about people, events, and especially
herself and her motivations.
Lamott is an established "secular"
(I hate using this word) writer from San Francisco, with a backlog
of novels and non-fiction narratives, who fairly recently became
a Christian.
This is a book not by a "Christian
author," but by an author who is a Christian. The difference
is between being able to say, as the final line in her struggle
of coming to Jesus, "F--- it, I quit...You can come in."
(dashes mine)
Mercies is brutally honest to the
point of making you squirm. But that is exactly why I love it
so much. Her story is as human as the Old Testament characters,
complete with confusion, failings, back-talk to God, despair and
the ultimate triumph of spiritual growth. Just the way God would
want it.
A white intellectual from a San Francisco
hippie-culture family (which hated everything having to do with
Christianity), early in Lamott's life she ends up a beaten down
alcoholic on the fast-track to self-destruction.
In the retrospective look at her
conversion, she saw the discord of her family and found solace
in the love and stability of friends' families with "religious"
parents from a wide variety of faiths:
"My coming to faith did not
start with a leap but rather a series of staggers from one safe
place to another.....When I look back at some of these early resting
places - the boisterous home of the Catholics, the soft armchair
of the Christian Science mom, adoption by ardent Jews - I can
see how flimsy and indirect a path they made. Yet each step brought
me closer to the verdant pad of faith on which I somehow stay
afloat today."
After an incredible roller-coaster
ride of God loving, pursuing and meeting someone on their own
terms, she comes to Christ after visiting a predominantly black
church. At first she came for the music, but eventually stayed
for the message.
What's most interesting to me is
without prompting from churchgoers, Lamott engages in a fierce
internal battle with trusting God with her life. Though it would
seem so much easier to just sit in church forever and enjoy the
music and people, while holding to a mishmash of spirituality,
she somehow knows she needs to make a choice. She knows she needs
to convert from something, to something.
(Thus debunks any criticism that
this book is light and fluffy reflections on faith, with no teeth
to it. One thing is for sure, this book has bite.)
For the rest of the book, we follow
her through her fledgling Christian years, agonizing and growing
with her as she tackles tough questions. What about God and the
problem of evil? Why do bad things happen to good people? Where
is God when it hurts?
All of these issues are addressed
without really being addressed. I know that may not make sense,
but that's precisely the brilliance of Lamott's style. The hard
questions are weaved throughout anecdotes and reflections; real
life we can all relate to, without pulling any punches whatsoever,
such as this thought on grief at the recent death of her bestfriend
from breast cancer:
"Grief, as I read somewhere
once, is a lazy Susan. One day it is heavy and underwater, and
the next day it spins and stops at loud and rageful, and the next
day at wounded keening, and the next day numbness, silence. I
was hoarse for the first six weeks after Pammy died and myromance
ended, from shouting in the car and crying, and I had blisters
on the palm of one hand from hitting the bed with my tennis racket,
bellowing in pain and anger."
However, humor and pointed thoughts
like this one, found in a chapter titled Grace, are right around
the corner:
"(Failure) breaks through all
that held breath and isometric tension about needing to look good:
it's the gift of feeling floppier."
And this this little gem on prayer
found in a chapter about consulting friends on a decision whether
or not to let her seven-year-old on a tandem hang-glider with
an instructor who offered a flight:
"Half said I should let Sam
go, half acted as if I were considering buying Sam a chain saw
for his birthday. But all the ones who believe in God told me
to pray, so I did. Here are the two best prayers I know: 'Help
me, Help me, Help me,' and 'Thank you, Thank you, Thank You.'
A woman I know says, for her morning prayer, 'Whatever,' and then
for the evening,'Oh, well,' but has conceded that these prayers
are more palatable for people without children."
Lammot's style is to simply speak
in a one-sided, self-absorbed conversation about her life and
experiences, a very difficult style to pull off because it generally
prompts the reader to wonder, "why should I care?"
But we do care. And I dare you to
get through the chapter Knocking on Heaven's Door without convulsive
laughter, or the part about the woman who hugs the man dying of
Aids, and not be shaken to the bone at the power of God and the
triumph of love.
I would highly recommend this book
to anyone, of any race, creed or religion. It brings up ideas
especially suited for hashing out withfriends in a "book
club" setting.
And for the individual reader, if
you are like me: a struggler, a skeptic, prone to failure, weak
and fearful, preferring to take your rough medicine of life with
a touch of humor, you will not be able to get enough.
Copyright © 2000 Dave Schwier
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