Just Dreaming

Anne Lamott

Anne Lamott renews my faith in Christianity.  How can a ex-alcoholic left wing foul mouthed hippie renew my faith in Christianity?  Her books are just brutally honest and raw.  They make me realize how flawed we all are.  That perfection is overrated and life is just messy sometimes.  Reading the quirky stories that fill her books forces me to laugh at our human failures and cry when life spins out of control.  She shows me that even irreverent people can love… and be loved by God.  Her book "Traveling Mercies" is really about her reluctant and continuous journey into faith.  She is ridiculous and profound.  She acts badly, asks for forgiveness and gets it.  She swears like a sailor and has a suggestion box to God on her desk.  She loves God, she struggles and she learns.  I find myself laughing for days at some of her hilarious, heartbreaking and (dare I say?) relatable stories.  She says the two best prayers she knows are “Help me, help me, help me” and “Thank you, thank you, thank you.”  I just love her books.

If you can handle swearing I highly recommend:

Traveling Mercies:  Some Thoughts on Faith

Just some quotes (not from the book):

I think joy and sweetness and affection are a spiritual path. We're here to know God, to love and serve God, and to be blown away by the beauty and miracle of nature. You just have to get rid of so much baggage to be light enough to dance, to sing, to play. You don't have time to carry grudges; you don't have time to cling to the need to be right. 

- author Anne Lamott, in a recent interview. (Source: The Washington Times)

"I do not understand the mystery of grace--only that it meets us where we are, but does not leave us where it found us."

Anne Lamott

"I'm as good a mother as the next repressed,
obsessive-compulsive paranoiac."

Anne Lamott

“You can safely assume that you've created God in your own image when it turns out that God hates all the same people you do.” Anne Lamott My coming to faith did not start with a leap but rather a series of staggers from what seemed like one safe place to another. Like lily pads, round and green, these places summoned and then held me up while I grew. Each prepared me for the next leaf on which I would land, and in this way I moved across the swamp of doubt and fear. 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. Anne Lamott

Love in the Time of Cholera

I really enjoyed this book.  I rarely read fiction for some unknown reason but when I do I find myself thinking about it for a long time afterwords.  I am not going to give any spoilers because I know at least one of my friends is reading this book right now as well.  There were just a couple of things that really stuck with me when I finished this book.

First and foremost this book was about love.  Unrequited love, forbidden love and learned love.  I was moved by two of the main characters of the story who were married for so many years and the level of love they had for one another.  Their love was a learned love held together by the years and it was interesting to see the familiarity in which they lived their lives together.  In the story, there was a period of time in which they almost got divorced over a bar of soap.  It was funny and sad at the same time how far people will go to not admit fault.  Even for something as silly as a bar of soap.  When it was finally resolved they both realized how close they had come to ending the relationship and they were more careful after that with each other. 

From the book:

When they recalled this episode, now they had rounded the corner of old age, neither could believe the astonishing truth that this had been the most serious argument in fifty years of living together, and the only one that had made them both want to abandon their responsibilities and begin a new life.  Even when they were old and placid they were careful about bringing it up, for the barely healed wounds could begin to bleed again as if they had been inflicted only yesterday.

My Grandparents have been married now for 60 years.  They are truly amazing and a great example of love.  They hold hands wherever they go and they really complete each other.  It is almost hard to tell where they begin and end because they are so much a part of each other.  In their day to day life you can see where they fill in for each other.  My Grandmother cannot remember details as well anymore so he gently reminds her.  He has a hard time hearing - especially around my house with all the kids running around so she repeats things for him.  It is so comforting to be around them.  It's like you know that this is the way it has always been and this is the way it will always be.

The second thing that stuck out to me is that memory is a fickle friend.  This book covered over 50 years so it looks back on youth, love and growing older.  It is so interesting to me how memory is affected not only by age but by circumstances.  When you look back on something with a different frame of reference it seem to change.  Even something simple like remembering something as a kid and then remembering the same thing as a parent.  Memories fade and change as we grow older as well.  I can see this especially as a parent.  Something that happens in the moment with my kids that seems so strong, so distinct and I have a hard time recalling it exactly to Dave when he gets home from work.  Memory to me seems like a rug that frays from the outside in until all you have is the threads with no idea how it went all together.

So here is my first written book review since high school!  How did I do?