Lamott’s ‘Grace’ wise and witty
“Grace (Eventually): Thoughts on Faith”
by Anne Lamott (Riverhead, 272 pages, $24.95)
Life would be much easier, Anne Lamott writes in these generous, wise and funny new essays, if grace were heralded by the tinkling of delicate silver bells.
“But no,” she laments, “it’s clog and slog and scootch, on the floor, in silence, in the dark.”
How to find the courage, then, to suffer through a long dark night of the soul? Call a friend? Try to figure out WWJD (What Would Jesus Do)?
Or earnestly attempt the great Helping Prayer, which, Lamott explains, goes something like this: “Helphelphelphelp. Helphelphelphelp.”
Instead, you might open “Grace (Eventually)” and sift through Lamott’s witty thoughts on spirituality, relationships, forgiveness, family, children, surly teenagers, sobriety, dogs, saving the library, sorrow and joy and death and, well, “everything.”
A novelist, mother, outspoken Left Coast liberal, devout believer and salon.com columnist, Lamott (who comes to Whitworth College on May 12) knows her limitations and pokes at them relentlessly with the sharp stick of her humor.
Writing about spirituality without self-importance can be tough, but in her third collection of thoughts on faith, she proves herself as agile as ever.
“Grace (Eventually)” follows the straightforward style of her previous “Traveling Mercies” and “Plan B,” but Lamott’s tone has shifted.
In these essays, she grapples with similar issues: the struggle to become a more loving person, the pressures of family, fear, aging. But while “Plan B” brims with hostility toward George W. Bush and the Iraq War, these new essays are less furious, more forgiving.
“I don’t hate anyone right now, not even George Bush,” she says. “I no longer want to hurt him.”
She writes of attempting to patch up a ruined friendship, of fighting not to battle her teenage son Sam when he’s uncooperative (frequently), of the universal struggle to let go of bitterness, jealousy, corrosive ire.
But humor, as always, prevents Lamott from indulging in self-righteousness. Examine her take on her changing body – “I am very glad to claim the crone who is coming to life within me” – and you might think you’ve stumbled into Nora Ephron territory:
“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 dragons that now connect the chin to the neck.”
And then the swift, tongue-in-cheek upside: “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.”
Now that is a divine indication of a merciful God in all Her glory.