Words of will

She’s been called a cranky Christian, a Jesus freak and a checker of reality.

Acclaimed author Anne Lamott may be best known for her reflections on faith, but her spiritual writings don’t always fall under the typically neat category of “religion.”

For one thing, she swears. Not a lot, in the whole scheme of things, but enough to offend some people. She’s also not very forgiving when it comes to George W. Bush and the Iraq war – a fact that has made her controversial in certain Christian circles.

Yet it’s precisely this irreverence – her subversive but brutally honest journey of faith – that has endeared her to thousands of readers nationwide. Through her best-selling books and online diary, the essayist and devout believer has made people think, cry and laugh out loud – sometimes all at once. She also has inspired and encouraged readers by sharing her own experiences with grace, hope, forgiveness, compassion and love.

“The problem with God – or at any rate, one of the top five most annoying things about God – is that he or she rarely answers right away,” Lamott writes in “Plan B: Further Thoughts on Faith.”

In the same book, she also shares another frustration: “God has extremely low standards. Pray, take care of people, be actively grateful for your blessings, give away your money – you’re cool. You’re in. Nice room in heaven. Flossing no longer required.”

Lamott, author of six novels and five nonfiction books, will be in Spokane next weekend to read from her works including her latest, “Grace (Eventually): Thoughts on Faith.” Her appearance and book signing happens May 12 at Whitworth College, which is sponsoring the event along with Community Colleges of Spokane.

Like her essays, there’s nothing airbrushed about Lamott and her life. The unabashed 53-year-old with dreadlocks bares it all in her non-fiction bestsellers – from “Operating Instructions,” an account of life as a ex-alcoholic and single mother during the first year of her son’s life, all the way to her most recent collection of essays, which continue to explore issues of faith as they pop up in places where people least expect it.

“So I am going to have a baby pretty soon and this has raised some mind-boggling issues,” she writes in “Operating Instructions.” “For instance, it occurs to me over and over that I am much too self-centered, cynical, eccentric, and edgy to raise a baby, especially alone. (The baby’s father was dramatically less excited than I was to find out I was pregnant, so much so that I have not seen or heard from him in months and don’t expect to ever again.) At thirty-five years old, I may be too old and too tired to be having my first baby.”

Despite being raised in an atheist household in northern California, Lamott discovered a spiritual yearning in her life – “this puzzling thing inside me,” she described in “Traveling Mercies,” that somehow demanded her attention.

In her youth all through early adulthood, she struggled with just about everything: drugs, alcohol, promiscuity, eating disorders, relationships.

Then one day in 1984, after she plummeted to the deepest depths of depression and addiction, Lamott happened upon a predominantly African American church in Marin City, Calif., that forever changed her life.

On a Sunday that she normally spent coming down off a cocaine binge while wandering through a flea market, Lamott found herself drawn to the Gospel music at St. Andrew Presbyterian Church. It prompted her to come inside and listen.

Lamott tried to resist the urge to go to church, along with this nagging feeling that someone was watching out from her. Then one day, after sensing that Jesus was following her “like a little cat” wherever she went, Lamott gave in. “I took a long deep breath and said out loud, ‘All right. You can come in,’ ” she writes.

In interviews with numerous publications, Lamott emphasizes how she wants to speak about Jesus’ love and to counter the Christian right’s fundamentalism and dogma. “I’m just a hard-core left-wing activist who believes that everyone goes to heaven,” she told the Los Angeles Times in 2002.

In addition to Jesus, addiction and motherhood, Lamott also writes about loss – loss of loved ones and loss of personal control, her publishing company points out. Her first novel, “Hard Laughter,” was written when her father, the writer Kenneth Lamott, was diagnosed with brain cancer. She describes that book as “a present to someone I loved who was going to die.”

Lamott has been honored with a Guggenheim Fellowship, and has taught at U.C. Davis, as well as at writing conferences across the country. Filmmaker Freida Mock, who won an Academy Award for her documentary on Maya Lin, has made a documentary on Lamott, entitled “Bird by Bird with Annie.”

Lamott’s biweekly Salon Magazine online diary “Word by Word” also was voted The Best of the Web by Time magazine.

“Reading Lamott is like having a chat with one of the angels, a smarter wittier one,” wrote Sandra Dallas, a book reviewer for The Denver Post, “sort of a Bette Midler angel, who many not have gotten an A in theology but cracks you up with her interpretations.”