Accidental Christian

"We were on the Ganges at five in the morning, in a riverboat in the fog... All four mornings we were in Varanasi, our boat was socked in with fog. This morning's riverboat man said, "Too much the foggy!" which I think captures all of human life. It was a thick, white pea-soup fog-a vichyssoise fog-and apparently we were not going to see any of the sights I'd assumed we would see, and in fact had come here to see. But we saw something else: We saw how much better mystery shows up in the fog, how much wilder and truer each holy moment is than any fantasy."~ Anne Lamott, Some Assembly Required

“… I had NO interest in being a theologian, especially not a Christian, as I had been raised by progressive atheists… so even though I secretly loved and believed in the Divine Something… I wasn't ready yet to commit myself to the study of a higher power… My theology is based on what I tell my Sunday-school kids — that they are loved and chosen, AS IS, now, today. That the moment is holy, sacred, and all there is — and that we are only as sick as our secrets…

Question: Have you ever been tempted to just say God is in all living things and become a pagan?

I always secretly believed in Something Or Other, and tried all through my 20s to find a home on an Eastern path… But at the end of my drinking, I liked to go to the flea market near Sausalito, because greasy food is so comforting when you are hungover. I could hear these old hymns wafting from this ramshackle church across the road… I wasn't seeking a church or Jesus — just respite from my disease and mental problems. There were about 50 people at the church, half black, half white… They just let me be, and fed me, and loved me. I was very slowly restored by the love of gentle do-gooders, and a year later, in 1986, I got sober, and eventually got baptized. So I swear, IT WAS AN ACCIDENT!..

One day, I was just sitting bitterly at my desk, with no ideas, and something inside me said, "Laughter is carbonated holiness." And I looked around…

I do for myself exactly what I would do for you — make a lovely cup of tea, or a hot bath, or go buy myself a fabulous pair of socks. I believe that you take the action, and THEN the insight follows — I do loving things for me, stroke my own shoulder, put myself down for a short nap, and the insight follows: that I am a wild precious woman, a human merely being, as e e cummings put it, deserving of respect, tenderness, protection, delight, and solidarity. And that is what Home looks like for me now…” ― Anne Lamott interviewed by Gloria Steinem, Cosmopolitan Apr 3, 2017

“Question: How do you help people get what they can find in faith without having to defend this institution?

I hate Christianity as much the next person. It’s just obscene… religion is a defense against spiritual experiences. And spiritual experience — everyone has had the human experience… I’m the world’s worst Christian too, except I do give thirsty people water and I always run into people and tell them, “Oh, I love your hat. Do you think these grapes are good?”… I don’t need people to come over to my side and dance with me to a large gospel choir — although that would be fabulous…

The natural response in the face of so much tragic political devastation and insanity is to put more armor on… The solution is to become more human and become more permeable and to let our shoulders drop down and take a long deep breath and even to say, “Here’s my prayer to God: Okay, what?”… we spring from the same ancestors. If I don’t get that as a Christian I’ve completely missed the boat. I’m scared a lot of the time. I can see that we are systematically destroying the earth, even as we speak. And yet I have such a huge faith that there is so much goodness in you and me and the world and as Mr. Rogers’ mother said, the helpers… my prayer is usually, “Help me, help me, help me,” or “Thank you, thank you, thank you.” I can break the trance of my terror and you can too… the third prayer. It’s Wow, I see the treetops and see the sky and see your face. I can start over. That’s what mercy is really about. It’s about when you’re clenched and grim, to breathe again.” ~ Anne Lamott, Interview by Salon, April 29, 2017

“I and my Sunday School kids all love stories about the biggest brats in the Bible. Sort of bitter, goody-two-shoes, and that don’t forgive very well. And so, what happens for Jonah when he lands in Nineveh, is that he’s supposed to go tell everybody to stop being such awful people. He hates them, they’re the enemies of Israel. They’re the Klingons. And his message to them is that if they start following God, then they’ll be forgiven. But he doesn’t really want them to be, because they’re just such awful people. He thinks they should all die. And that is so me, that’s basically me. But then, what happens is, they hear the word, and they all decide to become people of goodness and mercy. But for Jonah, he’s not having any of it.

So he goes and sits by this tree, on the outskirts of town, just fuming. And in the tree next to him, a worm comes and starts to eat the tree, and Jonah cries out passionately for God to save the tree. And God says, “Really, Jonah? You want me to save the tree and not the people?” And my kids love it at church because it’s them. It’s us. It’s that we make no sense, we vote against our own instincts, we care about stupidity. And in it all, our generosity towards the common good gets lost. But I love all the stories where somebody is acting really, really badly and doesn’t end up acting all that much better…” ~ Anne Lamott, The Dinner Party Download, May 19, 2017

~ Anne Lamott’s spunky, soul-bearing non-fiction has made her a best-selling author many times over. Her books sometimes investigate spiritual themes and sometimes they’re about very human triumphs and tribulations, like overcoming alcoholism or raising a son as a single mother. Anne Lamott found herself, at age 31, a self-loathing addict. “Radical self-love,” allowed her to turn around her life. “Little by little by little, I started being a resurrection story, and…it was self-love, I found out who I was, the Beloved…It loved me back to life.”