yeah - but i bet she memorized it and repeats parts to herself when everything goes to hell.

one of my favorite poems - i have a print of this hanging up:

"Doesn't anybody dance in church any more?
she whispered & her sister
said
not since the white people
took over
& the afternoon took a lifetime after that"

Anne Lammot's Traveling Mercies greatly challenged my Formulaic-Reformed-Relationship with God. I questioned a lot of what she was saying, struggled with it, and somehow rested a little bit in the freedom...not yet embraced that. Her honesty both drew me towards honesty and scared me away.

Going to L'abri and wrestling with God, and him winning, was at the least, refreshing to hear. Anytime you have mentioned that falling apart i think my heart jumps like it is pregnant with a prophet. having my foundations, structures, image, and all me fall apart...whew!

Anne is incredible and her dreads are awesome... and i believe she was single and alive when you wrote this letter. Thats where my predicament arises, my crushes are on:
Karen Peris (lead singer of The Innocence Mission): MARRIED
Murron MacClannough(from Braveheart): DEAD... oh and, uh, not real.

Any advice?

Jeremy, thanks for sharing yourself with us like lamott does, it both draws me towards honesty and scares me away.

I ran across Traveling Mercies a couple weeks ago in Colorado. It was sticking out on a shelf and caught my attention. It seemed familiar to me but I've never read Lamott. I sat down with it in Borders and couldn't put it down. I put it on hold at the library and I'm still waiting - the unfinished story is always in the back of my mind. I go to the library a couple blocks from my house and ask them every day if it's in. I'm trying to learn how to be good with money like my husband but I may have to go buy the darn thing.

justin,

i used to have a crush on karen peris. then i went to lancaster with denison witmer for a show he was doing with don peris. and after talking with him (and he was relatively nice), i realized it would be a lot harder to have a crush on someone whose husband i've met. maybe you should go meet your crushes' significant others--that would probably help. and quit digging on dead folks (pun completely intended).

My wife loves Anne Lamott's stuff. Operating Instructions was her regular post-partum, sitz bath reading. She once left one of Lamott's books in the bathroom where I stumbled across it and got absorbed by it for several hours. As the church librarian, I'd love to be able to put Traveling Mercies on our shelves since, I think, some uptight Reformed folks might benefit from hearing the very honest perspective of a person of faith who doesn't exactly fit their mold. But we already get some raised eyebrows from Charles Williams.

joel,

i like to give operating instructions to newly pregnant friends. hysterical and beautiful.

charles williams, huh? yikes. yes, don't slip anne in there, man. have you read coupland's Life After God?

Once in the wee hours (up with a baby, no doubt) I stumbled across a documentary on PBS about Anne. It seems I turned it on about 3/4's through and the first thing I saw was her and Charlse Shultz (Peanuts) doing a panel discussion about Christianity and the media. I found that very strange and very refreshing. I've always wondered what exactly I was watching.

I first read Operating Instructions while shirking work at Library Ltd. and quickly devoured everything by her I could get my hands on. There's a line from O.I. that I often think to myself..."The baby's screaming...I'm out of Diet Coke...when are the PARENTS coming home?"

jeremy, as is becoming a habit with any book you mention, i promptly went to half.com and purchased traveling mercies. last night i nearly bought out the whole shelf of lamott books (and there was a whole shelf) at barnes and noble. oh to be rich with money and time, if only to read.

i look forward to a book report from you, joy. you're someone i would have figured to have read traveling mercies already. very exciting. it had a major influence on my deciding to give up my looking into the pulpit and start looking into the writing.

yeah, i read coupland's gen x and life after god when they each first came out...i haven't kept up with anything he's written since, tho

i'll add that i used the gen x book when i was teaching a course on literature as moral philosophy one summer in a juvenile correctional facility and the students seemed to connect with it. this was back in 1993, i think. geez, those kids would all be in their mid to late 20s now...