Anne Lamott

 

If Anne Lamott wasn't an author, I believe she'd be a comedienne - a very introverted, dry, one.

I appreciate her writing and her wit equally and was thrilled when my friend Heather, who introduced me to Anne's writing long ago, alerted me to the author's local visit last night.


Anne Lamott signing books and
chatting with guests.

Anne's broken, loving life has been a topic covered in many of her non-fiction books with her most recent effort titled "Help Thanks Wow." Her talk at the sold out Bryn Mawr Presbyterian Church quickly settled into the comfy chair of those three single word prayers.

"I love to write about what I come upon and I love to come upon spiritual stuff," she shared.  Books about truth, resurrection, healing - these fill her huge heart. 

The "Help" in the book title is probably the most common prayer.  Life tosses us all sorts of hot potatoes.  When the juggling gets dicey, we ask for help.  This prayer has many faces when I beg, cry, scream, demand or negotiate for it. It is the Wild West of prayers - anything goes.  Anne's experience in recovery has kept this prayer active for her.  "It's when you've made such a catastrophe of your life and have run out of options that you allow yourself to be helped," she noted.

"Gratitude is a habit," she said regarding the second prayer of the title.  "It's irresistible." The author joked about often being scattered in thought but on this point her clarity shimmered.  Gratitude is not just for the good times.

Author Anne Lamott

She writes in the book, "sometimes our mouths sag open with exhaustion, and our souls and minds do too with defeat and that saggy opening is what we needed all along.  Any opening leads to the chance of flow, which sometimes is the best we can hope for, and a minor miracle at that, open and fascinated, instead of tense and scared and shut down.  God, Thank you."

''Wow" is the prayer for everything else.  "You don't go outside and see a starry night and say 'eh,' Anne said with a tilt of her head. "You say wow!.'"  Recognizing those moments is the task.  "To us much is given, we just have to be open for business," she writes. 

Anne touched on aging, body image, recovery, her son Sam and her writing process - each infused with her well-honed humor.  "The grace of getting older is that you get you back," she stated. "No one notices your butt, no one cares. Get on with it." 

Anne converted to Christianity 27 years ago - she was drunk.  "I got sober 26 years ago - I call that 12 months in between my gap year," she wryly added.

A question about Advent and holidays prompted Anne to discuss her anxiety over the hype of the holidays and her conviction that we need to be lights to one another.  "Be a lighthouse," she suggested.  "Stay lit.  Lighthouses don't go running around the island looking for ships to save," she added  "They simply stay lit."  Light was a consistent theme during her talk.

In the hour before the event start time, Anne made her way all through the church signing books, talking, listening, connecting.  It was warm, easy, welcoming.  She is accessible without giving up her essential self. 

She closed her talk stating what seemed to be her strongest conviction, "You are loved and chosen exactly as you are, exactly as you are."

 

"You know how vulnerable we are.  It's not out there.  You're not going to find it , lease it or date it. 

Grace is knowing you can stop the mad scrambling after things."   Anne Lamott

Lingering

I'm nearing the end. The urge to pause overwhelms me, so I stop for a moment.  This is the place to linger.

I am 75 pages away from finishing Cheryl Strayed's novel Wild which chronicles her solo 1100 mile hike along the Pacific Crest Trail in 1995. She was 26. She has gently brought me along the trail and her life in such a way that I have been lulled into the journey forgetting, like all journeys, this too must end.

But not yet.

I am a lingerer.  In sorrow or joy, I find a strong pull to pause. It could be defined as a moment to be in the moment.  Ah, I wish I was that evolved.  I'm not.  I linger because I know what I'm dealing with versus the next moment where I don't.  In the case of Wild, I don't want it to end.

Often I linger not because I am appreciating the moment but because I fear what may or may not come next.  It isn't a terrific life skill.  It can be a pseudonym for avoiding. It's the old devil you know besting the devil you don't know. In that vein, I am a repeat lingerer.

Sometimes, just sometimes, lingering serves me well.

As the grandchild of Italian immigrants, I learned that lingering was the thing you did after each meal and before you left someone's home. It was second nature.  Doorways and dining room tables were the places we paused to stay gathered as a unit.  It's primitive - gathering around the hearth, campfire, or wherever early families ate. 

Several years ago I traveled to Sicily with my folks and niece to visit my dad's extended family and to see the house where his father was born and raised.  I expected to learn about living in Sicily.  I learned more about how similar my extended family and I are.  We resemble one another, we share the same hand motions and verbal intensity in conversation, and we are bossy, loud, and hospitable.  We marveled at our family tree whose branches crossed land and seas. 

My European relatives always take time to linger.  They raise after-meal time to high art. Italians drive their cars like demons ablaze, but they slam on the breaks when it comes to sitting at the table.  Conversation, espresso, fruit, pastry and anisetta keep everyone at the table in luscious lingering.

Passeggiata
 

Another form of this primordial pause is the passeggiata (pah-sah-JOT-tah) Every Sunday evening around dusk in many small Italian towns it is the time for passeggiata - a collective saunter through the streets. Families, couples, singles stroll down narrow streets closed off to cars greeting neighbors, meeting friends, sipping coffee, eating gelato, heading nowhere, being everywhere.

It is the ultimate "see and been seen" scene.

I recall watching this unfold from my cousin's Castelbuono balcony, drinking in the sweetness of it all.  As we strode through town everything emanated warmth, family, togetherness.

This need to linger extends beyond the home mealtime table.  The evening before we met our relatives, the four of us ate at a quiet seaside restaurant.  Business was slow and so were we.  After dessert, we asked for the check.  We not only insulted the waiter but most of the employees with our very American request.  After much arm waving and spitfire translating by my dad and niece, we were admonished to aspetta (wait). 

It was the first time I was yelled at because I was freeing up a table at a restaurant.  Once we agreed to stay, the self-satisfied smiles returned to the waitstaff and we lingered in the land of our ancestors.  It was a glorious hint at what was to come with our deliciously cordial relatives.

In her memoir, Cheryl Strayed sought out the solitude her trek offered. Yet, when she could spend time with fellow hikers at various stops along the trail, she lingered with fresh appreciation.  She cautiously welcomed time for togetherness. It offered an unexpected balance on her solo hike. I believe she embraced the Beatles' suggestion to "Let it be."

As I near the end of a really good read, I feel the familiar ache of losing something dear.  I hoard the moment.  It's like the end of a great vacation or an unexpected call from someone special.  Please don't end, please don't end - this is my prayer-like wish. 

Learning to let it be and accept the moment morphing into the next does not come easily.  But I am trying - trying to linger with less of a death grip and more of the gentle whisper of aspetta.  

A Two Party Home

The running joke in my house is that for most - okay, all - presidential elections, my spouse and I have canceled out each other's vote.  We've always had opposing political points of view. 

The high-minded perspective suggests that it makes for rich dialogue.  But really, it can make life contentious. At this point in a presidential election year, it is wearisome.

While one of us is of the red persuasion and the other blue, we do find common ground.  We share an ardent belief in voting and we vote in every primary and general election.  We sadly witness the slim showing in the "off" election years when poll workers are not quite as busy. I guess it really is the full democratic experience - Americans can choose to vote or not vote.

When our two girls were little, we always brought them to the polls. Each of us would take one of them to the booth.  They would follow us as we punched holes, pulled levers, or filled in bubbles.  We wanted to imprint the importance of this act.

Those memories unexpectedly wash over me when I vote.  I recall the first time my husband suggested we bring our oldest daughter to the polls when she was just a baby.  I scoffed at the idea and he persisted.  I'm glad he did.  Our daughters have witnessed our pointed political differences at the dinner table, in social settings, and in the car. It is satisfying for them to also see us share in the act of voting.

Walking into the polls with kids in our arms or holding our hands showed we may disagree politically, but we see eye-to-eye on this eloquent right.

Sheila Heen's article "Sleeping With the (Political) Enemy" in the Sunday 11/4/12 New York Times shares the ups and downs of being married to someone who is the yin to her yang of political beliefs.  She writes the obvious noting, "when you marry across the divide, you have to give up things that provide the like-minded, self-satisfied comfort."

She and her husband, John Richardson, are both Harvard Law School graduates who work in and teach the art of negotiation.  Imagine the chatter at their dinner table! Better yet, imagine a double date with seasoned political consultants and married couple James Carville and Mary Matalin.  What a hootenanny!

Ms. Heen deftly comments on what being married to the other side requires.  She understands the importance of civility in disagreement.  "As tempting as it is, we can't demonize those on the other side as idiots who are out of touch, because they're liable to reach out across the dinner table to touch you (and rather sharply.)" There is always some truth in humor.

Scrolling through the mountains of comments that follow political articles on my hometown Patch website, what becomes immediately clear is the bitter banquet of ideology on both sides.  It's clear there is frustration out there, but it spills over into name calling and self-righteousness.  I picture pulsing neck popping veins and the pounding of computer keyboard keys as people do lots of proclaiming and little listening.  Conflict trumps conversation.

The fact that bothers me most is that those commenting can use pseudonyms. I believe if they had to use their real names civility might be the victor.  One can only hope.

On Tuesday, our youngest will be doing some local exit polling as part of her high school government class. Next year she will be old enough to vote.  Taking this class in a presidential election year is poignant and I savor her questions and thoughts as the process comes alive for her.

I hope her experience tempers the vitriolic noise out there as she and her classmates query voters one on one about their choices and the reasons behind them.  Most of all, I hope she understands political passion can be harnessed so we hear each other and that the process starts at home.