Grace (Eventually): Thoughts on Faith
By: Anne Lamott
Riverhead Books; Reprint edition (February 26, 2008)
253 pages
Grace (Eventually) is, of course, a book about grace. Naturally, Lamott teaches us about it in the way that only she can. She fumbles and stumbles as we all do, but manages to learn a few things along the way and communicate it all in a way that few of us could attain. Of course, she has a sense of humor about it all too. The biggest reminder that I took away was how easily we forget about grace. We are not great at extending grace to ourselves either, honestly.
Two of my favorite quotes:
The kids love stories that involve dead people. It’s one of the spiritual dimensions that they desperately need to have addressed, the incomprehensible fact that someone is there, and then is not. How can this possibly be, and how can you go on without the dead person? I don’t have an answer. There are deaths I’ve not gotten over yet; but somehow, over time, the acute helplessness of death has become merely painful.
This is something I do all the time, shove bits of paper with prayers and names on them into desk drawers, little boxes, my glove compartment. I’ve found that when you give up on using your mind to solve a problem—which your mind is holding on to like a dog with a chew toy—writing it down helps turn off the terrible alertness. When you’re not siphoned into the black hole of worried control and playing fretful Savior, turning the problem over to God or the elves in the glove compartment harnesses something in the universe that is bigger than you, and that just might work.