Grace (Eventually): by Anne Lamott
A faith-based memoir that blends humor, honesty, and deep reflections on spirituality and personal growth.
From the cover:
The world, community, the family, the human heart: these are the beautiful and complicated arenas in which our lives unfold. Wherever you look, there’s trouble and wonder, pain and beauty, restoration and darkness- sometimes all at once.
Yet amid the confusion, if you look carefully, in nature or in the kitchen, in ordinariness or in mystery, beyond the emotional much we all slog through, you’ll find it eventually: a path, some light to see by, moments of insight, courage, or buoyancy. In other words, grace.
Why should you read this book?
Anne Lamott knows and lives by this belief, most of the time. In Grace (Eventually), her brilliant new collection, she recounts the missteps, detours, and roadblocks in her walk of faith.
It’s been an erratic journey, and some days go better than others. “I wish grace and healing were more abracadabra kinds of things,” she writes. “Also, that delicate silver bells would ring to announce grace’s arrival. But no, it’s clog and slog and scootch, on the floor, in the silence, in the dark.”
Excerpts:
“There is not much truth being told in the world. There never was. This has proven to be a major disappointment to some of us. When I was a child, I thought grown-ups and teachers knew the truth, because they told me they did. It took years for me to discover that the first step in finding out the truth is to begin unlearning almost everything adults had taught me, and to start doing all the things they’d told me not to do. Their main pitch was that achievement equaled happiness, when all you had to do was study rock stars, or movie stars, or them, to see that they were mostly miserable. They were all running around in mazes like everyone else.”
“At twenty-one, I still believe that if you could only get to see the sunrise at Stonehenge, or full moon at the Taj Mahal, you would be nabbed by truth. And then you would be well, and able to relax and feel fully alive. But I actually knew a few true things: I had figured out that truth and freedom were pretty much the same. And that almost everyone was struggling to wake up, to be loved, and not feel so afraid all the time. That’s what the cars, degrees, booze, and drugs were for.”
“All I could think to do was what every addict thinks of doing: kill the pain. I don’t smoke or drink anymore, am too worried to gamble, too guilty to shoplift, and I have always hated clothes-shopping. So what choices did that leave? I could go on a strict new diet, or conversely, I could stuff myself to the rafters with fats, sugars, and carcinogens.
Ding ding: we have a winner.”
“We turn toward love like sunflowers to the sun, and then the human parts kick in. This seems to me the only real problem, the human parts- the body for instance, and the mind. Also, the knowledge that every person you’ve loved will die- many badly, and too young- doesn’t really help things.”
About the Author
Anne Lamott is an American novelist and nonfiction writer. She is also a progressive political activist, public speaker, and writing teacher.