Traveling Mercies: Some Thoughts on Faith
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Product Description
Anne Lamott claims the two best prayers she knows are: “Help me, help me, help me” and “Thank you, thank you, thank you.” She has a friend whose morning prayer each day is “Whatever,” and whose evening prayer is “Oh, well.” Anne thinks of Jesus as “Casper the friendly savior” and describes God as “one crafty mother.”
Despite–or because of–her irreverence, faith is a natural theme for Anne Lamott. Since Operating Instructions and Bird by Bird, her fans have been waiting for her to write the book that clarified how she came to the huge-hearted, grateful, generous faith that she so regularly alluded to in her two earlier nonfiction books. The people in Anne Lamott’s real life are like beloved characters in a favorite series for her readers–her friend Pammy, her son, Sam, and the many amusing and wise folks who attend her church are all familiar. And Traveling Mercies is a welcome return to persons lives, as well as an introduction to new companions Lamott treats with the same candor, insight, and tenderness.
Lamott’s faith isn’t about simple answers, which is part of what endears her to believers as well as nonbelievers. Against all odds, she came to judge in God and then, even more miraculously, in herself. As she puts it, “My coming to faith did not start with a leap but rather a series of staggers.” At once tough, personal, affectionate, wise, and very amusing, Traveling Mercies tells in exuberant detail how Anne Lamott learned to shine the light of faith on the darkest part of ordinary life, exposing surprising pockets of meaning and hope.
Amazon.com Review
Anne Lamott admits that she’s “ever so slightly more nervous than the average hypochondriac.” When faced with a tiny, irregular mole and a family tree history of skin cancer, but, she remembers her faith in God and enjoys some peace–despite behaving “a small more like Nathan Lane in The Birdcage than I would have hoped.” Leader Lamott reads these wonderfully detailed postcards from her meandering journey to faith. With sharp and bittersweet humor, she recounts a past full of terrible relationships with men, with food, with drugs, with alcohol, and worst of all, with herself. She battles her demons thanks to the like of her friends and family tree and her “lurch of faith” to embrace religion, that “puzzling thing inside me that had begun to tug on my sleeve from time to time, trying to get my attention.” Inspiring but not dogmatic, Traveling Mercies is a treasure. (Running time: 4 hours, 3 cassettes) –C.B. Delaney
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I establish this to be an brilliant book! It helped me in many ways to deal with the illness in my own life. . .If you want to another read a book that goes straight to your heart, read Stolen Moments by Barbara Jeanne Fisher. . .It is a gorgeous tale of unrequited like. . .for certain the like tale of the nineties. I proposed to give the book a quick read, but I got so caught up in the tale that I couldn’t place the book down. From the very beginning, I was fully caught up in the heart-wrenching account of Julie Hunter’s battle with lupus and her growing like for Don Lipton. This like, in the face of Julie’s impending death, makes for a tale that covers the range of human emotions. The touches of humor are fantastic, too, they add some nice contrast and lighten things a bit when emotions are running high. I’ve never read a book more deserving of being published. It has rare depth. Julie’s tale will remind your readers that life and like are precious and not to be taken for granted. It has had an impact on me, and for that I’m grateful. Stolen Moments is written with so much sensitivity that it made me want to weep. It is a spellbinder. What terrific writing. Barbara does have an exceptional gift! This book was edited by Lupus specialist Dr. Matt Morrow too, and has the latest information on that disease. ..A perfect gift for a name who ongoing college late in life, fell in like too late in life, is living with any illness, or trying to know a loved one who is. . .A gift to be cherished forever.
Reader’s Rating: 5 / 5
You certainly have to be a baby boomer to appreciate the colloquialisms used throughout the book. A generation x’er just won’t get half the book.
Reader’s Rating: 1 / 5
Although Ms Lamot writes well and expresses herself in ways that grab interest, I am disturbed at her usage of pronouns “She” and “Her” in reference to God. This to me is an affront to God our Father.
Reader’s Rating: 3 / 5
The first half of the book was to some extent appealing, and then it went downhill. I establish nothing moving about the events upon the leader. Needed to see some growth or something different by the end.
Reader’s Rating: 1 / 5
Jesus says, “Our FATHER in Heaven..”
Annie posits, “God is she/her.”
Jesus says, “Go and SIN NO MORE.”
Annie suggests, “Go and mourn no sin. Just talk about it.”
Jesus says to persons in the faith, “By your words you will be either acquitted or condemned.”
Annie breezily trips off multiple profanities that lace her essays, amusing many, offending just as many (unnecessarily!).
Jesus says, “I tell you, like your enemies, pray for them.”
Annie rejoins, “I tell you what, I can’t stand/despise right-wing conservative so and so’s (a few more choice expletives @*!#).
Jesus says, “In the Scriptures are eternal life…God’s Word is TRUTH.”
Annie feels, “Buffet-style spirituality works for me. Jesus in my belief system is first-among-equals along with Buddha, new-age, eastern meditation, Virgin Mary, dalai lama-blessed scarlet wrist cord, etc.”
Jesus says, “Judge not lest you be judged. For with the measure you mete out, it will be measured back to you.”
Annie passes judgment on persons persons/groups she vehemently opposes with biting, witty, sarcastic, venomous barbs of bile.
Jesus lovingly says, “Repent of ALL your sins or perish…observe EVERYTHING I mandate you..If you like Me, You will do what I expect as My disciple.”
Annie seems to shrug, “I’ve taken care of the biggies that I write about again and again. But my mouth and attitude and stance toward opposite political views and bitterness and hostileness and self-absorption and selective discipleship and selective use of the Bible? God likes/accepts me just as I am, thank you very much. That’s what makes Grace/Faith so wonderful.”
Jesus says, “By their fruit you will know right forthtellers from fake prophets.”
Annie, not just privately, but publicly, vocally and unabashedly in print before thousands ‘preaches’ a faith that in comparison to what Jesus preached and lived, comes across as a worldview ‘transformation’ sans noticeable life and language reformation – this after being a churchgoer since the late ’80’s with the shepherding of her pastor and friends in the faith.
Thoughts on Jesus? Thoughts on His Faith as establish in the Gospels? Hardly. More like thoughts on what she wants to judge as evolved-extract from multivarious sources topped off by a form of christianity that needs much more wide acquaintance with Bible instruction and discipleship mentoring that leaves out the aggressive lip and lives out the agape like.
Yes, the hallmark of the genuine Christian faith is that the Lord Jesus (term never seen in the book?) is like a gentle fisher of people: He catches us first, then cleans us. King Jesus likes us just the way we are, but likes us too much to place us that way (proved by His bloody death on the cross – see The Passion of the Christ to get an thought of HOW MUCH HE LOVES Annie and all of us).
When a book purportedly on ‘Christian Faith’ subtly encourages the reader to become like (or at the least accept the self-satisfactory state of) the leader rather than to become more Christ-like in every aspect of life, you have to marvel what sort of belief system is advocated.
Reader’s Rating: 1 / 5