Traveling Mercies: Some Thoughts on Faith
by Anne Lamott
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Book Summary Information
Author: Anne LamottEdition: Paperback
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 2000-02-15
ISBN: 0385496095
Number of pages: 275
Publisher: Anchor
Product features:
- ISBN13: 9780385496094
- Condition: New
- Notes: BRAND NEW FROM PUBLISHER! 100% Satisfaction Guarantee. Tracking provided on most orders. Buy with Confidence! Millions of books sold!
Book Reviews of Traveling Mercies: Some Thoughts on Faith
Book Review: Get Real
Summary: 5 Stars
When I first began writing and presenting my short stories about Iran, people in my workshop class looked nervous. No doubt remembering the fatwa placed on Salmon Rushdie's head for his Satanic Verses, they asked me, "Don't you think Iranians might take offense at some of the things you've said here? I mean, don't you think you come off as a bit bigoted?"
The question bothered me a lot. What was I trying to accomplish with these stories: Why did my stories usually involve horrible Iranian men and frustratingly stupid Western women?
And even when I figured out what it was I was trying to portray, for the longest time my stories lacked depth. Some were overburdened by sarcasm-- I was trying to make light of some dismal experiences I'd experienced living in Iran, experiences I would have a hard time explaining, even after all these years, to people like my mother. Some stories went round and round in circles and never seemed to arrive at any real conclusion.
In the midst of my dissatisfaction--why doesn't this sound right? why can't I paint the scene properly?--my mother dropped a book off at my house. Now, my mother, being passive aggressive, will often "forget" a book on the coffee table whenever she wants to get a point across. Let an author do the arguing for her, that's what she's all about.
There was Sex Before Marriage when it was time to have "the talk." And Not Without My Daughter when I was threatening to follow my then husband to Iran.
Here, now, lay Traveling Mercies: Some Thoughts on Faith, by Anne Lamott. An innocent paperback with a quaint, little church on the cover. No doubt Mom's way of spoon feeding me a dose of organized religion. Disappointed as she's been that God never took with me.
So there it sat, for months on end, this Traveling Mercies church propaganda. Until, completely distracted, I forgot what Mom was trying to do and flipped through the pages for a quick read.
I didn't want to, but I fell in love. Anne Lamott threw a spot light on all the bad stuff that lurked in my own heart. All the fear I had about myself. About the worth of my writing:
"All those prophecies you heard in the dark have come true, and people can see the real you, see what a schmendrick you are, what a fraud."
And in a book about finding God, about Grace and personal salvation, Anne Lamott wrote about the less than admirable life that led to her transformation:
Life was utterly schizophrenic. I was loved and often seemed cheerful, but fear pulsed inside me. I was broke, clearly a drunk, and also bulimic. One night I went to bed so drunk and stuffed with food that I blacked out....I made seven thousand dollars that year and could not afford therapy or enough cocaine. Then my married man called again, and we took to meeting in X-rated motels with lots of coke, tasteful erotic romps on TV like The Bitch of the Gestapo....
Her writing was, to use her own words, "so sexy and intimate and stark that you almost have to look away." Frankly, I want to lift all of her words and rearrange them on the page, because "Everything is usually so masked or perfumed or disguised in the world, and it's so touching when you get to see something real and human."
I laughed. I cried. But I never judged Anne Lamott, a woman who made such raw confessions. I understood her. It dawned on me then,that what was missing in my writing was honesty. I had started with the idea of, "Look what happened to me!!", but what I needed to explore was, "Look, what happened to me?"
Maybe, just maybe, I could tell this story without a smokescreen of justification. Maybe, just maybe, it's OK to be the flawed hero of my own tale. A damsel in distress who is also manipulative, insecure, aimless, and confused.
It's easy to talk about Iran. The Ayatollah Khomeini, Ramadan, a post-war economy. But, like Anne Lamott's search for Grace, what's hard to capture is the far more universal crux of the thing. The glaring mistakes. The failed expectations. The hearts that got broken. I wasn't just an innocent victim; I was the second party in that proverbial tango.
For every sin I've committed, I get that there's someone else out there who carries the same weight. Anne Lamott figured this out. And this too:
When I quit in 1986, I started getting healthier in almost every way and I had all these women helping me, and I told them almost every crime and secret I had, because I believed them when they said that we are as sick as our secrets.
Summary of Traveling Mercies: Some Thoughts on Faith
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 subject for Anne Lamott. Since Operating Instructions and Bird by Bird, her fans have been waiting for her to write the book that explained how she came to the big-hearted, grateful, generous faith that she so often 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 funny and wise folks who attend her church are all familiar. And Traveling Mercies is a welcome return to those lives, as well as an introduction to new companions Lamott treats with the same candor, insight, and tenderness.
Lamott's faith isn't about easy answers, which is part of what endears her to believers as well as nonbelievers. Against all odds, she came to believe 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 funny, 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.
Anne Lamott admits that she's "ever so slightly more anxious than the average hypochondriac." When faced with a small, irregular mole and a family history of skin cancer, however, she remembers her faith in God and enjoys some peace--despite behaving "a little more like Nathan Lane in The Birdcage than I would have hoped." Author Lamott reads these wonderfully detailed postcards from her meandering journey to faith. With sharp and bittersweet humor, she recounts a past full of bad relationships with men, with food, with drugs, with alcohol, and worst of all, with herself. She battles her demons thanks to the love of her friends and family 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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