Travelling Mercies: Some Thoughts on Faith by Anne Lamott
Not many people have the knack of writing about faith. It's not easy, usually. I know because I often try, and fail, and I read others' attempts, which don't quite get there either. But sometimes, just sometimes, it works and then it's joyous - you find yourself saying Yes! Yes! and there's no tint of pomposity or patronage to spoil it.
C S Lewis was an academic who could do it. ‘Surprised by Joy’ is a voyage you share with him through his path of conversion from atheist to Christian. Oh I wish I'd met him - or just heard him speak.
And Eleanor Nesbitt, Warwick University academic and poet, can too (interviewed on here). She writes her careful, transcendental thoughts in similarly easy to read, finely honed prose.
And then there are writers who use their daily life experiences to translate, colloquially, their faith. Anne Lamott is one of these. Her experience of life spills out on to the pages and she shares the meaning she finds within it so spontaneously. Her expression of her faith is as rich and thoughtful as the academics but in her own conversational, ultra personal style.
In Travelling Mercies The Yes! factor is there in bucketloads and it hits you different ways. I started off the book by reading a later chapter and laughed out loud which much startled the dog and cat who were sleeping nearby. Other times I was moved to tears. It was good to get a new slant on things and often a new understanding. Good stuff. And like all Anne Lamott's books - at least the ones I've read - it reads like a novel in its magnetic, must- read-more appeal.
Like Eleanor's work, there is often a poetic quality. She writes of a situation at her church where one woman is having some trouble accepting the presence of a man, Ken, who is dying of AIDS. They sing ‘Jacob's Ladder’, and then ‘His Eye Is on the Sparrow.’ Sitting, as he’s too weak to stand, Ken joins in the lyric, "Why should I feel discouraged? Why do the shadows fall?" And this is how Anne Lamott describes the miracle that happened:
"Ranola watched Ken rather sceptically for a moment, and then her face began to melt and contort like his, and she went to his side and bent down to lift him up - lifted up this white rag doll, this scarecrow. She held him next to her, draped over and against her like a child while they sang. And it pierced me.
"I can't have imagined anything but music that could have brought
about this alchemy. Maybe it's because music is about as physical as
it gets: your essential rhythm is your heartbeat; your essential sound,
the breath. We're walking temples of noise, and when you add tender
hearts to this mix, it somehow lets us meet in places we couldn't get
to any other way."
*****
Editor’s note: Anne’s new book ‘Plan B: Further Thoughts
on Faith’ came out last year. The comments in Google are either
despairing or (mostly) ecstatic. We’d love to hear what you think
of either or both books.