Grace (Eventually) – Thoughts on Faith by Anne Lamott

Just finished this her latest book on faith, enjoyed it greatly. It is a collection of essays many of which originally appeared in the Boston Globe, Salon and a dozen or so other magazines.

Anne is a white woman with dreadlocks, above all honest and open with her own experiences, usually witty, sometimes side-splittingly funny. She is an alcoholic who has been in recovery and sober for 20 years, a single mom, and totally committed member of St. Andrew Presbyterian Church in Marin City, CA. In both the preface and the Acknowledgements she mentions her gratitude to the members of St. Andrew and her pastor the Rev. Veronica Goines. She gives them credit for helping her become sober and a person of faith.

I have met both her pastor and several of the ladies from St. Andrew at Multicultural and can testify that the ladies were very loving people who reminded me of many of the mothers in my first church (also a largely African American congregation). Veronica is obvious an outstanding pastor and preacher.

I would recommend the book to any believer, for that matter any seeker, who is not offended by honesty and by unconventional ways of talking about the faith we share. I was enriched by reading about the lay ministries she is involved with, I quoted her last week in my sermon on belonging, and I probably will quote from the last chapter when I preach Sunday about eating and drinking with Jesus.

This is the paragraph: “The best way to change the world is to change your mind, which often requires feeding yourself. It makes for biochemical peace. It’s almost like a prayer: to be needy, to eat, to taste, to be filled, building up instead of tearing down. You find energy to do something your hadn’t expected to do, maybe even one of the holiest things: to go outside and stand under the stars, or to go for a walk in the morning, or in such hard times, both.”