Life can be a bit stressful in my house the day before a holiday. I am not a good student of women's magazine articles that advise the key to holiday bliss is to do tasks A and B four days in advance, tasks C through Y two days in advance, and task Z the day before, leaving a person relaxed as the holiday approaches and arrives. In my household, most of the holiday food preparations are done the day before or the day of. This morning I was among the mass of women's magazine drop-outs who were at the grocery store trying to fill a cart on the busiest grocery shopping day of the year. When I got home, my husband was just finishing washing the kitchen floor. I proceeded to put away the groceries thinking the worst was behind me. An innocent push of a package of paper lunch bags into the cupboard, however, dislodged a brand new tall bottle of olive oil, which fell to floor and shattered. An ocean of olive oil carrying broken glass gushed across my newly-washed floor while I frantically tried to break open a new package of paper towels to sop up the mess. Which leads me to a huge thing for which I am thankful: my husband came back into the room, knelt on the floor that he had just washed, and cleaned up the entire greasy glassy mess.
A breakfast of gratitude
My favorite Thanksgiving meal is not the dinner with turkey and stuffing. My favorite Thanksgiving meal is breakfast. When my children were little we started the practice of having a formal breakfast on Thanksgiving morning. The table is set with our good china and goblets. Candles. Fire in the fireplace. The menu varies and has included items such as waffles, Swedish pancakes, French toast, or some variation of a baked egg breakfast casserole. There is always juice and coffee with cream and sugar (for this meal, only sugar cubes will do). Over the years there have been broken goblets and spilled juice and the timing for the preparation of this meal has interfered with getting the potatoes peeled on time for the "real" Thanksgiving meal. But this is the meal I wouldn't trade for any other. The value of the meal isn't in the food of course. The value is in the ritual of thankfulness that takes place while we eat the meal. As we eat, we go around and around the table, each of us taking repeated turns to name things for which we are grateful. Many declarations of thankfulness follow a similar pattern from year to year: thanks for each other, for members of our extended family, for friends, for special people in our lives, for health and safety, for employment, for our church, for our schools, for the hope to see in heaven a daughter/sister who died before birth, for a son's miraculous recovery from head injury, for various kinds of rescue (rescue from accidents or unemployment, for example), for the love and presence of God in our lives. Some declarations of thankfulness are specific to the year. This year there will be thanks for specific medical care, for specific opportunities for one son and the nearing conclusion of high school for the other, for the publication of my book, for specific answered prayers...and 'round and 'round the table we'll go.
Faith in God in Traveling Mercies by Anne Lamott
USA Today had this to say about Anne Lamott's <Traveling Mercies: Some Thoughts on Faith: "You'll love Traveling Mercies for Lamott's unblinking confrontation with God's love, and you'll buy copies for all your friends struggling with faith." Religion News Service said this: "Lamott has developed an entirely new genre of religious writing. Gritty, stark, and humorous, she catches the reader by surprise when she points her pen heavenward.... Anne Lamott [is] the patron saint of struggling sinners, a woman who loves God enough to be divinely human."
A few days ago, a reader left a question on my website asking what the characteristics were for faith in God in Traveling Mercies. This is a great question because the book is comprised of essays about her experience with faith. Unfortunately, I can't answer this reader's question as fully as he or she would probably like. It has been a number of years since I read this book cover to cover and I no longer have a copy of it to go back to now to refresh my memory. So I will call on others reading this post who have read Traveling Mercies to add their comments.
Here is what I remember: I loved the book. It made me laugh! A friend was reading it at the same time and we would read each other parts over the phone and laugh so hard we couldn't talk. But while I was laughing I was also deeply moved by the spiritual impact of what she wrote about. One of the things I remember best--and actually go back to thinking about quite often--is the story of how she came to faith in Jesus. Her life was not going well in general. At that particular time, she was quite ill and alone. She had the sense that a presence was in the room with her. She had a sense that that presence was Jesus. Turning over in her bed so that she faced the wall, with her back to the presence, she thought she would rather die than believe in Jesus. Her illness passed and she returned to her daily activities but she couldn't let go of the sense that the same presence--Jesus--had moved out of her bedroom and was now following her. Constantly, like a cat. When she would go in her house she would slam the door behind her to make sure he knew he wasn't welcome. This went on for awhile. Then one day as she approached the door to her house, feeling the presence behind her, she held the door open and said, ok, he could come in. And that was that. She believed and from that day on her faith grew. Based on this story I think it is fair to say that Lamott would not say she herself mustered the wisdom to have faith, but that it resulted from God intervening in her life. The faith didn't come from her seeking God but from God seeking her. She sees God meeting her through many people and situations. My recollection is that the rest of the essays in the book would support that. That said, she does act in genuine response to the faith God gave her. She describes in hilarious self-deprecating detail these efforts to live as a person faithful to God in response. (For example, she wonders if her trying to be gracious and thankful still counts if she is doing it through clenched teeth and with her hand in a tight fist behind her back.) That is the gist of what I remember. Forgive me if I got any details wrong as I don't have the book to check it against.
If someone else reading this has something to offer on what Lamott's Traveling Mercies has to say about faith in God, I invite you to post a comment.
On thankfulness
From Kristin Lavransdatter: The Wreath by Sigrid Undset:
"Then I would impress upon your heart, my daughter, that you should pay close attention to the way God tends to the welfare of the people here in the valley. Little rain falls, but He has given you water from the mountains, and the dew refreshes the meadows and fields each night. Thank God for the good gifts He has given you, and don't complain if you think you are lacking something else that you think would be beneficial. You have beautiful golden hair, so do not fret because it isn't curly. Haven't you heard about the woman who sat and wept because she had only a little scrap of pork to give to her seven hungry children for Christmas dinner? Saint Olav came riding past at that very moment. Then he stretched out his hand over the meat and prayed to God to feed the poor urchins. But when the woman saw that a slaughtered pig lay on the table, she began to cry because she didn't have enough bowls and pots."
The balance of balance
"Balance" is talked about as if it were a high virtue. Whether it is or it isn't, the degree of balance in a person's life can't be measured under the lens of a single day. If it could, the degree of balance in my life over the course of the last three days would be so small as to be immeasurable. My desk has been my home as I try to meet several consecutive work deadlines. These kinds of days are good in the sense that they bring income into the checking account so that it can go out again to buy groceries. But they are also frustrating in that most every moment is a work moment, which means there isn't room for wondering thoughts or a fun outing or creative pursuits. Hence, no blog entries for several days. It's because of days like this that convince me balance isn't about what happens in the course of a day or several days, it's about what happens over a longer course of time--weeks or a season or year or lifetime. In a work-dedicated state as now, I make little notes on white cards about other ideas and lay them aside for later; set books unrelated to my current work project on the floor next to my desk; watch the growing pile of laundry and know I'll deal with it soon; make a plan to see a friend over the weekend; think of meals to cook when my son comes home for Thanksgiving. These notes and books and plans, even the growing pile of laundry, are like ballast to hold my life in balance, even when at this particular moment it feels anything but balanced.
If you've ever been wronged
Last night, while driving from the appliance store to pick up a pizza, I heard a couple minutes of a radio program. Not long, but long enough to hear the program's guest read this moving prayer that was apparently written by an unknown woman in a WWII concentration camp and pinned on the body of a little girl. It was found when the allied forces freed the camp. I couldn't write it down while I drove but when I got home I did a google search for it using a couple words and found it. It was a prayer worth retrieving.
Here is the prayer: "Oh Lord, remember not only the men and women of good will, but also those of ill will. But do not remember all the suffering they have inflicted on us. Remember rather the fruits we have bought, thanks to this suffering: our comradeship, our loyalty, our humility, our courage, our generosity; the greatness of heart, which has grown out of all of this. And when they come to judgment, let all the fruits, which we have borne, be their forgiveness."
Wow...
I'm not sure about the theology of that last sentence, but I suspect its attitude of mercy is along the lines of Christ saying of his crucifiers, "Father, forgive them, they know not what they do."
Aimlessness, a virtue?
How would Stephen Covey respond to this?: "After sanctification it is difficult to state what your aim in life is..." So wrote Oswald Chambers in yesterday's (November 10) reading in My Utmost for His Highest. He continued, "If you seek great things for yourself--God has called me for this and that; you are putting a barrier to God's use of you. As long as you have a personal interest in your own character, or any set ambition, you cannot get through into identification with God's interests. You can only get there by losing for ever any idea of yourself and by letting God take you right out into His purpose for the world..."
Which brings me back to my initial question, how would Stephen Covey (Seven Habits of Highly Effective People) respond to Chambers' words? Or Laurie Beth Jones (The Path)? Both are celebrated gurus of the fairly specific personal mission statement.... I'm also wondering where the balance is between using a realistic assessment of oneself and one's abilities and interests as a marker for future direction and being completely neutral and open to any of 360° of directional changes at any particular moment according to as the Spirit leads?.....What do you think? Any reactions to Chambers' words or my wonderings?