Bibliofreakblog

Traveling Mercies: Some Thoughts on Faith by Anne Lamott

You may have seen a pattern in some of my reading selections.  If not, I’ll spell it out for you.  I’m a fan of religion.  Religion, writing, and shoes.  Those are at the top of my pyramid of interests.  When I was in college I double majored in English (creative writing) and Comparative Religion, and for a couple of years there I worked in a shoe store.  Good times, good times.

In the CR department, there were a couple of professors who tag-teamed classes, and I took anything that they taught.  Dr. Light and Dr. Gross.  I still send them Christmas cards.  

Besides covering the religion theorists–Marx, Freud, Jung, Levi-Strauss, Eliade, etc.–they also taught Thich Nhat Hanh, Christopher Moore, Kathleen Norris, and so maybe others, who, despite not having PhDs, actually liked religion.  In fact, for one course, which they titled “Quest for the Self” I accused them of getting together a list of books they liked and making the class around it.  They denied it, but they were both emeriti, and could have gotten away with it, so I still have my doubts.  

Traveling Mercies was pretty much the only non-theorist book I read for them that I really didn’t like.  Had they picked out a couple of good parts and put it in a coursepack, that would have been O.K. by me.  But I think that Ann Lamott is an idiot.

Don’t get me wrong, I loved reading these non-theorists.  And possibly my own personal views are clouding my judgement, for which, shame on me.  

But when Lamott writes about how her car broke down on the way to visit her friend, and that she postponed her visit a few days, so that it ended up coinciding with the death of the friend’s mother, I’m sorry, but that’s not God.  Lamott at least has the decency to admit that not everyone might agree that God loosened a bolt in her car, causing it to break down so that she would be with her friend when the friend needed her most.  I believe in a Laissez-Faire sort of God.  I don’t think that He interferes with peoples daily lives.  I don’t think He interferes much at all.  Sure, there was Jesus, and Mohammed, but they were centuries apart.

And that’s what annoys me about Lamott.  However, the subtitle of of the book is not Some Thoughts on God or Some Thoughts on Theology.  It’s Some Thoughts on Faith.  

I’ve always been a big proponent of knowing what you don’t believe.  Why could I accept superstitious totems but not this?  Well, my professors were probably right in making me read this book.  But I can only recommend it to the rest of the world if you can stand that kind of reasoning without at least rolling your eyes.

Oh, and she believes in a abortion and uses the word “fuck.”  So there’s that, too.
Buy Traveling Mercies: Some Thoughts on Faith on Amazon

If you like this book/author, you might like:

(my reviews in blue)

Thou Art That by Joseph Campbell
Deep River by Shusaku Endo
The Secret Life of Bees by Sue Monk Kidd 
Dakota by Kathleen Norris
Eat, Pray, Love: One Woman’s Search for Everything Across Italy, India and Indonesia by Elizabeth Gilbert
Tales of a Female Nomad: Living at Large in the World by Rita Golden Gelman
Dress Your Children in Denim and Corduroy by David Sedaris
The Collected Poems of Thomas Merton by Thomas Merton
The Search for God at Harvard by Ari L Goldman
Dreams from My Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance by Barack Obama
Plan B: Further Thoughts on Faith by Anne Lamott
Grace (Eventually): Thoughts on Faith by Anne Lamott
The Spiral Staircase: My Climb Out of Darkness by Karen Armstrong
The Varieties Of Religious Experience by William James
Spiritual but Not Religious: Understanding Unchurched America by Robert C. Fuller
After Heaven: Spirituality in America Since the 1950s by Robert Wuthnow
Searching for God by Francis L Gross
The Third Jesus by Deepak Chopra
The Spontaneous Fulfillment of Desire: Harnessing the Infinite Power of Coincidence by Deepak Chopra
Frozen Tears by Mary Ann MacAfee 

Other works by Anne Lamott:

Hard Laughter: A Novel
Joe Jones: A Novel
Operating Instructions: A Journal of My Son’s First Year
Crooked Little Heart: A Novel
Plan B: Further Thoughts on Faith
Grace (Eventually): Thoughts on Faith
Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life
All New People
Blue Shoe
Rosie

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