Anne Lamott's Grace

Downloaded the podcast of Anne Lamott's interview on Salon and listened while doing my walk around the basement this morning.

Along with tapes, podcasts [and this blog] are saving me from the small black hole that threatens to suck me deeper.

I have liked Anne Lamott since reading her 1995 Bird by Bird about writing (the title comes from a story about starting "small, as their father once advised her 10-year-old brother, who was agonizing over a book report on birds: 'Just take it bird by bird.'"

The podcast was wonderful, hearing two people chatting about something serious, and being balanced about the struggle for spiritual balance. One of the points that hit me where I live just now is
[JW] "But I thought the deal is that if I get to the right spiritual place I will be in perpetual grace. Are you saying [in your new book] instead it's 'Grace eventually,' not 'Grace now,' and not 'Grace permanently'?"
[AL] "I think it's very frustrating and if I were God I would have a completely different system. I would have a magic wand and I would touch people with it, and help them be struck well."

Yes, it is "grace eventually," "satori eventually," isn't it. It has been four months since I got the first tapes to help me begin to turn off then replace the horrid ones turning in my head. And listening to so many, spiritual balance and self-motivation and stress management, I really understood that as far as I have come, I will never get "there." The work will go on forever. Every day it might get easier, but it will take relentless work, even more than "just" meditation, for me to stay in balance. Asking for, working toward, grace doesn't end the pain like buying a winning lottery ticket might.

I just hope getting to a stable spot in the road won't take very much longer. I can maintain after that, but I sure would like to find the center point and settle in for the long haul.

Yet there were some things in the Lamott interview that hit me wrong as I listened, and thought "How can you say that?":

1. One thing you [Lamott] and I [Joan Walsh, interviewer and editor-in-chief of Salon] have talked about is a sense of needing grace as you age, and how "aging gracefully" is something nobody really does.

Me: Really?? You 50-year-olds honestly believe no one really ages gracefully? In an interview about attaining "grace eventually"?

2. And I [Lamott] tease her [89-yr-old Aunt Gertrud who said, "I have lived too long" at the end of a challenging walk] about it and she loves it because she knows she has lived too long, but she still has a lot of pleasure in her life.

Me: Aunt Gertrud can say what she wants, in this case as part of a black-humor exchange with AL, but how can anyone say that someone else has lived "too long."

3. The day after the 2004 election ranks up there for me with days where cherished friends died.

This was inconceivable to me. I am glad I am not a cherished friend of AL!

I hope that when I find the center and live there, I'll have the grace such that thoughts like these will never even be conceived.