Traveling Mercies...

I'm currently rereading Anne Lamott's brilliant Traveling Mercies: Some Thoughts on Faith for the premiere of our first Logos discussion. Logos is a dream-come-true for me; I've been wanting to start a Christian book club through our church for a while, and my friend Kitty, an accomplished poet in her own right, is hosting the discussion and lunch for the group after Sunday's services.

After seeing Lamott in February at Point Loma's Writers' Symposium by the Sea, I find her work even more wise and brilliant. I have also read the two additional "Thoughts on Faith" collections since this one which appeared in 1999, so I haven't read this first collection of essays in quite a few years. Once again, her terse style truly emphasizes the almost brutal way she unfolds her testimony of alcoholism, drug abuse, and general dysfunction of her life both before and for a few years after her conversion to Christianity. But underlying her brutal honesty is a dry sense of humor that laughs at herself in a way that allows us to lighten up and laugh at ourselves as well. She just writes bluntly what most of us have thought but haven't had the guts to express.

I have much to read and ponder in the days before the discussion on Sunday afternoon, which I pray will not only be well-attended but will also provide a great discussion of our own faith and values as well as of this brilliant collection of essays that explore faith in ways that we conservative evangelicals may not always feel comfortable. But it seems to me that we need to hear Lamott's perspective in order to be able to reach out to others who haven't experienced the privilege of (most of) our sheltered backgrounds....

So this week I shall be reading, underlining, chewing, and writing about Lamott's "thoughts on faith" and the manifold mercies of God as revealed through His very imperfect works of art, His people. Truth is spoken through us, no matter how leaky His vessels may be....