Traveling Mercies--A Book Review

“It is unearned love--the love that goes before, that greets us on the way. It's the help you receive when you have no bright ideas left, when you are empty and desperate and have discovered that your best thinking and most charming charm have failed you. Grace is the light or electricity or juice or breeze that takes you from that isolated place and puts you with others who are as startled and embarrassed and eventually grateful as you are to be there.” 

"My heart was broken and my head was just barely inhabitable."

     

   Traveling Mercies, by Anne Lamott is a book that feels akin to getting to watch someone slowly and majestically discover something you've grown to love over a small lifetime of experience. The spin of a tire, the smell of a flower, the brightness of the sun's early morning rays, the joy found in the smallness of things. This book is about Lamott's journey to Christ in these tiny, gawky steps made of full awkward, common moments that we've all forgotten are truly and daily miracles. Most of us wake each day forgetting or even worse, never even contemplating, how many constant miracles surround us and how many miracles take place before we even put the key into the ignition to begin our work day. Lamott's account of her journey to Christ is story of discovery and a story of hope, but most of all it is a story about the greatest daily miracle: that Christ is still saving people from themselves and He is still making all things new. 

   

"I was sitting through the sermon now every week and finding that I could not only bear the Jesus talk, but was interested, searching for clues. I was more and more comfortable with the radical message of peace and equality, with the God in whom Dr. King believed. I had no big theological thoughts but had discovered that if I said Hello?, to God, I could feel God say, Hello, back. It was like being in a relationship with Casper. Sometimes I wadded up a Kleenex and held it tightly in one fist so that it felt like I was walking hand and hand with him."

     Reading Anne Lamott's, Traveling Mercies, was a constant exercise in removing the great sequoia-sized log from my own eye for almost every page. I say this because each day I forget the most important and the most profound item in my life and that is Jesus Christ saved me; the most sinful person on the planet. Period. I forget it. I take it for granted. I let whole days and weeks go by without really focusing on it. I, like the pharisees of old, look down from my self-built perch and say I understand grace and doll out mercy of my own making. I choose not to be floored by the fact that Jesus came back after conquering the cross, defeating sin and death, and descending into the very depths of hell to a small beach and helped the scared disciples feel the peaceful and commonness of the weight of living fish and taunt ropes in their hands and arms and he spoke calming and reassuring words to Peter; the man who had denied him. I choose to ignore the woman who just wanted to touch the hem of Jesus' robe. I choose to pretend I comprehend what it must have felt like to have my father turn his back on me and all for someone I knew was not going to be loyal to me or love for a whole hour. I, instead, feel as if I am doing God favors by praying to him and obeying him on occasion. I choose to bless God with my presence in church some days. I look at others who were not raised like me and don't believe like me with a great and secret disdain. I know this is true because I wish it were not. 

   

      A wise man once gave me marriage advice and told me to each day wake up knowing I am the most sinful person in my marriage and to constantly give my spouse half the grace and mercy she is giving me and I will have a long and happy marriage. I should be doing this to others and I am not. Lamott reminded me each night before I let my eyes shut of who I really am. Lamott knows who she is and she will let you, the reader, know. Lamott hasn't read all the right books. She doesn't understand God or really know who He is. She is not exactly sure about her salvation experience, but knows she needs saving. She doesn't understand grace, but knows she needs it. She is not exactly sure what she believes about some "key" issues within Christianity. She would side with being a "liberal" Christian every single time as long as grace, mercy, and love are shown. This last point was very convicting for me. Can we ever, ever focus too much on God's grace? Is that even possible?

"It is finally, so wonderful to have learned to eat, to taste and love what slips down my throat, padding me, filling me up, that I'm not uncomfortable calling it a small miracle. A friend who does not believe in God says, 'Maybe not a miracle, but a little improvement', but to that I say, Listen! You must not have heard me right: I couldn't feed myself! So thanks for your input, but I know where I was, and I know where I am now, and you just can't get here from there. Something happened that I had despaired would ever happen. It was like being a woman who has despaired of ever getting to be a mother but who now cradles a baby..."

     Traveling Mercies is not a book one should approach and read if you are looking for all the answers, or a great expounding of Scripture, or even a book like those written by Max Lucado or Joyce Meyer (Lamott may cringe at the thought of being grouped with those authors). Lamott is not a mainstream Christian. She is out on the fringes and she knows this and writes from this perspective. Each chapter is a story that could be self-contained, but when considered within the context of the book at large, there are similarities and I would say that those similarities are faith, grace, and brokenness. Each story is easily read and almost feels like modern day versions of the stories of all the people who come to Jesus when he was on earth because they had tried everything else and nothing had worked. Lamott's story is the same. It is all of our story, no matter the details. We stand at the edge of the Garden and we are not allowed in, but that is the only place we will ever find the peace we seek.

  Lamott's a great writer and is gifted at more than just putting sentences together. I disagree with so much that she writes about, but am glad I took the time to read her wonderful book. I feel it is so important to be reminded of how broken this world is and the people that fill it up and how powerful God's work is and how it is still spreading through time and throughout humanity in the smallness of items that we'd never expect it and is still shaming the wisest among us. And that redemption is nothing like what we think it is because we do not contemplate eternal and complete things and we've so badly twisted the ideas of goodness and grace that we'd fall prostrate ourselves like the prophet Isaiah once did if we ever got a glimpse of what they really meant. Lamott has seen a little of it and she will never be the same. I feel moments of it and it makes it hard to even breathe.

Happy reading and an even happier Saturday,

David