E-mail a friendAnne Lamott
original airdate March 28, 2007
Anne Lamott's best-selling books have been about such personal subjects as alcohol and drug abuse, single motherhood and Christianity. A Guggenheim fellowship recipient, she's been a book reviewer and a California restaurant critic. The San Francisco native has also taught at writing conferences across the U.S. In her latest book, Grace (Eventually), Lamott recounts the roadblocks in her walk of faith, and, for the first time, one of her novels, Hard Laughter, will be dramatized on stage this spring.
Anne Lamott
Tavis: I'm pleased to welcome Anne Lamott back to this program. The acclaimed essayist and author has written a number of notable books, including bestsellers like "Plan B," "Further Thoughts on Faith," and, of course, "Traveling Mercies." Her latest is called "Grace (Eventually): Thoughts on Faith." Anne Lamott, as always, nice to have you on the program.
Tavis: Great title. Let me give you a chance to explain it. "Grace (Eventually)."
Lamott: Well, I think - I have written a lot about grace. I believe that there is a force of goodness or sweetness or sanity, and it does meet us where we are, and it doesn’t leave us where it finds us. And it sometimes feels like water wings if you're a kid who feels like she's going under the waves, or sometimes it feels like a thin ribbon of fresh air when you can't breathe or you feel claustrophobic.
Sometimes it looks like all of a sudden being kinder to yourself. But I do not believe that God has a magic wand, which doesn’t work for me because when I pray, my main prayers are help me, help me, help me and thank you, thank you, thank you. When I pray I would like God to tap me on the head with a magic wand so that I could understand that my prayer was answered. But it comes eventually. The answer and the grace come eventually.
Tavis: I’m fascinated - and there's so much I want to get to in the time we have about this wonderful book - I'm fascinated first though by your prayer. Everyone has his or her own prayer. Yours is, to your point, help me, help me, help me; thank you, thank you, thank you.
Tavis: Your two prayers. Tell me more about why those are your two prayers.
Lamott: Well, I think help most easily when we have given up on having any more good ideas (laughs). And I've always heard that our problems aren't the problem; it's our solutions that are the problem. And so usually - and I've also come to believe that the willingness comes from the pain, so as long as I'm kind of getting things to work, I don't give up and just let a higher power of some sort take over the controls.
And so you finally give up and you just say, "I'm so done. Just please help me." You know what it's like a little bit? I had a friend named Paul who used to say that he would feel like a kid in one of the backseat kid seats, where they have a plastic steering wheel attached to the car seat. And he'd be sure, that little kid, that if you turn the car to the right it's going right, 'cause you're making, and then you make it go to the left.
And when you finally realize you're not in charge of much, then help arrives, solutions arrive, serenity.
Tavis: Grace, as you and I and anybody else who knows anything about grace knows - just a quick definition. I guess for me, grace is an unmerited favor.
Tavis: Yeah, a little bit of help. You think that most of us in our daily lives today believe in grace, believe in mercy, or do you think that - to your point now - most of us think that we're just on our own down here?
Lamott: Well certainly the American way is to convince you that you're alone and that you should work very, very, very hard and that if you have to ask for a lot of help you're a bit of a loser. Whereas everything I've read in the bible says that you're supposed to be part of something and there's actually help everywhere. Look up, look up. And that for me, most often, the help comes from picking up the 2,000 phone.
And I think most people feel like they’ve been left here without an owner's manual, but they think that - they compare their insights to everybody else's outsights, everybody else appears to be doing well but is maybe just faking it better. So you feel kind of uniquely hopeless and clueless about what's going on most of the time, I think.
Tavis: The companion question, I guess, to that question about whether or not you think many of us realize that grace and mercy are available as opposed to thinking we're on our own, the companion question is whether or not you think that most of us are willing to acknowledge when we are benefited by grace, when we are saved by mercy, whether most of us are willing to acknowledge that.
And I ask that against the backdrop of my personal belief that many of us think, to your point, because we work hard, and because we're gifted, and because we're talented, and because we're skilled it's what we do that accrues the benefit.
Lamott: Right. Well, I think also receiving and being aware that you're receiving so much blessing and gift and help and pride, even (unintelligible) some eyes upon you that are really proud of how you're doing is really very contrary to most of the stuff that we're all raised with, which is that we are the sum total of our achievements and our accomplishments, so we can always do a little bit better.
And an A-minus isn't - I was 35 when I learned that a B-plus was a good grade. I was raised to believe it was very close to an A-minus. How much harder would it have been? Of course, you got an A-minus; the trick was well, next time an A. So you basically can't win. It is like being in a rat maze or a rat exercise wheel, where you run and run and run and run and you're just left emptier than you were to begin with.
Your insides become like Swiss cheese. The more you try to fling at it that you hope will stick. You’ve finally gotta just stop and often, I think a lot of us have tried to stay one step ahead of the abyss by achieving and accomplishing and seducing people and winning favor and stuff. And most of the people I know who feel saved - not in a George W. Bush way, but in the way of having discovered the truth of their spiritual - let's say who've had an awakening - landed in the abyss.
They stopped, it turned out there was an abyss, they fell in it. And instead of trying to trick it out with new curtains or whatever, they cried. And it feels terrible. That's why they call it the abyss. And you don't go to Ikea and get fish forks or something. You cry and you grieve and it turns out that people will arrive to help you. That there's gonna be help, eventually.
Tavis: I guess the flip side to those companion questions is whether or not - and this is just pure conjecture on my part, but I'm fascinated by asking you questions that allow you to create a beautiful mosaic of words here - I wonder whether or not you think that God ever gets tired of extending us his grace, given the way we behave?
Lamott: Well, my relationship with God is really with Jesus. I do not have a sophisticated theology, and I'm not interested in trying to convert anyone. I'm just sharing my experience, strength, and hope that all evidence to the contrary, I'm someone who is loved exactly as I am. It's a come-as-you-are party. And in my - I imagine sometimes Jesus - Jesus was very good with people that were crazy or really off, say.
And he would say, "Look, you're crazy. I'm gonna go for a walk. We'll talk later." And so sometimes I picture Jesus saying that to me, but very nicely. Or sometimes I think that when I'm not looking, Jesus rolls his eyes but very sweetly, like you do with a toddler. And no, I think there - I think that God's love is so much bigger than anything.
It's so much bigger than our comfort zones; it's so much bigger than anything I could ever capture in words. But grace, to me, comes from the very last place where you look for it. It's often not in the direction. I would love it if Jesus were more like a cosmic bellhop and I'd ask for help and he'd step in and pick things up for me.
I don't think God is here to take away our suffering or our loss or our grief or our rage at the way that the government is running this country now. I think God is here to fill it with his light, and we say, "Come close, just be illuminated. Be with me in it." And then I don't think God would ever say, "No, you know what? Sorry, babe."
Tavis: The flip side of that is whether or not you think there are things that we can do to engender ourselves to his grace or whether or not it's just extended to all of us, to your point, this come-as-you-are party, I love you anyway, I'm gonna give you grace anyway, or are there things that we do to properly position ourselves to be the beneficiaries, the recipients, of that grace?
Lamott: Well, I think that a lot of truth is paradoxical, and I believe really both positions you said. I think that the reason I'm not carried in mainstream Christian bookstores is because I just think that we are all love. I think we're all equal, I think we're all loved and chosen, and I think we all go to Heaven. And it's just the way I have experienced God's love.
I think Saddam Hussein will go to Heaven, I think I will go to Heaven, I think even Dick Cheney will go to Heaven. But I think when you go there, you have to clean up your mess. I think you will be welcome, and God is gonna say, "You are my child, you are made of the same stuff I am made of, you made an awful mess, we gotta clean things up, and then you can eat."
And whereas I haven’t made quite as big of a mess as Dick Cheney 'cause I have no power, so I hope I will be immediately escorted to the dessert room. So that's my hope. Now the other thing is is that of course you can avail yourself of grace. You stop. You breathe. You give up, you surrender. And I think that you take the action, and the insight follows.
I don't think that you get - you break codes or have great insights that lead you to grace. I don't think you do grace. I think it's something you receive. And I think that when - and I know that God draws very, very close to the suffering and that when we're suffering, all we have to do is to say, "I'm really out of good ideas." I always say to God, "Okay, what?" (Laughter) Like some bitter 17 year old.
Tavis: I'm a huge Anne Lamott fan, as any of our viewers know, and almost never do I disagree with you. But I'm going to disagree with something you just said a moment ago.
Tavis: Because if everybody, seriously, if everybody goes to Heaven anyway, why the heck am I trying so hard? If I gotta hang out with Dick Cheney, to your point, and Saddam Hussein and Adolf Hitler and Mobutu Sese Seko - and I could run a long list of them - if I gotta hang out with these thugs in Heaven, then what's the point of me trying so hard? I don't believe that.
Lamott: Well, there's an old rabbinical tale of - old story about an elderly Jewish woman saying to the rabbi, "Will everyone I love be in Heaven?" And he says, "Well, you will love everyone in Heaven. That's what'll make it Heaven." So I think that who George Bush is on Earth, who I think is basically a war criminal - and I say that with love - are you from the South?
Lamott: That's what they say in the South. They say, "And I really see no reason at all for your existence. I say that with love, but…" (Laughter) I would like to see George Bush on trial at the Hague, and yet I think that he is absolutely as loved and beloved of God as a two year old.
Tavis: Okay, I agree with that. That's a very different point. The fact that God loves George W. Bush, or Cheney, or Saddam as much as he loves me, I don't argue that. 'Cause his love is so infinite, to your point, I totally get that. He loves us anyway. But that don't mean he gonna let all of us in. That's where - I'm having trouble with that part of it.
Lamott: Well, I don't understand very much of anything. I know that Jesus is very clear and simple to me. I teach the three to six year olds at Sunday school, and what I understand about God, the three to six year olds understand. (Laughter) And God, as I understand God, says, "Look, if you see someone who's thirsty, why don't you go get him a glass of water?"
Lamott: "And if someone needs an ear, sit down and try not to kill anyone today. Can you all just make yourselves little notes and tape it by the phone? Don't kill." It's immoral to hit back. You do nonviolent, peaceful nonresistance. It changes those who are hurting us and oppressing us. I keep it really simple. I don't claim to understand very much.
Tavis: All right, so I'll leave that alone. We're back on territory we agree on now, so that's good. I wanna close the conversation on a good note. (Laughter) So that said, you are very open and very honest in this book, and very loving about your relationship with your own son and how you’ve been challenged over the years as a parent. And you're very - you didn’t have to be so open about that. About Sam. Is Sam okay with this, by the way?
Lamott: Sam, I would never run anything if Sam hadn’t given me the okay to. He reads stuff, and he read the story that's sort of tough in there, and he said, "You can only run this if you come off looking as bad as I do." (Laughter) But he's just so funny, he's really my center, like Jesus is. I think I told you last time I was here that he'd suddenly shot up past me and he patted me on the head and he said, "Mom, when did this happen?" I said, "I don't know." And he said, "You're like a little gnome to me now."
But he's finally discovered all my work, not just the Sam pieces, and he said to me the other day, "Mom, you're really good." I said, "Well, thanks, honey." (Laughter) He's almost 18, and he said, "It's like having my own private tribal elder." So I've been feeling kind of squinty like Ishi lately, but he is so proud. He said to me, "It would be so incredible if other mothers could know what we have come through, and that when it's bad there's no way around it, and that you tell the truth and you stick together."
It's like before I turned on Woody Allen, and he used to say, "Ninety percent of life was just showing up." You show up for your kid, you listen, try to hear what they're saying. You don't try to fix them or spackle them back together or control them. Try to hear them, you try to hear their truth, you get help, you seek wise counsel. And he is happier than anyone else I know right now.
Tavis: Well, Sam has discovered what the rest of us have known for quite some time: his mother is a provocative and powerful writer. Her new book - her name, of course, Anne Lamott. Her new book, "Grace (Eventually): Thoughts on Faith." As always, Anne, a spirited conversation. Glad to have you on.
Back to March 28, 2007