Throughout the section on asking for help, as well as the next two, on gratitude (“thanks”) and awe (“wow”), she tells a few brief autobiographical stories. This is classic Anne Lamott, calling readers to recognize and begin to let go of our many neuroses, quirks, and petty angers, and to name our deep grief, in part by revealing her own. “In many cases,” Lamott insists, “breath is all you need. She recommends the practice of a God box in which you write down and then deposit whatever it is with which you are so “toxically, crazily obsessed,” which allows you to let go of your obsession long enough to breathe. We experience God’s presence when we admit the “three most terrible truths of our existence: that we are so ruined, and so loved, and in charge of so little.” She reassures us that we can pray for our sick cat as well as for a dying friend. In the first and strongest section, on the call for help, Lamott argues that admitting our need for something beyond ourselves is the first step to healing and wholeness. Wow., Lamott offers the latter sort of prayer as essential for renewal and hope, even (or particularly) in life’s most difficult moments. In my middle age, I have embraced two primary forms of prayer: Reciting prayers written by other people (most especially from the Episcopal Church’s Book of Common Prayer), which allows the Spirit to pray in me using words I can’t come up with on my own and brief, spontaneous prayers uttered in response to whatever events, images, and feelings are part of my day. While I am philosophically intrigued by prayer techniques that are more about presence than language, such as centering prayer, I inevitably fall asleep (all that deep breathing). The conversational style of prayer preferred by my evangelical college fellowship often struck me as too outward, too talky. Wow.: The Three Essential Prayers (Riverhead 2012) with these words: “I do not know much about God and prayer, but I have come to believe, over the past twenty-five years, that there’s something to be said about keeping prayer simple.” Reading that, I silently uttered one of the three prayers that Lamott presents as essential: “Thanks.” The notion that life-changing prayer can be simple was a message I needed to hear. Wow.: The Three Essential Prayers Anne Lamottīuy now: Amazon ] Kindle ]Īnne Lamott opens her newest book, Help.

Disentangled from our Selfish, Controlling, Damaged SelvesĪ Feature Review of Help.

Anne lamott thanks help wow