A left-wing liberal talking about how Jesus answers her prayers

[papau]

http://www.calendarlive.com/cl-et-lamott12mar12,0,6525502.story

Anne Lamott's "Plan B: Further Thoughts on Faith"- a liberal and her faith

A Christian writer, but not your garden variety
By Michael J. Ybarra
Special to The Times

March 12, 2005

FAIRFAX, Calif. —<snip>It could be grist for a typical quirky Lamott essay: the vicissitudes of daily life, first trying, then revealing some glimmer of meaning, a bit of unexpected grace like sudden sunshine on a stormy day. All that's missing is some of Lamott's potty talk and her zealous spirituality, a trademarked mingling of the sacred and the profane, usually in the same sentence.

<snip>"I was raised to think that Jesus was a trailer park thing, right-wing dogma," Lamott says after putting the dog in a different room. "But I kept feeling Jesus around me like a cat, nudging me and I kept pushing Him away. Finally, I just gave up and said … it."

This confessional combination of the earthy and the divine, of a sinning single mother seeking salvation, made Lamott's 1999 collection of essays, "Traveling Mercies," a beloved bestseller with 257 reader reviews on Amazon.com ("The only book that truly changed my life" being a typical paean).

Lamott's new book, "Plan B: Further Thoughts on Faith" charts similar territory, chronicling the author's struggles with her teenage son being, well, a teenager; her difficult mother's death ("I liked having a dead mother much more than having an impossible one"); the onset of menopause; and just finding a reason to get out of bed during the presidency of George W. Bush ("Believing in George Bush was so ludicrous that believing in God seems almost rational").
<snip>

Less crazy, of course, is relative. Lamott is a successful author, lives in a beautiful house with a view of hills rolling toward the bay, has a boyfriend, good pets and regularly enjoys hiking around nearby Mt. Tamalpais. Yet her recent essays make it sound as if she's living in Berlin during the rise of Hitler. "Everyone I know has been devastated by Bush's presidency," she writes.

Lamott comes to her politics almost genetically. Her father, Kenneth, was a Bay Area journalist who wrote a book about fascism coming to California when Ronald Reagan was elected governor and often took his children to vigils at nearby San Quentin State Prison on the eve of executions. Lamott adored her father, who was up every morning at 5 writing and encouraged his daughter to do the same, sending her postcards when he was out of town and asking her to write a story about the animal pictured on the other side. Father, and later daughter, constantly jotted notes on index cards.
<snip>

"My father hated Christians, oh, my God," she recalls. "Yet, I always had a secret life in me. My friends were always religious. My 6-year-old Catholic girlfriend said I would burn in hell. I thought I might not go as poorly as that if I went to church with her. But I was always ashamed about religion. I knew I believed but I didn't know what I believed." <snip>

"I'm alive because of my conversion (to Christianity)," Lamott says. "I'm a living writer not a dead or institutionalized writer because of it. Mine is not a traditional faith. I really loathe organized religion, except for these funny little churches doing good work. But I do feel a missionary zeal. Not to convert but to break through a sense of shame about God."

In 1988 Lamott got pregnant, but her boyfriend had children by a previous relationship and didn't want any more. They split up. Lamott, who had terminated a previous pregnancy and remains outspoken in favor of legalized abortion, decided to have the baby.
<snip>

She has a working title for a new book: "All the People I Hate: A Christian Perspective."

"I don't know if it's a novel or what," she says. "I'll probably be writing a lot about aggression and rage, which I'm full of."

*

Anne Lamott

Where: Dutton's Books, 447 N. Cañon Drive, Beverly Hills

When: 7 p.m. Tuesday

[papau]

1. Wallis's God's Politics also an excellent read on why GOP doesn't = GOD

Wallis's God's Politics also an excellent read on why GOP doesn't = GOD

http://www.buzzflash.com/premiums/05/02/pre05013.html#order
Book: God's Politics: Why the Right Gets It Wrong and the Left Doesn't Get It ..... by Jim Wallis.... Min. Donation: $31.00.. Hardcover: 416 pages
Publisher: HarperSanFrancisco (January 1, 2005)
ISBN: 0060558288
Product Dimensions: 9.5 x 6.3 x 1.3 inches
Shipping Weight: 1.5 pounds.

#5 on NYT Bestseller List: "God's Politics: Why the Right Gets It Wrong and the Left Doesn't Get It." Archbishop Desmond Tutu says Jim Wallis is "compelling, provocative, and inspirational." This Guy is Religious Lakoff When It Comes to "Framing". Wallis is Editor-in-Chief of Sojourner Magazine and website (http://www.sojo.net), which lists this bio:Jim Wallis is a Christian leader for social change. He is a speaker, author, activist, and international commentator on ethics and public life. Wallis was a founder of Sojourners - Christians for justice and peace - more than 30 years ago and continues to serve as the editor of Sojourners magazine, covering faith, politics and culture. In 1995, Wallis was instrumental in forming Call to Renewal, a national federation of churches, denominations, and faith-based organizations from across the theological and political spectrum working to overcome poverty.

If George Bush represents the empty, dark shell of faith, Jim Wallis fills in the heart and soul that the Busheviks so sorely lack.

This is the hot book on reframing the religious debate to represent the true caring values of Christianity and other faiths in America.

"Jim Wallis is compelling, provocative, and inspirational, with faith that can move mountains and can certainly move people and communities."
-- Archbishop Desmond Tutu

"Jim Wallis is an inspiration to me– for his witness of faith and his engagement with politics."
-- Bill Moyers

"Jim Wallis is the major prophetic evangelical Christian voice in the country."
-- Cornel West, author of Race Matters and Democracy Matters

"How far should we go to understand each other’s points of view? Maybe the distance grace covered on the cross."
-- Bono, lead singer of U2

"Wallis at his usual passionate and brilliant self: he will move you to examine your conscience and search your soul."
-- E.J. Dionne, author of Stand Up Fight Back and Why Americans Hate Politics

Since when did believing in God and having moral values make you pro-war, pro-rich, and pro-Republican? And since when did promoting and pursuing a progressive social agenda with a concern for economic security, health care, and educational opportunity mean you had to put faith in God aside?

While the Right in America has hijacked the language of faith to prop up its political agenda -- an agenda not all people of faith support -- the Left hasn't done much better, largely ignoring faith and continually separating moral discourse and personal ethics from public policy. While the Right argues that God's way is their way, the Left pursues an unrealistic separation of religious values from morally grounded political leadership. The consequence is a false choice between ideological religion and soulless politics.

The effect of this dilemma was made clear in the 2004 presidential election. The Democrats' miscalculations have left them despairing and searching for a way forward. It has become clear that someone must challenge the Republicans' claim that they speak for God, or that they hold a monopoly on moral values in the nation's public life. Wallis argues that America's separation of church and state does not require banishing moral and religious values from the public square. In fact, the very survival of America's social fabric depends on such values and vision to shape our politics -- a dependence the nation's founders recognized.

God's Politics offers a clarion call to make both our religious communities and our government more accountable to key values of the prophetic religious tradition -- that is, make them pro-justice, pro-peace, pro-environment, pro-equality, pro-consistent ethic of life (beyond single issue voting), and pro-family (without making scapegoats of single mothers or gays and lesbians). Our biblical faith and religious traditions simply do not allow us as a nation to continue to ignore the poor and marginalized, deny racial justice, tolerate the ravages of war, or turn away from the human rights of those made in the image of God. These are the values of love and justice, reconciliation, and community that Jesus taught and that are at the core of what many of us believe, Christian or not. In the tradition of prophets such as Martin Luther King Jr., Dorothy Day, and Desmond Tutu, Wallis inspires us to hold our political leaders and policies accountable by integrating our deepest moral convictions into our nation's public life.