[Oe List ...] Anne LaMott

[LAURELCG at aol.com]

This woman makes me proud to have joined the Presbyterian Church, as she did. 
 I love all the books by her that I've read.  TRAVELING MERCIES is 
specifically about her faith.
Enjoy!  Jann McGuire

>  

> God doesn't take sides.How do I reconcile my faith with that of the 

> spiritual hysterics in the White House? Easy. I don't even try.

> - - - - - - - - - - - - By Anne Lamott

>  

>  

> April 27, 2005 | I have been on a book tour for a month, and as God is 

> my witness, at every single reading I gave, someone asked how I can 

> "reconcile my Christian faith with that of the radical right." I never 

> quite answered this to my own satisfaction, but would like to try to 

> do so now. And the answer is, "I don't. Why would you even bother?"

>  

> The truth is that many of us left-wing Christians with fragile nerves 

> and bad attitudes are becoming ever so slightly tense about the 

> distinct possibility that this country we love is becoming, under the 

> Bush administration, a theocracy. Those of us with public lives are 

> constantly asked, "Don't you think the radical right has appropriated 

> God, and if so, what is your response to that?"

>  

> My answer to the first question is no. No one can appropriate God, 

> goodness, the Bible or Jesus. It just seems that way. The people 

> currently in charge of this country have so spiritualized their 

> hysteria that their antics make for much better news coverage than the 

> rest of us. Terri Schiavo ("Has America begun murdering its 

> handicapped?" they thunder, and we say meekly, "Well, um, no"). "Lord 

> of the Flies" rallies against gay marriage. Pro-life violence. And -- 

> my personal favorite -- the frenzied opposition to stem cell research, 

> based on the right's conviction that it is an atrocity to save actual 

> human lives by creating new stem cell lines using frozen embryos 

> slated to be thrown out after couples undergoing IVF conceive or give 

> up.

>  

> What the right has "appropriated" has nothing to do with God as most 

> of us believers experience God. Their pronouncements about God are 

> based on the great palace lie that this is a Christian country, that 

> they were chosen by God to be his ethical consultants, and that 

> therefore they alone know God's will for us. The opposite of faith is 

> not doubt: It is certainty. It is madness. You can tell you have 

> created God in your own image when it turns out that he or she hates 

> all the same people you do.

>  

> The first holy truth in God 101 is that men and women of true faith 

> have always had to accept the mystery of God's identity and love and 

> ways. I hate that, but it's the truth. I just think Bush and his 

> people have gotten it so wrong.

>  

> My response to the second question is that we who believe that a 

> benevolent intelligence animates our lives need to live by Jesus' 

> command: to try to stop killing other human beings, just for today, 

> and to act upon a total commitment to the poor, to the old and to the 

> Earth.

>  

> Watch, God said, and I don't think he meant cable news. I could be 

> wrong. But what I think he meant was, "Watch for the warning signs of 

> God's presence so you can remember what he said to do -- bring food to 

> those who hunger, bring water to those who thirst, and help through 

> love and showing up to turn despair into hope, swords into 

> plowshares."

>  

> Following are five warning signs, symptomatic feelings that indicate 

> that God is present

> in our hearts (and our national priorities).

>  

> 1) A passionate belief in freedom and equality, in God's inclusive 

> love for all his or her children. Jesus does not say, "I lay down my 

> life for my sheep." He says, "I lay down my life for the sheep," all 

> the people who are feeling alone, frightened, lost and hopeless.

>  

> 2) A belief in the importance of separation of church and state. Right 

> there in the First Testament's greatest hits is his admonition that we 

> render unto Caesar what is Caesar's, and render unto God what is 

> God's. (And speaking of the New Testament, I read it daily, and just 

> cannot find the part where Jesus says that everyone should get out 

> their guns, the part where he says that arming the angriest racists 

> among us is an excellent idea, or the part where he discusses tax 

> cuts.)

>  

> 3) A core belief that all people are good, and precious to God, and 

> that everyone deserves to be cared for. A majority of moderate 

> American believers are doing the work that Jesus insisted we do -- the 

> Jesus of, say, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. instead of the Jesus of -- 

> I'm not going to name names -- those committed to helping "the 

> deserving poor," as long as the poor agree to take their Bible 

> classes. When my son was in second grade, he wrote, "Dr. King said all 

> people count the same, and all people deserve good." Seven years old, 

> and he got it.

>  

> 4) The desire to sacrifice. My pastor Veronica threw up her hands the 

> other day at the pulpit, and asked, What would happen if the very rich 

> sacrificed a very little -- which is all it would take -- to bail out 

> Social Security for the rest of this great nation? And I wonder, along 

> those same lines, what would happen if those who believe that God made 

> us stewards of this beautiful, fragile, exquisite Earth became people 

> of sacrifice who gave up huge SUVs and trucks and bought much, much 

> smaller SUVs and trucks? What if liberals became people of sacrifice?

>  

> 5) Deep feelings of generosity. When we're dealing with the people in 

> our family -- no matter how annoying or gross they may be, no matter 

> how self-inflicted their suffering may appear, no matter how afflicted 

> they are with ignorance, prejudice or nose hairs -- we give from the 

> deepest parts of ourselves. We make sure, at the very least, that they 

> are housed, clothed, fed and invited to the dinner table. You can tell 

> you are following Jesus, instead of following people who are following 

> Jesus, when you truly get -- or grok, as the late, great Robert 

> Heinlein put it -- that we are one family, brothers and sisters. We 

> stand up for the very least in our family: the Republican uncle with 

> his shotgun, the grandparent with Alzheimer's, the stoner cousin, the 

> aunt with no savings. Do we stand up for the stock and bond traders? 

> Of course we do, but not by handing Wall Street the rest of the 

> family's Social Security money.

>  

> There's an old joke about a man who is being shown around heaven for 

> the first time, by St. Peter, who walks around pointing out the 

> various glories where people of all colors and ethnic persuasions live 

> -- grassy hills, green meadows, still waters, symphony halls, silent 

> spaces, steep hillsides for people who want to hike to the 

> mountaintops or the ponds, and so on. Then they come upon a great 

> walled fortress. "What on earth is that?" asks the man. "Oh," says St. 

> Peter. "That's where the fundamentalists live. It's not heaven for 

> them if they think anyone else got in."

>  

> I say, let them have it. We've got people to feed, people who have run 

> out of hope, and we have the Earth to save and a future to plant for 

> our children. We are like the people in Jeremiah, in the First 

> Testament, "people standing in the rubble of a once great community." 

> A whole lot of us believers, of all different religions, are ready to 

> turn back the tide of madness by walking together, in both the dark 

> and the light -- in other words, through life

> --

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