Other People's Words

There is a sermon series at my church that is hitting me hard. Every night, before I go to sleep, I lie awake in my lofted dorm bed, somehow closer to God up there, and I think about it. The sermon series is about not being an "accidental Pharisee," about not being too proud, "accidentally" noxious to God and others. And see, I'm being pharisaical by pointing out how deeply I've been affected by this series, how very thoughtful, how contemplative I am... when really, a damn good pastor is preaching some damn good sermons that damn me to hell (apart from the fact Jesus will save me through grace by faith, of course) over and over again. 
So, I'm beginning to process this by writing some quotes somebody else wrote, especially wise, savory quotes from Anne Lamott's book Traveling Mercies: Some Thoughts On Faith, because it's good for my soul to display other people's wise words instead of thinking my words are so wise. 

"Here are the two best prayers I know: 'Help me, help, help me,' and 'Thank you, thank you, thank you.' A woman I know says, for her morning prayer, 'Whatever,' and then for the evening, 'Oh, well,' but has conceded that these prayers are more palatable for people without children.'
"I remembered the old line that if you want to make God laugh, tell her your plans. But I also heard these words in my head: seek wise counsel."
"She said that when she prays for direction, one spot of illumination always appears just beyond her feet, a circle of light into which she can step. She moved away from the pulpit to demonstrate, stepping forward shyly-- this big-boned African-American woman tramping like Charlie Chaplin into an imagined spotlight, and then, after standing there looking puzzled, she moved another step forward to where the light had gone, two feet ahead of where she had been standing, and then again. 'We in our faith work,' she said, 'stumble along toward where we think we're supposed to go, bumbling along, and here is what's so amazing-- we end up getting exactly where we're supposed to be." (God, I hope that's true!)
"But I couldn't discern even what direction to face. And I didn't understand why as usual God couldn't give me a loud or obvious answer, through a megaphone or thunder, skywriting or stigmata. Why does God always use dreams, intuition, memory, phone calls, vague stirrings in my heart? I would say that this really doesn't work for me at all. Except that it does." 
(Anne Lamott quotes this in her book)
"And did you get what
you wanted from this life even so?
I did.
And what did you want?
To call myself beloved, to feel myself
beloved on the earth."-- Raymond Carver
"Our funky little church is filled with people who are working for peace and freedom, who are out there on the streets and inside praying, and they are home writing letters, and they are at the shelters with giant platters of food."
"The church became my home in the old meaning of home-- that it's where, when you show up, they have to let you in. They let me in. They even said, 'You come back now.'"
"This is in fact what I think God may smell like, a young child's slightly dirty neck."
"Our preacher Veronica said recently that this is life's nature: that lives and hearts get broken-- those of people we love, those of people we'll never meet. She said that that the world sometimes feels like the waiting room of the emergency ward and that we who are more or less OK for now need to take the tenderest possible care of the more wounded people in the waiting room, until the healer comes. You sit with people, she said, you bring them juice and graham crackers."
There will be more later, when I have more time to read more of this fascinating book.