Anne Lamott

Anne Lamott (1954-) was a thirty-year-old moderately successful fiction writer who worked an assortment of odd jobs to pay the rent. She was also a down-and-out drunk with an eating disorder. She was walking one Sunday morning through a flea market when she heard singing and wandered into St. Andrew’s Presbyterian, a predominantly African American church near her San Francisco home. She stayed for the singing and left before the sermon. Later that week, she couldn’t fall asleep late one evening and sensed the tangible presence of Jesus at the foot of her bed. She returned to church the following Sunday and stayed for the sermon, which eluded her, but the closing song, in her own words, “was so deep and raw and pure that I could not escape.” She left in tears, opened the door of her houseboat, and announced out loud, “I quit.” She took a long breath and said at last, “All right, you can come in.” A short while later, she learned that she was pregnant, and the father had zero interest in going forward with her in the pregnancy. The congregation supported her, encouraged her to keep the baby, and helped her kick the addiction. Anne, who describes herself these days as a “left-wing, born-again Christian,” writes frequently on religious themes with self-deprecating humor. I find her candor refreshing and her theology eclectic. In more recent years, she wrote a book about prayer, Help. Thanks. Wow: The Three Essential Prayers. She describes prayer as asking for God’s assistance, expressing gratitude, and showing wonder. She begins her writing, “I do not know much about God and prayer, but I have come to believe, over the last twenty-five years, that there is something to be said about keeping prayer simple.” Her first chapter, entitled “Help,” includes the prayer: