Can you imagine the hopelessness of trying to live a spiritual life when youโre secretly looking up at the skies not for illumination or direction, but to gauge, miserably, the odds of rain?
Anne LamottPrayer is talking to something or anything with which we seek union, even if we are bitter or insane or broken. (In fact, these are probably the best possible conditions under which to pray.) Prayer is taking a chance that against all odds and past history, we are loved and chosen, and do not have to get it together before we show up.
Anne LamottI woke up full of hate and fear the day before the most recent peace march in San Francisco. This was disappointing: I'd hoped to wake up feeling somewhere between Virginia Woolf and Wavy Gravy.
Anne LamottNo matter what circumstances, it's hard to be a parent and maintain a sense of self and identity in the world.
Anne LamottYou try to sit down at approximately the same time every day. This is how you train your unconscious to kick in for you creatively. ... You put a piece of paper in the typewriter, or you turn on your computer and bring up the right file. ... You begin rocking, just a little at first, and then like a huge autistic child. ... Then your mental illnesses arrive at the desk like your sickest, most secretive relatives. And they pull up chairs in a semicircle around the computer, and they try to be quiet but you know they are there with their weird coppery breath, leering at you behind your back.
Anne Lamott