Help, Thanks, Wow: The Three Essential Prayers by Lamott Anne

Author:Lamott, Anne [Lamott, Anne]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: Riverhead Hardcover
Published: 2012-11-13T00:00:00+00:00

Gratitude begins in our hearts and then dovetails into behavior. It almost always makes you willing to be of service, which is where the joy resides. It means you are willing to stop being such a jerk. When you are aware of all that has been given to you, in your lifetime and in the past few days, it is hard not to be humbled, and pleased to give back.

Most humbling of all is to comprehend the lifesaving gift that your pit crew of people has been for you, and all the experiences you have shared, the journeys together, the collaborations, births and deaths, divorces, rehab, and vacations, the solidarity you have shown one another. Every so often you realize that without all of them, your life would be barren and pathetic. It would be Death of a Salesman, though with e-mail and texting.

The marvel is only partly that somehow you lured them into your web twenty years ago, forty years ago, and they totally stuck with you. The more astonishing thing is that these greatest of all possible people feel the same way about you—horrible, grim, self-obsessed you. They say—or maybe I said—that a good marriage is one in which each spouse secretly thinks he or she got the better deal, and this is true also of our bosom friendships. You could almost flush with appreciation. What a great scam, to have gotten people of such extreme quality and loyalty to think you are stuck with them. Oh my God. Thank you.

The truth is that “to whomever much is given, of him will much be required; and to whom much was entrusted, of him more will be asked,” if Jesus is to be believed. He meant us, not the Kennedys or the Romneys—us, to whom such exquisite companions have been given. In the face of this, we mysteriously find ourselves willing to pick up litter in the street, or let others go first in traffic. Or even to let the psychotic talk to us for longer than a normal person would, to set aside the apprehension or boredom we feel and actually listen.

Father Gregory Boyle, the Jesuit who founded Homeboy Industries, a program that helps former gang members reenter society, reminds us that gratitude is not about waving your arms in praise on Christian TV shows. That’s what we think God would want, because we would love to have a few hundred people applauding us, waving their arms like palm fronds.

Instead, God’s idea of a good time is to see us picking up litter. God must love to see us serving food at the soup kitchen at Glide Memorial Church, or hear us calling our meth-head cousin just to check in because no one else in the family speaks to him. He can be long-winded and a handful, but we used to put each other’s peas in the glasses of root beer at holiday dinners, so we have history together. With two other cousins we took naps together in one big bed.

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