Somehow: Thoughts on Love by Anne Lamott

Author:Anne Lamott [Lamott, Anne]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Penguin Publishing Group
Published: 2024-04-09T00:00:00+00:00

Seven

Cowboy

If you ever find yourself all turned around underwater and can’t tell which way is up, blow bubbles and swim in their direction to the surface. Odds are that people will be waiting up above who were worried when you dropped out of sight. They’ve been trying to bail out the ocean, frantic to find you. They will cry with relief, just as you would have if one of them had gone under. Community is a body of people crying for one another, working together for a common cause, enjoying and overlooking (or grimly tolerating) each other’s foibles; it’s a rough and beautiful quilt sewn of patches that don’t seem to go together at all, and then do.

Community means we’re collaborating. It means that you help my children and my old people and I help yours. It means we are in this together. Most of us are perhaps a tiny bit self-absorbed, and good at keeping out people who don’t look, vote, or act like our friends, and that’s very nice. But a good community includes all those other people and those of us at the edges. Welcomes are offered: hey, come on into the circle—yeah, you. You with your nose in the air, or a neck tattoo, a walker or a Rolls.

Through an unknowable force, people join together to fight for what they think is right, or to bird-watch, or feed the poor, to help one another stay sober or rebuild after natural catastrophes. There are crazy communities—“We’re going to be raptured and F you and isn’t God great”—and groups of volunteer do-gooders who are the main reason anything works at all.

Odd, anxious people like me come together and then stick around awhile. It is uncomfortable and metamorphic; nobody in isolation becomes who they were designed to be.

Frederick Buechner wrote: “You can survive on your own. You can grow strong on your own. You can even prevail on your own. But you cannot become human on your own.” This is unfortunate. I think Jesus would agree that some people are incredibly annoying. (Many days He had to lie down with a cold compress on his head.)

Years ago my great friend Mark Yaconelli had a wonderful pastor at his small progressive church: humble, loving, and real. She put a notice in the church newsletter letter one week saying: “I’m starting a radical Jesus group. If you are interested, show up Tuesday night at seven o’clock.” Twenty people showed up the first night. She had them sit in a circle and announced that she wanted to follow the radical Jesus, He of service and reckless love, and she was going to need others to do this with her. She didn’t quite know what that might look like, though, so she threw it out there. A few people said they needed to start a homeless shelter in the church, build showers and serve meals. Someone else said that the local radio station was run by a right-wing media company, putting out hate,

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