I just added a new book (Traveling Mercies) over on my book list. I'm not finished with it but will be soon. I had checked it out from the library quite awhile ago and had to turn it in because there was a waiting list, so just bought my own copy. I'm so glad I did.

It's a book that will linger with me for a long time, and I know I will read it again and again. I love the way Anne Lamott writes-- she has such a wonderful, thought-provoking way of putting words together. I have to keep putting it down so I can think about some things she says. I don't normally write or underline in books--this one will bear the pencil marks of a reader that wants to remember.

Here's something from the chapter where the author writes about broken things-- hearts, health, confidence:

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 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.

This book is subtitled "Some Thoughts on Faith". While some people will take the "faith" to heart as related to their religion, I don't believe that is her intention. The book WAS written as a response to her search for her own faith and spirituality, but those words can be different things to everyone. That's what I love about this book-- it's so easy to read her words and connect them with something personal.

And the two best prayers she knows? "Help me, help me, help me" and "Thank you, thank you, thank you".

Sounds good to me.