By Carolyn Flynn
For red Ravine
SAGE Editor, author and redRavine.com contributor Carolyn Flynn recently attended “An Evening with Elizabeth Gilbert and Anne Lamott” on the UCLA campus.
To loosen up before writing a new book, Elizabeth Gilbert invites one person to join her and live inside her head. She says she wrote Eat Pray Love as a letter to her friend Darcy. “You should never begin unless you have in mind one person,” Gilbert says. “It’s good if you choose somebody who likes you.”
Gilbert is before an audience at Royce Hall on the UCLA campus with Anne Lamott, author of Operating Instructions and Traveling Mercies, and they are sharing tattoos and exchanging metaphors because that’s what writers do when they get together. “Like my boots?” Gilbert says, clicking her toes together, then her heels, “I’m acting like a second grader,” she says.
Gilbert has just introduced Lamott and everyone is laughing. My son is slapping his knee and nearly falling on the floor. Gilbert confesses that she was so giddy when Lamott blurbed her book that she drank two margaritas and ate an entire bag of Halloween candy. When she called Lamott to thank her, she thought about chirping out that charming anecdote, but then, she says, “I realized that might not be the most professional way to introduce myself.”
Now, with 4 million copies of Eat Pray Love sold, their lecture agents have brought them together for two nights of conversation — here at Royce Hall and the next night on Lamott’s home turf in Marin County, California. It’s a rare evening that’s been waiting to happen for about the past four years, starting back with that crisis point in Gilbert’s life when she was going through a highly charged divorce and a gut-wrenching breakup with her transitional relationship (“It didn’t work. No one could see that coming,” she says, deadpanning). Gilbert was planning her trip to Italy, India and Indonesia that would be the tableau for Eat Pray Love and pitching the idea to her editor.
But a book about spirituality was a tough sell. We’re talking about people who say “fuck” eight times before breakfast but can’t say the G-word, Gilbert says. And forget about the J-word. She told her editor, “But don’t worry, I feel like I can tell that story, kind of like Anne Lamott would.”
And so the seed of a great pairing was born. Gilbert breaks away from the format that the writers’ lecture agents prescribed for them and introduces Lamott to the audience. “If she had not done this, there wouldn’t have been a path,” she says. “She proved to the world that you can write about divinity in a way that does not make intelligent people want to projectile vomit.”
That blurb that prompted Gilbert’s ecstatic binge on fun-size M&Ms meant a lot. “If she liked the book, if she did blurb me, then it was a stamp of authenticity: It’s safe to read this.”
Thoughts on Faith
Then Lamott reads her story, “Ski Patrol,” from Grace (Eventually): Thoughts on Faith. Again, my son’s sides are splitting with giddy laughter, maybe because he relates to Lamott’s son’s embarrassment about her feeble attempts to ski, a lack of grace he can easily picture in his own mother. In the story, Lamott takes a rather ungraceful and ill-advised leap from the chair lift and lands in a contorted heap in a mound of snow. She has no other choice but to ask for help, she says, “something I force myself to do every four to five years.” But she believes that help will always come — eventually. For instance, she says, “America will heal from the Bush years — eventually.”
After her reading, the two writers sit in comfy chairs like we’re all just in their living room. Lamott launches the conversation with, “So what’s your favorite question for an interviewer to ask you?” But she follows with this question, before Gilbert can answer: “Are you on any particular spiritual path?”
Gilbert admits to “cherry-picking” in Eat Pray Love but says we should not be apologetic about embracing a diversity of spiritual beliefs. Spirituality is evolving, and many of the current structures aren’t a perfect fit. If she had to say just one, it would the yogic path, which led her to the ashram in India. “Buddhism makes the most sense intellectually, but it doesn’t grab my heart,” Gilbert says.
Part of her needs the messiness of not having just one path, Gilbert says, but she tells Lamott she admires her for being anchored in one church community, St. Andrew Presbyterian Church in Marin City, California. “You have one place that’s your home,” Gilbert says. “I admire that. While drinking from many wells.”
Lamott, who describes her church as the one with the scraggly Charlie Brown Christmas tree and the ragged hearts, says it was just the right place for her. “I am very devout, but I don’t have certainty or conviction. The opposite of faith isn’t doubt; it’s certainty.”
Though many people look to her for wisdom, she says she’s unqualified to answer spiritual questions that the greatest minds of the world have explored, such as how to explain suffering. “I’m just a post-alcoholic, post-menopausal tired person. I don’t know.”
Lamott’s down-to-earth spirituality is easy to embrace. “Like everybody else, I forget it. I think things into the ground.” But it’s very simple. It’s about how you live and how you respond to suffering. All traditions know this. “When you see suffering, you don’t look away.” Lamott was raised in an atheist home with a strong social justice orientation, so her faith is through the lens of helping others. “If I want to feel really loving, I need to do loving things,” she says. “Faith without works is dead.”
Gilbert notes that when she examined the arc of Lamott’s work, she saw an evolution from Operating Instructions, Lamott’s memoir of the first year of her son’s life, which came not too long after she got sober. Lamott was a single mom who hadn’t planned on raising a baby boy on her own. Gilbert notes that in Operating Instructions there were “so many shredded edges,” but now Lamott has raised a son to adulthood and written three books on faith and people are coming to her.
But Lamott won’t say it’s easier for her. “When I wake up in the morning, I’m mentally ill.” All of her obsessive-compulsive disorders and addiction tendencies have woken up already and made the coffee and they’re sitting on the bed. “I have written so many books. People think it goes well for me.” But she says, “Humor and laughter are carbonated forms of holiness.”
On Writing: A Work Ethic and a Little Grace
Neither writer says it’s easy to write. Neither says she has any discipline whatsoever. Gilbert tells a story about the poet Ruth Stone, who would receive poems fully formed in her imagination. Her challenge was racing up from the strawberry fields back to the house to get a pen and paper and get it down before it left. To this, Lamott says, “I’ve never heard of Ruth Stone until now, but she is now my mortal enemy.”
For example, Lamott says, it took her two weeks to write the 1,500 words in “Ski Patrol.” Her first prayer in the morning, when she’s greeted with all of her demons is “God, help me get out of the way so that what needs to be written can be written.” For her, the process is to work really hard to get the “shitty first draft” that she writes about in Bird by Bird, her book about writing, and the rest is getting out of the way. “Everything is five or six drafts.”
Gilbert calls it the “angel and the plow mule,” harkening to her Calvinist work ethic Connecticut upbringing. “This is my job. I’m the plow mule,” she says. She believes that if she works hard enough, the angel will come along and put the moving sidewalk under your plow.
“For artists, the enemy is perfectionism,” Lamott comments to this. When you are writing, you are finding out slowly what it is. “You have to un-learn everything they told you. You have to waste paper.”
The Auntie Brigade
Gilbert has not taken the path of motherhood, and Lamott asks about that. Gilbert attributes much of her angst in her 20s and early 30s to grieving that. She knew she wasn’t going to have children, by choice.
She says when you examine any human settlement in any culture, any time, you’ll find a very consistent 10 to 20 percent of females who don’t have children. It’s so consistent, that she has concluded that it’s a genetic necessity to have a cadre of adult, caring, compassionate women who do not have their own children. She calls it the “Auntie Brigade,” and she likes to think of herself as a “sparent” — a spare parent. “I feel a kinship with those women,” Gilbert says, adding an aside that she has since married her sweetheart from Eat Pray Love.
“What’s the most important thing you know?” Lamott asks her.
“Gentleness,” Gilbert says. She’s learned how to be gentle with herself, like the “older sister, older me” in Eat Pray Love. This is the older, wiser self who will say, “You want to do that? Well, that’s OK. You know it didn’t work out so well the last time. But if you really need to do that, you can do that.” She’s learned to trust that wise counsel, which grants her free will with compassion.
The Abyss
“You haven’t asked, but I’m going to tell you,” Lamott says. “What’s the most important thing I know? We’re all afraid.”
Lamott, who takes the spotlight for a bit to sound off on the presidential election, says in America, we’re all walking around with “this sheet metal loneliness.” American culture is about disguising that. “In America, if you do fall into the abyss, you go shopping. Go to Ikea and buy a throw rug.”
This “sheet metal loneliness” is protecting us from the dark night of the soul, Lamott says. We are very fearful, “but truth and beauty win out. The right thing will happen.”
Photos of Gilbert and Lamott from authors’ websites; photo of Lamott by
Mark Richards; book photo © 2008 by ybonesy. All rights reserved.
‘The opposite of faith isn’t doubt; it’s certainty.’
Good point. Since no-one – but God – can be 100% certain about reality and truth, so faith cannot be about 100% certainty (but by the same token that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t endeavour to find out as much as we can about faith).
And ultimately, as St Paul says, you can have faith to move mountains but if you have no love then it is useless.
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That line stood out to me, as well. I read it once, stopped, went back and read it again. I had to really think about it, and once it sunk it, I thought, How profound.
I have read several books by Lamott, although not those that express her spiritual journey. After reading this post, I am now chomping at the bit to pick up and read Traveling Mercies and Grace (Eventually).
Likewise, I have Gilbert’s Eat Pray Love, but I haven’t read it. I guess partly because it was such a huge sensation, I just haven’t jumped to read it. (I’m kind of contrary that way.) But, again, after reading this post, I’m going to read that one, too.
BTW, my favorite Natalie Goldberg book is Long Quiet Highway, and one of my all-time favorite memoirs is Looking for Mary by Beverly Donofrio. I am attracted to reading about a writer’s spiritual quest. There’s something about this search that speaks to something deep inside me, and I don’t think of myself as a spiritually lost person. I’m not sure why, then, this type of quest memoir resonates so deeply.
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Carolyn, I just reread this piece and got even more out of it the second time. The playfulness between these two writers sings in this post.
I can relate to Lamott’s “When I wake up in the morning, I’m mentally ill.” And how her addiction tendencies have woken up already and made the coffee and they’re sitting on the bed. It’s comforting to know many of us feel that way. Not so comforting to know, it doesn’t go away!
I also liked how the enemy is perfectionism. How writers have to un-learn everything and waste paper. And Elizabeth’s the Auntie Brigade, the 10 to 20 percent of females who don’t have children by choice. I sit in solidarity with those women.
I remember making a conscious choice when it got near the end of a childbearing age that made sense – not to have any kids. I have not regretted it. And it has given me a great appreciation for women who have kids and try to juggle their creative and work lives (women like ybonesy).
I have a couple of questions for you Carolyn – what surprised you most about the time you spent with these two writers? And what was one thing you took away that you intend to apply to your own writing.
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I too, was blown away by the insightfulness and intuitiveness of the line “The opposite of faith isn’t doubt; it’s certainty”…
it’s probably one of the more profound lines I’ve ever heard.
If we were certain about anything (other than death and taxes) there would no need for faith…like rooting for a
your favorite underdog in a game.
I will also make reading “Eat Pray Love” a priority in my already time-challenged schedule.
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Every time I hear Anne Lamott or hear from somebody else who has recently heard Anne Lamott, I discover a new gem.
I am now hereby adopting this as my new daily before-getting-out-of-bed prayer:
God, help me get out of the way so that
what needs to get written can get written.
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What surprised me the most was how hard this was to write. With two great writers like Gilbert and Lamott, who are funny and witty and engaging, it seems like it would be a piece of cake. The lines were just rolling out of them.
But it was hard. I wanted to capture the interplay between them.
I love Lamott’s line about “the opposite of faith is not doubt but certainty.” I think that’s what makes her discussions of faith so interesting. She admits to her vulnerabilities and her addictive tendencies.
Both writers admitted to their foibles. Gilbert says meditation is never easy for her and doesn’t expect that it ever will be.
But maybe what surprised me the most is how Lamott “stole the show.” Though this piece probably presents them as balanced — a little of Liz, a little of Anne — Lamott was really in her element.
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You captured it, definitely. It must have been nerve-wracking for them, being up there on comfy chairs yet in front of a large audience, talking casually about these deep issues. The notion that Lamott would broach the question of not having children, for example.
I mean, I’m not surprised that as writers, they would get beyond the superficial and drop into soul-searching, soul-wrenching areas, but the fact that they did so in public — that they had the kind of conversation just the two of them might have over pots of coffee (I was going to say “beers” but remembered that wouldn’t have been the case), that took guts.
I think I mentioned in QM in a separate email that I was struck by the number of insights these writers had and that you captured. How you close the piece, with Lamott’s reflections on “sheet metal loneliness” — writers can be so astute in their observations and then brilliant in their descriptions of what they see.
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Elizabeth, I have to say when I read that quote (God, help me get out of the way so that what needs to get written can get written.) I flashed on you and your current endeavor 8) .
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A friend recently loaned me an old tape of Lamott at a workshop over 10 years ago. I listened to it — twice. I had never heard her voice before then. Only read her books. I was struck by how fast she talked, how high energy she is. And so many good things about walking the writing path, rolling off her lips.
I also like that she is open about her recovery. And I wonder sometimes if her clarity and ability to distill things down to the simple, the basic, such as the lines you two mention – “God, help me get out of the way so that what needs to get written can get written.” And “The opposite of faith isn’t doubt; it’s certainty” come from her recovery background. It endears me to her even more. I appreciate her honesty. And it sounds like this conversation was right there in the moment.
I’m thinking about what you said about Lamott stealing the show. I wonder about the introvert/extrovert thing with these two writers. Do you think some of that was going on?
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Great question, QM. I’m fascinated by introvert/extrovert (and childbirth order, and anything, for that matter, that influences how we are and how we relate to the world).
Hey, your comment triggered something our friend amuirin once said that she read about Gilbert being an extrovert. I’ll have to find that comment.
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ybonesy, that’s interesting..I was wondering if it was the other way around, and Gilbert was the introvert. Hmmm. Yeah, if you find that comment, let us know. I do remember amuirin talking about it. I wonder if it was in the BookTalk post?
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Here it is: Have you ever had the chance to read ‘eat pray love’ by Elizabeth Gilbert? Great book. She talks about how she’s the gregarious one, and her sister, the scholar and introvert seemed comfortable alone so everyone thought Elizabeth would have the giant family, the house full of kids and her sister would be the world traveler/writer.
But it worked out the opposite way, because Elizabeth’s gregarious nature meant she never lacked for company she left behind the comfortable ‘roots’ of routine and structure and went seeking and traveling for a year, but her sister had the family, and she was happy, because her family helped her stay grounded in the world and not be lonely.
And the link: https://redravine.wordpress.com/2007/12/31/the-abcs-of-a-prosperous-2008-gratitude/#comment-26242
You know, back to the definition of introvert/extrovert being about energy and whether being with people drains (introvert) or fills (extrovert), an introvert *could* steal the show YET be exhausted afterwards.
People think I’m an extrovert because I can be the life of a small party, plus I’m flexible and easy-going (which comes more from being the youngest of five, I think) YET I don’t necessarily get energy from being “on.”
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So in “Eat Pray Love” there’s this hilarious section when Liz Gilbert is in India, and she’s really struggling with meditation. She feels like a complete failure because she can’t stop grieving the transitional relationship that has torn her up inside and left her frozen the whole time she was in Italy, which is so vibrant, so it’s a sharp, sharp contrast. She gained 25 pounds while she was in Italy and was sort of untethered, with no sense of where her life might go from there. She gets to India and she thinks it’s going to be better, or at least, that she’ll shed those 25 pounds. After four months of Sicilian pizza, now she’s eating vegetarian every day.
But she’s struggling mightily. Her mind is chattering away during meditation. It will just keep chewing on all the sorrow and rehashing all of her flaws, etc., etc. She has this hilarious conversation with her mind that is textbook on how to meditate. I only wish I had read that passage before I wrote “The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Mindfulness,” which, by the way, shameless plug, comes out in July 2008. It perfectly captures that practicing mindfulness meditation is like taming a wild horse.
Anyway, there’s a point in India at which Gilbert decides that she needs a personality transplant. She’s just too social. Already she’s become the life of the party girl, and she’s more focused on being charming and witty than meditating.
So she decides that her supreme spiritual goal is to become the “quiet girl at the back of the room.”
That’s why I was surprised that Lamott made the stronger impression. I expected before the show, and continued to during the show, that Gilbert would make the stronger impression because I had just recently finished her book, it’s still fairly new to the audience, and she’s sold 4 million copies. Gilbert’s introduction of Lamott was a rollickin’ warmup for the crowd. It was hilarious.
But Lamott’s spiritual insights are so deep and well-lived, so grounded, so passionate that I think Gilbert became “the quiet girl at the back of the room.”
Yet that in and of itself may show Gilbert’s spiritual evolution. Maybe she doesn’t always have to have the spotlight now.
I loved Gilbert’s answer to “what’s the most important thing you know.” Her answer was “gentleness.” She has learned to be gentle with herself. I didn’t write about their tattoo exchange because it was getting too long, but Gilbert talked about having the words “courage” and compassion” tattoed on her forearms. She says that there aren’t too many situations that are so sticky that those two things can’t carry you through.
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I was also struck by the comment, “the opposite of faith is not doubt but certainty.” and experienced the same sense of enlightenment as when I heard the statement that “the opposite of love is not hatred, but indifference.”
One of the statements in the KJ version of the Bible that I really relate to is when the man answered Jesus’ inquiry of his belief with the reply, “Lord, I believe; help thou my unbelief.” If our minds are not open to the possibility that there is always something more we can learn, than we are stumbling through life with blinders on…another way to put it:
“Don’t confuse me with facts…my mind is made up.”
I want to share with everyone a poem by Jemma Leech, who has cerebral palsy and cannot speak, but communicates by touching an alphabet connected to a computer. This was written by her in August of 2006, when she was 9 years old.
From Nobody to Somebody
I am nobody.
I hide in myself,
Velvet-lined
Against the cold stares
Of the world.
I am nobody.
I keep away from the hatred,
Stone-clad
Against those who mock
And deride.
I am nobody.
I remain in darkness,
Wool-insulated
Against the pain
Of their contempt.
But when I am asleep
I am somebody.
Stripped naked
Of all the trappings of myself.
An empress of lands of plenty,
With sackfuls of love, respect
And self-worth.
So please,
Let me sleep.
Copyright (c) 2008 ABC News Internet Ventures
There was a report on this remarkable girl on the evening news on ABC. Her autobiography was the winner in a competition when she was only 8 yrs. old…and the panel of judges did not know of her palsy beforehand!!! You can read it at ABC News.com. I wept.!
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What a night. I would have loved to hear this conversation first-hand because these two women are a couple of my favorites. But you have presented their ideas clearly and beautifully. Thank you.
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Hey, Liz and I listened to Garrison Keillor’s The Writer’s Almanac this morning and guess what? It’s Anne Lamott’s birthday. Happy Birthday, Anne! She was born April 10th, 1954 in San Francisco, California.
Here’s a link to The Writer’s Almanac with Lamott (LINK). You can listen to Garrison or read the text. You can also sign up to have it come into your email box. He talks about great writers and poets every day. We love it.
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Carolyn: Thank you for capturing this conversation for all of us. You’ve presented it beautifully and I’m so glad that I took the time to read it (and all the comments) after first balking at the length, thinking that I didn’t have time. It was time well-spent. This stays with me:
“Neither writer says it’s easy to write. Neither says she has any discipline whatsoever.”
I am frequently critical of myself for my lack of discipline as a writer, thinking that I must be practicing in a prescribed and ritualistic manner. But in the context of this post, I now see that thinking is a trap set up by the obsessive-compulsive tendencies that also always wake-up and start functioning before I do.
So, to get out of the way of myself, it almost seems that once I am awake, I might attempt to put those tendencies to bed, so that I can get on with my writing. Easier said than done, I think, but maybe as I make my bed in the morning, I’ll tuck in the o/c tendencies and tell them to “have a nice rest,” as I move on into my day and my writing without them.
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Carolyn, thanks for adding your thoughts about “the quiet girl at the back of the room.” As the mother of one daughter who is the quiet girl at the back of the room and one who is the barely-able-to-contain-herself kid at the front of the room, I do have to say that there is this notion that the quiet child is deeper, wiser, more serious. She is more serious. My extrovert is funny and clever, fast and sharp. It’s kind of interesting in light of this conversation to think about both in the context of writing and ability to tap that profundity and soul. Hmmm. Just thought, too, of the interplay of soul and spirit. Thinking aloud here.
oliverowl, the ABC story sounds so moving. I’ll be checking it out, as so with The Writer’s Almanac link, QM.
Hey, Carolyn, did you only take your son to the event, or did you take both kids? Just curious. I’m struck by how your son was able to enjoy himself at this kind of an event. My kind of kid!
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Carolyn, I love the tattoo exchange, too. These lines are perfect and I’m glad you added them to the comments (#13). Makes me want to get a tattoo again:
Gilbert talked about having the words “courage” and compassion” tattoed on her forearms. She says that there aren’t too many situations that are so sticky that those two things can’t carry you through.
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I took my daughter to this event, too, but she was trying not to laugh because she needed to use the bathroom very, very, very badly, and her mom told her to wait for “intermission,” which never came. She was a trooper!
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I should add: My daughter’s experience of this event was deeper.
You could actually say it was transcendent, given that her teeth were swimming through the event, yet she was really paying attention, soaking it all in.
She knows I’m passionate about writing, and she is a very good writer, so she was really paying attention to what the writers were saying, how they were interacting and what they looked like.
On the drive back to San Diego (where we were staying at this hippie surfer beach), she got really chatty about the event, interviewing me about what it was like to be a writer.
And I should mention for people reading this blog and these comments that my son and daughter are twins. They are 8 years old, and I’m pretty sure they were the only children at this event. Yet they were able to hang, intellectually, with what was going on.
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Carolyn, thank you for sharing the ages of your twins, I was going to ask how old your son was. I applaud you for taking them to this event & you say that they were able to hang, intellectually, with what was going on. A sign that you are bringing them up with great values! Good for you!
I read this post last night, too tired to absorb what I was reading. However, I read it again this morning & like many other’s comments, I also found the Lamott quote “The opposite of faith isn’t doubt; it’s certainty.” to be quite profound. That quote jumped off the page at me last night & I went to bed thinking about it.
I was also touched by the following:
Lamott: “Like everybody else, I forget it. I think things into the ground.”
“If I want to feel really loving, I need to do loving things. Faith without works is dead.”
Gilbert:”You have one place that’s your home. I admire that.
While drinking from many wells.”
Thank-you for sharing your experience.
And I must say, your daughter “is” quite a trooper! D
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Carolyn, What a great piece about three inspiring female writers, you included as your gift of eloquence captured Lamott and Gilbert wonderfully! Currently as a writer stuck in transition I found many inspiring words to motivate me. For starters, I have adopted Lamott’s morning afirmation of “God help me get out of the way so that what needs to be written can get written.”
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I don’t think writing really ever gets easier. I think that only the struggle of “to write-not to write” becomes more serene as time goes on.
Serenity. So we sort of have to make peace with this idea that we have a visitation from the muse, that we have heard the call to write what needs to be written. It’s dazzling, to be called, like that. And terrifying. …
That line, “God help me get out of the way so that what needs to be written can get written,” is the path to serenity.
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you ya ya sisters fill me with buoyancy. the 8 minutes that i am able to give to reading all that this blog offers leaves me
only on the surface of a deep deep wellspring. lamott and gilbert are women i want to read more and more of. when i am not driving to soccer practice, orthodontists, school science fairs, work, the grocery store or blood labs. so until then. thanks for reminding me that the world is round and moving constantly. always appreciate a moment of fresh titillating air.
marianne
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Anne Lamott, though she claims to be Christian, is an admitted universalist, so I guess it’s not surprising she is okay with Elizabeth Gilbert’s views, as she seems to be here. Gilbert’s book is basically New Age in its spirituality. I was a New Ager for close to 20 years and there is nothing wonderful about it from a Christian viewpoint. I think it’s sad that Lamott endorsed this book by Gilbert.
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I also meant to include this: the opposite of faith is not certainty! The opposite of faith is unbelief. Faith in a real God is a certain faith. God revealed Himself through creation, His word, and Jesus Christ. God tells us in many places in the Bible to “know” certain things.
Speaking as a Christian, if we could not be certain about our faith in Jesus Christ and in God’s word, then we can’t know the Bible is God’s word, which means we can’t trust it or trust God. We therefore can’t be certain that God is good, that Jesus came, that Jesus died for our sins, that He bodily rose, that He is coming again, or that salvation is true.
Certainty in God’s word and in Jesus Christ is not arrogant; it’s the result of our faith. And it follows what Jesus himself said many times. Didn’t he say, “and you will know the truth and the truth will make you free” (John 8.32)?
Christian faith is not based on some airy-fairy fantasy but on real truths about God and His revelation.
Either Jesus is the way, the truth, and the life or he is not. It is false or it is true – it is not some kind of gray area of uncertainty. I am not saying it is wrong to be uncertain, but for a Christian, being uncertain about the essentials of the faith is self-refuting.
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Marcia, your comments demonstrate the huge risk that writers take when they write about topics such as Religion and Spirituality. (Politics is another that opens any writer up to other’s criticisms and condemnations.) Of course, Gilbert knew that she would offend others and gave that disclaimer early in her book. But I do think this is why the existence of community — writing community and reading community — is so important, to help writers sustain the courage they need to tell their stories.
I was a New Ager for close to 20 years and there is nothing wonderful about it from a Christian viewpoint.
I was surprised that you yourself were once a New Ager and yet have so little compassion for someone else who is seeking. I would think that any Christian would be happy that a person is seeking spirituality. There are so many paths that such a search can lead one to. Look where it lead you. And yet, you have no tolerance for someone else who is on a path. Not a very charitable viewpoint, it seems.
It is precisely this kind of “certainty” that others are wrong and only you are right that for me demonstrates Lamott’s profound statement that “the opposite of faith is not doubt, it is certainty.”
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Ybonesy, thanks for your comments.
It is not that I don’t have compassion for Gilbert, but she states in her book that she is not a Christian and rejects Jesus as the only way to God (a claim Jesus makes in John 14.6).
It is not a matter of tolerance or compassion, but of truth. Who is the true God? I used to believe almost exactly as Gilbert does and I know where it leads. It would actually be non-compassionate and unloving of me to say she’s okay where she is spiritually speaking. And this is not my view – it’s the view of Jesus who made claims to be the Messiah, demonstrated this through signs (miracles) and fulfillment of prophecy, and atone for sins.
Gilbert believes we are all God and are all divine; this is not what Jesus taught.
If what Jesus said is true, then we can be certain who he is and why he came and that we need him.
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Two of my three sisters are challenged to understand the loving, compassionate and open-minded brand of Christianity that I believe in.
I think that what Lamott means by her comment — “the opposite of faith is not doubt, it’s certainty” — is that the moment that we think we have all the answers about God, who He is and what He thinks and what He wants us to think and even if He is a He — and we think other people don’t — then we weaken our faith. We stop exploring it. We stop seeking to get to know God.
I think God calls to each of us differently. He called to Elizabeth Gilbert when she was on her knees, in tears, in the home she shared with the man she didn’t want to be married to anymore. And He showed her compassion. Now she has the words “courage” and “compassion” tattoed on the inside of her forearms to remind her.
The moment in India when she truly experiences this love came out of this.
I don’t think you could find a place in “Eat, Pray, Love” where Gilbert thinks she’s just divine. She’s honest and humble. She admits to her failings as a meditator (my son loved that passage). She admits to forgetfulness, as in I knew God loved me, but then I forgot. Anne Lamott talks about this, too.
Fundamentalist Christians like to slap New Agers with the accusation that they think they are divine, but if you listen with an open mind, what they are saying is that they are letting the divine come into their hearts. How is this different from seeking Jesus? If we see the spark of the divine in us, and that makes us seek Him, then how is that spark different from Genesis when it says God created man in his own image. That’s the spark! I think He gave to us so we would seek Him.
What is appealing about Lamott and Gilbert is that they are genuine seekers. They don’t claim to have all the answers.
I honor the beliefs of all three of my sisters. Two of them need the certainty that Marcia writes about here. They flourish because of that certainty. They are loving, beautiful people. They are happy. I love them with all my heart.
The other two of us — myself and another sister — are seekers. We have a hunger for knowing more and more about God and Jesus Christ, but you would never be able to categorize either one of us. This is a path we share.
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Carolyn, because of this post, I cracked open my copy of Eat Pray Love. I got through Italy, am now in India, although for some reason I decided to pause and turn my attention to Traveling Mercies. That one I am now going through without stop.
A friend of mine came through here over the weekend en route to a writing workshop in Taos, and we talked about Gilbert and Lamott over breakfast. We each come from institutionalized Christian traditions — he is Christian Scientist, me a Catholic — and we noted how disturbing it can be for Christians who come about their faith via institutionalized religion to think about Christians accessing faith without the support of institutions. In other words, the idea of a person seeking spirituality on his or her own, without Church, can be disturbing, threatening, not legitimate. Not to everyone, but to some.
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I love what Anne Lamott is doing. She found a community, and it grounds her in her spiritual path. I love that she is participating fully in it and is devoted. I love that she believes in public service — that it’s important to do good in the world, that your faith is more than a vow — it’s an action.
I have a good grounding because I, too, come from an institutionalized Christian tradition. I think this gave myself and my youngest sister the firm foundation of faith that has allowed us to explore and be open.
But I have found that while I have a community that I love, I still seek more. It has been a struggle in my adult life to find others like me, but I actually have come to believe there are more people like me that I ever imagined.
I think many people find comfort in the institutionalized religions, and I honor that because ideally, that’s what I am seeking, too. But Gilbert points out in “Eat, Pray, Love,” there are many of us who are “cherry-picking,” to use her term because we’re willing to accept that the established institutions don’t quite fit. The way I always say it is that I believe God is bigger than just one church. And so I seek.
Community is vital. I believe that we need that support. We need other spiritual seekers to be mirrors to our souls, to be our allies on the journey.
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Hi Carolyn,
As a writer and a traveler living around the country (LA, San Francisco, currently Washington DC) renting and swapping my house out in New Mexico (thank you Craig’s List!), the wisdom from Gilbert and Lamott resonate. I’ve always told myself that the opposite of fear is faith – and that has given me encouragement. Now I can add “the opposite of faith is certainty” to my thoughts. I like that – it takes my perspective to a higher level.
Thanks for adding these ideas to the global conversation!
Best to you,
Elle
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Wow. Hello everyone, I am saddened to discover the event in Marin is sold out. I will be searching for tickets in various places having been stirred here on this very page. Today I had picked up a copy of Grace (EventuallY) by Lamott. I related with you Carolyn, on being a seeker. I am a worship leader, a singer, writer, and READER. Jesus and I have walked , limped, and crawled through many painful paths together. I have Relfex Sympathetic Dystrophy. (http://rsdsa.org) Because of my religious background, it took a great deal of transformation for me to allow God to reveal Himself to me in His way. Shedding the shoulds, the curiosity built up and up and brought me on the most fulfilling journey of my lifetime. A freefall began. I chose to be curious, to question, and to receive love like I’ve never felt before. It was extremely humbling.
The best tool, I still work with it, was a training where I spent three days discovering what belief systems I was holding to that weren’t working in my life. When you remember that your thoughts aren’t original, people before you had them too, the fear of expressing them slowly goes away. it’s comforting reading these replies and seeing that we’re all in discovery. I love it!
Thanks for reading, please feel free to write on…
The opposite of faith is… certainty. I’m so certain of my faith, my friendship with Christ, that I am free to question EVERYTHING, like a child.
Love Wins, K
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Kaitlyn, thanks for your insightful comments. I like what you said about having a solid faith base, which allows you to be free to question everything and know that nothing changes the core.
It’s like when I tell my twins that I love them even when they’re grouchy. That love is a constant.
I’ve love to be able to tell you that more Anne Lamott/Elizabeth Gilbert events are available, but the last I checked the L.A. and Marin County events were the only ones. (I found the info on Gilbert’s web site.)
Lamott was funny because she kept saying she was a homebody, that when she leaves the house, the only thing she can think about is when she’ll be home again.
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[…] An Evening With Elizabeth Gilbert & Anne Lamott by Carolyn Flynn […]
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ybonesy, can’t wait to hear how it goes tonight with Elizabeth Gilbert in New Mexico. Let us know!
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Elizabeth Gilbert was engaging, funny!, and down to earth. She read an excerpt from the first chapter of Committed, then took questions. An entertaining evening. Carolyn will write for red Ravine another post soon. I’m looking forward to it.
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[…] also wrote red Ravine posts An Evening With Elizabeth Gilbert & Anne Lamott after seeing the two writers together in 2008 on the UCLA campus and The Devil Came Down To Austin […]
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[…] new beginnings with the poetry of Ruth Stone (the poet mentioned in Carolyn Flynn’s piece An Evening With Elizabeth Gilbert & Anne Lamott). This Friday we’ll read the work of Pablo […]
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[…] this book, which thrilled Gilbert, and she appeared with Gilbert for an event on the UCLA campus (https://redravine.wordpress.com/2008/04/09/an-evening-with-elizabeth-gilbert-anne-lamott/). Lamott’s words appear on the book’s cover: “A wonderful book, brilliant and […]
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Dropping this link into this post, too. I listened to these two rebroadcast interviews on MPR yesterday. Fascinating to listen again with the new movie coming out. Writers have so much to teach us about living. It’s up and down. And you never know when your time will come. How could Elizabeth Gilbert possibly have known that Julia Roberts would play her in a movie one day? She said they are working hard to get the details of her travels spot on. It’s just Julia’s glowing face that will be greeting you on screen.
MPR News Q: With new film, ‘Eat, Pray, Love’ author back in the spotlight (LINK)
With “Eat Pray Love” (no commas intended), the film starring Julia Roberts, currently reaping millions at the box office, Midmorning rebroadcasts two conversations with author Elizabeth Gilbert about her literary adventures.
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What a treat: Carolyn and I got to see Anne Lamott tonight in Santa Fe, at the Lensic Theater. Wow, what a wonderful storyteller. I could have listened to her forever. Bought her latest book, Imperfect Birds, which I will start tonight even though I’m dog-tired. (But happy dog-tired.) 8)
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yb, that’s awesome that you got to see Anne Lamott last night. What were some things you learned? I’m always amazed at what I come away with when I go hear writers speak about and read from their work. Wisdom of the ages.
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QM, she was awesome. I learned about grace, and I think Anne Lamott is full of grace. I learned about the urgency of writing and other passions, the importance of spirituality and community, just listening. And now off to read more from Imperfect Birds.
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