Friday, May 25, 2007



Grace Eventually by Anne Lamott. I already started to rant about this book a little earlier in the week and I'll try to pick up with the same intensity I left it with. I got my car inspected today so I was in the waiting room a little while and used the time to finish this book up for the week. First of all I'm not sure why her book is called Grave eventually and then subtitled "thoughts on faith". The only thoughts of faith I heard was a hope that someone would hear her incessant whining and feel sorry for her. I was looking for a book on thoughts of faith about God and found very little of that. I feel a large discrepency with Anne on her view of God. At one point in the book she talks about her "glow stick Jesus" and how he is there to comfort her when she is afraid. I know it's not acceptable to question a believers faith but honestly I wonder if her view of God and mine could be any different. Tt seems her faith is around the crutch of God and her involvement with God is because it brings her comfort. This is a very valid reason to maintain close to God but I miss his power and awesomeness in her stories. Perhaps I just tire of her frailty.

Two chapters in particular soured me towards her probably for the final time. The first was her role in an assisted suicide to a friend with terminal cancer. Her friend was a self professed athiest and she gathered together the medication necessary, crushed the pills and mixed it with his meal. All at his approval, she calls this grace. But she killed this man. I hate to play the game "what if". But her logic that a person has the right to die with dignity and she merely helped this man do this. But what if his dignity is what needed to be stripped in order for God to penetrate his heart? She calls it grace but it's grace on her terms not on God's. I was disturbed, offended and appalled that she would not only commit this murder but would also write about it and call it grace. The harsh reality is that she not only helped this man die but she held his hand as she walked him to the gates of hell and dropped him off for eternal punishment.

The other chapter that raised my hackles was her railing against those that are against abortion. I have never justified the rights of women at the expense of an unborn baby. I just don't understand it. You know what causes a person to get pregnant, you get pregnant and then suddenly you think it's your "right" to terminate the life of an embryo. Sex is convenient so let's do that often, children however are not so let's just abort them.

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