Traveling Mercies: Some Thoughts on Faith by Anne Lamott - Literature review Example

THEOLOGY INQUIRY Introduction Traveling Mercies: Some Thoughts on Faith is a book by Anne Lamott, who is a controversial Christian. She thinks of God as a crappy mother and Jesus as Casper, the friendly savior from Casper the friendly ghost. The author, however, has a strong faith that is not with easy answers as we see from the book. Sara Miles, the author of the book, Take This Bread: A Radical Conversion is a woman who had an atheist raising. The book describes how she found her faith unexpectedly. The book has real-life characters such as church ladies, millionaires, child abusers, bishops, schizophrenics, and thieves. They are all in Miles’s life and are into it by the relentless force of her newfound calling in Christ. Discussion Anne Lamott and Sara Miles are both women who had atheist’s upbringing. Lamott, however, liked to go to church despite her parents being atheists. Miles lived a secular life growing up. She was a cook and a writer. Lamott had a great love for going to church, but had to pretend in front of her father that the church was stupid to gain his approval. His father was raised by Tokyo missionaries and did not like the life of being a Christian. Her mother would sometimes attend the midnight mass, but Lamott had a limitation when it came to the opportunity of attending church. The only time Lamott had a chance to attend church was when she was with her Catholic friend. She also attended church when she was with her grandparents.1 Miles did not have any interest in the church or being a Christian while growing up. She was comfortable with leading a secular life and she was a lesbian. She says she was wondering why people were going to church and did not know anything about salvation. Miles covered a series of revolutions around the world as a left-wing journalist but had never discovered any religion to fulfill her needs.2 There is a difference in how Anna Lamott and Sara Miles became Christians and how they started having faith in Christ. Coming to faith for Anne Lamott was not by a leap, but it was through a series of stages of what seemed like a safe place to the other safe place. The places Lamott is talking about summoned her and held her up like lily pads as she was growing through the years. She had prepared for the next step in life and the growth of her place from the experiences she received from the previous year.3 She initially had doubts and fear about being a Christian, but these had clearance through her journey. Each step was crucial in making her stay afloat in her faith. Sara Miles faith and her starting to be a believer were by a leap of faith. She walked into a church one morning when she was forty-six years old, and her life changed forever. She ate a piece of bread which is symbolic of the body of Christ and took a sip of wine, symbolic of the blood Jesus shed on the cross, and that was it for her. Her life changed instantly, and she felt an overpowering feeling she had never experienced before. Miles life was indifferent to religion as her life was thoroughly a secular lifestyle.4 She had scorned the faith in Christ but having to consume the body of Christ changed all that instantly. Lamott did not believe how they could exist a Father-Mother God as Lee used to tell her. Lee taught her the Bible and read to her the books of Psalms to encourage her with her life. She helped her to go to sleep from reading to her the books of the Bible. Lamott engaged in drug abuse as they would help her forget the suffering she had. Her father had pressure on her to perform well in school and needed an A- instead of the B+ she had earned. She engaged in sexual activities with the boys, and she was only sixteen years old. She was also intimate with girls.5 Lamott later came to discover that her B-plus grade was great when she was 35 years old and that she did not have to do drugs and be sexual because of it. Sarah Miles wanted to experience meaning and connection in her life when she left her parent’s house, who was atheists. She spent her time searching for meaning in extreme places such as war zones, poor peoples’ revolutions, restaurant kitchens, and politics. She could not understand why, after all, these she still could not find a purpose for her life. She knew the world through her passion in food. Her father was a child of missionaries and loathed their lifestyle, so he passed it on to Miles. Miles attended a pilgrimage unaware of it when she was eighteen years old. Friends World College had only ninety students in 1971. The goal was to learn through experience. Miles, unlike Lamott, had considerable Christian experience while growing up though she did not believe any of it. The College Miles attended turned her into a missionary who was visiting the world over. The core values she learned from the mission were the same as the one she later heard was living by through her faith in Christ. She did not care about God or learning anything about Christianity while in college. She thought being a believer was stupid. She, however, gained her passion for cooking while on her mission. She did not know that there was hunger deeper than that of food and would be expressed through food and feeding people. She later learned that from her bishop who takes it as a form of miracle.6 Lamott still had her belief in God when she was twenty-three years old and a tennis teacher. She, however, was afraid of talking to her father about the same as well as Miles was afraid. Lamott’s dad did not care if she had romantic relationships with married men but talking about God made the man impatient. Lamott was drinking heavily most of her adult life to please her dad who had brain cancer. Through her drug and alcohol abuse, Lamott lost her footing in God and did not believe that God could love her anymore. She called a guy from St. Stephens and expressed her sorrows to him. The death of her father took a toll on her, and she did not believe God loved her anymore. The guy helped her in assuring her that loving her is God’s job.7 God could not leave his job of loving her. Lamott became pregnant through her alcohol abuse. She, however, changed her life around and had her turning point after a church service and sermon. The lives of the two women are so different in their twenties, and none of them had deep faith in Christ during those years. Lamott and Miles are similar in that they found fulfillment in cooking and food. Miles was cooking with her brother as she was thinking about family instead of miracles. Miles in her faith and the church wanted to start a food pantry that the church members opposed. She suggested that as it would be the same as a community outreach program to help the people. Miles also participated in food pantries in her mission as a Christian. She believes God is in helping people and having core values of the church. Lamott believed that God existed in the little things and little miracles on the earth. She did not believe that there has to be a significant occasion before God shows himself to use on land. She found fulfillment in cooking and feeding people. She stopped thinking about the world and started to focus on things that matter. God and doing according to God’s will was all she was thinking about and not about her hair anymore. Miles turning point and her life in Christ had manifestation when she was feeding the needy with the women of the church. She did not understand much of Christianity and the meaning of every step. She did not know the holy matrimony nor did she understand the Holy Communion. The time she spent in church and the women at the pantry helped her understand God and His ways. She was even able to introduce Lawrence her husband to the church and to be a believer.8 Both women became influential members of their church and were active in helping the needy people of the society. Lamott raised her son Sam in a Christian way far from how she was brought up. Miles touched the life of many people since she became born again.9 Her faith in Christ went through many tribulations, and she had to pay for her faith and belief at one point in her life. Conclusion The two books bring an insight into the lives of two women who were once unbelievers, but through the trials and tribulations in their lives found God and found faith in Him. Lamott’s life was a series of drug abuse and sexual activities that left her vulnerable. She turned her life around to be a Christian. Miles also had a turning point in her life that made her help other people through their pain and desperation. Faith in God and the belief in God is the same for Anne Lamott and Sarah Miles although they have a few differences in the way they express their faith in God. Lamott has suffered from her faith as a Christian as she went through her transition from being a drunkard to a Christian. Lamott was a drunkard Christian, who was struggling to understand the meaning of church as she had the idea that the church is for idiots while growing up. Lamott seems to suffer from her faith in Christ as she is still a work in progress. She had to give up on her drinking when she encountered Jesus in the church. She has a sense of humor about her faith in God. Sara Miles describes in her book that her conversion to Christianity was terribly inconvenient for her. She was an atheist growing up and had to convert when she was forty years old. Sara Miles did not like Christians or believe in God until she ate the bread and drunk the wine. The feeling she got from this action has changed her life forever. She is now a staunch Christian, who believes in Jesus as her Savior. Miles is a controversial Christian, who is married to a woman. Christians do not believe in same sex marriages, but Miles maintains she worships at the altar that belongs to God. The altar in Miles words does not belong to the church. The two women have similarities in that they are both controversial Christians with similar experience of being raised atheists. The difference is how they worship with Lamott still transforming her life and Miles being a gay Christian married to a woman. These two women conversion stories remind us other Christians of how the Christian Right has limited and distorted our understanding of the variety and richness of being a Christian. They express their faith in God in different ways. Bibliography Lamott, Anne. Traveling Mercies: Some Thoughts on Faith. New York: Anchor Books, 2000. Miles, Sara. Take This Bread: A Radical Conversion. New York: Ballantine Books, 2008. Read More