Second Draft: Anne Lamott

Today, I wrote a first draft.  It was a blogpost on Anne Lamott and how she's influenced me and might even influence you to read the Bible.

If I were to write a second draft, then I would eliminate all the misspellings and typos.  I would take out the S-word and the F-word.  I would talk about Anne Lamott in the abstract too, giving propositions on hermeneutics and exegetics and Barbara syllogistics and such.  It would not be creative.  It would not be colo(u)rful.  It would not be narrative.  It would probably contain no french words like l'écriture féminine, et si oui, alors il ne serait pas les traduire.  (Please pardon my French!)  I would make you get my intention without the need for your interpretation.  I would courageously exercise my writer's rights at the expense of your readerly timidity.  You would have to thank me for being so clear, for communicating with lucidity, with such transparency, with such ease.  You could just sit back in your easy chair, just thinking that, without even thinking about your body, or mine, or anybody's.

But on second thought, maybe I'd just let you do some of the enjoyable stuff for yourself in your own skin.  And I'd want to remind you of what Rod of Alexandria reminds some of us of:

Amanda Mac of Political Jesus and Cheese-wearing theology provides us with a list of women theo-bloggers/bibliobloggers that she reads: Blogs I Read: A Shout Out To Women.

I'd link to his entire post, BODIES CONFRONTING TRADITION

You would discover some history of Northern British Columbia, from Suzanne McCarthy, whom one male blogger still makes his own game out of censoring.

For some reason or another, then, you might even think of some history out of Toronto, Montreal, and back to Vancouver.  What's this all have to do with Anne Lamott, you might ask.  Right, huh, I'd ask.  And would say, as if I knew her well, doesn't her son's father who abandoned her live in Vancouver?  We might agree, Oooh.  So, I'm just sayin.  What's more relevant to you, and to me: Principles about Bible reading all cleaned up in a second draft or real life as much as we, on second thought, find sexism, too much of it still, right here?

The F-word in the Bible: Anne Lamott

Pardon me for writing so sloppily this morning.  This is what Anne Lamott would advise:  a shitty first draft.  I learned that while doing oh so much writing for a Ph.D. in English, when the English Department experts here at the university advised me to read even more.  They said to learn how to write the dissertation I'd do well to read an Anne Lamott book, Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life.  That's where I got that "shitty" advice from, great advice, one of the best books on writing I've ever read.  I'm follwoing it now, I'm sure.

But what my advisors didn't know about was how reading Anne Lamott's books had alreayd helped me learn to read the Bible.  It's her materiality, or what Rod might call her body, that gets me reading the Bible differenlty.  More on that in just a sec.  I wanted to stop on the body again just to give you how Rod writes on your body and on mine and probably on Anne Lamott's as we all decide how to read the Bible.  He concludes:

Therefore, while tradition provides Christians with a closed canon, reading Scripture, one can understand how to live into an open story, where one’s body becomes part of the biblical narrative as one learns to participate, by the power of the Holy Spirit, into the divine life of Yeshua the Messiah, our New Humanity.

(Now go read how he got there!  Stop, read, then come back here if you like).

Thanks for coming back.  Isn't Rod giving us some wonderful insights?!  How to read the Bible.  What if there's the F-word in it?  How would we read that?

Well, depends, doesn't it, on what we mean by the F-word.  Could mean Fe-male.  Like Mary Magdelene, or Miriam as Rod and others who read hebrew do call her.  Lots of problems reading the Bible that way, with Eve being "Life" but then "sinning first"; with the wife of Lot turning around; with the non-Jewess heroine being a prostitute (yeah Rahab is who); with a non-Jewess snuggling with our hero Boaz (yeah Ruth is who); with the wife of Uriah bringing down David the King; and so forth and so on.  Bodies, and bodies sexed Fe-male. 

There still here today.  Read about em in the blogs.  Now the real f-word is Fe-minist.  Listen:

Rod writing a whole month long series, with fe-minists Elisabeth Schussler Fiorenza, Renita J Weems, April DeConick, and Suzanne McCarthy all in the body of one blog post.

Clayboy (aka Doug Chaplin) is showing his "feminist interest in early Christian history" by relying "A story of a North African woman’s courage... a genuine first-hand journal by the high-class and educated [Vivia ] Perpetua."  Oh, read this one!

The wonderful Jane Stranz is confessing:

Sometimes I get bored with calling myself a feminist. It seems sort of tired and old fashioned, yet it is very much part of who I am and what makes me tick. I admit I have sort of given up smiling every time I get comments such as "when are we going to have an international men's day".... So today I felt energised and encouraged when reading Mariella Frostrup's excellent essay in the Observer.

And if that's not enough to stop you from reading, the Bible, the blogs, etc., then there's Anne Lamott.  No she doesn't blog and she didn't write the gospel of Anne, non canonical.  But, like the Fe-males in the Bible she meanders into spirituality, into wonderful relationship with God, in her body travelling.  And like the Fe-minists blogging and being blogged about (she doesn't blog, but writes stuff for Salon and such online), Anne Lamott has liberty that's refreshing as I come to where I am, when I read, when I'm opening bible pages to read.  Well, here's a spoiler alert or a reader's advisory.  Anne Lamott really does use the F-word.  At a dead old blog now, I once wrote what she wrote (clikc the linke if you must, and read).  Now I'm writing what she's written in Traveling Mercies: Some Thoughts on Faith - it's her story (after she was making step by step progress - not perfection - out of so much, going to nicer motels with the men and not the very seedy ones, and such); she writes of faith:

I began to cry and left before the benediction, and raced home and felt the little cat running along at my heals and I walked down the dock past dozens of potted flowers under a sky as blue as one of God's own dreams, and opened the door to my houseboat, and I stoo there a minute , and then I hung my head and said, "Fuck it: I quit."  I took a long deep breath and said out loud, "All right. You can come in"

So this was my beautiful moment of conversion.

Which makes me think of all the beautiful moments of conversion in the Bible, of all the F-words in it, and how they make a difference, even to me, maybe to you too.

Good Friday and Pesach: the Right Personality and the Right Cup

On Good Friday and during Pesach, here's from Anne Lamott and from Amy Stone:

[Good Friday 2005]

     I don't have the right personality for Good Friday, for the crucifixion: I'd like to skip ahead to the resurrection. In fact, I'd like to skip ahead to the resurrection vision of one of the kids in our Sunday school, who drew a picture of the Easter Bunny outside the tomb: everlasting life, and a basket full of chocolates. Now you’re talking.
      In Jesus’ real life, the resurrection came two days later, but in our real lives, it can be weeks, years, and you never know for sure that it will come. I don’t have the right personality for the human condition, either. But I believe in the resurrection, in Jesus’, and in ours. The trees, so stark and gray last month, suddenly went up as if in flame, but instead in blossoms and leaves--poof! Like someone opening an umbrella. It’s often hard to find similar dramatic evidence of rebirth and hope in our daily lives.
      What is there to do in such difficult, violent times?  I try to follow my own advice to take short assignments, and do shitty first drafts of my work, and most of all, to take things day by day.  Today I am going to pray that our soldiers come home soon.  I am going to pray for the children of American and Iraqi soldiers, for the innocent Iraqi people, for the POWs, for humanitarian aid, and for our leaders.  I am going to pray for the children and youth in Oakland and East Palo Alto and Palestine and Israel.  I am going to pray to forgive one person today -- to give up a soupçon of hostility....  

--Anne Lamott in Plan B: Further Thoughts on Faith (pages 140-41).

.......

(April 8, 2009)

I am fuming. [yes, Moi.]  I was just in West Side Judaica (Manhattan’s Upper West Side) where a little boy was saying to his grandparents, “We need a Miriam’s Cup.”

Grandfather (60-something, could pass for a liberal-congenial-spirit): “No, we don’t.”

Moi (seething): “Yes you do.”

Grandfather: “What did Miriam do?”

Moi: “She provided the well of fresh water that kept the Jews alive in the desert.” (I was so enraged, I didn’t even mention Miriam led the women a song of rejoicing after the crossing of the Red Sea.)

Grandfather: “That was after Passover.”

Moi: So angered [was I that], it didn’t even occur to me to say So was Elijah.

But final shot: Grandmother taking Kos Miriam selected by the little boy to the cash register, where the Orthodox male will ring up the sale.

Hag sameach.

–Amy Stone, "Pesach dead hand of the past"

Anne Lamott on Donald Miller & Paul

Just finished reading two books in one sitting. My excuse? I'm home in bed with the flu, and Anne Lamott (one of my very favorite writers) endorses the two authors.

About the one, Lamott says, "I love Donald Miller. He is a man after my own heart."

About the other, she says, "Saint Paul, who can be such a grumpy book-thumper, said that where sin abounds, grace abounds, and I think this is Paul at his most insightful, hopeful, faithful, when it comes to politicians and to me — if by 'sin' we mean strictly the original archery term of missing the mark."

The reason I bought Miller's book in the first place is because of Lamott's endorsement on the cover above his name and the title, A Million Miles in a Thousand Years: What I Learned While Editing My Life. And Lamott seems so gracious towards Paul's grumpiness that I thought (as I blog this week on some of his Greek words) that I might read (again) the whole of his first Greek letter to the half-Hellene Timo-THeos (aka I Timothy).

Maybe it's the flu, maybe it's reading Miller's story-telling and Paul's letter-writing together - but side-by-side, the two seem strange. Let me show you what I mean. Without giving away too much of either, here are some excerpts (with Miller on the left in his original English, and Paul on the right in the rhetorical English translation called ESV):

I was watching the news the other night, and they were still covering that story in Mumbai about the terrorists who went on a shooting rampage.  The man on the news said that before the terrorists killed the Jews in the Jewish center, they tortured them.  I had to turn off the television, because I could see the torture in my head the way they were describing it.  I kept imagining these people, just living their daily lives, and then having them suddenly ended in unjust tragedy.  When we watch the news, we grieve all of this, but when we go to the movies, we want more of it.  Somehow we realize that great stories are told in conflict, but we are unwilling to embrace the potential greatness of the story we are actually in.  We think God is unjust, rather than a master story teller. (pages 31-32)	1:8 Now we know that the law is good, if one uses it lawfully, 9 understanding this, that the law is not laid down for the just but for the lawless and disobedient, for the ungodly and sinners, for the unholy and profane, for those who strike their fathers and mothers, for murderers, 10 the sexually immoral, men who practice homosexuality, enslavers , liars, perjurers, and whatever else is contrary to sound doctrine, 11 in accordance with the gospel of the glory of the blessed God with which I have been entrusted. 12 I thank him who has given me strength, Christ Jesus our Lord, because he judged me faithful, appointing me to his service, 13 though formerly I was a blasphemer, persecutor, and insolent opponent. But I received mercy because I had acted ignorantly in unbelief,
A couple of weeks later, I ran into a friend I hadn't seen in years...  He said he and his wife had a baby since he last saw me.  A little girl.  He pulled out his wallet and showed me pictures.  I asked him if it was scary being a father, and he told me, no, he loved it.  He said his life had gotten smaller.  His world had shrunk to his wife and kid, and all that mattered was keeping them safe. "Your wife must be loving you," I said. My friend went on to say that he was more in love with his wife than ever, which is not something men usually say to each other, even if it's true.  I don't know why we don't say those things, but we don't.  So I knew he must really be crazy about his wife.  He said he'd been preoccupied with work and hadn't paid much attention to life at home; but after the baby came, he saw his wife differently. "She's amazing," my friend said, shaking his head.  "A baby came out of her body, for crying out loud.  And now she produces food.  She keeps the baby alive." I asked him how his wife felt about all of this, thinking she must be excited to have her husband back.  My friend looked at me as though he were realizing he hadn't actually said anything to his wife. "You haven't said anything?" I questioned. "I guess I figured she knew," my friend suggested. ... I thought about my friend's story from his wife's perspective.  She only knows what he says and what he does, not what he thinks and what he feels.  I'm sure his wife picked up on his new-found enthusiasm, but it did help me realize the stories we tell ourselves are very different from the stories we tell the world.  I told him he ought to bring her flowers. He said that was good idea and asked me where he could get flowers.  (pages 72-73)	2:8 I desire then that in every place the men should pray, lifting holy hands without anger or quarreling; 9 likewise also that women should adorn themselves in respectable apparel, with modesty and self-control, not with braided hair and gold or pearls or costly attire, 10 but with what is proper for women who profess godliness—with good works. 11 Let a woman learn quietly with all submissiveness. 12 I do not permit a woman to teach or to exercise authority over a man; rather, she is to remain quiet. 13 For Adam was formed first, then Eve; 14 and Adam was not deceived, but the woman was deceived and became a transgressor. 15 Yet she will be saved through childbearing—if they continue in faith and love and holiness, with self-control.  3:1 The saying is trustworthy: If anyone aspires to the office of overseer, he desires a noble task. 2 Therefore an overseer must be above reproach, the husband of one wife, sober-minded, self-controlled, respectable, hospitable, able to teach, 3 not a drunkard, not violent but gentle, not quarrelsome, not a lover of money. 4 He must manage his own household well, with all dignity keeping his children submissive, 5 for if someone does not know how to manage his own household, how will he care for God's church? 6 He must not be a recent convert, or he may become puffed up with conceit and fall into the condemnation of the devil. 7 Moreover, he must be well thought of by outsiders, so that he may not fall into disgrace, into a snare of the devil.  8 Deacons likewise must be dignified, not double-tongued, not addicted to much wine, not greedy for dishonest gain. 9 They must hold the mystery of the faith with a clear conscience. 10 And let them also be tested first; then let them serve as deacons if they prove themselves blameless. 11 Their wives likewise must be dignified, not slanderers, but sober-minded, faithful in all things. 12 Let deacons each be the husband of one wife, managing their children and their own households well.
I heard an interview on the radio with a woman who worked with people in domestic abuse situations.  She said most women who come to her for help go back to the situation they come out of, back to the man who abused them.  When the interviewer asked why, the woman said that even though most women had family they could escape to and friend who would take them in, they returned to the abusive man because the situation, as bad as it might be, was familiar.  People fear change, she said.  Though their situations may be terrible, at least they have a sense of control; at least they know what to expect.  Change presents a world of variables that are largely out of their control.  And then the woman said this:  "The women in these situations are afraid to choose a better story, because though their current situation might be bad, at least it's a bad story they are familiar with.  So they stay."  (pages 100-01)	5:3 Honor widows who are truly widows. 4 But if a widow has children or grandchildren, let them first learn to show godliness to their own household and to make some return to their parents, for this is pleasing in the sight of God. 5 She who is truly a widow, left all alone, has set her hope on God and continues in supplications and prayers night and day, 6 but she who is self-indulgent is dead even while she lives. 7 Command these things as well, so that they may be without reproach. 8 But if anyone does not provide for his relatives, and especially for members of his household, he has denied the faith and is worse than an unbeliever. 9 Let a widow be enrolled if she is not less than sixty years of age, having been the wife of one husband, 10 and having a reputation for good works: if she has brought up children, has shown hospitality, has washed the feet of the saints, has cared for the afflicted, and has devoted herself to every good work.

Translation: You-Dependent, Never-Gone-Entirely

. . .
All along you know that they will disperse once they're out of your vision, but they will never be gone entirely, because you saw them. The leaves show you how water is like the wind, because they do what streamers do in a breeze. The garlands are a translation of this material; autumn leaves, transposed to water, still flutter.

Anne Carson and Anne Lamott on Resurrection

Listen to silly Anne Lamott and foolish Anne Carson, wanting hoping desiring so gullibly to keep open the historic and literary possibilities of resurrection, as women see it. The one Anne speaks of Jesus, the other Anne of another Greek-fabled drama, Alcestis in Alcestis by Euripides.

Euripides, of course, is that one of whom the Historian F. A. Wright, in his Feminism in Greek Literature from Homer to Aristotle says: “Euripides and Plato are almost the only [male] authors who show any true appreciation of a woman's real qualities, and to Euripides and Plato, Aristotle, by the whole trend of his [sexist, bigoted] prejudices, was opposed.” But I’m reading the “scholarship” of another “historian” (supposedly) who scoffs, like Aristotle, at true appreciation of a woman’s views. I’m talking about James F. McGrath and his newly published book The Burial of Jesus: History and Faith. McGrath is crying for reviews, but not this one here. In his book, again and again (on more than a dozen pages so far), McGrath feels like he has to pooh pooh the inclusion of women as credible witnesses to the resurrection of Jesus in the gospel of Mark. Not surprising. His historiography is straight phallogocentrism. What I mean by that is this. Hélène Cixous, in her book Stigmata: escaping texts, translates and quotes “Clarice Lispector, who did not think in terms of phallogocentrism.” Cixous points out that Lispector provides a definition of the term: “We have seen this before; it is the ‘phallocratic system’ . . . this is how she [Lispector] conceives of it: a ‘system of inflexible last judgment, which does not permit even a second of incredulity’” (123). Now the English translation of Cixous’s French translation of Lispector’s Brazilian Portuguese has yielded the term. The three together have made “phal-” from Aristotle’s φαλλικὰ (“ph-a-l-l-ika”); “logo,” from Aristotle’s λόγος (or “l-o-g-os”) which he himself makes (by) his λογική (or “l-o-g-ikē” aka LOGIC); and “centric” from Aristotle’s κεντρική (or “k-e-n-tr-ikē”). McGrath, like father Aristotle, does not permit even a second of incredulity. He redefines “faith” and “history” under the guise of “religion.” Enough of that then.

Here’s Anne Lamott in Plan B: Further Thoughts on Faith:

I don't have the right personality for Good Friday, for the crucifixion: I'd like to skip ahead to the resurrection. In fact, I'd like to skip ahead to the resurrection vision of one of the kids in our Sunday school, who drew a picture of the Easter Bunny outside the tomb: everlasting life, and a basket full of chocolates. Now you’re talking.

In Jesus’ real life, the resurrection came two days later, but in our real lives, it can be weeks, years, and you never know for sure that it will come. I don’t have the right personality for the human condition, either. But I believe in the resurrection, in Jesus’, and in ours. The trees, so stark and gray last month, suddenly went up as if in flame, but instead in blossoms and leaves--poof! Like someone opening an umbrella. It’s often hard to find similar dramatic evidence of rebirth and hope in our daily lives. (140).

Here’s Anne Carson in Grief Lessons: Four Plays by Euripides:

What does Alkestis' resurrection mean for the sacrificial contract that Admetos had negotiated with Death? This question is never addressed in the play. Mathematically Death is down one soul; common sense (what the Greeks call Necessity) tells us such a situation can’t last. But Herakles seems a character able to override common sense. He releases Alkestis simply by choosing to do so. As if to say, within every death a life stands waiting to be set free, should anyone have the nerve to do it. As if to say, try looking deep into a house, a marriage, or an idea like Necessity and you will see clear through to the other side. Death, like tragedy, is a game with rules. Why not just break the rules?

Rules broken by Euripides in Alkestis include the rule of closure. What are we to make of the ending? Can we be sure the veiled women is alive? that she is Alkestis? that she will live happily ever after with her husband and children? Critics have doubted all these. There is a kind of nuptial drama staged in the final scene--perhaps a parody of the ancient Greek wedding, which centered upon an unveiling of the bride before the eyes of her husband and some exchange of words between them--that stalls oddly at its peak moment. Here the bride is unveiled to her husband at 971/1121 (or so it seems to me; critics doubt this too) but she will not be permitted to speak for three days due to her death-polluted condition. An eerie silence carries her into the big dark house of her unconventional husband.

I find I want to say less rather than more about Alkestis. Not because there is less in this play but because the surface has a speed and shine that evaporate with exegesis, like some of [Alfred] Hitchcock’s plots. Or a trembling of laughter, terrible if it broke out. (248-49)

Anne Lamott Translates Joshua 2

before you read Anne Lamott's translation, get the full disclaimers, and save yourself:

• by reading you're complicit in my violating copyright laws (unless you buy her book Plan B: Further Thoughts on Faith, and read it too, or check it out from your local library, or listen to her reading it. or get an amazon.com account and just peek in for yourself to pages 19,20,21,22).
• you may disagree that hers is really a "translation" of "Joshua 2" (it's not because Lamott herself is writing an original book in which she's telling here of her preaching a sermon of which this little snippet on Rahab is just a part), but why do we have to be so precise and mono-definitional about the prostituting process, the spy-like method, the treasonous betrayal we make "translation"?
• Lamott says things that cause readers to translate, the text, themselves--all unintended hell breaks loose is what I'm trying to say.
• (oh, and she had a hard time forgiving President George W. Bush because she hates war, especially the undeclared one on Iraq, long before the rest of most of America and the world did even though she's a Christian even though he is one too.)
  
• you've already read enough at this blog on Rahab.
  

----
Then I moved on to the story of Rahab, from Joshua 2 in the Hebrew Bible, whose life was saved by a red cord. She was one of the bad girls of the Old Testament, a prostitute in Jericho, at the end of the Israelites’ wilderness journey. Joshua was their leader, Moses’ anointed successor. When Rahab’s story begins, Joshua and his army are camped on the River Jordan across from Jericho, which they are about to invade. He sends two spies into Jericho to find out how strong the opposing army is.

The spies want to blend in, so they go to stay with Rahab, the most infamous prostitute of her time, figuring that if they go to the local Travelodge, they’ll stick out, but that at Rahab’s, half the men in town will be there, and no one will notice them or say anything. It is like, “If I see you in New Orleans, I won’t see you in New Orleans.”

Rahab lives in an apartment built just inside the walls of Jericho, like a Pueblo or Anasazi dwelling; her windows are built into the outside wall.

The king’s spies visit Rahab’s—on official business, no doubt—and report to him that Joshua’s spies are staying with her. The king sends his soldiers to Rahab’s to demand that she turn over Joshua’s spies.

But word has it that the Israelites are under the protection of a loving God: everyone has heard about the Red Sea’s parting, and that God has cared for the Israelites in the harsh desert for forty years. In that dark and scary time, with war about to break out, and no standing in her own community, Rahab feels something in her heart that tells her to align herself with the people of God. So she lies to the king’s soldiers, and says that by the time the gate to the city was closed at dark the night before, the spies had already gotten away. Actually, she hid them on her roof, in stalks of flax.

Why did she hide them, since, by the calculus of the world, that act endangered her?

She did it because she was desperate, and so she listened to her heart. In my experience, there is a lot to be said for desperation—not exactly a bright side, but something expressed in words for which “God” could be considered an acronym: gifts of desperation. The main gift is a willingness to give up the conviction that you are right, and that God thinks so, too, and hates the people who are driving you crazy. Something spoke to Rahab through her heart, or through what Mel Brooks, in “The 2,000 Year Old Man” refers to as the broccoli. “Listen to your broccoli, and your broccoli will tell you how to eat it.” Something told Rahab that if she aligned herself with the people who had been brought so far by faith, she would be safe as well. This gave her the radical conviction that she should be cared for. Rahab believed that God was trying to get her attention, and she listened.

I try to listen for God’s voice inside me, but my sense of discernment tends to be ever so slightly muddled. When God wants to get my attention, She clears Her throat a number of times, trying to get me to look up, or inward—and then if I don’t pay attention, She rolls Her eyes, makes a low growling sound, and starts kicking me under the table with Her foot.

Rahab got the spies of the Israelites to swear that if she didn’t rat them out, they would spare her and her family.

She let the spies out the window and down the wall by rope. And they gave her a red cord to tie in the window. They returned to tell Joshua their news; and Joshua moved his great army across the Jordan and, in the words of the old spiritual, fit the battle of Jericho. And the walls came a-tumblin’ down.

But Joshua’s soldiers saw the scarlet cord in Rahab’s window, and spared those she had gathered inside, and all because she turned to the spirit within her, the secret place that, as Robert Frost wrote, “sits in the middle and knows.” She went on to live a life of great honor, marrying an Israelite and becoming one of the four women mentioned in Matthew’s genealogy from Abraham to David to Jesus.

You’ve got to love this in a God––consistently assembling the motleyest to bring into this lonely and frightening world, a commitment to caring and community. It’s a centuries-long reality show––Moses the stutterer, Rahab the hooker, David the adulterer, Mary the homeless teenager. Not to mention all the mealy-mouthed disciples. Not to mention a raging insecure narcissist like me.

Anne Lamott Translates Luke 2:39-52

"What on earth did Mary do when Jesus was thirteen?"

Here's what I think: She occasionally started gathering rocks.

If we take the incarnation seriously, then even good old Jesus was thirteen once, a human thirteen-year-old. He learned by doing, as we have to. He had to go through adolescence. It must have been awful sometimes. Do you know anyone for whom adolescence was consistently okay? But in his case, we don't know for sure. We see him earlier, in the Bible, at twelve, when he's sneaking to the elders in the Temple. He's great with the elders, just as Sam is always fabulous with other grown-ups. They can't believe he's such an easygoing kid, with such good manners. In the Temple, Jesus says things so profound that the elders are amazed. "Who's this kid's teacher?" they wonder. They don't know that Jesus' teacher was the Spirit.

But at the same time he's blowing the elders away, how is Jesus treating his parents? I'll tell you: He's making them crazy. He's ditched them. They can't find him for three days. Some of you know what it's like to not find you kid for three hours. You die. Mary and Joseph have looked everywhere, in the market, at the video arcade. Finally they find him, in the last place they thought to look--the Temple. And immediately, he mouths off: Oh, sorry, sorry, I was busy doing all this other stuff, my father's work. Like, Joseph, you're not my real father--you're not the boss of me. I don't even have to listen to you.

And what is Mary doing this whole time?

Mary's got a rock in her hand.

I turned around. Sam sat grimly, and I fixed him with gimlet eyes, pinning him to the seat until he could see the error of his ways.

It seems idiotic for Sam to challenge me so often, since he has no income to speak of, and he can't drive. I looked at the face in the altar, toothless and muckled, with its folded-over mouth. In the alder branches above me, a little gray bird flitted about, modest but melodious. The leaves of the alder quivered. I started to miss Sam. He's every single good thing, including honest, and openly questioning and angry, that I love so much. The other day he said, with enormous hostility, "We are the only family that doesn't display its china." I responded nicely that we don't have any china and he said, "That's my point."

The hills behind me were close, curvy and feminine. The quaking leaves of the alder sounded like rain against a skylight.

I looked over at my bad boy. he was staring out the window with resigned misery, as if he were on his way to the dentist. I thought about stoning him. Jesus would have said, "Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, and tax collectors, and thirteen-year-olds," which means, "You are totally pissing me off." And he'd have said this right before he picked up a rock.

I bet he had a good arm, being a carpenter and all. I bet he could take a kid out at 150 yards. I thought of Sam's most infuriating habits; how snotty he can act, how entitled, his clothes and towels always dropped on the floor; the way he answers the phone, sounding like Henry Kissinger and only pretending to take down messages.

What a mess we are, I thought. But this is usually where any hope of improvement begins, acknowledging the mess. . . .

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pages 98,99,100 of Plan B: Further Thoughts on Faith

It's copyrighted, I'm sure, so please buy the book, or check it out from the library--there's an audio version, a reading by the author. Don't tell her I gave so much away here, please.

or

Here's how my 12-year-old has to read it in her fundamentalist Christian school. Which gives her cause, she feels, to act like Lamott's Sam or Lamott's Mary's Jesus.

or

Check out Lingamish's rendition today, which he must call "Cyber-Psalm 51." Read it, and see if you can figure out why.