I read those who have a different take (often a VERY different take)
because there are gaps in my own knowledge and reasoning that a careful
examination of an opposing view might fill. Or (as often is the case)
because I am trying to understand differences.
These, for example, are the reasons I typically ponder authors who
spiritual journeys are vastly different than mine, especially if their
ultimate destination is, more-or-less, the same. One author whom I had read
in passing is someone "liberal" people of faith absolutely adore: Anne
Lamott.
Ms. Lamott, an amazingly gifted writer, would be the first to tell you
she has battled a formidable series of demons, including alcoholism,
bulimia, drug addiction, and depression. But it is because she is (as one
fan put it) "armed with self-effacing humor," and is "ruthlessly honest"--and
not incidentally because she clobbers President Bush unmercifully--Lamott is
more popular than ever, especially with liberal Democrats.
A few years ago I read the first section of perhaps her best known and
best-loved work, "Traveling Mercies." (I had meant to finish the book, and I
picked it up again this afternoon, once I finished the initial draft of this
edition of TN&V.) Especially, in the beginning, Lamott's insights into her
40 years in the wilderness are extraordinarily powerful and deeply moving.
On February 10 Lamott wrote a withering, brutal op-ed for the Los Angeles
Times in which she absolutely obliterated abortion opponents in an ugly,
cruel, and ungenerous manner. She angrily announces that women's lives have
"been righted and redeemed by Roe vs. Wade" and (worse yet) insists that she
is carrying "the fight for the sacredness of each human life, and
reproductive rights for all women is a crucial part of that." Tomorrow I'll
talk about the op-ed per se.
When I stumbled across her Times' op-ed, reprinted in the [Minneapolis]
Star-Tribune today, it called to mind one of the most moving passages about
abortion I have ever read. I don't claim my reading/interpretation of this
section in "Tender Mercies" is the only reading.
And it surely is not what Lamott would say she meant! But, as so often is
the case with abortion, the ripple effect of taking the life of a
defenseless unborn child extends into areas we might never anticipate.
Early in "Tender Mercies," Lamott writes about her "beautiful moment of
conversion." Although she no doubt would insist her abortion played no role,
judge for yourself.
In April 1984 Lamott became pregnant by a married man, whom she said she
had just met, who was "no one I wanted a real life or baby with." She had an
abortion "and I was sadder than I'd been since my father died." Lamott comes
home and drowns herself in codeine and alcohol. That first night she drinks
until nearly dawn.
Lamott writes that she continued this self-destructive behavior for the
next two nights, minus the pills that had run out. She smokes dope and
drinks and tries to write. "On the seventh night, though, very drunk and
just about to take a sleeping pill, I discovered that I was bleeding
heavily." Fortunately, several hours later, the bleeding stops. Then
"I became aware of someone with me, hunkered down in the corner, and I
just assumed it was my father, whose presence I had felt over the years when
I was frightened and alone," she writes. "The feeling was so strong that I
actually turned on the light for a moment to make sure no one was there--of
course, there wasn't. But after a while, in the dark again, I knew beyond
any doubt that it was Jesus. I felt him as surely as I feel my dog lying
near as I write this."
Lamott considers what her "progressive" friends would think and she tells
herself out loud, "I would rather die." Having said that, however, she knows
that Jesus is there, "watching me with patience and love." In the morning,
Lamott writes, he was gone.
"This experience spooked me badly, but I thought it was just an
apparition, born of fear and self-loathing and booze and loss of blood," she
writes. And, then, there is this incredible passage.
"But then everywhere I went I had the feeling that a little cat was
following me, wanting me to reach down and pick
it up, wanting me to open the door and let it in. But I knew what would
happen: you let a cat in one time, give it a little milk and then it stays
forever. So I tried to keep one step ahead of it, slamming my houseboat door
when I left or entered."
Restless, a week later, she goes back to church. Prefaced by an obscenity
defiantly sent up to God, Lamott takes a "long deep breath and said out
loud, 'All right. You can come in.'"
(In his famous poem, written in the 1870s, Francis Thompson wrote of the
"Hound of Heaven," who is ever in pursuit of his children. Perhaps the
"little cat" is the kind of gentler image that serves the same purpose for a
skittish Lamott.)
Two quick thoughts and I'll be done. Lamott deeply loved her father, who
died of brain cancer. Can it be an accident that the most fitting comparison
she can make for the pain she feels after the death of her unborn child is
her dad's death?
And could it not be that Lamott was particularly receptive precisely
because at some level she knew without knowing that she had done something
deeply offensive to God and that this was the point in her life that Lamott
most needed the forgiveness that was awaiting her?
That she seems unable to see this--indeed that she appears is so blinded
by her pain and regret that she spiritualizes abortion and demonizes
pro-lifers--shouldn't obscure this truth for us.
