Part Three – WOW

“Wow is often offered with a gasp, a sharp intake of breath, when we can’t think of another way to capture the sight of shocking beauty or destruction, of a sudden unbidden insight or an unexpected flash of grace.”

“Wow is about having one’s mind blown by the mesmerizing or the miraculous: the veins in a leaf, birdsong, volcanoes.”

“Poetry is the official language of Wow.”

“Love falls to earth, rises from the ground, pools around the afflicted. Love pulls people back to their feet. Bodies and souls are fed. Bones and lives heal. New blades of grass grow from charred soil. The sun rises.”

“Art makes it hard to ignore truth, that Life explodes and blooms, consumes, rots and radiates and slithers; that eternity really is in a blade of grass.”

“Astonishing material and revelation appear in our lives all the time…We just have to be open for business.”

  —-  Anne Lamott

HELP, THANKS, WOW                       
The Three Essential Prayers
By Anne Lamott (2012)

“Prayer is …communication from the heart to that which surpasses understanding…the force that is beyond our comprehension but that in our pain or supplication or relief we don’t need to define or have proof of any established contact.”

“Nothing could matter less than what we call this force.”

“the Really Real”

“the great mystery, or Goodness…the animating energy of love we are sometimes bold enough to believe in; something unimaginably big and not us.”

“Not me”

“I don’t know much about God and prayer, but I have come to believe, over the past twenty-five years, that there’s something to be said about keeping prayer simple.”

Anne Lamott is an American novelist and non-fiction writer. She is also a progressive political activist, public speaker, and writing teacher. Her nonfiction works are largely autobiographical.  Marked by their self-deprecating humor and openness, Lamott’s writings cover such subjects as spirituality, addiction, motherhood, mental illness and religion.