My Kind of Christian

I have experienced some significant personal crises this past year and at some of my lowest points I looked for signs and wonders in the midst of introspection and prayer. It seems as if my prayers were answered in the form of the work of Anne Lamott. Some of you may be aware of her writing from some of her other collections or from her commentary at Slate magazine. I was not aware of her, but picked up a copy of Traveling Mercies: Some Thoughts on Faith.
Unfortunately like many books on my shelves, despite an initial infatuation, I pushed her aside for a newer more intriguing book, until she sat there gathering dust with so many other forlorn books.
So I decided to pick up this book, which is easy to leave and return to, since though it has a narrative structure, it is a collection of essays/columns that can be read piecemeal too.
The book begins with a poem from W.S. Merwin that emphasizes the importance of being thankful and of actually saying "Thank You" throughout the day and throughout one's life. It is a theme that Lamott returns to over and over again in these various pieces. Lamott is a brutally honest writer and I very much admire this trait of her writing. She gives you her story warts and all, even if it makes her look bad in the process. She unflinchingly portrays her battles with poverty, addiction, a parade of lovers and failed relationships, and her unusual path to faith in God and her embrace of Christianity. She is the product of a divorce between a father who grew up in China as the child of missionaries and a quietly suffering mother who when she divorces Lamott's father, moves to Hawaii to pursue a new life as an attorney after working her way through law school. Lamott writes about her father, with whom she lived after the divorce and who she was clearly closer too. However, I do wonder what type of relationship she has/had with her mother. In lieu of a nuclear family, Lamott finds a circle of friends, some religious and some not. She also has the blessing of her son, Sam, who she raises as a single mother. Perhaps most importantly for her faith, Lamott finds a spiritual home in a very multicultural and socioeconomically diverse parish.
Though Lamott's story is a conversion narrative of sorts, it has an organic feel to it that I find particularly credible. She shows that faith is a process, one that continues even after you have found your faith. I can definitely confirm this in my own life.
What I will take away from Lamott's work is that despite our best efforts and most fervent wishes, we will suffer misfortunes and tragedies. Friends will die, lovers will come and go, but life continues to go on. We cannot stop it from happening, short of ending our own life. So we are left with a choice as to how to deal with this? I know that during my own "dark night of the soul", I often wished for life to end or for my life to return to a less difficult time. However, I had to finally realize that I cannot turn back the clock to avoid all the mistakes and foolish actions I have taken over time. Instead, I had to find a way to go on, to continue to eat, sleep, work. In other words, I willed myself to keep on living. And often slowly, over time, we realize that the darkness has lifted from our heart and our lives. To what do we this attribute to? For believers like Lamott and me, we might call it the tender mercies of faith or perhaps even a moment of grace. I know that for me, reading the work of Anne Lamott has been one of those small mercies in my life. I am immeasurably grateful for her writing and for her candid and heartfelt Christian witness.

Czar

Faith in a Wintry Season

I suppose this an appropriate post for the 2nd day of the New Year, which finds us smack in the middle of winter. As a lifelong Catholic who has nevertheless struggled with my faith, I have found comfort and support in the work of a theological giant like Karl Rahner. Rahner was a Roman Catholic priest and Jesuit who spent the majority of his life trying to engage with the modern world in fields like philosophy and theology. Though Rahner has now been dead about 25 years, I don't think we have a clear sense of his influence not only on Roman Catholicism, but also on the attempt for the Catholic Church to continue its dialogue with a postmodern world that we can no longer assume has a traditional religious sensibility.
I wonder what Rahner would make of the supposed "New Atheism" authors who have been in the news so prominently over the last decade. One of his most famous and probably most lasting concepts is "the anonymous Christian." What Rahner means by this is that following the pronouncement at Vatican II that one did not need to be a Catholic or even a Christian to attain salvation, he believes there are many individuals both famous and anonymous who have lived a life that is consistent with the Christian ethic, even if they were never exposed to Christianity.
I will confess that I have not tackled any of Rahner's densely theological works, but if you are interested in a deeply intelligent, lucid, and ultimately generous mind, you should take a look at the work of Karl Rahner. This particular volume, Faith in a Wintry Season, is a collection of interviews given in the last decade or so of his life. With Rahner dying in 1984 early in the papacy of John Paul II, he has some definite views on the new pope an on his main theological adviser, who is now Pope Benedict, but was then Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger.
Surprisingly Rahner has been excused by some other Catholic hierarchy and theologians as not being a "true" Catholic, but these interviews clearly show that while he can be a critical Catholic, he is not at all a heretical one. Catholicism in particular and Christianity in general can use more thinkers like Rahner, who in some ways patterned his professional life after that of Saint Thomas Aquinas, who faced similar criticism from the Church regarding his work, but whose legacy is still felt today. Like Aquinas, Rahner has tried to keep pace with the secular world, while not losing his own anchor with the Catholic Church. I for one am thankful for his work and his example.

Happy New Year!

Czar