Traveling Mercies

As you may have read in my earlier posts, I am currently reading 'Traveling Mercies' by Anne Lamott (and may have spelled 'traveling' incorrectly earlier!) I'm really enjoying it. She says that traveling mercies is "what they (the old people at her church) always say when one of us goes off for a while. Traveling mercies: love the journey, God is with you, come home safe and sound." Traveling mercies, indeed. I think that's what I was trying to express as my desire when I wrote "Missing the Forest for the Trees". I long to love the journey, know that God is with me and go Home safe and sound.

There are so many quotes in this book I have loved. Some of them deep and profound and some of them almost painfully irreverent (but so funny).

"I always imagined when I was a kid that adults had some kind of inner toolbox, full of shiny tools: the saw of discernment, the hammer of wisdom, the sandpaper of patience. But then when I grew up I found that life handed you these rusty bent old tools -- friendships, prayer, conscience, honesty -- and said, Do the best you can with these, they will have to do. And mostly, against all odds, they're enough."

"I thought such awful thoughts that I cannot even say them out loud becaue they would make Jesus want to drink gin straight out of the cat dish."

"I was not wearing a cover-up, not even a T-shirt. I had decided I was going to take my thighs and butt with me proudly wherever I went. I decided, in fact, on the way to the beach that I would treat them as if they were beloved elderly aunties, the kind who did embarassing things at the beach, like roll their stockings into tubes around their ankles, but whom I was proud of because they were so great in every real and important way. So we walked along, the three of us, the aunties and I, to meet Sam and our friends in the sand. I imagined that I could feel the aunties beaming, as if they had been held captive in a dark closet too long, like Patty Hearst. Freed finally to stroll on a sandy Mexican beach: what a beautiful story."

Everyone have a beautiful summer day -- traveling mercies.