I just finished Anne Lamott’s new little book, Help, Thanks, Wow: The Three Essential Prayers (full disclosure: I got it from the library). Just over 100 pages, it’s a wonderful book for those who pray all the time and those who haven’t even started praying yet. She’s an astonishing writer. (It’s a kind of spiritual practice not to get discouraged as a writer reading her amazing sentences…) And to simplify these aspects of prayer down to those three punchy words is brilliant. Yet it’s not simplistic, not in the least.
Here’s one quote from the “Wow” section, about God’s generosity: “God keeps giving, forgiving, and inviting us back. My friend Tom says this is a scandal, and that God has no common sense. God doesn’t say: ‘I have had it this time. You have taken this course four times and you flunked again. What a joke.’ We get to keep starting over. Lives change, sometimes quickly, but usually slowly.”
Highly recommended.