Shelf Space - A Revival in the Big Tent

In the aftermath of last year’s elections and the small “d” democratic big “S” Spirit, which I am required to characterize as currently “sweeping” the Middle East, the conventional wisdom holds that the Dems have to get themselves right with God or face the fate of the Bull Meese and the Zoroastrians. And by “God,” I don’t mean some politely defined 12-step friendly “higher power.” To compete with the GOP God Squad, we’re apparently going to need a bunch of Jackasses for Jesus.

Thank the big “G” for Anne Lamott, America’s favorite lefty Jesus freak, and her latest collection of essays, Plan B: Further Thoughts on Faith. In her funny, vulnerable mediations on living a meaningful life in the midst of trials and sorrows - many of which she blames on Dubya Bush and his disciples - Lamott is not afraid to reference a wise word or two from Rumi, the Dali Lama, or the Catholic vision of the Virgin Mary (who Lamott imagines looks like Bette Midler). But there’s no doubt where her loyalties lie: She’s a Presbyterian Protestant, with extra emphasis on the “Protest.”

Through peace rallies and race relations to raising a teenager and watching her waistline expand, this dreadlocked deacon sends it all up to God. Lamott’s Jesus is the kind of loving, long-haired, Birkenstock-wearing hippy incarnation you can imagine stopping a crowd of conservatives about to stone a same-sex couple and then giving them all a sermon on, you know, boundless love and all that.

Lamott is, bless her, not one of those beatific alpha-wave addicts with too much heart and too little head. She knows she can’t pray Bush into a progressive who “would make decisions for the common good ... but I pray that he might slip up and do it anyway.” She lets us in on her ugly thoughts, her failures of faith, her bouts of bad mothering. She cracks jokes at her own and her savior’s expense.

As much as I enjoy a good Bush bashing, Lamott’s digs are sometimes a little gratuitous, but her gentle message of radical hope and loving your enemies with “80 percent sincerity” offers a good plan for anyone hoping to hold a revival meeting in the big tent.

thomas.bell@creativeloafing.comCharis Books and the Center for Women at Emory University present Anne Lamott, reading from Plan B: Further Thoughts on Faith, Thurs., March 24, 7:30 p.m., in the Winship Ballroom, Dobbs University Center on the Emory campus, 605 Asbury Circle. 404-727-2000. www.chariscircle.org. Book: $24.95. Riverhead Books. 320 pages.??