A Fresh Perspective

In her book, Traveling Mercies: Some Thoughts on Faith, Anne Lamott tells of her conversion to Christianity. After a number of years of self-destructive behavior and spiritually wandering about, she found herself attending a small Presbyterian church. She says, “I went back to St. Andrew about once a month. No one tried to con me into sitting down or staying. I always left before the sermon. I loved singing, even about Jesus, but I didn’t want to be preached at about him.” Her life at the time was a mess. Her dearest friend was dying of cancer. She was despondent following an abortion. She was addicted to alcohol and spent a number of days in a drugged and alcoholic stupor. And she was in the midst of a deep depression. It can’t get much lower than that. Nevertheless, she felt a presence. She says it was like a cat eyeing her, “I felt him sitting there on his haunches in the corner of my sleeping loft, watching me with patience and love, and I squinched my eyes shut, but that did...

Have you read any of the books by Robert Fulghum? If you haven’t you should. Some of his stories are hilarious, but he also makes one think. In his first book, All I Really Needed to Know I learned in Kindergarten, he reflects on an experience at the San Diego Zoo. A little girl was standing beside him, both of them were looking at the giraffe. She asked her mommy, “What’s it for?” Mommy didn’t know. Does a giraffe know what’s its for? Fulghum writes,  “Besides the giraffe, I saw a wombat, a duck-billed platypus, and an orangutan. Unreal. The orangutan looked like my uncle Woody. Uncle Woody is pretty unreal too. He belongs in a zoo. That’s what his wife says. And that makes me wonder what it would be like if samples of people were also in zoos. I was thinking about that last notion while watching the lions. A gentleman lion and six lady lions. Looks like a real nice life being in a zoo. The lions are so prolific that the zoo had to place IUDs in each of the lionesses. S...