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Y'all take care now
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July 22, 1999 |
I have been staving this off for as long as I could, trying to stay one step ahead of it, but it has finally caught up to me, like someone in a dream you keep trying to dodge. I'm almost sure this is what I'm supposed to do -- or I may just be having a massive nervous breakdown -- but not long ago I prayed for knowledge of God's will for me and the power to carry that out, and then next thing I knew, I had come to believe it was time to start a novel. I learned all this 30,000 feet up, on the way to Jackson, Miss. I did not want to go to Jackson. The national weather reports indicated that it was several hundred thousand degrees there but months earlier I had agreed to give a lecture at a writing conference, so that is where I was headed. Of course, I couldn't remember why it ever seemed like a good idea to go to Mississippi in July. I think I must have been convinced at the time that it was God's will for me. Plus, I probably also needed the money. Anne Lamott Anne Lamott's column appears on the Mothers Who Think site every other Thursday.
Anyway, there I was in the sky over Jackson, having left Memphis well over an hour before, which is noteworthy only because Jackson is theoretically 40 minutes by plane from Memphis. But there was a problem. I don't know why I end up on so many planes that develop major issues, but I do. This time we were in a lightning storm. The pilot had announced that we had 40 more minutes of fuel left, so if we didn't get to land soon, we would have to fly back to Memphis. Curiously, I was not panic stricken. A tiny bit edgy, but not panic stricken; not Blanche DuBois. I'd say more like Harvey Fierstein on mild tranquilizers. The reason for this, I believe, was that it was my 13th sobriety birthday, and the fact that I could go 13 days without a drink, let alone 13 years, had convinced me that miracles do happen. It's not just that I believe in them; I rely on them. Also I had learned a little about God's will along the way -- that there is your will, and there is God's will, and your will doesn't matter. So I figured that if it was God's will that my plane go down over Jackson -- well, fine. What are you going to do -- drink over it? What if you thought the plane was going down, so you had some Jack Daniels, and then the pilot pulled out of the nosedive, and you lived? In your new current condition? And you had to go back to how you used to be, and your kid had to see you weeping about the cat that had been put to sleep 30 years ago. That couldn't be God's will. If you hang around sober alcoholics long enough, you will hear at least a few of them pronounce that God's will for them is to be happy, joyous and free. I personally believe that this is a bit of a stretch, or at any rate, a very American conviction. My priest friend Tom Weston says that God's will for each of us is to have a life. "And it is up to us to go and get one. Find some work, some love, some play. Taste things. Be of service. Feed the hungry and clean the beaches and clothe the naked and work for justice. Love God, love your neighbor. Help build a world where it is safe to be a child, and where it is safe to grow old. And love cats, and the occasional dog." I think this pretty much says it.
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