Shrd

A piece on generosity from Lamott Bird by Bird (p 133):

“Here is the best true story on giving I know, and it was told by Jack Kornfield of the Spirit Rock Meditation Center in Woodacre. An eight-year-old boy had a younger sister who was dying of leukemia, and he was told that without a blood transfusion she would die. His parents explained to him that his blood was probably compatible with hers, and if so, he could be the blood donor. They asked him if they could test his blood. He said sure. So they did and it was a good match. Then they asked if he would give his sister a pint of blood, that it could be her only chance of living. He said he would have to think about it overnight. The next day he went to his parents and said he was willing to donate the blood. So they took him to the hospital where he was put on a gurney beside his six-year-old sister. Both of them were hooked up to IVs. A nurse withdrew a pint of blood from the boy, which was then put in the girl’s IV. The boy lay on his gurney in silence while the blood dripped into his sister; until the doctor came over to see how he was doing. Then the boy opened his eyes and asked, “How soon until I start to die?”

This is from Anne Lamott’s Bird by bird (pp 29-31):

“When I was twenty-one, I had my tonsils removed. I was one of those people who got strep throat every few minutes, and my doctor finally decided that I needed to have my tonsils taken out. For the entire week afterwards, swallowing hurt so much that I could barely open my mouth for a straw. I had a prescription for painkillers, though, and when they ran out but the pain hadn’t, I called the nurse and said that she would really need to send another prescription over, and maybe a little mixed grill of drugs because I was feeling somewhat anxious. But she wouldn’t. I asked to speak to her supervisor. She told me her supervisor was at lunch and that I needed to buy some gum, of all things, and to chew it vigorously – the thought of which made me clutch at my throat. She explained that when we have a wound in our body, the nearby muscles cramp around it to protect it from any more violation and from infection, and that I would need to use these muscles if I wanted them to relax again. So finally my best friend Pammy went out and bought me some gum, and I began to chew it, with great hostility and skepticism. The first bites caused a ripping sensation in the back of my throat, but within minutes all of the pain was gone, permanently.

“I think that something similar happens with our psychic muscles. They cramp around our wounds- the pain from our childhood, the losses and disappointments of adulthood, the humiliations suffered in both-to keep from getting hurt in the same place again, to keep foreign substances out. So those wounds never have a chance to heal. Perfectionism is one way our muscles cramp. In some cases we don’t even know that the wounds and the cramping are there, but both limit us. They keep us moving [and writing] in tight, worried ways. They keep us standing back or backing away from life, keep us from experiencing life in a naked and immediate way. So how do you break through and get on?

“It’s easier if you believe in God […] Now it might be that your God is an uptight, judgemental perfectionist, sort of like Bob Dole or, for that matter, me. But a priest friend of mine has cautioned me away from the standard God of our childhoods, who loves and guides you and then, if you are bad, roasts you: God as high school principal in a gray suit who never remembered your name but is always leafing unhappily through your files. If this is your God, maybe you need to blend in the influence of someone who is ever so slightly more amused by you, someone less anal. David Byre is good, for instance. Gracie Allen is good. Mr Rogers will work.

I’ve just finished Almost Everything – Notes on Hope by Anne Lamott. Lamott is a very funny character, probably most famous for Bird By Bird, a book about writing, but really about spirituality too.

She is in AA, is very active in the church, a Californian, a writer both of novels and of a variety of self-help books. She teaches writing. And she’s very funny as you can see from the TED talk above.

They might not always be in the most coherent order, but Almost Everything is crammed full of interesting ideas, rattled out in Lamott’s signature machine-gun style. It’s very thought provoking and I’ll pull out my favourite ideas from the books in the following posts.