—WHAT DOES IT SAY ABOUT ME, THAT I HAVE AGREED TO THIS RECORDING?

 

It’s actually a miracle just to be here at all, with a few truly great friends, and to keep muddling through, grateful if sometimes perplexed.

 

We’re going to save the world by repeatedly busting the dread that looms over us like a blimp.

 

My husband says that ninety percent of what is beautiful, meaningful, and useful in the world is visible in a ten-minute walk.

 

“Why?” is rarely a useful question.

 

When people know you too well, they eventually see your damage, your weirdness, carelessness, and mean streak. They see how ordinary you are after all, that whatever it was that distinguished you in the beginning is the least of who you actually are. This will turn out to be the greatest gift we can offer another person: letting them see, every so often, beneath all the trappings and pretense to the truth of us.

 

Sometimes the movement of grace looks like letting other people go first.

 

When you’re with an awful person, you’re not around a villain, you’re with a person who’s suffering deeply, starving for love.

 

Darkness can be so soothing when you know it won’t last forever.

 

Tasks bring us presence.

 

Love is supernatural and homely, soars and sags, is oceanic and a shared tangerine.

 

Love is being with a person wherever they are, however they are acting. Ugh. (A lot of things seem to come more easily to God.)

 

In the end, love will have to do. 

 

             --all Anne Lamott