I’m closing February, the month associated with love, with a book about well, … love. I typically don’t review books that have been reviewed numerous times in more prestigious places than my blog, but I’ve loved Anne Lamott long before she was ANNE LAMOTT the famous (I had the good fortune of hearing her at a literary festival just as her first book was published. Thank you, Irene Blair Honeycutt for always finding those authors and poets whose stars were just starting to rise.) so I’m reviewing Lamott’s latest book, Somehow: Thoughts on Love today. 

Somehow is a short book, only ten personal essays, centered on the joys, hard work, and vulnerability of love. While she writes of the romantic love for her husband Neal, this book is about the love of family, children, and other–all the loves–and including the love of God, or in her sometimes, all-encompassing title of honor, GUS–the Great Universal Spirit.

Lamott never sugarcoats anything in her honest, sometimes irreverent writing, and this book is no exception. In the essay titled, General Instructions, she tackles teaching her Sunday school class of 9-14-year-olds on Palm Sunday, just days after another school shooting. In Swag it’s the journey of purple bags for the homeless, and the lessons and blessings, and humility that are made apparent along the way. In Hinges and Minus Tide she writes of family, brokenness and healing.

The honesty in her writing includes honesty about her own failures, shortcomings, and faults. Lamott comes across as someone you could sit at a table and share a cup of coffee with and know at that moment you have all her attention and she wants only the very best for you–even if you’ve never met before that moment. One of the many nuggets I’m holding onto from these essays is WAIT. Which means, Why Am I Talking? It’s that little reminder when someone is pouring out their heart or sharing their dreams and ideas– in other words talking–but because we have egos, we start giving advice, pointing out all the reasons why something won’t work, etc. instead of simply listening. It’s a reminder to simply be present.

In all her writing, not just this book, the underlying message is one of goodness, hope and love. The belief that love is ‘a call and response’. The belief that God can’t not love. The belief that despite the bruising, pain, and heartache that often comes with loving, humanity has the great God-given power and potential to love anyway … somehow.

“One day at a time, and somehow one hour at a time, love will be enough to see us through, get us back on our feet and dust us off. Love gives us a shot at being the person we were born to be.” ~ Anne Lamott

My week ends on Saturday with a family wedding so love is definitely on my mind in all its hope and joy. May you find moments of the same this week. I’ll be back at my window on Monday and hope you’ll be here too.