Will and Grace
It's probably safe to say that not many mothers picture themselves as tarantulas. It takes an uncommon mother to make such a comparison, as well as a bad day and an eruption of rage aimed at her kid. But Anne Lamott is not one to back away from her emotions or the messiness of life. In Plan B: Further Thoughts on Faith (Riverhead, $24.95), her latest collection of essays, she once again demonstrates her unique perspective on her life and her Christian faith -- swinging from hilarious to despairing while remaining, above all, honest.
Since her last book of essays, Traveling Mercies, Lamott has turned 50, her mother has died from Alzheimer's and her son has become a teenager. In the midst of turmoil, she prays and tries to remember to breathe, then reaches a place of reassurance not just for herself but for all of us.
Further provoking her anxiety is President Bush's 2004 election victory and the war in Iraq. A columnist for Salon, she confesses to her pastor that "I was so angry with and afraid of the right wing in this country that it was making me mentally ill." She attempts to love her enemies, but her hostility persists. Still, she writes that "trying to love the people in this White House is the single most subversive position I could take."
Closer to home, Lamott discusses the difficulties of child-rearing in extremely blunt terms. By admitting that she can be so mean to her son that it scares her, and by getting other parents to admit the same, she exposes the shame and isolation that threaten to bury parents who can never live up to an impossible ideal.
Lamott shares various coping strategies throughout the book. These include praying, showing kindness, eating chocolate, taking walks, removing the dog droppings from her shoes following the walks, screaming in the car. Her strategies keep her from going under and allow her to reach moments of clarity, when grace breaks through the anxiety and fear.
Her fans will enjoy Plan B, as will new readers. Lamott's honesty about her anxieties is always balanced with self-deprecating humor, and her fearlessness in confronting the issues in her life is amazing to behold.
Meaning in Minneapolis
An introspective child, when finding it hard to engage with the world, may often narrow the field of her perception to create a more manageable space. The child can then focus on the tiny details of physical objects and the arrangement of objects in a room, letting her immediate vicinity become a microcosm from which she hopes to understand the larger world.
For a child who also has mystical leanings, the task is that much more complicated. In her spiritual memoir On the Threshold: Home, Hardwood, and Holiness (Westview, $22.95), Elizabeth J. Andrew details that struggle and reveals that, even as an adult, she looks to her immediate surroundings to reach some understanding of God and her life.
Raised in Tarrytown, N.Y., Andrew moved to Minnesota to attend college and took up permanent residence there. Her home, a south Minneapolis bungalow, is the setting for many of her essays. The book begins with a meticulous accounting of the items in her pantry. "This is my spiritual discipline, this reading of my house for heart and meaning," she explains.
No room in her home is without metaphor. But such detailed descriptions end up being devoid of emotional content. "Attend to the small," she tells herself. "The minute is pleasing too." Maybe so, but one of the tricks to introspection is knowing when to come up for air. Fortunately, as the book progresses, Andrew does just that. She engages her neighbors and fellow church members, always with the hope of creating community.
The tension between traditional Christianity and mysticism runs throughout the book, surfacing most strongly in her search for a life partner. After 10 years of dating with no real success, she wonders if she is meant to be celibate. But her therapist urges her to undertake a delayed adolescent rebellion, which includes making out with "women I didn't care for, just to see what it felt like. . . . I had to try asserting my will in order to know that the world wouldn't collapse in response." She concludes that by never acting on desire, "we clutchers to security compromise our spirit." Her rebellion against her childhood god allows her to more fully engage her world, to look up and expand her field of view.
While Andrew has moments of insight, reaching them requires a good deal of work from the reader, who is unlikely to be as engrossed with the objects in Andrew's home as she is.
Just Say Not Yet
Lauren F. Winner takes a different view of Christian ethics in her latest book, Real Sex: The Naked Truth About Chastity (Brazos, $17.99). She draws on Christian scripture and tradition to argue that, even in a post-sexual-revolution society, chastity is "God's very best for us. God created sex for marriage and that is where it belongs."
Chastity, then, means no sex for singles and monogamous sex for married couples. It's not a teaching that is widely embraced; studies show that 65 percent of teens have sex by the time they graduate from high school and that two-thirds of self-professed Christians are having premarital sex. Winner, 28, a recently married historian and the author of the memoir Girl Meets God, notes that "my own history with chastity is nothing to be proud of." But she now fully embraces Christian teachings on sexuality. Sex is to be confined to marriage; the ideal is Adam and Eve in Eden, prior to the fall. After the fall, "our sexual desires were disordered," and human emotions and intellect were corrupted. As a result, human experience is not a reliable compass for making decisions about sexuality.
A more useful guide, writes Winner (who converted to Protestantism from Orthodox Judaism), is the Bible, which should be viewed not "merely as a code of behavior but as a map of God's reality." The order that God established in Eden can be protected by adherence to biblical teachings.
She acknowledges that early Christianity was influenced by gnostic teachings that the body is inherently evil. Regarding medieval theologians, Winner admits their "high praise of celibacy was infused with disdain for sex, women, and bodies in general," but she is still taken with the idea of lifelong celibacy as a calling for some.
Real Sex provides specific behavioral guidelines but also calls for the creation of a wider, communal sexual ethic. Winner sees sex as "a communal task" -- not only because children can result but also because sex is so fundamental to our formation. Sexual behavior, therefore, should not be considered strictly private. Her vision of this ethic includes a willingness to confront fellow believers about sexual sin and the tenet that married couples should make decisions about contraception in consultation with clergy.
Winner's book offers useful insights into current Christian thought on chastity. But her call for a communal sexual ethic is worrying, conjuring images of a "bedroom police." Whether she intends for her ethic to apply to the larger culture is unclear, although she writes that "to embrace chastity is to reconstruct a culture." Whatever her intent, it's easy to imagine her ideas making their way into abstinence-only education programs, where they might well be presented as fact by those who seek to advance their religious beliefs under the guise of sexual education. •
Nancy Zjaba is a freelance writer living in Madison, Wis.
