Every year, Big Bad Wolf organizes this big book sale that every bookworms look forward to. Last 2019, I was quite busy at work that I didn't have time to go to the place that serve as a warehouse of books, a bookstore would be an understatement for the bulk of books they transport to our country for this event. I asked my sister to look for books that are cheap in price. I didn't have any book title in mind at that time. When she mentioned about a book authored by Anne Lamott, her name rang a bell, I asked her to buy it for me. And that's when I got my first book (entitled Small Victories) written by Anne Lamott.
I was only able to finish Small Victories last year, I was mesmerized by her storytelling. Since travelling and seeing wonders of nature was something all of us were restricted, I was captured by how Lamott gave her readers a picture of walking in a national park. Lamott can be so detailed with the surroundings of the people in her stories, like it was important too. And with that, I made sure to buy another one of her works from this year's book sale.
At first, I was afraid that it would just be a re-telling of her stories from the book I read last year. But the nine chapters in Hallelujah Anyway impressed to me that there's something innate in us that makes us human, something that we also long to feel and experience from other people...and that is mercy.
Authenticity was never lost
Of all the Christian books I have read, Lamott's work has this authentic voice of an old friend you chanced to meet again. What I thought about her books is that, I am not sure if it belongs to that genre of literary genre. I am more convinced that her books are of the [auto]biography genre, it just turns out that she is a believer. The way she tells her stories, no matter how ordinary they are, seems like flowing conversations you hear in a coffee shop. With all those seamlessly sewn words, she always has this chunk of lesson placed in between that we would want to know in life.
Pages that anyone can understand
My understanding of mercy before I came to know Jesus is that it is uttered in the prayers I was taught of. Before, my pessimistic perspective would tell me that mercy is just another word for pity, someone took pity and was moved into helping. A few years ago, I heard on this conference how I have experienced and still experiencing mercy from God. It was a beautiful thought that the God I was getting to know have been and will always be merciful to me when I fall short. I was glad to understand what mercy is from that conference. But then, when life started to unfold in front of me, I soon forgot what true mercy really is. Its meaning and the way I looked at it was tainted with all that I have seen in the years that I have lived as an adult. It hasn't been long though, I am still young and willing to learn more. So I was glad to have the chance of reading Lamott's telling of what mercy is in a world that is so broken. It wasn't a re-branding of what I have known in the past, what Lamott did is to tell it in such a way that I can understand it. Of the many forms of mercy, I was most captivated by the truth that myself is not an exception from this gift, I ought to be merciful to myself too, just as I want to receive mercy from my God and extend this gift to other people.
Doors were opened
From auto[biography] works and novels, I became curious and interested in reading poetry works as I read Hallelujah Anyway. Works of the poets like Nye and Rilke are quoted in her book, which adorned the pages of the book with so much weight. I loved the simplicity of poems and how I can simply look at life in a new perspective from their simple thoughts.
I want to be famous in the way a pulley is famous, or a buttonhole, not because it did anything spectacular, but because it never forgot what it could do. —Naomi Shihab Nye
When it became real to me [again] what mercy could do in someone's life, no matter how broken it looked like, that someone may also be myself, I was able to open this door that's been closed for a long time already. I was before afraid of being vulnerable, but here's this book telling me that I am meant to connect with other people. I am meant to give and receive mercy —and that's how I rediscovered mercy.