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You celebrate what works and you take tender care of what doesn't, with lotion, polish, and kindness.
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lotion
polish
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Anne Lamott |
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You need to find people who laugh gently at themselves, who remind you gently to lighten up.
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Anne Lamott |
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And I guess when you take away the resentment and disappointment, it's that simple. It is what we do in families: we help, because we were helped.
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Anne Lamott |
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Our preacher Veronica said recently that this is life's nature: that lives and hearts get broken -- those of people we love, those of people we'll never meet. She said that the world sometimes feels like the waiting room of the emergency ward and that and that we who are more or less OK for now need to take the tenderest possible care of the more wounded people in the waiting room, until the healer comes. You sit with people, she said, you ..
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Anne Lamott |
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I have become more successful in my forties, but that pales in comparison with the other gifts of my current decade -- how kind to myself I have become, what a wonderful, tender wife I am to myself, what a loving companion. I prepare myself tubs of hot salt water at the end of the day, and soak my tired feet. I run interference for myself when I am working, like the wife of a great artist would -- 'No, I'm sorry, she can't come. She's worki..
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Anne Lamott |
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c9f189e
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If you are a writer, or want to be a writer, this is how you spend your days--listening, observing, storing things away, making your isolation pay off.
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Anne Lamott |
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There is almost nothing outside you that will help in any kind of lasting way,
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Anne Lamott |
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Almost everyone is screwed up, broken, clingy, scared, and yet designed for joy. Even (or especially) people who seem to have it more or less together are more like the rest of us than you would believe. I try not to compare my insides to their outsides, because this makes me much worse than I already am,
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Anne Lamott |
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The ancient Chinese had a practice of embellishing the cracked parts of valued possessions with gold leaf, which says: We dishonor it if we pretend that it hadn't gotten broken. It says: We value this enough to repair it. So it is not denial or a cover-up. It is the opposite, an adornment of the break with gold leaf, which draws the cracks into greater prominence. The gold leaf becomes part of its beauty.
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Anne Lamott |
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b4f2714
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The lesson here is that there is no fix. There is, however, forgiveness. To forgive yourselves and others constantly is necessary. Not only is everyone screwed up, but everyone screws up.
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Anne Lamott |
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423e813
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My lifelong and core belief, right after the conviction that I was defective, mildly annoying, and better than everyone else was that my help was helpful.
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Anne Lamott |
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To paraphrase Paul Tillich, the opposite of faith is not doubt, but certainty.
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Anne Lamott |
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Bird by bird buddy. Just take it bird by bird.
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quote
for-anyone
getting-overwhelmed
just-take-it-bird-by-bird
one-step-at-a-time
quote-for-writers
quotes-for-all-writers
take-a-deep-breath
motivational-quotes
bird-by-bird
quotes
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Anne Lamott |
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7c12477
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When we are stuck in our convictions and personas, we enter into the disease of having good ideas and being right.
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Anne Lamott |
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Jesus was a rabbi, schooled by rabbis, who thought like rabbis. Rabbis, upon being asked a question by a disciple, usually answer with a paradoxical inquiry or a story. This can be annoying and time-consuming for those of us looking for neat, simple answers. But truth is too wild and complex to be contained in one answer, so Jesus often responded with a question or a parable.
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Anne Lamott |
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8b80180
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Kindness toward others and radical kindness to ourselves buy us a shot at a warm and generous heart, which is the greatest prize of all.
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Anne Lamott |
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At the same time, the truth is that we are beloved, even in our current condition, by someone; we have loved and been loved. We have also known the abyss of love lost to death or rejection, and that it somehow leads to new life. We have been redeemed and saved by love, even as a few times we have been nearly destroyed, and worse, seen our children nearly destroyed. We are who we love, we are one, and we are autonomous.
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Anne Lamott |
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Hallelujah that in spite of it all, there is love, there is singing, nature, laughing, mercy.
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Anne Lamott |
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We have to make ourselves available to one another, or we can't experience goodness. It's not so much us seeking God, tracking Her down with a butterfly net; it's agreeing to be found. The Old Girl reaches out to everyone and wants to include us in this beautiful, weird, sometimes anguished life. All people: go figure.
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Anne Lamott |
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I read more than other kids; I luxuriated in books. Books were my refuge.
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Anne Lamott |
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they got to be so conceited because they were Catholics.
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Anne Lamott |
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Nothing is as important as a likable narrator. Nothing holds a story together better.
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Anne Lamott |
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If we stay where we are, where we're stuck, where we're comfortable and safe, we die there. We become like mushrooms, living in the dark, with poop up to our chins. If you want to know only what you already know, you're dying.
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Anne Lamott |
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bc78141
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Amen" is how most of us end our prayers, the standard response to prayers in the synagogue and the church and the mosque. The word means "And so it is" or "Truly." Well, that's very nice, but what on earth does "it" mean? What is? The people praying are the ones saying "Amen," so it's not God saying bossily, like Judge Judy, "So it is. All done. Go away. Get some help with that anger." It is us, the damaged, hopeless people, lifting up our ..
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Anne Lamott |
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She quoted the Reverend James Forbes as saying, "Nobody gets into heaven without a letter of reference from the poor."
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Anne Lamott |
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But where do we even start on the daily walk of restoration and awakening? We start where we are. We find God in our human lives, and that includes the suffering. I get thirsty people glasses of water, even if that thirsty person is just me.
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Anne Lamott |
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The search for meaning will fill you with a sense of meaning. Otherwise
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Anne Lamott |
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Easter is so profound. Christmas was an afterthought in the early Church, the birth not observed for a couple hundred years. But no one could help noticing the resurrection: Rumi said that spring was Christ, "martyred plants rising up from their shrouds." Easter says that love is more powerful than death, bigger than the dark, bigger than cancer, bigger even than airport security lines."
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Anne Lamott |
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ultimately we're all just walking each other home.
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Anne Lamott |
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It made no sense that Abraham could head for the mountain in Moriah still believing in God's goodness. It made no sense that even as he walked his son to the sacrificial altar, he still believed God's promise that Isaac would give him many descendants. It made no sense that he was willing to do the one thing in the world he could not do, just because God told him to. God told him to obey and to believe that he as a loving god and could be t..
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Anne Lamott |
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First I showered off that horrible butt smell you get from being on an airplane. [p. 257]
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Anne Lamott |
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Remember the scene in Cat Ballou where a very drunk Lee Marvin goes from unconscious to ranting to triumphant to roaring to weeping defeat, and then finally passes out? One of the men watching him says, with real awe, "I never seen a man get through a day so fast." Don't let this be you."
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Anne Lamott |
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Don't be mean to yourself, though . . .this is the only sin.
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Anne Lamott |
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But baseball, if we love it, gives us back our place in the crowd. It restores us.
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Anne Lamott |
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Mark Twain said that Adam was the only man who, when he said a good thing, knew that nobody had said it before.
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Anne Lamott |
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But in surrender you have won.
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Anne Lamott |
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Rosie had to keep her room neat enough so James would not freak out, but not so neat that they could figure it all out, break the code, of who you truly were, what you were up to, your values, your truest parts. ... you were layer upon layer of ideas and erasures and new ideas and soul and images. [p. 68]
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Anne Lamott |
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833140c
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She slept deeply, but as usual, she did not dream. It had been months; none of them was dreaming anymore. [p. 227]
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Anne Lamott |
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Bonnie persuaded me to focus on the good, just for today: tomorrow I can call back and we will wallow in the total awfulness of Amy's behavior, which will surely lead to permanent estrangement and dead bodies. Just for today, I was supposed to try to remember three things: The baby is not falling off the earth, or headed to Afghanistan. So many things are going well: Everyone has good health. Jax is perfect. Even though I have acid and sewa..
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Anne Lamott |
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6532542
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Now, Muriel Spark is said to have felt that she was taking dictation from God every morning-- sitting there, one supposes, plugged into a Dictaphone, typing away, humming. But this is a very hostile and aggressive position. One might hope for bad things to rain down on a person like this.
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Anne Lamott |
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a62f8a6
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You can change the world with a hot bath, if you sink into it from a place of knowing that you are worth profound care, even when you're dirty and rattled.
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Anne Lamott |
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b8ff781
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If we stay where we are, where we're stuck, where we're comfortable and safe, we die there. We become like mushrooms, living in the dark, with poop up to our chins. If you want to know only what you already know, you're dying. You're saying: Leave me alone; I don't mind this little rathole. It's warm and dry. Really, it's fine.
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Anne Lamott |
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19957cc
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those years I fell for the great palace lie that grief should be gotten over as quickly and as privately as possible. But what I've discovered since is that the lifelong fear of grief keeps us in a barren, isolated place and that only grieving can heal grief; the passage of time will lessen the acuteness, but time alone, without the direct experience of grief, will not heal
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Anne Lamott |
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I'm pretty sure that only by experiencing that ocean of sadness in a naked and immediate way do we come to be healed--which is to say, we come to experience life with a real sense of presence and spaciousness and peace.
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Anne Lamott |