What is a miracle? How does she take the miraculous out of the realm of the extraordinary and return it to common life? What is the effect, for you, of her doing so?Ĩ. At several moments in this story Anne Lamott speaks of the events she is describing as miraculous. If Lamott had not been an alcoholic, do you think she would eventually have found faith anyway? Is coming to faith a matter of fate for certain people, or is there a large element of chance involved?ħ. Do you agree with these two statements? Why is forgiveness so important in spiritual life?Ħ. Lamott writes, 'Families are definitely the training ground for forgiveness-when you can forgive your family, you can learn to pardon anyone' (223), and 'Forgiveness is giving up all hope of having had a different past' (217). What particular challenges does raising a child bring to Lamott's life as a Christian? How does she handle some of the crises of maternal decision-making, such as the episode of Sam's desire to go paragliding on his seventh birthday?ĥ. Andrew's? What does Traveling Mercies tell us about the role of of community in raising children? How does it expand our notions of what a family is?Ĥ. What do you think of her decision, after terminating an earlier pregnancy, to have this baby on her own, and what do you think of the response of the people at St. In her earlier book Operating Instructions, Lamott explored the enormous changes that the birth of a child brings to a woman's life.

Is this the reason for Anne's powerful girlhood desire to escape her family and to be 'adopted' by the mothers of her friends? Judging from the evidence she offers in the section called 'Lily Pads,' what was lacking in her own home that she needed?ģ. Lamott writes of her parents and their friends, 'they were fifties Cheever people, with their cocktails and affairs' (10). Yet on page 51 she notes that there was a actually a moment of 'conversion.' How would you describe the process by which she came to religion? Is there necessarily a spiritual component to emerging from an addiction?Ģ. Lamott explains, 'My coming to faith did not start with a leap but rather a series of staggers from what seemed like one safe place to another.Yet each step brought me closer to the ample verdant pad of faith on which I somehow stay afloat today' (3).

Traveling mercies by anne lamott