What I'm Reading Now-Same Kind of Different as Me

Same Kind of Different as Me by Ron Hall and Denver Moore with Lynn Vincent-(This is another airport find that I happened to pick up at LAX along with Gang Leader for a Day.) Okay, so, brief review (no, seriously!): Rich white guy (Ron), and his super-religious wife (Deborah), who is into volunteering at the local homeless shelter/mission, make friends at the shelter with an older black man (Denver) who used to pick cotton for The Man and is very distrustful of the husband and wife team and their motives at first. Rich white guy is constantly shocked and amazed by the grace shown him by his wife, his skeptical new friend, and the rest of the homeless shelter's...residents? shelterees? congregation? (I'm not really sure what the correct terminology is here.)

See? I told you it would be brief.

I really loved this book even though I'm not too comfortable with books about How Great God Is! It's not that I dispute it necessarily, I just don't want it shoved down my throat, and this book can be a little shove-y at times; but the husband is right there with you through the whole thing going, "I know, right? I thought my super-religious wife was crazy too!" so it all kind of worked out. Also, there were enough more subtle parts to break down my defenses. The story is told alternately from Ron and Denver's points of view, and I think that Lynn Vincent did a good job of capturing both of their voices.

When word spread at the mission that Deborah (Miss Debbie) had been diagnosed with cancer, Denver talks about how the folks at the mission took it:

There's a lot of folks come down to the mission and volunteer, but most of em was not faithful like Miss Debbie. But that wadn't all. It was the way she treated the homeless that made them accept her as their friend. She never asked em no questions, like how come you is in here? Where you been? How many times you been in jail? How come you done all them bad things in your life? She just loved em, no strings attached.

That's the way she loved me, too. The Word says God don't give us credit for lovin the folks we want to love anyway. No, He gives us credit for loving the unlovable. (...)

You know, if you ain't poor, you might think it's the folks in them big ole fine brick churches that's doin all the givin and the carin and the prayin. I wish you coulda seen all them little circles a' homeless folks with their heads bowed and their eyes closed, whisperin what was on their hearts. Seemed like they didn't have nothin to give, but they was givin what they had, takin the time to knock on God's front door and ask Him to heal this woman that had loved them.

During Deborah's stay in the hospital Ron stops by the mission. He hasn't seen Denver for a while, and he wanted to check in with him.

In the hallway to the kitchen, we ran into Chef Jim. I asked him if he'd seen Denver that day.

"He's probably sleeping." he said.

"Sleeping!" I blurted. Lazy, I thought. It was already midafternoon.

Jim raised an eyebrow. "You don't know?"

"Know what?"

"Well, when Denver heard about Miss Debbie, he told me she had a lot of friends that would be praying for her all day. But he figured she needed someone to pray all night, and he would be the one to do it."

My eyes widened as he went on. "So he goes outside at midnight, sits down next to the Dumpster, and prays for Miss Debbie and your family. When I get up and come down here at three in the morning to get breakfast going, he comes in for a cup of coffee and we pray here in the kitchen for her until about four. Then he goes back outside and prays till sunup."

Ashamed, I realized again how deep grew the roots of my own prejudice, of my arrogant snap judgments of the poor.

Yikes. How many of us have ever been in those shoes, making a snap judgment of someone because s/he's poor, rich, black, white, clearly a foreigner, clearly a native, employed, unemployed, homeless, living in a mansion, a man, a woman, married with no kids, married with kids, single with no kids, single with lots of kids, young, old, tall, short, fat, thin, in short, not like us? I know I have, and one of the things that I try to take away from a book like this is the inspiration and strength to not do things like that. In an interview at the back of the book, Denver says, "You never know whose eyes God is watchin' you through. It probably ain't gonna be your preacher and it just might be someone who was livin' like I used to." whose eyes God is watchin' you through...I never thought of it like that.

I've mentioned before that I like Anne Lamott's writing because even though she is deeply religious and believes, much like Deborah, that when you are in doubt the best thing to do is pray (which I can't really relate to at all) she still has moments of, "Seriously, God? Are you KIDDING ME???" (which I can totally relate to). That's why this book worked for me as well. Deborah and Denver both had a faith that was unshakeable, but Ron...not so much. He was skeptical, and I can relate to that, but he also witnessed some things that might be classifiable as miracles and really couldn't come up with any other explanations...which makes me willing to question my beliefs more so than anyone telling me, "You just have to have faith. Because it says so in the Bible."

Fore more information about this book, you can check out the website at http://www.samekindofdifferentasme.com/. There's a video, a calendar of Ron and Denver's speaking engagements, and other reviews and comments about the book.

Have you reviewed this book? Let me know and I'll add a link to your review.

What I'm Reading Now-Traveling Mercies (and, (finally!), a few pictures from our trip)

Traveling Mercies: Some Thoughts on Faith by Anne Lamott-When an atheist relative told me that this book sent her into the ugly cry on the treadmill at her gym, I figured it was worth checking out, and I'm so glad I did. I loved this book! I'm not big on religion; I don't want to be preached to, I don't want to hear about how I need to be saved and how everyone else in the world needs to be saved, I don't want to hear about how much better you are than me because you've been saved and about how now that you have Jesus in your life He will take care of everything and you never have to worry about anything ever again and how anybody who isn't on this path is Screwed.

What I do want to hear about is how religion or faith or spirituality has inspired someone, given her strength, caused her to see beauty in the world that she otherwise might not have seen, encouraged her to find a grace within herself that she didn't know was there, you know, the good stuff. Anne Lamott delivers all of this, and she's hilarious to boot. While she does have a pretty unshakeable faith, she also has plenty of, "You've GOT to be kidding me!" discussions with the Lord, which I found refreshing. I think that was what appealed to me the most about this book, the fact that it was written by someone who is not perfect in her relationship with God and does not claim to be. Absolute, unquestioning faith in something that you can't prove exists is tricky, even for the most sincere.

One of my favorite examples of this is when she is trying to explain the significance of Ash Wednesday to her child, Sam. She has turned off the TV and explained that if he wanted to draw or play with some of his other toys that would be fine, but just for today, in observance of Ash Wednesday, they were not going to watch TV. A few minutes later, he has turned the TV back on and Alvin and the Chipmunks are singing "Achy Breaky Heart," and Lamott LOSES IT. Personally, I think having to listen to Alvin and the Chipmunks sing "Achy Breaky Heart" is a totally justifiable reason to lose one's mind, but I think this had more to do with Sam's blatant disregard of the somber speech she had just made about the importance of Ash Wednesday. Anyway, she proceed to shout, cuss, and then she

"grabbed him by his pipecleaner arm and jerked him in the direction of his room, where he spent the next ten minutes crying bitter tears.

It's so awful, attacking your child. It is the worst thing I know, to shout loudly at this fifty-pound being with his huge trusting brown eyes. It's like bitch-slapping E.T." (p. 93)

I've read that passage several times, and it cracks me up every time. Maybe that just means I'm warped. I don't know.

I've mentioned recently that I've noticed a lot of coincidences involving the books I'm reading and my real life activities. I was reading this book on our recent vacation in Oregon, which began with an ill-fated trip to Vegas, a drive over to L.A., and then a drive from L.A. up to Portland during which we stopped to check out many of the redwood forests and groves along the way.

(Me sitting next to the Founders' Tree in Humboldt Redwoods State Park)

For those of you who have never seen a redwood, they are amazing. For those of you who have, you know. They're so huge and stately and...and...I don't even know how to describe them. (However, Bob Neubauer did a pretty good job of it, so I'll let you read his article here.) For me, they're comforting and feel like home. I've always liked evergreen forests, and living in Hawaii has reinforced that love. As beautiful as the tropical forests (jungles? I'm not really sure what the proper term is here) are, they're messy. Evergreen forests are always neat and orderly and covered with that soft, springy, uniform covering of needles, not a disorderly mess of decaying leaves under which there could be hiding any number of creepy crawlies or decaying fruit. (Stick with me here; this does eventually tie back in to the book). They feel serene and tidy. Perhaps this appeals to me because I tend to be the exact opposite of that-our house is a cluttery mess. As much as we try to keep it up, by the end of each week, there is just clutter everywhere. I don't really know how it happens. I'm pretty sure it might involve gnomes. Anyway, evergreen forests are already tidy; you don't feel like you have to straighten anything up, so you can just be and relax. A redwood forest only amplifies this. Not only is it tidy and calm and serene, but the trees have been there for longer than we can comprehend and (hopefully) will continue to be there, standing guard, sentry-like, providing a calm, secure, safe retreat from the rest of the world for as long as there is still some good in the world.

All of this is to say that in Lamott's book, she talks a lot about the northern California area (through which we had just driven!). She also talks about a health scare involving her son. After an extremely nerve-wracking wait, she finally receives some good news on this front and calls her friend in order to share the news. His response: "Baby? Sometimes deliverance is as cool as the air in a redwood grove."

Of course, this was cool for me because I was like, "Hey, we were just in a bunch of redwood groves!" but it was more than that. It was a reminder of how lucky we have been to experience things like that. I realize there are probably millions of people each year who visit the redwood forests and there are people who live with redwoods in their back yards, so it's not like we are an elite group or anything, but that doesn't make the experience any less special. Also, there are a lot of people who have never found themselves surrounded by redwoods and probably never will, and so in that regard, I do feel lucky to have had that experience.

So, long story short, I would totally recommend this book. It's funny and uplifting and honest and heartfelt and just an all-around good read.