I went to see Anne Lamott – one of my all-time favorite writers – give a reading many moons ago, and something she said during the Q&A stayed with me. Lamott is a smart, quirky, funny, cool, liberal, born-again-Christian writer (quadrupled oxymoron?), and I positively love her stuff. She was promoting her book Grace (Eventually): Thoughts on Faith, so many of the questions after the reading were about faith and god, and her experience of those. I’m not remotely religious, and not sure I believe in “god,” so sometimes I get tripped up in her language, but I’ve learned to listen for the concepts, and do word substitutions in my head. When she says “god,” I say: “the universe,” or “creative force,” or “The Force.” (but i digress) At one point someone asked her if she believed in the devil, and Lamott said she did – but not an incarnated devil – instead (and i paraphrase here) – “The devil is the voice in your head that whispers: Yeah, you know you have to quit smoking, drinking (or engaging in some other addiction or behavior that enslaves your spirit or keeps you out of integrity) … and you will … of course you will. But, the devil will say: not today.” The […]
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