Review: SOMEHOW: THOUGHTS ON LOVE

I am reading the library's print version of Somehow: Thoughts on Love by Anne Lamott. Normally if I owned a copy or read an e-version of the book I would make a point of highlighting my favorite phrases. This post is my effort to highlight my favorite thoughts. It is pretty disjointed. I won't blame you if you decide to skip this review, but I hope you stick with it.

The book begins with a epigraph is a poem: "The Guest House" by Rumi. It seems completely perfect for a book about love. It reminds us to celebrate who and what comes our way.

The first chapter seemed to be especially quote-worthy:

One thing is certain: Love is our only hope. Love springs from new life, love springs from death. Love acts like Ghandi and our pets and Jesus and Mr. Bean and Mr. Rogers and Bette Midler. Love just won't be pinned down (3).

When we are paying attention, we see how much holds us invisibly. Love is a bench (6).

The Dominican friar Timothy Radcliffe wrote that God can never tell you to not love someone. God can only tell you to do a better job loving someone (7).

Love is what our soul is made of, and for (10).

When we tell someone that God is always with them they may reply (or think) "But I need someone with skin on." Be goodness with skin on.   (Paraphrase p. 12)

Anne Lamott is often sought out for advice on how to cope with life's failures. She is pretty humble about what advice she has to offer. She says, When we wrong someone our prayer can be: " Bless him, change me. Help me like myself again." I love this prayer: Bless him/her, God. But change me! 

Each of Lamott's books always seem to be autobiographical, at least in part. In this book she talks quite a bit about her father, how he left the family, the scars from that relationship. At one point she and her younger brother take the father, who is dying from cancer, to the beach. While there he falls over and his pants get wet in the surf. Yet, the look of joy at being at the beach at low tide negates the mishap. She said, "We all felt it, that rare feeling, those rare moments out of time, not religious or esoteric, just piercingly alive for a few moments, moments of eternity, my father tasting the joy of being alive" (71). I've experienced those types of moments. Haven't you? Moment which can be bottled up for use later when we need them. When my father died we asked the choir of the church for help fulfilling one of his wishes: to sing the "Hallelujah Chorus" at his memorial service. They did better than that, they sang it while the organist played it on the big pipe organ. Whenever I need it, whenever I want to feel close to my Dad again, I can call up that beautiful moment when 200 mourners, a big choir, and a fantastic pipe organ made music together honoring a great guy.

I'm getting to the age where more and more of my friends are dying. Last month alone I lost three. Anne Lamott, too, has experienced the death of many friends and she does not shy away from being with them in their last hours and days.

I have been with many people who were dying and what is revealed besides the worry is that they loved, both what they will miss and what still fills and feeds them.  Karen in her bed with her cat and us, photos of her family; my father happy as a child that morning on the beach, wet pants and all. Those ornate ordinary times, the grip of the a hand as you walk up the trail to car, laughing in spite of it all, vanilla pudding (78-9).

Lamott shares how important it is to live our love out loud. And to accept love when it is given by others. "Apricity means the warmth of the sun in winter, and the warmth for me was people loving on me out loud" (86). All of us need to feel the warmth of love coming from others. Accept it! Snuggle into it.

She shares her advice when one wants to recover from an attack: "Here is the launch code when under attack: gratitude (make a list!) chores, chocolate, service, breath, nature" (87). She hopes she gets a chance to whisper these into her grandson's ears after she is gone, when he needs help. Her consistent advice throughout the book is to get out in nature and take a walk, and to do service to help the needy. I would concur that these almost always bring me out of a funk!

It is hard to welcome pain but it may help to remember: "Rumi said that through love, all pain will turn to medicine" (87). We often need the medicine that only love can provide.

Anne Lamott quotes so many authors and poets in her books, like I am quoting her here. Tee-hee! Here she quotes the writer Arundhati Roy and her beautiful statement and then adds to it:

"'Another world is not only possible, she is on her way. On a quiet day, I can hear her breathing.' ...it reminds me if I stop and listen, I will hear hope. I hear it in nature, in singing, in stories of goodness, in the saddest places, in celebration, but maybe most often in gently absurd stories of love" (95).

One of her favorite songs became a star in chapter six, "Song". I'd heard the song "Ripple" by the Grateful Dead before but hadn't really listened to the words. This verse really stood out to me:

Reach out your hand, if your cup be empty

If your cup is full, may it be again

Let it be known there is a fountain

That was not made by the hands of men

"Ripple" by the Grateful Dead

I have a relative, X, who is a recovering alcoholic, who doesn't? Anyway as I read the 7th chapter, "Cowboy", I  kept wishing that this relative could read it. Lamott talks about the importance of human connections. Ask any teacher who taught before and then after the COVID shut-downs and they will tell you how impactful it was for students to be away from other students for those years. Kids don't know how to make friends anymore. They don't know how to compromise or work on projects together. It is so sad. Heck, I think I will copy off the pages and share them with X. I know he will appreciate the wisdom therein.

In the CODA, Lamott paraphrases William Blake, "We have to learn to endure the beams of love." This message, this thought makes me cry today. I am crying for myself and for so many people I know who keep dodging these beams, trying to hold ourselves together with spit and baling wires, rather than submitting to the beams of love which can help us grow and evolve. Only love can heal us from our loneliness and despair.

If the younger ones in our lives can remember only this one idea, that they are here, briefly, a little space to love and to have been loved, they they will have all they need, because love is all they need, rain or shine...good old love, elusive and steadfast, fragile, and unbreakable, and always there for the asking: always, somehow (191).

It doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out I rated this book with 5 stars.

-Anne