Substack just notified me that there are a hundred of you, so I thought I’d say hello. I’d thought about contributing but hadn’t until just now. I’m clueless as to what might be helpful to you, so maybe I’ll just say a little about my intentions.
I don’t want to spew here, as I have other places to spew, some of which actually pay me. My political opinions should be pretty clear by now, and I am actively involved in trying to make good trouble. I may from time to time slip in a tiny partisan morsel, such as that there will be a No Kings rally on Oct, 18 in every city and many small towns across the country, but mostly, not.
I’ve been clean and sober 39 years, and maybe occasionally can say something that will contribute to the commonweal of healing. The best thing I ever heard about recovery was from a bumpster sticker I saw years ago in Texas, that said, God loves you exactly the way you, but God loves you too much to let you stay like this.”
I have written 20 books, the last one being Somehow: Thoughts on Love. My husband and I have a book on writing out next March called Good Writing. You can check it out and admire the fabulous cover at Amazon, although we worry that our younger readers will not recognizes the contraption in the illustration. It’s a “typewriter.”
Maybe you know that my son Sam had a baby at 19, but you can’t know that the baby got his drivers license last Monday.
Maybe you know that I was a Sunday school teacher at a tiny church for 30+ years but retired a year ago, so a belief that God always makes a way out of no way informs my daily walk. But when people ask me how I maintain hope during troubling times, I rarely mention Scripture. Instead, I mention my faith in the goodness of the American people, and in the enormous amount of love and care I experience all round me. I am reminded of two things almost every day: First, that if I want to have loving feelings (instead of doom, judgment and paranoia) I just have to do loving things. I do a few loving things anonymously every day, but if I was being honest, I also do a few loving things that I make absolutely damn sure to get credit for. Second, I remember what Bill Wilson’s priest friend told him when Bill was getting Alcoholics Anonymous off the ground, that sometimes he thought heaven was just a new pair of glasses. So when I am feeling crunchy and judgmental, I often gently help myself put on a better pair of glasses, ones through which I can see how much love, beauty and goodness surround us, in spite of It All.
That’s all for now. Mostly I wanted to say Hey, hello, hang in there, thanks and love.
Proud to be your 101st subscriber, Miss Lamonte.
Woohoo. You are here! Thank heavens. Even my substack feed is now mostly about the endless horrors unfolding. Small bites of faith, and charity with a helping of biting wit may ease the suffering.