April 10, 1954

Anne Lamott was born April 10, 1954 and it is hard not to love her. And my being a writer within the western christian tradition, accidentally of course, it is hard not to approve of anyone who has that authentic glint in their words that suggests a sincere, freshly thought, Christian experience. Her voice is one of a creative, gentle, thoughtful and observant, writer whose religion is a deep part of their life. There used to be many people like this. Now there are just a few. Anne Lamott is one. I would recommend anything she writes, though I have not read it all and none of the novels. The latest book may be Help, Thanks, Wow: The Three Essential Prayers (2012).

Our excerpt below is most recently from Reader's Digest Magazine (March 2012), and discusses the mother of her her teen aged son's child.

He and Amy had been together, tumultuously, since his birthday a year earlier, [2008] but they had split up a couple of months before — although not, I can see now, in the Biblical sense. Amy is beautiful, tiny, and Hispanic, with her roots in Chicago ... She first bounced into my house in shorts that would fit my cat, long thick black hair, huge brown eyes, and a perfect smile. She is around four feet ten, and weighed 90 pounds at the time.

The writing of Anne Lamott once helped me understand something.