[inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] >> welcome, everyone. my name is ted hamm and i'm the chair of journalism here at st. joseph's college and i will welcome into this evenings event. the sign out front we have another event coming up with a night he wanted to tell you about the woodrow wilson visiting fellow by the name of richard benedetto, one of the original founders of "usa today" is going to talk about several decades of its. in the white house press corps.

not exactly a spiritual place. but an important one nonetheless. this is the final event of this policy then. so keep in touch. we'll keep you posted about what's coming up next evening. right now i want to bring up the co-owner and the person who directs the series on behalf of greenlight bookstores, jessica stockton by below. [applause] ..

>> tonight is our final event of the season but we hope to have screen events up soon. i want to thank the folks from c-span2 who are filming this event to share the discussion with a wide are audience. before i turn the take over to tonight's speakers, first, please silence any cellphones or other electronic devices. if you purchased a ticket you should already have received your company of "almost everything." additional copies of the new book and other titles are available for sale, and annewill be signing books after the discussion. some becomes are presigned but she'll sign additional wins bunt won't have to do personalize.

the signing line will form around the perimeter of the auditorium. we also will be passing out some card on which you can write questions for anne and we'll walk through the audience and our moderator will select questions to be addressed on stage. our interviewer this evening is edward l. beck. the roman catholic priest of the passionate congregation and an author, playwright and on-air commentator for c-span2 on issues of faith, religion and ethics, world in the mainstream media for ten years. currently on academic sabbatical so we're honored he is here. speaking with our featured author anne la molt. the author of hallelujah anyway, help thanks wow, small victories, stitches, some assembly required, grace

eventually, plan b, traveling mercies, bird-by-bird and operating instructions. also the author of seven novels including imperfect birds and rosy. a past recipient of the guggenheim fellowship she lives in northern california. her new book, almost everything, notes on hope is is perhaps the book we need most from her right now. uncertainty surrounds us in the news in our families and ourselves. but even when life is at its bleakest, when we are, she suits. , do., stunned, exhausted, and overcaffeinate the seeds of rejuvenation are at hand. in each profound and sunny chapter, lamott calls for us to rediscover the includings of hope and wisdom win us that can make life sweeter than we ever imagined. you're in for something special. join me in welcoming to the stage, anne lamott. [applause]

>> thank you. can i talk to the lighting guy from here? just got so bright. when i say blinded -- okay. well, how are you over there? >> i'm used to this. >> oh, you are. okay. well, edward and i have been friends over time, and very excited about each other's work in the world, and then we were together in l.a. a week ago, and got to spend some time reconnecting and so i'm just

love, love, love being with him on stage. it's not just an honor. it's just a friend. just makes it so easy, like having a brother up here with me. i'm just going read few pages from the book, and so you can get a sense of what it's like, and then we'll sit down. we hope you have questions you can ask about -- ask me pretty much anything. white want to be a bit more sensitive with him. so, this is the first few pages of the prelude. i am stockpiling eights for the apocalypse, as i wait the blossom can 0 fewer this news of late has captured the drop of modern life, everything exploding, burning, being shot or crashing to the ground all around us. while growing older has provided me with a measure of perspective and equilibrium and a lovely

long-term romance. towns and studies, ice field, democracy, people, all disappear, while we rejoice and thrive in the spring and the sweetness of old friendship us. families are tricky. there's a whole chapter that begins, families are hard, hard, hard. there's so much going on that flattens us, that is huge, scary or appalling, we're doomed, stunned, exist and overcaffeinated and yet outside my window yellow roses bloom and little kid horse around, making a joyous react. underfeel look the lighting making progress. feels lying death by annoyance. at the same time the truth is that we are beloved even in our current condition by someone. we have lost and been loved. we have also known the abyss of love lost to death or rejection, and that it's somehow leads to new life. we have been redeemed and saved

by love, even as a few times we have been nearly destroyed and, worse, seen our children nearly destroyed. he are who we love. we are one and autonomous. there's another chap they're that beginnings all truth is paradox. so why have some of us felt like jumping all tall buildings since can remember, even those who did not struggle with clinical depression. why have we managed turning the wheels of our cars into ongoing coming trucks. we just do. to me this is very natural. i think it is hard here. there is the absolute hopelessness we face that everyone we love will die, even our newborn granddaughter, even as we trust and know that love will give rise to growth, miracles and resurrection, love and goodness and the world's beauty and humanity are the reasons we have hope, yet no matter how much we cycle, believe in our priuses and

abides by local laws we see our beauty is being destroyed, crushed by degreed and cruel stupidity, and we also see love and tender hearts carry the day. fear against all odds, leads to community, to bravery and right action, and these give us hope. i wake up not knowing if our leader has bombed north korea and still this past year has been just about the happiest of my life. so, yeah, it can all be a little confusing. on the one hand there is the hopelessness of people living in grinding poverty in sub saharan africa and uptown oakland, be power our money and time into organizations that fed and mentor people, teach in uganda and appalachia, show up in refugee camps with water and art supplies, people team teach children, teach girls auto repair and electrical installation, teach boys to care for babies.

witnessing this fills me to bursting with hopement never witnessed both more global and national brutality and such goodness in the world's response to our own. and then there were our families of origin, we call those our foos in recovery. some grew up in the alternative universe of unhappy marriage accept as normal, desperate, parental need. i'm sure your family was just fine. and the temp plat of love you grew up with was kindness and mutual respect, delight in each other, patience with the spouse or a child's foibles, but other families, just a few, hardly worth mentioning, were stressful, home foamic, racist, alcoholic, psychiatrist trendic and/or repressed. brothers and sisters didn't always survive. we became jumpy perfecticses.

ts elliott wrote, teach to us care and not care, teach to us sit still. we long for this yet chuck our are smart foreigns every ten men minutes. before my boyfriend i decided to make a list for my -- in my dearest, i begin, i have a spirit actual mentor named bonnie, i've had for three decades now, who loves me and trusts god and goodness so craziyly i sometimes think of her -- think of her as horrible bonnie, because i cannot get her to judge me or abandon hope. for 30 years she has answered all of my distressed or deeply annoyed calms by say, hello, dearest, i'm so glad it's you i've come to believe this is how god feels when i pray, even at my least attractive.

so, dearest, again, here is everything i know about almost everything that i think applies to almost everyone, that might help you some day. [applause] >> thank you, anne. that was beautiful. >> thank you. >> i want to pick up on something you just read. you said, i wake up not knowing if our leader has bombed north korea, and still this past year has been just about the happist happiest of my life. how come. >> well, i fell in love. and i got engaged. and i will let you -- [applause] -- yes. i will let you meet him with the purchase of each hardback book.

neil allen, and that was two years ago. my grandson's nine and lives with husband half the item and that's just joyful and funny. still got the sleuth by baby voice. he is lovely, and he is brown and he went to the terror before the election that trump would separate us as every brown child america felt, and he just has the funniest things, and i love living with him, and i love being a little bit older. you get so much less self-conscious and just care so much less about how you're doing and how people think you're doing. you feet hurt. you want to think but your feet more. [laughter] your vision failing and your memory shot. i decided i had a stroke in denver, which is five days ago, because i lost so much ground since then.

may have been altitude poisoning but i have not bounced back. five years ago i would have. but i love not caring as much but dump stuff, and i'm just surrounded -- i love my sunday school kid us, two or three of them, different ages, and i just feel so blessed. >> you mentioned neil and you got engaged. think some people who have known you for a while through your write, think of you somewhat as a nontraditionallist, the 60s hippy, and yesterday yet something at your state of life, like the institution of marriage. how come? why is that important? >> well, he asked me. [laughing] >> i didn't want to hurt his feelings. and we basically have felt married for -- since we met, really, and then we got this funny little house that's big enough for my son and his son,

and neil's kids when they come to visit so it felt like -- i'll tell you, years ago i did a benefit in san francisco at a huge cavalry press in pacific heights and i had a well interviewer, fran jones, and she said, everything that could happen for writers happened for you. if a child that you love who has grown and healthy. you have a little boy, a little grandchild, and said there is anything you still dream about? and i don't know why i felt that it was okay to say in front of a thousand people, but i said, i think i might like to be married. and people went, whoa, did she just say that? if you -- then it den happen for you, oh, what a loser. all she ever wanted was to get married and no one would have her. and then -- so i didn't expect to fall in love at 62, and with

a younger man, he was 61. [laughter] but we just merged. we saw that first date we would be able to talk for the rest of our lives about books and god and movie and being parents and it all -- politics, both very progressive, and so why stop? >> that's a great answer. i'm glad i asked it. another quote from the book: peace of mind is an inside job. unrelated to fame, fortune, whether your partner loves you. i was struck by that because i think so many of us look for our approval or our self-worth from the outside. you think it's going to come from a career or falling in love with someone or some kind of validation, but what you're sayingers that the exterior validation -- we know this to be true -- but that it can't give

you that peace of mind. it's an inside job. how do you come to that? >> well, it's taken a long time. i just was raised to believe that the world -- if i achieved enough and had the respect of men -- didn't we a woman, didn't count much -- had the respect of men who were especially powerful, and highly respected, it that we like the fda stamped me with the seal of approval, and then i would be all well. and then i would have great self-esteem while the time enjoying life. and that kills people. striving, striving, to be esteemed enough, which you cannot be and will not be, it is fickle. the world is fickle. the world is a male alcoholic who still drinking and some day the world and charming and seductive and just think you are

a honey bebee and then the next day they can't remember where they met you or somebody else has come along. i tried so hard, my whole life, in october when i was 32, and i was sort of -- i couldn't drink my way into self-respect anymore and into feeling unself-conscious and whole, and, boy issue had to get to work, and people, mostly silver women, taught me it was an inside job and that i was starving to death from my own respect because i wasn't raised with it, a girl in the '50s and then '60s with a mother in a terrible, terrible marriage, and who was not respected by my father, and i didn't know you could be angry. my friend, pat, fitzpatrick, said if you're an american girl over 12 and not really angry you missed the boat. and i looked very, very different, and felt very

different, felt so isolated, and scared. i just had a tremendous amount of anxiety and these women -- some men -- just taught me that if you want to have self-esteem, you start doing esteemable things. what are they? well, service, and love of people who are annoying, like some of your relatives, like one of my aunts. and i go and a visit her all the time, and sometimes she is kind of mean to me, and -- but jesus doesn't say visit the nice -- the friendly lonely peel. jesus doesn't say, please, please take care of the friendly poor. i just show up, learn to show up -- i kind of think it was a nautilus of the soul over years and time and i raised a child, and that was so intense and

crazy and hard and i didn't have any money, and i think that i started to respect anyone who would do that, and -- >> in the become, when anne teaches sunday school at her church, and you were saying to kind of instill this in the children, you had them repeat the mantra it and was, i have value, i have value. tell the story but the little girl. >> i had three kids. i go to a tiny failing church of 30, 35 people so i have two or three kids. had two teenagers, one was really rough skin and one a little better, and but an eight-year-old girl with very severe buck teeth, really straight out buck teeth, bust but just the loveliest spirit, just like god. when i told the children we were going to say out loud, i have value, scary, to say that to yourself. you can do it in your head now and it's scary, becauseow were

taught -- first of all, not to think it. isn't she full of herself. she were taught you were close to being of value and if you could bring up the b-plus to an a-minus so it's scary to say, i have value. the boys -- the teenagers were mortified. i have value. one said i have value. then the little girl said, i have value. and then she said it again, i have value. and she was so beautiful. and i felt, what if he had been taught that, at a little girl, i had value as is, even at whatever shape i was in, however i was doing, that i was a beautiful, precious child in whom anyone in their right mind would delight, without bringing my grades up. they're some seats up here if you want to couple up here. they reserved for the publisher

but we don't care. we'll look away. come on up. >> one of the wonderful quotes from hosch donnie, your spiritual mentor, is when she said to you, dearest, the secret is we're preapproved. you don't have to get it. we're preapproved and if we could lean into that. and live into that reality. >> live from that, yes. i i had the most stunning thing i ever heard, said it ten years ago. we're preapproved? everything in the world, every magazine, every commercial on tv, everybody in your family, everybody has held a carrot out that if you can bring this up to a certain level, you can burnish the surface a little more brightly, yeah, you, get the approval you so seek. bonnie's decision is that you

come prepresumed you are preapproved as a two-minute old baby and nothing can take that away. that can't be created or destroyed. that is just true. and it's so radical. >> so fundamental but to embrace it is like a life-long journey i think. >> yeah. >> let's talk about addiction. >> edward, i want to tell you something, you are preapproved. you are. >> thank you. >> you have value. >> thank you. i have value. >> you have value as is. as is. wow. >> wow. >> no one remembered to mention that to me when i was little. sorry to interrupt you. >> thank you for that. i'll try to live it into a little more. you have spoken about your own addiction to alcohol and drugs, two brothers who are also addicted and a son, sam, and in the throes of sam's addition, when he was perhaps at his worst

and you were trying to save him, and rescue him -- >> and fix him. >> you write it's the worst time of your life you wrote in the book, and he gets arrested, and he said, wound the hardest things -- one the most important things was to not bail him out. and so much in 12 ten programses bought enabling and you want to fix it and the natural -- how did to a place of saying, he may be just has to sit in jail to survive this. so many parents can't get there. >> well, one of thing a crow fames for god is the gift of desperation, and by then -- i that i was 18 dish bass desperate and had tried everything i could think of and i think sometimes grace is besides being spiritual, w do 40, grace looks lyings exhaustion and grace looks like just being done, and giving up on having any more good ideas,

and doing dish call the ploppage, you just sit and go -- i don't have a clue. and i thought that if i got him out of jail, he would debuts the only thing in the history of human life, not one single person has gotten another single person sober. or stopped binging and purging or starve organize gambling. another once ever. we need and we receive or open to ayton of support, but you can't do it. it doesn't work that way. and i had tried everything, and, boy, kids ahead jail, young people hate jail because it's so boring. it's so boring. it's so boring. you can't have your phone and you don't get any books. and i prayed about it, and i prayed for knowledge of god's will for me and the power to carry that out. are you really going to leave this beautiful 18-year-old now jail?

and i thought, yeah. yeah. and he didn't get sober and clean right away. took few more years. hads to hit my own bottom with the fixing and rescuing which ice another 12 step premier for those with tiny control issues. and i just -- i was doing better and not trying to fix or control or save him, but i had a lot of good ideas, really good ideas, and i sent him away and he loved it. he was gone for nine months and came back. we live in a little '60s town in marin, and i got -- i was -- they always say in recovery, if you have a problem go book in the mirror, people are not doing things to you. the way -- our problems aren't the problem. it's our solutions that are the problem, and so if a kid, my own, precious, my outside hearts mat at me i have a solution to that which is to win or buy him

back, or bribe and then. but i got worse and worse. gone to the point where i just had rats in my little -- little rats in my head and i looked good on the surface. do what i do every day, i take care of the people, if god needs me to do to be his or her hands and i wrote most days, i have all the stat but there were rats running around in our mind and our bottom was standing on a little street and everybody knows i'm a sunday school cheecher and a peace knick and a marcher and i was holding a sharpened pencil to my son's throat. that got my attention. and i said you can't be on this property anymore because his baby was inside. a two-year-old or something. and he said, yeah, started to walk away i said ick give you a ride to the city? it's 45 minutes or an hour.

this was holy spirit because he got in the car, right? how do you get from where we were to him getting in the car with the person who -- are you doing that edward? >> no, it's not me. it's a gremlin. we drove to the city and he got out in front of his -- his apartment and i got out and gave him a hug and we hasn't said word. and i released as best i could. we say, everything we ever let go of has clawmarks on it. the hardest work is releasing someone we love who may need -- whose destiny we don't control, and two weeks later he called and said i have a week clean and sober and just celebrated seven years and it's because i left him in jail and because i went and looked in the mirror. i stopped hurting him with my help. we say that help is the sunny

side of control, and that my help is not helpful, believe me. if you knew me, you know that. >> let's talk about higher power, because it's so much a part of 12 step program certainly. the first step, admit one's powerlessness and you're a christian, so jesus is fundamental for you as higher power. but you include a quote from the dalai lama in the book, great quote. says: religion is like going out to dinner with friends. everyone may order something different but still sit at the same table. and i wonder what your opinion is about the need for a higher power in someone's life that they have to acknowledge it if the program is going to work, and even though jesus is yours, how you say somebody else -- there arlet of christians who say jesus is the way. if you believe jesus is the son

of gamed have a truth i want to share with you and i want to give you and i know you resist that kind of -- you have to believe in jesus. so a little bit about the higher power and whether or not one needs its for the program to be successful. >> well, i think people that want to shove jesus downed my throat or anyone else's tend to be very crazy. [laughter] >> my jesuit friend said that if you want to know if you created god in your own image, he hates all the same people you do. and i -- neil isn't a christian but he loves jesus. he loves my church because it's such a sweet sanctuary, place of welcome, and shalom and love and -- i mean, i feel -- i

understand i know nothing. i really believe i have a third grader or golden retriever's sense of theology. i keep things so simple with any sunday school kids, whether they're teenagers or little ones and i say your love, its love there, is love, around you, above you, and inside you, there's this beautiful little flame of the dissunshine you. divine in you and don't let anybody blow it out. i tell them you're loved and chosen and safe, you're safe in the arms of god and of the people who love you and us, and if -- as soon as you have a horrible secret you won't tell the grownups you're not safe anymore so that's what i teach them. don't teach them about the trying nature of the trinityity who are shot the hospital. i teach them they're made out of love, create for love. i wrote in the last book that in the african -- what's the --

liturgy, they say that god created people because he thought we'd like it here. isn't that funny? in the era of trump especially. mean that in a nice way and i don't mean that in a political way. i think that's so funny to say that because we always think about the god created the earth and it was good and beautiful and all the animals and let humans name them and blah blah blot thought we would like it here so he created to give us a blessing of having a life and to love and like her and i was so startled when i first heard that because it's so unwestern. right? but i think there's one mountain and there's many -- i have never once literally in my life tried to get anyone to come to jesus. i hope that when i show up, you can feel that i am -- have been loved back to my feet, that you can't get from where i was to where i am now.

it's not humanly possible. no human power could have relieved me. had an addiction and to every single thing you can have an addiction to, except gambling. and my friends in recovery said that's a big yet for me. [laughter] >> i might start gambling wednesday night in cincinnati. i don't know. >> but you know, one of the most poignant stories in the book is about kelly, and i don't think you have ever toll that story before in your writings, and kelly was someone who was in the program, but would distance her from it is this inability to give ascent to the higher power, the jesus thing or the god thing, to the hely turned her off to 12 step programs and show begins to isolate, and i mean, it's a rather tragic story. do you think it was related because she couldn't kind of ascent to a higher power or was

i it nose that at all. >> i believe it was. this is really dear friend of mine who got sober when i did and was a successful realtor, she grown up very wealthy in this society, pages of san francisco, just fabulous, and had had a horrible bottom as an alcoholic and loved being sober but she said i don't believe in god. think it's in -- i said they're not talking about god. they're talking about a higher power, anything. a numb of people i -- a small mountain in our county that where the coastal me walk were shifting and people turned to the mountain, her name is mountain tam mall pieas, and the sleeping maden and it's clear it could be anything except for your own good ideas. could be anything except for your own pinball machine of a mind that is trying to get other people to change so that you can be more comfortable, and so

anyone who'ved her would say that you could use the doorknob. you could. and anything but your own best thinkings because you're own best thinking gets you to a bottom where you might be able to accept love and help, and she stopped being in groups of sober people and just -- but she is doing fun, just a lovely, exuberant and then she lost 100 pounds when he got sober, started gain it back and didn't want people to see her, most important thing as an american is that you look good and little by little -- she had two vodkas -- two gins on a tuesday, and most of a bottle of wednesday and split her head open on a friday, and ended up at oakland general, which is our highland hospital, a really are depressing place, and i went to see her and she said -- i said, let's get back with the herd,

being to with the caribou herd. she said the god thing doesn't work for me. what can you saginaw what you can say is, okay, i'm hearing you say that and i accept that and i love you and i will -- i never tell people, i'll pray for you but i said i love you and everyone prays for you and you're the best. i love you i. can't wait for you to get to go back home. and she ends up blowing her brains out. >> what is so interesting, i thought, the woman upstairs -- >> fell in love, not romantically but alcoholically with another very big woman upstairs in her apartment, and it was -- i always tell people that the love of your dog or cat is probably crow closest you'll find to divine love but they drank together and made each

other love laugh and that what's path she chose -- a way for her to hook into something bigger than herself, which is what they mean by -- something big and beautiful that loved her unconditionallies that's how she had value so wasn't god as i understand god or god in any kind of goodness. it was love. god is love. >> our you beautifully put in the book for kelly, god was the old woman upstairs. >> yeah. >> i naught that was such a beautiful way of saying it. >> thank you. >> let's talk about family. >> okay. >> which we all can relate to. another wonderful quote by ramadas, if you think you're enlightened go spend a week with your family. [laughter] >> talk to but the veneer that so many of us try to put forward that our families are fine. everything i perfecting. everything is fine and you talk about fine, the acronym, fine tv

as f step0, insecurity and emotional. family is not easy for everybody. >> no. i love and live for my family. my parents have both passed. i have an older john who is 66 and -- younger brother cowboys officer years younger and all tee addicts and holics have more than 32 years clean and sober and we all nearly died. my old are brother has been perfectly healed of very advanced help c and he has no money and it's a thousand dollars a pill, for 90 days, and he is a believer and he got the -- the stayed -- he had to pay 6 down and he has been healed and we are there ever step of the way for each other and it was really hard growing up. we were all three scared.

my older brother -- also found drugs and alcohol very early. i raised steve, my baby brother, because mom and dad were in so much tense, quiet, polite distress, and the literally should have raised orchids instead of children, literally. but they loved us and they were progressives, very awe vaughn guard, and marchers for peace and human rights and civil rights, and they just couldn't stand each other, and so we -- it presidentialized us all. -- pretzellized us all and we all have struggled with healing and mental health and believing that we're safe, because i didn't feel safe as a child. i held my breath and i walked on eggshells and and i tried to be my father's wife abuse he didn't love mom so i needed to be enough woman at five and six for him to want to come home. my mother was very heavy and

didn't like my father, and she needed a husband. and then the little one needed a mother, and then the older brother used to hit me a lot. always say hurt people hurt people and he was hurting and he hurt me a lot. so he were very scared, and then everyone i know, the familiar already den -- when i was a child i completely compared any insides to everybody else's outsides and sow you see families that had money or beautiful, the daughters were beautiful, and had long, smooth hair and the parents seemed to be really happy it and was just an illusion. it was a storyfront. if thought if you went swivel your family is went everyone was doing well, anded turn out that their kids, as many as -- i mean so many kid i know committed suicide, and they lived on the lagoon which is the wealthier enclave in our county and had skiing vacations and went to

switzerland and it was all a show. they were all an the inside feeling damaged and defective and must be annoying because their parents were so unhappy, and the parents looked so happy. and so i have just come to believe every so often, you come upon someone who had a really happy experience where the father really respected the mother, was the early feminist and when there were problems the parents got help for them and they didn't shame the children or try to goad them into doing better than they could. i was goaded by. the saying, you have to get thicker skin because i was so sensitive. you just have to be a completely different person and then this family will function better, and you need a family that was really happy and the parents were equals and had respect and affection, and i could name maybe four of them.

i i've gotten to know, and actually -- never really want to sit with them at dinner. what would we talk about? and then i'm happy for them. it's amazing. but the people i'm close to, that wasn't the story. the good of some of the boy were molested, scary grownups that did not protect the child from being brutalized in whatever way. there war just like a lying machine and the mother in the '50s and early '60s had to side with the power -- with the father. you align with whoever has the power it and was one way in '50s, so i write a loud about families because the people that come to -- that tend to come to see me really know what i'm talking about when i talk but how frightened i was and how grief struck by the world i was, as a young child, and that was where there was this popular book in the '50s called the

overly sensitive child, and the parents -- like my parent got it because having such an open-hearted sensitive child was clearly herring their lives, and a lot of the people that come to my events either had very frightening childhoods with alcoholism or unfaithfulness or mental illness or religion and they ran screaming from the dogma and fundamentalism of their childhoods and only lately or in the last couple decades were able to find a god of their own understanding who loved them as is. so i write about families. my family is so important to me and, god, the stories we could tell. >> and you do. >> yeah. >> you have a chapter on hate and say it's the worst emotion of all. second only to jealousy. there's lot of visit central in the country -- individual troll in the country right now. seem very divided politically.

just con through a very contentious supreme court confirmation area, and it seems like they're nothing in between. pro-con and yet you say the pastor, your pastor, had a great word during the homily, don't let them get you to hate them and that was transformative to you. what's this secret. >> a whole chapter i can't really say in a sentence or two. i can say what i said when we talk but recovery. is that the willingness to change and to do the healing comes from the pain of not changing and doing the healing and about a year ago, after a year of just insanity and hate and victimized self-reich which isness, which is my calling -- self-righteous nose, which is my calling card. if you have a problem, look in mirror, and right around then my

pastor took a line that was part of something booker t. washington said of million years ago. he said i shall allow no man to belittle my soul by making me hate them and martin luther king took that up also, and our pastor paraphrase it it saying don't let them to get you to hate them. then you become then, then you lose your snore and your serenity and the little rats starts up again and you're not a very -- you don't have nutritious bred to offer the world because you're toxic, and i got there. the willingness came phlegm pain and i was willing to look at my stuff. i made contact with my inner donald trump, this kind of -- this is a man who has never -- the differences never once been loved, in his entire life. his brother committed suicide through alcoholism because of that lack of love and the pain

of their childhood. this is an unloved human being, and -- also bombastic and thinks he is right and i am bombastic and i think i'm right and his is taken to be a bully -- i'm not a bully but i start to realize it's like that old pogo cartoon, i've met the enemy and he is us, and i know god, i know jesus loves him exactly as much as he love mist little grandchild. that's the mystery of grace, and that grace softens one's heart and the promise is not that it will soften your heart if you're having trouble with one person who you kind are okay with. it's the promise to free you from the hatred -- from the claws around your heart that keep you from being able to breathe expansesively and live in spaciousness and truth.

it was me. and the only thing i could change was me. i always registered voters, always being a peace marcher, always been for women's rights, always been certain ways, but i had to look at the fact that i am judgmental and bombastic and i have my arms clenched -- crossed again and my fists clenched and i didn't want to be enclenched in grippage anymore. i thought i don't know how long i'm going to live, maybe ten or 20 or two and i don't want to good out on hate. i want to go out on forgiveness and that horrible reality is that it begins with self-forgiveness and i had to look at the parts of me, they rocky cold parts of me that haven't african myself, and when i did i was able to get somewhere. and there's this wonderful -- he is a makeup pastor, the name is

david roach. and he became the pastor of a church called the church of 80% sincerity, and he said 80% of anything is a miracle. 80% of truthful and good and obedient and well-behaved, 80% is fair and i would say i'm 80% less toxic right now because you take the action and the insight follows and so i started taking absolutely more benevolent actions. stopped -- stopped spewing so much and i'm a passionate progressive, and i write a lot about politics, but i stopped spewing and i stopped believing that he was doing something to me, and i just thought, we're winning anyway. right now the tide has turned. and there's a little of topic but when the kids rose up at

parkland high school, i began to feel hope again. don't remember how long ago that was but when the young rose up, when white kids joined their black brothers and sisters in "black lives matter," i thought, we're going to be okay. between science and goodness in the young people -- young people were not there 20 years ago when we were marching for women's rights and ten years ago, and now they are. you go to any of the marches for any social justice issue and have people there young the young white men are involved because of "black lives matter" and that's what it took to break the trans. -- break the trance. but check again in three hours. we'll see how my levels are. [laughter] >> i could talk to you all night and there's other stuff i want to talk about. we have to get to some audience

questions. i want to do a few lightning round questions. >> how do you pray? >> i pray -- first thing when i wake up i try and say, hi, god, and in confession at our church, which is five minutes, during the service, i say, look, i think we both know what we have got on our hands here. and then i say, i'm sorry, and i sometimes mean it. sometimes i say i'm really sorry. [laughter] -- but you know i don't really mean it and then i'm not contrite. i'm not able to change that right now. but i know that it can't get him to not love me. i cannot get god of my understanding to recoil or to say, then the deal is off. and so -- but i lie awake -- wake up early and start to say, i say a little prayer that it's about turning my will and hi life over the care of god and always say the lord's prayer

because i some days do believe that we're in heaven, the kingdom is written, everything god primmed me is around me, there is heaven here when people are doing loving things, mr. rogers mother toll him to look for he helps after tragedy gentlemen had that catastrophic fire in santa rosa that killed and wiped out so much in its path, unbelievable, because of climate change and this was not -- it was-when you ask you a question and i say one word -- >> speed right. >> a lightning round. >> you can't do lightning round with ann. >> light inning around. >> that's the hardest part of loving someone else. >> well, just how annoying we all are. we're so annoying.

no offense. you're not. you're good. >> if you enough it was your last day, on this earth, how would you spend it. >> spend it in prayer. i would be doing what i always do, which is seek seeking union with god and goodness and truth and i would be doing radical self-love. my last day, i will only be eating dessert. i we won't even be eating fruit. i'll be eating dessert and will not have flosses for weeks and might smoke. it's been 32 years since i quit smoking. i'd -- mostly about not flossing. >> what's the thing you most differ like about yourself? >> how judgmental i am.

>> okay. >> that's good. left to my own devices, until someone busts me. its breaks the trance, this good, this bad, i hate that, this is good, this person is so lovely, this person i'm running for my cute little life. this happened terrible, this happened good, and that's what i most struggle with. >> okay. let's do some audience questions. i don't have time to look through these so i'll. >> how do you feel about social media and have your effects feelings changed? >> i never did any of it. i wrote a piece at sunset magazine you can get online that you will like. it's about not squandering your time, this one short precious, fleeting life you have been issued, anymore, and one of -- about ten years ago but it's online, so -- and i said, get off twitter. and i wasn't on twitter.

and about six, seven years ago my son and i wrote a book called some assembly required, online of his son's first year and he river head was sending us out on tour and both he and be people of riverhead we're not going to do that unless you get on twitter. they really were clear. they said you really need what is calling the social platform. and i didn't want to be on facebook because i knew that's all i would do. that and not floss. and then i discovered i could have a writers page at facebook and just write things. don't know how to work it. i have to supply neil or my feingold granddaughter or my publish exist ask them to post it. twitter, my son set it up and after a few days had 100 people and i called sam and said, i have 1 people at twitter. he said no way, yeah, yeah, and then i was off and running. i really -- i really rely on

twitter. there's ten people i follow at twitter i completely rely on for their perception of what the political happenings really mean or amount or what we can do. >> i briefed through a few of this and i notice there's a lot of them about writing. so make talk but your first chapter, the chapter, the first sentence is, what a bitch and you talk about you need to write your stories badly and people want to know what is your writing routine and what is the greatest wisdom you can impart beaut writing for people? >> well, i wrote a whole chapter on writing that is sort of an age pages of -- if i -- bird-by-bird consume. and it's mostly told through the format of the writing workshop is staned doing with any grandson in can kindergarten.

i want it el to tell you how to write in a way that five-year-old would understand. the things believe in are the original bird-by-bird story when my older brother, who hated school, had a paper on birds due in fourth grade in california you study bird in sacramento and you do a term paper and hehunt starred. due the next day he was in tears and my older brother was tough and did not cry. and my dad sat down with him and said, just take it bird-by-bird, study pelosi cans cans and put t in -- pelicans and put in your own words and then go on do juncos and then writes in your own words and it was just so profound. the short assignments and terrible first draft is told the kindergartensers is really poopy first draft. no writer you love write goods first drafts. i always thought that would have been so encouraging to know at an early age. my favorite line beside hi dads

was, writing is like driving at night with the head legislates on, you can only see a little was in front of you but you can make the whole journey that way. if you're not a writer in the habit of getting your work done you think the writers you like know what they're doing and where the book goes, a place to start and things along the way and good way to end the book, and no one does. no one knows what they're doing. until they do it and you write, two and three and four drafts. usually after the second or third draft you can show it. i'm sure you show your work to someone and they criticize chit i had. when somebody criticizeds my work i say, that's fine, we're not friend anymore. because now i hate you. and. [laughter] but you need someone to read your work. it's really hopeless. otherwise you're going to be handing in work that is not good enough yet, and people say i

have a friend doug in chicago who says things like i'm going to love this. the material is strong. the first page is just clearing your throat, though. don't need it. halfway through the seconds page i got interested. people help you, most writing is taking stuff out. like -- oh, god. i -- my mind win black because of he stroke i had in chicago -- denver, i mean. she said you have to kill your little darlings and you have to do it draft where you go now and take out the stuff you just love more than anything. the passages you think are so brilliant and the conversations that are just so snappy and you're -- you have to take it out because you're trying to hard. it's sticking out. when we read it we're going to bump up against and its go, it's great, clever, maybe we'll use it somewhere else.

but that means cut, and then i write at the same time every day. i'm much smarter in the morning, i just am. i try to get off to an early start. if i can. we have a grandchild, we he have a school lunches and all of that. but i really try. i really try start as early as i can. and i let myself write really badly. like these facebook thing is write that-under a thousand words, they could be two and three hours, and then i give them to neil and he'll mark them up or correct stuff, and then i'll fix all that and usually at the last minute you go through one more time ask still can make some good changes and at some point you realize just starting to hurt the book because you have gotten too uptying and perfectionist and then you release it to whoever it's going to. a third of creativity is taking stuff out and it's a erasing stuff. i used to always write on binder

paper with pencils because i love the sound of pencil on paper that ancient, sacred sound like the wind, and then i was -- probably the last person you ever known to come to a computer but someone bought me, i believe it mays publisher, bought me a mac, a strawberry mac. remember that year of the sorbet macs, and i got a straw werery mac so i write things mostly on my ipad now. i also have paper and pen sell with -- pencil with me. it's like you open up a mail box in your soul and you're open for business and start having ideas and memories or visions ore overhear conversations and the expressline at the doctor's offers, waiting in line to get a book signed and you go -- you can't think this stuff up. it's great that -- then you write it down. >> well, when you all read, almost everything, if you

haven't already, it will be hard to believe that any of it was written badly. >> all of it. >> from the very start but a it's beautifully done. >> thank you. >> its like to conclude with a line from the book, being a priest who has too deal with spiritual stuff all the time, to get a handle on what grace is, that amorphous notion we throw around, you have a sentence in this book that i thought said it so beautifully for me. and i'd like to leave it with us this evening. >> okay. >> it meets you exactly where you are. at your most pathetic and hopeless and loads you into the while bare row and then tips you out somewhere else in ever so slightly better shape. thank you for giving us hope, anne. >> thank you, edward. [applause]

... [applause] if you like to have your books signed, and will be seated at the -- no personal vision but she will send a new broker old vote and we ask there be no photos in the tiny lines as well. thank you are coming out and have a great evening. [inaudible conversations]

>> it up your name. my name is michelle nolan and i'm a member of the exact are lord executor street books and i'm happy to welcome you to the story today. buffalo stew books as an is an independent cooperatively on bookstore that's been part of the community in one station or another since 1981. feel free to browse a bit after the event and pick up a copy of "godless citizens in a godly republic" and support our mission for being a vital club for literature. i'm quite honored to introduce to you to these