This is the key part, but follow that link to see how Lamott sees this story of incarnation and grace as a Christmas story.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe only things getting me up the stairs are Terry, behind me, pushing me forward every so often, and this conviction I have that this is as bad as it\u2019s ever going to be \u2014 that if I can get through this, I can get through anything. Well. All of a sudden, the man in front of me soils himself. I guess his sphincter just relaxes. Shit runs down onto his shoes, but he keeps walking. He doesn\u2019t seem to notice.<\/p>\n
\u201cHowever, I do. I clapped a hand over my mouth and nose, and my eyes bugged out butI couldn\u2019t get out of line because of the crush behind me. And so, holding my breath, I walk into the windowless, airless room.<\/p>\n
\u201cNow, this meeting has a greeter, which is a person who stands at the door saying hello. And this one is a biker with a shaved head, a huge gut and a Volga boatman mustache. He gets one whiff of the man with shit on his shoes and throws up all over everything.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou\u2019ve seen the Edvard Munch painting of the guy on the bridge screaming, right? That\u2019s me. That\u2019s what I look like. But Terry enters the room right behind me. And there\u2019s total pandemonium, no one knows what to do.The man who had soiled himself stumbles forward and plops down in a chair. A fan blows the terrible smells of shit and vomit around the windowless room,and people start smoking just to fill in the spaces in the air.<\/p>\n
Finally Terry reaches out to the greeter, who had thrown up. He puts his hand on the man\u2019s shoulder.<\/p>\n
\u201cWow,\u201d he says. \u201cLooks like you got caught by surprise.\u201d And they both laugh. Right? Terry asks a couple of guys to go with him down the hall to the men\u2019s room, and help this guy get cleaned up. There are towels there, and kitty litter, to absorb various effluvia, because this is a meeting where people show up routinely in pretty bad shape. So while they\u2019re helping the greeter get cleaned up, other people start cleaning up the meeting room.<\/p>\n
Then Terry approaches the other man. \u201cMy friend,\u201d he says gently, \u201cit looks like you have trouble here.\u201d<\/p>\n
The man just nods.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re going to give you a hand,\u201d says Terry.<\/p>\n
\u201cSo three men from the recovery house next door help him to his feet,walk him to the halfway house and put him in the shower. They wash his clothes and shoes and give him their things to wear while he waits. They give him coffee and dinner, and they give him respect. I talked to these other men later, and even though they had very little sobriety, they did not cast this other guy off for not being well enough to be there. Somehow this broken guy was treated like one of them, because they could see that he was one of them. No one was pretending he wasn\u2019t covered with shit, but there was a real sense of kinship. And that is what we mean when we talk about grace.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
It\u2019s kind of a Christmas tradition here to post an excerpt from Anne Lamott\u2019s \u201cAdvent Adventure.\u201d This is the key part, but follow that link to see how Lamott sees this story of incarnation and grace as a Christmas story. \u201cThe only things getting me up the stairs are Terry, behind me, pushing me forward […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":141,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5403","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\n
'He was one of them'<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"It's kind of a Christmas tradition here to post an excerpt from Anne Lamott's "Advent Adventure." This is the key part, but follow that link to see how\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/2011\/12\/24\/he-was-one-of-them\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"'He was one of them'\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"It's kind of a Christmas tradition here to post an excerpt from Anne Lamott's "Advent Adventure." 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