OPRAH’S NOT MY GURU, BUT ANNIE IS MY PASTOR

The other day I bought a t-shirt online that says, “Bono is my pastor.”

Because it made me laugh. And because some days it’s kind of true. The t-shirt — a pink, spaghetti-strap little number with black lettering — arrived yesterday. It’s cute, but, sadly, the lettering sits directly under my boobs. So you can’t so much read what it says unless I’m lying down or you’re three feet tall and looking up at me. Must have been designed by a man.

But I digress . . .

Today, the folks at Beliefnet have posted a couple of interviews with the left-leaning segment of the Jesus-loving community’s answer to Beverly LaHaye: author Anne Lamott. I love her. I just . . . love her. Her self-effacing, brutally honest, charmingly humorous approach to faith is inspiring, comforting and challenging. To me.

Here’s what Annie says, in part, about her conversations with Jesus (prayer, I guess we would call it):

I usually say “hi,” and I can just feel him say, “Hi, hi hon.” Sometimes if I’m praying for discernment, when I’m really stuck and I don’t know which way to turn–or, most likely, when I absolutely can’t let go of something that’s driving me nuts, then the way I hear is this kind of Holy Spirit nudge on my heart, where all of a sudden I have the answer. It always makes me laugh that it’s so obvious.

Or the phone rings, or the mail comes, or I see someone I haven’t seen since we were in ninth grade together. I see them at the health food store and they say something that was exactly the answer I was looking for. It’s like that beautiful line of Rumi’s that someone always fills the cup.

Right. So now I’m off to design a t-shirt that says, “Annie is my pastor.” I promise to place the letters in a more boob-friendly location.