I’ve just finished a book by Anne Lamott, one of my favorite authors. It’s Plan B: Further Thoughts on Faith (Riverhead Books/Penguin, 2005), and is a series of short essays about her life, particularly her life with God. 

Lamott’s faith is nourished by a variety of sources—from the Christian church which she said in an earlier book (Operating Instructions) took her in and loved her back to health when she was drunk and addicted to drugs and then helped support her during her out-of-wedlock pregnancy, to friendly and intimate conversations with Jesus, Mary, and God the Father, to a Jesuit friend she describes as “a scruffy Birkenstock type,” to Zen Buddhism, to communing with nature. She has a conviction that “all the good religions” emphasize caring for those in need and recognizing that all of humanity are our brothers and sisters. Her philosophy doesn’t always resonate with mine, but it does so often, and she is so small-s sacramental that part of me can’t understand why she isn’t Catholic. But I’m so Catholic that I sometimes can’t understand why everyone doesn’t see the light and join up (then I remember some of the itchy parts).

Lamott’s writing is richly textured and full of apt one-liners. In her book about writing, Bird by Bird, she admits to always carrying an index card and a pencil so that she can write down a felicitous phrase whenever it comes to her. In Plan B she notes that one of the reasons we can survive as a society is that not all of the members of our tribe are insane at the same time. She says that laughter is “carbonated holiness.” Of living with a teenage son while going through menopause, she writes that there is wisdom in the advice to have children while you’re young, so that either the parent or the child is hormonally stable at all times, and she muses about what kind of a thirteen-year-old Jesus was: “If we really believe in the Incarnation…”

She writes about going skiing with a terminally ill friend, about a peace march, about a cruise ship, about helping her son meet his biological father and much older half-brother, about teaching prisoners storytelling, about starting a Sunday school at her church. She writes a lot about trying to trust God, and about how much better her life is when she does that, and when she tries to do what God wants her to do even when she doesn’t think it will work. She’s smart and funny and insightful and she shares the courage it takes to trust that God has a plan—maybe even a plan B if I foul up plan A.

Plan B is a book for grown-ups: Lamott is earthy and sometimes uses words we don’t associate with spiritual writing. But I think it is a holy book, and I think Lamott is holy in the way that all of us who are trying to do God’s will are holy despite our imperfections. And it made me laugh, and made me want to torture my friends by reading bits of it aloud to them. It’s spiritual reading for those willing to venture off the beaten path. Go for it.

My suburban backyard has a variety of trees and bushes: the previous owners had a hot tub (alas, they took it with them when they moved) and planted bamboo in the corner near it for privacy. The bamboo, supposedly lucky but actually given to spreading where it isn’t necessarily wanted, has since grown up to mix its branches with what I think is a neighbor’s ash tree and those of a fruit tree of some kind. I am not the gardener in the family; I used to say the farmer gene skipped me, until I realized that wasn’t a skip at all—my father came to New York from Ireland at least partly because he didn’t want to be a farmer. I can’t identify the fruit tree even by its small hard bounty (round and reddish and as big as a grape). But I appreciate the trees and vines and general peaceful greenery. 

The birds in the area also appreciate the mix of leaves and branches and make their nests in it. This year we had nesting pairs of cardinals and robins, and in late spring were constantly seeing the parents flit back and forth on feeding runs, just flashes of red, and then on rare occasions in the summer we’d see the half-grown offspring.

We also have the usual sparrows and starlings, some of which come to bathe in a small ornamental pond. A couple of big old oak trees, one in the front of the house and one in back, and a crabapple are the prime attraction for fat gray squirrels who think they own the place and that we humans are the intruders. But I think my favorite is the mockingbird.

Because the mockingbird imitates other birdsongs, and because I can’t really tell one bird’s call from another’s, it’s easy not to realize at first that he’s giving one of his concerts—my first reaction is usually to think there are a lot of birds out vocalizing. But once I notice a long string of different calls, I know it’s the mocker.

A spoilsport once told me that mockingbirds did their thing to entice other birds into giving away the locations of their nests, but I looked up the facts and that isn’t so. Other birds, it seems, aren’t fooled by the imitation calls, and in any case mockingbirds don’t rob nests the way owls and other major predators will. They eat bugs and snails and small lizards and such. The males do most of the loud singing (are we surprised?) and bird specialists think it’s primarily to attract females and secondarily to announce the boundaries of their territories. They have a distress call if their nests are being attacked, and other mockingbirds will sometimes come to help them.

For whatever reason the mockingbird sings, his song is delightful and sometimes funny, and though he may just be showing off my sense is that he is singing for the sheer joy of singing. And I can’t help thinking what a wonderful thing God thought up when he created such a small creature, one that would delight not only in a particular song but in all the songs of the birds he hears around him.

I am not an outdoorsy sort of person: give me a good book and an air-conditioned room and it will beat out a mountain hike any time you ask my preference. But I am awed by the big and small things of nature. I cannot be around mountains without being aware of the greatness of God, or near the ocean and not be aware of my insignificance. I cannot hear a mockingbird without taking pleasure in his song and thinking that God had no reason to think up such a creature except to give pleasure to humanity. He could just as easily have made only a few species of birds, and given them raucous calls instead of tuneful songs. He didn’t need to make the trees turn gold and red in autumn before they drop their leaves. He didn’t need to make the world beautiful, but because he is the God he is, it is his nature to create beautiful and wonderful things.

We are stewards of that creation, troubled now by our failure to maintain the perfect balance God intended. I can’t, in this brief post, even consider the ways in which human activity has upset and destroyed what God has created, nor is that my purpose.

And I don’t want to give the impression that I live in a secluded park somewhere: ours is a typical suburban lot with a backyard perhaps a little bigger than average for Long Island because we have no garage or carport. I am blessed because the previous owner—and perhaps whoever preceded him—had a green thumb, and because my sister fortunately did get a farmer gene from somewhere and does like to garden, and our varied flora attract everything from butterflies and squirrels and lightning bugs to rabbits and cardinals and mockingbirds.

I’m just thinking that the mockingbird sings in his own key, a key different from any of the birds he imitates. That’s how God made him, and how God made us, each to borrow, perhaps, from each other, but to sing in a key just a little different from anyone else’s.

I wear my mother’s perfume every day.

 That is to say, I don’t wear her perfume—she’s not around, having gone home to her reward nearly 20 years ago—but I wear the perfume she liked best. Actually, it’s “eau de toilette,” lighter than the full-strength version that would probably qualify as “French perfume that rocks the room” per Annie Get Your Gun.

 Anyway, I wear hardly any makeup except on state occasions and I always have a kind of wash-and-wear hairstyle, but nearly every morning I take the few seconds to dab on a little of the hard-to-find, flowery, feminine scent.

 Everyone knows that smells are evocative, calling up memories instantly. Kids’ wet woolen coats in a classroom; the first whiff of ocean when you’re driving to the beach; incense at the Easter vigil (and wondering why the coughers who don’t like it don’t have the sense to sit in the back); anything baking in the oven on a morning when you get to sleep late; bacon (remember before cholesterol when everyone could eat bacon?); the disastrous smell that means you’ve let the garbage sit too long; shoe polish; the awful smell when a dentist is drilling, even now that it’s painless—I’d bet nearly every one of those sets off some reaction in most people.

 Mom’s perfume is commonplace for me now, just a kind of automatic self-indulgence, but every now and then I get a flash of her coming, happily dressed up and perfumed, to kiss me before she and my father went on a rare evening out. All was right with the world.

 I feel blessed to have memories like that. My childhood wasn’t all idyllic, but my parents loved each other until death parted them, and even afterward. My father would buy the special perfume for Christmas or Mom’s birthday (that was after she had him trained, of course: the year he bought her a pressure cooker for Christmas is the stuff of family legend). He never left the dinner table without thanking and/or complimenting her. Whatever else was going on—and the first five kids were close enough together that there were usually several things going on—she’d take a minute to tidy her hair if not the living room before he got home. They were Mom and Dad, but they were also sweethearts. It’s said the best gift parents can give their children is to love each other.

Families are different from the way they were fifty years ago. We are configured in so many different ways, but we are still families. And maybe we still can give our children and each other the gift of great memories. Smells are optional.

Yesterday the mail brought me two copies of a brochure from the Knights of Columbus. The cover photo is a tight shot of the face of a beautiful, sleeping infant with one of his or her chubby hands reaching back to touch an ear and the other seeming to support his or her chin.

I realize there’s a redundancy in that last sentence: all babies, certainly all healthy babies, are beautiful, and there are few things more calming, I find, than just sitting and watching one sleep. (Holding one is even better.)

Across the photo, as one begins to open the brochure, is a line reading, “A people of life…and for life.”

The rest of the brochure describes, in very positive terms, the K of C’s commitment to life issues, and their advocacy of a consistent pro-life message. It says they are “pro-woman and pro-life,” seeking to support women “who are driven to abortion” as much as they seek “to defend the defenseless in our society.”

The other issues they mention are euthanasia, human cloning, and embryonic research. I wish they included in their definition of a consistent ethic of life opposition to the death penalty and the loss of life caused by war, but I’ll take what I can get. I presume that many Knights agree that those things also are part of the culture of death, but sometimes in trying to move people in a given direction one has to narrow the discussion, and the brochure is primarily focused on abortion.

What I like so much about it is its affirming tone. In proposing action steps, number one is “Volunteer—Your valuable time can save precious lives. Contact a local pro-life pregnancy center to find out how you can help women choose life and turn away from abortion. You can also support programs that work with women who have been physically and emotionally wounded by abortion.” It also proposes education, advocacy, donating funds, and prayer.

On the same block as the building where I work there is a large Planned Parenthood facility. In fact, the corner of Bleecker and Mott Streets, which I cross each time I walk from the subway to the office, is designated “Margaret Sanger Square.” (I nearly freaked when I first saw the sign.) I’m usually passing there before they open, but sometimes I see a young woman headed for the door and I wonder why she’s going in, and send a quick, silent prayer her way; once or twice I’ve overheard a man and woman who seem to be still trying to decide what to do about a pregnancy and done the same for them.

For a while there were pro-life demonstrators on the corner several days a week, and a Planned Parenthood guard in an orange vest designated to escort women past them.

The demonstrators were two men and two women, the men and one woman past middle age, the second woman perhaps in her late thirties. Only the younger woman looked friendly; the older seemed perpetually angry. One of the men wore a sandwich board plastered with pictures of bloody, aborted babies, with the caption “They are all babies”; the other man had a stack of leaflets.

I began to make a point of smiling and saying “Good morning” to them, but I wanted to argue with them. I thought their approach was all wrong, unlikely to have a positive effect even on a woman wavering in her decision to abort, more likely to drive her quickly into the building.

I never worked up the nerve, but I had my speech all prepared. “I’m on your side,” I’d say, “I’ve been pro-life since I was a teenager.” But if the man wants to wear a sandwich board, why not have a big picture of a beautiful infant and a caption reading, “Please let us help you have your baby”? Could they say, “Abortion isn’t your only option”? Could they use the quote the Knights of Columbus picked up from a U.S. bishops’ ad campaign, “Women deserve better than abortion”?

I never spoke with them because I’ve tangled with some pro-life advocates before. They—some, not all by any means—think I’m a wimp because I don’t think pictures of mutilated infants change anyone’s mind. They question my bona fides because I’ve never prayed the rosary on the sidewalk in front of an abortion facility. In fact I’ve written thousands—probably hundreds of thousands—of words in support of the pro-life cause, and arranged to publish my contender for the picture worth 10,000 words: the one where the infant being operated on in utero for spina bifida is grasping the surgeon’s finger with his tiny hand. That, I think, is a picture that might change someone’s mind.

We all have different gifts, and different callings. I think I’m more effective with a word-processor than a picket sign. I think we need to look at the factors that drive women to think abortion is their only option, to believe that that their futures will become dead ends if they have their babies. Once a woman conceives a child, her life is changed forever, but abortion is never her only option and it is never the best option. We need to work to make sure that is true and is communicated to the women who need to hear it.

I think the Knights of Columbus are on the right track with their new campaign. Bravo.