Eating too much honey

Eating too much honey

Last summer, Anne Lamott published Help Thanks Wow, a book about what she considers to be the three essential prayers in life.  Around the same time, she posted the following story on Facebook, which brings us back to a couple of important themes from this past Sunday's readings, including our human desire for control contrasted with our need to open ourselves to God's action in our lives:

Yesterday, when Jax and I were hanging out at the park, I was trying to climb through the opening at the top of a wooden climbing structure, to the platform where the slides are, and I got wedged into the opening for a few moments. I finally turned sideways and slid thru easily, but in the meantime, I felt like Winnie the Pooh when he eats too much honey and gets stuck in the opening to Rabbit's house. Our course, there were a dozen gorgeous young half-naked mothers and a few fathers watching, because stuff like this NEVER happens if no one is there. It's just like when I fell badly in front of the 7-11 a few weeks ago--lots of beautiful young people standing around watching me do my double-gainer onto the blacktop.

At least I got myself out. The park is right next to our fire dept. and it would have pushed me over the edge into madness if they'd had to come with the Jaws of Life.

A couple of years ago, my pastor Veronica preached on the passage in W the P when Pooh gets stuck in Rabbit's doorway, because he's eaten too much honey, as usual. For me, the solution is so often about acknowledging my powerlessness--which I hate, and resent. And how stuck I get sometimes in thinking that I am right, and have all these great ideas for my own life, and everyone else's. Anyway, after trying all these good ideas, which don't help at all, Pooh finally asks Christopher Robin, "Then would you read a Sustaining Book, such as would help and comfort a Wedged Bear in Great Tightness?"

That's one of my favorite passages in literature and scripture. I am so often a wedged bear, and the only hope is the sustaining book, and the one true friend; even as I know that it will only be a matter of time till I eat too much honey again. Oh, well (the fourth great prayer). 

Posted by Anne Lamott, Facebook, July 26, 2012

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