Purpose Guides Institute Presents:
Invite your friends and family to explore Anne’s powerful teachings with you.
Anne Lamott
Sometimes life can seem overwhelming to the point of being unbearable - when from the macro to the micro, everything seems to have gone off the rails. But even as despair may overtake us, and when we are, as Anne Lamott puts it “doomed, stunned, exhausted, and over-caffeinated” - we can still drop in to the present moment and touch beauty. “All truth is paradox,” Lamott writes, “and this turns out to be a reason for hope. If you arrive at a place in life that is miserable, it will change.” That is the time when we must pledge not to give up but “to do what Wendell Berry wrote: ‘Be joyful, though you have considered all the facts.'” This event is about finding the sweetness in the present moment, and gleaning the wisdom and inspiration on the other side of brokenness, that can lift us up and carry us onward.
“We have all we need to come through. Against all odds, no matter what we’ve lost, no matter what messes we’ve made over time, no matter how dark the night, we offer and are offered kindness, soul, light, and food, which create breath and spaciousness, which create hope, sufficient unto the day.”
— Anne Lamott
In this special 60-minute event you’ll:
- Discover the potential for profound resilience that resides in each human soul.
- Explore the relationship between hope and love.
- Receive the practice of finding presence, love and hope, even in the midst of uncertainty and despair.
- Sharing stories from her own life, she’ll show us how to meet the full scope of the human condition with wit and humor.
- Hear about the upcoming two-session Book Club with Anne Lamott which she will personally host on Thursday, June 27 & July 11 at 5:30pm PST. We’ll be discussing Anne’s book, Almost Everything: Notes on Hope.
Praise for Almost Everything
“Anne Lamott has a rare talent for making writing look easy… Given the warmth, liveliness and intimacy of her prose, time with one of her books can feel like a visit with a friend.”
— Wall Street Journal
“Part memoir, part manual and part sermon from the church of Lamott, this satisfying escape points to notes of beauty in our uncertain world.”
— People
“Like a feminist C.S. Lewis, [Lamott] talks about God, politics and other unmentionables, and gently exhorts her readers, as she does herself, to find joy in a bleak and chaotic world: a leftie guru of optimism.”
— The New York Times
“Plenty of us have grown to trust Lamott’s spiritual compass. We settle in quickly here, knowing just around the next sentence she might pry open our heart, and pack in truths we will mull long after we’ve put down her pages… Again and again, Lamott steers us in and out of the canyons and potholes of despair.”
— Chicago Tribune
“That is what the wise and wonderful Anne Lamott considers with uncommon self-awareness and generosity of insight throughout Almost Everything: Notes on Hope— the small, enormously soul-salving book that gave us Lamott on love, despair, and our capacity for change.”
— Brain Pickings
“Lamott boldly sets out to share . . . she veers from the intensely personal to the philosophical, highlighting some of the ways joy and pain are close companions in life. . . . Anyone reading with an open mind and heart will come away with more than a few nuggets of useful wisdom.”
— BookPage
“Anne Lamott is our wickedly funny, self-deprecating, insightful guardian angel, and she’s given us the gift of hope”
— Pasadena Star News
About Anne Lamott
Anne Lamott writes and speaks about subjects that begin with capital letters: Alcoholism, Motherhood, Jesus. But armed with self-effacing humor – she is laugh-out-loud funny – and ruthless honesty, Lamott converts her subjects into enchantment. Actually, she writes about what most of us don't like to think about. She wrote her first novel for her father, the writer Kenneth Lamott, when he was diagnosed with brain cancer. She has said that the book was "a present to someone I loved who was going to die." In all her novels, she writes about loss – loss of loved ones and loss of personal control. She doesn't try to sugar-coat the sadness, frustration and disappointment, but tells her stories with honesty, compassion and a pureness of voice. Lamott does communicate her faith; in her books and in person, she lifts, comforts, and inspires, all the while keeping us laughing.
Lamott is the author of seven novels including, Hard Laughter, Rosie, Joe Jones, Blue Shoe, All New People, Crooked Little Heart, and Imperfect Birds. She has also written several bestselling books of nonfiction, including, Operating Instructions, an account of life as a single mother during her son's first year followed by Some Assembly Required: A Journal of My Son's First Son, and a writing guide: Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life. She has also authored three collections of autobiographical essays on faith; Traveling Mercies: Some Thoughts on Faith, Plan B: Further Thoughts on Faith, and Grace (Eventually): Thoughts on Faith. In her latest book of non-fiction, Help, Thanks, Wow: The Three Essential Prayers, Lamott gives us three prayers to assist us in trying times. Her new book is entitled Stitches; A Handbook on Meaning, Hope and Repair, an honest, funny book about how to make sense of life's chaos.
