Quotes from Operating Instructions.

A while ago I read a book by Anne Lamott entitled Operating Instructions. Since I've moved, whenever I'm back at my parents I try to clean up my room a little bit. This is a book that wasn't in my closet with the other "already read" books, and I didn't take it to my new place on my bookshelf of "to read" books. Upon opening it, I realized that I'd read it, but never typed up my favorite quotes. So this afternoon, I had a few minutes and typed things up so that I can put it away until I need it again. Enjoy.

Pg 48 Every time I say yes when I mean no, I am abandoning myself, and I end up feeling used or resentful or frantic. But when I say no when I mean no, it’s so sane and healthy that it creates a little glade around me in which I can get the nourishment I need. Then I help and serve people from a place of real abundance and health, instead of from this martyred mentally ill position, this open space in a forest about a mile north of Chernobyl.

Pg 155 Tonite Sam (the author's new born baby) and I took a friend of ours out to dinner, a young man in his late twenties who is badly strung out on booze and Methedrine but who is also a very sweet, bright guy. We went to McDonald’s and got Quarter-Pounders and fries, and we were sitting in a booth with Sam on the table in his car seat, babbling. I was talking to the young man about recovery, which he was starved to hear about- I think it must have been like hearing about the sun during an ice age- and then Sam made a loud spluttering noise, so I said jokingly, “Shh, honey, be patient, I know John plans to share his food with you,” and I went on blithely with my recovery pitch, eating at the same time, not particularly paying attention. Then I looked up and noticed that my friend had torn off about a third of his burger and was holding it tentatively in his left hand, and he said to me, “Is that about right?” and I said, “Is what about right?” and he held out the small piece of hamburger and said with exasperation, “I just really don’t have any idea how much he eats.” I mentioned this story to Pammy later, and she said, “Boy, scratch him off the baby-sitting list.”

On making good choices--If we’re not careful, we’ll spend our whole lives blowing on sparks and trying to turn them into embers, when all along they were sparks that should never have been ignited. In that capacity, I’ve looked like Neptune, cheeks filled with wind blowing on the sea.

On making good choices--One thing I know for sure, though, is that when you are hungry, it is an act of wisdom each time you turn down a spoonful if you know that the food is poisoned.

On her newborn son's face-- In the morning when he first wakes up and looks at me, it’s with such joy and amazement that it’s like someone had told him, before he went to sleep, that I had died.

Divine Patience

God scatters light across the world to the just and the unjust, he allows the earth to yield fruit to the worthy and unworthy, he bears the sins and wrongdoing of men, he restrains his wrath as evil men go about their life oblivious to God. The most visible sign of God's patience, however, is the Incarnation. For God allowed himself to be conceived in the womb of a woman and waited patiently for the months to pass before the birth of Christ. When God is born as a human being he patiently underwent the various stages of childhood and adolescence leading to maturity. And when Christ reached adulthood he didn't rush to be recognized and even allowed himself to be baptized by his own servant....Impatience becomes the primal sin, and the chief example of impatience is the devil. "Who," says Tertullian, ever committed adultery "without the impatience of lust?"
For Tertullian the singular mark of patience is not endurance or fortitude but hope. To be impatient, says Tertullian, is to live without hope.

-Excerpted from The Spirit of Early Christian Thought by Wilken