This is the book that is making it difficult for me to get any work done...

Traveling Mercies by Anne Lamott

"Looking back on the [Catholic] God my friend believed in, he seems a little erratic...God as borderline personality. It was like believing in the guy who ran the dime store, sometimes with a kind face but who was always running behind and had already heard every one of your lame excuses a dozen times before--why you didn't have a receipt, why you hadn't noticed the product's flaw before you bought it. This God could be loving and reassuring one minute, sure that you had potential, and then fiercely disappointed the next, noticing every little mistake and just in general what a fraud you really were."

"More than anything else, [drugs] gave me the feeling that I was fine and life was good and something sacred shimmered at its edges."

"My coming to faith did not start with a leap but rather a series of staggers from what seemed like one safe place to another. Like lily pads, round and green, these places summoned and then held me up while I grew. Each prepared me for the next leaf on which I would land, and in this way I moved across the swamp of doubt and fear."

And here in dust and dirt, O here,
the lilies of His love appear
--George Herbert

See what I mean?