I've said this in every book, but there was this priest,

Father Dowling, who helped Bill Wilson get a A off the ground in 1935.

He was not an alcoholic.

And he said to Bill, sometimes I think that heaven is just a new pair of glasses.

And so with people that are very resistant to any kind of higher power,

a power greater than

their own troubled, angry, controlling minds, I ask them to try to put on a new pair of glasses.

Welcome to the spiritual life. I'm Father Jim Martin. On this podcast, we reflect on how people experience God in their prayer and in their daily lives. And I'm joined by my, I always try to think of a good adjective. I was thinking, insightful producer. How's that, Maggie Van Dorn? Thanks, Jim. It's really good to be here. And I cannot believe that we are speaking with the great Annie Lamont. Yeah, and I'm really

curious about your own experience with Annie Lamont. We asked her at the beginning, she's Anne

Lamont, but she goes by Annie, so that's what we're going to call her in the interview. When did you

first discover the writing of Annie Lamont? It was in undergrad when I was a do-eyed theology major.

I think I was first introduced to her work bird by bird.

Then later in Div school, it was her book, Help Thanks, Wow.

But yeah, I just fell in love with her writing. It was candid,

probing, insightful, funny, and irreverent, which was something that I wasn't used to hearing at that

time. I thought that in order to be a religious person, you had to adopt a certain pious speak.

And Annie wasn't performing any of that. She was authentically herself and spiritually seeking

all the same. Yeah, so honest, and that's what really appealed to me when I read. I think

Traveling Mercies was the first book that I read, you know,

sort of autobiographical. I like that kind of spirituality, narrative theology. And you're right,

she's just, she brings that kind of poets and writers' sensibility to the spiritual life,

which not all spiritual writers have. I mean, we're not all perfect writers. And she's really a

...