Little: Lead Us by the Hand to Those We Are Looking For

Happier with Gretchen Rubin

Gretchen Rubin / The Onward Project

Education, Health & Fitness, Self-improvement

4.7 • 13K Ratings

🗓️ 16 April 2018

⏱️ 3 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

For years, Flannery O’Connor’s prayed to Saint Raphael, and her prayer led me to realize how much we want to be led “toward those we are waiting for.” To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	I'm Gretchen Rubin and this is a little happier.
0:02.8	One of my very favorite writers is Flannery O'Connor.
0:06.8	It's hard for me to read her fiction because it makes my head feel like it's going to explode
0:12.0	and I get so overwhelmed I can't even really quite bear to read it even though I love it.
0:16.4	Like her novel Wiseblood.
0:17.9	I love it.
0:18.9	It's one of my very favorite novels in the whole world and I can literally only read one
0:22.6	page at a time because it's so intense.
0:25.6	But I also love Flannery O'Connor's nonfiction which I find much less overwhelming and much
0:30.8	easier to handle for that reason and I particularly love her letters.
0:35.2	I have read the collection of her letters called The Habit of Being several times and in fact
0:40.0	I pulled it off the shelf because I'm getting ready to reread it yet again.
0:43.3	I find new things in it every time.
0:46.6	And one thing that struck me as I've been thinking about it over the years is that there is
0:51.1	a theme that emerges very late in the collection in 1964.
0:55.7	And at this point O'Connor's health is worsening.
0:59.6	She has a lupus and the sad fact is that we as readers know that she is in the last months
1:04.5	of her life.
1:06.6	Flannery O'Connor was a deeply religious person, a devout Catholic and I've always been
1:10.5	intrigued that at this point O'Connor starts to mention a prayer.
1:15.8	O'Connor writes to a friend about a prayer that she describes as a prayer I've said every
1:19.9	day for many years.
	...

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