Submitted by First Parish in Bedford
Author and memoirist Anne Lamott will read from Help Thanks Wow: The Three Essential Prayers, her newest book about the simplicity and power of prayer, followed by a book signing in the sanctuary of First Parish on the Common in Bedford at 7:30 pm on Monday, April 8.
Lamott’s visit to Bedford is the only Boston stop on her book tour promoting the paperback release of Some Assembly Required: A Journal of My Son’s First Son, a paean to families inspired by her son Sam’s impending fatherhood.
The program is free and open to all. A free-will offering and a portion of all book sales will benefit the Unitarian Universalist Service Committee (www.uusc.org) .
While The New Yorker calls Anne Lamott “a cause for celebrations, [because her] real genius lies in capturing the ineffable, describing not perfect moments, but imperfect ones. . .perfectly. She is nothing short of miraculous,” John Gibbons, senior minister at First Parish likes a livelier side of Lamott.
“Anne’s got a down-to-earth style that’s achingly and endearingly humane, with applied theology and humor on every page,” said Gibbons. “When she once confessed to occasionally having such awful thoughts as would “make Jesus want to drink gin straight from the cat dish,” I knew that Anne was someone I wanted to spend time with.”
About her writing, Lamott says, “I try to write the books I would love to come upon, that are honest, concerned with real lives, human hearts, spiritual transformation, families, secrets, wonder, craziness—and that can make me laugh. When I am reading a book like this, I feel rich and profoundly relieved to be in the presence of someone who will share the truth with me and throw the lights on a little, and I try to write these kinds of books. Books, for me, are medicine.”
Thanks to an arrangement with Porter Square Books of Cambridge, Help Thanks Wow is available in the office at First Parish, and the paperback version of Some Assembly Required: A Journal of My Son’s First Son, to be released on April 2, will be available when Lamott visits the church on April 8. A portion of the profit from the sale of her books at First Parish will benefit the human rights work of the Unitarian Universalist Service Committee.
First Parish on the Common in Bedford is a Unitarian Universalist congregation that was gathered in 1729; built its historic meeting house in 1815; and was acclaimed as a Breakthrough Congregation by the Unitarian Universalist Association (UUA) in 2012. First Parish is fully handicapped-accessible and is located at 75 The Great Road, Bedford, MA. To learn more about the congregation, visit its website at www.uubedford.org or call 781-275-7994.
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