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July 5, 2011 | Anne Lamott said that the humor she finds in everyday life -- which abounds in her novels, essays and memoirs -- is nothing less than “carbonated holiness.” 

“Humor and laughter and silliness and giggles can get into some dark, walled-off places inside us and bring breath and lightness,” Lamott said. “When I am at my most stressed, I sometimes lose my sense of humor, and that condition is just a nightmare…

“The most important thing in someone’s writing is truthfulness -- the sharing of the authentic self, the higher self -- and if someone can help me laugh or smile while sharing this realm, I am putty in their hands.”

Lamott has been drawn to that “carbonated holiness” ever since she first wandered into a church in downtown San Francisco more than 25 years ago, cold, lonely and hung-over.

Touched by the gospel singing she heard wafting from the open doors of that little wooden church, she felt the power of the Holy Spirit for the first time as a real presence of God’s grace.

From that day forward, Lamott wrote in “Traveling Mercies: Some Thoughts on Faith,” she has embarked on a journey toward sobriety and finding true connection with others through writing. 

“I see writing as a vocation, a calling, like other people might feel [about] the seminary,” Lamott said. “Reading fiction is the ultimate pleasure for a lot of us, and we luxuriate in great writing even as it enlivens us. … It enlarges our hearts and our world, which is so deeply spiritual.”

Lamott has written seven novels, including most recently “Imperfect Birds,” and five works of nonfiction, including “Bird by Bird” (on writing) and “Operating Instructions” (on having a baby and being a new parent).

Lamott spoke with Susan Ketchin for Faith & Leadership about her writing process, what she has learned from tennis, the role that stories play in faith and in leadership, and what we’re called to do as Christians. The following is an edited transcript.

Q: Talk about your childhood experiences with religion and how they influenced you.

I grew up being offered by my family -- which was not religious -- some of the great Bible stories. But those stories were very carefully selected for their mythical meaning, their collective unconscious and their archetypal meaning and value -- like Abraham, Moses, and Daniel and the lions.

I was not raised to believe that there was particularly much meaning to my own life. The Bible stories were more like the Greek myths. We were offered the myths as ways of various people trying to understand the fact that life is very, very brutal and scary and weird and mysterious, and it really doesn’t make sense a lot of the time in that the innocent constantly, constantly suffer and are ground down by the powerful.

We have all understood what hell is like. We have watched ourselves be damaged by the people we’ve most trusted to love and guide and nourish us, whether that was our parents or our spouses or siblings or partners or friends.

For me, hell is when I’m absolutely stuck in self-obsession, this terrible, terrible self-consciousness. The healing and grace often comes from being put back together by people -- whether that’s people or stories from people -- that somehow help me lighten up and get my sense of humor back. When I have my sense of humor back, nothing can stop me.

Q: As a teen, you played the junior tennis circuit, and your novel “Crooked Little Heart” focuses on the sport. What have you learned from tennis that helps you deal with this sense of hell?

The one thing that happened revolutionarily for me a few years ago was that I fell in with a teacher whose practice was about learning to play tennis as if for the first time.

Q: In the sense of “Zen mind, beginner’s mind”?

Yes, how to hit this ball with the least amount of stress. It had to do with being playful and more natural instead of getting into that unconscious stress and gripping everything and trying to keep your eye on the ball and that fixation.

It was really about the gift of goofiness and the gift of caring so much less. It was about having a whole new mindfulness -- a new value of play. It was about having more fun with the people you were playing with instead of trying to beat them.

Q: Is it like the concept of “inner tennis”?

Timothy Gallwey wrote “The Inner Game of Tennis.” That book had a profound influence on me. He teaches you that your body knows what it’s doing and that at any given moment you already have all of the information and training you could possibly have to hit this shot with as much confidence and lack of grim fixation as you’re going to, and that there are ways to learn to divert your focus from the pinball machine of your mind to this natural animal body that you have.

Q: How does this practice of sports relate to your practice of writing?

Writing is so much about the habit of doing it. I had established the habit 30-plus years ago, and I just know that I’m going to show up and do it. I know certain things: that it’s going to go much more slowly than I had hoped, that I’m going to have to do 10 pages to get the three I’m after, and that I’m going to go through periods of drought.