But if you are madly in love with your pets, as any rational person is, you know what a loss it will be for both me and my three-year-old grandson, Jax. This must sound relatively petty to those of you facing the impending loss of people, careers, or retirement savings. I know I won’t be able to live without her. That’s too bad, because as we speak, I have a cherished thirteen-year-old cat who is near death from lymphoma. Besides dealing with standard-issue family crisis, heartbreak, and mishegas, I feel that I can’t stand one single more death in my life.

What I wanted my whole life was relief-from pressure, isolation, people’s suffering (including my own, which was mainly mental), and entire political administrations. The planet does not seem long for this world. Everywhere you turn, our lives and marriages and morale and government are falling to pieces. Even for a crabby optimist like me, things couldn’t be worse. Lamott, who also wrote Traveling Mercies and Grace (Eventually), touches here predominantly on “Help,” the prayer that comes by being “sick to death of death,” while God tends to operate mainly by it and through it:

Playfully, she is really talking plain-and-simple about prayer book orthodoxy: supplication, adoration, and, well, thanksgiving. Coming from someone with an unconventional family and a checkered past, she delves simply and no-less-powerfully into ways we pray to God. In light of her new book, Help Thanks Wow, cherished rock-bottom mystic Anne Lamott wrote in Salon last week about the nature of prayer.

Anne lamott help thanks wow review