While Traveling Mercies advertises itself as "some thoughts on faith" in its subtitle, the greatest gems are Anne Lamott’s not so subtle humor and reflections on the vicissitudes of life rather than the spiritual life exclusively. Written in the style of Bird By Bird [1994], this memoir of Lamott’s spiritual search — and the answers she offers — is uneven. My dissatisfactions with this work as a spiritual guide are numerous, but no one can dispute Lamott’s humor and probity.

Although Traveling Mercies purports to be a spiritual guide, it encompasses too many aspects of the author’s life. While her sections on son Sam’s Oedipal yearnings, her casual sexual history, and her battle with her ballooning buttocks, designated "The Aunties," illuminate her passage to spirituality, they seem distant — even distracting — from her intent. She prefaces the latter section with the comment: "Spiritual experiences do not happen frequently at tropical vacation spots for normal people who travel well, but there is no one fitting that description around here … So I was in the Mexican state of Oaxaca when I got my most recent brown-bag spiritual victory: I broke through Butt Mind in the town of Huatulco." While her details are mildly funny, and her conclusion that "a person being herself is beautiful" is inarguable, it is a stretch to connect them with the ineffable.

Quoting liberally from such diverse writers as Ferlinghetti, Jung, and Blake, Lamott is able to apply their truths to her own life. Particularly relevant to her journey is this quotation by Dag Hammerskjold: "I don’t know Who or What put the question, I don’t know when it was put. I don’t even remember answering. But at some moment, I did answer Yes." When Lamott traces the path of her affirmation, the book is at its most touching. Writing of a friend with AIDS, largely renounced by the members of St. Andrew’s Presbyterian Church, she recounts the Sunday when Ranola, one of the most critical and fearful members, lifts Ken "this white rag doll, this scarecrow" while everyone is singing "His Eye Is on the Sparrow." Using uncharacteristically spare prose to freeze this soulful image into a tableau, Lamott concludes poignantly "And it pierced me." The reader, too, is pierced. The passage requires no further amplification, and thankfully Lamott provides none.

Among her best observations are the most serviceable. Her meditations on death reverberate as she relives her sorrow and fear at her best friend, Pammy’s, passing. Alternately in a stupor or keeping herself insanely busy to avoid grappling with the agony, Lamott turns more philosophical than practical with the statement that "whatever you do to keep the pain at bay robs you of the flecks and nuggets of gold that feeling grief will give you …You begin to cry and writhe and yell and then to keep on crying; and then, finally, grief ends up giving you the two best things: softness and illumination." Later when she writes of committing Pammy’s ashes to the sea, she comments that the ashes are deeply paradoxical in nature, "impossible to let go of entirely." Again, by not glossing this moment, she encourages her readers to spin out their own parallels.

Much of the book is reminiscent of the language and tone of Bird By Bird. No doubt her line about Jesus wanting to drink gin out of the cat dish engendered chorkles originally, but the image seems sacrilegious — and even ludicrous — in Traveling Mercies. At times, she strains too hard for the comic moment, saying, for example, that an angrily demanding Sam looks "like a cross between God and Cindy Crawford." And surely she could have crafted a finer conclusion than a triple somersault thank you.