I don't know about preachers and sermons and bible class,

but this speaks to me. . .

"You don't want to die when you're this upset--you get a bad room in heaven with the other hysterics, the right-to-lifers, and the exercise compulsives. But thinking of heaven made me remember something: that I believe in God. And I smote my own forehead."

"Over the years, my body has not gotten firmer. Just the opposite, in fact. But when I feel fattest and flabbiest and most repulsive, I try to remember that gravity speaks; also, that no one needs that plastic-body perfection from women of age and substance. Also, that I do not live in my thighs or in my droopy butt. I live in joy and motion and cover-ups. I live in the nourishment of food and the sun and the warmth of the people who love me."

"I was desperate to fix him, fix the situation, make everything happy again, and then I remembered this basic religious principle that God isn't there to take away our suffering or our pain but to fill it with his or her presence, so I prayed for the health simply to enter into Sam's disappointment and keep him company."

"And then the music began.
"Mandolin music. A folksy bluegrass trio began playing, the mandolin offering the quavering meoldy, then two guitars joined in, and then three voices singing. We turned slowly to look at the musicians. A woman got up from her table and began to dance on the lawn between us and the stage, all by herself, and I thought to myself, I wish I were the kind of person who could dance in public, not caring what everyone thought. And I wanted to be this way so badly that after a minute I just got up, moved closer to the music, toward the one woman dancing, and slowly and very shyly and without enormous visible grace, began to move in time to the music. I figured that once I stepped forward into that spotlight, another would appear somewhere near my feet, and if it didn't, at least I'd have had the chance to dance.
"So I did, dancing with my eyes closed so as not to be distracted. Nietzsche said that he could only believe in a God who would dance, and I feel the same way: not Jesus as John Travolta, but Jesus as Judith Jamison, the great black dancer with Alvin Ailey, a shining, long-limbed, elegant crane."

~Anne Lamott, Traveling Mercies