Free Plan B by Anne Lamott Page B

dancer’s.
    He described his first game of spin-the-bottle, when the girl who was chosen to kiss him recoiled in horror, and he said to her, debonairly, “You know you want me.” Then he admitted sheepishly that he didn’t actually say that for twenty years; but in soul time, it’s never too late. He told of loving a teenage girl named Carol, of how it took months to ask her out, and that when he did, she accepted. They went to the movies and afterward sat on his front porch; he kept trying to put his arm around her but couldn’t quite do it, so they talked and talked and talked. He wanted to kiss her but was too shy to ask; he was afraid it was like asking her to kiss a monster. Finally she said, “I need to go home now,” and he said, “Carol, I want to kiss you,” and she said, “David, I thought you’d never ask.”
    That was a moment of true grace, and from this experience, he built a church inside himself. There is no physical church, but his own life: both his performances and his work teaching people to tell their stories, their marvelous, screwed-up, and often hilarious resurrection stories. Voilà: a church.
    â€œWe in the Church of Eighty Percent Sincerity do not believe in miracles,” he said. “But we do believe that you have to stay alert, because good things happen. When God opens the door, you’ve got to put your foot in.
    â€œEighty percent sincerity is about as good as it’s going to get. So is eighty percent compassion. Eighty percent celibacy. So twenty percent of the time, you just get to be yourself.”
    It’s such subversive material, so contrary to everything society leads us to believe—that if you look good, you’ll be happy, and have it all together, and you’ll be successful and nothing will go wrong and you won’t have to die, and the rot won’t get in.
    In the Church of 80% Sincerity, you definitely don’t have to look good, but you are supposed to meditate. According to David’s instructions, you sit quietly with your eyes closed and you follow your breath in and out of your body, gently watching your mind. Your mantrashould go like this: “Why am I doing this? This is such a waste! I have so much to do! My butt itches. . . .” And if you stick to it, he promised, from time to time calm and peace of mind will intrude. After some practice with this basic meditation, you will be able to graduate to panic meditations, and then sex fantasy meditations. And meditations on what to do when you win the lotto.
    When David insists you are fine exactly the way you are, you find yourself almost believing him. When he talks about unconditional love, he gives you a new lease on life, because the way he explains it, you may, for the first time, believe that even you could taste of this. As he explains it, in the Church of 80% Sincerity, everyone has come to understand that unconditional love is a reality, but with a shelf life of about eight to ten seconds. Instead of beating yourself up because you feel it only fleetingly, you should savor those moments when it appears. As David puts it, “We might say to our beloved, ‘Honey, I’ve been having these feelings of unconditional love for you for the last eight to ten seconds.’ Or ‘Darling, I’ll love you till the very end of dinner.’ ”
    David has been married to a beautiful woman named Marlena for the last few years. After listening to his lovely words, his magic, this doesn’t seem at all strange. Therehe is, standing in front of a crowd, and everyone can see that just about the worst thing that could happen to a person physically has happened to him. Yet he’s enjoying himself immensely, talking about the ten seconds of grace he felt here, the ten seconds he felt there, how those moments filled him and how he makes them last a little longer. Everyone watching gets happy because he’s