I'm only two chapters into Anne Lamott's newest, Grace (Eventually). Although I thought I needed a break from her after her last book in this series (Plan B), I'm realizing now how much I've missed her. She makes me laugh like almost no other author, and there's something spine-strengthening and bracing about her faith, even if her theology sometimes seems a touch rubbery.

Anyway, chapter two is called "Wailing Wall" and it's a quite wonderful description of her attempt to teach a Sunday School class of three- to six-year-old boys (and herself) about "letting go". At one point she confesses her desire to whisper to a disruptive toddler something she read on a bumper sticker: Only one six-billionth of this is about you.

Maybe that's a well worn expression, but I'd never heard it before. It made me laugh and sort of gasp at the same time. I am one of six billion humans, and that's just the people living right this moment. (I tried to convert that fraction into a percentage by dividing six billion into one; my online calculator says that I represent 1.67e-10 of the population.  I have no idea what that means.)  As my own six-year-old says when she is truly staggered, "Oh my."

Every time I start to place myself at the centre of the universe, I am going to say, out loud, "Only one six billionth of this is about me." But if that produces not the desired humility and proper perspective but rather the underwhelming sensation of being as essential as an ant, I'm going to chase Lamott with a little Willard. This is what Dallas says, in The Divine Conspiracy: You are an unceasing spiritual being with an eternal destiny in God's great universe. How's that for significance?

If all that quoting and math and thinking doesn't do me in, I'm going to ponder the fact that God knows how many hairs are on each of the six billion heads currently nodding on this planet ... that He knows the name of each of the six billion unceasing spiritual beings with an eternal destiny currently sucking oxygen in His great universe.

Oh my.

CA