Some Conversions are Hard to Believe

 Please, Lord, teach me now how to serve you with all my heart, to know at last what it really is to love, to adore, so that I may worthily administer your kingdom here on earth, and find my true honour in serving your divine will.’

When Thomas Becket was consecrated bishop, this was the prayer he recited.  At least, this is the prayer, author Jean Anouilh put in Becket's mouth, in the play.  I think everyone can pray it.  Don't we all aspire to do God's will?

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Becket had a religious conversion, and it defined his life from then on.  Hard to believe; it does happen.  Many monks, nuns, and other religious, can attest to that fact.

Intuition

 

The Church taught what I had instinctively always felt as a writer: the smallness of a life does not diminish it; the brevity of a moment does not reduce its importance; death is not the end.

Amen to that!  These words are from Sally Read’s Night’s Bright Darkness—a spiritual memoir. This book is a conversion story.  Sally Read is a poet, a writer, and a mystic.  I enjoyed her writing, not so much her experiences.   

I couldn’t exactly put my finger on the time (place, time, action) that her conversion happened.  It wasn’t an auditory message, like St. Augustine.  It wasn’t a personal apparition like Roy Schoemann had.  It wasn’t a physical occurrence as St. Paul had.  I think Sally’s was intellectual.  She figured out that there just might possibly be a God.  She wasn’t brought up as a believer, so she didn’t have eyes to see or ears to hear.  But she did have a mind to reason. 

Once she became open to God, grace flowed.  She was blessed with good friends who were spiritually mature, lay women and priests.  She also was a reader who voraciously read as much as possible.  Also her little daughter seemed to guide her thinking.  Her husband tolerated her new found religiosity and eventually accepted it as their family’s new normal.  

Personally, I think the quote I began with explains Sally’s conversion.  She was a poet, and as a poet she intuitively knew there was beauty in the world.  There is always more than what our eyes see, and ears hear, and hearts feel.  When Sally opened herself to the possibility of a Creator, she believed.