A Tiny Spark of Light
 |
| Google Image |
Described as “an essayist,
memoirist, blogger and speaker” by Wikipedia, King was estranged from God and addicted
to alcohol, and in telling her story and the reasons she gave up the subsequent practice
of law, she provides unflattering opinions about the law and lawyers.
“…The entire legal profession,”
she asserts, “was so driven by the fear of not winning enough money, so intent
on covering its a.., so inured to the meaninglessness of the whole enterprise,
that if the truth had stood up from the jury box and waved, we would have
stared for a moment in shock, then made a motion in limine to rule it
inadmissible.”
Disillusioned
My apologies to any lawyers who
may be reading this. King was obviously disillusioned by her experience as a
lawyer – something that happens with many professions. But that experience and
a painful recovery from her addiction led her to broader questions about her
life and the equivalent of a common question, “Is this all there is?”
“Almost nothing in our culture
validates such questions,” she writes, “provides any meat, gives the person
worried about the state of his or her soul anything to latch onto.” She latched
onto “a tiny spark of light,” starting to notice, and focus on, the suffering
of others and “participate in their burden.”
Her recovery helped her realize
“the deep limitations of my intelligence, and also not to feel the need to
prove my intelligence. People who don’t believe in God, I’ve observed, are
often very invested in how smart they are. They’ll say, ‘God is for stupid
people’ or ‘I’m too smart to believe in God!’”
 |
Heather King
Google Image
|
I can’t say whether this
characterizes most atheists, but I believe it’s true that there is an element
of intellectual pride in doubt, which I defend in these blogs as necessary for
faith. Obviously, a sincere search for God rules out a motivation of pride.
One of King’s observations I
believe to be especially interesting is her distinction between “spirituality”
and “religion.”
“I’m not sure I can describe the
difference,” she writes, “but religion seems to involve another Person. To be
concerned about the state of my soul presupposes that someone greater than
myself is similarly concerned; to want to be held to my highest self
presupposes that someone else – someone who knows me to my core – is doing the
holding.”
Finally, part of what moved her
to become a believer was participation in a religious retreat and an encounter
with an “old Irish priest” who noticed the anguish of her search for God. Instead
of bidding her to “get a grip” or launching into a sermon, he simply said,
“You’re very dear to God.”
That moved King. Besides an
obvious personal affirmation, it resulted in what King described in another
place in the book as receiving “that stab of joy that hints at a world hidden
within this one.”
Change of Focus
As important as that type of
encounter may be for people searching for God, I believe another kind may be
equally important, having to do with King’s change of focus from herself to
others.
She describes the search for God
of a friend who also struggled with alcoholism and other disorders and the
friend’s decision to volunteer at a women’s homeless shelter, a work the friend
continues at the time of the book writing. King describes her friend’s
experience by quoting Mother Teresa as “the joyful participation in the sorrows
of the world.”
It reminds me of the famous
prayer attributed to St. Francis, the kind of prayer that I believe paves the
way to God: “O Divine
Master, grant that I may not so much seek to be consoled as to console; to be
understood as to understand; to be loved as to love.”
Comments
Post a Comment