This little book is truly a gem.
Using one or two page-long reflections—that short and punchy
Magnificat formula that I’ve grown to love,
Heather King gives new light and
perspective to even the most common feasts.
With insight and discernment, King intuitively demonstrates
that—whatever the topic—she’s thought about, pondered, prayed over, and
finally, ingested what she hears God saying about it for her life. And with sincere openness, she allows this
Catholic faith to speak to her, daily.
I confess that I
’ve loved Heather King’s writing ever since
I read her memoir “Redeemed” –and I discovered her blog. I appreciate and am
thankful for the way she allows herself to wrestle with the meaning and purpose
of the personal events in her life.
She
gets that life is in constant motion—and that
our task is to say ‘yes.’
But perhaps
the greatest gift that King gives her readers is
her disarming honesty and vulnerability—and the fact that she writes about it, reminding
us to be “real” in our common pilgrimage of faith.
Take for example this reflection in the book, the entry for “All
Souls Day,” November 2nd. On
a visit to her aging mother, King acknowledges her life-long desire to connect
with her mom, to “know” her—and to have her mom “know, see, understand” her,
the oldest child.
“Mom,”
I blurted, “do you think after we die
that we’re reunited with the people we love? Do you think afterward we’re all
together?”
“No,”
she replied shortly. “I think when
you go you just go. I just try to enjoy each day as it comes.”
My mind raced. Mom, a lifelong
Protestant, believed in God: what about the Resurrection? What about the seed
falling to the ground and dying and bearing much fruit? What about Jesus
appearing to the disciples after the third day?
“Really?”
I said. “You don’t think there’s anything
afterward at all?”
“You
don’t have to worry about that,” she waved me off. “That will take care of itself. Let someone else worry for a change.”
I looked over at that dear,
common-sense face, and I suddenly saw that I must have driven her crazy with my
incessant desire to over-bond, over-emote, over-worry. I saw my whole life I’d
waited for a conversation that in this world didn’t, couldn’t, exist. Enjoy
each day as it comes. Let someone else worry for a change. Everything is all
right. Everything had always been all right.
Maybe the greatest gift we can give
the people we love, alive or dead, is to free them from our expectations. I
will pray for her, and all those I have loved, on All Soul’s Day.
But no one, not even Mom, can
convince me that we’re not going to all be together after we die.
Or this one, a reflection on Damaris, a woman of Athens
converted by St. Paul’s preaching in the Areopagus:
Damaris… her name appears nowhere
else in Greek literature.
Paul is preaching the resurrection
of the dead, a scandal in any era, and it is humbling to consider the
unlikeliness that anyone is ever converted at all. It is humbling to remember
that we go back in an unbroken line to these first few converts who were willing
to believe what we want to believe but can hardly bring ourselves to believe:
that death is not the end; that a lowly carpenter from the backwater of
Nazareth entered human space, time, and history, and vanquished death.
I once attended a prison orientation
in order to be able to share the story of my alcoholism with the inmates. For
three hours the trusty went on about the hardened criminals, the crafty
criminals, the criminals who would come for the coffee but not for the message.
But to have broken through prison walls yourself is to know that someone else can,
too.
At the end, I raised my hand. “A hundred won’t hear, but one will,” I
said. “That’s why we come.”
That is how our faith is spread,
then, as now.
Paul preaches. Damaris hears.
Trust me. This is one book you want to keep on your prayer
table or nightstand.
I do.
I highly recommend Heather King's book, "Shirt of Flame: a year with St. Thérèse of Lisieux," an insightful and provocative reflection on this timeless saint! 
