It's a tale I know well. So many similarities: the attraction to and influence of C.S. Lewis, the encounter with Aslan, the lure of poetry and beauty, the stubborn refusal to, as Lewis said, lay down our arms. There was the intellectual thirst to investigate, grasp, comprehend, the need to find real and concrete answers. The relentless search for truth, wherever it led. There was the stop at the Episcopal Church before reception into the Catholic Church, and the recognition that this is not the end of the journey, that surrender is not something now in the rearview mirror but something that is asked of us every moment that we continue down this road.
It was uncanny, at times, to read Ordway's story, as there were many moments that echoed my own experiences -- at times she even quoted the same poems that touched me in my conversion process, with perhaps the most powerful echo ringing from John Donne:
Batter my heart, three-person'd God, for you
As yet but knock, breathe, shine, and seek to mend;
That I may rise and stand, o'erthrow me, and bend
Your force to break, blow, burn, and make me new.
Not God's Type is a beautiful book. I hesitate to say much more about it because Ordway's story doesn't need to be dissected. It is a story -- a reality -- that you should simply breathe in, and you don't need me to tell you how inhale deeply of clean, clear, fresh air.
2 comments:
Sounds SUPER interesting...
Yes -- I loved the way she showed God at work through imagination, even when one cannot yet imagine that He could be real. :)
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