Night's Bright Darkness: A Modern Conversion Story

by Sally Read

Hardcover, 2016

Barcode

5948

Call number

248.246 REA

Status

Available

Call number

248.246 REA

Pages

152

Description

Staunchly atheist Sally Read converted to Catholicism in the space of nine electric months. In 2010, Read was heralded as one of the bright young writers of the British poetry scene. Feminist and deeply anti-Catholic, she was writing a book about female sexuality when, during her research, she spoke with a Catholicpriest. The interview led her on a dramatic spiritual quest that ended up at theVatican itself, where she was received into the Catholic Church. Unsurprisingly, this story is written in the vivid language of poetry. Read relates her encounters with the Father, the Spirit and then the Son exactlyin the way they were given to her--timely, revelatory and compelling. Thesetransforming events threw new light onto the experiences of her past--her father's death, her work as a psychiatric nurse and her single years in London--while they illumined the challenges of marriage and motherhood in a foreign country. As she developed a close intimacy with the new love thaterupted into her life, Christ himself, she found herself coming to embrace a faith she had previously rejected as bigoted and stifling.… (more)

Publication

Ignatius Press (2016), Edition: Sew, 152 pages

ISBN

1621641511 / 9781621641513

Collections

Conversion Stories, Love and Marriage

Rating

(1 rating; 4)

User reviews

LibraryThing member judithrs

Night’s Bright Darkness: a Modern Conversion Story. Sally Read. 2018. Read, a promising young feminist, British poet, has written a good conversion story. She grew up in an atheistic family and had no interest in God or in any form of religion. When her daughter was three, she decided she’d

write a non-fiction book and decided to collaborate with a physician friend of hers on a book about the vagina. One of her tasks was to interview all types of women: gay, straight, Muslin, Christian, etc. In an effort to meet a nun to interview, she contacted a friend of a friend, a Canadian Byzantine-rite priest who had been exiled from the Ukraine. They began an email correspondence. Read’s anger and hostility at the Catholic Church didn’t seem to bother Father Gregory, and they discussed all manner of issues with the Church. The more they emailed and talked about God, the more restless and unsettled Read became. She attended a baptism in St. Peter’s Basilica and could not reconcile the beauty she saw there with the horror of the priest abuse scandal. Her atheism and hatred of all things Christian was at its peak, but her ability to write anything was gone. In desperation she turned to Dodie Smith’s I Capture the Castle, a book she’d always found some comfort in. In it she read the vicar’s comments about God, and this was the turning point, the moment she began to get a glimpse of God. From there she began to talk to Fr. Gregory, read books he suggested, and eventually be baptized into the Roman Catholic Church.

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