Friday, December 12, 2008

Anne Rice--A Christmas Catholic

It was COLD yesterday...and so off I went to run indoors in a warm humid environment giving me a chance to catch up on a podcast I had been looking forward to listening to. I try to capture "summer" in whatever way I can.

Anne Rice is an author that wrote about the dark world of vampires for decades. She was interviewed by Tapestry on CBC, describing her experience of being a devout athiest for almost 40 years, and then experiencing the call of God. She claims that it is hard to remain an athiest when so much of nature calls a person to admire the beauty created by God.

I was listening to her while still thinking about yesterday's blog post about finding warmth and hope in the midst of a winter in one's life, so I was quite struck by a brief quote that was read from her book as a preface to a question:

"And everywhere on December the 24th and 25th, the child is born again in the midst of inevitable winter darkness and reaches out with warm delicate and curling fingers."

The author then quote a part of the chorus of "Oh, Holy Night"-
"A thrill of hope the weary world rejoices, for yonder breaks a new and glorious morn."

It was fascinating to hear Anne Rice talk about her search to find hope in a world that she had previously seen as meaningless--she is transparent, knowledgeable, and candid about her journey. I don't think I had ever heard or understood "a weary world" in that chorus the way she invited me to hear it. Her internal "invincible summer" has the Divine as its source.

If you have a half an hour sometime this Christmas, give the interview "a listen".

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