I have been reading, We Have Been Friends Together, by Raissa Maritain, a French, personalist philosopher. She gives an account of her conversion from atheism to Catholicism.
To my great surprise, it is an envy of contemplatives that was a turning point for her. She found herself reading a book on contemplation, and she reports that it was "the only [way] capable of dealing with the inner life, of awakening that life dormant within each of us, of making us really alive and human in our spirit as well as in all our acts..." But she became aware that this rich, interior life comes only through grace. And so, feeling the desire for her inner heart to be awakened and enlivened, she says, "It was necessary, then, to believe in God." (p. 153-4).
I desire union with God, and so I must believe in God! How fascinating! I would never think a person would come to God that way.
But this shows me wrong. And rightly so--why wouldn't the beauty of the faith attract a smart woman?
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