a poet speaks to an icon

"Poetry gives voice to what has no voice and form to what has no form and creates the illusion of possession."I love this description by the award winning British poet Sally Read.I wish to read her poems,this young star in the literary world, but I bring her up because of a co-incidence.

The other day, I wrote about Howard Storm who has become a believer and a minister after a near death experience.He told his tale on a TV show, and then the interviewer asked what advice he would give to anyone listening.Breaking down visibly, he said,"Just ask Jesus to help you.That's all and wait.Even if you don't believe."

The next day,co-incidentally,I found a conversion story on line that touched my heart.This is the lead-in information:For almost all of her 40 years, a Suffolk-born psychiatric nurse-turned published poet and passionate atheist felt little but contempt for Catholicism.But then,in less than a year,after a springtime epiphany, she was received into the Church.This is her journey.

It is a long story but in the process of writing a snarky book about vaginas, Sally Read,came in contact with a priest and her questions and his answers caused great turmoil within her.There is more to the story but once in a church that she wandered into, this happened:"In that church was an icon of Christ and,prayerless,I would simply look at him.It was on one of those occasions that I spoke aloud to the face and asked for help.There was no visual or aural hallucination,or anything as a poet,I can use as a metaphor to tell what happened.The nearest I can come to describing it is to say that it felt like someone walked into the room that I recognized........I had and have no doubt that it was the presence of Christ...."

This is exactly how my spiritual journey started,a non-believer, who asked for help from a God that I didn't know existed.In the dark,in the night,in a church,in a seat by a window,in bright sunlight, He will take any crumb of turning.