After she decided to join...
Illustration
After she decided to join the Catholic Church, Clare Booth Luce recalled an early experience when she was a young girl of about sixteen. It took place on a summer day at the seashore early in the morning, and she remembers, "a sensation of utter aloneness." As she stood by the water's edge, something happened. Years later after her conversion, she wrote about it in short, jerky sentences with certain words emphasized.
"I find it difficult to explain what did happen. I expect that the easiest thing is to say that suddenly SOMETHING WAS. My whole soul was cleft clean by it, as a silk veil slit by a shining sword. And I knew. I do not know now what I knew. I remember, I didn't know with any 'faculty'. It was not in my mind or heart or blood stream. But whatever it was I knew, it was something that made ENORMOUS SENSE ... Then joy abounded in all of me. Or rather, I abounded in joy. I seemed to have no nature, and yet my whole nature was adrift in this immense joy, as a speck of dust is seen to dance in a great golden shaft of sunlight."
"I find it difficult to explain what did happen. I expect that the easiest thing is to say that suddenly SOMETHING WAS. My whole soul was cleft clean by it, as a silk veil slit by a shining sword. And I knew. I do not know now what I knew. I remember, I didn't know with any 'faculty'. It was not in my mind or heart or blood stream. But whatever it was I knew, it was something that made ENORMOUS SENSE ... Then joy abounded in all of me. Or rather, I abounded in joy. I seemed to have no nature, and yet my whole nature was adrift in this immense joy, as a speck of dust is seen to dance in a great golden shaft of sunlight."
