The Anchoress
Later this month, we’ll be celebrating the release of Heather King’s latest book, Shirt of Flame: A Year with St. Therese of Lisieux, but while we wait in joyful anticipation for our copies to arrive, check out my interview with this wise and self-knowing author:
Thérèse wrote under obedience. You sort of write under obedience, too, don’t you?
In a sense, yes. I am not affiliated with any movement, organization, cause, politics, or institution other than the Church. But that “other than the Church” is key. Without the Church, I am nothing. My “authority” is Christ; my authority is my heart.
I was trained as a lawyer and a big part of my search consisted in having “achieved” what supposedly constitutes the American dream and discovering that that particular version of it was killing me. I want to emphasize that lawyering is absolutely the call of someone else’s heart. Lawyering is absolutely where someone else is meant, and is going, to bring Christ into the world. It’s just that that is not where I was going to, and so I underwent a major spiritual crisis that consisted of trying to discern God’s will for me and discovering, as many of us do if we’re lucky, that God does not “want” us to do the grim, hard thing. He wants us to do the absorbing, exciting, “come-higher-friend” hard thing, which turns out to be exactly what we want, too.
She’s great; I can’t wait to read the book. In the meantime I hope you’ll read the whole thing
UPDATE: If you’ve never heard Heather King speak, here is a treat! Pat Gohn’s “Among Women” podcast this week is a chat with Heather about her book. Don’t miss it!
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