From here, a story of a fiercely-atheist college professor who was attracted to Christianity when she noticed that she really admired some of her religious friends:
“Nancy was the most intellectual person that I knew,” says her longtime friend and USC language colleague David Hill, who teaches Spanish. “She lived almost entirely in her head.”
Lane says now she caught a hint of God’s grace after the breakup of her marriage, when her many friends rallied to her side to help her through the upheaval.
“There again, for no reason, people were wonderful,” Lane says. “I realized as I was healing from the end of my marriage, there were people whose intelligence and integrity I really admired who were religious.”
Hill and his wife, Peggy, were among those who had returned to an active Christian life.
“It really kind of surprised her when we started going back into the church,” Hill says. “It just didn’t compute that you could be intelligent and religious at the same time.”
Lane would accompany the Hills to church, usually on Christmas Eve, to watch the couple’s three children participate in pageants and appreciate the majesty of the ancient stories.
Lane experienced an epiphany on the beach at Edisto in 1999, she says, sensing some spiritual force was at work within her. “I give up,” she said then.
At services at St. Simon & St. Jude Episcopal Church in Irmo, the church that would become her own, Lane refrained from taking communion until one day she leaned over and told David Hill, “I just wish it were all true.”
Hill remembers Lane telling him, “I really desperately want to believe.”
“And I kind of quoted a Spanish philosopher, a Christian existentialist, Miguel de Unamuno, who said, ‘To believe is to want to believe,’ ” Hill recalls. “And she said, ‘That’s enough.’ ”
Maybe, Hill says, it helped that he appealed to Lane’s intellect by quoting a philosopher, but, after that, there was an acceptance of faith.
“She’s clearly still on the journey, but the pain is gone,” he says. “It has given her a very peaceful outlook on life.”
Hat tip: TitusOneNine.
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