Dear Editor: While writing my current novel, I arrived at a crossroad when trying to describe a ‘conversion experience’ (Father Lauder’s column, Sept. 26), not from an evangelical point of view, but from a metaphysical one. The protagonist in my work experiences it in these words….’It was the presence of something deeply intimate beyond the bounds of his mortal self, like a crack in the unreachable understanding of all that is, and which rose uncalled for from within.’… Father Lonergan has clearly helped me understand the intellectual, moral, and spiritual stages of this transcendence of the human spirit.

In my research, I have been greatly influenced by the writings of St. Augustine as well as other philosophical writers in my belief that Christianity is as deeply profound as any metaphysical abstract and which always points to the unexplainable being the substance of faith alone.

The fundamental difference is that science is based on physics, on rationale and logic, whereas the concept of God is based on belief, and I hope to one day achieve the ‘spiritual stage’ of divine experience as I’ve realized it is a journey that some of us may never complete.

PETER-JOHN CALITZ

Via website