Browsing cable, I hit upon one of those Catholic conversion shows, set in a study, in front of a fireplace -- no carnival barkers and weeping testimonials for this sort of Catholic -- just the quiet conviction of being right, and a tolerant smile for those who raise the same old tired objections for the millionth time.
I deeply, deeply hate this stuff. I can imagine hell: being reborn as a mouse in that study.
They dragged in Chesterton, as their patron saint, a convert who then went out to confute the critics, because he liked confuting people. But Chesterton is a sweet man, an insightful and helpful man, and the poem they quoted as part of their argument is a quiet and friendly poem that gives those without religion a glimpse of how it is for some people. I felt obliged to rescue the poem:
G.K. Chesterton - The Convert
After one moment when I bowed my head
And the whole world turned over and came upright,
And I came out where the old road shone white,
I walked the ways and heard what all men said,
Forests of tongues, like autumn leaves unshed,
Being not unlovable but strange and light;
Old riddles and new creeds, not in despite
But softly, as men smile about the dead.
The sages have a hundred maps to give
That trace their crawling cosmos like a tree,
They rattle reason out through many a sieve
That stores the sand and lets the gold go free:
And all these things are less than dust to me
Because my name is Lazarus and I live.