News & Events
NPR commentator relates her story of alcohol addiction recovery and her Catholic conversion
Heather King speaks at Prayer and Pasta April 21
April 30, 2010
Heather King, a published author, attorney and commentator for National Public Radio’s “All Things Considered,” inspired participants of Prayer and Pasta, April 21 at Family Theater Productions, with her intriguing, testimonial of her recovery from alcohol addiction and a promiscuous lifestyle, her conversion to Christ and Catholicism and her life-long dream to be a writer.She had just returned from a 3-month writer’s residency in Taos, N.M., while on a year-long sabbatical. She gave up her practice of law to pursue a career as a writer.
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King, who has been sober for nearly 23 years, related that after 20 years of having “the obsession to drink at every waking moment,” her family in New Hampshire did an intervention and put her in a rehab facility for 30 days. That’s “where the first stirrings” of belief in God began, she said. “It felt hypocritical to pray, which only shows how merciful” God is. “It’s like what C.S. Lewis said, ‘God has been waiting for all eternity for you alone to just turn toward him,’” she related, adding, “So this obsession to drink was lifted.”
“It was an experience of incredible mercy and grace” and of the parable of the Prodigal son – God opens the “table” to you with no questions asked, she said. “Once you take your place at the table, the first thought is: how can I step up to the plate? You are called to something higher and that appealed to me. So I got sober and went to AA meetings. It taught me right away that you can’t walk the spiritual path alone. And that is why we are called to participate in the Church. You can’t do it alone. (Otherwise) you miss the whole gift. We need one another.”
Her ongoing spiritual journey led her to the Catholic Church. “My experience has been just what they tell us. The sacraments, daily Mass and reading the Gospel, praying the office – all of that leads me closer” to God. And, she said, that freed her from the bondage that kept her from becoming a writer, which she desperately wanted to be since she was a child.
“I get to write about the things I am passionate about, which are the mysteries of the Gospel, our relationships with people and ‘the joyful participation in the sorrows of the world,’ as Mother Teresa put it. Being a writer is a vocation, a calling, and you devote your life to it.”
King’s first two books tell her story of an obsessed alcoholic and her recovery and redemption: Parched, a memoir about sin, redemption, and rehab, and Redeemed: A Spiritual Misfit Stumbles Toward God, Marginal Sanity, and the Peace That Passes All Understanding. Here third book – borrowing a term from a T.S. Eliot poem – is Shirt of Flame: A Year with Saint Thérèse of Lisieux. It is being published by Paraclete Press.
Prayer and Pasta is usually held on the third Wednesday of each month and is part of Family Theater Productions' Hollywood Prays, a spiritual outreach to young adults pursuing and furthering a career in the entertainment industry. At Prayer and Pasta, they can find hospitality and nourishment for body, soul and spirit. Industry veterans and spiritual leaders serve as guest speakers, offering insight, encouragement and direction to the participants.
For more information, www.familytheater.org/outreach.html or call 1-800-874-0999 and ask to join the Hollywood Prays email group.