William Kurelek: from darkness to light.

Here, in the spirit of Christmas, is a more than usually remarkable conversion story--jaw-dropping, really. William Kurelek, a well-known Canadian Catholic artist who died in 1977 at the age of 50, let us in on his extraordinary spiritual journey in a disarmingly candid autobiography, Someone with me. "Once--it seems a long time ago now--I had set out on my wanderings, a puzzled and unhappy young man in search of peace and happiness in what was obviously an imperfect world.... This is the story of that search and how I found that this persistent hope in people's hearts--of attaining perfect happiness--is actually quite justified! My big mistake was in looking for it in the wrong place."

William Kurelek's difficulties stemmed from the collision of his sensitive, creative and highly artistic nature with his father's harshness, and stern judgments, and from the equally harsh, roughhouse society of rural Manitoba. From his earliest days, Kurelek suffered intensely from a profound introversion, feelings of inferiority, and an inability to fit in or to connect with others; what he termed "depersonalization." He was "a square peg" and any attempt (and there were many) "to drive me into round holes like everyone else was senseless and cruel."

A saving grace for young Bill was his talent for drawing; through this he was granted a measure of acceptance and even admiration from his peers. He determined to be a painter; his father wanted his oldest son to be a doctor. Despite young Bill's attempts to both prove himself worthy of his father's regard, and to tear free of the effect of his parent's disdain (which he did by leaving home, briefly studying art in Toronto and Mexico, taking on various menial jobs and wanderings--a lifestyle that led one of his sisters to call him "the original hippie"), his inner turmoil, depression and emotional isolation increased. While he lacked any spiritual formation, he was for a short time during childhood fervently religious, but by early manhood had opted for atheism. Kurelek also became convinced psychology was his answer, finally traveling to England to seek long-term psychiatric help.

What proved ultimately life-changing for Bill was his friendship with an occupational therapist, Margaret, at Maudsley Psychiatric hospital. Single and 10 years his senior, Margaret "gave me an hour of her own time at the end of her working day, so I could talk over the things that were weighing most on my mind." Soon he discovered that Margaret was a Catholic; she made no attempt to convert him, "but I had become curious. Was that indefinable something I sensed about her derived from her faith perhaps; that, what shall we call it--cleanliness? Moral steadiness? Self sacrifice? Discipline? To pin this thing down I began to ask a question here, a question there." Moreover, "I asked if by chance she was praying for me. Once again came the simple answer, nothing more, nothing less--'Yes, I am.'"

Despite this connection, Kurelek's condition deteriorated. Transferred to another hospital, he attempted suicide. "I so desperately wanted to break through the depersonalization thing--the thing that prevented me from experiencing life deeply. And so I imagined that if I could just grasp the reality of death, then the opposite life would also become real to me." After this episode, he was given shock treatment; initially glad that something concrete was being done to help him, he soon came to hate those black days. "There is an instinctive dread in a person of being annihilated.... It is said sorrow remarries us to God and how true that is with many people. Here was a genuinely humbling experience. One prays best when one is really and helplessly 'up against it.' That is when I, too, resumed prayer and [I] have been praying ever since."

After an unspecified number of shock treatments, Bill was deemed well enough to be released from the hospital, and he took lodgings in London. Margaret remained close as he struggled to live on meagre earnings from painting, but despite his dire poverty, Kurelek did not consider suicide again. "Why? Because the Catholic Church said it was wrong." He had arrived. With typical intensity, he flung himself into learning all he could about the Catholic Church.

Bill Kurelek's subsequent life unfolded with far less drama: he received instruction, was baptized, returned to Canada; he thought he was in love with Margaret but they mutually discerned it was not meant to be. He then settled in Toronto, married and had four children, and was a devout Catholic and a highly successful artist for the remainder of his earthly life. His art was frequently of a moral nature; he was an ardent pro-lifer who did not flinch from portraying the graphic reality of abortion on occasion.

Sometimes in this gloomy world our feeble faith must stretch to the limit to believe that love is stronger than death, that good is more powerful than evil. As winter darkness overtakes us, we prepare to celebrate the coming of the Saviour into the world, and with grateful hearts can contemplate this account of God's infinite mercy and tenderness, and the triumph of grace, for who among us cannot, with the psalmist, say: I was stupid and cud not understand/No better than a beast in your sight?" Yet hope in faith in this: "And yet I was always in Your presence;/You were holding me by my right hand./You will guide me by Your counsel/And so You will lead me to glory" (Ps. 73).

Lianne Laurence writes from Burnaby, BC, and is the author of the book Borowski: A Available from Interim Publishing, [phone].