{"id":2862,"date":"2008-09-10T11:36:00","date_gmt":"2008-09-10T11:36:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/deaconsbench\/2008\/09\/i-am-a-witness-to-and-the-beneficiary-of-gods-love-for-all-of-us.html"},"modified":"2008-09-10T11:36:00","modified_gmt":"2008-09-10T11:36:00","slug":"i-am-a-witness-to-and-the-beneficiary-of-gods-love-for-all-of-us","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/2008\/09\/i-am-a-witness-to-and-the-beneficiary-of-gods-love-for-all-of-us.html","title":{"rendered":"“I am a witness to and the beneficiary of God’s love for all of us”"},"content":{"rendered":"

Those remarkable words come from the pen of Joe Eszterhas, a man who previously used that pen to write movies like “Showgirls” and “Basic Instinct.” He has a new book out about his conversion, Crossbearer<\/i><\/a>. And he just wrote a stirring essay<\/a> about his conversion that was published in yesterday’s Washington Post’s On Faith section online:<\/p>\n

My life has turned inside-out. I have stopped my excesses and replaced them with prayer and long walks. I am carrying the cross as often as they’ll let me at Holy Angels Church in Bainbridge Township, Ohio. And I have written a book as a thank-you to God. Not just for saving my life, but for saving me.<\/p>\n

I am witness to and the beneficiary of God’s love for all of us. Am I am witness, too, to the fact that His love is so strong that it was even able to open my rusty old closed heart.<\/p>\n

I will thank Him forever because He gave me new life and a heart which is truly able to love for the first time in my life. His love is mine.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Be sure to read the rest at the link. <\/p>\n

And: check out this radio interview<\/a> done with Eszterhas last month by Brooklyn’s own Brian Craig.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Those remarkable words come from the pen of Joe Eszterhas, a man who previously used that pen to write movies like “Showgirls” and “Basic Instinct.” He has a new book out about his conversion, Crossbearer. And he just wrote a stirring essay about his conversion that was published in yesterday’s Washington Post’s On Faith section…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":204,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27,19,11],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2862","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-converts","category-links-r-us","category-media"],"yoast_head":"\n"I am a witness to and the beneficiary of God's love for all of us" - The Deacon's Bench<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/2008\/09\/i-am-a-witness-to-and-the-beneficiary-of-gods-love-for-all-of-us.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\""I am a witness to and the beneficiary of God's love for all of us" - The Deacon's Bench\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Those remarkable words come from the pen of Joe Eszterhas, a man who previously used that pen to write movies like “Showgirls” and “Basic Instinct.” He has a new book out about his conversion, Crossbearer. 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Prior to that, Deacon Greg worked for 26 years as a writer and producer for CBS News, where he contributed to \"The CBS Evening News with Katie Couric,\" \"60 Minutes II,\" \"48 Hours,\" (Emmy Award, Writers Guild of America Award) and \"Sunday Morning.\" He was co-writer for the acclaimed documentary \"9\/11,\" hosted by Robert DeNiro. (Emmy Award, Christopher Award, Peabody Award, Writers Guild of America Award.) His radio essays were featured in the bestselling book \"Deadlines and Datelines\" by Dan Rather. He's also a two-time winner of the Catholic Press Association Award. Other places you may find him: AMERICA, U.S. CATHOLIC, CATHOLIC DIGEST, REALITY (Redemptorist Communications) and THE BROOKLYN TABLET. He also contributes homiletic reflections to the parish resource CONNECT!, published by Liturgical Publications. In November 2009, he began serving a three-year term as a consultant to the Communications Committee of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB). Deacon Greg grew up in Maryland (Go Terps!) but he and his wife today live in the beautiful borough of Queens, New York. You can contact Deacon Greg at dcngreg@gmail.com.","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/author\/gkandra"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2862","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/204"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2862"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2862\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2862"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2862"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2862"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}