“Please spare me from the green vegetables.” That kind of attitude would not fly at all at one of St Teresa’s convents, I dare say. But it would fly like a wind in my home, where green vegetables are as common as gold coins. 

Contrary to what you may think from my journal, I am actually not perfect. This becomes particularly clear to me when I read St Teresa of Avila, this time her book The Way of Perfection. Unlike her Life and Interior Castle, this one seems to not be written with a clear progression toward more and more inner purity. It is more of a guidebook for her nuns, on how to live in the convent. So I think I should be able to get through this one, without coming to a point where I feel I am cheating by looking at a holiness that is so far ahead of me that I should not even be able to see it.

That said, the contrast between me and what she expected from her nuns is pretty damning. They were to live in such poverty that while she did not expect them to starve to death, she reminded them that if they did, it would be acceptable. After all, they lived for Christ who died for them, and if they had to die for him as well, it would not be a big deal.

The purity and selflessness she expected from these people is really shaming me, who at this time of my life still have hobbies.  They may be nice hobbies, but you really cannot fit that into the “way of perfection”. I assume even today, monks and nuns live a life of complete selfless devotion to God and their fellow humans, taking no time to indulge or even pay attention to their own interests. Living a life as God’s finger on Earth. That’s not how I live at all. Sure, I want to serve the Light, but it is more like having a job that interests you I guess. An employee is partly free, even if he thinks about his job a lot. A slave has no life of his own. He is at work even when sleeping.

St Teresa and her nuns (at least if they lived up to her expectations) were thralls of God’s love.  They had nothing else to do, no other goals than to serve their Lord. That may indeed be the way of perfection. But it is not how I currently live. I try to serve God in my way, and they in His.

I use to read a little in the book each day on the commute bus. (It’s on my Galaxy Note, so no one can see the title.) It may take a long time getting through it this way, but that is OK. I am not so much looking for revolutionary new information, as to be reminded over and over how far I am from perfection. Because, as I am sure my readers can notice if they will, it is entirely too easy for me to preen in my advanced knowledge and tuck away my imperfect life where you can’t see it.