[home]

The original chapter subtitle reads: Something Very Beautiful for Jesus but for whatever reason, I feel uncomfortable putting that in the post title. It's the mention of Jesus. I guess I don't want to turn people off to something that is very beautiful indeed. The word Jesus, however, scares a lot of people. Myself included. I think I know what it means (and doesn't mean) to me but what does it mean to you? Like snowflakes, I don't think two personal meanings of Jesus on this entire planet could be alike. There's so much of the earthly self wrapped up in it. I'm weary of anyone who claims to know the categorical truth. Now the truth as you or I know and/or apply it individually, is something entirely different, isn't it?

Slowly, I'm making my way through Mother Teresa, Come Be My Light. Whilst reading it, I've been sidetracked by reading infinitely interesting and enlightening texts on Ethics and Major World Religions (for school i.e. my hobby). And I've been reading and thoroughly enjoying lighter fare like this (my bathroom book). And then not-necessarily-light fare like this (I do want to write more about that one later...if I can get past Chapter 2. doh!).

Back to the Mother Teresa book. It's a harder read (for me) than I expected. I expected it to be a little more like Frida by Frida, which consisted purely of letters she wrote with little interpretation from the editor. It might have helped that I've read various biographies and was familiar with the timing of certain situations but still, I just enjoyed reading her words as she wrote them and forming my own meanings and opinions about what she might have meant by them. God, I adore that book. And I quote: "She is absolutely a son of a bitch." ha ha ha

Anyway, I find that in the Mother Teresa book there is a lot, a LOT of stopping and starting. There's a lot of interpretation which I find disruptive and subjective. Then, of course, there is my own secular doubt to contend with. No small task, that. Nevertheless, I would have loved for this book to have contained nothing but her letters in their entirety. Her words and her words only. The words that made the initial impact they did on me when news of her personal struggles with faith emerged. The words that brought forth a sort of healing that remains hard for me to describe. Still, I soldier on, making myself available to those impressions. The ones that ran chills through me. The impactful references to the darkness and the tunnel that seemed to have jumped directly out of my personal journals during some of the most difficult, challenging times of my life. Times, that are a distant memory now but no less a part of me. No less real. No less formative.

Then, there is her lightness of spirit. Her seemingly unending capacity for love. This is what inspires me. This is what makes my heart sing. 

"...profiting by all the smallest things and doing them through love."

"Yes my children, be faithful in little practices of love, of little sacrifices -- of the little interior mortification --- of little fidelities to Rule, which will build you in the life to holiness - make you Christ-like."

"Don't look for big things, just do small things with great love...The smaller the thing, the greater must be our love."

I know it must seem self-important to align myself with one of the greatest figures of our time. It feels a little bit ridiculous, actually. But doing small things with great love is so my "gig."

Happy Love Thursday, my friends!