gratitude for teachers

I am grateful for those who help me learn, understand and interpret the world, history and my faith tradition. I am currently on retreat with other women and the retreat is being led by Edwina Gately. What an amazing storyteller. Her book of poetry called Soul Sisters, along with her own telling of these women's scriptural stories, creates a powerful living image of them.

I am also currently reading, reflecting on really, You Will Be My Witnesses: Saints, Prophets and Martyrs by John Dear. He, along with Dorothy Day, has made the life of St. Therese of Lisieux more accessible and meaningful for me. So I will share a bit of John Dear's teaching about Therese:

Therese appeared to live an ordinary life, but appearances can be deceptive. Life in a monastery is difficult. She dedicated herself to the daily practice of sacrificial love toward those around her, perfecting the art of responding to coldness, rudeness, gossip, and insults with active loving kindness and inner compassion. She aimed these small acts of unconditional love at Christ in the other person and for the redemption of the human race--a spirituality she called her "little way." She wanted to remain like a child, as Jesus instructed when he said that we must become like children if we want to enter the reign of God. She understood this spirituality not as childishness, but as a profound trust in God through confidence in God's love, not just despite our littleness, poverty, weakness, and brokeness, but precisely because of them.