We are in Scottsdale where the temperature is perfect and the weather beautiful. We were at mass this morning, Sunday and the priest spoke of a Carmelite nun who said that even though she is in a convent where prayer and meditation is an around the clock activity there are annoyances that come with living with other people. I thought of one of my favorite saints, Theresa of Lisieux, the little flower, who became a saint by the way she responded to the small irritations of living in a convent where in close quarters small irritations loom as large challenges. As the world shrinks to the size of the covenant and those occupying it, all things quickly grow out of proportion to reality. Theresa was famous, even though she never left the convent, because she was ordered to write a spiritual journal of her experiences and that revealed the extraordinary person she had become.

After services, I reflected on the people described in the book I’m listening during my commute to work, The Life You Save May Be Your Own. Too often the church throws up as an example plaster saints who we are told never did anything wrong in their entire life and whom we are supposed to imitate. It really makes it difficult when you are expected to be perfect when you know you are unlikely ever to live up to that goal.

The book describes Dorothy Day and Thomas Merton as well as two other Catholic writers. Day and Merton are particularly interesting people. Before her conversion to Christianity and then the Catholic faith, Day was a communist who lived with a man and became pregnant by him. She aborted the child.. She lived a bohemian life. She was arrested in a raid of a building occupied by the Wobblies, the Industrial Workers of the World, a radical union. She was an agitator for the poor and the worker. She spent thirty days in a hell hole of a prison. Afterwards, she married a man twice her age in a marriage that lasted only a few months. Next she fell in love with another man who was an atheist and lived with him in a common law relationship. She became pregnant by him. But over his strong objections she had the baby baptized in the Catholic church. She converted and as a result of her new faith her common law husband and she split. From that background, Dorothy Day evolved into a person who dedicated her life to housing, feeding and caring for the poor. Not a limousine liberal, but one who lived with the poor and experienced the same hard life the really poor of New York experienced. She was courageous. She was the first to protest publically against anti Semitism when anti semitism was common. She was a life long firm pacifist even though it cost her much of her financial and general support in World War II. But, in spite of all the abuse during the war, she never deviated from her pacifism and her love of the poor. She was a dedicated Christian who acted out the teachings of Jesus. She died poor with the poor and is an example for all of us to follow in her dedication.

Thomas Merton, spiritual writer and Trappist monk was another example of an ordinary person who turned his life around and became holy through conversion to Christianity. Merton’s life was one of an ordinary young man who led a somewhat wild and foot loose life. He got a young woman pregnant. They never married and he never saw the child again. While on a retreat at the Trappist monastery in Kentucky during holy week, Merton decided to become a Trappist monk. While in the monastery he wrote best selling spiritual books, but lived his life in a cloistered monastery where life consisted of sleeping on a straw mat, having one small cardboard box to keep all of his possessions in and praying frequently during the day as well as the night The monks would rise at 3:00 am to pray, took vows of silence (they communicated by sign language) and ate no meat, eggs or fish. It was a hard life, but Merton adopted it with faith and love. His entire life after his conversion was one of dedication to God.

For me, these are the kinds of people who are inspiring. They are normal people, not plaster saints, who led a less then perfect life until their conversion of faith. Like the great Saint Augustine, they left their previous life behind and walked a new path with courage and dedication. They may not have been perfect, but they are a lot more real to me then many of the past and present Christians who are held out as holy people.