On St. Therese of Lisieux Who Could Have Made My Life Impossible

It's the Feast Day of St. Therese of Lisieux. Carmelite nun. She died very young of tuberculosis and now loved by millions of Catholics across the world and by plenty of non-Catholics too.

My life could have been very different because of her. Nonexistent. She could have led my mum to a very different life.

My mum read Therese's autobiography when it was published in English and decided she wanted to be a nun too. I could have never been born.

I think in part it was rebellion because my grandad told his kids he was happy for them to be anything they want except Christian or Communist. For the same reasons. None of his five children became Communists. But one is an evangelical Baptist minister.

Fortunately for me my mum's desire for enclosed religious community waned not long after her Catholic baptism as a teenager.

She was lured away by a gravedigger, a future Radio 1 DJ, and then by my dad.

The book pictured was given to me by a nun when I was received into the Catholic Church. There's still a bookmark. On page 57.

I am no longer Catholic or theist but in some ways the idea of an enclosed contemplative life still appeals deeply. But only if I could escape and walk in the hills or get myself a pasty from Pink Lane or solve puzzles or get online and write weird Facebook posts like this. And only if it could be free from dogma or from compulsory belief in religious teachings or religious books and free from the many crazier things people have found or invented after rejecting Christianity. Messages from nine dimensional Venusians come to mind!

Apart from dogma and everything that bought, good and bad, Therese wrote with some wisdom and compassion and said things that the Catholic Church had often forgotten when tending to push piety and spiritual growth to religious orders rather than embracing their possibility for anyone.

Without following her path her autobiography is still an excellent read. It's a stunning picture of devout French religious life 150 years ago and is far easier reading than Teresa of Avila or John of the Cross, earlier Carmelite "Doctors of the Church."

These days I also think of her as quite messed up though. If you believe you deserve to suffer, a Carmelite community in 19th century France was a good place to do it and to mourn that you're not suffering well enough. I can understand a belief like that far too well. I found it even more Saint Faustina who is mentioned on that bookmark on page 57 and who also died young from tuberculosis. Perhaps I judge them both too harshly as a result of my own battles with self rejection.

Perhaps not. Therese on page 136 offers herself to Jesus as "a little plaything ... to use me like a little ball of no value which He could throw on to the ground ... I wanted to give myself up to his childish whims." Is that healthy? You can decide whether that level of self offering is beautiful or abusive or something else. For years I longed to live at that level too.

Even now I still have to consciously reject that belief. Many of us do. The way of Therese provided her a joyful answer to those kinds of belief. A better but perhaps difficult answer depending on the rootedness of the belief is first to reject it and then look again at the possibilities of life.

To live with any variety of that belief brings a vulnerability to being drawn into all kinds of groups, both religious and secular, offering answers. Some, innocent. Some, strange but supportive. Some, extreme dangerous and sinister. Some may even offer the means to find freedom from the belief and move on in that liberty. That's not common though. Most exploit it, some deliberately but often without realising they practice exploitation.

In my life I only had the opportunity to speak at length with one enclosed Carmelite nun. She was among the most joyous and contented people I've ever met and knew a calm and freedom deep within her. A lovely woman. I must be honest. She radiated simple compassion.

I could only meet her because of laws and nations. She was African. I can't remember which country. She had been living in a Carmelite community in the USA, harming nobody. The US government decided she was in breach of visa regulations and had deported her. She had gained permission to stay in the UK instead and was due to enter the Carmelite community in Snowdonia. My nightmare - to be enclosed behind walls in the middle of such a beautiful area. On the way she was staying in Bangor for a few days. I don't know her name or whether she's still in Wales but I'm always grateful to have spent a little time in her company.