Mostly due to sheer bloody-mindedness, it's unusual for me to put down a book before it's been read through. The last one was The Fountainhead, which I threw at my wall in disgust when I reached, yes, the "love" scene. In my defense, I recently went back and finished it. Note to Objectivists: yurgh. Bad writing, bad philosophy.

Now, however, I'm struggling to finish a much better book: The Life of St. Teresa of Ávila by Herself. St. Teresa (shown here and here) has that uniqueness of character common to saints. Afflicted by rather remarkable illnesses:

My tongue was bitten to pieces, and my throat was so choked from having eaten no food and from my great weakness, that I could not even swallow water. My bones seemed to be wrenched out of their sockets, and there was great confusion in my head. As a result of all these days of torture I was all twisted into a knot, and unless someone moved them for me, could no more move arm, foot, hand, or head that if I had been dead. All I could move, I think, was one finger of my right hand. It was impossible for anyone to see me, for I was in such pain all over that I could not bear it. They used to move me in a sheet, one taking one end and one the other; and this state of things lasted till Palm Sunday.

...she still showed nothing but humility and resignation. Lest one should underestimate her trials, I might mention that the above suffering lasted eight months, and her paralysis nearly three years.

Her writing is charmingly direct, even if careless about syntax, and chatty in tone, even when she is discussing profound mysteries. She digresses constantly; indeed, the story of her life is interrupted almost immediately by a study of the various states of prayer, their benefits and dangers.

So she writes well, on a subject that ought to be of the greatest interest to me. Her life should inspire us during our own trials. Why then am I considering putting the book down for the foreseeable future? Simply put, she's too advanced for me.

The last biography of a saint I read was that of St. Thomas Aquinas, by G. K. Chesterton. As with all Chesterton, he's always there, making puns and looking over your shoulder while you read his book, but he's such good company that it's easy to forgive him. Jack's take on the book is just about right.

But I've got at least a hold on St. Thomas' philosophy, which gives us, as it were, a conversation-starter. I can begin our talk there, and end with him saying, "I shall write no more. All that I have written seems to me like straw compared with what has now been revealed to me," and at least know how we got there. St. Teresa's experiences are so far beyond mine as to be incomprehensible, no matter how well she writes or how clearly she describes her nearness to God during prayer.

One of the reasons that C. S. Lewis is so accessible, I think, is that his own religious life was not as dramatic as the saints'. He came into it late in life, and was always more concerned with converting people than advancing them along the Path. He therefore concentrates his arguments on the beginnings of faith.

St. Teresa is wholly concerned with the Path; she addresses no concerns outside a Christian context, which makes her a poor choice for the skeptic. Faith is, for her, an assumption. St. Thomas, on the other hand, is quite openly addressing skeptics, and so covers arguments that for St. Teresa are quite unnecessary.

A confession: I still have a great deal of the skeptic in me. St. Teresa's faith is nearly impossible for me to understand, honor it though I do. She recedes in the distance, as she leaves me behind.

So I struggle along, rather bewildered, and consider putting her auto-biography down and turning to something more comprehensible to someone such as I.

UPDATE: a brief biography of St. Teresa here.

I may at some point post a comparison between the two great saints and their autobiographies: St. Augustine and St. Teresa. But not now.