Learning

    “Father, tell me what I must do to be perfect. I pray eight hours a day; I eat only one meal; I wear a hair shirt; I have given all that I own to the poor. Yet I am still troubled that I am not perfect.”

    Sergius said all I had done was good but that I had not yet understood perfection.

    “Go,” he said, “go and dream the deep dreams of God. He will teach you.”

    So I went away and slept.

    In a dream our Savior came to me and knelt beside my bed, writing with his fingers in the dust.

    “Nikon,” he said, “you do well, but you have not yet attained the perfection of two married women who live in the village.”

    When I awoke I went down to the village, a half-day’s journey by foot.

    And there I found two women who spoke no rash words, who lived humility, patience, and charity, sanctified their actions with prayer, and put up with the ill humors of their husbands.

    It was there I learned humility.

~Michael O’Brien (from Sophia House)