The Confessions of St. Augustine

By St. Augustine
Read: Jan/Feb 2008
Rating: MAKE IT STOP.

Every time a new semester starts, I try to be really on the ball and keep up with everything. Take lots of notes, etc. This slowly falls away as things progress and I get comfortable. Unfortunately, this was the first book assigned to my memoir class.

Is it sinful to want to throttle a saint?

The Confessions are remarkable as they are the first known work approaching autobiography/memoir. In a time where everyone was writing about God, Augustine wrote about himself and his relationship with God. This could have been really interesting, and parts of it are. You can glean a lot about his sinful younger years and his relationship with his mother.

In between the rest. Some 90% of it is “You are so very wonderful, God. You have given me so much. I am so grateful. I seem to keep making mistakes, but you are a wise and all-knowing god who must have planned for all of this so you are truly wise and wonderful and deserving of our love. Have I mentioned that you are wonderful?” There are also strange little tangents into various other things.

It almost killed me. Little atheist girls should not have to suffer through such things. Even if my opinions aligned, I would still be ripping my hair out at the sheer repetition of it. But I can now say that I have read it.

There were some bright spots, however…

Augustine and his other philosopher buddies decided that it would be reallyreallycool if they made a sort of co-op. They could get one big house and all live in it together, studying and thinking and suchlike, and only two or three of them would have to work at paying jobs at a time, on a rotating basis. Awesome! Augustine pioneered hippie co-ops!

Next, however, the question was raised as to whether our wives would put up with it–some of us having wives already and I being anxious to have one. And so the whole scheme, which has been so well worked out, fell to pieces in our hands and was abandoned as impracticable.

Oops. They forgot the women. Who would NOT “put up with it.” Ladies, I salute you.