teresa of avila
Illustration by Owen Gent
THE INTERIOR CASTLE, the best-known text of 16th-century Spanish saint Teresa of Ávila, is a tour of the inward ways we relate to God, with varying intensity, awareness, and intimacy. In Spanish, the book is simply Moradas, or “Dwellings,” a title I find more appealing and helpful than the English title, mostly because “dwellings” sounds approachable, universal, and less precious.
Teresa was a grounded mystic. She is down-to-earth in her prose, her witty and candid teaching, and her lived experience. It could be argued that every “true” mystic or saint is grounded or has some element of both the active and contemplative life. Teresa strikes me as remarkably and robustly balanced, in a way that her basic reputation as a mystic sometimes betrays. She is notably resolute in both her defense of the reality of “supernatural” prayer experiences and her insistence that this loving movement of God to an individual must then extend into the world rather than curve in on itself. What we might call her grounded nature even extended into her prayer dialogues with Jesus: Once, when complaining honestly to Christ about her many struggles, she heard a response to this effect: “Don’t be troubled; so do I treat my friends.”
Her tart response? “I know, Lord — but that’s why you have so few friends!” In many of her waking days, she worried that Christ has so few “good friends,” and tried to encourage her contemporaries to become better friends of God. But she is clear-eyed and honest about the things that stand in the way of that friendship, from within and without.
Elvira Arellano, a Mexican-born advocate for undocumented immigrants to the U.S., gained national recognition in 2006 when she took sanctuary in Adalberto United Methodist Church in Chicago. She requested asylum in 2014. Her case is still pending. / Illustration by Clarissa Martinez
WELCOME TO ANOTHER U.S. election year. The man atop the Republican elephant charges forward. The incumbent astride the Democrat's donkey stubbornly digs in his heels. We at Sojourners seek to follow Jesus in his joyful mission of liberation for all. We see this in Georgia, through the holy imperfect work of racial reparations, as reported by assistant editor Josina Guess. We see it in California, where former Sojourners fellow Laurel Mathewson finds unexpected intimacy with God through prayer and study of Teresa of Ávila.
I attended a basketball game this winter at the University of Maryland, accompanied by an intern at my workplace, a man in his twenties. For much of the game, we chatted about everything from politics to how North Carolina is far superior to Duke in all the ways that really matter (on the court, of course). During the conversation, between glances at the game, my colleague maintained steady eye contact … with his smart phone.