Arguing With St. Theresa

For the last week I have been arguing with St Theresa. Not arguing so much as resisting her even trying to talk to me.

I first became aware of Teresa of Avila in HS in the AP Art part of European Studies my senior year. I was talking to my friend Toni and paying very little attention to the slides that Sister was showing us of European Baroque art. The dark needed for the slide show was deliciously conducive to note-passing and giggling which is exactly what we, and most of my fellow classmates, were doing. Toni and I were discussing our plans for the weekend, where we could score beer, and what boys we were interested in hanging out with. When Sister flicked on to the next slide I found myself in thrall to what I saw there on the screen. Bernini’s The Ecstasy of St Theresa. It bored its way directly into my brain stem where it still resides such that I can recall in perfect clarity that moment when I first saw it. Over the next few weeks, I looked at that statue over and over again. I don’t know why. I did wonder why talking to God had never made me feel like that. If it had, I am pretty sure that I would still be a very devout Catholic. Even so, I credited Bernini with that intrigue and gave little/no thought about the subject that had inspired the sculpture. I fell in love with Bernini’s St Theresa and added her to my growing bucket list of art I want to see in person. 

It would be many years before St Theresa percolated into my consciousness again – about 20 - and my Catholic roots would be all but forgotten in the intervening years. My friend Patricia (formerly known as Pat) is a huge St T groupie. The stuff she knows about her is truly amazing and PhD –worthy in its scope. I got front row seat for all kinds of weird stories about St T’s mystical abilities and self flagellation. Pat even went so far as to loan me her copy of the Interior Castle when I was looking for one. A very beat up, well-loved book if ever I have seen one. I will admit I was terrified that I would fuck up or lose her favorite book as I am not known to be exactly gentle with my books. So, I kept if for a week, pretended to read it and then reverently returned her copy. Then, I ordered one from Amazon and treated it much like St T treated her physical body. Reading. Dog-earing pages (yes I do this). High-lighting passages that spoke to me until my copy didn’t look all that different than Ms Patricia’s. 

Patricia likes to hold lengthy arguments with St. Theresa over her self-flagellating ways. Arguments that neither of them win, but that are interesting to be privy to. I will start by saying that while I find Interior Castle to be one of the most amazing piece of work that I have ever read, that has nothing to do with my Catholic upbringing. In fact I struggle quite a bit with the whole structure of Catholicism. I don’t like it when people want to relate to me spiritually solely through Jesus or angels of saints. I am willing to allow you that belief as long as you are willing to allow that I may choose differently. I still resist having people tell me that Mary in ANY form is there for me. as a guide, teacher, helper, even though she is powerful in that role. 

My parents were strict Catholics, my grand parents uber-Catholics. By either nature or nurture I should have been one too. To give you an idea of what I’m talking about my mom on Holy Friday, which for Catholic kids was always part of spring break, would make us come in and kneel on the linoleum floor and pray with her from noon to three. She told us those were the hours Jesus hung on the cross and we believed her. It didn’t escape my notice that my friends, also Catholic, did NOT have to do this, but got to continue playing out in the Spring sun while I shifted from knee to knee for those 3 hours. My grandparents used to expect us to pray the Rosary with them on car trips. My grandmother had an amazing talent of spotting when your mind began to wander and would often startle whoever was daydreaming by asking them to lead the next decade. Shit I hated that. I certainly started off skipping happily down that well-lit path with the rest of my family in my Communion dress and patent leather Sunday shoes. As a small child, I could feel God and knew him intimately. Going to Mass was a mystical experience that I loved even if I understood none of those Latin words. 

I am not sure where the wheels fell off of my Catholic self. Maybe it was being force fed religion for 12 years and expected to follow like a sheep. Maybe it was that no one could explain it so that my logical brain could understand (and my spiritual brain had yet to develop). Maybe it was that I received a great education that encouraged me to question everything – everything except what I was taught in Religion class and that always bothered me. Maybe it was that there was no role model for me there as a woman. Unless you were willing to choose martyr, virgin or mother. The older I got, the less appealing any of those options seemed. Maybe it was that so few of the people around me really lived those things that Jesus seemed to be talking about. I am pretty sure though that Father R. played a pivotal role with my dissension. Weekly confession was part of the rigors of Catholic School. I didn’t really mind. It always made me feel better. Like God have just given me a clean slate. But I knew it was not clean, not really. There was always that white elephant that lived right behind me. The one that I pretended not to see. The one I knew God could see being omniscient and all. And one day, I slipped into the dark and velvety confessional, screwed up my courage and using the only words my nine year old self knew, I told Fr. R. that I had committed adultery. His response was to laugh, tell me I was wrong and ask me to leave his confessional - unshriven. In that moment God died for me. He no longer spoke to me. Because I was a sinner and now a hopeless joke. I like to think that Fr R. thought I was yanking his chain or being a wise ass. I wish that were so. Perhaps that small voice hit too close to his own sins as he was later rumored to be engaged in a torrid romance with one of the married women in the parish. And I hope that a priest today might ask a few more questions about what I meant by that. Might get to the truth rather than dismiss it. There were no words in my nine year old Catholic lexicon for what I was trying to confess. And by the time I knew the words, I no longer had the courage to try. 

I don’t blame Fr R. for those words. He is a human man prone to reacting out of his own garbage. I am not angry at the Catholic church which is a rich and beautiful tradition that I was grateful I had been part of for all those years. All those circumstances simply combined to set my feet out ito seek a different way than the one I had been taught. For many years if anyone asked what religion I was, I would answer “I am a seeker”. I don’t know why I said it, but it felt like the right words to describe the process in which I was engaged. I attended Pentecostal snake handlings, Jewish Seder, Pagan Samhains, watched Baptists testify, listened as people argued the merits of sprinkling versus dunking, and went to synagogue. While my friends found God there, I did not hear his voice. Not the way that they did. 

In the 80’s I ducked into a tiny store on Main Strasse in Covington called Victory books to get out of a sudden rainstorm. I was a poor graduate student with no money to spend and had been window shopping to entertain myself in this interesting neighborhood of shops. I avoided the clerks eyes bc I couldn’t buy anything really. I ducked into the back room full of books, mostly used by the smell. I chose one and curled up on a couch in the back and lost myself. I worked my way thru a lot of Victor’s books that way. More like I devoured them. No one seemed to notice me back there. No one said anything. And I never felt anything but love from the staff even though I rarely bought anything. But it was there in Victory books that the seeker found what she had been looking for. I remembered how to talk to god. 

What I am now does not fit neatly into any box and I like it that way. I don’t know that I can define it or if I even want to. It’s simple, yet delightfully layered like a good torte. I stopped arguing with St Theresa, reisisting her Roman Catholic origins long enough to hear what she was trying to say. I am traveling deep thru paths within myself, walking toward those rooms of the soul that she described all those years ago. Walking thru them one by one and allowing the crystal to shatter that separates me from you, me from god, me from myself. 


Turns out St T is one smart chica.