The feed places the Benimar at Saint-Paul-lès-Dax, in the Landes. They are in France.
Yesterday was the hundredth morning and the first outside Portugal. Today is the hundred and first, and the first in the country this household has been travelling toward since spring. Spain was crossed in a day.
And the French Scriptures begun ten days ago have arrived in the country they were prepared for. When Le presses Écouter this morning, the journal will be speaking the language spoken outside the window.
She also opens a new mentor today: a Spanish saint, read on the morning after crossing Spain. Ávila lies about a hundred kilometres from where the Benimar was parked the night before last.
"I thought of the soul as resembling a castle, formed of a single diamond or a very transparent crystal, and containing many rooms, just as in heaven there are many mansions.
If we reflect, sisters, we shall see that the soul of the just man is but a paradise, in which, God tells us, He takes His delight. What, do you imagine, must that dwelling be in which a King so mighty, so wise, and so pure, containing in Himself all good, can delight to rest?
Nothing can be compared to the great beauty and capabilities of a soul... for, as He has told us, He created us in His own image and likeness."
A little about the woman, because it changes how the book reads.
Teresa of Ávila wrote The Interior Castle in 1577, when she was sixty-two. She says so in her first sentence: this work which obedience has laid upon me. She did not choose to write it. She was told to.
And she wrote it in difficult circumstances. Her earlier autobiography had been handed over to the Inquisition and was being held. So the book about the soul's interior was written by a woman whose previous book had been taken away from her.
She also spent her last twenty years travelling Spain by cart, founding convents, on rough roads, often ill, rarely in one place for long. Which means the greatest book ever written about the house inside a person was written by a woman who did not have a settled house outside one.
Le has been reading in a motorhome for eleven days. Teresa would have understood the arrangement perfectly.
Teresa builds her whole book on a verse Le read on the thirtieth of July. Just as in heaven there are many mansions. Il y a plusieurs demeures dans la maison de mon Père.
That morning the note was about the other half of John 14 — We will come to him and make Our home with him — and how the same word is used for the home He prepares there and the home He makes here. Teresa takes the identical verse and turns it inward. If the Father's house has many rooms, so does the soul He dwells in.
And then the image that gives the book its power: a castle made of one diamond, or of very transparent crystal. Not stone. Not brick. Something that light passes through.
Which sets up the sentence that should stop every reader: our bodies, which are but the coarse setting of the diamond, or the outer walls of the castle.
The body is the setting. The soul is the stone. Teresa is not despising the body — a setting is necessary and valuable. She is correcting where the attention goes. All our care is concentrated on our bodies. Nobody insures the ring and forgets the diamond.
"It is no small misfortune and disgrace that, through our own fault, we neither understand our nature nor our origin.
Would it not be gross ignorance, my daughters, if, when a man was questioned about his name, or country, or parents, he could not answer? Stupid as this would be, it is unspeakably more foolish to care to learn nothing of our nature except that we possess bodies, and only to realize vaguely that we have souls, because people say so.
Rarely do we reflect upon what gifts our souls may possess, Who dwells within them, or how extremely precious they are."
Teresa's example is a man who cannot answer three questions: his name, his country, his parents.
This household has spent a month being asked exactly those three by circumstance.
Country — the answer changed twice this week, and on the eighteenth of August the reading gave the deeper one: notre cité est dans les cieux. Parents — predestined to adoption as sons, read on the twelfth. Name — a white stone, and on the stone a new name which no one knows except him who receives it, read on the eleventh.
Teresa says the disgrace is not being unable to answer about a passport. It is being unable to answer about a soul. And this journal has, without planning it, spent the month answering all three.
"This appears incongruous: if this castle is the soul, clearly no one can have to enter it, for it is the person himself: one might as well tell some one to go into a room he is already in!
There are, however, very different ways of being in this castle; many souls live in the courtyard of the building where the sentinels stand, neither caring to enter farther, nor to know who dwells in that most delightful place, what is in it and what rooms it contains."
Teresa raises the obvious objection to her own image and then answers it, which is the mark of a careful writer. How can you enter a castle that is you? One might as well tell someone to go into a room he is already in.
Her answer is one of the most useful sentences in Christian literature: there are very different ways of being in this castle.
Many souls live in the courtyard, where the sentinels stand. Technically inside the walls. Never once in any of the rooms. They know the place exists and have no idea what is in it.
And notice where the courtyard is. It is the part of a castle nearest the outside — where the guards are posted, where noise comes in, where the business with the outer world gets done. A person can spend a whole life in the part of themselves that faces outward.
Le said the same thing three weeks ago, in her own words and without the architecture. How we tend to clutter the fountain. The water was never far away. The route to it was.
"As far as I can understand, the gate by which to enter this castle is prayer and meditation.
I do not allude more to mental than to vocal prayer, for if it is prayer at all, the mind must take part in it.
If a person neither considers to Whom he is addressing himself, what he asks, nor what he is who ventures to speak to God, although his lips may utter many words, I do not call it prayer.
The custom of speaking to God Almighty as freely as with a slave — caring nothing whether the words are suitable or not, but simply saying the first thing that comes to mind from being learnt by rote by frequent repetition — cannot be called prayer."
On the twenty-fifth of August Le wrote: we Christians take some verses for granted, repeating them because everyone does and not fully understanding them.
Teresa is making the identical complaint about prayer, in 1577. Learnt by rote by frequent repetition — words that have become a habit rather than an address.
And her test is three questions, which is a genuinely useful thing to carry. To Whom am I speaking? What am I asking? And who am I, that I should be speaking to Him at all?
She is not demanding eloquence. She says explicitly that a person may pray devoutly without going through all this each time, through having practised it at other times. The considerations are not a checklist for every prayer. They are what keeps prayer from becoming noise.
And Smith said the shorter version on the tenth of August: the prayer of faith takes the soul and places it before God, in its real state and true character. Teresa's third question is Smith's whole point. What am I, who ventures to speak to God?
One more piece from this chapter, and it joins something read three weeks ago.
Teresa describes the rooms — some above, some below, others at the side — and then: in the centre, in the very midst of them all, is the principal chamber in which God and the soul hold their most secret intercourse.
On the sixth of August James Smith wrote: His secret place our home. Le pulled that phrase out herself. Teresa puts the same room at the centre of the castle.
And the geography matters. The centre is the furthest point from the courtyard. The place where God is met most directly is the place a busy soul reaches last. Not because He is hiding — because everything else is nearer the door.
One last thing worth marking, because Teresa says it plainly and it protects the whole book from misuse.
God does not bestow these favours on certain souls because they are more holy than others who do not receive them, but to manifest His greatness.
She is closing the door on a ladder-reading of her own castle — as though the rooms were ranks and the inner ones were earned. They are not prizes. And she names Paul and Mary Magdalen as her examples: two people whose lives before grace were not recommendations.
Which is the same thing Hebrews 11 said two days ago. They were commended without being praised for results, and their failures were not entered on the record. Teresa's castle is not a promotion structure. It is a house someone is invited further into.
"There are very different ways of being in this castle. Many souls live in the courtyard, where the sentinels stand — the part of a castle nearest the outside. A person can spend a whole life in the part of themselves that faces outward."
Sainte Thérèse d'Ávila · Saint-Paul-lès-Dax, France · Day one hundred and one · The first morning in FranceThe Setting and the Stone
A castle of one diamond, or transparent crystal — something light passes through. And the body is the setting, not the jewel. Nobody insures the ring and forgets the diamond.
Name, Country, Parents
Teresa's picture of ignorance is a man who cannot answer three questions. This household has been asked all three by circumstance — and the readings have answered all three.
Living in the Courtyard
You cannot enter what you already are — but there are different ways of being in it. The courtyard is where the guards stand and the outside business gets done.
The Gate Is Prayer
And her test is three questions: to Whom am I speaking, what am I asking, and who am I to be speaking at all? Not eloquence — just the difference between an address and a habit.