Stacy is in the states again this week. The last little kids left on the boat yesterday morning and summer camp is officially over. Esperanza is silent by comparison. I miss the thump, thump, thump of the trampoline, and the shrieking that comes from the ball swing, or the zip-line, or from the dinning hall, or really any where that little kids can fit themselves into. I have found myself wanting to get back in the woods, where I can not only find silence, but let the beauty and pains of this time sink in.
I have been reading and meditating about the words of St. Theresa of Avilia. She talks about the times where the soul is awakened as if by a “swiftly flashing commet, or by a clap of thunder”. This causes great pain in the soul, but she says to count it a blessing. This pain comes from the secret closeness of God and has no earthly explanation. She calls this “signal favors” and sees this as the Lord preparing the bridegroom for marriage.
As I thought about this, while wandering through the woods, I ate some thimbleberries. I only discovered them 3 days ago, or at least that is when I started eating them. Before that I just eyed them and figured they must be poisonous because they were too perfect looking. I figured that anything that perfect could not taste good, and might even get ya. But thimbleberries taste like jam. Sometimes God makes perfect things and they are perfect, end of story. I have been blessed by finding out something I called bad was actually meant to be enjoyed.
Theresa knows something is from God when it has no other explanation. When she hears of a vision that someone else received, she doesn’t ask what God said or how sure they were that God was speaking. Instead she asks if they suffer from melancholy, or have a wicked past, or are prone to emotions, or any other means that someone might naturally be lead to strong emotional feelings. If the Lord we to speak to you, she writes, He would use supernatural means that could not be explained any other ways.
We now know that St. Theresa probably suffered from Temporal Lobe Epilepsy, which is one of my favorite topics, but I won’t go into it to much now. Simply, TL epileptic seizures are known to induce emotional experiences, visions and feelings that line up with religious visions. The pain she was experiencing she saw as blessed because it brought along great visions of God. These seizures, of course, happened out of spiritual context for her. They didn’t happen every time she prayed, or every time she talked to someone, or even line up to what emotions she was feeling that day. So it makes sense that since she didn’t know of Temporal Lobe Epilepsy, she would understand her visions as to not have a pattern or context, and for it to be of God it must happen outside of anything she did or experienced.
And I believed God spoke to her in seizures, or whatever she experienced. And God speaks to me in my melancholy, and my being prone to emotions. Theresa was looking for God to prove Himself by appearing outside of understanding, by showing Himself outside context, interior of the body. I am looking for God to speak through my emotions, in the context I live, through thimbleberries and trampolines, conversations and emotions. Theresa found the way to build a soul by looking inward, by removing any potential sin from her “Interior Castles”, finding God in the places where nothing else could be. I am looking for a way to build my soul in “Exterior Windows”, looking out and seeing where God already is, begging me to notice.
Wish me luck, and if you hope to enjoy thimbleberries with me, you better come to Esperanza soon. They might all get eaten.
I am wishing you luck and love…I will be home soon. I promise.
I really loved this post, Jeremy. I’m kacie by the way, a fellow MBI alum that used to have class with Stac.
I loved it because I’m trying to think wholistically about people. I have friends that bipolar, clinically depressed, mentally retarded, etc. Our spiritual guidance in America is really about how to reach God as an average person. Then we add in a little Mark Driscoll for the jocks, a little Beth Moore for the girly girls, and a little charismatic hype for the happy emotional types…. but we don’t recognize that these may all be partly just different ways of God interacting with different personalities.
What about people like Avila who are quite strongly out of the ordinary, and in our world today would be considered disabled in some way? I find it amazing that God speaks within the disability. I think God may also speak in the melacholy of depression, in the manic stages of bipolar disorder, and in quiet simplicity to the mentally retarded. Though I may not understand how they can interact with or hear from God in such a unique way, it doesn’t mean that it is just their disorder speaking and I can dismiss them.
Kacie, thanks for your comments.
I think some of christian history is full of exclusion. It really saddened me how much of Theresa’s energy was trying to prove or disprove the spiritual experiences of someone else. I want to be apart of a christian community that isn’t suspicious of the experience of others but embraces their personal communion. What you said was perfect. We don’t have to remove our faults for God to speak to us, or for God to speak to others through us. God consistently uses our crazy to make sense.
what a beautiful post. I love thinking of the ancients and how they are able to connect with the divine. Depsite the difference between our lives and then, I feel like it gives me a model of how to find the Divine in modern life.
Oh Jeremy,
I haven’t read your posts for a few weeks. You make my heart ache for more of God. Thanks for doing that! I miss you and am so happy you’ll be coming to celebrate too in September!!
Thanks Shelley. I am excited to see you soon.