the hitchhiker’s guide: the journey forward to the ancient roots of our faith

As we continue our journey into the 4th mansions, or 4th floor of our building, we come to the point where Teresa says that the natural and the supernatural start to mix. She begins by talking about the difference between “sweetness in prayer” and “spiritual consolations”. The first of these is something that we attain for ourselves. It is those moments of meditation and discipline where we feel the joy and passion of being close to the Lord. Teresa talks about crying when viewing and meditating on a statue of the Passion, or the joy experienced when doing God’s work and feeling full of His love.

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Written and posted by Jamison on September 29, 2009, 8:47 am.
Filed under: General Discussion

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We’ve come now to the third or mansions, or the third floor of our tower. At this point in Teresa’s descriptions we’ve arrived at the point where people are basically living a pious life. In this level we find people who have managed to overcome the day to day struggles of sin. Granted, from her description, the holiness appears to be an outward holiness, and perhaps hasn’t penetrated them completely.

I believe that, through His goodness, there are many such souls in the world: they are most desirous not to offend His Majesty; they avoid committing even venial sins; they love doing penance, they spend hours in recollection; they use their time well; they practise works of charity toward their neighbours; and they are very careful in their speech and dress and in the government of their household if they have one.

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Written and posted by Jamison on September 26, 2009, 12:38 pm.
Filed under: General Discussion, Reflections, Transformation

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After talking with a couple different people I want to take a quick pause in my thoughts to just cover a couple things.

First, someone expressed some confusion about the metaphor of the various mansions. What Teresa is doing is using an urban planning metaphor that people in her day would understand. In her time there were castles that were built for the kings/lords/noblemen, etc.,. These castles were surrounded by mansions that were built progressively outward from the castle. As you got further away from the castle you were further away from the king, and closer to the wilds of the world. Now, most of us today don’t live in castles, so the metaphor breaks down a bit.

The basic idea though is that Teresa wants to take us on a 7-step journey into our own souls. Before the journey we’re completely focused on the world, and after the journey we’re completely focused on Christ. She uses a metaphor that works for the people she was talking to, but if it’s something that just doesn’t make sense to you, then feel free to discard it or substitute something more meaningful. Something more modern might be to look at a 7 story office building. The bottom floor is where you enter from the world, and at the top is the CEO of the company. So we’re making a journey upwards in our building as we progress through each of the 7 floors.

Second, I want to mention that I was perhaps a bit too hasty in my last post, and as pointed out in the comments, didn’t phrase something particularly well, so I’d encourage my readers to read the comments from the previous post and understand that I wasn’t trying to say that Protestants don’t suffer, but that most non-Orthodox/non-Catholic theology doesn’t look at the idea of Redemptive Suffering, which is what Teresa has at the heart of her second mansion/floor. She wants us to realize that we have a responsibility to avoid falling in to sin, and that we too often shy away from fighting it because it’s hard, and we don’t like to suffer. Too often we also blame God for “not giving us enough strength”, which she refutes with the quote from my posting.

Finally, I want to just say a quick word about how my intentions for these reflections. In my first post I asked a question about how an inward spiritual life can affect an outward Christ-like life. To be clear, that’s my question, and not one I’m even sure if Teresa is providing an answer to. But I’m entering this reading with a mind towards seeing if any of Teresa’s wisdom touches on this topic.

Ok, back to regular posting. Just wanted to clarify a few things before we continued our walk.

Written and posted by Jamison on September 23, 2009, 10:28 am.
Filed under: General Discussion

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This second portion of Teresa of Ávila’s work is quite short. She explains that this is because she has covered much of this material in a different book. However, I don’t really feel compelled to go and seek out that book, and want to just stay focused on what she’s given us to chew on in this book.

In the second mansion described by Teresa , we have progressed deeper into the human soul, but not too deep. We are still in an area of the castle where the broods of vipers and wild animals (as she is so fond of talking about) can still enter and seek to bite us, in other words we can still be tempted to sin quite readily. However, in this second phase of our journey inwards, we start to see a change in intention. If prayer is the doorway in which we begin our pathway towards uniting Christ and our soul, then it is in the second mansion that we start to perfect our steps through the denial of sin.

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Written and posted by Jamison on September 21, 2009, 9:40 pm.
Filed under: General Discussion, Reflections, Transformation

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Today I picked up, and started reading Interior Castle by Teresa of Ávila. I thought it might be an interesting task to bring the readers of HHG (all 3 of you) along with me as I journey through this classic work. The nature of this work is to examine our souls as if they were a mansion with many layers of rooms. Christ’s light is at the core, with His power of love, compassion and perfection. The world of sinfulness and darkness exists beyond the outer rooms. Therefore the question we face is how we can move ourselves further inwards towards the pure light of Christ.

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Written and posted by Jamison on September 19, 2009, 5:01 pm.
Filed under: General Discussion, Reflections, Transformation

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NOTE, the contents of this post are the opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of other authors on this site.

Today on a walk, I was listening to a podcast from a Franciscan friar about the history of Catholic hospitals. This again started prodding some thoughts in my head, that have been ruminating there for a while, about the topic of a Christian response to the healthcare debate in the United State. History shows that when it came to bringing healthcare to the people, it was the Christian churches (and religions in general) that led the cause, and in fact were the only source of health and healing for most people. As early as 325 AD, the Council of Nicea ordered that every town that had a cathedral, also must provide a hospital to care for the sick. This even developed into Christian monks helping to create some of the first mental health counseling treatments.

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Written and posted by Jamison on September 13, 2009, 4:25 pm.
Filed under: Culture, General Discussion, Our Roots

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