September 23, 2009
Interior Castle… a quick pause for explanation
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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