CONFUSION, HUMILITY, PEACE: I’m about forty pages from the end of Saint Teresa’s Interior Castle now. Some scattered thoughts: At first I was confused about the structure of the mansions, especially the earlier ones. I understood that the progression from mansion to mansion was not direct–there are overlaps, preludes, “flashbacks”–but still couldn’t quite grasp what the saint was saying about the first couple mansions. Kathy the Carmelite sent me an extremely helpful email; I was assuming that the earlier stages described people who were already pretty far along the path to union with Christ, whereas actually Teresa is also addressing people with shakier or more complacent faith.

One thing I truly appreciated about Saint Teresa is her sharp, unflagging awareness of life as a spiritual battle. Her writing embodies the meaning implied by calling the pilgrim church on earth “the Church Militant.”

I was also really struck by the use of the word “confusion” in IC. Confusion, for Teresa, is provoked by the soul’s encounter with God; it is the preface to humility and peace. This was hard for me to see at first because I’m so used to confusion meaning a kind of mental wandering, lack of certitude about the truth, tangled thoughts. I think Teresa means it more the way we mean it when we say that an embarrassing event “covered me in confusion.” The encounter with God is an emphatic reminder of one’s own weakness, sin, and littleness. It’s experienced initially as if the soul were a knight, charging with his lance, who’s just run into a tree. CLOOOONNNNGGGGGG!!! The soul needs some time to absorb the shock of meeting with the Living God. So this particular kind of confusion resolves into humility–a more settled, accepting sense of who one is and Who God is–and thus to peace.

Finally, Saint Teresa’s description of the people with “weak imaginations” is very unexpected! She writes, “Some persons–and I know this is the truth, for they have discussed it with me; and not just three or four of them, but a great many–find that their imagination is so weak, or their understanding is so nimble, or for some other reason their imagination becomes so absorbed, that they think they can actually see everything that is in their mind. If they had ever seen a true vision they would realize their error beyond the possibility of doubt. Little by little they build up the picture which they see with their imagination, but this produces no effect upon them and they remain cold–much more so than they are after seeing a sacred image” (my emphasis).

We tend to think that being able to “see everything that is in [one’s] mind” is a sign of a strong imagination, not a weak one! But since Teresa is here talking about people who mistake their own imaginings for Divine visions, I think her meaning is something like this: A “weak imagination” is one that is ingrown, self-obsessed, rather than turned outward to God. It is unable to see God through the miasma of self-produced “visions”; it is as if a poet had stuffed his ears with wax to shut out his Muse. He might still write poetry, but it would sag and fail, because he has cut himself off from the source of his poetic prowess.