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Join me on an adventure to the wonderfully romantic town of Ronda in the Andalusian region of Spain. Let’s begin by enjoying the beauty of Ronda under the spell cast by a local Spanish guitarist...

As we mentioned in our last blog, one of daughter Lilli’s friends stayed with us a couple days in Spain. When Ajay suggested Ronda as a possible place for us to visit together I became curious and did some research:  might Ronda have a convent founded by Teresa of Avila? Might visiting that city provide an opportunity to deepen my “feel” for this great reformer of the Carmelite order?

How I Fell under the Spell of Ronda (Teresa of Avila)

Of course, this short video captures the fragrant enchantment of Ronda: a harpist strumming and singing a medley which set the mood for the ethereal beauty of this town. 

Our Spain trip to beautiful places like Ronda became a Spain pilgrimage under the inspiration of Teresa of Avila. We took a class last October on Teresa of Avila’s Interior Castle, a “guidebook” based on her experience of how the soul might experience God’s love in and through life’s journey.

Why was Teresa of Avila such an inspiration for us? For starters, she was no hothouse-flower saint: she was a constant object of scrutiny throughout her life under the Spanish Inquisition.  She navigated Inquisition Spain so adroitly that she turned many of her persecutors into her admirers and, even, followers. All this she did while enduring a Mother Teresa-like twenty-year spiritual drought absent of experiencing God’s presence. What kind of charismatic, spell-binding charm could do this?

As an Enneagram Type 3 who  likes to think Teresa was one as well, I was drawn to the maturity of her type through the depth of her earthy authenticity and life achievement while struggling under the limitations of poor health. Once a sister under her charge was aghast to find Teresa in the kitchen, gorging on a partridge with gusto.  Without missing a beat, Teresa chided her, “Child, when one prays one should pray. When one eats partridge, one should eat partridge.”  When Teresa’s life was reviewed for canonization as a saint, her sisters reported a number of incidents when she levitated during mass and they would have to pull her down to earth. One time it was reported that she rebuked(!) God saying, “Put me down!” and he did so. Her final years bore the fruit of a heart overflowing with God’s love. She undertook and achieved the reform of the Carmelites and founded seventeen convents with St. John of the Cross.

How Teresa “Spoke” to Me

So when I learned that there was one of the Discalced (“Barefoot”) Carmelite convents that Teresa founded was in Ronda, I couldn’t wait to visit it. After a mid-morning snack of churros, chocolate and café con leche, our next stop in Ronda was the Iglesia de la Nuestra Senora de la Merced Convent.

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After taking these pictures at the front of the church, Susie, Ajay and I entered the small room where Teresa’s gloved hand was displayed. I had a moving experience of Teresa’s Life Force when I saw Teresa’s left hand still incorrupt through the glass windows in the glove. I felt the tingle of awe, unexpected excitement, and then a wave of the noumenous sweep over me. I was not only awe-struck by seeing her 505 year-old gloved hand; I had a sense of being with her. While I did not hold the typical Catholic understanding of the incorruptible hand as signifying the God-permeated presence of this saint, my experience told me otherwise!

I would guess I’m not alone in having these kind of experiences. I learned that Teresa’s gloved hand was taken from the convent during the Civil War in the 1930s. Franco, devout Catholic and fascist dictator of Spain from 1939-1975, had it on his nightstand and purportedly died with it in his arms.   After his death, the hand was returned to the convent in 1976.

When I first read this story, I was baffled. What do we make of Franco’s obsession? Why would a dictator known for killing tens of thousands of Spain’s citizens, defeating the Republicans (communists) and colluding with the Catholic Church through fascist rule, be obsessed with this relic?

My own experience gave me great empathy for Franco and his desire to possess Teresa’s healing goodness.  Could it be that Franco desperately wanted Teresa’s presence to assuage his conscience? Did he regret choosing to align with Hitler and Mussolini during WW II? Did he hope Teresa might earn him forgiveness from the atrocities committed during his rule?

Ronda Reflections From the U.S.A.

My Ronda pilgrimage is still speaking into my life back in the States!

If the pandemic is teaching me anything, it is that life IS uncertainty. All the assumptions I had of what makes sense, of what’s next, of certitude for the future leave me empty-handed. So in this new framework,  I find myself wondering which of these perspectives on my experience makes the most sense:

• the post-modern view that the hand of Teresa is just a historic artifact, and there was nothing to this experience?
• the traditional Catholic belief that this relic is imbued with the love of Christ and my spiritual experience with Teresa in Ronda was “real”?
• or something else?

I am choosing to apply the same rigorous criteria that Teresa used to assess each her own experiences to discern if it was from God, from the Devil, or from her own mental imbalance:

Does this experience cause my heart to enlarge with the love of God or not?

I would answer the question of my experience with a firm, “Yes—I DO have a deeper sense of God’s love for, with, by and in me!” In these uncertain times, I can imagine no better ground to stand on than that.

YOUR TOOLKIT: Whatever our experience of race, if we have unresolved pain or color-blindness or other forms of denial, it will either have been transformed or it will be transmitted. I encourage you to take some time to journal about your sense of racial identity or lack thereof. Is there a part of Jon’s story you resonate with? What have your BIPOC experiences or relationships been like? How is that similar to or different from others you grew up with? What would you want to leave behind or see transformed from your past? What one thing is yours to do going forward?

#relic #COVID-19 #pandemic #TeresaOfAvila #TeresadeJesus #Ronda #Spain