a life only for Teresa

miracle
like so many products
and
mystery
like so many books
and plays
becoming movies

miracle
and mystery

foundations for
an extraordinary life
of
visions
mountaintop
and valley encounters in
the world
but more so of
the Spirit that both inhabits and
visits
the attending and inquiring
soul

and
do we elevate in ecstasy
and what of those who
don’t go anywhere
but stay
below to pray and hope for on-the-ground
situations and
experience

those of us who do not move
who cannot leave
not
to paradise
or the next
town

who are tied where we are tied
and shall go to nowhere
save
to struggle like the caged
or otherwise enclosed
or simply call it
where we are
and where we work
for now

not
to leave with any notion of abandon
not
to go wild
but
to stay put until Parousia come for all

and so
free or encumbered
we might hope to know God
yet
must live where we are
between the peak
and the vale

hoping for
interior conviction for
a life of faith and
love

a life somehow material
and holy

c l couch


Saint Teresa de Ávila wrote The Interior Castle

photo by Florian Haun on Unsplash—I was out working for our local newspaper [photographer’s story]. The weather was clear in the beginning but changed quickly. I turned round and saw the hut called “Zimmereben” in the region of Mayrhofen/Zillertal/Tyrol. The black and white gives that photo a touch of mystery to.