God is on the journey, too.

I am lately interested in the confluence of architecture and religion (see earlier post). I want to explore how architecture can be used symbolically in constructing visual images of the journey to faith, or awakening. In this post, I will focus on the imagery of the castle in the mystical writings of St. Theresa of Avila.

St. Theresa of Avila, one of the pre-eminent religious figures of the 16th century, whose religious reforms forever altered the Christian monastic world, symbolized the soul and its journey to faith as a castle, with seven mansion-sized rooms. In the seventh room dwells the loving God. Her most famous work, The Interior Castle (1577), was intended to bring Christians closer to ultimate communion with God, and as St. Theresa described it, in His secret chamber. She writes,

"Let us imagine, as I said, that there are many rooms in this castle, of which some are above, some below, others at the side; in the centre, in the very midst of them all, is the principal chamber in which God and the soul hold their most secret intercourse."

Her metaphor of the castle was arguably borrowed from Islamic and Jewish mystics writing in Spain during the "Convivencia" period a couple of centuries earlier -- when Islamic, Jewish and Christian artists informed culture and people lived in relative stability and conviviality. Here's a picture of a Moorish castle on the Costa del Sol in Southern Spain:

As a metaphor for both the soul and its journey, a stationary castle seems a little awkward, clunky even -- St. Theresa addresses this directly:

"Now let us return to our beautiful and charming castle and discover how to enter it. This appears incongruous: if this castle is the soul, clearly no one can have to enter it, for it is the person himself: one might as well tell some one to go into a room he is already in! There are, however, very different ways of being in this castle; many souls live in the courtyard of the building where the sentinels stand, neither caring to enter farther, nor to know who dwells in that most delightful place, what is in it and what rooms it contains."

The architecture of the castle, while accessible to any lover of God who enters its doors, makes only a private union possible. Unlike a cathedral with expansive nave to comfort and hold a mass of devotees, the castle walls and interior labyrinth of rooms make the process of seeking God a lonely one, and finding Him the most intimate experience ever. This intimacy is echoed in the words of 8th century female Sufi Islamic mystic poet Rabia al Basri,

"With my Beloved I alone have been,
When secrets tenderer than evening airs"

The Ineffable in His intimate dwelling place--an interior room of the castle of the soul--unlike the Biblical Ark of the Covenant, is accessible to those who have the courage to walk inside. It takes effort, though, to find him.

The elusive nature of God, for Saint Theresa, creates a delightful suffering for the soul on its journey. This "delicious pain," as she describes, causes her to be ever more fervent in finding that ultimate, lasting intimacy.  But it is there -- if not to be experienced in this lifetime, then in the eternal life.

From His castle, the human soul, God beckons as a lover to the one who journeys. According to St. Theresa, God isn't stationary in that castle, but also on His own journey. She writes, "The feeling remains that God is on the journey too." This reminds me of Walt Whitman's "Song of Myself",

"Failing to fetch me at first keep encouraged,
Missing me one place search another,
I stop somewhere waiting for you."

I am sure that I would have hated to live in one of St. Theresa's reformed convents, having to go shoeless and perform strict austerities in order to meet her demands for getting closer to God. There is something, though, about her passion for seeking the love of the divine that is attractive to me. And, I love her for her willingness to walk through those castle doors.