October 15, 2009

A Mother’s Pain

Today is the feast day of Teresa of Avila, one of my very favorite saints. This sixteenth-century Spanish noblewoman is patroness of writers and migraine sufferers, perhaps best known to us for three things: reforming the Carmelites, writing The Interior Castle, and her cheeky retort to being summarily dumped in a stream by her horse. Looking up to heaven, she cried, “If this is how you treat your friends, Lord, no wonder you have so few of them.” Oh, yes, and her poetry. In Spanish, of course. Let nothing trouble you, let nothing frighten you. All things pass away, but God never changes. Patience obtains all things She […]