Authors: Carmel Bird
A Chaplet of Red Roses
As we journeyed from one place to another, across mountains and plains and rivers and fields, in drought and snow and floods — and in fair weather many a time — I came to think of the Foundations of the convents as prayers in a chaplet.
We would make for Christ a chaplet from the darkest and most highly perfumed roses, red as love can be. When we had to stay at inns infested with vermin and filled with rough soldiers and mule-drivers, I would imagine roses and sunlight and the scent of fresh water, and when we set up each house, I made sure that rose bushes were planted there.
When we came to Seville I laughed with pleasure at the sight of all the roses — and the giant violets, the jasmine and the orange blossom. How I love orange flowers preserved in sugar.
And for that matter the patio in the Seville convent resembled sugar icing. This was a kind of paradise on earth. The gardens were cool with fountains where the water fell like the hair of silvery mermaids. The white walls dazzled me — everything dazzled me with its elegance and lightness and a kind of tinkling laughter that echoed through the streets.
The Apple Green Silk of Rapture
There is a sound that silk makes, a rustle, a sigh. I am sometimes reminded of this sound when I am seized by a rapture. I am taken by a rapture so violent that I can offer no resistance.
I seem to be raised to heaven, travelling on or within a liquid green light, a light that resembles and yet cannot resemble the sight and sound of the most glorious green silk. In Heaven I have seen my mother and father, visions that float in indescribable light. The brightness of the sun is pale and dull in comparison with the beauty of this light. The senses are filled with such profound bliss and joy and sweetness that no real description is possible. I have spoken many times to my confessors about this, and they have always comforted me in my strange doubts and feelings. I think it is remarkable that anyone believes me, and
The Book of Colours
141
yet they do. The Lord commands me to tell others what I see, and by virtue of this command my poor words become credible.
I sometimes wish I could stay in a state of ecstasy forever, for when I return I am left with a great contempt for earthly things which seem like so much dross. I see the meanness of our occupations here below where we are detained until God calls us.
Crisp Green Lettuces
I always hope there will be fresh vegetables in heaven — and plenty of sardines, partridges, apples and orange-flower water.
But especially bright green lettuces. How delightful it is when someone sends us the gift of a basket of lettuces.
Blue Lead of Winter Clouds
I suffer severely from pains in the heart. When the sky is dark with the sadness of winter, and this pain comes upon me, I am sorely troubled. The sky was the blue of lead, and my heart was sharply painful when a lady from a nearby house came to try to divert me. She brought with her in her kindness a casket of precious golden jewels which sparkled and glittered on the surface of my bedcover. I smiled when I saw them, and I began to feel a little better because of the lady’s kindness. But how I laughed in my spirit at the thought that these shiny things are all we have on this earth to cheer us. I laughed that people should value such things when the Lord has great glory in store for us.
In comparison with this glory the lady’s jewels are but stones rolling in the dust.
The Colour of the Treasure of Heaven
No words exist to describe the sensation I have of the colours of the light in which our Heavenly Father shines.
I have heard that it is impossible to see the sun in dreams.
What I have seen with the vision God has given me is something far, far brighter than the sun itself. I shall attempt to describe raptures, visions, events, feelings and understanding, and yet even these words are inadequate to encompass the meaning of what I would wish to convey. Sometimes the Lord speaks to me and reminds me of my wickedness. I weep and fall into
142
The White Garden
complete humiliation. But often after this humiliation I receive great favours and my spirit is so transported that I feel it to be entirely out of my body. Three times in this state I have seen the vision of Christ’s most sacred humanity with wonderful clarity in the bosom of the Father. It was as if I saw without seeing, as if my human eyes had become the eyes of the spirit, and I saw what could not be seen. This is the most sublime vision that the Lord has given me the grace to know. And the colour of it all is like no colour I have ever seen on earth; it is as if all the colours of the rainbow that hangs in the sky after rain were but poor dull dripping lifeless imitations of the soaring lights of heaven.
At these times I see not with the eyes of the body, but with the eyes of the soul.
The Dark Blue of Wisdom
Wherever I am I write every day of God’s grace. This is a great joy and consolation to me. I also write, it seems, hundreds of letters to my family and to my many friends and patrons. I like to think of myself as a woman of Avila, following the tradition of the great Bishop Alfonso who wrote his three pages of wise prose every day of his life.
There is a dark blue clarity and truth in what he set down, a blue of heaven at midnight, of the sea that yields up the harvest of its fishes for our supper. Often with a letter I will send a trout to grace the table of my letter-reader. There is such pleasure in the sharing of small gifts of food and drink. Once when I lived with my nuns in the hospital at Burgos (we were looking for a house) I used to smuggle oranges and limes in my sleeves to take to the patients. My brother would send me sweets and sardines and figs and sea-bream. Sometimes when I close my eyes in terrible exhaustion I see the very blue of the Bishop’s wisdom. Such peace comes over me. I am embraced by the mantle of the Queen of Heaven. As I crisscross the lands of my beloved Spain setting up the convents and establishing my nuns where they can best serve the Lord, I write. With great joy and satisfaction (and even a sigh of relief with my prayer of thanks) I saw my
Way of Perfection
completed in my own hand and bound in silk on which was embroidered the images of humble
The Book of Colours
143
yellow flowers. May some of my words be worthy of the great tradition of the Bishop.
Children Dancing
My eight-year-old niece Teresita as well as Isabella who is the little sister of Father Gracian lived with us in the convent for a time. They were like fairies flitting about the place, playing with statues of the Christ child and the shepherds and the Virgin, dancing and making up songs and poems and pieces of music. They were always laughing, dressed in the habits of tiny Carmelites. Teresita entered the convent at Avila when she was old enough. I was not present for her profession because I was too ill. I was near to death in the convent at Alba de Tormes.
Alba de Tormes
The convent here is a peaceful place, a haven. The walls are the colour of sand, and the gracious river runs nearby. I died in the convent at Alba de Tormes.
Water of Angels
A popular perfume at this time was called water of angels. They said they could detect its aroma on my deathbed. I knew only that I was tormented by violent bleeding from the lungs. It was the fourth of October, 1582 when I died and passed beyond the earth. During the hours between my death and burial a fragrance so sweet and powerful filled the room that they had to open the windows. For nine months I lay in the womb of the wall, bricked up against the violations of the world. And emanating from my resting place there was a perfume of violets and jasmine and of lilies. Also a nameless scent so beautiful that people would be overcome. To keep the nuns vigilant in the choir, I often made noises which startled them.
Fresh Blood, Bright as a Chrysanthemum
In secret and in the dead of night, by the light of a few candles, the Father Provincial and the nuns began to remove the stones that sealed up my tomb. They worked for four days in a steady fever of guilt and terror lest their plans to investigate the grave
144
The White Garden
should be discovered. They finally removed the coffin and exposed my features to the light of the candles. My habit, old and patched as it was, had rotted away, but my body was unchanged. The Father Provincial, wishing to retain a relic of my body, severed my left hand and took it away to be an object of veneration. A novice who had been born with no sense of smell was gifted with the ability to detect my perfume when she kissed my hand. This hand cured indigestion and cured also the murderous intent of a jealous husband when it was placed on his heart. The nuns removed my ragged mouldy clothing, washed my face and body, restored a habit to me, wrapped me in a sheet, and replaced me in the coffin which was again walled up in the chapel. For two years my resting place was undisturbed, but in Avila there was a move afoot to remove my body to the convent of St Joseph in my native city.
Once again, secretly, in the dead of night, they came for me.
They opened up the wall and detected again the beautiful and unearthly fragrance. My body was intact but dry, and fresh blood, bright as a chrysanthemum, was visible on my handkerchief. This blood would leave an indelible stain on anything that touched it. The body-snatchers worked in haste, leaving behind for the nuns in Alba my left arm, minus, of course, the hand. And so I travelled back to Avila where news of the unchanged state of my remains soon got about.
The Bishop of Avila and a retinue came to St Joseph’s in the winter, and on New Year’s Day, before daybreak, they took me out into the gateway and placed me upright on a carpet.
Every person present held a flaming torch. They saw the colour of my skin had darkened in the tomb, but my hair was as it had been when I died. My eyes had quite dried out, but my eyelids, it seems, were well preserved. I speak with something that resembles vanity. The people with their torches knelt and gazed and wept. And soon the news that I had been stolen from Alba reached the ears of the Duke and Duchess of that town. I know that the message travelled to the Duchess in a note that was hidden in a pie, made, I should say, from plump delicious partridges. The Duke then acquired an order from the Pope, and off I went again, by night, in secret, back to Alba de Tormes.
The Book of Colours
145
This time they placed me behind the choir grille and a rapturous crowd came to look. There were always miracles. Dying children were restored to life and vigour; limbs were healed; madness was replaced by lucidity and health. My final resting place was above the high altar in the church at Alba, after the fifth and final opening of my coffin as late as the middle of the eighteenth century. By this time, the desire of the people to possess a fragment of my body had resulted in the loss not only of my left hand and arm, but of my right foot, my fingers, and some ribs. Someone obtained my neck so that my head, missing the jaw and the left eye, lay disconnected from my body, on a crimson satin pillow. My heart also was separate, exposed in a reliquary for all to see. The wound inflicted by the spear of the angel, many years before, was still visible. I remember yet the pain that was of such surpassing sweetness.
The Lettuces
Heaven is a state of simple ecstasy. It is very busy. And yes, there are lettuces.
THE HONEYCOMB VERANDAH
Rosamund moved quietly, almost imperceptibly, into the life at Mandala. She spent her days in prayer and meditation in her cell in the old convent part of the hospital. The other cells were empty, their green doors all standing open in a row as if await-ing the arrival of a crocodile of nuns. Rosamund’s room was furnished with a harsh simplicity and she liked it. Her meals were brought to her. She walked beneath the wide veranda where the old tiles were set in the pattern of a honeycomb. Ants lived under the pavement, throwing up little mounds of sand between the cracks. Rosamund would stare in fascination and disgust at the shapes of the sandhills. They resembled lips, pale brown lips of sand. She occasionally went into the hospital for LSD or ECT, but mostly she was left to follow her delusion.
Ambrose sensed that the best way to treat Rosamund, the best way for him to explore the development and meaning of her deluded state, was in fact to medicate her lightly and to let her be the self she chose. However, in order to satisfy the health authorities and to get the appropriate refunds, while keeping Rosamund’s fantasy alive, he had to follow certain conventions of more orthodox treatment. She would be at Mandala for a long time, and so her case history became a complex pattern of assessment and reassessment, with some episodes of ECT, some periods of DST, and the occasional administration of hallucinogens. These treatments usually had a bad effect on Rosamund, and it would take some time for her to readjust to her rule of life in the convent wing. She spent much of her time writing in her journals, writing poetic and random recollections of her life which were sometimes descriptions of the life of St Teresa, and sometimes an account of daily events in the hospital. The local priest, Father Anthony who had been at school with Ambrose, heard her confession and brought her communion once a week.
‘The only thing,’ he said to Ambrose, ‘I wish she wouldn’t bite her fingernails.’
Ambrose told Rosamund that Therese was coming.
The Honeycomb Verandah
147
‘I think you will be very pleased to hear, Teresa,’ he said,
‘that one of your greatest followers and admirers is coming to stay very soon. She has been unwell, and is still being treated in the hospital, but as soon as she is up to it, she will have the cell next to yours.’
A frightened look crossed Teresa’s face, as nameless suspicions darted through her mind.
‘But this convent is full. All the cells are occupied. Look.’