The Architecture of a Soul

Feast of St. Teresa of Avila

What is the architecture of a soul?  Is it possible to construct a soul architecturally, room by room, level by level?

Marilynne Robinson tried.  The house and who keeps it is important, but so is the house itself: the memories, the tragedies, the love that it keeps.  The house in dynamic relationship to those who live in it: its structure and condition reflect the souls that dwell within.

My home is full of clutter.  So is my soul.  My soul responds to the clutter of my world, so full of distractions, so tempted to apathy.

It is important to consider where to build, how to build, what to build with, and what to put inside.  Where to build a “spiritual home”?  What rules to follow, what materials to use?  It is not enough to say I am a Catholic.  Even that is too broad, for Catholicism is a broad terrain.  Some like the sun, others like the shade; some like winter, some like spring.  Some like to wander, some like to rest.  There are as many ways to be Catholic as there are to be human.  It is important to know who you are.

Also it is important to know you are not alone.  Though there are no hard and fast rules for the construction of a soul, others have trod the path before.  Teresa of Avila, for instance.  The beauty of The Interior Castle is its insight that the soul is its own heaven: the castle is where God dwells, and it is also the soul.  The soul must, as it were, travel through itself – plumb its own depths, scale its own heights – to meet God.  It is not as though God is met outside of itself.  God is within, waiting to be met.  To be a saint means only to be yourself, as God meant you to be. 

Yet my soul is so small, so chaotic.  God is still there – I know he is – amid the chaos and the mess.  God can fit anywhere, no matter how small a space we grant him.  The clutter does not hinder God – it hinders me.  Keeps me trapped in the entryway, stuck amid paralyzing nostalgia and deluded practicality.  I am the one who cannot move.  How to make my soul bigger, how to clear out the clutter?

I cannot.  God can.  Only God can create order out of chaos, something choate out of the inchoate.  Only God can expand the horizons of my soul.  The infinite God has made himself small enough to fit inside my soul, so that he can expand my soul into his own infinity.  A divine kenosis.  He is there, waiting to burst into new life.  But I must allow him.

How impossible to pick through the pieces.  To let go of control, to be willing to let God teach me what to keep and what to throw away.  The important thing is to know what to throw away and when.  Some things are good for a time, then must be laid aside.  Some things must be set aside and kept for later.  Spiritual greed is just as much a temptation as material greed: greed for a new spiritual experience, a new form of prayer, a new meditative practice.  This is the problem with treating spirituality like any other consumer good.  We think that all of these new spiritual experiences are expanding our souls, when really they are just filling our souls with mess.

It’s not just the “new” spiritualities that are subject to this criticism.  Even Catholics are prone to this temptation.  The important thing is not to cling.  Devotions are good, rosaries are good, novenas are good – but remember they are means to an end.  Just as a hallway is simply a passage to other rooms.  Don’t set up your sofa in the entryway, don’t set up your bed in the hall.  Keep the “stuff” as long as it is useful, but be willing to let it go.  They are meant to lead you to God, but they can become chains that bind you from becoming what God meant you to be.  Do not fast while the bridegroom is present, Jesus told his friends.  This does not mean fasting is bad.  Fasting is a means to encounter God.  But what need do we have of fasting when God is standing before us?  A means, not an end.

Nada te turbe

Nada te espante

Todo se pasa

Dios no se muda

La paciencia

Todo lo alcanza

Quien a Dios tiene

Nada te falta

Solo Dios basta

Let nothing disturb you,
Let nothing frighten you,

All things pass away:
God never changes.
Patience obtains all things.

The one who has God

Finds he lacks nothing:
God alone suffices.