Into the Wild: a blog by the Discalced Carmelites UK

For many families, the first sign of the coming festivities comes, after the advent wreath, with baking. Smells of cookies, cakes and bread pervade many homes. From spice cookies to almond crescents there is a joy that accompanies this activity. Especially in homes with small, and not so small, children using the cookie cutters is a way to include all members of the family in the process. A lot of thought goes into baking. Choosing the recipes, finding the ingredients, and baking takes time but it is a time that during Christmas many don't quite measure, it simply goes by in a way that reminds me of something an old professor commented once. He was reminiscing about his childhood Christmases and one of the things he remembered noticing was that time seemed to not exist during Christmas. Family members came and time was spent sharing, eating, playing, and singing, but this time spent wasn't measured. No one stopped to notice the time spent during preparation or the time spent to...

Recently, during a talk about Edith Stein on Radio Maria, the action of the Holy Spirit on her soul stood out to me. The speaker was asked about how she had become a Catholic and while her reading St Teresa's Vida  is a well-known turning point in her life the previous gentle promptings of the spirit are less well-known.  She had at a young age decided that she was an atheist though out of love and respect for her mother, who was a devout Jew, she continued to practice the prayers of the Jewish faith her mind had turned away from the Abrahamic faith. In her autobiography, Life in a Jewish Family, she speaks about how her experiences of the death of close family members had left her with burning questions about the afterlife and about what was important in this life. These burning questions were not satisfied until her conversion more than a decade later and spurred her on in her studies. She would late comment how she realised that all those who seek the Truth are in reality s...

On Thursday we went to Toledo, a city that played a role in St Teresa's work and St John's life. It was a place not without difficulties and is most associated with the town in which John of the Cross was imprisoned. It is also where St Teresa began writing her Interior Castle.  Through the maze of small medieval streets, Fr Matt guided us to the Friar's Monastery where we had Mass and then were able to walk around the garden. The views from the garden are impressive, overlooking the river that runs alongside Toledo and its suburbs.  John of the Cross' arrest is not easy to explain and can be quite shocking when you consider it was done by his own community. Part of is the history of the time, which is too extensive for here. What can be very briefly mentioned here is part of what Fr Matt said: during this time disobedience was the major reason people would be punished, usually with imprisonment. Imprisonment for disobedience was all to common and it happened in most mo...