Tessa Bielecki at the statue of St. Teresa on her first visit to Avila in 1990. Photo by Judy Maselli.

St. Teresa continues to fascinate me in an ongoing conversation sixty years after I first met her. The covers of my books say so much about who Teresa is – and isn’t. (You can see the covers here.)

It’s rare for an author to choose the art for a book cover, but Crossroad let me do this in 1993 for Teresa of Avila: Mystical Writings, part of their “Spiritual Legacy Series.” I asked my friend, Suzie Ryan, to draw Teresa dancing with her tambourine. Suzie even added castanets in her right hand and superimposed Teresa’s dynamic figure against the dramatic walls of Avila. This is the vibrant Teresa in love with life who wrote, “We are not angels, but we have a body. To desire to be angels while we are on earth – and as much on earth as I was – is foolishness.” 

Holy Daring

The editor of Holy Daring, my second book, first published by Element in 1994, came up with “wild woman” as part of the awkward subtitle: An outrageous gift to modern spirituality from Saint Teresa, the grand wild woman of Avila. The book designer used a brilliant red for the cover with yellow lettering to match the flames on the burning dart which Teresa felt pierce her heart: “I saw in his hands a large golden dart and at the end of the iron tip there appeared to be a little fire. It seemed to me this angel plunged the dart several times into my heart and that it reached deep within me. When he drew it out, I thought he was carrying off with him the deepest part of me; and he left me all on fire with great love of God.”

Ecstasy and Common Sense

I finished the third volume, Ecstasy and Common Sense, for Shambhala in 1995. (Yes, three books in three years! Isn’t it great that a Buddhist publisher wanted St. Teresa?)  I told the editor, “Whatever you do, please don’t put that classical portrait of Teresa on the cover. She hated it, and so do I.” When he insisted on it, I insisted in turn that he also print a “disclaimer.” One of Teresa’s friars did this portrait in 1576 in Seville as Teresa neared the end of her life. When she saw it, she exclaimed, “Fray Juan, you’ve made me look like a bleary-eyed old hag!” I find it so endearing that this lively saint was still vain and concerned about her appearance as a sixty-one-year-old nun! (Teresa died six years later.)

I don’t like the cover on the revised edition of Holy Daring, published in 2016 by Adam Kadmon Books, an imprint of Monkfish. Part of a painting by Francois Gerard (1770-1837), it’s too dark and gray, and makes me apologize to my friend, “Oh Teresa, they’ve made you look like a pious spook!” The Teresa I know and love is neither pious nor spooky. “May God deliver us from foolish devotions,” she proclaimed in her autobiography. And “God deliver me from people so spiritual they want to turn everything into perfect contemplation no matter what.”

Woman of Passion

Teresa was first and foremost a woman, a woman of passion, who not only felt strong emotion but expressed it freely in her life and writings. She was earthy and in touch with her body, not only writing about spiritual matters but down-to-earth human matters: good food and books, illnesses and home remedies, the fields, flowers, and fruit she loved: limes, quinces, coconuts. She called her soul a garden and compared prayer to watering that garden. An intimate companion to both men and women, Teresa models strong, loving, and not always balanced man-woman friendships. She was also a remarkable leader who stands out as the only woman in the Roman Catholic Church to reform an order of men. 

Teresa was open and vulnerable not only about her vanity but her other shortcomings. She often got so angry, she wanted to “eat everyone up.” In two of her most poignant images, she describes herself as a “helpless bird” with broken wings or a “stupid little donkey grazing.” She often confessed, “I was frightened and scared.” She offers sage advice about how to keep going when we mess up because she often made mistakes but picked herself up with a sense of humor, often laughing at herself. 

Teresa’s mystical life was ecstatic, but she is known as the “saint of common sense,” who teaches us about the mystical path and then in the next breath about the importance of walking under the sky, the danger of overwork, the value of celebration, and God in the kitchen “among the pots and pans.”

“Gracie,” the artist who draws images for the Women Mystics School sponsored by Spiritual Wanderlust, depicts the women in their “correct ethnicity” and makes them look contemporary with “real human expression.” She paints each one “like someone you’d run into at your local coffee shop.” Teresa is dressed in red. Under her dark hair, she looks at us with a saucy smile and exclaims, “Oh, Gracie, you got me just right!”  I’ll bet she wishes Fray Juan had painted her like this.