Old books, timeless treasures

 In Sunday school class earlier this week, we talked about the value of reading the devotional classics. Different class members shared writers and books that had been formational in their own growth in the Christian faith. It was rich.

Some definitions are in order: Devotional classics are books that speak to the heart, that have the formation of holy habits and personal transformation as their aim. Devotional classics refer to books whose value has been affirmed over time. In other words, these are old books. Maybe beyond old or new, they are works that are timeless in their worth.

Examples that come to mind are the “old” guys and girls: St. Francis of Assisi, Brother Lawrence, Julian of Norwich, George Fox, John Wesley—the list is long. Some of the “newer” devotional classics include 20^th century writers such as C.S. Lewis, Dag Hammarskjold, Thomas Merton, and Henri Nouwen.

A classic that influenced me many years ago was Teresa of Avila’s Interior Castle. I first approached this book, not as devotional reading, but as class preparation. I was scheduled to teach a class on spirituality to Latin American church leaders. Since the classic Spanish mystics of the 16^th and 17^th centuries are foundational to current Latin American spirituality, I needed to include them as background to the course. So I found myself reading Teresa, John of the Cross, and Ignatius of Loyola

Teresa was a Carmelite nun and mystic who became influential as a monastic reformer. She was known for her devotion to Jesus and her mystical prayer life. She was often called on to instruct young nuns in the life of faith. Her life story is long and dramatic and her reforms brought deep changes to the Catholic monastic movement.

I got another view into this woman through the poetry of humorist Phyllis McGinley. Apparently Teresa had a feisty aspect to her personality. Here’s McGinley’s poem:

Conversation in Avila

Teresa was God’s familiar. She often spoke
To Him informally,
As if together they shared some heavenly joke.
Once, watching stormily
Her heart’s ambitions wither to odds and ends,
With all to start anew,
She cried, “If this is the way You treat Your friends,
No wonder You have so few!”

There is no perfect record standing by
Of God’s reply.

Interior Castle is considered Teresa’s best work. The castle is an extended metaphor for a person’s intimate relationship with Jesus. The castle is within the person. It’s a mysterious, medieval, and quite asymmetrical structure composed of many large rooms or “mansions.” The seven mansions represent ascending levels of spiritual intimacy. The person progresses to a new room only after having attained to the maturity level of the previous room. It can all be slow going.

I was fascinated by the disciplines and experiences in each room, beginning with silent listening, contemplative prayer, and visions. This is good stuff, I thought. But as the pilgrim progressed through the different rooms, her experiences seemed to get stranger, even extreme. She went through dreams, swoons, ecstasies, mortifications, raptures, and trances, some of them seeming to last for days. Darkness and pain become part of the spiritual cleansing. I had to ask myself, is this the sort of thing I want to experience? No, I decided.

In the sixth room, Jesus tells his beloved daughter that they have reached a level of profound commitment. They are now “novios,” engaged to be spiritually married. I began to worry, wondering what extremes I’d find in the last mansion, the place of mystical marriage.

Teresa surprised me. It wasn’t at all what I expected. Jesus, in essence, tells his beloved, “My bride, we are now united. You have no more need of raptures and trances and swoons. That’s behind you. Now we will leave the castle and go out into the streets of the city where people I love are suffering and dying. We’ll go together. And you will serve the people and tell them how much I love them.”

Wow. I cried as I read that last chapter. The book become more than class preparation. It was a devotional classic in every sense of the term. It said to me that intimacy with Jesus comes before any service or ministry out in the world. And it is the relationship with Jesus that empowers and makes that service fruitful. While God doesn’t seem to be asking me to go through all the stuff Teresa experienced in her castle, the principle still stands. Thank you, Teresa.

Concerning the value of the classics, C.S. Lewis once wrote that “It is a good rule, after reading a new book, never to allow yourself another new one till you have read an old one in between.” Lewis, himself a scholar of medieval literature, was referring to more than the devotional classics, but he included them.

I’m currently re-reading Dostoevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov, and finding it tough going. I remember how it impacted me as a young woman, but it’s been many years and I am no longer young. So I’m taking it slow, reading a couple of chapters, then switching to a contemporary (and much easier) book, and coming back for another dip into Dostoevsky. I’m not sure that’s what C.S. Lewis had in mind, but I intend to keep reading.

Old books—they’re sort of like us. We’re all growing older. Wouldn’t it be nice if we could feel we’d reached a high level of maturity and passed the test of time. I know older people who, indeed, have earned the respect of those who follow them and have become almost legendary. Probably not many of us will win the distinction of becoming a classic; most of us would not want that title anyway.

I will keep on reading seasoned old books, along with the new. I won’t be too concerned with becoming a human devotional classic. I’ll let myself be content with my grandson’s recent assessment: “You’re a really cool grandma!”

That’s classic enough for me.