Conversations Beyond Time

Article by a Carmelite Friend

I have often wondered, as our St. Therese did, what part I am called to play in the life of the Body of Christ. Like Therese, I am called to be love at the heart of the Church. As a Secular Carmelite, like Teresa I am called to live out my mission as a good friend of Jesus, but ‘in the world’.

As Therese did when she wrote her Story of a Soul, as Teresa did when she wrote her Life, I have looked back on my life from earliest memory and discerned a certain thread which signifies God’s leading me and guiding me at each place, and gifting me according to his plan and my unique reflection of Him, into this place called Carmel. Since I have made a Promise for Life to live the charism of the Discalced Carmelite Order, in the world, I am trusting that God plans to take me home by this way... likely with a last stage of growth in Purgatory.

I have suffered a shock in recent months. Today’s students are not being taught to write in cursive! When I was in my 30s, I discovered a box of letters written to my mother by my father, and there I encountered my father ‘in person’ for the first time. I was conceived during my parents’ last visit together before he was killed in World War II, so I had never known him except as a menacing-looking Marine watching me from a fancy gilt picture frame in our living room, and as the invisible man my mother still honored with her life.

When I opened and began to read his letters, I was happily surprised to see that Daddy had beautiful handwriting. I did too. Though not like Daddy’s, of course, my handwriting was praiseworthy, about the only academic gift I was ever praised for as a child. I cried when I saw the evidence that I was his child, had inherited this special gift from him. It was my first familial bond with my father. Pen in hand, I have written lots of letters throughout my life; it is one of the manifestations of God’s gift to me of spiritual friendship. Handwriting has brought me much pleasure; the work of it has consoled many “hard things” I had to do.

When she opened it, she said, “I can’t read cursive.”

In December, I wrote my 13 year old granddaughter, honor student in a Catholic School, a letter as part of her Christmas gift. When she opened it, she said, “I can’t read cursive.” I learned that the students are not being taught to write in cursive, in many schools, because of their growing dependence on the computer.

I was horrified! The pleasurable image of opening the mailbox to see the address on an envelope for me, and knowing immediately who’d sent it because of the distinctive handwriting, passed quickly into sadness to realize how few handwritten letters I receive these days. Today, in confession with a beloved young priest in our parish, I handed him a passage to read from my journal which would shed light on my convictions. I was shocked again to hear him say he finds it difficult to read cursive.

Dear God.
Are You now calling me to detach from handwriting?
Is the old gift no longer of use?
No. By Your grace I learned long ago to converse with You on paper,
In my prayer journals,
And You read cursive very well.

I struggle mightily to correspond and do business on my MAC; beyond the basic writing, I am lost, always having to ask for help. But the handwritten cards and letters seem to continue to be a blessing for those who write and read cursive, and this correspondence is a vital part of my personal apostolate of spiritual friendship.

Thank God for those clever people who find the computer a great adventure, and are willing to help me use it when I must. And for the treasured letters from my Daddy and Mother and friends which continue to bless me when I come upon them among my treasures. Carmel has taught me that even our limitations are cause for joy, as they call forth the gifts of others to enable us to function as the living, loving Body of Christ.

Our OCDS community has been reading St. Teresa of Jesus’s Letters. At the Atlanta Congress last September, Fr. Stephen Sanchez, OCD, gave a wonderful Conference on the Letters, stressing that our Holy Mother did not like writing letters. For her they were more penance than pleasure. Especially with her sicknesses and the enormous demand on her time and energy, Teresa wrote out of a sense of duty, often at great personal cost. Still, her natural penchant for conversation and her interest in the wellbeing of her Carmelites, family, friends and so many others, including high-ranking officials, even the King of Spain on two occasions, remains consistent in her letters. She writes to Fr. Gracian, for example:

I long to know if you are well after having returned from so long a journey. For love of our Lord, try to write to me as soon as you can and find some way for sending the letters... even a few hours without knowing about you seemed to be a long time. Since you know this, it would be a great cruelty for you to neglect writing...

In communicating her orders, her news, her needs, and her love, no matter the person to whom she wrote, Teresa was “speaking in the light of conversation what she heard in the darkness of prayerful contemplation.” It is what someone once perceived in my letters; it is what I see now, in reflection, as I go back to read from my journals. I doubt Teresa expected to have her personal letters read 500 years down the road, might even be horrified to watch us read them. But I am grateful to have them, to see her distinctive handwriting, and to hear her distinctive voice reflected in her handwriting, here as in her official works.