Sat, Oct 25
|Zoom
Dwellings of the Soul: Teresa of Ávila's Masterpiece on Prayer & Transformation
How can a 16th-century Carmelite impact your spiritual direction? This workshop brings this renowned spiritual leader into focus for contemporary spiritual directors.
Time & Location
Oct 25, 2025, 8:00 AM – 10:00 AM
Zoom
About the event
Teresa of Avila was a sixteenth-century Carmelite nun who was committed to a life of contemplative prayer. Beloved for both her deep spiritual insights and practical approach to life, her writings are considered spiritual classics, and The Interior Castle is widely recognized as her literary masterpiece. To read The Interior Castle is to put yourself in the hands of an extraordinarily qualified faith mentor who well understands our struggles to connect with God.
In this class, Laurel Mathewson, author of An Intimate Good: A Skeptical Christian Mystic in Conversation with Teresa of Avila, and editor of The Interior Castle: Exploring a Spiritual Classic as a Modern Reader, brings this renowned spiritual leader into focus for contemporary spiritual directors. The session will include a brief introduction to St. Teresa and her work, chapter summaries of the various dwellings, and questions for personal reflection. Mathewson encourages us to be open to the ways in which Teresa’s “experiences and writings still shed light on things that happen in our world, so different from hers in many ways but still filled with human beings struggling to be in relationship with one another and God.”
About the Presenter:
Laurel Mathewson was born and raised in Oregon, where she received a lasting love for the natural world, rural communities, and social justice. She graduated with honors from Stanford University, where she found her intellectual passion in the intersections of literature and landscape, faith and politics, and social transformation—as well as a life partner in her now husband, Colin. Laurel is the author of An Intimate Good: A Skeptical Christian Mystic in Conversation with Teresa of Avila, and the editor of The Interior Castle: Exploring a Spiritual Classic as a Modern Reader.
Having trouble signing up online? Contact Sonya at 714-744-3172 or slongbotham@csjorange.org.
Image credit: "17-05 03 St Teresa of Avila" by Felton Davis is licensed under CC BY 2.0. To view a copy of this license, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/?ref=openverse.