You never knew that?
Once when Teresa was little, she and her brother ran away to be martyrs, or was it hermits? Well they are kind of the same, so I think it was hermits. Anyway, they gathered all the Christmas trees in the neighborhood, for it was right after New Year's, and they proceeded to build their hermitage where they could live as little hermits. They piled the trees together in the back yard, forming the walls of the enclosure, then knelt inside to say their prayers. It was cold and they didn't know how to make a proper roof, nor did they know what to do after their prayers, so they returned home for supper.
"Hey wait! That's my story, not Teresa's!" I interrupted.
"Oh very well," the narrator responded.
St. Teresa and the Toad.
Once upon a time there was a pretty little girl named Teresa who became a nun in a Carmelite monastery. As she tells it, she was so pretty that she had to force herself to enter because she thought she'd go to hell otherwise. She was naturally devout, despite her propensity to vanity. For some reason, she liked to commission artists to paint her portrait, only to insult their talent, scolding them for making her so ugly.
"Whatsa wrong with thata nun! She makea my lifea misery!" Said one the young artists who later became a friar named Juan de la Misery.
Eventually Teresa got the hang of things at the monastery and made herself the center of attention, for, as we said, and by her own admission, she was very vain. At first she wanted to write romance novels and put on dance shows for the other nuns, but she suddenly became very ill. A fortuitous turn of events it turns out, since that is how she learned to pray and had a couple of visions along with it.
One day she woke up and shouted, "I'm a mystic! I see dead people!" And all the nuns came running to hear her speak. (Actually, they thought she was dead, but she woke up and looked in a mirror - which explains why she said "I see dead people!" That's one variation of the story at least.)
Anyway - this time Teresa became so popular, she was sought out by people even outside the monastery. She was soon telling everyone how to have visions and locutions and stuff - so they wouldn't have to rely on passing notes through cracks in the walls of their cells. The visions might help the less talented nuns come up with less gaudy designs when it came to embellishing their habits too.
Almost immediately Teresa gathered a little clique around herself and they pretty much hung out in the parlour of the monastery, gossiping and eating figs, while sipping Sangria. Our Lord wasn't very happy and appeared to her once and gave her a dirty look and told she was on the way to perdition. Naturally she was frightened and felt really guilty and humiliated, but she put on a happy face and decided to put on a dramatic play instead of a dance routine for recreation that night.
You got it right - it was a huge hit! Teresa became more popular than ever and that gossipy nun Our Lord didn't want her to hang out with, started stalking Teresa. Eventually the saint convinced herself it was all right just to meet for drinks once in awhile - in a public place.
Then one day, while sipping Sangria in the parlour and gossiping about the new Swarovski crystal beads Mother Electrolux ordered from HSN - which she added to the lace around her wimple, a gigantically-huge ugly toad suddenly appeared, frightening everyone in the parlour. Teresa took it as a sign to break off her friendship with the stalker nun - which she did rather dramatically BTW. Throwing her Sangria in the air, Teresa ordered one of the postulants, "That's it! I've had it! Hand me my cloak Isabel! We're leaving!"
Teresa then left the convent and founded the Discalced Carmelites....
What became of the toad, you ask? He was featured in one her best selling books, Interior Castle - you can still see him and his grizzly friends in the creepy moat which surrounds the Castle - but I wouldn't spend much time there, if I were you. Best to get deeply into the castle interior as quickly as one can, and stay there.
The End
Ed. Note: For more information on the Life of St. Teresa of Avila, go
here. Oh. Yes. This is the the "other" version of the story of the toad:
She tells us that having recovered her health she began to forget the practices
of her earlier days. She had to frequent the parlors of the monastery, and in
many ways had as much freedom allowed her as the older nuns—but she confesses
that she never abused it. She had many friends, and was so winning in her ways
that people eagerly sought her. One day while with a friend—it was at the
beginning of her acquaintance with her—Our Lord stood before her "stern and
grave," and made her see that her conduct displeased Him. "I saw Him," she says,
"with the eyes of the soul more distinctly than I could have seen Him with the
eyes of the body," and she resolved never to meet that person again. Satan,
however, prevailed; she was made to think it was an imagination, yielded to the
temptation, and returned to her new friend. She was told there was no harm in
seeing her, and that she gained instead of losing reputation by so doing. On
another occasion in the parlor with that person, a great toad crawled towards
them in their sight and in the sight of others who were there. She recognized
this to be another warning, but no one told her she was in the wrong except one
of the nuns, then old, and a relative of the Saint. But even this did not
restrain her—she frequented the parlor as before.