"Imagine a medieval castle with a Web site. The Carmelite monastery of Indianapolis has strong towers, heavy oak doors and hand-wrought iron fittings, and hallways marked off by heavy chains where light comes in through mauve-colored windows. It also has a bank of computers linked together in a LAN and a Web site, words that were not in the vocabulary of Saint Teresa of Avila, the sixteenth-century Spanish mystic and founding genius of Carmelite spirituality. Sisters who entered the monastery in Indianapolis (built in 1932) moved into a house and a life not unlike the one that Teresa inhabited. They "left the world" in order to live a religious life in a sacred space. Today those same sisters perceive the universe itself as a sacred space, and they are surprisingly aware of and prayerfully present to the world." "This project, which began as an architectural history soon developed into a celebration of Carmelite spirituality as it grew from the experience and reforming instincts of Ter

Studies the life and writings of Saint Teresa and explains why her teachings are viewed as a keystone of modern mystical thought.