Another Book Meme

This one comes from the Psalmist via Red Heeler Ranch. This is one that--depending on circumstances--could be either edifying, bewildering, or just plain silly.

Pick up the nearest book of 123 pages or more. (No cheating!)

Well, the closest pile of books, with the one on top is one I bought for going to the Shalem Residential term: Entering Teresa of Avila's Interior Castle by Gillian T. W. Ahlgren.

Find Page 123.

Find the first 5 sentences.
(The author quotes Teresa of Avila and describes her as lamenting the human tendency to ignore the divine within. You will see below how the author writes LONG sentences.)

Post the next 3 sentences.
"Without denying that Teresa play a significant (and intentional) role in the Catholic Counter-Reformation and that a Catholic interpretive system guided her understanding of human life, the fact that she identified the interior depths of the human person as the primary sphere of human-divine intimate creativity suggests that her insights contribute to a deeper sense of what it is to be human, not merely what it means to be Christian or Catholic. Thus, although Teresa clearly felt that Christian theology offered the best framework for her to understand and express the human-divine relationship, it is not clear that her theological system, as explicitly Christian as it is, is unable to enter a larger interreligious dialogue about the nature of the self, especially the self and the self-beyond-self as points of entry into human-divine relationality or ultimate reality.

"This leads to the corollary to Teresa's major premise, that understanding the self is a theological project requiring some forms of theological language."


Tag 5 people.
I tag Garlic/Salt, Fran, Jiff, Garten, and The Crimson Rambler.