Coloring is Praying Thrice

I have trouble getting to sleep for a variety of reasons. Last night I’d exhausted all my options: the hot bath, the candle, the sex, the physician-prescribed benzos; this is where I usually pick up a book (either a Gothic or a Lives of the Saints) and read it out. But that wasn’t even working last night. I thought “Maybe I should color.” I have books of mandalas and a big box of colored pencils at the ready, but no. “Not mandalas,” I thought. “If only there were something… sainty?” And then I produced, with a little effort, a St. Teresa of Avila coloring book as well as The Story of Joan of Arc. And what do you know? This was just the thing. Results below.

1. This is the scene where Teresa gathers up her courage and reveals her plan to open her own Carmelite monastery. “‘We’ll be pioneers,’ she told the four women, who were thinking of coming to the new convent.  ‘We’ll live according to the primitive Rule for Carmelites which Saint Albert of Jerusalem drew up in 1209, but which no nuns have ever followed. Then, eyes twinkling: ‘That could mean trouble, you know.’ Ursula de Revilla, Maria de Avila, Antonia de Henao and Maria de la Pax looked up in astonishment. Why, what did Mother Teresa mean?”

2. “Next, Joan convinced the other French commanders, who wanted to wait for reinforcements, that Les Tourelles could be conquered. On the morning of May 7, 1429, Joan led an attack against the southern outwords (a defensive position outside the fortress).”