![St. Teresa of Ávila](/images/7)
_St. Teresa of Ávila._

<span class="dropcap">One more quotation</span> from James K.A. Smith's _Make Your Home in This Luminous Dark_:

> In contrast, the mystics describe an experience of unknowing that rocks the very foundations of confidence in knowledge. What follows is a humility that St. John of the Cross describes as a “humiliation.” St. Teresa describes it as an experience of “annihilation.” In describing “the Prayer of Union,” [St. Teresa of Ávila] cautions: “Don’t think that this union is some kind of dreamy state.” It is, rather, an experience of utter vexation. It is a kind of death. “Even if she is able to love, she does not understand in the midst of her loving how or what it is she loves. She doesn’t know what she wants. She has died completely to this world so that she can fully live in God. This is a delicious death.”