We entered the vestibule of the enclosure, passing the massive closed door and into a bare sort of parlor. Gerd rang the bell, and when a young-sounding nun responded, she said "Hello, it's me, Gerd," and that she had two women visitors from the United States, saying our ages. She explained that I had come to Spain to visit all of St. Teresa's foundations. "Ah, yes." I explained that I had been able to enter into the church of only one, at Valladolid, but I had also had a nice conversation with the nun at the torno in Medina del Campo, though they weren't able to let me in.

Gerd wanted to see their directory of Carmels to give me the addresses of others outside of Spain, and perhaps in the U.S. This was passed through the torno. Gerd asked after the two American Carmelites and received the news that one had already left on her assigned mission to found a new Primitive Carmelite house, and that she was in Buffalo. "¿Conoce Bufalo?" the nun asked, pronouncing it in Spanish - "Boofalo." "Sí, conosco Bufalo!" A Carmelite house in Buffalo is her staging point, to found the new convent in "Dakota del Sur." Sí, conosco Dakota del Sur.

Gerd got the Buffalo address for me and we thanked the nun and said goodbye, we were going to visit the church now. Gerd, as always was shining, and we lingered for a few moments as if she were taking in the air so close to the enclosure like perfume. She turned to a painted legend on the wall, " El Carmelo es todo de Maria" and translated it for us : "Carmel is all for Mary. That was for me very difficult to understand, but I think understand it now." I'm not sure I entirely grasped why, except that for a Lutheran, whose spiritual explorations had sprung from the northern experience of Christianity, which is bereft of the Catholic idea of the share of divinity due to the mother of Christ, in fact very much bereft of the feminine, this might be something very unaccustomed indeed. I wanted to know more about it.