Gerd selected another key from the iron ring and opened the gate to the large chapel built over the room where St. Teresa received the vision of the transverberation: being pierced in the heart with a flaming arrow held by an angel.

The strong odor of frankincense enveloped us. I love this fragrance. Gerd then used a third key to open the door to the gated remnant of St. Teresa's cell, with its second level kitchen hearth. Most of its original floorspace is incorporated into the chapel, beneath more recent pavement less humble than the original bricks, laid in a chevron pattern. St. Teresa lived here for the first 27 years of her religious career, before she was inspired to make the Reform and took to the road, first founding San José.

"This is the most sacred place to me," said Gerd. She stood back to let us enter the small space between the door and the barred cell. She seemed to retreat into herself and become as still as she was when I first saw her in the church of San José.

The morning was passing and it was approaching time for us to leave to check out of el hostal del Rastro and head for Toledo. We soon left the chapel and church and Gerd returned the keys. We were all three in a reflective mood. I asked Gerd about vocation, the calling to religious life, or I think, any strongly felt commitment. She repeated that the Spaniards think she's crazy, and that if entering La Encarnación is an impossibility, perhaps at San José....

I asked her if she planned to add to her autobiography, which I had started to read (slowly, in Spanish) at bedtime the previous night. She said perhaps she would, but she didn't yet know where her path would lead. For now, she has said all there is to say, and it leaves only the waiting and the faith and the living of it, whatever it may be.

We came in for another few moments when we reached Gerd's house. She showed us two more rooms in the small house she doesn't use, except to put up the occasional person she meets through circumstance who might need a bed for a night or two. She also said she had written her statement of faith when she converted, much as St. Teresa wrote her Life and Foundations at the behest of her confessors. She went into one of the closed rooms and came back with another color xeroxed manuscript copy, as artful as the first, titled "Mi Propria Profesión de Fé." "Since it's you..." she offered it to me as well to read and send back to her.