Fr Ben Garren

En tu Libertad te pongo,
si quieres censurarlos;
pues de que, al cabo, te estás
en ella, estoy muy al cabo.

No hay cosa más libre que
el entendimiento humano;
¿pues lo que Dios no violenta,
por qué yo he de violentarlo?

I leave you quite at liberty
to find fault and reprehend-
how thoroughly free you are, after all,
I thoroughly comprehend.

Nothing is more free than is
our human intellect;
then why should I attempt to force
what God himself respects.

—Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz 

Dear Siblings in Christ,

In 1695 a plague is overwhelming Mexico City and on April 17 in a simple convent cell Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz passes away after a year of tending her ailing sisters. She had dedicated herself to the Religious Life because it gave her the freedom to be an academic in a society that would not otherwise provide her an education. A society that did not know what to do with a woman who at the age of eight could do Latin prose composition at a collegiate level. A society that did not know what to do with a woman who, as a teenager, could pass any oral exams with no preparation given to her by the leading scholars of Mexico City. A woman who would be considered the Tenth Muse, and the Phoenix of America, by other authors of the Golden Era of Spanish Literature… and then almost forgotten.

The convent where she lived became, for a while, home of a 4,000 volume library, a salon where some of the deepest intellectual conversations occurring on the North American continent took place, and a hub in a global network of academic writings. Only so much writing about the need for freedom of thought, of valuing the intellectual capacity of women, of recognizing the beauty of indigenous American societies could be tolerated… and eventually pressure mounted that her work was not proper service to her sisters and community and so she was required to sell her books, close her salon, end all correspondence, and dedicate her life to caring for her sisters as they succumbed to the plague overwhelming the city. This abrupt end to her career left her a forgotten part of the literature and history of the Americas.

So today, on the day when her life ended in that simple cell that once held a precious library, where scholars traveled to learn and discuss with a polymath who never was allowed to go to university, where letters to the leading global intellectuals had been written just take some time to remember her, read her poetry above, and know that nothing is more free than our human intellect.

Pax,

—Ben