This week, a new book about Mother Teresa, Mother Teresa: Come Be My Light, based on the many letters she wrote to her spiritual counselors and confessors over an almost 50-year period, show a spiritual life that was, as she described it, dry, dark and lonely.

Father James Martin, in a commentary on All Things Considered, says Mother Teresa's spiritual struggles is a reminder of the, not so well-known, “Dark Night of the soul” we may experience in our spiritual journey. Days when we may feel God is absent. Days when we can't feel God's presence.

Mother Teresa faithfully did God's work in this state of darkness for years.

“ When I finally see Jesus, I will tell him I loved him in the darkness.”

— Mother Teresa, “Saint of the Gutters”

As a designer, I’ve always been intrigued by architecture, especially architecture for the church. The balance between self-expression and expression of the sacred is a difficult one. Also, the needs of a space and its relationship to context, is a challenge. The Catholic Church in Uruguay held a contest to design a church building near the city of Colonia. Here you can view the project, along with more photos and a discussion of the rich symbolism behind the design.

The simplicity of its form, and the straight forwardness of its function is admirable. Sadly, you don't see this kind of thought taking place in the U.S. as much as you see it in Europe and South America. Protestant architecture, for better or for worse, is not so interested in the message of its architecture. However, this isn’t just a church mind-set, its an over-all modern architecture perspective. If you are interested in seeing the re-thinking that is going on regarding architectural spaces and their effects on people, here some discussion I’ve come across:

Why are there so many ugly churches?

An Anatomy of Megachurches: The new look for places of worship.

Moyra Doorly, the author of No Place For God: The Denial of the Transcendent in Modern Church Architecture gives a Catholic perspective, and holds the spirit of Relativism, as embodied in Modernist architecture.

“The architecture of Relativist space, like the universal model it embodies, is homogenous, directionless and value-free. A Relativist church building downplays or even denies the concept of sacred space, rejects linear forms, and is designed so that every part of it appears to be of equal importance. Outside it will resemble the local library or sports stadium, thereby proclaiming ‘nothing special here’.”

Alain de Botton, author of The Architecture of Happiness discusses the importance of beauty in architecture in this podcast.

“can good art make us into good people? The hope is always “Yes, it can.”… Good architecture is a suggestion of good behavior, but nothing more or less than that.”

"The place where God calls you is the place where your deep gladness and the world’s deep hunger meet."

— Frederich Buechner