Customer Reviews

Called to Question: A Spiritual Memoir

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Upon hearing about Sister Joan from Sir Walter Brueggemann and Patricia Hallum who are both avid readers, I tackled her two latest treasures. Bruegge's awesome evaluation after speaking in Mississippi Conference last year with Marcus Borg, Bishop Spong plus Sister Joan was simply "She is a fearless Lady!" All of her writing has great simplicity, profoundity, richly mined metaphor plus an awesome collection of Epiphanies. Some of her numerous quotations by Teresa of Avila, Julian of Norwich, May Sarton, Sue Monk Kidd, Donna Schaper and Marie Fortune: "In the midst of profound suffering, God is present and new life is possible." As personal response in her Journal: "Why is God in suffering? Maybe because, in those moments, there is little of anything else there! Only in God can we come to see the broader view of suffering....Suffering pares us to the core, strips us of our complacencies, and leaves us naked of ourselves. Suffering exposes us to ourselves!"

Other than Karen Armstrong, who provides her personal accolades on the book cover, Walter Brueggemann, and Barbara Brown Taylor, no one else inhabits my ballpark as equally inspiring, noteable writers! These and others often gift me with courage, Faith and spiritual endurance to guide me through those deeper waters of spiritual growth! Retired Chaplain Fred W Hood

If you have questions or doubts or strong feelings about spiritaul matters that are pertinent particularly to women or you are a man who recognizes that the Catholic Church does not think women exist you must read this book. Her spirituality is sound, her questioning of herself and her church are sound. She challenges herself and her life, would that all of us would do the same.

Please note that the previous reviewer, DS in NJ, did not disclose with "his" opinions, that "his" views are colored by "his" natural gender bias. It is commendable that he recommends Sr. Joan's book, despite his obvious disagreement with her contention that it is time for an open dialog about the role of women in the Catholic church. Hopefully, DS's suggestion that readers skip the section of the book he found objectionable will draw more attention to ideas sorely missing from open discussion between men and women of Catholic faith. DS contends that feminism is dead. Sr.'s serious presentation of long ignored issues concerning women's roles in Catholisism are an indication that feminism has matured and has grown long reaching roots. It is crucial this book is read completely, in order to initiate debate, discourse and deliberation, as Sister obviously intended. My suggestion? Read, think, express your views, listen to others, think more and talk!

In this her most recent book, Sister Joan Chittister, a Benedictine nun and author of twenty-five books, continues to think out loud about just what it means to know, love, and follow Jesus in our crazy, contemporary world. This is the third book by her that I have read, and I have come to appreciate her spirit and gift to do what good writers do, which is to connect with the every day experiences and aspirations of her readers. Using her own spiritual journal entries from across a four year period, she pushes, pokes and prods at the various dimensions of Christian living. In particular, I appreciated three themes from this book that also recur in her other works.

Chittister writes from very much "inside the box," the box that is the Roman Catholic Church. But no one likes to be boxed in, much less a feminist like her, and so one theme from this book is what I would call institutional frustration with the church. Our Christian institutions and churches often purvey a sort of "god of the system" that asks us at some level to sublimate our deeply personal identities to the group identity. But then we risk forfeiting conscience and becoming what she describes as "institutional robots." So, we try, often with very limited success, to change the institution for the better. Others just want to leave the church out of frustration. In the end, Chittister pictures herself as a "loyal member of a dysfunctional family" (p. 135).

A keen scholar like Chittister is also full of provocative questions about important issues like women's ordination, the place of gays in the church, global justice, and, as a member of a Benedictine community, obedience to the institutional church. But critical questions are just what the church often suppresses, obscures, or responds to with superficial and ideological answers. We can acquiesce to this, too, out of fear of being wrong or even punished. But Chittister does not want to live the Christian life asking other people's questions or accepting their answers, so she keeps asking, seeking, and knocking: how does the Christian relate questions of personal conscience and intellectual integrity to churchly fidelity?

Personal failure and struggle are also prominent themes for Chittister. The problem, it would seem, is to foolishly accept perfection as our standard or goal. But that goal is an oppressive one, and a set up for failure, for no Christian this side of heaven will ever reach it: "The problem, of course, is that we fail. We know ourselves to be weak. We stumble along, being less than we can be, never living up to our own standards, let alone anyone else's. We eat too much between meals, we work too little to get ahead, we drink more than we should at the office party. We're all addicted to something. Those addictions not only cripple us, they convince us that we are worthless and incapable of being worthwhile. It is a self-fulfilling prophecy of the worst order because it traps us inside our own sense of inadequacy, of futility, of failure" (p. 195). Instead, we ought to view failure as "among the best friends of the soul" (p. 91). Rather than subscribe to the unattainable, we should come to appropriate the "sanctifying nature of mistakes and calculations" (p. ix).

Chittister begins her book with a well known story of the seeker who asked the monk just what they did in the monastery: "Oh, we fall and we get up, and we fall and we get up, and we fall and we get up again." Beyond the institutional frustrations, the stymied but important questions, and the realization of but limited progress, she encourages us to hear God's voice to keep going, to "find the me in me" (p. 111), and to cultivate a sense of being at home with yourself because of the extravagant love and grace of God.

Joan Chittister always has the best sense of melding together the human with the divine, the natural with the supernatural, reality with theology. She's done it again.

How wonderful, such a great grace, of Sheed and Ward now to reissue in paperback what appeared some five years ago in hardback, in time for our Lenten Lectio Divina!

Truly this spiritual memoir, this taking stock, this incisive assessment of a life of prayer and of work in God's Church, in the Benedictine Order, including as Prioress, makes edifying reading in this coming time of Lent, in which we earnestly seek our centering upon the firm Rock of Saint Peter, in which we examine our hearts and minds and turn through our passion and suffering towards the Easter miracle.

This book teaches us, as it opens, that when we fall, we get up again, that we are called to question and thereby to grow in Faith, in Love and in Hope.

This book, so timely released now in paperback, makes an excellent gift for every religious community to read together, hearing these helpful and guiding thoughts and prayers from Sister Joan, all speaking to the spirit of these times. This book makes a worthy gift to every hermit, everyone who struggles alone in any desert dwelling, physical and/or interior. Tis book well accompanies every pilgrim of faith, every seeker questioning, every loved one alone.

Sister Joan as ever opens her heart and formidable intellect to us, in healing, in wisdom, in Truth.

Read this book, together with those you love and care for. Discuss this book. Ponder its many messages, and come into the light of God's Love.

When you fall, get up again. Be not afraid; Sister Joan is an intrepid guide.

See also her beautiful gift to us aging: The Gift of Years: Growing Older Gracefully, and her The Rule of Benedict: Insights for the Ages (Crossroad Spiritual Legacy Series). Now that the Kindle 2: Amazon's New Wireless Reading Device (Latest Generation) comes available we find so welcome their conversion of now five of her greatest works to the Kindle format, and are thus able to hear her works read to us, albeit electronically, such as The Story of Ruth: Twelve Moments in Every Woman's Life and her able participation in the necessary collaborative work The Tent of Abraham: Stories of Hope and Peace for Jews, Christians, and Muslims.

In whatsoever format, allow Sister Joan to accompany us upon our long and lonesome journey. She is a powerful and worthy spiritual guide and a great Roman Catholic nun.

This book by Sr Joan Chittister is inspirational and confirming.

All believers who wonder, once in a while, if it is all true - no matter what comprises the "all", will find solace and consolation in this book. Sr Chittister answers your doubts and fears by putting hers on the line. Written beautifully, as are all her books, this one has you saying 'Yes, that's me!' over and over. I would recommend it to all who are interested in their own personal spiritual growth.

Jeanne MacCoy, San Leandro, California

To me, "Called to Question" is a great book, It spoke to my most inner feelings.

Sister Joan Chittister speaks to the human soul. She speaks to many frustrated Catholics and other Christian denominations as well. Her voice has really become a movement that embraces many people of faith who seek to throw off the restraints of a male dominated society that has been so ever present in the Catholic Church. This though is not solely a Catholic issue or a women issue but applies to the abuse of male domination in all institutions of power. To Sister Joan, this long history of male domination in the world has limited the human imagination by suppressing the more caring aspects of the feminine soul.

In Sister Joan's writing and lectures, she expresses a deep passion to "open conversations and thought; to stir minds and touch hearts; to bring us into contact with our souls". This is because she sees institutions "as suppressing thought; governments jailing dissenters; churches excommunicating them; corporations firing them and communities shunning them".

Joan Chittister sees the heart of Christianity as being more of a counter-cultural faith rather than a faith of personal piety. To Sister Joan, it is Christianity that is "called to question", to be seeking justice and to question the unjust status quo of "brutal violence, inhuman poverty, unconscionable discrimination and self righteous fundamentalism. Otherwise the circle goes round and round as we prefer the security of the present to the possibility of the future".

To me "Called to Question" really goes to the heart of the insidious and diabolical nature of American consumer capitalism and how narcissist materialism is destroying the spirituality of humankind. Sister Joan though takes a less confrontational approach with the thought that American individualism has suppressed the spiritual self and that "the spiritual self is all we really have......It is not the world with which we wrestle; it is the self that is the antagonist in our lives. The cry of the restless self is the cry for the God beyond the little gods we fashion along the way".

Sister Joan though is by no means naïve about the oppression of the institutions of corporate capitalism and the human need to oppose such totalitarian rule. I love her paragraph on page 73. I quote: "The greatest spiritual problem of them all may be that we are simply too willing to give over our sense of direction, our compulsion to search, to those who want from us anything but a self. They want obedience or comformity or sacrifice and silence. They do not want us to make up our own minds about anything. They want us to put our minds down at the altar of oblivion so that systems and institutions can thrive, while the soul smothers under the weight of its own indifference. "We cannot afford not to fight for growth and understanding, even when it is painful, as it is bound to be," as she quotes from May Sarton.

Later on page 115, Sister Joan writes another pearl among so many: "It's when we discover that enough will never be enough that we can finally stop kicking and scratching our way through life, put it all down, and let God be the point of the compass for us. Then we are ready to link arms with the rest of the human race as partners in the great enterprise of life. Then we realize not only the insufficiency of the other on whom we have put the burden of our emotional satisfaction, but of ourselves as well. Because neither we nor they are God, we can finally be gentle with one another".

Another very powerful thought that Sister Joan leaves with the reader is that the powers that surround us should not discourage us . "In the end, power does not lie in wealth and authority; it lies in having nothing to lose. When we have nothing to lose or to gain in a situation, we are finally free. Then, the only things that stand between us and integrity are consciousness and truth. Powerlessness does not neutralize us, it drives us on. We are the only ones on the battlefields of life with an eye on the questions alone. Everybody else is too busy calculating the effect of the loss of the situation on their reputations and their careers and their images and their positions".

In summary, Joan Chittister really believes that consciousness really commits one to action. Once one sees so much evil in the world as disguised as virtue, one has no choice but to resist it. However success for radical social change depends on society's being able to achieve a critical mass of resistance. For that, Sister Joan says, "God will need to "send our laborers into the field."

Finally Sister Joan concludes: "The God of creation goes on creating us. The danger is that we ourselves are inclined to call our creation over before its time". .

I have been on a spiritual journey for many years, always feeling terrible for doubting what I have believed from childhood about my faith. This book comforted me by letting me know that questioning is an essential part of becoming spiritually mature, an essential part of being fully human and living life "to the full". I highly recommend this book especially for women who recognize that they are on a spiritual journey.

The first part discussed some of the church's beliefs and traditions and her problems related to them. Each chapter begins with her quoting a writer and then questioning what is said. This, including her initial response, is all in a journal she once kept. The book comments on her initial comments with new insights she has gained over the years. At first I liked the book even though it was quite negative in many cases. AFter a while I decided that even though it provoked questions for me it was becoming so negative that the negativity was rubbing off on me. That, I decided, was not what I needed at this point in my life.