Customer Reviews

The Cloister Walk

5 star:		(44)
4 star:		(9)
3 star:		(6)
2 star:		(7)
1 star:		(4)

 

 

It would be difficult for me to say a harsh thing about this book or the companion audio tapes read by Debra Winger. I was in a very confused and troublesome place in my like and this book introduced me to the wonderful simplicity and sense of the Rule of St Benedict, and gave me my first recognized touch of Grace.

I enjoy Norris' writing style. She is quirky, down to earth. Unlike other reviewers, I like her familiarness, her occasional slang and language choices. She is a real person reporting a real experience, and that experience literally penetrated deep within me.

What more could anyone ask for in a book?

For many people, Kathleen Norris' story is somewhat familiar. She was raised in a faith tradition as a child, abandoned her faith, or at least put her faith on hold, then rediscovers her faith as an adult. Norris' experience is hardly typical, but it is definitely not "the same old story" with a different person telling it. Norris rediscovers faith accidentally, but it is not the Protestant faith of her youth. She is now a Protestant whose faith is colored by Roman Catholicism, particularly the Benedictine monastic tradition in Catholicism.

Norris is a writer whose primary genre has been poetry. In 1991, she spent a year at a Benedictine monastery in Minnesota and entered into the life of this monastic community. From time to time she also traveled to her home and to various parts of the country for conferences or speaking engagements. The book is taken from reflections of that experience. In the book, she is connected to her life outside the monastery while at the monastery and while away from the monastery, she still seems to be very present to the life of the monastery. The life in the monastery has a certain pattern to it, based on the Rule of St. Benedict. The year follows a calendar, but it is the calendar of the Roman Martyrology which lists the days that various saints and religious feasts are remembered. The Liturgy of the Hours, chanted by the monks is essential to the life of the monastery as is time for personal prayer and reflection. As both an insider (as a person connected to the monastery) and an outsider (a Protestant woman in an all male Catholic community), Norris is able to make keen insights into the life of the monastery with a unique perspective.

This is a book that should be read from cover to cover when the book is read for the first time. Since the book begins in September and concludes in August of the following year, reading the whole book rather than excerpts is essential to see Norris' growth in her understanding of monastic life as well as her own spiritual growth. After reading the book a first time, most readers will inevitably go back to favorite passages. I often reread portions in the book about the liturgical seasons such as Advent and Easter. I also enjoy rereading her understanding of "lectio divina" a prayerful method of reading scripture that allows the words to speak to a person's heart. I believe that as a poet, she is able to understand the richness of scripture both from a literary point of view and as a believer. Her experiences back home in South Dakota and her activities in her own faith community are also great excerpts in the book.

Part of my love for the books is due to the fact it can be read and shared with so many people. More often than not, religious books speak only to a person who shares the same religious mindset. I have found myself recommending the book to lifelong Catholics as an affirmation of the faith. I love the fact that this Protestant woman has a better understanding and appreciation for many Catholic things than most Catholics do. I have likewise recommended the book to people who have been hurt by organized religion in general, and the Catholic Church in particular. Norris is able to see God at work in lives that she terms "messy" and flaws in the saints. Everyone can find him/herself in Norris' book. Most people I know have read this book slowly in conjunction with prayer. This is probably the best way to approach the book. This is also a book for people on a spiritual quest, but not a book for people who want an easy spirituality. Norris' profound insights are due to struggling with faith and belief and how faith and belief are lived in life. If living a life of faith can be a challenge, The Cloister Walk is the kind of encouragement needed as Norris shares her journey and we live our own journey.

I first read Cloister Walk after deciding to write my senior thesis on her writings. I was intrigued by a writer who was a feminist, embraced Christianity, explored monasteries, and found an audience outside the conservative Christian market. As a person who has grown up with a strong faith in God and love for Jesus, I also longed for new ways to talk about God. Norris's honesty and exploration of what it's like to live out the beliefs and ideas of the Christian faith gave me confidence to explore my own experiences of these beliefs. Her chapter on the Psalms was particularly amazing. I felt like I was being set free with Norris to be honest with God and others about being human--complete with anger, doubt, and depression. Her theology, or speech about God, is grounded in everyday living. She finds God revealed in the simplest things, which is consistent with the Bible and the character of God--who chose to become a human in Jesus. This affirms for me that even the smallest things I do everyday are important to God--because he loves me enough to become someone like me.

Even most christians today seem to find the idea of the monastery archaic, extreme and unappealing. Here, Ms Norris, a hesitant believer, makes the convent seem appealing, beautiful and full of wisdom.

Once you get past the gimmick - a modern poet finding centering in a monastery - there is still much to like about this book. It is a combination of a lot of things - a painfully personal journal, a catalog of discoveries and musings, a polished essay on laundry that was published in the New Yorker, and several brilliant pieces that stand as academic writing, ready for a feminist publication or academic journal.

I think the latter were my favorite. It is informative and enjoyable to find Ms. Norris taking on the virgin martyrs, looking at catholic history and practice with a modern feminist eye, and finding much to like, and much to weep over. Another similar essay comparing the role of biblical prophets and modern day poets (both dwellers on the "margin" of society, yet deeply necessary to that society) is also excellent.

Norris' respect for the Word is wonderful, as well. She writes much and often about the poetry of the Bible - psalms, Jeremiah - and how they fit and fill her life. She brings new life to what, for many of us, have been wrongly dead words.

Her reflections on the monastery are good. She gives monks and nuns an earthy reality, talking about their quirks, their sense of humor, their doubts and struggles as well as their achievements, discipline, and success. She spends a fair amount of time digging into the heritage and history of monasticism and christianity - apparently she is reading Christian classics as she is living at the monastery - and I learned much about ancient monks, martyrs, and saints.

There is much wisdom in this book, and I appreciate Kathleen Norris' awareness and poet's sensibility. It reveals a richness in the Christian tradition that I gladly and happily claim as a follower of Jesus. It's not all WWJD bracelets and "Left Behind" novels.

A passage:

"Not long ago I accompanied a Trappist abbot as he unlocked a door to the cloister and led me down a long corridor into a stone-walled room, the chapter house of the monastery, where some twenty monks were waiting for me to give a reading. Poetry does lead a person into some strange places. This wonderfully silent, hidden-away place was not as alien to me as it might have been, however as I'd been living on the grounds of a Benedictine monastery for most of the last three years. Trappists are more silent than the Benedictines, far less likely to have works that draws them into the world outside the monastery. But the cumulative effect of the Liturgy of the Hours - at a bare minimum, morning, noon, and evening prayer, as well as the Eucharist - on one's psyche, the sense it gives a person of being immersed in the language of scripture, is much the same in any monastery. What has surprised me, in my time among monastic people, is how much their liturgy feeds my poetry; and also how much correspondence I've found between monastic practice and the discipline of writing."

if you'd like to discuss this book, this review, or anything else with me, e-mail me at williekrischke@hotmail.com. i'd love to chat. :)

A RING OF TRUTH: Like Kathleen Norris, I am a Protestant who lives in a small town and have been heavily influenced by being a guest in a Benedictine Monastery many times. Like Norris, I have been invited into the cloister. Her account has the ring of authenticity. By the time I finished the book I realized I was reading while listening to the CD of chants prepared at the monastery I most often visit.

WHO WILL LIKE THIS BOOK? Norris is a poet. This book is a collection of sketches from inside the monastery, from monastic history, from her own small town, from her vacations, and from the cities she has lived and worked in. Some chapters are long, while others are short. Her themes bounce from chapter to chapter. If you like poetic imagery written in prose and are interested in this theme, you will like this book.

WHO WILL NOT LIKE THIS BOOK? If you like to read technical manuals and books with finely structured outlines, you will probably not like this book. You may feel that Norris rambles too much and doesn't stay with her main point.

Kathleen Norris brings to the table a unique perspective on the monastic life for two reasons:

1.) She comes from a Protestant background

2.) She is not writing from the outside to the extent that someone researching a novel would do.

She is involved with the Benedictines as an Oblate. This means that she is actively involved in the life of the monastery the morning and evening Psalms, the liturgy, and other elements of the monastery. Thus, she writes as an 'insider' of sorts. The book is written rather liturgically in that she covers the topics as they crop up in the liturgical year. This includes different books of the Bible as they are read in the monastery, different saints and Fathers from earlier periods of Church history. She also delves into a diversity of topics on life in the monastery and the different difficulties of the monastic life. Yet she sheds a reflective lens on the Benedictines and it is far from the common caricatures that are bandied about by those who consider themselves `paragons of wisdom' in the world today.

It helps to see that striving for sanctity is not easy even to the Benedictines for often we get the stereotype of monks and nuns having some repressed view of humanity and its stresses/temptations. Perhaps the most important element (if one can be singled out) is that the monks and the nuns are shown in their humanity. This sadly is often not done. The monastery life may add up to a big fat zero in the eyes of the world. However, in Norris' book it takes on an aura of richness and splendour. She also does a wonderful job of showing the positive side of celibacy - which it seems the all-wise world wants to deface at any cost whatsoever. I cannot imagine someone reading this book and not coming across with a new vision of monastic life. A view that accompanies a realization that far from antiquated, the principles of the Rule of St. Benedict are applicable to all us in our daily lives. They would vary slightly of course in accordance with our states in life (religious, married, single, widowed, etc). Another plus is that the sections are generally shorter with few longer than 10 pages (many are about 1-5 pages or so). Thus unlike reading a novel where you have to at times stop in mid chapter with this book you are seldom too many pages from finishing the section you are reading.

The book holds together and has a common thread binding the sections but at times it seems that the author has difficulty focusing on a topic without veering into another topic and then another. Other reviewers spoke of it being a series of shorter writings and that is probably how this book was written. As one who is not unfamiliar with the process of writing, I understand where the author is coming from but it might seem disjointed to some readers. Ms. Norris also shows how the principles she reveals in the monastery she applies to her everyday life including her marriage and her relationship to others. I recommend the book highly and feel that for those who are of the patient sort, the book will read quite well and they will mine many wonderful antidotes and unexpected jewels from it. For those who have difficulties in that area, this book could serve as an instrument of sorts to help with learning patience: the calming effect of meditation coupled with the rhythms of life. The ebbs and flows of liturgy and the gradual fashioning of persons being conformed them to the will of God. Themes in other words familiar to the monastic and which are so often shunned today by the wisdom of the world. Better though is the wisdom of God, which the world thinks is foolish. Ms. Norris' work provides a wonderful source for meditation and enlightenment and I highly recommend it.

This book was a last minute grab from an airport newstand. Frankly, I expected to be disappointed. (Betty J. Eadie's "Embraced by the Light" and James Redfield's "The Celestine Prophecy" had similarly let me down on a long flight.)

I find that much of contemporary spiritual literature, although frequently heartfelt and sincere, is glib and unsubstantial. "The Cloister Walk" was different. It was thoughtful and aware, but maybe better than that, it was smart. Although the author's preoccupation with her status as a tortured poet was less than riveting, I appreciated the context that Kathleen Norris' scholarly impulses provided and I found that I could agree with many of her various points of view. (That whole virgin martyrs phenomenon does have a wierd legacy.)

As I read, I felt much of my self-generated tension drain away from me. Norris took me along on the journey with her, and I was glad to go. She offered me a sense of the peace I so desperately craved.

Let me say this, I'm a voracious and consumptive reader. Few are the books I revisit. "The Cloister Walk" is still on my nightstand, two years after I first picked it up.

The Cloister Walk
by Kathleen Norris

Calling to mind the writings of Thomas Merton and Henri Nouwen, Kathleen Norris writes a deeply personal journal of spiritual self-rediscovery. Although a lifelong protestant, Ms. Norris explores the cultures and traditions of a Benedictine Monastery as she searches for deeper meaning and communion with God in her life. This is a book of great reflection, a story of a soul's journey in the midst of contemporary doubt and turmoil.

The book takes place within the context of monastic life throughout the Church's liturgical year. It explores the rituals, ceremonies, liturgies of this life as well as the everyday existence of monastic life. Ms. Norris is strangely drawn to the cloistered community, one which is at once both apart, yet deeply (if somewhat obliquely) connected to life in general. The themes of liturgical renewal, ritual, contemplation, meditation and prayer speak directly to the hearts of all of us. In that life, the author addresses the sacredness of all life and its ability for renewal and spiritual growth.

As a former monk, a former educator in the Catholic and public school systems, and as a present Roman Catholic priest, I found this book to be the perfect companion (along with Willa Cather) for a recent retreat less than thirty miles from St. John's Abbey. As an insider and an outsider to monastic living and lifestyle, it was interesting to read about how a complete outsider turns from traveler to pilgrim. Once one has encountered Benedictine spirituality, one's life takes a new direction. Norris blends her experiences, both "secular" and "sacred" into what the Gospel calls to be: disciples who try to do the best we can. I'm happy to see that she has found rhythmn in her life. She reminded me of that same rhythmn and balance that the great liturgy and monastic disciplines of the Roman Catholic church offers. This book helped me to remember where I have been and, more importantly, it helped me to remember my future and our future.

A friend loaned me this book as I was moving to a new city. That was 3 months ago; I just finished it last night. Every night, I have treated myself to one tiny chapter, or maybe two on a rough day. As a Catholic with some experience in the rhythm of communal life, it was like being wrapped again in the love of that community. It literally helped me calm down. I wish Ms. Norris could have coffee with all my lapsed Catholic siblings of her generation; as it is, I may dare to give one of them the book for Christmas. Thanks to the author for unfolding her story.