Customer Reviews

Virgin Time: In Search of the Contemplative Life

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From the other reviews, this is clearly a book you either love or hate; as someone who loved it, I also found it (as the other fans of it did) a very moving and coherent tale. Hampl takes us with her as she seeks for a way to understand what it means to seek; she (like many of us) yearns for some sort of spirituality, but rests in a deeply uneasy relationship with her childhood Catholicism. The book follows her on a series of trips-- to Italy with jaded English tourists, then with Franciscan pilgrims, to Lourdes, back into her childhood memories, and finally to a retreat in California. I think readers who find the travelogue parts and the retreat section disconnected are not seeing this as a spiritual journey (in fact, most of them admit they aren't interested in it!-- then why read this book?) but it is-- and one that moves Hampl, not into certainty, but into peace and acceptance with her own doubt. The book charts her finding her way to accept and forgive those who travel with her, and especially to forgive herself for the dance she does between wanting this contemplative life and not wanting to give up the world-- adoring her sweets and coffee, her human companionship, her writing, her shyness, all the weaknesses that make her human and that she finally realizes do not have to be left behind, but instead embraced with compassion. The lessons she lives out are not solely Catholic or Christian but remind me of Pema Chodron's teachings on living with uncertainty. I found it honest, moving, and, in the end, deeply joyful.

Although I do not consider myself to be religious and have seldom set foot in a Catholic Church, I found this book captivating. It is refreshingly honest and simple to read and the characters are charming and sometimes quirky. The narrator has spent her life trying to break free of her childhood Catholic roots only to find herself drawn back into them in middle age. She begins her pilgrimmage in Italy with a group of agnostic British couples and moves on to a group of Friars and Nuns, who are delightfully humorous and not at all what one would expect them to be. Throughout her trips in Italy we learn bits and pieces of her childhood along with the story of St. Francis and St. Clare. The places she stays and sees are described beautifully and I felt as though I were on the trip with her. The book is fun and charming to read and I highly recommend it.

As memoir and (especially) travelog, VIRGIN TIME works reasonably well. The author has a quietly introspective prose style well suited to the topic. The reminiscences are well-drawn, and her observations of "sacred travel" are astute and entertaining.

But I bought the book to learn something of the contemplative life, and come away feeling like I know nothing more than when I began. This may be due to a sharp divide between two parts of the book: The first, an intertwined memoir/travelog, and the second, a crimped and uninforming description of a retreat at a dismal-sounding kind-of-a-sort-of-a-monastery in xenophobic Northern California.

I almost got the impression that the second piece had been grafted onto the first to complete the book or bring it up to a publishable size. This is a shame; the lesson I get from the California retreat is that retreats are about as pleasant and meaningful as giving up gumdrops for Lent.

And about contemplation itself we learn almost nothing.

I suppose I could just be dense; it's a fersure that I'm not a New Age type and look *very* askance at asceticism. (Most ascetics I've met are prideful people who look down their noses at those of us who try to live balanced and uniformly modest lives.)

Anyway. The book is worth reading until the author starts heading up to Northern California. Once you get to that point, put it down. There's nothing further up the road.

If you're interested in contemplative prayer, this author knows the subject well. Her years with contemplative nuns as a child, her own intense search, and the contemplatives she runs across in her travels are described with impressive perception and depth. A remarkable book, rich in specific insights and details that will be of particular interest and meaning to contemplatives.

This book is carefully and elegantly constructed, with the quiet pacing of a richly written travelogue. Her writing is so clear, descriptive and nuanced that the countryside, her fellow travellers and her own inner life are vividly realized. I enjoyed her candidness about the difficulty of constructing an authentic spiritual experience and the magic of actually experiencing one. It has what the best spiritual autobiographies have: hopeful doubt, caution, journey and joy. It is her stark candidness and the quality of her writing that set it apart as an excellent read.

Patricia Hampl, a poet, writer and teacher, is in the midst of a spiritual journey for what she has seen in the eyes of some fellow Catholics, the sustaining love of all emanating from a higher degree of unification between God and person. A pre-Vatican II Catholic education is the ground from which the journey proceeds. We tour with her at Assisi and Lourdes, and go on retreat in California, partaking in the conversations and quiet experiences Hampl collects. An exceptional observer and wordsmith, we are treated to a wonderful book on the level of construction and expression in which Patricia Hampl reveals how powerful prayer exists in the silences, much as a poem reveals itself in the white space between the lines of text.Virgin Time: In Search of the Contemplative Life

A pilgrimage on the page, this book has a strong sense of spirituality, but also an engaging sense of humor. Make a vicarious pilgrimge to Assisi and get inside the head of a deep-thinker and a gifted writer who makes an excellent traveling companion.

Virgin Time is a book that half way in I was nearly ready to toss - the walking trip thru Umbria seemed to have little relationship to her childhood memories of a Catholic upbringing and education. Only at her return to Assisi with a Franciscan study group did the structure of the book begin to appear. Only in the last chapters of the book did the need for the first half of the book become apparent.

As for the internal spiritual journey, Patricia Hampl has a perspective that is useful and uncommon - the problem is not God but is prayer. Her resolution comes on retreat in Northern California - a resolution that has several insightful observations on prayer.

There are individuals for whom Virgin Time should be "required reading" - others will find that it is an interesting one-time read from which they will learn little other than how personal a spiritual path must be - different questions as primary - different aspects of the answer missing.

The best way to learn if this book is for you is to read it.

I have tried twice to read this book and couldn't get through it either time. I was determined the second time I read it to try harder, thinking there had to be some redeeming value, but if there is I just didn't have the patience to perservere. There are too many engaging books to be read.

Read for a college Theology class. Uninteresting. She has a spiritual journey. It's just not worth reading.