The Cloister Walk

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Norris comes at it like most of us do: reasonably religious, reasonably curious, yet grounded in the day-to-day world of secular getting by.

From the iconic author of Amazing Grace: A Vocabulary of Faith , a spiritual journey that brings joy to the meanings of love, grace and faith. Norris never really reveals a lot of details about her daily life (or secular life), but she shares her thoughts on God, on life in the cloister, on the beauty and transcendence of scripture, and on our own unique approaches to a relationship with God and one another. Do you agree with the author’s insistence that keeping liturgy grounded in age-old metaphor and poetry is imperative if we are to preserve meaning and the “ belief in the power of words to change things” (p.Part record of her time amoung the Benedictines, part meditation on various aspects of monastic life. In The Cloister Walk, persisting in [Norris's] wonderfully idiosyncratic ways, she gives us the result of an 'immersion into a liturgical world'.

Chicago Tribune "With her lucid, luminous prose, hardheaded logic, and far-reaching metaphors, Norris has brought us the cloister at its most alive.It’s like the much older sister you weren’t quite ready to understand yet, and to love openly despite her flaws. Unlike Fermor in his short masterpiece, Norris utterly fails to convey the 'feel' of monasticism and often comes across as rather apologetic about the subject, as though she feels she needs to justify her interest in it. All used books might have various degrees of writing, highliting and wear and tear and possibly be an ex-library with the usual stickers and stamps.

If so, did the book provide you with ideas for overcoming the ways you have become exiled from your religion? Why would a married woman with a thoroughly Protestant background and often more doubt than faith be drawn to the ancient practice of monasticism, to a community of celibate men whose days are centered around a rigid schedule of prayer, work, and scripture?But of course I get why now, now that I’m older, what they lived through, what men made them go through every day, what academia must have been like, and that we’re finally talking about everything we’re talking about and men can’t make it go away. What is the role of silence in spiritual life, and why is silence so hard to come by in our culture? After all, we all like the merciful aspects of God, His willingness to forgive our faults, heinous as they are; the righteous God that punishes, the battle God that vanquishes, well, as far as our culture is concerned this just isn’t something we like. Part record of her time among the Benedictines, part meditation on various aspects of monastic life, The Cloister Walk demonstrates, from the rare perspective of someone who is both an insider and outsider, how immersion in the cloistered world– its liturgy, its ritual, its sense of community– can impart meaning to everyday events and deepen our secular lives. Read more about the condition Very Good: A book that has been read and does not look new, but is in excellent condition.

On the other hand, poets speak with no authority but that which the reader is willing to grant them. This is the question that poet Kathleen Norris asks us as, somewhat to her own surprise, she found herself on two extended residencies at St. The author is continually amazed by the perspective of time in a monastery as compared to that of the world outside.

I watched ice form on the river outside my window one Sunday afternoon and felt loneliness more intense than any I could remember since childhood. Part record of her time among the Benedictines, part meditation on various aspects of monastic life, The Cloister Walk demonstrates, from the rare perspective of someone who is both an insider and outsider, how immersion in the cloistered world-- its liturgy, its ritual, its sense of community-- can impart meaning to everyday events and deepen our secular lives. Her poems have appeared in The New Yorker, in various anthologies, and in her own three volumes of poetry. In this stirring and lyrical work, the monastery, often considered archaic or otherworldly, becomes immediate, accessible, and relevant to us, no matter what our faith may be. These cloistered people are still just that: very real and very human people who approach life and all its complexities and needs with a startling honesty.