Rating: 
Summary: Amaze yourself
Review: Wherever you stand on "the God thing," AMAZING GRACE will add to your life. Norris does the seemingly impossible: she weaves together personal experience, theology (from the everyday to the high-falutin' academic variety), the diction of a poet, and the objectivity and detachment of a monastic (which she is not) into a whole and fascinating story. The device for telling this story is a "vocabulary" of scary or impenetrable words -- salvation, heretic, apostasy, Christ, evangelism, etc. written about in the most extraordinary and approachable way. Norris knows her Bible and will send you back to it again and again -- not in a deliberate way, but just so you can read again (or for the first time) her experience of scripture, or scripture under the light of her insight. Wonderful reading. Full of hopeful, life-affirming, God-loving, everyday-ness. You will amaze yourself with your own enthusiasm for this book.
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Summary: Religion with a sense of the poetic: inspiring.
Review: I think I might have found a new favorite writer. Annie Dillard, I still love you, but Kathleen Norris' little pieces are just as imagistic, inspiring, and profound, as serious and intent about exploring God with a poet's sensibility and a writer's eyes, yet she unsettles and disturbs me less. Here I find a voice not only expressing, but helping me to work out my own faith. In "Amazing Grace", Norris seeks to wrestle with and around tough, often scary words within the religios lexicon. Her efforts are not to define per se, not in any linear way, but to own and understand the faith and tradition that these words belong to; where they come from, where they're going. In the process, she lays down some of the basics of her own faith and belief - in a sense this book is something of one poet's religious manifesto. This appeals to me so much more than a theology text, though it does basically the same thing! By simply being willing to wrestle with the words, to acknowledge their scariness, abuse, mystery, usefulness, by searching out the concepts behind the words (every word has a meaning, but also a reason) this is a beautiful exploration of faith and God.
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Summary: A progressive faith requires a progressive vocabulary...
Review: Being someone who comes from a right-wing fundamentalist background, I have been a victim of an overly-abused vocabulary of faith. And also being someone who happens to be gay, words like "judgment" and "hell" can be especially painful things to hear from the mouths of people who call themselves "Christian". In "Amazing Grace", Norris takes some of the words used in the hateful religion of my childhood and shows me how they can be applied to a more progressive faith, centered around love and inclusion, not hatred and exclusion. After reading this book, the Christian vocabulary has taken on a whole new meaning for me - a meaning that needs to be defined on my terms with my ideas - not those of an overzealous preacher or televangelist. Norris says it so beautifully in her book: "I refuse to be shaken from the fold. It's my God, my Bible, my church, my faith. It chose me." And like so many others out here in the Christian wilderness, my faith has chosen me and not the other way around. My thanks go out to Kathleen Norris for showing me how to redefine the basics of the Christian faith - the vocabulary - with definitions that won't be found in any dictionary.
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Summary: When you get called for jury duty, bring this book with you!
Review: The enchanting quality of the prose in Kathleen Norris's "Amazing Grace: A Vocabulary of Faith" far outweighs our sporadic vexation with the elasticity of Norris's theology. A charming exploration of the "buzzwords" of the Christian faith, with occasional touches of progressive snobbery, as if she were saying, faith isn't just for functionally literate housewives or octogenarian bead-tellers, it's for people like you and me, college-educated readers of poetry who are turned off by the more moralistic exponents of Christianity. But even if we differ with Kathleen Norris on one or two things, we cannot reprehend her evident love of the monastic tradition (this, from a Presbyterian), nor can we find fault with the mellow, benevolent tenor of her prose; reading this book gives one a sensation not unlike that of hearing the Anglican monks sing their vesperal antiphons at the Charles River monastery. Women have contributed much to the literature of 20th century Christianity, whether it be Caryll Houselander, or Evelyn Underhill, or Dorothy Day, or Marianne Moore (whose book-reviews frequently got quite metaphysical!). And there is a broad range of Christian apologetics by women: what kinship do we find between, let us say, Mother Angelica and Rosemary Radford Ruether? Kathleen Norris is between these two extremes, sometimes finding herself bewildered to be participating in the Christian liturgy at all! When I was called for jury duty last January (a bitterly cold day in Boston/Cambridge, three degrees above zero), I brought this book, and four others, with me to the courthouse. The graceless tedium of waiting, waiting , waiting, was leavened and lightened somewhat by the gracefulness of Norris's meditations. Think of "Amazing Grace" -- if you like -- as a less austere version of Thomas Merton's "New Seeds of Contemplation." A few passages will vex, but many more will enchant.
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Summary: Read it slowly
Review: For some time I used this book for insights into various topics. Then I decided to read it just for itself. And I chose to read it slowly -- one essay at a time and let it ruminate. Norris is a Christian who is not always at ease with her faith or place within the church -- yet she is one of the most inspirational writers around today. Her faith is based in the realities of life -- yet she at times borders on what could be called mystical. It is the seeming contradictions that make her writing so wonderful.
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Summary: Taking the fear out of Christian terms
Review: Ms. Norris has taken those terms that are part of the Christian vocabulary and given them new life. Even for those who have been on the Christian journey for many years can appreciate the thought and love Ms. Norris has given each theological term. In this era when many find that it is the "words" that separate us and not the beliefs, Ms. Norris' treatment can be helpful in bringing the different factions into closer union. Ms. Norris' ability to bring these terms into her own faith journey, gives each of us a way to incorporate the terms into our own journey, with love, and knowledge and wisdom. This book is an excellent read for both the new Christian and those who have been on the Christian journey for many years.
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Summary: Two things I like to think about: language and faith!
Review: One of the features this reader finds most compelling about this book is the style. One can peruse the Table of Contents and select the topic that most speaks to her at a given time. That few moments of reading often gives way to hours of contemplation. What an inspired notion to examine the language of faith in such a way. This book is not only for the faithful but also for those losing faith or seeking it.
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Summary: Thought-provoking but also flawed
Review: I admire Kathleen Norris, but in this book, I feel like she's fallen into some deadly religious traps. Take her account of being seated next to the mentally-challenged young man on the airplane. She seems to feel that this happened to her because she's a Christian, so that she could serve and learn. But things like this happen to everybody, every day. It's not just religious people who get opportunities to help people (and follow through on them). Christians don't have a monopoly on Christian ethics. Also, I wish Norris had taken a stronger stand on Biblical interpretation. Some interpretations better reflect the overall themes of the Bible than others. (And there *are* overall themes, just as in any other text--which is not something most people are taught in reading the Bible.) By not stating this, it seems like she's trying to gloss over some very real problems and schisms in the Christian community. Also, she does spend a lot of time criticizing New Agers, which is way too easy. Suspiciously easy, from a spiritual standpoint. Maybe next time she'll write about the flaws and traps and wrong turns of the Christian path.
Rating:
Summary: A token to open the gates
Review: Kathleen Norris allows us to see how she finds a place to start her journey and uses her childhood religon as a vehicle to get through the toll gates of our human vocabulary; a vocabulary that can block many of us, and limit our spiritual experiences. She doesn't allow literalism to block the openings, and describes, with compassion, her respect of others experiences and the difficult acts of listening,watching and real silence.
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Summary: A Drink of Water
Review: Kathleen Norris's Amazing Grace is quite possibly the most thirst quenching new book on faith that I have encountered. It is a combination of exposition, poetry, and stories, keen observations on the Christian faith journey that is a matter of both transcendence and the "everyday." Most simply, it is a series of honest reflections on some of the words that come "loaded" within Christian heritage. If you are thirsty, this book is a drink of fresh water.
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