The Cloister Walk

Rating:
Summary: Started my own personal walk...
Review: It would be difficult for me to say a harsh thing about this book or the companion audio tapes read by Debra Winger. Four years ago it was this book that led me back to the Catholic Church, 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 and started a process of change that is still going.

What more could anyone ask for in a book?

Rating:
Summary: Mixed Blessings
Review: Norris' book was so highly praised that some disappointment was inevitable. There are some good insights, but they're mixed in with pompous, snobblish, quirky, cranky, and deliberately obtuse comments. Her language is frequently adolescent, with pointless vulgarity or slang. She is remarkably self-centered. Her model for this is Thomas Merton, but it's a pity she imitates all his worst habits!

Rating:
Summary: Another Artists' Way
Review: This book is a singular resource for writers and, I presume, other artists and those "non-artists" who perceive their work as a vocation.

Some of my favorite passages in the book explore today's insidious attitude that people who claim to be "called" to something are merely "self-indulgent" folks who shun their true responsibility to pursue as much wealth and "productivity" as possible.

Norris' journey as a writer/poet and her immersion in monastic life are exquisitely interwoven to create (without directly posing) a question about whether "the monastic path" is much different than any mindful immersion into a meaningful life.

Rating:
Summary: Wisdom and doubt
Review: 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 [e-mail]. i'd love to chat. :)

Rating:
Summary: Good book, but not as good as I expected
Review: I was very looking forward to reading this book because it came highly recommended and because it seemed to be a guide for walking in the footsteps of many dedicated Christians. I am sorry to say that I was a little disappointed. Although many parts of the book are really excellent, Ms. Norris spends too much time making commentary instead of just sharing the experience. I really enjoyed when she shared how she was moved by prayer, to a point of conversion. And how the experience of the cloister strengthened her sense of self, and her marriage. But the chapter on St. Maria Goretti, while making a valid point, was overkill. Still it is worth the effort through the tedious parts, for the nuggets of wisdom which are also to be found there. My recommendation, skip over the platitudes and embrace the jewels.

Rating:
Summary: Really good writing
Review: Kathleen Norris is a writer's writer. She is fun to read and her imagery stays with you. This book is one of those rare books that change the spiritual formation of an entire generation. Those who are looking for a spiritual guide won't do better than Norris as she takes us along on her own spiritual journey and discovers the ancient tradition of Benedictine spirituality. If you're not interested in spirituality--read it just because she's such a marvelous writer.

Rating:
Summary: Walking into the Cloister
Review: "The Cloister Walk" offered encouragement for my spiritual journey into the "cloister" of God's love. For another helpful book like Norris', but specifically aimed for parents, check out "The Family Cloister: Benedictine Wisdom for the Home", by David Robinson (New York: Crossroad, 2000). Peace.

Rating:
Summary: Poetry and Liturgy
Review: Through this well-crafted collection of essays, Kathleen Norris reminds the reader again and again that neither poetry nor liturgy is the domain of the chosen few. Liturgy--meaning the "work of the people" and poetry--meaning the art of revealing meaning through words and images--is a calling that is lifegiving to us all. Norris's simple willingness to share her experience launches the reader into a contemplative space where new connections between the sacred and the mundane can be enjoyed. It's a refreshingly slow read--a tall glass of water in a thirsty world.

Rating:
Summary: Glimpse of Peace
Review: 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.

Rating:
Summary: Mesmerizing
Review: I must agree with the Boston Globe's description of this book as both strange and beautiful. The Cloister Walk is mesmerizing. An extraordinary book that is at once memoir, poetry and meditative reflections that can leave one poised in long moments of silence. Norris, in sharing her experiences as a monastic oblate, opens the door for the reader to experience the power of 'lectio devina'-- "represents the power of words to resonate with the full range of human experience . . . [as one attempts] to read more with the heart than with the mind" (xx). Norris carries the reader along into the hymns and prayers of Christianity and the Rule of St. Benedict. As Norris shares many passages from the monastic bible(dating back to the 4th c.), one realizes that not much has changed in the past sixteen centuries. Acts of violence against one another and our environment continue to be played out through the centuries. The bible is a book of philosophy as well as psychiatry with the power to heal our collective wounds. "In expressing all the complexities and contradictions of human experience, the psalms act as good psychologists. They defeat our tendency to try to be holy without being human first" (96). There are two faces to the heart: one of evil and one of good, we must be willing to accept both in our search for inner peace and harmony. Bogged down by dogmatic interpretations of the bible, I walk away from the Cloister Walk inspired and uplifted with a greater interest in understanding the true, unadulterated intention of the bible.