Rating: 
Summary: A father's understanding
Review: As a non-Catholic who has struggled for more than a year with his daughter's decision to enter a Poor Clare Monastery as a postulant, I found Kristin Ohlson's book an enlightening and fascinating exploration of the life and faith of this mysterious order. Ms. Ohlson writes with sympathy and understanding of the faith of the Poor Clares -- born of her own search for faith -- and provides a glimpse of the meaning of life behind the screen.Thanks, Kristen
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Summary: What a Great Book!
Review: For those of us who Jesus hasn't followed home on little cat feet, a'la Anne Lamott (particularly those of us who are Jewish and would be horrified if he did), "Stalking the Divine" is a compelling read. Kristin Ohlson manages to balance the truly remarkable tales of the Poor Clares, cloistered nuns who pray day and night for us all, with her own longings to get closer to the fires of faith. Will an all-night prayer vigil do it? Damn- in the morning, feeling much the same as she did the night before, Ohlson realizes that her prayer to God had been not to fall asleep, and indeed she didn't. Engrossing, moving, at times laugh out loud funny and always beautifully written, this is one book that should not be missed!
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Summary: THIS WILL BE A BEST SELLER
Review: I am loathe to be the first customer to review this because this might be the only review some buyers will see. The responsibility of doing this book justice weighs heavily on me. Although I finished the book four days ago and then went back to read it again, I am still in the flush of great enthusiasm. "Publishers Weekly" got it right (See above) except for the fact that Kris is better than all the others. She is much more entertaining than the rest of the "journey" writers. She has the same gift Kathleen Norris has of humanizing nuns and making their lives understandable, but Kathleen Norris never seems to have any doubts. Kris is full of doubts and questions. The nuns Kris interviews as part of her journey also don't seem smug, those faith-seeking folks who are all so different from one another but not all that different from the rest of us. I especially liked her treatment of Clare, the founder of the contemplative Order which is her subject matter and which she researched so thoroughly before she started asking all her questions. Clare was fleeing a 13th century patriarchal world in addition to seeking God. Vowed virginity puzzled the patriarchs because the nuns moved outside of their control. I have also seen that phenomenom among my lesbian friends. It isn't about sex at all; it's about freedom from being controlled and trying not to lead a dull and meaningless life with a husband and kids. About Jesus as the Bridegroom: I have the same trouble Kris has with throwing around the name Jesus because the Religious Right has given Jesus such a bad name. I also like the fact that Kris doesn't sugar coat the Church's long history of anti-Semitism or its long history of anti-feminism. She, like I think most of us, wants a religion and a faith where people can get outraged at injustice and never achieve total peace with the way things are. What Kris does so well is to pull us into her journey. We find ourselves hoping so much her journey will have a happy ending, not necessarily that she will come back to the Church but that she will find a resolution of some kind and peace at the last; that she will find some answers. Yet, at the end, I felt so very glad that she was just like I am. I should have known that a journey would always be a journey and that things would always be "up in the air." It reads like a mystery story. The thirst to know what happens next makes it a page turner. Folded into the narrative are her own personal trials and those of her heart-broken daughter over the loss of a boyfriend, and the taunting of her rational friends, like the characters in the Book of Job. She stepped outside her own world in order to understand the sisters who stepped into another world themselves and left the old one behind. In addition to getting to know and like Kris, we also get to know the fascinating and mysterious contemplative sisters she interviewed one by one. How she won their trust is a story in itself. I thought it was neat for her to compare her trips to interview the nuns with "Tuesdays With Morrie." This is a book not just for hardcore Catholics like myself who can identify with every page, including knowing the same types of loners who hang around the "Shrine," but for all people who are on journeys seeking enlightenment. I predict this book will have a large audience. Conservative Catholics will love it for sure, but New Age folks will also like it, partly because of the killer title which really is what the book is about. I am sending it to a couple of atheist friends, not to win an argument but help them understand me a little better. I want to show them that I and other people like me aren't sure about much of anything but remain curious about everything and live in the hope that at the end there is a lot more to life than just our own fulfillment. Maybe I can convince them that in stalking God, the nice surprise at the end will be for us to find out that God is always stalking us...sometimes with books like this one.
Rating:
Summary: Profound and deeply moving
Review: I have been hesitant to attempt describing the effect this book had on me because I have been certain that words, as always, cannot adequately express those things most deeply felt. That being said, I simply must give it a try.
I have been on a journey back to a Christian path after many years away. I am not Catholic, but have always been drawn to the writings of Catholics and this one ranks with the best of them, in my opinion. I read it in almost one sitting as I felt the author's words draw me into her story in a deep and profound way. Her earnest seeking and absolute honesty coupled with the honesty and beautifully pure faith of the Poor Clares touched me deeply, heart and soul.
This book helped me plant my feet firmly back on the Christian path, comfortable now with both faith and doubt, recognizing that in some profound way they can coexist. I will always be grateful to Kristin Ohlson and the Poor Clares for this realization.
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Summary: This is an amazing book
Review: I read this book cover to cover almost without stopping. It is the most pure, kindhearted, honest account of one person's struggle with faith, yearning for divine guidance and curiosity about the lives of those who seem to have captured the market on believing.
I highly recommend this book for all people, especially those who grew up in a Catholic home or school and have filled their lives with education and culture, yet still feel a shallowness in their hearts. Kristin Ohlson took what was originally a voyeuristic curiosity about these nuns, and found not only a great story, but that the doors to God had never been closed to her. This isn't some Bible beater's how-to guide. It is a candid story of a journey, through which we learn about the Poor Clares of St. Paul's Shrine. However, the story of the nuns is merely the backdrop to Ms. Ohlson's discovery of her place in the world of faith and divine worship. The book does not end with her "faith switch" being miraculously turned on, but merely her heart having been softened by the work of the Poor Clares. I think Ms. Ohlson may have found, as I know I did, that person or persons for whom you have such admiration for their faith that you are willing to say, if they be a fool, then I shall be a fool beside them. This is a great book.
Rating:
Summary: An amazing, moving read
Review: I'm not at all religious and I found this to be a fascinating inquiry of faith, as well as a smart, funny and insightful memoir. Ohlson, a former atheist and Maoist, explores the cloister of the Poor Clares of Perpetual Adoration and her own faith with a rich, multi-faceted perspective that is quite captivating. Highly recommended.
Rating:
Summary: A perfect resonance
Review: I've been hesitating about reviewing this, simply because every time I've tried to sit down and write about it, bits of the book pop into my awareness and make me reconsider it, freshly every time. And I wanted to do it justice. In short - and coming from a middle-aged pagan, I can give no higher compliment - "Stalking the Divine" got into the chinks of my own sense of spirituality, and basically pitched a tent. Ohlson's history, of falling away from the beliefs that limned her earlier years, will ring chords with many of us. Faith, whether in a traditional monotheistic sense or in something more esoteric, is something people tend to redefine as they grow older. But few will have her experience of the Poor Clares, of wandering into a church on Christmas morning, knowing or at least suspecting she was in search of something she didn't have and somehow needed, of having a warm inner door so beatifically opened. Her time in conversation with the Poor Clares is exquisitely told, and illuminates these women, offering insight into the life - surely a very odd one to most of us - they've chosen to follow. But for me, it's Ohlson herself who comes shining through, a woman edging around the periphery of something lost, something that, in the end, she may get back in a way that will nourish instead of constrain. That, to me, is the hallmark of spiritual maturity. A beautiful, beautiful book.
Rating:
Summary: Outstanding
Review: In telling the amazing story of the Poor Clares of Perpetual Adoration, the author recounts her own search for faith. Her struggle and skepticism create a striking contrast that is moving and provocative. As someone who grew up in the church and drifted away, I often empathized with the author. It's as if I were experiencing her search firsthand.
Rating:
Summary: Honest and compelling
Review: It's hard to add another good comment to these reviews without sounding redundant. This is indeed a wonderful spiritual memoir, and I cannot get enough of this genre when it's well done!
But what I most enjoyed about this book, aside from its lucid and heartfelt writing, is the fact that the author was so honest about her ambivalence toward Catholicism. It was so palpable, right along with her deep yearning to belong. As a lapsed Catholic, she is drawn back to the faith yet she is a thinking seeker, and not totally in agreement with the rules set down by her old patriarchal church.
Would she re-join the church or not? Were the Poor Clares the catalyst she needed to find the faith again? Or not? This conflict creates a marvelous spiritual tension throughout the book -- and that is what kept me reading until I finished.
Rating:
Summary: Best Nonfiction Book of 2003
Review: Kristin Ohlson has filled a void in religious writing and done so beautifully. Not only has she employed her luminous prose to chronicle the history and current state of the Poor Clares of Perpetual Adoration, a small group of nuns who pray 24/7, she has delved into her own search for faith in a way that is never preachy, cloying or reductive. The best nonfiction writing makes us read and contemplate things we didn't even know we were interested in; frankly, I was not terribly captivated by the subject of cloistered nuns before I started this book. Now, having read Stalking the Divine, I want to know more and I deeply regret never having gone to see the Poor Clares' church and hear them sing when I lived in Cleveland. And I'm a secular Jew, for crying out loud. This book would have been terrific had it only dealt with the Poor Clares. But for me, the more profound pleasure came from reading about faith from the point of view of a skeptic, someone who recognizes the value of religion and the good it can embody while never ceasing to ask questions. Ohlson craves faith but is too smart to simply jettison her doubts. Thanks to her clear and incisive writing, I found it easy to empathize with her cognitive dissonance: the desire for God on the one hand and the recognition that human beings are fundamentally restless and inquisitive on the other. And that despite being created in God's image, we have a tendency to screw things up a lot of the time. The world is full of human suffering and all kinds of other crazy, irrational and awful things. Why? Ohlson articulates this question as well as it can be done. She also takes solace in the fact that, behind the grates inside a big old church on a run-down block somewhere in Cleveland, Ohio, a group of women has dedicated itself to prayer in the hopes that things will get better. Amen, Sister.
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