She’s got at something there, I think, not only about poetry, but about anyone’s encounter with the divine.

Part memoir, part meditation, The Cloister Walk is the movingly written and thought-provoking record of a married, Protestant woman’s time spent in a community of men in a traditional Benedictine monastery in Minnesota.Byatt excepted here- and to be honest, only Possession– that gorgeous thing that somehow manages to be commanding and passionate at the same time, and stared you down with its intelligence while never losing heart. This one has been sitting on one of my many bookshelves for years, and I’ve nearly picked it up several times only to get distracted or feel that the requisite spiritual mood wasn’t there. You want to share this great discovery, giving her work as a gift3/4or you simply shove a copy in the face of a friend, saying 'Read this. With her lucid, luminous prose, hard-headed logic, and far-reaching metaphors, Norris has brought us the cloister at its most alive. She can be patronising in places too, such as in her discussion of celibacy: "Ideally, in giving up the sexual prsuit of women (whther as demons or as idealized vessels of purity), the male ceibate learns to realte to them as human beings.

Do you think the Catholic church should continue to require its priests, nuns, and monks to make this vow? My own protestant background has always focused on a personal relationship with Christ, which conveniently left the mess and necessity of other people swept under the rug (a hermit’s dream). Reason for not reading yet: As with any book that’s similarly concerned with spirituality, there’s a whole lot of “I’ve gotta wait until I’m in the right mood,” that goes on, thinking that you have to feel in a state of grace, or a state of neediness, to appreciate something like this. The Benedictines believe deeply in hospitality-the monastery is not considered complete without a guest or two staying with them.Life needs metaphor, that something more, to give it weight, to give us a sense that there is something more, to give us that hint of magic beyond the utilitarian that transforms us.

and yokes them to psychological and spiritual realities in such a way that we’re often left gasping. Nevertheless, it’s always interesting and her out-of-the-box look gives the religious life a freshness and relevance that is often lacking.The language of liturgy and poetry wells from a realm of image and symbol that skirts the edges of the rational mind and is, thus, often ambiguous in its meaning. Indeed, the Benedictines have a love of the psalms, reading and immersing in them daily, starting over once they are all read again, imbedding the rhythms into their daily lives and contemplations. Each chapter is structured around a reading, a line, or a life of a saint she encounters while attending worship with the monks. 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. Whereas prudish denial may have been a darker part of the cloister’s past, it doesn’t show itself here and the way that the nuns and monks approach their unique life leaves even the most skeptical eye-rolling readers with a sense of deep respect .

In 1974, her grandmother died leaving Norris the family farm in South Dakota, and she and her future husband, the poet David Dwyer, decided to temporarily relocate there until arrangements to rent or sell the property could be made. The term “negative capability” is aptly resonant with “negative theology,” and indeed Norris’s focus on the hidden, mysterious aspects of religious faith situates her among the theologians of Via Negativa, a strand of thought which emphasizes the fundamental unknowability of God (many mystical voices from within the church fall into this set, Gregory of Nyssa among them). After she graduated in 1969, she moved to New York City where she joined the arts scene, associated with members of the avant-garde movement including Andy Warhol, and worked for the American Academy of Poets.This reading group guide has been created to enhance your group’s enjoyment of The Cloister Walk, which can be read as a chronicle of spiritual discovery or as a meditation, like daily passages of scripture. And in the essays of The Cloister Walk, Norris is concerned with the question of how we read and interpret the language of scripture, of liturgy, knowing that our grasp on its meaning will always be imperfect. Above all, she discovers the force of spirituality and the beneficial change it can effect – that “love can be the center of all things, if only we will keep it there. A New York Times bestseller for 23 weeksA New York Times Notable Book of the Year"A strange and beautiful book. Monastic “church” reflects a whole-body religion, still in touch with its orality, its music… I find it a blessing that monks still respect the slow way that words work on the human psyche.