From the Worldwide Faith News archives www.wfn.org
Poetic Pilgrim: The Spiritual Journey of Kathleen Norris
From
PCUSA.NEWS@pcusa.org
Date
21 Apr 1998 10:11:13
9-April-1998
98130
Poetic Pilgrim: The Spiritual Journey of Kathleen Norris
by Steve Rabey
Religion News Service
WASHINGTON-Since the 1960s, pilgrims seeking an authentic spiritual path
have often looked beyond the Christian faith of their parents to the
esoterica of the New Age, the mysticism of Eastern religions or the allure
of newfangled cults.
Kathleen Norris abandoned the Protestant pieties of her childhood for
the life of a poet in New York City, a substitution she says "actually
worked pretty well."
But in the early 1980s, a surprising thing began happening to her. A
hunger she describes as "a vague desire for more spiritual depth in my
life" led her to reexamine Christian traditions, and in the process she
found them "much more various, rich, and nourishing than I had ever
imagined."
In "The Cloister Walk," her 1996 best-selling follow-up to her
critically acclaimed "Dakota," Norris introduced readers to the rhythms and
mysteries of monasticism, which she had experienced firsthand during nine
months as an oblate (or lay associate) at a Benedictine monastery.
Her recently released "Amazing Grace: A Vocabulary of Faith"
(Riverhead) offers lively, literary interpretations of concepts like
"salvation," "incarnation," "repentance" and "orthodoxy," as well as dozens
of other perplexing Protestant terms she encountered at Spencer Memorial
Presbyterian Church in Lemmon, S.D.
"When I first ventured back to Sunday worship in my small town, the
services felt like a word bombardment, an hourlong barrage of heavyweight
theological terminology," she writes. "Often I was so exhausted afterwards
that I would need a three-hour nap."
After periods of resting and wrestling, Norris wrote "Amazing Grace," a
book that's neither preachy nor pedantic, but applies a poet's ear - she is
the author of three collections of poetry -- and a prodigal's heart to the
tricky task of shedding warm light on musty and often misunderstood words.
"I'm not a representative of any one faction of the Christian church,"
said the 50-year-old Norris in Denver, the first stop in a 20-city
publicity tour. "I'm simply a seeker saying I'm grounded here in the
Presbyterian tradition, and here's how things look from here. I'm too much
of a poet to have an agenda."
Over the course of 384 pages, Norris explores more than 50 complex
concepts like asceticism and apocalypse. A lyrical, literary writer,
Norris also cares about accuracy, and she had both a Protestant and a
Catholic theologian critique "Amazing Grace."
Early drafts were also read by her agnostic husband, her Jewish editor,
and a writer friend whose first reaction to Norris' conversion was to ask,
"What in the world happened to you? Did you have a lobotomy?"
Her ability to communicate to such a broad spectrum of readers is just
one of Norris' gifts, but one allowing her to ride the crest of the current
wave of interest in spirituality.
"The Cloister Walk," for example, was on the "New York Times" hardback
best-seller list for more than four months, was excerpted in both "New Age
Journal" and the evangelical "Christianity Today" (which also named it one
of the year's best books) and was the subject of a story on Jesuit-run
Vatican radio.
At the same time, Norris is anything but "anything goes," and there are
aspects of the contemporary spirituality boom that concern her.
"I think we're seeing the fruit of a lot of well-meaning people in the
'60s who said we're going to raise the kids with no religion. As a result,
people are frantically searching for some religious meaning in their lives.
And they're sort of taking whatever shows up, which is a really unwise
thing. If you raise people with no religion, they will wind up with some
really warped religions."
She writes about religion's "shadow side" in "Amazing Grace": "I might
hire someone to channel my personal angels, or purchase an Indian name from
a company in California. I might look into my `past lives' and discover
that I was, as some now claim to be, an Indian in a former life. The
religious marketplace is full of spiritualities that can costume us in
fancy dress." In contrast to such shenanigans, Christianity seems "not so
crazy, after all, but an ancient thing, and wise."
Wrestling with one's religious inheritance is never easy, a truth
Norris illustrates by discussing the lives of poet Emily Dickinson and
Chicago Bulls coach Phil Jackson, neither of whom fit comfortably into the
faith of their parents.
But, she writes, the answer isn't found in "a perpetual seeking for
something, anything, that doesn't lead us back to where we came from."
That only results in something she calls "a perpetual adolescence."
After looking elsewhere, Norris found what she was looking for closer
to home. Some were shocked she returned to the church. Others wondered why
it took so long. Meanwhile, she is watching, listening, taking notes and
writing about her pilgrimage.
"It's been a lively journey," she writes. "And I am the same person who
departed, so long ago, and not the same at all."
------------
For more information contact Presbyterian News Service
phone 502-569-5504 fax 502-569-8073
E-mail PCUSA.NEWS@pcusa.org Web page: http://www.pcusa.org
mailed from World Faith News <wfn-news@wfn.org>
--
Browse month . . .
Browse month (sort by Source) . . .
Advanced Search & Browse . . .
WFN Home