I have been reading this book a little at a time, savoring a chapter every night or so. Kathleen Norris has a very rare quality as an author. She is able to impart her very deep faith in God across the pages and straight into the hearts of her readers.
Norris is a protestant who becomes an Oblate in a monastery. She is woman of great faith, but not without her own personal struggles and despair. Never holier than thou, never preachy, her voice is that of a friend you would want to have.
Norris' best known book is "The Cloister Walk." It is an extraordinary narrative, and one I take comfort in when I feel my own faith faltering. It has never failed to renew my spirit.
Her most recent book "Acedia & me" delves into acedia as a sin, a vice, a disease, and a path to redemption. She perhaps best explains acedia in its contemporary sense in the following paragraph:
Acedia is at work in us when we prefer buying things to witnessing the beauty of nature, "reading" catalogues instead of books, or lingering in a museum store instead of touring the museum itself. These are not insignificant choices, for in making them we risk losing our capacity for wonder. When acedia has so throughly possessed us, making life seem so dull that only artificial stimulation can get our attention, it may be crazy to suggest that the ordinary rhythms of time, the passing of day and night, have something to teach us, or that there is a world to be revealed when the mall is closed, the electric power has failed, and it is too dark to see anything but shadows and stars. Cast back on our lonely, raw, and wounded selves, we may find that nobody is at home. (194)
She is brutally direct, but so, so right.
No comments:
Post a Comment