The Cloister Walk, cont.

I keep returning to this book; it's like a much needed conversation. I would consider Kathleen Norris a "literary mentor," something I take rather seriously. Her writing speaks to me in a quiet, easy way. Sitting here in Panera bread, with a coffee handy (although the dark blend is not my favorite) it's almost like she's sitting across from me, sharing anecdotes from her life and quietly looking into my eyes, waiting for me to make the connections.

I'm glad I had the chance to meet Ms. Norris. She doesn't look like an author, nor a benedictine oblate, nor anything else you might characterize her as. She's just a normal person. Her normality is almost as striking as the first time I saw a picture of Thomas Merton: he looked nothing like a monk. There are authors out there who glamorize themselves as authors-- or at least come off as something "other" than us, the reader. (To me, Lauren Winner comes off that way in person. She's been around Calvin a time or two for me to make that observation.) While I appreciate LW almost as much as KN or TM, she just doesn't make the cut into a rich readerly relationship. I wonder if anyone knows what I mean.


Kathleen Norris:

Thomas Merton:

Lauren Winner:

Disclaimer: I know that my pictures are rather biased, seeing as how I had the whole internet's worth to choose from. But these pictures still vaguely represent how I, their reader, sees them as when I relate to the text.


And yet, for all their necessary "ordinariness" of Norris and Merton, their lives have been truly extraordinary. Maybe it's because I'm fascinated with monastic life and communities, I don't know. But Kathleen Norris repeatedly talks about the "necessary other" which is intimately connected with the role of the prophet and poet. This "necessary other" is the one able to step out of the framework of society and take a long, hard look, and spell it out to the rest of us in prophecies and poetry. I have always been astounded by the astute clarity that Merton provides in his work No Man Is An Island, and I think this whole idea of the "necessary other" is what allows him to do that. Kathleen Norris, too, but in a way that straddles our world and the monastic community, bridging us at the most important points. If I were a Benedictine, I would probably get as much--or more-- out of what Norris has to say, and her reflections on the Christian calendar. Even though I've learned so much (about monasteries, about saints, about tradition, and about myself, too) there's something deeply meditative about her work that brings me to a level of Mystery. She walks with the reader like a guide to a Heavenly dwelling, saying "Look here. See this aspect of God's splendor? Let's stay a minute and let you take it all in." Then we move on, slowly, contemplatively. Every time I pick up one of their books, it's seeing tradition made new.

Merton talks about that, too. (I like to quote him, can you tell? I re-read him every year and then some, and bought that book in 2005!)
Tradition, which is always old, is at the same time ever new because it is always reviving—born again in each new generation, to be lived and applied in a new and particular way... Tradition is creative. Always original, it always opens out new horizons for an old journey... Tradition teaches us how to love, because it develops and expands our powers, and shows us how to give ourselves the world in which we live, in return for all that we have received from it. (N.M.I. 151)

This idea of tradition is manifested in their writings. It's a way of reviving something very old and very valuable, like monasticism, and making it relevant to a layperson like me.

Enough of praising these lovely writers. It's obvious I recommend them, isn't it?

I wish for company, though. For someone else to join me at this table who knows and respects Norris as I do, and to sit and talk about different aspects in this book and talk about the why behind it all. I want someone to take it all in with. I'm just a third through. It's a book to take in bits, over time, to mull over. There is a chapter that I have in mind for a Calvin prof or two to read--one that I think an Education program could learn a lot from. Even though it took a few tries to get into it, it comes more easily now. I was much too rushed before, I wanted plot or action, a story-- and it didn't seem to offer that. Now I see the stories are more like vignettes; little pictures of something larger and deeper and wider--past my readerly peripheral vision.

More later, I'm sure.