she imagines the non-believer asking, then goes on to reply, “The question is best answered simply: ‘Yes. If you enjoyed The Cloister Walk, you’ll want to read these other works by Kathleen Norris, all available from Riverhead. Norris comes from a protestant background, and yet finds herself compelled by this life of chastity and worship, cloisters and habits, and its quiet gentleness and yet worldly acceptance of things as they are.

If our work brings you any hope and a sense of belonging, then please consider supporting our labor of love with a donation. Nearly 20 years ago, poet Kathleen Norris and her husband moved from New York to the isolated town of Lemmon in northwestern South Dakota, home of her grandparents. Her book The Cloister Walk—initially published twenty-five years ago this month—was born out of this immersion in the daily rhythms of the monastery.

Newsday, "In The Cloister Walk , persisting in [Norris's] wonderfully idiosyncratic ways, she gives us the result of an 'immersion into a liturgical world'. If you like to read technical manuals and books with finely structured outlines, you will probably not like this book. Norris, whose poetry collections include The Middle of the World, reached a wide audience with her prose memoir Dakota, A Spiritual Geography. 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. Range of fitted bedroom furniture in light wood effect finish comprising; wardrobes and high level storage cupboards.

This is the question that poet Kathleen Norris asks us as, somewhat to her own surprise, she found herself on two extended residencies at St.With her lucid, luminous prose, hardheaded logic, and far-reaching metaphors, Norris has brought us the cloister at its most alive.

This is a second reading for me as it was so interesting a well written by the author Kathleen Norris. Kathleen Norris, a married woman with a thoroughly Protestant background and often more doubt than faith, finds herself, somewhat to her own surprise, on two extended residences at St John's Abbey, Minnesota. The canal tow path and river Exe are also conveniently nearby, and are popular for walking and cycle rides. Each chapter is structured around a reading, a line, or a life of a saint she encounters while attending worship with the monks. Kathleen Norris is the award-winning, bestselling author of Amazing Grace: A Vocabulary of Faith; The Cloister Walk; and Dakota: A Spiritual Geography.

There’s value in both, but I thought Norris’ book likely approached what it was like to live as a member of a monastic community far more than Fermor did. Of course, the Christian tradition also carries a “positive” theology, rooted in the acceptance of scripture as divine revelation. During this pandemic, which is horrific and sad for the world and yet oddly good for my extremely introverted, hermit-ish soul, I decided to do some catch-up and hit that pile of books I’d always wanted to read and yet never quite started. Norris is more interested in her own thoughts and feelings about the subjects of monasticism and religion than in what anyone else has to say about them.

Despite my constant waiting for the “right” moment to read this book, it found me right when I needed it. But of course I get why now, now that I’m older, what they lived through, what men made them go through every day, what academia must have been like, and that we’re finally talking about everything we’re talking about and men can’t make it go away. How do you think we can better expose children to religion so that they will more easily grow into a meaningful, mature relationship with God? For those of us like yours truly, who could happily live in a fortress of solitude surrounded by books and cats, this is an interesting take on the strength of human bonds and the necessity of community. She travelled extensively around England, and occasionally visited Europe, painting wherever she went.When an idea strikes, she tells us, the poet must be ready to attend to it even when they can’t see where it’s leading, even when they don’t know what it means. They gossip, crack jokes, fall asleep in church, suffer through depression and doubt like the rest of us…. From the iconic author of Amazing Grace: A Vocabulary of Faith , a spiritual journey that brings joy to the meanings of love, grace and faith. Black Women’s Faith, Courage, and Moral Leadership in the Civil Rights Movement Have You Got Good Religion? There’s a reason Margaret Atwood is popular again, and nobody’s brushing what she has to say under the rug anymore.