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Reading Guide

The Cloister Walk

By Kathleen Norris

By Kathleen Norris

By Kathleen Norris

By Kathleen Norris

Best Seller
Paperback $16.00

Apr 01, 1997 | ISBN 9781573225847

Ebook $4.99

Apr 01, 1997 | ISBN 9781101215661

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    The Cloister Walk by Kathleen Norris
    Paperback $16.00
    Apr 01, 1997 | ISBN 9781573225847

    Buy from Other Retailers:

    See All Formats (1) +
    • $16.00

      Apr 01, 1997 | ISBN 9781573225847

      Buy from Other Retailers:

    • Apr 01, 1997 | ISBN 9781101215661

      Buy from Other Retailers:

    Buy the Ebook:

    About The Cloister Walk

     A NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER AND NEW YORK TIMES NOTABLE BOOK OF THE YEAR

    “Vivid, compelling… An embrace of moral and spiritual contemplation.” –The New York Times

    “A remarkable piece of writing. If read with humility and attention, Kathleen Norris’s book becomes lectio divina, or holy reading.” –The Boston Globe

    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. 

    Why would a married woman with a thoroughly Protestant background and often more doubt than faith be drawn to the ancient practice of monasticism, to a community of celibate men whose days are centered on a rigid schedule of prayer, work, and scripture? 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. John’s Abbey in Minnesota.

    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. In this stirring and lyrical work, the monastery, often considered archaic or otherworldly, becomes immediate, accessible, and relevant to us, no matter what our faith may be.

    About The Cloister Walk

     A NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER AND NEW YORK TIMES NOTABLE BOOK OF THE YEAR

    “Vivid, compelling… An embrace of moral and spiritual contemplation.” –The New York Times

    “A remarkable piece of writing. If read with humility and attention, Kathleen Norris’s book becomes lectio divina, or holy reading.” –The Boston Globe

    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. 

    Why would a married woman with a thoroughly Protestant background and often more doubt than faith be drawn to the ancient practice of monasticism, to a community of celibate men whose days are centered on a rigid schedule of prayer, work, and scripture? 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. John’s Abbey in Minnesota.

    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. In this stirring and lyrical work, the monastery, often considered archaic or otherworldly, becomes immediate, accessible, and relevant to us, no matter what our faith may be.

    Reading Guide

    Reading Guide

    Also by Kathleen Norris

    Acedia & me
    The Virgin of Bennington
    Amazing Grace
    See all books by Kathleen Norris

    Also by Kathleen Norris

    Acedia & me
    The Virgin of Bennington
    Amazing Grace
    See all books by Kathleen Norris

    About Kathleen Norris

    Kathleen Norris is the award-winning, bestselling author of Amazing Grace: A Vocabulary of Faith; The Cloister Walk; and Dakota: A Spiritual Geography. Her poems have appeared in The New Yorker, in various anthologies, and in her own three volumes of poetry. She divides her time… More about Kathleen Norris

    About Kathleen Norris

    Kathleen Norris is the award-winning, bestselling author of Amazing Grace: A Vocabulary of Faith; The Cloister Walk; and Dakota: A Spiritual Geography. Her poems have appeared in The New Yorker, in various anthologies, and in her own three volumes of poetry. She divides her time… More about Kathleen Norris

    Product Details

    Category: Religion | Meditation & Mindfulness | Philosophy

    Paperback | $16.00
    Published by Riverhead Books
    Apr 01, 1997 | 416 Pages | 5-1/2 x 8-1/4 | ISBN 9781573225847

    Category: Religion | Meditation & Mindfulness | Philosophy

    Ebook | $4.99
    Published by Riverhead Books
    Apr 01, 1997 | 416 Pages | ISBN 9781101215661

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    Praise

    “In The Cloister Walk, persisting in [Norris’s] wonderfully idiosyncratic ways, she gives us the result of an ‘immersion into a liturgical world’… She is one of hisotyr’s writing pilgrims but also a contemporary American one, boldly willing to forsake any number of cultural fads, trends, and preoccupations in favor of this ‘walk,’ this searching expedition within herself.” –The New York Times Book Review

    “Norris continues to write plainspoken meditations that expand the purview of non-fiction… She writes about religion with the imagination of a poet… In reading Norris, one comse to feel like a spiritual collaborate and, when one’s spirit fails, like a spiritual rebel.” —Chicago Tribune 

    “With her lucid, luminous prose, hardheaded logic, and far-reaching metaphors, Norris has brought us the cloister at its most alive.” –San Francisco Chronicle 

    “The Cloister Walk is a new opportunity to discover a remarkable writer with a huge, wise heart… you want to share this great discovery, giving her work as a gift– or you simply shove a copy in the face of a friend, saying, ‘Read this.'” —Minneapolis Star-Tribune

    “Norris presents ample proof that holy people don’t have to be starchy… If you learn anything from The Cloister Walk, it’s that monks are people too. They gossip, crack jokes, fall asleep in church, suffer through depression and doubt like the rest of us…. Perhaps there’s hope for spiritual life outside the cloister after all.” —Newsday

    Awards

    Barnes and Noble Discover Great New Writers Award WINNER

    Books for a Better Life Book Award WINNER

    Table Of Contents

    Preface

    Dawn

    September 3: Gregory the Great

    St. John’s Abbey Liturgy Schedule

    The Rule and Me

    September 17: Hildegard of Bingen

    September 29: Michael, Gabriel, Raphael, Archangels

    The Difference

    September 30: Jerome

    October 1: Thérèse of the Child Jesus

    October 2: Guardian Angels

    Jeremiah as Writer: The Necessary Other

    November 1 and 2: All Saints, All Souls

    November 16: Gertrude the Great

    Exile, Homeland, and Negative Capability

    New York City: The Trappist Connection

    Los Angeles: The O Antiphons

    Borderline

    The Christmas Music

    January 2: Basil the Great and Gregory of Nazianzus

    Passage

    The Paradox of the Psalms

    Baptism of the Lord: A Tale of Intimacy

    January 10: Gregory of Nyssa

    February 2: Candlemas/Presentation of the Lord

    Celibate Passion

    February 10: Scholastica

    Good Old Sin

    Acedia

    Pride

    Anger

    Noon

    Degenerates

    New Melleray Abbey Liturgy Schedule

    Chicago: Religion in America

    The War on Metaphor

    March 18: Mechtild of Magdeburg

    April 2: Mary of Egypt

    Saved by a Rockette: Easters I Have Known

    Triduum: The Three Days

    Triduum Notes

    Cinderella in Kalamazoo

    The Virgin Martyrs: Between “Point Vierge” and the “Usual Spring”

    Minneapolis: Cocktails with Simon Tugwell

    May 15: Emily Dickinson

    Maria Goretti: Cipher or Saint?

    Evening

    Genesis

    Road Trip

    Places and Displacement: Rattlesnakes in Cyberspace

    Learning to Love: Benedictine Women on Celibacy and Relationship

    The Cloister Walk

    The Garden

    The Church and the Sermon

    June 9: Ephrem the Syrian

    Small Town Sunday Morning

    At Last, Her Laundry’s Done

    Dreaming of Trees

    Monks and Women

    July 11: Benedict’s Cave

    A Glorious Robe

    Women and the Habit: A Not-so-glorious Dilemma

    The Gregorian Brain

    Oz

    Generations

    Monastic Park

    August 28: Augustine

    The Lands of Sunrise and Sunset

    The Nursing Home on Sunday Afternoon

    One Man’s Life

    “It’s a Sweet Life”

    Coming and Going: Monastic Rituals

    “The Rest of the Community”

    “The Only City in America”

    Night

    Acknowledgments

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