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Amazing Grace: A Vocabulary of Faith
The best-selling author of The Cloister Walk blends history, memoir, and theology with a strong grasp of language in a unique, personal, and compelling investigation into the key words of Christian belief, such as "judgment," "prayer," "faith," and "Christ." 100,000 first printing. Tour.
384 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 1998
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4092 people want to read
About the author
Kathleen Norris
127 books453 followersKathleen Norris was born on July 27, 1947 in Washington, D.C. She grew up in Honolulu, Hawaii, as well as on her maternal grandparents’ farm in Lemmon, South Dakota.
Her sheltered upbringing left her unprepared for the world she encountered when she began attending Bennington College in Vermont. At first shocked by the unconventionality surrounding her, Norris took refuge in poetry.
After she graduated in 1969, she moved to New York City where she joined the arts scene, associated with members of the avant-garde movement including Andy Warhol, and worked for the American Academy of Poets.
In 1974, her grandmother died leaving Norris the family farm in South Dakota, and she and her future husband, the poet David Dwyer, decided to temporarily relocate there until arrangements to rent or sell the property could be made. Instead, they ended up remaining in South Dakota for the next 25 years.
Soon after moving to the rural prairie, Norris developed a relationship with the nearby Benedictine abbey, which led to her eventually becoming an oblate.
In 2000, Norris and her husband traded their farmhouse on the Great Plains for a condo in Honolulu, Hawaii, so that Norris could help care for her aging parents after her husband’s own failing health no longer permitted him to travel. Her father died in 2002, and her husband died the following year in 2003.
Her sheltered upbringing left her unprepared for the world she encountered when she began attending Bennington College in Vermont. At first shocked by the unconventionality surrounding her, Norris took refuge in poetry.
After she graduated in 1969, she moved to New York City where she joined the arts scene, associated with members of the avant-garde movement including Andy Warhol, and worked for the American Academy of Poets.
In 1974, her grandmother died leaving Norris the family farm in South Dakota, and she and her future husband, the poet David Dwyer, decided to temporarily relocate there until arrangements to rent or sell the property could be made. Instead, they ended up remaining in South Dakota for the next 25 years.
Soon after moving to the rural prairie, Norris developed a relationship with the nearby Benedictine abbey, which led to her eventually becoming an oblate.
In 2000, Norris and her husband traded their farmhouse on the Great Plains for a condo in Honolulu, Hawaii, so that Norris could help care for her aging parents after her husband’s own failing health no longer permitted him to travel. Her father died in 2002, and her husband died the following year in 2003.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 244 reviews
October 6, 2017
This makes the shortlist of books I would hand to skeptics to show them there might be something to this Christianity nonsense after all.* Like Speaking Christian by Marcus Borg, it aims to inject new life into theological terms that have become mere jargon; “it is my accommodation of and reconciliation with the vocabulary of Christian faith that has been the measure of my conversion,” Norris writes.
She spent 20 years away from the faith but gradually made her way back, via the simple Presbyterianism of her Dakota relatives but also through becoming an oblate at a Benedictine monastery – two completely different expressions of the same faith. At times liturgy has only been like going through the motions for her, but sometimes dutiful action cuts through her doubts. I especially appreciated how she gives personal weight to the term “salvation,” attributing to Christianity the ability to save her marriage after her husband’s severe depression threatened to crush it.
“My book might be seen as a search for lower consciousness, an attempt to remove the patina of abstraction or glassy-eyed piety from religious words, by telling stories about them, by grounding them in the world we live in as mortal and often comically fallible human beings.” And that is exactly what she does: in few-page essays, she gives each word or phrase a rich backstory through anecdote, scripture and lived philosophy. For instance:
Incarnation: “it waits in puzzlement, it hesitates. Coming from Galilee, as it were, from a place of little hope, it reveals the ordinary circumstances of my life to be full of mystery, and gospel, which means ‘good news.’”
Prayer: “is not asking for what you think you want but asking to be changed in ways you can’t imagine. To be made more grateful, more able to see the good in what you have been given instead of always grieving for what might have been. ... I sometimes think of prayer as a certain quality of attention that comes upon me when I’m busy doing something else. When a person—friend or foe—suddenly comes to mind, I take it as a sign to pray for them.”
Church: “When formal worship seems less than worshipful—and it often does—if I am bored by the sheer weight of verbiage in Presbyterian worship—and I often am—I have only to look around at the other people in the pews to remind myself that we are engaged in something important, something that transcends our feeble attempts at worship, let alone my crankiness.”
The book is on the long side, so take it slowly, a few essays at a time. There are too many excellent quotes to copy out here, as my Post-It-strewn paperback attests, so I will simply give this my highest recommendation and say that I mean to read every other book Norris has written (including poetry). She’s the sort of down-to-earth guru I could follow.
*Others I would include:
The Heart of Christianity by Marcus Borg
A New Kind of Christianity by Brian McLaren
Secrets in the Dark by Frederick Buechner
Falling Upward by Richard Rohr
How (Not) to Speak of God by Peter Rollins
Unapologetic by Francis Spufford
An Altar in the World by Barbara Brown Taylor
Without Buddha I Could Not be a Christian by Paul F. Knitter
and anything by Anne Lamott.
She spent 20 years away from the faith but gradually made her way back, via the simple Presbyterianism of her Dakota relatives but also through becoming an oblate at a Benedictine monastery – two completely different expressions of the same faith. At times liturgy has only been like going through the motions for her, but sometimes dutiful action cuts through her doubts. I especially appreciated how she gives personal weight to the term “salvation,” attributing to Christianity the ability to save her marriage after her husband’s severe depression threatened to crush it.
“My book might be seen as a search for lower consciousness, an attempt to remove the patina of abstraction or glassy-eyed piety from religious words, by telling stories about them, by grounding them in the world we live in as mortal and often comically fallible human beings.” And that is exactly what she does: in few-page essays, she gives each word or phrase a rich backstory through anecdote, scripture and lived philosophy. For instance:
Incarnation: “it waits in puzzlement, it hesitates. Coming from Galilee, as it were, from a place of little hope, it reveals the ordinary circumstances of my life to be full of mystery, and gospel, which means ‘good news.’”
Prayer: “is not asking for what you think you want but asking to be changed in ways you can’t imagine. To be made more grateful, more able to see the good in what you have been given instead of always grieving for what might have been. ... I sometimes think of prayer as a certain quality of attention that comes upon me when I’m busy doing something else. When a person—friend or foe—suddenly comes to mind, I take it as a sign to pray for them.”
Church: “When formal worship seems less than worshipful—and it often does—if I am bored by the sheer weight of verbiage in Presbyterian worship—and I often am—I have only to look around at the other people in the pews to remind myself that we are engaged in something important, something that transcends our feeble attempts at worship, let alone my crankiness.”
The book is on the long side, so take it slowly, a few essays at a time. There are too many excellent quotes to copy out here, as my Post-It-strewn paperback attests, so I will simply give this my highest recommendation and say that I mean to read every other book Norris has written (including poetry). She’s the sort of down-to-earth guru I could follow.
*Others I would include:
The Heart of Christianity by Marcus Borg
A New Kind of Christianity by Brian McLaren
Secrets in the Dark by Frederick Buechner
Falling Upward by Richard Rohr
How (Not) to Speak of God by Peter Rollins
Unapologetic by Francis Spufford
An Altar in the World by Barbara Brown Taylor
Without Buddha I Could Not be a Christian by Paul F. Knitter
and anything by Anne Lamott.
April 7, 2019
I first heard of this book over a decade ago when I was in a much different place in my spiritual journey. An acquaintance (who was a member of a church that I judged as too liberal in their interpretation of scripture and therefore, I'm ashamed to say, I believed meant they didn't have true faith) was reading this book and it caught my eye. I dismissed it at the time because if that person was reading it then it probably was not the best choice for me. Sheesh!!! Could I have been more judgmental and so sure that my way was right and had all the correct answers???? But, I digress. It seems this book has followed me and the other day when I purchased it, I could barely wait to dive in. I have since not been able to put the book down!
In Amazing Grace-A vocabulary of faith, Norris writes with such humility and respect for the path that brought her where she is today (after an absence from the church for many years), never discounting those with a different method (as I am prone to do- see above paragraph!) but recognizing how that path or belief history manifests in blessing to others and greater understanding.
She explores words that we hear and use in the church either so much that we don't really know what they mean or that we hear and run from bc they are scary. She beautifully weaves her experiences in life into each essay. I could truly read each chapter or essay over and over seeing and hearing something new each time.
Scary words such as fear, chosen, grace, conversion, anger, hell, judgement and even Antichrist are just a few of the words that Norris says, "became so codified or abstract that their meanings were all but impenetrable." she found she had to wrestle with them and make them her own before they could confer their blessings and their grace.
In Amazing Grace-A vocabulary of faith, Norris writes with such humility and respect for the path that brought her where she is today (after an absence from the church for many years), never discounting those with a different method (as I am prone to do- see above paragraph!) but recognizing how that path or belief history manifests in blessing to others and greater understanding.
She explores words that we hear and use in the church either so much that we don't really know what they mean or that we hear and run from bc they are scary. She beautifully weaves her experiences in life into each essay. I could truly read each chapter or essay over and over seeing and hearing something new each time.
Scary words such as fear, chosen, grace, conversion, anger, hell, judgement and even Antichrist are just a few of the words that Norris says, "became so codified or abstract that their meanings were all but impenetrable." she found she had to wrestle with them and make them her own before they could confer their blessings and their grace.
July 27, 2010
As I have said earlier, I am on a kind of Kathleen Norris roll here...... Reading her books is kind of like peeling an onion. She is telling much the same story in every book, but from a different perspective. "Dakota" had to do with understanding her geographical roots. "The Cloister Walk" had to do with her discovery of the Liturgy of the Hours as practiced by the Benedictines. This book has to do with the underlying "language" that she had to examine upon her return to the Christian church and her Christian faith. Having walked apart from the Christian church for many years, when she returned there were many words and phrases that she had difficulty with. These words and phrases are the backbone for "Amazing Grace: A Vocabulary of Faith".
Each chapter is an examination of a particular word of phrase that is part of the Christian vocabulary. Some have taken on lives of their own that were never intended, some have had extra layers of "meaning" slapped on them like extra mortar on a brick.
Inbetween chapters on words like "Exorcism", "Bible", "Faith", "Chosen", and "Unchurched" are vignettes of conversion stories. These are not the evangelical type of conversion stories, but instead are instances where the author and others are exposed to some aspect of God's truth. The sum total of the conversion stories is that God has been at work all along in Kathleen Norris' life, whether through an understanding of her own family heritage or through a firm examination of her feminist tendencies. I found these vignettes very worthwhile, and thought provoking.
What strikes me most positively about this book is the way that "an outsider who becomes an insider" can look at the words of the Christian faith. The words really mean the same thing, but an overfamiliarity with them can breed a certain amount of disinterest. I found myself caught up in each chapter as she examined the root meanings of "righteous" and "incarnation", "trinity" and "hell" (among others) and then drew out of them an understanding that was both familiar to me and also new.
Each chapter is an examination of a particular word of phrase that is part of the Christian vocabulary. Some have taken on lives of their own that were never intended, some have had extra layers of "meaning" slapped on them like extra mortar on a brick.
Inbetween chapters on words like "Exorcism", "Bible", "Faith", "Chosen", and "Unchurched" are vignettes of conversion stories. These are not the evangelical type of conversion stories, but instead are instances where the author and others are exposed to some aspect of God's truth. The sum total of the conversion stories is that God has been at work all along in Kathleen Norris' life, whether through an understanding of her own family heritage or through a firm examination of her feminist tendencies. I found these vignettes very worthwhile, and thought provoking.
What strikes me most positively about this book is the way that "an outsider who becomes an insider" can look at the words of the Christian faith. The words really mean the same thing, but an overfamiliarity with them can breed a certain amount of disinterest. I found myself caught up in each chapter as she examined the root meanings of "righteous" and "incarnation", "trinity" and "hell" (among others) and then drew out of them an understanding that was both familiar to me and also new.
August 14, 2011
I really wanted to love this book. I loved the idea of re-defining terms in our faith that have transformed into representing something we don't understand. The beginning of the book was amazing, it's clear that Kathleen Norris has a way with words and experiences that I do not, but as the book continued her chapters became less about the terminology and more of a repetitive account of her experiences in Benedictine spirituality. Her writings became less of using her life and the readers lives to define these religious terms and more of using only the writings of the monks and Emily Dickinson to make her points. By the time I was half way through it was no longer a pleasurable read, and the remaining half of the book was more of a painful marathon than a thought provoking piece of work.
May 9, 2016
Kathleen Norris is a wordsmith, so I'd probably enjoy reading her essays even if I couldn't relate much to the content. She just writes in a way that is clear and crisp as a fall morning. She's had an interesting life, and she's not afraid to examine it.
That said, this is a book that I never would have read if I'd first read a review of it. Norris is almost always reviewed as a "Christian author." That lumps her in with the same group as that creepy Left Behind guy, Pat Robertson's rantings and the whole lot of the "you're going to hell if you don't do it right (i.e. the author's way)" stuff of my childhood. I picked this book up from a library display of current American poets. (Why there wasn't one of her poetry books there instead, I can't say.)
In a series of essays, Norris ponders the charged words of religion (specifically Christianity): redemption, sin, prayer, antichrist, grace. These aren't words that we use casually when talking about our day; they are loaded with all the baggage of religion and often used to induce fear, guilt and/or control. Norris is one of the few writers I've read who acknowledges the load factor. These essays are her way of looking under the bed and de-clawing the monsters hiding there. By examination and contemplation on the vocabulary, the words become tools rather than weapons.
That said, this is a book that I never would have read if I'd first read a review of it. Norris is almost always reviewed as a "Christian author." That lumps her in with the same group as that creepy Left Behind guy, Pat Robertson's rantings and the whole lot of the "you're going to hell if you don't do it right (i.e. the author's way)" stuff of my childhood. I picked this book up from a library display of current American poets. (Why there wasn't one of her poetry books there instead, I can't say.)
In a series of essays, Norris ponders the charged words of religion (specifically Christianity): redemption, sin, prayer, antichrist, grace. These aren't words that we use casually when talking about our day; they are loaded with all the baggage of religion and often used to induce fear, guilt and/or control. Norris is one of the few writers I've read who acknowledges the load factor. These essays are her way of looking under the bed and de-clawing the monsters hiding there. By examination and contemplation on the vocabulary, the words become tools rather than weapons.
October 8, 2022
A perfect devotional read. In the brilliant, nuanced, poetic tradition of Fleming Rutledge and M L’Engle.
May 12, 2023
When I read this twelve years ago, I only found it mediocre and rated it three stars. I have no idea why. But after rereading, I can only imagine that I wasn't ready to receive Kathleen Norris's gift. Maybe I was immature or needed more life experience. The reason isn't important. What's important is having read this again and being so touched by her openness and way of unpacking the sacred. These are things that always draw me to Norris's writing. She brings together religion and literature and poetry in a way no one else can, and I deeply admire it.
February 11, 2009
As with so many profound human concepts, our language around the topic of spirituality and devotion is limited, divisive and often fails us. This is a wonderful book for someone who both loves words, their intricacies & evolution, and is reconstructing a personal spiritual ground.
October 23, 2020
Have read this over the course of almost a year with a handful of other women. We have been poking at and discussing a few sections at a time, roughly every other week. Although it has taken us so long to peruse it, I think we have all been satisfied with doing so. Ms. Norris took us through the vocabulary of reformed Christian faith, exploring the meaning of all those terms at which we nod our heads and think we know when we hear them.
June 22, 2011
Most books that I have read about religion and spirituality assume the reader has an understanding of the vocabulary of those topics. I have found that that is not always the case. This book attempts and almost succeeds in addressing this problem. I still found some ambiguity that I felt was caused by the author's personal perceptions. It is still an excellent book, but I can only give it 4 stars.
March 14, 2015
This was a really interesting book. As a non-Christian who is not interested in becoming a Christian, I felt like I wasn't really the intended audience for it. But I enjoyed getting to know this author and her perspectives on a wide range of relevant terms and concepts in her religious tradition, and having the opportunity to reflect on how some of them might fit with my own faith and practice (as a Pagan Quaker Jew myself).
October 31, 2015
I LOVED this book! Kathleen Norris writes with wisdom, humor and faith. As the title of the book suggests, Norris' has written a very enjoyable series of essays on the vocabulary that Christians commonly use. Although her take on many of the words is anything but common, which is what makes her book so much fun to read.
September 18, 2011
This book felt to me like it was rushed to press after the success of The Cloister Walk. Norris is one of my favorite writers, but this book didn't seem up to her usual standard.
November 7, 2020
I can be a bit skittish around Christian books, but this one was recommended long ago by Rachel Held Evans and so I figured I could trust it. With short chapters each framed around a particular "Christian" word ("repentance", "idolatry", "chosen", "orthodoxy", etc.), Norris shares her own personal experiences interspersed with references to and quotations from historical theologians, scholars, and monastics in the Christian church. I felt a connection with her amalgamated faith — she left the church for a long time, and then found herself as both a member of a rural Presbyterian church and a frequent guest at a Benedictine abbey. So she holds a respect for the Catholic faith and its traditions without being a spokesperson for the Church, and she appreciates both the importance of a church community where lay people frequently preach and the power of liturgy, ritual, and religious commitment.
The book was published in 1999, and although Norris is progressive for a Christian at that time, she does occasionally come across as a bit old-fashioned and mocking of modern ideas (like the idea of inclusive language). Because she's 73 now — although she was only 52 when this was published — I tended to picture her like a liberal grandma, the one who will tell you enthusiastically about all the "homosexuals" she was friends with in the 70s. She's relatable, but she's no Nadia Bolz-Weber.
My only other nitpick of the book is that Norris (or her editor) seems to have had it in mind that these chapters could be read independently, rather than the book always being read front to back, which means that Norris frequently re-explains parts of her life as if it's the first time she's referencing them. Which I suppose is great if you want to share one of chapters out of context with your religion class, but a little annoying if you're reading it straight through.
This was a nice book for revisiting some Christian concepts in a non-threatening way. Norris is a poet by trade, and although she frequently references dictionary definitions and Scripture passages for the words that comprise the book's chapters, she also tells stories and plays with language and imagines words in new (or very old) ways. I found that freeing and a nice invitation back into thinking about some more complex theological ideas in relatable, practical ways. I'd recommend this to any of my fellow Christian readers, particularly those who find the typical "Christian" book too conservative for their taste.
The book was published in 1999, and although Norris is progressive for a Christian at that time, she does occasionally come across as a bit old-fashioned and mocking of modern ideas (like the idea of inclusive language). Because she's 73 now — although she was only 52 when this was published — I tended to picture her like a liberal grandma, the one who will tell you enthusiastically about all the "homosexuals" she was friends with in the 70s. She's relatable, but she's no Nadia Bolz-Weber.
My only other nitpick of the book is that Norris (or her editor) seems to have had it in mind that these chapters could be read independently, rather than the book always being read front to back, which means that Norris frequently re-explains parts of her life as if it's the first time she's referencing them. Which I suppose is great if you want to share one of chapters out of context with your religion class, but a little annoying if you're reading it straight through.
This was a nice book for revisiting some Christian concepts in a non-threatening way. Norris is a poet by trade, and although she frequently references dictionary definitions and Scripture passages for the words that comprise the book's chapters, she also tells stories and plays with language and imagines words in new (or very old) ways. I found that freeing and a nice invitation back into thinking about some more complex theological ideas in relatable, practical ways. I'd recommend this to any of my fellow Christian readers, particularly those who find the typical "Christian" book too conservative for their taste.
December 22, 2017
Norris, a poet by trade, writes evocatively as a Christian who has returned to her faith roots. This is her third book about her return to Christianity after a two-decade hiatus brought on by a liberal secular education. In this installment she reflects on religious words - "scary words" she calls them - and what they mean to her now that she has embraced Jesus Christ. Fundamentalists and Conservatives may cringe at some of her statements, as may liberal believers. Honest, excellent writing that invites reflection. Norris is currently Asst. Professor of Communication Studies, Loyola Marymount University, Westchester, CA.
August 9, 2018
3.5 - Norris examines words used in the language of Christianity and explores their meanings through various stories and discourses. She explains their possible meanings through research/reading she has previously done as well as drawing from her experiences in monasteries. She often takes a different perspective on common terms which gives fresh meaning to the term in question. I appreciated her chapter on the definition of "wickedness" and how revelation is "not an explanation...it is the revealing of the presence of a God who cares for all creatures." It took me some time to really "get into" this book, and I am glad I took the time to finish it.
January 21, 2021
An interesting read. While I'm not religious, I picked this up for exploring. Ms Norris explores the meaning of so many words of faith through the eyes of so many different religions and/or beliefs. Part memoir, part exploring, this is a fascinating look at words and how they have different meanings to different religious/spiritual backgrounds. a fascinating read.
August 23, 2025
Buechner’s Wishful Thinking spoiled me rotten! A dictionary book ought to be alphabetical, and the entries should be only a paragraph - certainly no more than a page. Still a Norris superfan tho!
November 16, 2025
This author does a beautiful job of honoring words and bringing joy and mystery back to deeply thinking about faith. I love how she does this with humility, acceptance and grace for all, including herself. This book was written in the late 1990s and she was way ahead of her time in discussing some current topics churches and believers are grappling with.
March 30, 2019
I love this book. It's great to pick up and read a section each night. Or not. I've left this by my bed for months now, and when I feel like reading a short snippet of a devotion-like reading, I can just pick up where I left off. Very relatable as well. Norris has experience with Catholicism, Protestantism and contemplative practices. As well as good common sense and a personal, pleasant writing style. I'm keeping this book by my bed and will continue to delve into it.
August 20, 2010
I first stumbled across this book in a pew at the Benedictine monastery in Atchison, KS. It was sitting in the rack with the hymnals, and after skimming a handful of pages I put it back, knowing I would find it again later and spend much more time with it. Norris sums up her purpose in the preface: "When I began attending church again after twenty years away, I felt bombarded by the vocabulary of the Christian church. Words such as 'Christ,' 'heresy,' 'repentance,' and 'salvation' seemed dauntingly abstract to me, even vaguely threatening. They carried an enormous amount of emotional baggage from my own childhood and from family history. For reasons I did not comprehend, church seemed a place I needed to be. But in order to inhabit it, to claim it as mine, I had to rebuild my religious vocabulary. The words had to become real to me, in an existential sense."
Amazing Grace is an account of that process, with each chapter taking on a new word. This was a hugely influential book for me, as I struggled to reconcile my bizarre new instinct to go to church with ... well ... everything I've ever thought and known about God or church. She refers to the book as, in some sense, her "coming out" as a Christian, and that expression fit perfectly my bashful foray outside of my more comfortable realm of jaded intellectualism. For me, the battle wages on, but when I'm sitting in church and my internal voices mutter "whatever ... this never happened ... what am I doing here?" I do well to remember her description of conversion as "largely a matter of trusting one's instincts, even when reason cries foul."
At the end of the day, what I find most helpful in Norris's book is the way God/religion/holiness are always yoked to the personal, the specific. She says, "I am a Christian, theologically, trusting in the incarnation of Jesus Christ as a perfect union of the human and divine. And I try to take the incarnation seriously; by that I mean I look to the local, the particular, the specific, to determine how to express my Christian faith."
She also helped build my current understanding of the Bible, which I have always viewed as written by human - and therefore fallible - hands (e.g. as in the words of the profoundly Christian poet Emily Dickinson: "The Bible is an antique volume/Written by faded men . . .") But Norris opens my heart to it, or rather helps me articulate why my heart is somehow still open to it. She says, "In a religion centered on what is in Christian convention termed a 'living word,' even our ridiculously fallible language becomes a lesson in how God's grace works despite and even through our human frailty."
Amazing Grace is an account of that process, with each chapter taking on a new word. This was a hugely influential book for me, as I struggled to reconcile my bizarre new instinct to go to church with ... well ... everything I've ever thought and known about God or church. She refers to the book as, in some sense, her "coming out" as a Christian, and that expression fit perfectly my bashful foray outside of my more comfortable realm of jaded intellectualism. For me, the battle wages on, but when I'm sitting in church and my internal voices mutter "whatever ... this never happened ... what am I doing here?" I do well to remember her description of conversion as "largely a matter of trusting one's instincts, even when reason cries foul."
At the end of the day, what I find most helpful in Norris's book is the way God/religion/holiness are always yoked to the personal, the specific. She says, "I am a Christian, theologically, trusting in the incarnation of Jesus Christ as a perfect union of the human and divine. And I try to take the incarnation seriously; by that I mean I look to the local, the particular, the specific, to determine how to express my Christian faith."
She also helped build my current understanding of the Bible, which I have always viewed as written by human - and therefore fallible - hands (e.g. as in the words of the profoundly Christian poet Emily Dickinson: "The Bible is an antique volume/Written by faded men . . .") But Norris opens my heart to it, or rather helps me articulate why my heart is somehow still open to it. She says, "In a religion centered on what is in Christian convention termed a 'living word,' even our ridiculously fallible language becomes a lesson in how God's grace works despite and even through our human frailty."
September 17, 2015
This is a book I've put off reading for years because I've been a casualty of church and didn't want to read anymore spiritual memoirs for a while, if ever. But it sat there on my shelf calling out to me every time I finished another book, and it came from my mom originally, someone who's recommendations are always rewarding. So I dove in. And I felt refreshed and renewed. Here is a person who had also been a casualty of church for a couple of decades and found her way back to a surprising small faith community in North Dakota because she felt, as I do, that she needed it. Kathleen Norris' faith community is broader than just her presbyterian church, including the Benedictines and the myriad other people she has learned from and just run into, which is as it should be. Hearing someone else describe our Christian vocabulary in a way that I have always understood it made me feel like I'd found a kindred spirit. Her book was written in the mid-1990s and I fear that many churches have done more damage in the last 20 years than Norris may have imagined at the time. I'll have to look into what her more current writings have to say about this. Not for everyone, but it has given me hope for fellowship again.
July 11, 2008
After I hammered Kathleen for her previous book, "The Cloister Walk", she sent me one of the chapters of her new book for my comment. The chapter was so much superior to Cloister Walk, I was drawn into this new book. This book has had a wide readership. It is an attempt to define "scary" religious words in the language of everyday life. A very successful attempt.
And remembering my uneasiness with Cloister Walk, she pulls back at one point in the book, saying that "one of her editors" told her she should give the reader credit for having a brain, and not try to close every issue she opens by drawing "airtight" conclusions. At the end of the book, in a tiny little square, she mentions my name among her editors. I had told her earlier to never mention my name in one of her books again (see review of "Dakota") because it infringed on my obscurity. I am, after all, the best poet pretty much no one has ever read.
And remembering my uneasiness with Cloister Walk, she pulls back at one point in the book, saying that "one of her editors" told her she should give the reader credit for having a brain, and not try to close every issue she opens by drawing "airtight" conclusions. At the end of the book, in a tiny little square, she mentions my name among her editors. I had told her earlier to never mention my name in one of her books again (see review of "Dakota") because it infringed on my obscurity. I am, after all, the best poet pretty much no one has ever read.
January 24, 2014
If you grew up in a religious Christian family and have moved away from that tradition but seek to understand it....if you are a seeker, new to the faith,....if you love language, spirituality, and a little intellectual challenge with your beautiful words...you ought to read this book. Norris is one of my favorites--she's just unique as she combines the talents of a poet with the mind and spirituality of a wonderful, "down-home" theologian. She makes the language of faith and spirituality understandable to us mere mortals....
March 8, 2008
I have picked this book up numerous times. Norris is an oblate monk (a "civilian" monk in a sense) and reflects on the words used in the Christian church, such as "incarnation," "repentance," "prayer," "hospitality," "mystic." The words were a barrier to her when she returned to church in adulthood. The reflections are her attempt to communicate the meaning she found in the words over the years, words that have become powerful and meaningful to her faith.
April 27, 2015
Having consumed this collection of brief essays in a couple big gulps, I think I will have to revisit it more slowly to get the full effect. That having been said, I did find much here that has lingered with me, particularly the way Norris very persuasively makes her case for religion as a communal experience, imperfect though it may be, as opposed to the personal spiritualities of the day that can often lead to narcissism.
December 22, 2016
I cannot explain how often I've referred to this book. It is truly remarkable. It brings some of the loftier "religious" terms down to a level they can be fully understood. It'll probably p.o. a lot of folks but that's OK. This book, in a word, is truth. Hope it's still in print. If not it's worth a trip to eBay.
November 5, 2011
Norris' is a word artist, sculpting beautiful imagery from the medium of language. Unfortunately, her sarcastic and cynical political opinions kept awkwardly creeping into a book professing to be about faith. I had to stop reading mid-way.
November 7, 2014
It was really inspiring and educative.
January 24, 2024
I’d read The Virgin of Bennington by Kathleen Norris before, which is just wonderful. But I liked this one even better. In it she tackles all the baggage we have around words like prayer, repentance, idolatry, commandments, etc from the religious world itself and the culture at large. She then discusses how she has come to understand and make peace with what they mean. For example, take this quote from her essay on inquisition that I sent to a few friends:
But inquisition is more than social inequality. It is an attitude of mind, a type of questioning that resists true conversation, which like the word “conversion,” at its root means to turn, or to turn around. The inquisitor has the answers in hand and does not wish to change them. It is good to determine, when someone asks you a question, whether they are asking in good spirit, or conducting an inquisition. When it is the latter, one may begin to feel that the person one is speaking to is not listening at all but merely biding time. Clicking off the points against you; waiting, like a lion, for the proper time to attack. Inquisition begins, then, in the human heart.
How does this not play into our world right here and now? How can we in our daily lives remember — on the job, in an interview, in any small interaction — to not be an inquisitor? How can we always be someone sincere and wholehearted in how we are with others?
I also really liked how Norris’ book opens up insights into rural America, especially the Dakotas.
But inquisition is more than social inequality. It is an attitude of mind, a type of questioning that resists true conversation, which like the word “conversion,” at its root means to turn, or to turn around. The inquisitor has the answers in hand and does not wish to change them. It is good to determine, when someone asks you a question, whether they are asking in good spirit, or conducting an inquisition. When it is the latter, one may begin to feel that the person one is speaking to is not listening at all but merely biding time. Clicking off the points against you; waiting, like a lion, for the proper time to attack. Inquisition begins, then, in the human heart.
How does this not play into our world right here and now? How can we in our daily lives remember — on the job, in an interview, in any small interaction — to not be an inquisitor? How can we always be someone sincere and wholehearted in how we are with others?
I also really liked how Norris’ book opens up insights into rural America, especially the Dakotas.
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