The Cloister Walk (2 page)

Penguin Group (Canada), 90 Eglinton Avenue East, Suite 700, Toronto, Ontario MP4 2Y3, Canada (a division of Pearson Penguin Canada Inc.) • Penguin Books Ltd., 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England • Penguin Group Ireland, 25 St. Stephen's Green, Dublin 2, Ireland (a division of Penguin Books Ltd.) • Penguin Group (Australia), 250 Camberwell Road, Camberwell, Victoria 3124, Australia (a division of Pearson Australia Group Pty. Ltd.) • Penguin Books India Pvt. Ltd., 11 Community Centre, Panchsheel Park, New Delhi—110 017, India • Penguin Group (NZ), 67 Apollo Drive, Rosedale, North Shore 0632, New Zealand (a division of Pearson New Zealand Ltd.) • Penguin Books (South Africa) (Pty.) Ltd., 24 Sturdee Avenue, Rosebank, Johannesburg 2196, South Africa

 

Penguin Books Ltd., Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

 

The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content.

 

“My Very First Dad,” © 1987 North Dakota Council on the Arts and COMPAS. Used with permission.

 

Excerpt from “Protestant Easter,” from
Live or Die
by Anne Sexton. Copyright © 1966 by Anne Sexton. . All rights reserved.

 

Excerpt from “For People with Problems About How to Believe,” from
An Oregon Message
by William Stafford. Copyright © 1987 by William Stafford. .

 

Excerpts from the Grail Psalms, © 1963, 1986 by Ladies of the Grail, England. Used by permission of GIA, Inc., exclusive agent. All rights reserved.

 

All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distrubuted in any printed or electronic form without permission. Please do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of the author's rights. Purchase only authorized editions.

RIVERHEAD is a registered trademark of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

The RIVERHEAD logo is a trademark of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

 

First Riverhead trade paperback edition: April 1997

ISBN : 978-1-1012-1566-1

 

 

Norris, Kathleen.

The cloister walk / Kathleen Norris. p. cm.

eISBN : 978-1-1012-1566-1

1. Monastic and religious life. 2. Catholic Church—Liturgy.

3. Norris, Kathleen, date. 4. Spiritual life. I. Title.

BX2435.N57 1996

255—dc20 96-863 CIP

 

 

 

CHRISTINA, JACQUELINE,
LILLIAN, A.J., AND MIKEY

Ten years ago, when I became a Benedictine oblate, I knew two things: I didn't feel ready to do it, but I had to act, to take the plunge. I also had no idea where it would lead. An oblation is an abbreviated yet powerful profession of monastic vows; you attach yourself to a particular monastery by signing a document on the altar during Mass, in which you promise to follow the Rule of St. Benedict insofar as your situation in life will allow. A married woman such as myself, for example, who makes frequent visits to a monastery, will follow the Rule in a far different way than the men and women who commit their lives entirely to a monastic community. One thing I did not know was exactly how I had come to be here. Having moved twelve years before from New York City to my grandparents' house in western South Dakota seemed to have something to do with it. And I'd begun to realize that the apprenticeship as a writer that I'd embarked on in my early twenties was in essence a religious quest. (For years literature had seemed an adequate substitute for religion in my life.) The fact that I'd been raised a thorough Protestant, with little knowledge of religious orders, and no sense of monasticism as a living tradition, was less an obstacle to my becoming an oblate than the many doubts about the Christian religion that had been with me since my teens. Still, although I had little sense of where I'd been, I knew that standing before the altar in a monastery chapel was a remarkable place for me to be, and making an oblation was a remarkable, if not incomprehensible, thing for me to be doing.

The word “oblate” is from the Latin for “to offer,” and Jesus himself is often referred to as an “oblation” in the literature of the early church. Many people now translate “oblate” as “associate,” and while that may seem to describe the relationship modern oblates have with monastic communities, it does not adequately convey the religious dimension of being an oblate. Substituting the word “associate” for “oblation” in reference to Jesus demonstrates this all too well; no longer an offering, Jesus becomes a junior partner in a law firm. The ancient word “oblate” proved instructive for me. Having no idea what it meant, I appreciated its rich history when I first looked it up in the dictionary. But I also felt it presumptuous to claim to be an “offering” and was extremely reluctant to apply to myself a word that had so often been applied to Jesus Christ. The monk who was my oblate director, guiding my studies of the Rule (a period that was supposed to last a year but rambled on for nearly three), waited patiently for me to sort out my muddle. Finally I said to him, “I can't imagine why God would want me, of all people, as an offering. But if God is foolish enough to take me as I am, I guess I'd better do it.” The monk smiled broadly and said, “You're ready.”

Once I became an oblate, I found that I'd gained an enormous family. Benedictines are everywhere, and like a good family, they keep interfering in what I like to pretend is my own life. A chance encounter at an American Benedictine Academy convention led to my applying to the Institute for Ecumenical and Cultural Research at St. John's Abbey and University in Collegeville, Minnesota, and then spending not one, but two nine-month terms there. I had often heard Benedictines refer to their Liturgy of the Hours (also called the Divine Office) as “the sanctification of time,” but had not much idea of what this could mean until I'd attended the liturgies at St. John's on a daily basis for many months.

Gradually my perspective on time had changed. In our culture, time can seem like an enemy: it chews us up and spits us out with appalling ease. But the monastic perspective welcomes time as a gift from God, and seeks to put it to good use rather than allowing us to be used up by it. A friend who was educated by the Benedictines has told me that she owes to them her sanity with regard to time. “You never really finish anything in life,” she says, “and while that's humbling, and frustrating, it's all right. The Benedictines, more than any other people I know, insist that there is time in each day for prayer, for work, for study, and for play.” Liturgical time is essentially poetic time, oriented toward process rather than productivity, willing to wait attentively in stillness rather than always pushing to “get the job done.” Living at St. John's, I was surprised to discover how much the monastic world was giving me a new perspective on many aspects of my life, not only time, but marriage, family, living in a small town, clothing, and the vagaries of the literary world.

The Cloister Walk
is a result of my immersion into a liturgical world, and in it I have tried to replicate for the reader the rhythm of saints' days, solemnities, and feasts that I experienced when I first came to St. John's in the fall of 1991. The book leaves the monastery, as I did, for family reunions, for work, for life at home in a small town in western South Dakota, and for worship at two Presbyterian churches there, Hope and Spencer Memorial. It also returns to the monastery, where for me, everything comes together. One pleasant surprise for me in writing this book is the way that my marriage came to weave in and out of it. It seems appropriate, as my life vows are not to a monastery but to matrimony, and marriage has for me been a primary instrument of conversion, “a school for love,” to employ Benedict's metaphor for the monastery.

I've been a devoted reader since childhood and have been surprised to discover that what Benedict termed
lectio divina,
and many contemporary Benedictines call “spiritual reading,” has given me a new appreciation for the contemplative potential of the reading process.
Lectio
is an attempt to read more with the heart than with the head. One does not try to “cover” a certain amount of material so much as surrender to whatever word or phrase catches the attention. A slow, meditative reading, primarily of the scriptures,
lectio
respects the power of words to resonate with the full range of human experience. As a monastery is a place in which the scriptures come to permeate all aspects of one's life, I have included in this book many quotations from the Bible. I feel this requires an explanatory note for the reader who, like the person I was for many years, may not have kept up an acquaintance with the Bible, and possibly thinks of it only as a weapon that Christians use against anyone who disagrees with them. Media sound bites can give the impression that this is the purpose of the Bible. But in the world the Benedictines have introduced me to, the scriptures constitute, as Paul Philibert, O.P., has described it in
Seeing and Believing,
“a demanding ecology of thought, imagination, decision, and action,” words that are “awake during our rest and our silences, active in our reflection . . . effective in our actions in cooperation with others, [and that] cut through all our excuses.”

Christianity, like Judaism and Islam, is a religion of the book, and for some seventeen hundred years the daily Christian liturgy has woven the Bible into the lives of monks and nuns. Monastic worship is essentially Hebraic; every day you recite the psalms, and you listen, as powerful biblical images, stories, and poems are allowed to flow freely, to wash over you. Doctrine and dogma are effectively submerged; present, but not the point. When I quote from scripture in this book, I am not trying to convince the reader that I have some hold on the truth. I am telling the story of the Liturgy of the Hours as I have experienced it, as “an open door, which no one is able to shut” (Rev. 3:8). I quote the Bible in the spirit of the great poet and theologian of the early church, Ephrem the Syrian, who said: “Scripture brought me to the gate of paradise, and the mind stood in wonder as it entered.”

—Emily Dickinson

Abba Poeman said concerning Abba Prior that every day he
made a new beginning
.—THE SAYINGS OF THE

DESERT FATHERS

In the Orthodox tradition, the icon of Wisdom depicts a woman seated on a throne. Her skin and her clothing are red, to symbolize the dawn emerging against the deep, starry blue of night.

For years, early morning was a time I dreaded. In the process of waking up, my mind would run with panic. All the worries of the previous day would still be with me, spinning around with old regrets as well as fears for the future. I don't know how or when the change came, but now when I emerge from night, it is with more hope than fear. I try to get outside as early as possible so that I can look for signs of first light, the faint, muddy red of dawn.

—FROM A HOMILY OF GREGORY THE GREAT

 

 

 

 

 

It feels right to come back to the monastic liturgy on this day, to settle in with Gregory after the rush of moving to St. John's, the jumble of unpacking, the jumble of Gregory's life on my mind as I walk up the hill. Wealthy young Roman sells his estates, founds several monasteries, and gives to the poor. Dedicated monk turns reluctant diplomat and, in a time of plague, is elected bishop of Rome. Vigorously defends Jews' right to their synagogues, writes all we know of the life of Benedict. Fire, famine, earthquake; Rome sacked four times in twenty years. In 593, Gregory negotiates a truce.