Kathleen Norris - Amazing Grace: A Vocabulary of Faith

Table of Contents

Norris draws upon her considerable poetic skills to refashion the vocabulary of the church into her own religious vocabulary. In each of these meditations, Norris uses anecdotes and humor to invest these words with fresh meanings.... Norriss lyrical prose rings with clarity and grace as she brings life to her experience of the churchs vocabulary.

Seizes upon ideas of religion that even for the nonreligious reader are rich in a reassuring humanity.... There are simultaneous winks and caresses in her deeply personal glimpses at the large ideas formulating human faith.

Most of the essays are only a few pages long, but dont be fooled by the length. You could read these any number of times and always discover something new.

Thoughtful ... [Norris] illustrates her definitions with personal experiences: Her adolescent worship of Sandra Dee and her crush on an older boy become examples of devotion; her husbands nervous breakdown provides a lesson in detachment. At once erudite and chatty, Norris wears her learningand her faithlightly, as she interprets the most familiar (and puzzling) biblical passages and quotes from sources, including Emily Dickinson and Thomas Merton, Saint Paul and Mary Gaitskill. Shes frank about her passions (the Psalms) and her peeves (intolerance and jargon), and generous with deeply felt, aptly expressed, and refreshingly uncorny observations.

She is an ideal escort along the semantically bumpy road to her conversion: she never evangelizes, and she writes forthrightly about doubt as confronted by herself, her fellow worshipers and even her beloved monks.... [The books] strength lies in its depiction of a fallible woman engaged in spiritual inquiry.

If you like Kathleen Norriss previous books ... youll love this one.... Whether it is humor or wide-ranging, well-lived experience, this writer lives up to her title. She amazes with grace.

An erudite, surprisingly easy-to-read lexicon of the basic terms of Christianity.

In essay after perfect, polished essay, Norris blows a breeze of linguistic precision and profound theological thoughtfulness across words like Hell and Virgin Birth ... a dazzling writer and independent spiritual thinker.... It is with ... humility that Norris affects Amazing Graces signal achievement: pricking the easy pieties of her baby boomer audience.

Moving easily between the annals of the daily news and the archives of church history, Norris applies her rich narrative to the exploration of the Christian lexiconto both the words that draw her in and the words that put her off.... Replete with homilectic possibility, her imaginative and focused definitions might propel one full speed ahead through chapter after illuminating chapter. Yet the book has a devotional quality to it, each brief entry worthy of being savored and revisited over time. In the last five years Norris has received high acclaim for her accessible and inspiring treatment of matters spiritual. She nurtures her faith life with the hearty staples of rural Presbyterian worship and Benedictine monasticism. In Amazing Grace, Norris employs the experiences of her own life to breathe new life into the words on which the church has relied for centuries to speak of things ineffable.... Norris writes with evocative power and purpose. She explores in detail and in depth the feelings and concepts summoned by theological language, while letting the mystery be. In the brittle and divisive climate that so often characterizes the contemporary church, Amazing Grace is an unmerited gift.

Amazing Grace [is] neither preachy nor pedantic, but applies a poets ear and a prodigals heart to the tricky task of shedding warm light on musty and often misunderstood words.... Her ability to communicate to a broad spectrum of readers is just one of Norriss gifts ...

Filled with humor, insight, and a spirit of openness and inclusivity that is rare in religious writing ... It is Norriss inclusivity I find most appealing, her ability to befriend and to learn from monk, Pentecostal and Presbyterian cowboy alike.

The Charlotte (NC) Observer

This is a strange and beautiful book. Part memoir, part meditation, it is a remarkable piece of writing.... If read with humility and attention, [it] becomes lectio divina, or holy reading. It works the earth of the heart.

Ms. Norris is subtle and shrewd ... In The Cloister Walk, persisting in her wonderfully idiosyncratic ways, she gives us the result of an immersion into a liturgical world ... Most of all, naturally, these pages offer the voice of Kathleen Norris, a person of modern sensibility who dares leap across time and space to make the interests and concerns of any number of reflective thinkers her own.... She is one of historys 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 ...

Robert Coles, The New York Times Book Review

[An] intelligent, sometimes quirky, often moving, always fascinating take on a variety of subjects both sacred and profane.... With her lucid, luminous prose, hard-headed logic, and far-reaching metaphors, Norris has brought us the cloister at its most alive.

The Cloister Walk is a new opportunity to discover a remarkable writer with a huge, wise heart.... Norris resonates deeply for a lot of people: Shes one of those writers who demands to be handed around. You want to share this great discovery, giving her work as a giftor you simply shove a copy in the face of a friend, saying Read this.

OTHER BOOKS BY KATHLEEN NORRIS

NON FICTION
The Virgin of Bennington
The Cloister Walk
Dakota: A Spiritual Geography

POETRY
Little Girls in Church
The Middle of the World
Falling Off

ANTHOLOGY
Leaving New York (editor)

FOR MY HUSBAND, DAVID

ROBERT ROBERTSONCome, Thou Fount of Every Blessing

An alert human infant, at about one month of age, begins to build a vocabulary, making sense of the chaos of sound that bombards the senses. Addressed by another human being, the baby pays attention with its whole body, often waving arms and legs in response. One of the first signs that the child has begun to understand there to be a relation between the human face and the oddly pleasurable noises it makes, between the world of self and that of other people, is that it watches that face intently, especially the mouth. And it begins to move the tongue in and out of its own mouth in imitation, trying on the sound of speech, which at one month is well beyond its capabilities. But it is worth the effort, and the child will continue to try. An essential connection has been made; there are noises we share with others, sounds that are deserving of response.