Kathleen Norris's The Cloister Walk is a fascinating account of the author's year-long spiritual experience as an "oblate" among Benedictine monks in St. John's Abbey in Minnesota. The author defines oblate as one who engages in "an abbreviated yet powerful profession of monastic vows; you attack yourself to a particular monastery" and "promise to follow the rule of St. Benedict insofar as your situation in life will allow" (Norris xvii). norris becomes, in effect, a sort of part-time monk for a year, although her dedication to and love of the monastic life during that period are anything but half-hearted. Norris is a poet as much as a down-to-earth mystic, and her book gives the lay reader tremendous insights into and appreciation of the spiritual riches of the monastic life.
Norris's book makes the monastic life appear so fascinating and rewarding that this reader is seriously considering not a life as a monk but certainly an extended stay in a monastery to experience some of the spiritual growth Norris found. By "spiritual growth" is meant not some achievement of a transcendent state of being separate from the human condition, but rather an increased ability to love other human beings and life itself. This focus on love--at the heart of prayer, myth, meditation, ritual, Scripture, faith, religious symbols, and even morality--is what finally gives her book and her experience its power to move the reader's heart. One does not have to be a monk or stay at a monastery for a year to have one's perception of the world and one's place in it changed for the better by this book. Norris reminds the reader, and is reminded herself again and again, that the Christian religion--Catholic or Protestant--the Bible, and the life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ mean nothing if they do not lead human beings to increase their love for one another, in a monastery or out.
Norris is no mere dilettante or journalist trying out an exotic l...