Kathleen Norris's The Cloister Walk is a fascinat

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

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t morning prayer, a man who has been a monk for nearly sixty years has suddenly forgotten how to begin morning prater." However, there is no need to panic or judge: "A jump-start is required; then we're off and rolling" (Norris 183). Norris also writes often of the importance of individual as well as communal prayer, a point also emphasized by Kenneth Overberg, who notes that Jesus throughout his ministry took "time to be alone and pray" (Overberg 70). For Jesus, prayer is a crucial part of his close relationship with God at important parts of his life, such as after being baptized when the Holy Spirit descended upon him (Overberg 72). Monastery life is immersed in both individual and community prayer. Both Overberg and Norris note that morality is not simply a matter of doing good things and avoiding bad things. Morality is more crucially a matter of living so that one will remain close to God and conscious of that closeness, so that, in turn, one will love selflessly rather than become isolated in self-concern. Overberg writes that "each person is understood as a being created in God's image, redeemed by Jesus, called to everlasting life" (Overberg 131). Immoral behavior, or sin, separates the individual from this special re

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