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Stalking the Divine: Contemplating Faith with the Poor Clares |  |
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Stalking the Divine: Contemplating Faith with the Poor Clares | |
Wandering into a forgotten downtown Cleveland church for a Christmas mass, Kristin Ohlson discovered the Poor Clares -- a tiny, threadbare congregation of cloistered elderly nuns with one mission: to pray day and night (literally 24 hours a day, 7 days a week) for the sorrows of the world. Ohlson -- utterly enchanted by these devoted women -- started to attend church for the first time in many years. So began her three-year dialogue with the Poor Clares, a dialogue that afforded Ohlson a fascinating, unprecedented glimpse into the intensely private nuns and their life in the cloister. Why, she wonders, have these women retreated from the world to joyfully devote themselves to perpetual adoration? How do they sustain their faith? And what, ultimately, is faith?
As Ohlson -- a long-time skeptic -- opens up to the Poor Clares, she opens herself to the possibility of the sacred. The result is an inspiring personal journey as well as a poignant reflection on the power of the church and faith, no matter what our religion may be.
作者简介 Kristin Ohlson has published articles and essays in the New York Times, Ms. Magazine, Salon, O The Oprah Magazine, Discover, Food & Wine, Tin House, Poets & Writers, and many other publications. Born and raised in Oroville, California, she now lives in Cleveland, just miles from the Poor Clares.
媒体推荐 "A book worth reading for anyone who has ever had religion, lost religion, or needed it." -- Sarah Willis, author of Some Things That Stay
"A quietly moving, surprisingly humorous testament of faith." -- Booklist
"A thoughtful companion for anyone caught in the tremendous chasm between belief and nonbelief in any religion or philosophy . . ." -- Body & Soul
"A unique blend of journalism and personal memoir . . . [Ohlson] is unafraid to ask questions." -- Cleveland Plain-Dealer
"Could easily become the spiritual classic of our time." -- Catholic News Service
"Intriguing" -- Midwest Living Magazine
"Kristin Ohlson is a scrupulous observer and a wonderfully intent writer . . . A fascinating book." -- Sven Birkerts, author of The Gutenberg Elegies
"Ohlson's gracefully written account of the Poor Clares is blended with the narrative of her own search for faith." -- Washington Post Book World
"?Ohlson's beautiful writing, gritty honesty and parallel story of the Poor Clares of Perpetual Adoration set this one apart." -- Publishers Weekly [starred review]
专业书评 From Publishers Weekly
A longing for belief at midlife has provided endless book material for authors, but Ohlson's beautiful writing, gritty honesty and parallel story of the Poor Clares of Perpetual Adoration set this one apart. At age six, Ohlson wanted to be a nun, but later wandered from her childhood Catholicism. One lonely Christmas morning she stumbled across an advertisement for mass at Cleveland's St. Paul Shrine and decided to go. Attendance, she found, had dwindled, and only 16 cloistered nuns remained in the monastery, but she discovered that "somehow, the act of going had created the desire to go." Hoping that writing a book about the Poor Clares and the St. Paul Shrine might "help me construct a framework for trying to make sense of their faith, and, perhaps, learn to build some kind of faith of my own," she explores the history of both as her own faith journey unfolds. Ohlson remains insecure about her beliefs, but she finds that the patterns of faith and retreat keep the sparks of her growing faith kindled, and she takes heart in the "tiniest of convictions that God is like a fire burning in the darkness." Although she confesses she's not quite there yet ("I'll hear the words at mass-the words that I'm saying along with everyone else-and I'll think, `Are you nuts?'"), Ohlson's vulnerability about her doubts in the midst of her new commitment will appeal to anyone who has ever yearned to believe.
Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc.
文摘 After my first month regularly attending mass at St. Paul, I called my sister out in California and told her that I was trying out church.
"Sure," she said. "You were always the holy one." Me? Me, the former radical communist atheist who'd taught her children to believe that belief in God is as fanciful as a belief in fairies but far more insidious? Me, whose children worried that my new interest in church might be evidence of an impending breakdown?
"Yes, you," my sister said. "We were laughing at your expense the other night. Mom and Dad pulled out a box of old photos and papers. There were a bunch of letters you wrote in second grade, going on and on about angels."
"The nuns made me do it!" I replied.
But yes, I remembered a few times in those early years when I'd felt rapturously happy in church. It was very much like the drifting-out-of-your-skin ecstasy that I later felt at political rallies, or when I was falling in love, or when holding my children in my arms. I wondered if I was going to church because I imagined this kind of heated exuberance could happen to me again. And did I even want to be that kind of believer?
After that first month, I began to recognize a few of the St. Paul regulars from a distance. Some of them looked well suited and stylish, as if they had just driven their SUVs in from the suburbs, while others looked broken and dusty, as if they'd spent the night sleeping under a bridge. There was the woman with foreboding eyebrows who always sat by the confessionals, the tweedy couple who whispered to each other throughout the service, the woman who always wore a ski hat, sneakers, and a cross the size of a potato masher around her neck. During the part of the mass when the congregants were supposed to turn and greet each other, some people had to stretch over empty pews to shake hands but the potato-masher-cross lady blew kisses at me instead. At the end of each mass, she often walked up to the front of t
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