Kathleen Norris – författare

Though Easter (like Christmas) is often trivialized by the culture at large, it is still the high point of the religious calendar for millions of people around the world. And for most of them, there can be no Easter without Lent, the season that leads up to it.A time for self-denial, soul-searching, and spiritual preparation, Lent is traditionally observed by daily reading and reflection. This collection will satisfy the growing hunger for meaningful and accessible devotions. Culled from the wealth of twenty centuries, the selections in Bread and Wine are ecumenical in scope, and represent the best classic and contemporary Christian writers.Includes more than seventy Lenten and Easter readings by Alexander Stuart Baillie, Alfred Kazin, Alister E. McGrath, Amy Carmichael, Barbara Brown Taylor, Barbara Cawthorne Crafton, Blaise Pascal, Brennan Manning, C. S. Lewis, Christina Rossetti, Christoph Friedrich Blumhardt, Clarence Jordan, Dag Hammarskjöld, Dale Aukerman, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Dorothee Soelle, Dorothy Day, Dorothy Sayers, Dylan Thomas, E. Stanley Jones, Eberhard Arnold, Edith Stein, Edna Hong, Emil Brunner, Ernesto Cardenal, Fleming Rutledge, Frederica Mathewes-Green, Frederick Buechner, Fyodor Dostoevsky, G. K. Chesterton, Geoffrey Hill, George MacDonald, Henri Nouwen, Henry Drummond, Howard Hageman, J. Heinrich Arnold, Jean-Pierre de Caussade, Johann Christoph Arnold, John Dear, John Donne, John Howard Yoder, John Masefield, John Stott, John Updike, Joyce Hollyday, Jürgen Moltmann, Kahlil Gibran, Karl Barth, Kathleen Norris, Leo Tolstoy, Madeleine L’Engle, Malcolm Muggeridge, Martin Luther, Meister Eckhart, Morton T. Kelsey, Mother Teresa, N. T. Wright, Oscar Wilde, Oswald Chambers, Paul Tillich, Peter Kreeft, Philip Berrigan, Philip Yancey, Romano Guardini, Sadhu Sundar Singh , Saint Augustine, Simone Weil, Søren Kierkegaard, Thomas à Kempis , Thomas Howard, Thomas Merton, Toyohiko Kagawa, Walter J. Ciszek, Walter Wangerin, Watchman Nee, Wendell Berry and William Willimon.

Kathleen Norris had written several much-loved books, yet she couldn't drag herself out of bed in the morning or summon the energy for daily tasks. Even as she struggled, Norris recognized her familiar battle with acedia. She had discovered the word in an early Church text when she was in her thirties, and instantly recognized herself in a passage describing the affliction as sinking into a state of being unable to care.Fascinated by this 'noonday demon' so familiar to the early Church, Norris read intensively and knew she must restore this forgotten but utterly important concept to the modern world's vernacular.As Kathleen explains, 'restless boredom, frantic escapism, commitment phobia, and enervating despair that we struggle with today are the ancient demon of acedia in modern dress.'

Although Kathleen Norris’s best-selling Dakota: A Spiritual Geography has brought her to the attention of many thousands of readers, she is first and last a poet. Like Robert Frost, another poet identified with a particular landscape, she can reveal the miraculous in the ordinary, and she writes with clarity, humor, and deep sympathy for her subjects.

Kathleen Norris has touched readers throughout America with her thoughtful and provocative memoirs of faith: Dakota: A Spiritual Geography, The Cloister Walk, and Amazing Grace: A Vocabulary of Faith. She is equally admired for her poetry of engagement with the spiritual world and its landscapes. Journey includes poems from three previous books spanning thirty years, along with a generous selection of new work that continues her radically individual celebration of the sacredness of life.

A NEW YORK TIMES NOTABLE BOOK OF THE YEARFrom the New York Times-bestselling author of The Cloister Walk, a book about Christianity, spirituality, and rediscovered faith.Struggling with her return to the Christian church after many years away, Kathleen Norris found it was the language of Christianity that most distanced her from faith. Words like "judgment," "faith," "dogma," "salvation," "sinner"—even "Christ"—formed what she called her "scary vocabulary," words that had become so codified or abstract that their meanings were all but impenetrable. She found she had to wrestle with them and make them her own before they could confer their blessings and their grace. Blending history, theology, storytelling, etymology, and memoir, Norris uses these words as a starting point for reflection, and offers a moving account of her own gradual conversion. She evokes a rich spirituality rooted firmly in the chaos of everyday life—and offers believers and doubters alike an illuminating perspective on how we can embrace ancient traditions and find faith in the contemporary world.From the Trade Paperback edition.

 A NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER AND NEW YORK TIMES NOTABLE BOOK OF THE YEAR“Vivid, compelling... An embrace of moral and spiritual contemplation.” –The New York Times“A remarkable piece of writing. If read with humility and attention, Kathleen Norris''s book becomes lectio divina, or holy reading.” –The Boston GlobeFrom the iconic author of Amazing Grace: A Vocabulary of Faith, a spiritual journey that brings joy to the meanings of love, grace and faith. Why would a married woman with a thoroughly Protestant background and often more doubt than faith be drawn to the ancient practice of monasticism, to a community of celibate men whose days are centered on a rigid schedule of prayer, work, and scripture? This is the question that poet Kathleen Norris asks us as, somewhat to her own surprise, she found herself on two extended residencies at St. John''s Abbey in Minnesota.Part record of her time among the Benedictines, part meditation on various aspects of monastic life, The Cloister Walk demonstrates, from the rare perspective of someone who is both an insider and outsider, how immersion in the cloistered world-- its liturgy, its ritual, its sense of community-- can impart meaning to everyday events and deepen our secular lives. In this stirring and lyrical work, the monastery, often considered archaic or otherworldly, becomes immediate, accessible, and relevant to us, no matter what our faith may be.

From the Trade Paperback edition.