Some books I have read and re-read. Sometimes I will know the first time I am reading a book that I will come back to it. Sometimes this happens because I use a book for a class. The class goes well and I know part of the reason is the book was effective. Either students really liked the book or it was a useful tool to do what I wanted to do in that particular class. One such book for me is Kathleen Norris’ work, The Cloister Walk. Originally published in 1996, the book seems as fresh with each new read as it did when I first worked my way through it.
While you can derive overall themes from the book, it reads much more like a journal, which in effect it is. Norris spent several months on two different occasions at a Benedictine monastery in Minnesota. Her book lifts up meditative reflections on her time and experience there. Of course, Norris is not a nun. She is not even Catholic, but what she learns from the monks, nuns and other Catholics reawakens her spiritual journey and helps her on her way. It is that personal experience interpreted through her feminine, poetic lens that I find so helpful.
One of my favorite stories in her book recounts the time she spent teaching elementary school kids poetry. Since I know Norris personally, I am sure she was not a normal person in the classroom. As she said, she is not much into rules. In fact, the kids who are the rule followers were probably most at sea with her. However, I am more interested in her personal learnings from this experience, rather than what happened in the moment.
Norris begins her reflections by noting, “Working with children on the writing of poetry has led me to ponder the ways that most of us become exiled from the certainties of childhood…” (59) This idea of exile intrigues me. I have not literally been exiled, although there are a few times when I felt like I was. We can be exiled by being removed from our home or home area. I have done this a few times willingly. I think of the times I have lived abroad. Although that was a good experience overall, there were moments when it felt like exile. It was not business as usual.
So I am intrigued by what Norris concludes about children and how we ultimately are exiled from our certainties. She observes this exile can be seen when we see “how it is that the things we most treasure when we’re young are exactly those things we come to spurn as teenagers and young adults.” Norris then moves to what she senses about children as she spends time teaching them poetry.
“Very small children are often conscious of God, for example, in ways that adults seldom are.” This certainly matches my experience. I saw it with my own kids and have had a second chance with grandkids. Often they talk about God---and even with God---in ways that adults don’t do. As Norris comments, “They sing to God, they talk to God, they recognize divine presence in the world around the: they can see the Virgin Mary dancing among the clouds, they know that God made a deep ravine by their house ‘because he was angry when people would not love him,’ they believe that an overnight snowfall is ‘just like Jesus glowing on the mountaintop.’”
When I have worked in churches and spent time with kids, I can attest that this is the case. As the old tv show said, “kids say the darndest things!” And they can ask very penetrating questions. They are fun to be with and a challenge to address their real life concerns. They have a curiosity about life and about the world that somehow seems to erode as they grow older. Maybe we “educate” it out of them! Too often we teach them to become conformists rather than feed their curiosity. Instead of spurring them on, we “teach” them answers and many of them quit thinking.
This leads to the final word I want to share from Norris, who makes a similar point. Of the experiences she has had, Norris concludes, “Yet these budding theologians often despise the church by the time they’re in eighth grade.” I love the descriptions of her kids” budding theologians. Indeed, they are! A theologian is anyone who begins to reflect on his or her own experience of God or Jesus or the world. A theologian is someone who begins to give ideas to the experience and then gives language to the ideas.
A budding theologian is a theologian who is at the beginning of the learning. A budding theologian has to have some kind of experience. And then she or he begins to think about it and tries to explain it. So the budding theologian may say she saw the Virgin Mary dancing among the clouds. Of course an adult will come along and effectively say, “No you don’t.” The adult is sure she or he is right. And of course, the subtle message to the kid is to “shape up” and think like I do. So much for the dancing Virgin Mary!
I come away from the Norris reading with a gentle reminder not to take my adult theology too seriously. That theology may have long since lost touch with any experience of God. If I don’t think Mary dances in the clouds, I will never look at the clouds nor expect to see Mary there. And of course, as a non-Catholic, I am not too sure about Mary anyway!
And so, I begin to set myself up for cynicism. And I may even have been tempted to trash the church and go my way too sure of things for my own good.
Those of us who have read theology or, perhaps, those who are people of faith and are old enough might well recognize this title as a reminder of the late Jewish philosopher and theologian, Martin Buber. I remember reading Buber’s book, I and Thou , when I was in college in the 1960s. It was already a famous book by then. I am not sure I fully understood it, but that would not be the last time I read it. It has been a while since I looked at the book. Buber came up in a conversation with a friend who asked if I had seen the recent article by David Brooks? I had not seen it, but when I was told about it, I knew I would quickly locate and read that piece. I very much like what Brooks decides to write about and what he contributes to societal conversation. I wish more people read him and took him seriously. ...
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