Cloister Walk Essays - Asceticism, Kathleen Norris, Nun, Celibacy

Cloister Walk In The Cloister Walk, American poet Kathleen Norris takes the reader through her experiences with life in a Benedictine monastery. She writes 75 short tales, each one dealing with a different observation.. One thing that appealed to me about this book is that Kathleen Norris isn't a catholic, nor is she very into church. Her experiences at the monastery help her better understand herself, as well as others. This paper will attempt to link my experiences with those of Kathleen Norris's and the Catholic Tradition. Kathleen Norris moves into the St. John's monastery and her book is based on her nine months there. She has a very poetic personality, and goes to the monastery in search of expanding her mind. She doesn't expect to find religious knowledge or to improve her relationship with God. "The monastic life," she says, "has this in common with the artistic one: both are attempts to pay close attention to objects, events, and natural phenomena that otherwise would get chewed up in the daily grind." There are a few main topics with which she pays special attention too, those of celibacy, community living, the liturgy, and time. Each of these topics relates very nicely to my experiences here at Notre Dame, as well as to different aspects of the catholic tradition. Norris has this to say about celibacy. "Celebate people have taught me that celibacy, practiced rightly, does indeed have something valuable to say to the rest of us. Specifically, they have helped me better appreciate both the nature of friendship, and what it means to be married." Although I cannot relate to the marriage aspect of this statement, I can relate to the friendship part. For 19 years of my life, I chose to remain celebate. The friendships that I formed in this time with members of the female sex have been very powerful. I can honestly say that I have experienced love without the physical part of my relationships being present. The perfect example of this is my best friend at Notre Dame. We can sit and talk all night long about absolutely anything, and we both know each other as well as ourselves. We help each other cope with the hard times, especially as of late, she has been at my side supporting and loving me the entire way. Should something physical step in the way of this at this point in time, I think that our friendship would be altered for the worst. This all relates to the Catholic tradition of remaining celebate until marriage. The reason the Catholic church does this is so people learn to develop emotional ties rather than physical ones. Should I ever marry this girl, it won't matter if there isn't any physical attraction because the emotional bond between us is so strong that we could most likely deal with anything. When Norris says "they(celebate people) have something valuable to say to the rest of us," she is putting the catholic church's feelings on the issue into layman's terms. Communal living is another topic that Norris has an opinion about. While she was living in the monastery, she was amazed at how the monks were all so diverse, yet they managed to get along well. As one monk told Norris "our biggest problem is that each man here had a mother who fried potatoes in a different way." Norris talks about how beneficial it was for her to live among such a diversified group of people because she learned to accept diversity. This is especially important here at Notre Dame. In my dorm room alone I have a roommate originally from Mexico, a roommate from Seattle, and a roommate from South America. Three different languages are spoken in my room and before this year I had never met two of my roommates. This has been my most gratifying year though in regards to learning to understand different types of people. Living with all different types of people for the past two and a half years has been a great experience and has helped me to grow as a person. I had to learn to take individual differences into account in order to live happily in the dorm. Catholics are taught the importance of friendship and understanding...something that communal living definately endorses. I feel the same way that Norris does when she says that she has grown as an individual simply through living with other people. The next topic that Norris talks about deals with that of the liturgy. Norris, being very poetic