Kathleen Norris

KN:  I went to church but only at highly charged moments like marriages or baptisms or funerals. I wasn’t so much depressed as emotionally drained or charged because I was going at these very potent times. It’s pretty typical for young people, no matter how you’ve been raised, to drift away or experiment. You have to decide for yourself what your faith really is. What wasn’t so typical was that I had a determination that I needed to find my way back. It was quite a process--such a process that I decided to write about it.  

TAP:  But you didn’t go to what we typically see in Protestant North America: the big-box church with almost no liturgy. You were very counter-cultural, this young poet from vibrant New York City returning to a very small rural church in South Dakota with old hymns, long bible passages--not what we would consider “seeker-friendly.” How can a liturgical church be more welcoming of the newcomer without dumbing down the liturgy?

KN:  Just by being themselves. It was a church I had some family connections to. I think a church just needs to be itself, especially a liturgical church that has that wonderful tradition. I discovered that tradition even more in Benedictine monasteries; that tradition said so much to me. I didn’t want them to change to suit me at all; I wanted to see what they were about. You can find ways to be inviting. Benedictines have it down: hospitality is one of their prime ministries. Of course out on the western plains there were no big-box churches.

TAP:  Are you now attending an Episcopal church in Hawaii?

KN:  It’s another church I have some family connections with. It’s a marvelous church, St Clements in Honolulu. The parish consists of a preschool and a church--a great combination. We have a deliberate hospitality ministry: if someone is standing alone at coffee hour everyone in the church [knows] they need to be welcoming. We have floating greeters so there’s a kind of openness and friendliness to the church. We do homework helpers for children one day a week; we feed the poor and give them groceries once a month. We have a partnership with a church and a hospital in Gaza. A traditional liturgy but an open, welcoming place is a marvelous combination. It was hanging out with Benedictine monks for so many years that taught me how much liturgy matters. Given my respect for liturgy it was not a hard decision to go to an Anglican church.       

TAP:  Would you be willing to sit on a committee to revise an Episcopalian liturgy? They obviously need poets as well as theologians to write good liturgy.

KN:  I’ve never been approached. I don’t know if anything is afoot but it would be an honour.

TAP:  There is a tendency in North America to be highly individualistic. We want to be ‘just-Jesus-and-me’ or ‘just-the-Spirit-and-me’ yet your conversion happened through communal worship. Is that important for all Christians?

KN:  The communal aspect is so important. People say “Oh I don’t like organized religion.” I say “Just join a church and you’ll find it’s not all that organized.” The significant ministries that we do in our community and globally you couldn’t do on your own. We prepare a Sunday dinner for 400 people at the homeless shelter. You can’t do that sitting on your own thinking that Jesus loves you. For the liturgical church that is the way the Church has decided to celebrate over 1700 years. You’re joining the community in worshipping, not just one person deciding how to celebrate.

My husband and I were married by a Justice of the Peace but we had our wedding solemnized. People said, “Oh, you must have written your own wedding ceremony.” Of course, we did not. The Book of Common Prayer—there’s nothing better than that. Why would you want to elaborate on the Book of Common Prayer? All the necessary things are there. It’s beautiful. Why would we want to mess around with that? To us it was common sense. Other people were shocked--they thought any two writers would not be able to resist writing a wedding service.

TAP:  You, along with Richard Foster, have introduced Protestant North Americans to the great Christian mystics.

KN:  I think they would be surprised to hear themselves even described as mystics. The desert monks and mothers and fathers were extremely down-to-earth. They did centre their lives around worship and prayer in ways that seem amazing to us but when you read what they did and said they were ultimately very practical. I have a book coming out next fall, Accidie in Me, based on the writings of the fourth century mystics. It is a memoir of my marriage and my life as a writer. But basically it’s about how these people from the fourth century changed my life, converted me.

TAP:  Is it accurate to call Accidie spiritual depression?

 KN:  No, it’s really not depression. It’s an inability to care, to make commitments, to really get involved. It’s cold, profound indifference and it’s a very modern problem. [There were originally eight deadly sins but then] accidie was dropped into the sin of sloth which most of us think of as physical laziness. Actually the early monks thought accidie, anger and pride were the worst, the hardest sins to struggle with.

TAP:  The city folk in head office of many a denomination would like to close many of the little churches. What would you tell head office? Should small rural churches be amalgamating?

KN:  It’s very difficult partly because of the huge physical distances to travel in the rural west. Some priests in Montana stay overnight Saturday in one town so they can reach three or four churches on one weekend. It’s so painful for churches to close. City folk just don’t understand what that means to a rural community. You’re going to have people who won’t even go to church anymore; they’re going to drop out because the personal pain is too great. They’re not going to drive the 25 or 40 miles into town, especially in winter. There’s an Episcopal church in North Dakota that hasn’t had a pastor for most of its history--lay people have led. That’s happening more and more. Lay people have a real role here; they can do a lot to keep a church going.

TAP:  You wrote in The Quotidian Mysteries: “Reminding ourselves that God’s love for us is daily and everlasting can go a long way toward helping us live through the rough spots of our lives.” How have you recently experienced both the “daily” and “everlasting” love of God?

KN:  My mother is ninety and lives independently with some nursing assistance but a lot of the care-giving duties fall to me. I’m not the most patient person in the world and she can be very stubborn. On most days I’d be there at 3 or 4 in the afternoon until 8 or 9 at night. And she’d say, “I appreciate everything you do for me” and I’d say, “I appreciate you.” We make this little affirmation. Because it’s daily it’s really hard. The daily stuff with other people--that’s part of our religion. It’s all part of God’s love somehow. There is always that larger picture. This is the woman who gave birth to me, who nurtured me; I’m nurturing her now. If I get impatient it’s my problem not hers--it’s a spiritual discipline. God’s love is daily and everlasting and to be part of that specifically means being more patient with my mother, not letting my anger and impatience affect her. This is my life now. It’s what I’m called by God to do--not resisting, not fighting, not being angry about it. Sometimes that’s a challenge.

TAP:  Why do you call marriage a “community of two”?

KN:  Marriage is a religious commitment and a vow. People would say, “Why don’t you join a monastery?” but I’m already living a vowed life. Monks and nuns have their religious vows; I’ve got my marriage vows. When you look at a marriage that way you do see it as a community. That sense of the sacredness of marriage is what helped me to stay in my own marriage. My husband passed away four years ago; we had just celebrated our 26th wedding anniversary. We were in it for the long haul.  

TAP:  The two of you were open to all sorts of people dropping into your home.

KN:  That’s key to my understanding of Benedictine hospitality. If you know who you are and you’ve made a good community in either a monastery or a marriage, then you’re much more able to welcome other people in.

TAP:  Are there things you’ve learnt about marriage now that you’re a widow?

KN:  An old friend who has been a widow for over twenty years said, “It takes at least five years for you to even understand what’s happened. In four years you don’t know a thing yet.” Other widows told me: “Take it easy; be good to yourself; don’t make any major decisions.” The really sharp pangs of grief, the teariness will go away a little sooner, but understanding this new world you’re in--five years is the minimum. I’m not sure if I’ll ever understand it. It’s a very strange new identity. I don’t think I was terribly good at being a single person in my twenties; I don’t think I’m terribly good at it in my sixties. I’m happy to have time by myself reading and writing but there’s something about feeling incomplete. There is a part of me that is missing and I have to figure out what to do about that.   

Tell me about your new book, God with Us: Rediscovering the Meaning of Christmas.

We feel like cogs in the Christmas machine. We get caught up in this insane commercial thing. Even the Japanese who are mostly Buddhists celebrate Christmas commercially; everybody buys presents. Christmas has become detached from its original religious meaning for so many. This book will help people rediscover a deeper meaning in the feast. Christmas isn’t one day; it’s twelve days. The publisher said, “Let’s get some writers together that can lead people through Advent, through Christmas and to Epiphany. The Bible readings during Advent blew me away; you’re hearing references all the way from Genesis to Revelation. It’s the season when everything comes together. It’s about the Second Coming as well as the First Coming. What does it mean to wait? What does it mean to hope?

TAP:  How much of a community of writers is there with you and Anne Lamott and Karen Winner and Don Miller? All of you express your Christian faith through personal narrative and memoir.

KN:  I think it is a very lose community; we don’t regularly get together. I’ve been literally very distant in the Dakotas and now in Hawaii. We read each other’s works although I don’t keep up absolutely. I’ve read a lot of Anne Lamott. I love her book on writing, Bird by Bird. 

TAP:  With the passing of Madeline L’Engle, on whose shoulders will the mantle for Christian memoir and meditation fall? Has it fallen on you?

KN:  Well, I don’t want to think about that actually. There are a number of people doing it really well. Roberta Bondi is not as well known as she should be. I’d like to play around with some fiction. Memoir is a great form. I’ve written memoirs that speak to other people, that aren’t just about me--but now I’d like to explore some fiction.    

TAP:  When you teach about spirituality to teens how do you talk about spiritual discipline when discipline seems such a negative word?

KN:  I do avoid saying “discipline.” Instead I’d say spiritual practice. A lot of young people are in sports or music so they know what practice is; they have to practice all the time. And asceticism means training. You train to run a race; you may have to train yourself a little bit in prayer to get the most out of it.