AMAZING GRACE

by Norris, Kathleen

• ISBN13: 9781573220781
• ISBN10: 1573220787
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 1998-03-01
• Publisher: Riverhead Books

Summary

When, more than twenty years ago, Kathleen Norris began attending her grandmother's small-town church on the Great Plains, she was a transplanted poet with more doubt than faith. Still, the strong pulls of tradition, family, history, and community compelled her to return week after week to Sunday morning services, and her deepening ties to a nearby monastery awoke in her a desire to believe. In returning to the church, Norris's greatest struggle was with the language of the Christian religion. Words such as "judgment", "prayer", "faith", "dogma", "salvation", "sinner", and even "Christ" formed what she called her "scary vocabulary" - words that often intimidate people and distance them from their religious heritage. She found she had to wrestle with them, grapple with their meanings and make them her own, before they could confer their blessings and their grace. Blending history, theology, story, etymology, and memoir, Amazing Grace: A Vocabulary of Faith is a poet's journey through language to faith, with each word serving as the occasion for an examination of a particular aspect of the Christian lexicon.

Author Biography

Kathleen Norris is the award-winning, bestselling author of Amazing Grace: A Vocabulary of Faith; The Cloister Walk; and Dakota: A Spiritual Geography. Her poems have appeared in The New Yorker, in various anthologies, and in her own three volumes of poetry. She divides her time between South Dakota and Hawaii.

Table of Contents

Preface	1	(10)
Eschatology	11	(3)
Antichrist	14	(2)
Silence	16	(2)
Salvation	18	(12)
Blessing and Curse	22	(8)
Incarnation	30	(2)
Detachment	32	(13)
The Family Story	37	(8)
Exorcism	45	(10)
Perfection	55	(3)
Prayer	58	(4)
Belief, Doubt, and Sacred Ambiguity	62	(7)
Repentance	69	(2)
Annunciation	71	(14)
What Religion Were You Raised in, and What Are You Now?	78	(7)
Commandments	85	(3)
Idolatry	88	(6)
Bible	94	(2)
Righteous	96	(13)
The Stories	98	(11)
God	109	(3)
Blood	112	(4)
Virgin Mary, Mother of God	116	(8)
Anger	124	(15)
The Feminist Impasse	128	(11)
Chosen	139	(5)
Fear	144	(6)
One More Boom	148	(2)
Grace	150	(2)
Intolerance/Forbearance	152	(9)
Christ	161	(3)
Sinner, Wretch, and Reprobate	164	(5)
Faith	169	(6)
Good and Evil	175	(5)
Preaching	180	(17)
Illiteracies and Ironies	189	(8)
Heresy/Apostasy	197	(8)
Creeds	205	(3)
Orthodoxy	208	(3)
God-Talk	211	(4)
Inquisition	215	(5)
Oppression	220	(5)
Herod	225	(6)
The Wild West	228	(3)
Ecstasy	231	(3)
Medieval	234	(4)
Christian	238	(4)
The Bible Study	242	(4)
Worship	246	(11)
My Ebenezer	251	(2)
Give Me a Word	253	(4)
``Organized'' Religion	257	(5)
Hospitality	262	(6)
Church	268	(9)
Lectio Divina	277	(7)
Mystic	284	(3)
Trinity	287	(5)
Seeking	292	(8)
The Scary Stuff	295	(5)
Evangelism	300	(5)
Imagination (Or, How Many Christians Does It Take to Balance N. Scott Momaday?)	305	(6)
Unchurched	311	(1)
Hell	312	(4)
Judgment	316	(2)
Apocalypse	318	(6)
The Expert Marksman's Medal	322	(2)
Dogma	324	(4)
Angels	328	(2)
Wickedness	330	(11)
``I Know Not''	333	(8)
Revelation	341	(2)
Pentecostal	343	(7)
Prayer as Mystery	350	(3)
Neighbor	353	(6)
Theology	359	(2)
Asceticism	361	(6)
Heaven	367	(2)
Infallibility	369	(6)
Truth	375	(7)
The New Jerusalem	382	(3)
Acknowledgments	385