Working with Kathleen Norris

Kathleen Norris is someone I've always wanted to meet, and last month I had a chance not only to meet her but to work with her.


I had met her over a year ago at St. John's Abbey in Collegeville, Minnesota where we both were attending a program. A casual remark about an idea I had for a retreat that explored how writing can help us focus on our experiences in order to recognize what's significant about ordinary life resulted in her offering to come and be the featured speaker. It's meant a year's worth of e-mail exchanges with Kathleen's very congenial and unbelievably well-organized agent, Kathryn Barcos at the Steven Barclay agency in order to find dates and make all the other necessary arrangements that needed to be attended to in advance.

The retreat, titled "Writing as a Spiritual Practice: A Retreat With Kathleen Norris," took place the weekend of October 23-25 at New Melleray Abbey, south of Dubuque.

Kathleen used her own poetry and that of other poets (including Mark Van Doren, Anne Porter, Mary Oliver, Denise Levertov and others) to illustrate how writing helps us contemplate "both emptiness and fullness, absence and presence". In sharing her own insights about the contemplative, prayerful dimension of poetry and other forms of creative writing, she emphasized that "we write until we start to think." Or in other words, the very act of putting pen to paper (or fingers to keyboard) helps us discover what is inside us needing to find expression. But she cautioned us to be honest about what we are trying to say because writing can tell us the truth about ourselves - but only if we're willing to cooperate. Otherwise our writing can end up being a chance for us literally to lie to ourselves.

Throughout the weekend she provided us with opportunities to try out her ideas and suggestions by doing some writing of our own, She gave us three specific exercises to jump start what she was talking about.

The first was to write our own spiritual autobiography in 200 words or less - no mean feat for those of us who tend to get carried away when attempting to express ourselves. Kathleen pointed out that usually we use many more words than are needed and that any good writer needs to keep going back to get rid of the excess. Or in her words we need to be willing to "kill our little darlings" - most of whom tend to be adjectives.

Our second exercise, which was to write a short psalm about something ordinary, gave us a chance to look for "the beauty in the ordinary task." Kathleen said that it's not always helpful to try talking about holiness and beauty in abstract terms, but rather to write simply about daily life using concrete images. So here's my attempt at creating a Psalm about sorting laundry.

" Monday Morning" by Andrew Wyeth

Praise the Lord
for this wicker basket filled with laundry
to be sorted and put away.

Rejoice and be glad
because of clean towels
that know the contour of our bodies
and the texture of our skin.

Give thanks for underwear
that proclaims how wondrously we are made -
how marvelous and strange the mysteries
of maleness and femaleness.

Sing joyfully for the lovely symmetry of folded handkerchiefs,
and the patience of pillowcases
waiting quietly all day for the nighttime,
and yes, even for this -
the loneliness of a sock without its mate.

For our last exercise, Kathleen read a poem that ended with the line "Have I wasted my life?" and another whose last line was "This is what I have wanted." Our assignment was to write two poems of our own using those same lines.

"Two Trees in that Field" by Anne Garton

The wind lurches through the fields
And clutches at cornstalks that have been left behind
Rattling their dry bones.
The sky is the color of an owl's feather.
Trees have dropped their leaves,
And all day long
Pinecones have been making their little leaps of faith
As if to say pay attention to this -
Pay attention.
Have I wasted my Life?

*****

Long after dusk has swept away the afternoon
A full moon climbs up through the darkness
Spilling clarity from her chalice of light.
This is what I have wanted.

The other speaker at the retreat was Fr. Brendan Freeman, Abbot of New Melleray and a poet in his own right, who shared some of his writing as well as his thoughts about how poetry and other forms of creative writing can help us be more aware of the spiritual dimension of life.

Father Brendan said many of us find that using "God-talk" isn't necessarily the best way to write about spiritual things. He added that it's not the words we use to talk about God, but rather the words we use to describe our day to day experiences that speak most eloquently of the luminous realm of the spirit.

I'm not very good at writing poetry but I am drawn to what words can do. They're powerful tools not only for communicating with others, but also for helping us discover who we are. That's one of the things writing does. It helps us listen to ourselves and hopefully learn something important from what we're hearing.