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From the 1970s, when both our communities took root in the poor sector of northwest Washington, DC, we of Tabor House have watched this evolution in Wallis’s thought. We had written articles for and even benefitted from press credentials from Wallis’s Sojourner Magazine that served us well in Central America in the 1980s. Focused on Central America since that time this reviewer had lost the steady contact and dialogue with Jim Wallis, but is delighted to renew acquaintance with his thought in these two recent works. His parting words recall the prophet Amos in summing up his challenge to his revivalist tradition, a challenge to us all as well to escape the manipulations of political ideologies. “Imagine politics being unable to coopt such a spiritual revival, but being held accountable to its moral inspiration. Imagine a social movement rising out of spiritual renewal and actually changing the wind of both our culture and our politics.” Yes, and every chapter has brought tears of hope to this reviewer’s eyes. Acedia & me: A Marriage, Monks, and a Writer’s Life by Kathleen Norris Reviewed by Peter C. Hinde, O.Carm. Writer and poet Kathleen Norris is well known and widely read, but perhaps by not a few of you. Addicted to justice and peace literature, I confess to being ignorant of her work until on some inspiration at a library I picked up this book whose title intrigued me. Touted by Ron Rolheiser for her style and deep probing of the spiritual life as “a Saint Augustine for our day,” she wrote of herself rather as a kind of “Elvis Presley introducing Protestants to Catholic monastic prayer.” Norris, a convert from the Presbyterian style of Christianity, was drawn by an enchantment with the life of the Benedictine monks of South Dakota, their intimacy with and chant of the psalms. She is no slouch for research as she ranges through the history of spiritual writers from the desert fathers to our own day. In one chapter she joins Dante in his Divine Comedy to journey through hell and purgatory to gain the insights into her’s and, I might say, one’s own spiritual journey with its hopes, temptations and despairs. An attractive characteristic of this work is that it is at once a “confession” of a renowned poet and writer as well as a treatise on an oft-neglected vice of the human condition, viz, acedia. One of her prime sources was Evagrius, 4th century contemporary of John Cassian. Continually returning to his thought she persuades me that I should acquaint myself with his work, Praktikos. In fact, in sharing her own struggle with acedia throughout her life, she leads one to see how much it has invaded, practically undetected, one’s own life. For as she experiences it, and as explained by Evagrius, acedia—not exactly sloth—lies hidden behind all seven capital sins or temptations. The fact that Kathleen was a happily married woman, a widow at the time of writing, does not stop her from identifying with the temptation of the desert fathers. To the point of creating acedia in the reader, she labors the question of whether acedia is a morally neutral depression as some moderns would have it, or a serious spiritual malaise, as the ancient ascetics declared it. She comes down on the side of the latter. Her self examination is unsparing as she looks over the many venues of her life and work. Her life with husband David reminds one of Raisa Maritain’s We Have Been Friends Together writing of her husband Jacques. David, an upfront atheist, was a poet, and a math-metician, who suffered great physical and psychological pain most of his adult life. A remarkable down-to-earth man himself, David died in 2003. Kathleen does not doubt that she will be joined with David in paradiso. Norris concludes her treatise with quotes from no less than 130 different writers on the subject of acedia beginning with the psalmist and on through the centuries to our own day. This tour through the life of Kathleen Norris inspired by the psalms, the desert fathers, and hundreds of other classics on the spiritual life is a great spiritual adventure. C Canonization Inexplicably, her sight returned to the blinded eye. But it was not until last July (eight years after the incident) that the Pope approved this healing as a miracle obtained through the intercession of Blessed Nuno. Guilhermina had the honor of carrying the relics to the front of the Altar during the canonization Mass. This is a symbol that all of Nuno’s relics can be venerated publically as a Saint in the Catholic Church. The celebrations ended with a Mass of Thanksgiving in the majestic basilica of San Paolo Fuori le Mura (Saint Paul Outside the Wall) in the outskirts of Rome. Our Prior General presided and during the homily he stressed the importance of having elevated Nuno Alvares to the altar for the spiritual and pastoral enrichment of Carmelites and of the universal Church. It was this final act of the celebrations that for me summarizes the importance of having a saint like Nuno in our Order. We should not see Saint Nuno in an altar for the mere purpose of pietistic acts of worship and veneration. Nuno’s memory must prompt us to rediscover the soul of Catholic Faith in action. More than building altars and praying novenas for the new Carmelite saint, we must build organizations like the Confraternity of the Holy Constable in Portugal; a group of faithful people who attended the canonization Mass in their Scouts-like uniforms. They work with the poor and homeless of Lisbon in remembrance of Nuno, the peacemaker. Or like the Blessed Nuno Society in Duluth, Minnesota; a group of people who not only promotes devotion to Nuno; but also engages in works of charity on behalf of the orphan and the homeless. In the tradition of Carmel, Nuno was at one time: a lover of the Blessed Mother, a man of deep spiritual commitment who spent hours in prayer, and a man with a sense of prophetic call who fought for peace and justice in favor of the vulnerable. Dom Nuno de Santa Maria Alvares Pereira, you deserved to be canonized! We pray that you may inspire us to love God and to serve the poor as you did.
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