Amazing Grace-Filled Gossip

One of the more “fascinating emanations on the social landscape of millennial America,” writes Kathleen Hirsch in the Chicago Tribune, “is the emerging generation of what might be called latter-day Christians. White, middle-class adults, 35 to 50 years old and reasonably well-educated, are returning to the fold of traditional church congregations after years of proud exile.”

Kathleen Norris is one of these latter-day Christians. She spent her early years in New York, working among secular literati as a writer and poet. Then she and her husband decided to move to South Dakota, into the former home of her grandmother. Norris began attending the nearby Presbyterian church and was also drawn to visit a Benedictine monastery to meditate and pray. This led, ever so slowly, to a conversion to Christ.

She explores her spiritual journey in three books, all of which have become best sellers. In Dakota: A Spiritual Geography (Houghton Mifflin, 1993) and The Cloister Walk (Riverhead, 1996) we watch her making her way to faith. In Amazing Grace: A Vocabulary of Faith (Riverhead, 1998), we see she has arrived.

Harvard’s Robert Coles calls Norris “a person of modern sensibility who dares leap across time and space to make the interests and concerns of any number of reflective thinkers her own.”

Those “reflective thinkers” happen to be mostly Christians—monks, theologians, writers, and poets. And as Norris interacts with them, she rediscovers the treasures of the church: prayer, Scripture, and biblical community.

Leadership editors Mark Galli and David Goetz visited Norris in her Lemmon, South Dakota, home to ask what drew her back to Christ and how that experience has shaped her understanding of biblical community.

What made you start going back to church and, especially, start visiting a monastery?

I vaguely knew why I was going back to church, which is about four doors from my house. I knew the congregation. I went to Sunday school there when, as a kid, I visited my grandmother every summer. I liked to sing hymns, and Presbyterians have wonderful hymns.

I couldn’t, however, understand why I was so attracted to the monastery. But I “remembered” once I had learned. The Psalms were key because of their poetry. They’re so powerful, and every day you’re immersed in the Psalms and other Scripture. So it was really the liturgy, especially the immersion in the Bible, that was at the heart of it.

At some point, I learned that the daily praying of the Psalms went back to the Jews, even beyond the 1,700 years of Christian monasticism. One day, standing in western North Dakota, it hit me: My God, we are connecting here. Reading the Psalms, we were connecting with the tap root of Christianity. That was immensely appealing to me and prompted me to immerse myself in Christian faith even more.

Yet you note in Amazing Grace that many Protestant services tend to shortchange Bible reading.

What’s happened has been a funny reversal. You can go to some Protestant services and not hear the Gospel read. If you go to any Catholic church, you’ll hear not only the Gospel but an Old Testament lesson, an Epistle, and a Psalm.

I feel cheated if I don’t hear the Gospel when I go to church on Sunday. The life and teachings of Christ are core Christian stuff for me. Even if it’s a phrase or two from one of the Gospels, I don’t mind. But if I don’t hear any Gospel reading, I get agitated.

I was asked to preach at a large Methodist church once. I asked to see samples of their bulletin so I could see how to fit in. I noticed that none of their services had a complete complement of Scripture readings. And in the so-called contemporary service, I was expected to jettison almost all Scripture. My Methodist grandmother Norris and my grandfather, a Methodist pastor, wouldn’t have recognized that service.

The idea that to be contemporary and relevant we don’t ask people to listen to Scripture strikes me as almost suicidal for the Christian church.

I asked the church about the lack of Scripture reading. They said, “People won’t sit still and listen to the Bible.”

It reminds me of teachers who have low expectations of their students: they get low results. Just because people have a prejudice against Scripture because of bad experiences doesn’t mean they shouldn’t have to listen to Scripture in a more positive way and learn what’s there for them. I don’t know if we should acquiesce on this point.

Is there something wrong with a church trying to be relevant?

When churches aspire for relevance, they tend to fall into marketing language; it’s all around us. Most of the language of marketing is meant to mislead. So it’s risky for Christian churches to use it much at all.

In Amazing Grace, I quote a prayer of confession once used in my church; the prayer began, “Our communication with Jesus tends to be too infrequent to experience the transformation in our lives you want us to have.” That is evasive. It’s not a confession. It’s a memo—a memo from one executive to another.

Here’s another I heard in church recently: “We confess our tendency to keep portions of our life apart from your influence.” That’s language you use when you’re trying to cover something up. It’s not lively language. It’s not incarnational language. It’s not memorable language.

When you use marketing language to address God, you’re shortchanging the mystery; you’re shortchanging any notion of real guilt. One of the reasons people come to church is to hear real language. And that means it’s not the kind of language they hear on the job or when they turn on the television sets.

And if the church doesn’t give them real language, they’ll go home a little hungry. The church needs to give people “memorable speech” (as one writer called poetry). The Scriptures provide that royally. There’s all sorts of memorable speech in the Psalms and the Gospels. But when I look at some of the modern prayers that get written every week, it’s just in one ear and out the other.

Maybe we need more Bible reading but from modern translations.

Not necessarily. One of the crazy things about the King James is how consistently it has been popular with people who are illiterate or semi-literate. For older members of my church, the language of King James is fine. It’s simply because of the power of the language. Most poets generally like it best.

I quickly learned, however, that in Sunday worship I probably should use other translations because the King James grammar can be confusing. But at times I’ve used it because of the sheer power of the language. For example, it’s hard to beat the King James’s repetition and rhythm in Jacob’s dream stories.

Some modern versions are just lowest-common-denominator translations that often shortchange people. In the King James, when Jesus blesses Peter for recognizing him as Messiah, he says, “Blessed art thou, Peter” (or in the Revised Standard Version, “Blessed are you, Peter”).

In one modern version, it’s “Good for you, Peter.” That secularizes the whole thing, as if Jesus is trying to bolster Peter’s self-esteem. A blessing is something much different, and people need to understand that.

When churches aspire for relevance, they tend to fall into marketing language; it’s all around us. Most of the language of marketing is meant to mislead. So it’s risky for Christian churches to use it.

So you believe Scripture has an ability to work on us in some way apart from interpretation—teaching or preaching.

You’re interpreting as you’re hearing. I wrote The Cloister Walk to describe what was happening to me as a Protestant woman sitting there being forced to listen to so much Scripture and how incredibly it formed my daily life.

In the book, I tell the story of my encounter with some difficult passages from Jeremiah. I was having a rough time in my life, and at the same time, every morning, I had to listen to these difficult, probing, grieving passages from Jeremiah that were part of the cycle of readings. That forced me to look at my own life and probe why I was miserable. The Bible became this incredible interpretation of my own life. It was the Bible interpreting me, not so much the other way around.

Frankly, some days it would go in one ear and out the other. I’d be tired. I’d be cranky. I just didn’t have the heart for it. But there were so many days, especially when I kept sticking with the book, when I would really hear it.

What do you mean by the Bible interpreting you?

I remember a time when I was anxious about something that had to do with money. This was after Dakota had become a best seller; I’d had an interview with New York magazine, and all sorts of crazy things were going on. I went to worship, and the Psalm that night was “Put not your trust in riches even when they increase.”

That would be the Bible interpreting me.

It’s not just admonitions. There’s a passage from Luke where Jesus says to Peter, “Now Satan wanted to scatter you like chaff, but I prayed for you that your faith will not fail.” The notion that Jesus prays for us was a new revelation to me, as was the idea that life was a contest. Satan might want to scatter us like chaff, but Jesus is there as a bulwark.

I can’t remember exactly what was going on in my own life—I think I was depressed, feeling scattered, unfocused—but there was this wonderful consolation, the assurance of Christ right there in the Gospel.

It sounds like you’re saying that biblical community is first a community that gathers to hear the Bible read.

Oh yes! That was my biggest revelation, I think, in going to the monastery. I was totally immersed in hearing Scripture all day long. If you were at a Trappist monastery, that would be seven times a day; at the Benedictine, it’s four or five. All day long you’re hearing Scripture read aloud.

Even if I sit and read the Bible aloud to myself, I don’t hear the things or experience the insights I do when somebody else is reading to me. There’s a reason why little kids need to be read to, and why the bedtime story is so important. At the monastery, I began to think of morning prayer as my wake-up reading, and evening prayer as my bedtime reading. I really needed it.

My husband accompanied me on one of my sojourns and wanted to do something one night with me. He asked me, “Couldn’t you miss vespers tonight?”

I said, “I could, but we’re going to finish the Book of Ruth tonight.”

He said, “But you know how it ends.”

“That’s not the point,” I said. “I have to hear it.”

The church needs to give people “memorable speech.” the scriptures provide that royally.

I really get this longing to hear it. There aren’t that many places in our culture where people experience that wonderful pleasure of hearing things read aloud. The audio book movement is probably a real eye-opener: so many people are just crazy about audio books, and I think they’re responding to that need.

That’s how religion begins. What is it Paul says? Faith comes through hearing.

What would you say to a pastor who asks, “How can I make sure my community is biblical”?

An abbot determines the health of a monastery by looking at the quality of the liturgy, the meals, and the recreation.

First, how is the liturgy? What’s the prayer life like? Do people seem to be functioning pretty well with it? Is everybody there at prayer? Or is half the community out, having some excuse, working or whatever? Do people seek to avoid the liturgy?

Second, what about the communal meals? Who comes? Do people seem to want to be there?

Third, are the monks getting together for recreation? There’s a scheduled time every day for communal recreation. It can take a variety of forms—playing pool or cards together, or taking a walk with other monks.

I know of one monk who was almost always at prayers and meals but never came to recreation, and the abbot ordered him to start coming. He said, “If you can’t come every day, at least come a few times a week. You’re rejecting the community when you don’t participate.”

I think there might be a parallel in the local church: if somebody stops coming to church, stops coming to various church events, I think the pastor and a few members might try to find out what’s going on. There might be a good reason for it. It certainly hurts the community when people aren’t there.

With that criteria, the church could become pretty insular, just worried about members attending its own functions.

If the church is just a club looking for people who want to come and sing and listen to Scripture and then go home, then it’s not a church by biblical standards. You also have to look around to see what that church is doing in the life of people outside—food pantries, day care centers, homeless shelters, and the like.

I feel fortunate to live where I do because the churches are often the only institutions in a small town like this that can provide services that people need. Government programs are minimal here. If you want to register for job service, you have to drive over 80 miles to Mobridge, and there’s no public transportation.

We’re so isolated. But that makes the church so important.

My husband was surprised by this. He was raised Catholic in the suburbs of New York City. He had no idea what Christian clergy did and how important churches were until we came here and saw what churches were doing.

For example, I recently was working with other women in a food pantry. When the number of people showing up started to drop, we became concerned because we knew of some elderly people who needed more food. So we started what I call “holy gossip,” trying to discover people who would qualify, asking questions of neighbors, relatives, and friends. We found plenty of people who qualified for help but weren’t coming to get it. So we made up packages, loaded them in our van, and my husband and I delivered boxes to mostly older women living alone.

These are the type of things that make up a community that reflects biblical values—taking care of the widow and the orphan and providing what you can for people who really need it.

You used the phrase “holy gossip.” What’s holy about gossip?

The word actually is related to the word for godparent, so it has a holy derivation—I was shocked when I discovered this! The unholy kind of gossip is bad, of course, but I have a healthy respect for holy gossip.

I love the part in our Presbyterian service when, before prayer, we share joys and concerns. We hear about somebody’s grandkids visiting from Spokane or the birth of a great-grandchild. We also hear about someone losing a job or going into surgery.

That’s when the gossips get busy after church and call around. They get in touch with friends, neighbors, and relatives—does he really want to see people? Or is he too tired? Should I drop in today? That is a good use of gossip.

When my husband and I go away for three months in the winter, I still get the local newspaper delivered to me so I can keep up with things. But when I come back, I always check in with a friend and ask, “What’s really been happening?” She fills me in, letting me know So-and-so’s wife died and he’s not doing too well, or So-and-so retired and he’s doing great—the sorts of things I need to know to be a member of the community. The next time I see the person, I can ask about their news, or I can write a note to those in the hospital.

In some sense, it seems all the church’s talk is a form of holy gossip, from Scripture reading to the sharing of joys and concerns.

An 85-year-old gentleman died at the nursing home recently, and we’ve known his family for a long time. Yesterday I heard from a distant relative of his, and she told me how he died—that he really was in his right mind until almost the end, that he just slipped away. This woman, one of my neighbors, works at the nursing home, and she said it was one of the best deaths she’d ever seen.

When I go to the funeral this afternoon, where we’ll hear Scripture read, I’ll also be aware of that bit of gossip. I’ll know that for Clarence and his family, it wasn’t a horrible trauma. He’d been failing in health for a couple of years, and he just slipped away. They got to visit with him up until the end.

While the family experiences grief, holy gossip has helped me to know a bit of grace at Clarence’s death.

Writing of her life in Lemmon, South Dakota, Kathleen Norris says, “The Plains have been essential not only for my growth as a writer. They have formed me spiritually.” For a time, she filled the pulpit in nearby Keldon, at Hope Presbyterian, a congregation of cattle ranchers and their families—like church elder Stuart Schmidt, pictured here. The experience has stretched her spiritually: “Every time I read the Scriptures aloud in the Sunday service at Hope I became aware of sparks in those texts that I had missed in preparing my sermon . … It said much about the power of words to continually astonish and invigorate us, and even to surpass human understanding.”

The church needs to give people “memorable speech.” The Scriptures provide that royally.