Altar Music

I am also from MN and have known many religious, from the early 60s through today. During the time represented by this book, those in religious life did not have many options and they were required to give up their life's passion to learn self discipline and "empty" themselves. I remember a young woman, a concert pianist, who was required to give up her music for a time. I saw her come into a darkened room and lay her hands on the keyboard cover for a few moments, then quietly leave. You could sense her dispare. These are not the things that those in the religious life speak of to friends and relatives. I believe the book is a beautiful and couragous look at the toll that was taken in some of the young women who gave their lives to God in this way over the centuries. Don't judge methods over 40 years old by today's standards.

Christin Lore Weber has written several previous nonfiction books on feminist liberation theology, and I loved each of them. I was a little nervous about a first novel, but I needn't have been. Weber's prose style is achingly gorgeous, a great pleasure to read.In the movie "When Harry Met Sally," a male character greets a female character's description of the classic film "An Affair To Remember" with the comment, "That's a chick movie!" Altar Music is a lyrical, beautiful "chick novel" -- written by a woman in language and ideas that speak directly to women's experience. For me, it was as if I had spent most of my life living in an alien land, and suddenly stumbled across something in my native tongue.Roman Catholic apologists may find ideas to dislike in this book, particularly those who believe that only men were created in God's image and that the Magisterium is right: in front of the altar, only a penis can represent God's divine Penis. And some male readers will find themselves fleeing to the safety of Alastair Maclean or John D. MacDonald. Let them. This novel is about women's relationship with the divine between (roughly) 1930 and 1965. I loved it so much that the minute I finished, I turned back to page 1 and read the whole thing a second time.

Every woman who has experienced both sacrifice and forced denial on the human spirit will be able to identify with the characters who invite you into their world, only to wrestle with you like the biblical Jacob and the angel. You come away bruised, but you are also touched with healing. They claim your attention as well as your breath. While the story takes place in a convent, Ms Weber has been able to universalize the experience in such a way that it matters not whether you know anything about convents, nuns, or Catholics. If you have ever dared to love, this story will speak to you.

ALTAR MUSIC is a love song to the unbroken spirit of the survivor. Weber's characters each become a theme in the melody that fills this book with the music of its title. The story touches the old ways, denial, sacrifice, emotional starvation for the sake of salvation, taking a hard look at this form of religiousity through the eyes of the character Elise, Sr. Michelle.Weber's prose defines Elise's pain and spiritual starvation vividly. The Author's use of metaphor and the poetry of her image, music transforming from desire to completion, gives insight into the minds and hearts of the three women who sacrifice their womanhood on the Altar of Religious Patriarchy: the maiden-Elise, the mother-Kate and the crone-Meghan, who are this works main characters. As we see the in the story the transformation of Meghan from maiden to mother to crone and keeper of secrets, and Kate's transformation from maiden to physically cold and spiritually frozen mother, so we experience Elise's climb from the trap of institutionalized religion. Her heart's blood is spilled in her gaining of maturity through the heroine's journey. She enters the soul's underworld a naif and returns a knower.This story contains a wealth of wisdom and insight into the human spirit. I could not put it down.

I was swept away by this story. I felt the winter icy cold and the mosquito-rich heat of summer, the scratchiness caused by a woolen habit and the fevered touch of a would-be lover. But most of all, I felt the author's love and compassion for her wonderfully-realized characters---all of them striving to find meaning and happiness amid the surprises, disappointments and tragedies of life in northern Minnesota. To me this book is an ode to the unquenchable but expensive hope that leads us to struggle for freedom. Thank you, Christin.