Stalking the Divine

"Stalking the Divine: Contemplating Faith With the Poor Clares" is a modern-day "Seven Storey Mountain." My job requires me to read a lot of books, and this is simply the best one that I have read in the past 20 years. Not since St. Clare turned back the invading armies of Frederick II in 1234, by raising a ciborium containing the Blessed Sacrament, have her descendants been considered a military threat. But recently, two Poor Clares of Perpetual Adoration in Cleveland found themselves in conflict with the U.S. Department of Homeland Security. The two cloistered nuns, South Korean biological sisters, faced deportation. A ruling will permit them to stay as temporary business workers. Their story had made national headlines thanks in part to the author of this book about their community. Author Kristin Ohlson found her secure world shaken when she stumbled upon the Poor Clares community a few years ago. Fascinated, she asked to enter the walls in order to write about their lives. The sisters resisted this, but did allow her to interview them, with the grill that separates them from the outside world between them. What unfolds in "Stalking the Divine" is an exposition of the spiritual life, not only of the sisters but of Ohlson and of whoever reads this fascinating book. There is a touching moment in one of Ohlson's encounters with the Poor Clares that especially moved me. I realized, and I think most readers will also see, that the words spoken to the author are a testament of why Poor Clares pray night and day for the world. An elderly sister that Ohlson had just finished interviewing took Ohlson's hand, kissed it, and said, "I love you." Ohlson writes, "Usually, the people who say that get an automatic 'I love you' back, but it didn't seem right: She was loving me as a fellow creature made in the image of God, and my love is confined to a much tinier slice of humanity." Therein lies the charm of this book, which could easily become the spiritual classic of our time. Ohlson's almost happenstance encounter with this cloistered community suddenly transforms her life. And her life is at the center of "Stalking the Divine." I say her life, but it would be more accurate to say that it is our life that she brings to her weekly interviews. Her questions are the questions of the modern world confronted with the seeming absurdity of those who leave it behind, forsaking all to give themselves fully to God. Ohlson, a self-described former Maoist and lapsed Catholic, is moved by the witness of the nuns. I think anyone who reads her moving narrative will share in this admiration. She writes, "I guess I'm tired of a world with so little faith. I'm tired of marriages that fall apart because people won't persevere through the dry, dull, miserable periods; I'm tired of people who have given up on making the world better; I'm tired of people who cynically deconstruct everything for their own amusement -- and I've been all these people. These nuns fell in love

Kristin Ohlson has filled a void in religious writing and done so beautifully. Not only has she employed her luminous prose to chronicle the history and current state of the Poor Clares of Perpetual Adoration, a small group of nuns who pray 24/7, she has delved into her own search for faith in a way that is never preachy, cloying or reductive. The best nonfiction writing makes us read and contemplate things we didn't even know we were interested in; frankly, I was not terribly captivated by the subject of cloistered nuns before I started this book. Now, having read Stalking the Divine, I want to know more and I deeply regret never having gone to see the Poor Clares' church and hear them sing when I lived in Cleveland. And I'm a secular Jew, for crying out loud.This book would have been terrific had it only dealt with the Poor Clares. But for me, the more profound pleasure came from reading about faith from the point of view of a skeptic, someone who recognizes the value of religion and the good it can embody while never ceasing to ask questions. Ohlson craves faith but is too smart to simply jettison her doubts. Thanks to her clear and incisive writing, I found it easy to empathize with her cognitive dissonance: the desire for God on the one hand and the recognition that human beings are fundamentally restless and inquisitive on the other. And that despite being created in God's image, we have a tendency to screw things up a lot of the time. The world is full of human suffering and all kinds of other crazy, irrational and awful things. Why? Ohlson articulates this question as well as it can be done. She also takes solace in the fact that, behind the grates inside a big old church on a run-down block somewhere in Cleveland, Ohio, a group of women has dedicated itself to prayer in the hopes that things will get better. Amen, Sister.

I read this book cover to cover almost without stopping. It is the most pure, kindhearted, honest account of one person's struggle with faith, yearning for divine guidance and curiosity about the lives of those who seem to have captured the market on believing. I highly recommend this book for all people, especially those who grew up in a Catholic home or school and have filled their lives with education and culture, yet still feel a shallowness in their hearts. Kristin Ohlson took what was originally a voyeuristic curiosity about these nuns, and found not only a great story, but that the doors to God had never been closed to her. This isn't some Bible beater's how-to guide. It is a candid story of a journey, through which we learn about the Poor Clares of St. Paul's Shrine. However, the story of the nuns is merely the backdrop to Ms. Ohlson's discovery of her place in the world of faith and divine worship. The book does not end with her "faith switch" being miraculously turned on, but merely her heart having been softened by the work of the Poor Clares.I think Ms. Ohlson may have found, as I know I did, that person or persons for whom you have such admiration for their faith that you are willing to say, if they be a fool, then I shall be a fool beside them. This is a great book.

For those of us who Jesus hasn't followed home on little cat feet, a'la Anne Lamott (particularly those of us who are Jewish and would be horrified if he did), "Stalking the Divine" is a compelling read. Kristin Ohlson manages to balance the truly remarkable tales of the Poor Clares, cloistered nuns who pray day and night for us all, with her own longings to get closer to the fires of faith. Will an all-night prayer vigil do it? Damn- in the morning, feeling much the same as she did the night before, Ohlson realizes that her prayer to God had been not to fall asleep, and indeed she didn't. Engrossing, moving, at times laugh out loud funny and always beautifully written, this is one book that should not be missed!

I am loathe to be the first customer to review this because this might be the only review some buyers will see. The responsibility of doing this book justice weighs heavily on me. Although I finished the book four days ago and then went back to read it again, I am still in the flush of great enthusiasm. "Publishers Weekly" got it right (See above) except for the fact that Kris is better than all the others. She is much more entertaining than the rest of the "journey" writers. She has the same gift Kathleen Norris has of humanizing nuns and making their lives understandable, but Kathleen Norris never seems to have any doubts. Kris is full of doubts and questions. The nuns Kris interviews as part of her journey also don't seem smug, those faith-seeking folks who are all so different from one another but not all that different from the rest of us. I especially liked her treatment of Clare, the founder of the contemplative Order which is her subject matter and which she researched so thoroughly before she started asking all her questions.Clare was fleeing a 13th century patriarchal world in addition to seeking God. Vowed virginity puzzled the patriarchs because the nuns moved outside of their control. I have also seen that phenomenom among my lesbian friends. It isn't about sex at all; it's about freedom from being controlled and trying not to lead a dull and meaningless life with a husband and kids.About Jesus as the Bridegroom: I have the same trouble Kris has with throwing around the name Jesus because the Religious Right has given Jesus such a bad name. I also like the fact that Kris doesn't sugar coat the Church's long history of anti-Semitism or its long history of anti-feminism. She, like I think most of us, wants a religion and a faith where people can get outraged at injustice and never achieve total peace with the way things are. What Kris does so well is to pull us into her journey. We find ourselves hoping so much her journey will have a happy ending, not necessarily that she will come back to the Church but that she will find a resolution of some kind and peace at the last; that she will find some answers. Yet, at the end, I felt so very glad that she was just like I am. I should have known that a journey would always be a journey and that things would always be "up in the air." It reads like a mystery story. The thirst to know what happens next makes it a page turner. Folded into the narrative are her own personal trials and those of her heart-broken daughter over the loss of a boyfriend, and the taunting of her rational friends, like the characters in the Book of Job. She stepped outside her own world in order to understand the sisters who stepped into another world themselves and left the old one behind. In addition to getting to know and like Kris, we also get to know the fascinating and mysterious contemplative sisters she interviewed one by one. How she won their trust is a story in itself. I thought it was neat for her to compare