Kathleen Norris has 4 audiobooks on Listento.it, narrated by 4 narrators, with an average listener rating of 4.8★ across 6 ratings. The most-rated is Acedia & Me.
Acedia & Me
Summary
In Acedia & Me, the acclaimed author Kathleen Norris explicates and demystifies the forgotten but utterly relevant concept of acedia, a term that has often been understood as spiritual sloth, but really signifies the serious malady of being unable to care. With great insight and candor, Norris explores acedia through the geography of her life as a writer, her marriage and the challenges of commitment in the midst of grave illness, and her keen interest in the monastic tradition. She writes of her and her husband David's battles with acedia and its clinical cousin, depression, and traces acedia's path through literary and religious history, exposing the damage it does not only to individual lives but also to our culture as a whole, as we are desensitized by ever more intrusive distractions and lose the ability to care about what is truly important. Thus, she finds that the "restless boredom, frantic escapism, commitment phobia, and enervating despair" that we struggle with today are "the ancient demon of acedia in modern dress." An examination of acedia in the light of theo logy, psychology, monastic spirituality, the healing powers of religious practice, and Norris's own experience, Acedia & Me is both intimate and historically sweeping, brimming with exasperation as well as reverence, sometimes funny, often provocative, and always important.
©2008 Kathleen Norris (P)2008 Penguin Audiobooks
The Cloister Walk
Summary
How can an understanding of celibacy strengthen a marriage? How does the mundane task of doing laundry become as sacred as ritual? Let Kathleen Norris explain. For over 10 years, thoroughly Protestant Norris has been an oblate at a Benedictine monastery. During this period, she has gained tremendous insight into the languages, customs, ceremonies, and sexuality of the men and women who have chosen the cloistered life. In this revealing account of the hidden world of the monastics, Norris explores the true monastic life and inspires us to evaluate our own lives and values.
Recording (P)1996 by Audio Literature; Copyright ©1996 by Kathleen Norris
Dakota
Summary
"A deeply spiritual, deeply moving book" about life on the Great Plains, by the New York Times best-selling author of The Cloister Walk (The New York Times Book Review). "With humor and lyrical grace," Kathleen Norris meditates on a place in the American landscape that is at once desolate and sublime, harsh, and forgiving, steeped in history and myth (San Francisco Chronicle). A combination of reporting and reflection, Dakota reminds us that wherever we go, we chart our own spiritual geography.
©1993, 2001 Kathleen Norris (P)2019 Tantor
The Virgin of Bennington
Summary
The book her devoted readers have been waiting for. At last, New York Times betselling author Kathleen Norris's first continuous narrative . . .a story of sex, drugs, and poetry. After spending her high school years in Hawaii, Kathleen Norris was woefully unprepared for Bennington College in the 1960s, with its culture of drugs, sex, and bohemianism. But it was also at Bennington that she discovered her great love of poetry, which carried her to New York City at a time when a new generation of poets was emerging and shaking up the establishment. Working at the Academy of American Poets for her beloved mentor, Elizabeth Kray, and hanging out at clubs with Andy Warhol's crowd at night, Norris found herself immersed in an exciting and emotionally turbulent new world. Her memoir of that time - of her friendships and encounters with poets, including Jim Carroll, Denise Levertov, Gerard Malanga, Erica Jong, James Merrill, Stanley Kunitz, and James Wright - is an inspiring tribute to poetry and a stunning evocation of time and place. Her tenuous balancing act on the bridge between naïve experimentation and indirection and the more focused responsibilities of adulthood, makes for a dramatic and illuminating account of coming-of-age at a tumultuous moment in our history.
©2004 Kathleen Norris (P)2004 Brilliance Audio, Inc.