Other editions of book Amazing Grace

A NEW YORK TIMES NOTABLE BOOK OF THE YEARFrom the New York Times-bestselling author of The Cloister Walk, a book about Christianity, spirituality, and rediscovered faith.Struggling with her return to the Christian church after many years away, Kathleen Norris found it was the language of Christianity that most distanced her from faith. Words like "judgment," "faith," "dogma," "salvation," "sinner"—even "Christ"—formed what she called her "scary vocabulary," words that had become so codified or abstract that their meanings were all but impenetrable. She found she had to wrestle with them and make them her own before they could confer their blessings and their grace. Blending history, theology, storytelling, etymology, and memoir, Norris uses these words as a starting point for reflection, and offers a moving account of her own gradual conversion. She evokes a rich spirituality rooted firmly in the chaos of everyday life—and offers believers and doubters alike an illuminating perspective on how we can embrace ancient traditions and find faith in the contemporary world.

A NEW YORK TIMES NOTABLE BOOK OF THE YEARFrom the New York Times-bestselling author of The Cloister Walk, a book about Christianity, spirituality, and rediscovered faith.Struggling with her return to the Christian church after many years away, Kathleen Norris found it was the language of Christianity that most distanced her from faith. Words like "judgment," "faith," "dogma," "salvation," "sinner"—even "Christ"—formed what she called her "scary vocabulary," words that had become so codified or abstract that their meanings were all but impenetrable. She found she had to wrestle with them and make them her own before they could confer their blessings and their grace. Blending history, theology, storytelling, etymology, and memoir, Norris uses these words as a starting point for reflection, and offers a moving account of her own gradual conversion. She evokes a rich spirituality rooted firmly in the chaos of everyday life—and offers believers and doubters alike an illuminating perspective on how we can embrace ancient traditions and find faith in the contemporary world.

From Kathleen Norris, the author who "writes about religion with the imagination of a poet" (Chicago Tribune), comes this unusual, accessible, and profound investigation of Christian faith. Taking as her starting point the "scary words" that can intimidate and distance us from our religious heritage--words like judgment, faith, dogma, salvation and sinner, Norris blends history, theology, storytelling, etymology and memoir to help us reflect on their meanings. Always entertaining, and thought provoking, Norris awakens us to the possibility of belief. Through this exhilarating journey, readers will come to know more about the gradual conversion and the daily struggle for faith that Norris described in her bestseller The Cloister Walk. Amazing Grace will grant an illuminating perspective on how we can embrace ancient traditions and find faith in the contemporary, everyday world.

When, more than twenty years ago, Kathleen Norris began attending her grandmother's small-town church on the Great Plains, she was a transplanted poet with more doubt than faith. Still, the strong pulls of tradition, family history, and community found her week after week at Sunday-morning services. In returning to church, Norris' greatest struggle was with the language of the Christian religion. She found she had to wrestle with it, grapple with its meaning and make it her own before she could embrace its blessings and grace. Kathleen Norris is an award-winning poet and the author of THE CLOISTER WALK and DAKOTA: A SPIRITUAL GEOGRAPHY. Her most recent book of poetry is LITTLE GIRLS IN CHURCH. She lives in South Dakota. "...a book whose hospitality extends not just to Christians or religious seekers, but to anyone drawn by what its author celebrates as 'the living word'." (The New York Times)