The Cloister Walk - Kathleen Norris [64]
The bell-ringer asked if I’d like to ring the bell, which I did with great enthusiasm, beaming up at everyone who put in coins. On the rare occasions when someone put in folding money, I’d exclaim, “Wow—a whole dollar!” A few fives went into the bucket as well, and my boundless joy—buck teeth, pigtails, and all—made the passersby smile. My prepubescent brother, embarrassed by this display, hid in a store across the street.
I hadn’t been to Chicago for many years when I received an invitation to give a reading in the Lenten lecture series at Fourth Presbyterian, a lively church in the heart of the Loop. The church had reserved a room for me in a hotel nearby, and when I arrived there, one night in early March, I was rattled from an hour spent in a cramped and noisy commuter plane and anxious to settle in, as the next day would be busy. When the bellhop opened the windowshades, I was surprised to find that I’d been given a corner room, the walls mostly glass. I had a stunning view of the city. There were the requisite bedside phone, mini-bar, and large television set. But the fax machine on the desk startled me, and I couldn’t repress my giggles when the young man pointed out the phone and small television in the bathroom.
I apologized quickly when I saw his guarded look. Bellhops meet some exceedingly odd people in the course of a day; it was 9:30 at night and he had a woman on his hands who was laughing over nothing at all. “I’m sorry,” I said, “but this is all too much. I’ve just spent the last few days in a Trappist monastery, and it’s just too funny.” “A monastery,” he nodded, and asked, “What was it like?” “Well,” I replied, looking around the hotel room, “it was more real, almost the opposite of this. It was a place you felt you could stay for ever.”
He sighed, gazed out the window, and said, “One of my best friends just joined the Capuchins.” Clearly bemused and with wonder in his voice, he added, “My friend, he says it’s what he wants to do with his life.” “It must be a hard life,” I replied, “but maybe it’s worth doing.”
He nodded, and we both relaxed and stood for a few minutes, looking out at the brilliant skyline, thinking about the hidden worlds into which friends disappear, seeking God in ways more intense than we can imagine. I wondered at the odd ways religion surfaces in America, in such tender, unhurried conversations between strangers.
The hurry-up world was all around us, and all the iniquity that the human race can provide. A comment of Ambrose Bierce came unexpectedly to mind: “You can’t stop the wicked from going to Chicago by killing them,” as did the words from Deuteronomy that I’d heard that morning at the monastery: “The word is very near you; it is in your mouth and in your heart, so that you can do it.”
THE WAR
ON METAPHOR
I once had the great pleasure of hearing the poet Diane Glancy astound a group of clergy. Mostly Protestant, mostly mainstream Lutherans. She began her poetry reading by saying that she loved Christianity because it was a blood religion. People gasped in shock; I was overjoyed, thinking, Hit ’em, Diane; hit ’em where they live. One man later told me that Diane’s language had led him to believe she was some kind of fundamentalist, an impression that was rudely shattered when she read a marvelous poem about angels speaking to her through the carburetor of an old car as she drove down a rural highway at night. Diane told the clergy that she appreciated the relation of the Christian religion to words. “The creation came into being when God spoke,” she said, reminding us of Paul’s belief that “faith comes through hearing.” Diane saw this regard for words as connected not only to