Audiobooks by Kathleen Norris

A Whole Life in Twelve Movies: A Cinematic Journey to a Deeper Spirituality

Come to the movies with two celebrated spirituality writers—American poet and author Kathleen Norris and Irish storyteller and peace activist Gareth Higgins. In A Whole Life in Twelve Movies, Norris and Higgins invite listeners along as they discuss acclaimed movies that can help us better understand our lives—from before birth to death and beyond. Featuring twelve films, including 2001: A Space Odyssey, Malcolm X, and Babette's Feast, this book is perfect for individuals or groups to watch and discuss movies over the course of a year. Each chapter recommends additional films and includes discussion questions ideally suited for churches, small groups, and book clubs. As listeners watch and listen, they will journey through the human life cycle and explore themes of existence, goodness, belonging, vocation, identity, success, generosity, dealing with conflict, and what it means to be human. The book outlines a cinematic path toward a deeper spirituality and a more meaningful life for believers across the faith spectrum and seekers alike. It includes a foreword by James Martin, SJ.

Gareth Higgins, Kathleen Norris (Author), Susan Hanfield (Narrator)

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Dakota: A Spiritual Geography

'A deeply spiritual, deeply moving book' about life on the Great Plains, by the New York Times bestselling 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.

Kathleen Norris (Author), Pam Ward (Narrator)

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Acedia & Me: A Marriage, Monks, and a Writer's Life

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.

Kathleen Norris (Author), Kathleen Norris (Narrator)

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The Virgin of Bennington

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 naÃ¯ve 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. "Through three bestselling books published over the past six years, Kathleen Norris has captured [readers'] hearts and fed their souls." - Common Boundary

Kathleen Norris (Author), Sandra Burr (Narrator)

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Letting Go of Second Guessing God

Kathleen Norris's search for a quiet place to write led her to the Dakota plains, and remarkably, to the world of a Benedictine monastery. In this dialogue, Norris reveals the hidden treasures of the spirit that come to those who live on the heartland of our culture, whether they be monks, townsfolk, farmers or ranchers.

Kathleen Norris (Author), Michael Toms (Narrator)

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