Dakota
Bartelme, Elizabeth
liberal anxiety about the imposition of pub- he seeks to make legitimate. lic standards appears myopic if not absurd. The Spirit of Co,nmunity seeks to carve Spiritual The...
...Again, ers to the monastery, where the liturgy is ductive...
...could stand and watch this changing land and sky forever...
...Watching movies 'with the eyes of our hearts' helps us identify our truest aims, finest values, and noblest aspirations.'' PRAYING IN PLACE The bestselling author of Ordinary People as Monks and Mystics invites readers to consider their favorite movies not merely as sources of escapist entertainment, but as reflections of their DAKOTA Although Ms...
...a work of beauty...
...As in the desert, the Plains demand strict attention to weather...
...Dakota have suffered great deprivations during the backs, Norris is convinced that a great is all of these...
...Weather reports are to be getting rich...
...Norris and those others that it could be written by a woman...
...twenty-five Norris is not idle...
...But she speaks again of the matas local librarian...
...That was twenty years ago, woman, thoroughly Protestant, who often An Imprint of Liguori Publications however, and running a herd of cattle is has more doubt than anything resembling 1 Liguori Drive, Liguori, MO 63057 not the simple answer to why they stayed...
...These are her most particular than fish...
...Then there is Kath- the fringes of the Andy Warhol crowd...
...longer attracted her...
...Politically, there like Cincinnati no jury would support its is evidence that Etzioni is onto something suppression...
...The cognitive style of techEtzioni's chief opponents are "radical in- nocracy-cum-emotivism favored by many dividualists," a moral type he finds com- of the national elites seems to have worn mon among the cultural elite, though not thin on the electorate...
...By shifting the atonly there...
...BOX 300, GARRISON, NY 10524-0300 SUZANNE KEEN is an assistant professor of English at Yale University...
...The Marsha Sinetar is author of the leen Norris and her husband, vastness and emptiness of the western nationwide bestDavid Dwyer, poets both, and, at least in Dakota prairie drew her toward asceticism...
...Norris feels that it's al- sources of strength, even though she says quaintance put it, "where angels drown...
...questions...
...Despite these draw- timony to the work of the Spirit...
...GRAYMOOR, P.O...
...Urban life no How they chose it is simple enough...
...silence became im- lust published $995 paperback Norris's grandmother died, and she and portant to her...
...To be able to see the curve of the individuals tend to whitewash the things so deeply intertwined in the dailiness of planet during a solitary walk is a great that have happened to them, so that every the ora et labor "that everything in cregift...
...Even though Although Norris encourages women in brings us back to the monastery...
...to her surprise she did not miss the "cor- You Lore The Money Will Follow Lemmon is their place...
...the emptiness of the prairie a con- story has a happy ending...
...979 years to manage the family farm and cat- monastery as well...
...be chosen, just as a commitment to monas- Dakota, a bunch of hicks...
...She points out that some Presbyterian farmers, or a handful of monks schools, teaching poetry to children for families are educating their children to try for that matter, don't have much to say to the North Dakota Arts Council...
...faith," she is nevertheless an oblate of Saint Commonweal 7 May 1993: 23 Benedict, the monastery a particular oasis in the desert that the Great Plains resemble...
...Norris had spent summers own best and worst traits and as spiritual guides to life...
...the knowledge of what they are giving up...
...small town where she lives...
...Norris tence, we are enriched, and can redefine monastic ideal she has embraced, she has tells the story of one woman who attend- success as an internal process rather than a great concern for community within the ed a writing workshop...
...As an interthat all moral utterances are no more than locutor of some of the elites he criticizes...
...What she discovered, along with a joy in "Those who love cinema may solitude, was the meaning of what the be pleasantly surprised by Marsha Elizabeth Bartelme Benedictines call "stability of place," and Sinetar's explanation of the power with it the Benedictine rudiments of her of film to heal us and nourish our journey through life" spiritual geography...
...scattered throughout the book-a few who live in the small towns of the West Meanwhile, there is the very special lines to indicate the time of year and are in the slow lane, so she tells us, where, Norris spiritual geography...
...most an imperative that life on the Plains that perhaps "we're all anachronisms in Despite the attractions of solitude, Ms...
...Ticknor & Fields, $19.95, 224 pp...
...In order to avoid the monotony of edictine monastery to which she is attracting gulls who feed on rodents rather such a life, a conversion, a change of tached...
...The farmers she was going to a meeting, as writing A poet's book...
...These particular gifts, she bebuttes, of the landscape that stretches al- town...
...Too many people are related and lieves, are what draw travelers and seekmost beyond time, are immeasurably se- there is fear of offending relatives...
...JOHN LANGAN, S.J., is Rose Kennedy Prosince 1898...
...As this example illustrates, significant...
...Includes A Spiritual Geography with her grandparents, living on the Plains journal exercises and discussion Kathleen Norris year round was a different experience...
...Con- specific feature of Etzioni's argument is servative senators may fulminate against that this consensus must not be intimidated through film the National Endowment for the Arts' by socially and intellectually fashionable support of the Mapplethorpe exhibition, emotivists into playing down the centralbut even in a traditionally conservative city ity of "the moral voice...
...comitant pleasure...
...ROBERT E LAUDER, author of God, L emmon, South Dakota, pop- To backtrack: Norris had turned her back Death, Art, and Lone The Philosophical ulation 1,616, the kind of ru- on her Protestant upbringing and in New Vision of Ingniar Bergmaii ral town that Americans leave York, was, as she put it, hanging around on in droves...
...ELIZABETH BARTELME teaches English at Hofstra University...
...It embraces the what's happening just then...
...She acts careers other than farming: then, if they the world...
...She describes as in the monastery, nothing much hap- Hope Presbyterian Church and the Benthe Plains as a huge dried-up sea, still at- pens...
...She preaches in the choose life on the Plains, it will be with ter of stability of place, and its especial suitHope Presbyterian Church...
...She told her friends an outward display of wealth and power...
...The Spirit of Co,nmunity seeks to carve Spiritual The historical current, Etzioni insists, is out a new consensus, one attentive to the clearly flowing the other way, toward ex- social roots of individual well-being...
...She discovered the desert faher husband left New York for a few thers through her reading, and she found the X1'3I 1-800-325-9521 ext...
...blizzards in the winter...
...ability to a rural environment...
...a tesof the area-and the Dwyers themselves- sounded too frivolous...
...A sea, as a small boy of her ac- heart is necessary...
...Norris, spiritual seeker...
...It is quite evident why "a person "Mind if I sit in...
...His inost recent stride of military ethics AND SISTERS OF THE ATONEMENT is "General Shennan, General Schwarkopf AND THEIR ASSOCIATES, and the Ethics of War, " published br• the Center CONTACT: VOCATION DIRECTOR, for Ethics Studies of Marquette University...
...nucopia of New York City...
...cial life in a small town is overwhelming- Where "in choosing a bare-bones exisAlthough the heart of her book is the church socials, teas, card parties...
...statements of personal preference, has for Etzioni may also be providing them with Etzioni become a major contributor to the a means toward reinventing themselves for suffocation of that "moral voice" which the nation's good as well as their own...
...Storms come up suddenly: hail and drenching cloudbursts in the summer...
...The growth pansion of individual discretion...
...Norris describes them with a poet-farmer's eye, her description of a "white-out" (blizzard) resembles a white-on-white painting...
...period when the rest of the world seemed novel could come out of the Plains, and REVIEWERS "Experimenting WILLIAMM SULLIVAN is professor of phiwith tradition losophv at La Salle University in Philadelphia...
...Which And what a writer she is...
...FOR INFORMATIONABOUT fessor of Christian Ethics at Georgetown UniTHE FRANCISCAN FRIARS versity...
...she speaks of the Great Plains as the void her workshops to write, about their expe- Hospitality and playfulness-these are in the heart of North America, the pic- riences in this wide and empty land, this what Norris has learned to love in the tures she draws of the rising plain, of the presents particular problems in a small monks...
...She writes...
...Radical individualism is marked tention of a significant sector of public by a strong "disinclination to lay moral opinion-and opinion-leaders-toward claims," preferring when at all possible to "the moral voice" embodied in the strugpresent objections to socially obnoxious gle to foster living communities, Etzioni activity as the expression of personal pref- is helping define the direction American erence...
...seller Do What the case of Ms...
...Finally, the so- ation invites us to share in God's love...
...Now, "as a married U TRIUMPH TM BOOKS tle ranch...
...She spends time in rural ticism is chosen...
...24: 7 May 1993 Commonweal...
...This moral posture, which philoso- public discourse must take if there is to phers identify as emotivism, or the belief be a democratic renewal...
Vol. 120 • May 1993 • No. 9
