One of my favorite nun books is not written by a nun at all but by Mark Salzman who also authored Iron and Silk
The Saint Petersburg Times has a clever feature on the book called Read and Feed: ‘Lying Awake’ by Mark Salzman paired with Nun’s Sighs. Article writer Tom Valeo gives a mini review of Lying Awake and suggests the perfect cookie to eat while reading the book: Nun’s Sigh cookies!
I definitely want to re-read this book. And I’m thinking a number of you might enjoy the book too. So what about having an online book discussion on Lying Awake? I think I could probably find a cloistered nun or two who would be willing to join us and share from their experience too. If interested, leave a comment below and be sure to enter your correct email so I can contact you. Once I see if folks are interested, I’ll pull together more details.
Email This Post
Print This Post
{ 50 comments… read them below or add one }
Sister Julie, I would be interested.
BTW, I like your blog! I have just recently started reading it.
Its been a long time since I read Lying Awake. Will search for my copy. I recall it be very thought provoking and having application to everyday situations in addition to religious life.
I’ve ordered the book – the review in Amazon has me intrigued. Thanks Sister Julie for both the book title and the offer for online discussion.
Nun Sigh cookies sound good (and fattening) as well, too bad we can’t share a batch while “discussing”!
Oooh. could be fun. When were you thinking of starting?
The only unfortunate thing about cloistered nuns is that we can never talk to them. Sounds like a great idea!
Sounds like a good idea. I’ve just bought it – used copies are going for a song on Amazon. Certainly looks interesting…
I read Lying Awake several years ago, and it was so good, I finished it in one sitting. I just couldn’t put it down. It’s one of those books that stays with you long after you finish reading it.
I’d love to read it again. I’m pretty sure I saw it when I was unpacking books last week. It would be wonderful to discuss it with some others and share perspectives.
I would love to read and discuss this book. I have a brand new B & N gift card, so will see if I can find it there. If not, Amazon and I are on a first-name basis (is there a 12-step program for Amazon addiction??)
I would love to do this!
JMJ+
~Betsy
Totus tuus Maria!
I will order the book and I am very interested in the discussion board. Keep me posted, please
I’ve enjoyed all of Salzman’s books and have read this one several times over the years. I was particularly taken with how, in this book, he illustrates central and universal themes such as faith and trust by setting them not just in a religious context but within the cloister.
oh, i loved the book. i’m in! i’ll start my re-read this weekend. yay!
Hey, I will join the fun!
I like to hear about good books, and like to read them for myself even better. : ) I looked online and the library (which is so handy, just across the street from work) has it in and ready to be checked out. I will start reading during some relaxing time this long holiday weekend. I’m off to the library now…
Thanks,
Dawn
I’ve actaully never heard of the book, but read the summary on amazon. It looks like a great book.
I’d love to join in on the fun!
I’ve never heard of the book either, but it looks like a great read! Count me in!
This sounds great! I’d love to participate.
Oh, Sister Julie! Lying Awake is so inaccurate of cloistered life. It is a sterotype that people seem to want to continue and is a dis-service to cloistered, contemplative life. Trust me, nuns don’t go around in artistic burts of energy all night long writing poetry and then being late for Office and everyone thinking nothing is wrong. AND I can assure you that no nun would have to think twice if she found out that her artistic bursts of poetry came from an illness and not from God.
Contemplative life is about living in reality. Very quickly in the novitiate one finds out that this life is about living in naked faith borne of love. It’s painful and all the yucky stuff comes to the surface and must be dealt with but in the end it is so worth it because it means truly loving and letting one self be loved by God.
The author couldn’t even get the feasts of the year accurate.
He’s a good writer and apart from it being inaccurate the book is well written.
Sorry to be so passionate about this but when a family member gave me the book I was so disappointed when I read it and found the same old sterotypes.
In Jesus,
Sr. Mary Catharine, op
Sister Julie – I would love an online book group but, given Sister Mary Catharine’s comments here, I wonder if there is another book to start with. I know I would be far more frustrated by a book-length misrepresentation of religious life than I was by Heather Graham’s campy self-description. HG’s stuff was off-the-cuff. But a book – was there research for the book?
And, Sister Mary Cathatine, I am relieved to know that being late for Office would be an issue in a contemplative community. Even Catherine of Siena seems to have been expected or have expected herself to remain fully involved in community’s prayer life, despite the risk of levitations after receiving the Eucharist! In all sincerity, what is religious life all about if prayer commitments – opportunities to be with God – do not take precedence over all but the most urgent and critical needs? I would hope that individual, private experiences with God do not in anyway diminish the importance of communal and ritual time spent in prayer nor the essential spiritual values of obedience, of fasting (in the example offered, fasting from sleep in the aftermath of the great grace of those ecstatic midnight experiences with God), of participating in a communal experience with God rather than seeking/accepting privilege as a consequence of private spiritual experiences.
The question raised in the review – (as I understand it) would the nun’s faith sustain even if the mystical experiences turned out to be neurological and, thus, organic in nature – is very compelling and makes me think of that brief tv show that touches to some degree on those themes (Eli Stone – brilliant lawyer has visions from God; they turn out to be symptomatic of a cerebral aneurism). Again, Sr Mary Catharine, I am relieved by your comments, as I understand them: that nuns – educated women, after all – would, upon learning they had experienced neuro symptoms that produced stimuli, easily separate that organic experience and its content from authentic spiritual experience. I just checked out a review on Amazon, and it seems this woman had been a sister long before she began to have these ecstatic experiences. Again, it is a relief to me, Sister Mary Catharine, that – in your judgment – nuns have the good sense of the vast majority of people I encountered in the years I was a social worker in an ICU that treated many people suffering with neurological and psychiatric stimuli: most people want relief, even those who reject traditional western medicine and medical models of brain illness. I have known people who were terrified of the risks inherent in brain intervention/surgery and, thus, are reluctant. There *is* some literature out there that supports the idea of some small number persons who are reluctant to give up hallucinations (by accepting appropriate treatment) but these are most often the very sickest of persons living with serious and persistent mental illnesses (schizophrenia or other psychotic illnesses), persons who have developed an emotional attachment to the world created by their hallucinations, perhaps because of the emotional and social poverty of their actual lives. I have never met a person who, in moments of sound mind and health, wanted to protect and retain her hallucinations. I believe that those people may be out there but I also believe they are few and far between and that that the choice would be reflective of a highy complex and likely very painful psychological/emotional/social/even spiritual existence. In short, not a well person.
It is an absurd premise, I think, that an otherwise healthy and stable nun, even (and perhaps most especially) a daughter of Teresa of Avila, would be so desperate for UBERmystical experiences that she would seriously contemplate risking progressive brain damage and the risk that the illness would progress to grand mal seizures with that inherent risk of physical even catastrophic injury, all so that she could re-experience the false “electrical high” of an epileptic hallucination with spiritual content. Wouldn’t that be kind of like trying to trick God? Wouldn’t that be a little like saying, “Hey God, nuts to you. What you won’t give me, my body will. Father, NOT what you will but what *I* will”?
I’ll take Heather Graham and her campy vampy unnunny self any day….
Anyway, count me in with another book………………
Just quick note: there are lots of reasons why people don’t follow through with treatment and find themselves ill again (and people with illnesses than include mania do often hate to come down or prevent future manic highs) but this scenario – a sane and deeply spiritual woman’s treatment-resistant attachment to the content of a hallucination the electrical source of which could be documented on an EEG – would seem to piggyback (intentionally or not and not altogether unintelligently) on some popular misconceptions of the profoundly complex realities of life with neurological/psychiatric disease/disorder.
Even given the book’s inaccuracies, ‘Lying Awake’ is well written and poses some really interesting questions about the interaction of community v. personal experience of God. I enjoyed it. It’s one of my favourite “nun books”.
My all-time favourite nun book is “The Called and the Chosen” by Monica Baldwin, who spent 32 years in an enclosed convent. She also wrote “I Leap Over the Wall”, which was an account of the struggles she had when she left. Unfortunately both of these are out of print and quite hard to find, which makes them not too great for group study!
Other good nun books: Sr Mary Catharine OP’s own book “Amata Means Beloved” is pretty good; and of course there’s always ‘The Seven Storey Mountain’ (Thomas Merton – this one is a monk book rather than a nun one!).
I would be very interested in a group discussion and am looking forward to reading the book. Let me know!
oops- I just read some other comments….maybe not the best book?
Sr. Mary Catharine, Thank you for your post — I had questioned a few things while reading the book and it’s good to hear my suspicions confirmed by someone who lives the life. I would love for you to be part of our book discussion because I think that the inaccuracies give us a chance to have a conversation around what is really true about religious life and cloistered life in particular. Again, many thanks for your comment — it’s so helpful to me and to other readers.
I’m still game for going with this book because (as noted above) it’s an excellent opportunity to address stereotypes about religious life and cloistered life in particular. My intention in choosing this book was NOT to say this is how nuns live. It’s a work of fiction. But it is a good piece of fiction and when literature is well written, it opens the imagination up and generates reflection and conversation. That’s my goal here. But because there are inaccuracies about religious life in the book, it’s important to have folks in the conversation that can address those too because, as you know, we care deeply about accurately portraying religious life. The setting of a cloistered nun in a convent is important to the plot, but I think the author’s intent goes well beyond that to explore some good questions about prayer, the quest for God, and as Victor noted, it has “application to everyday situations in addition to religious life.”
In many ways, you’ve already begun the book discussion! So this weekend I’ll pull together some specifics about the book discussion so we can get moving!
Sister Julie – I was going to start with “not to be provocative…” but I do mean to be provocative. Why so much ire about Heather Graham’s bit of nonsense – her bit of creative non-fiction – and this ease with a book-length fiction that, in just the two instances Sister Mary Catharine poses, seems to miss the essense of the spiritual life chosen as the vehicle for his more general and interesting question? I recognize my own cranky “written” tone in this: the pugilistic tone of the HG post and responses were really off-putting for me as someone in discernment.
After our group spanking of Heather Graham yesterday (on grounds that totally missed her meaning, I believe: she was not saying nuns are not badass social justice activists and that nuns do not have kickass personalities in the fun and admirable way. That whole thing was our apples to her orange, which was that nuns are not vampy badasses. And that’s totally true, right? And as a woman, HG has full agency re: whether she presents herself as a vampy badass, which is a sound and powerful feminist presentation – women’s bodies are women’s bodies and women get to recolonize their bodies and there is enjoyment in living in this feminine beauty that God created. And yet she got verbally nailed to the wall here yesterday for two brief, playful lines)
After that, we’re cool with a trade book about which a sister here has said “here’s why this book is troubling to me as a nun who lives a contemplative life”, pointing out stuff that dwarfs Heather’s quips, I think, in every way AND we’re going to encourage people to go out and spend money on it when there are so many other books to choose from, lesser known books from non-trade publishing houses, books whose “life in print and in internet hits” we could impact, even if only slightly, by doing a book group on those?
I don’t get it. This book sounds jampacked with errors that touch on very deep and quite significant issues about spiritual life, and we’re worried about HG and her relief, which is common to 95% of Catholic girls who have been threatened with the convent, that she was spared. That is normal! That is not about who Catholic sisters are. That is about who most Catholic women are: the thought of being a nun is unimaginable to them, just as it was for a great many of us who are in discernment or “in the life” already. Yes, I agree, it sounds like this author pinned a really interesting narrative on a character who is not really appropriate for that narrative but how come we can see that his point wasn’t really the nun/convent when we can’t see that Heather’s point wasn’t really the nuns/convent?
I am puzzled. There is a dissonance with these two responses juxtaposed and I am curious about what that dissonance could be pointing to. Again, the tone of the HG post/responses gave me one of my increasingly less frequent “ughhhhhhs” about religious life (as in, do I really want to throw my cap in **this** ring). And yet we’re cool with this book and will even promote its sales.
With Peace and Provocativeness , Jean
It is an interesting juxtaposition to be sure, Jean. First, to be fair to Heather Graham (and to my post), the media is also responsible for kicking up the sensationalism of her comment. While I think she could have benefited from actually knowing nuns before making an assumption about the kinds of women who are nuns, I do not think that that warrants “nailing her to a wall.”
There is a big difference between a piece of literature and an offhand remark by someone. We could definitely continue to have a discussion about Heather Graham that would allow us to address stereotypes about nuns, but (as illustrated by the discussion so far) it tends to end up in a downward spiral — an interesting, but nonetheless downward, spiral. It would seem that a well-written book that contains stereotypes of as well as lots of thought-provoking ideas on spirituality and prayer offers much more breadth and depth in which to reflect and would therefore be much more beneficial and life-giving.
I hope this clarification is helpful to you in regard to how I’ve looked at things. And I also hope you consider joining our book discussion. A book discussion, like this blog, gives people the opportunity to respectfully disagree (and agree) with each other and in the process broadens the perspectives of everyone.
Sister Julie – Thanks for your response. I think HG did get roughed up; that was the harshest language I have encountered here; certainly the only personal attacks I have ever read here. There were several statements that caused Jack Nicholson in “A Few Good Men: to flash before my eyes, “You want the truth?! You can’t handle the truth!” Suffice it to say that I read it, from start to finish, as an unfortunate over-reaction – a bad day for nuns – and I hope there would be some review (individual or collective, public or private) of whether people here really want that to happen again. I mean, where does that fit in spiritually? (Doesn’t everyone – even Heather – look just a little bit like Jesus? I am being funny now… and I am serious. Let’s look at that tagline up there about who we are and why we are here).
Sister Julie, I think you get my point: passionate character assessments (assassinations, even) for an actress who makes a silly 2 line sterotyped comment seemed unjustified and ugly and definitely like overkill, especially when a whole book of silly stereotyped images is met with collegial and curious calm. I think the original HG post and responses were unfortunate and worthy of a glance with a thought toward spiritual review. And I will take a spiritual glance at the way I reacted to my “ewwwwwww” about the first post and then the juztaposition with the second one. Thanks for your response, Sister Julie, and the dialogue at the hard places, too. Jean
Just a quick note: look at the number of responses to the HG piece –
27! Not the usual. Again, why? That’s all. Why?
Is “In the House of brede” still in print? I just love that book and hope I packed it when I moved my books last Fall (70% of my stuff is already in New Mexico, but I don’t leave until August. Makes me wonder where things really are….)
Hey I’ve read Iron and Silk and I think Mark Salzman is a great author. I would love to read Lying Awake. Anybody else read any of Salzman’s other works?
Thomas
Definitely interested! I am always looking for book recommendations, and I love discussing them.
You would be wise to put “In This House of Brede,” by Rumer
Godden, on your shortlist of books to discuss. It is a classic story
of a mature woman choosing life in a Benedictine House. Wise and
wonderful book on conscecrated life.
Good luck of course on the MarkSalzman book.
A definite classic! Last year I read the reprint by Loyola Classics. It’s definitely still available — here’s the Amazon link: In This House of Brede
.
Many sisters in my cloistered community read this book years ago. We marveled at how the author, a layman, captured so well the texture of relationships in an enclosed monastic community of women. I look forward to reading the book again and participating in the discussion you propose. Once, again, many thanks for your blog.
I read the book years ago and loved it. I read it as a book of FICTION, as Sister Julie pointed out. I was surprised at the sensitivity of a male author to the life of women living a cloistered life. He was not writing a vocational pamphlet and authors do twist realities (as they understand them) to make a literary point. The issue of the nature of mystical experience is at the heart of this novel and well worth exploring.
Addendum ( I accidentally edited it out):
What is the spiritual value of allowing self to be so very, very sensitive to a bit of others’ nonsensical storytelling about that self?
What are we giving to others when we indulge self’s sensitivity in that way?
Where is Jesus when self is being so very, very sensitive to a bit of nonsensical storytelling from others?
Did Jesus ask us to respond with humility whether the nonsensical stories flatter or offend or did he put a good housekeeping seal of approval on indulgences of self’s sensitivities?
Jean
Jean, thanks for your further thoughts on this. I sense your questions here are more rhetorical in nature because they are pretty loaded.
I understand from what you’ve written that this book is not your cup of tea. There’s been other good suggestions for books so maybe another one in the future will resonate with you.
Since we are already commenting on the book I’m going to figure out how we might do a discussion online and will post later today with a suggested approach (have to figure out the technology a bit).
We do well to keep in mind the cautions that Sister Catharine Mary mentioned and hopefully we’ll have a variety of sisters join us who can help us with the inaccuracies.
Hi Sister Julie –
The book is clearly not my concern (though it also likely not my cup of tea for a book group).
The dissonant evaluations here of the use of “nun narratives” by the author and by HGraham are my concern as a woman discerning religious life.
I am troubled by the aspect of current nun culture suggested by a “boosterism” that, if only briefly, seems wholly inconsistent with religious life as I understand it.
Those concerns are not rhetorical. My style may be rhetorical.
My concerns are most definitely “loaded”, not in the sense of “ready for battle” but in the sense that Catholic religious life itself is – by its most essential nature – loaded with and by the context of the Gospels and counsels.
Media critique that is immune from critique is not critique; it is boosterism and I haven’t imagined that boosterism – any more than these other things I observed – is part of religious life. If it is, then I need to count myself out of much more than this particular book group.
This is a beautiful site, Sister Julie, and I value and respect you. Thus, I am sorry to be unpleasant in the directness of my dissent but, plain and simple, I am uncomfortable with the particular snapshot of the face of nuns on the internet that was afforded me by the post/responses about HG, a snapshot that was thrown into sharp relief for me when juxtaposed by the dissonant response to material similarities in the Salzman book, which in my mind differs only in that it is “high art” to HG’s “low art”.
Enjoy the book. In hopes of future book discussions, I vote for the reading of a more out of the way book – a book whose circulation in the world could be resuscitated, if only in the limited world of the internet and our personal book-sharing circles, by its reading and discussion here.
Peace.
Jean
Is THAT contextual loading is disallowed
Disregard final line/stray words
yikes!
other than that, i loved in this house of brede, too, and will be here for that discussion, too!
Friend Marla – I need to read The House of Brede. People have been lauding it ever since I first started reading Sr Julie’s blog. Actually maybe I will wait and see if it is the topic of a book discussion and, for now, make my way through my current stack of books
You are so much more concise than I. “Yikes” is exactly what I thought when I read your post and several others about HG, including the original post. For the life of me, I could not track back from what you wrote about her to what she said about herself. If you go back and read your response to HG with my responses and questions in mind, you may have a better sense of where I am coming from.
If not, I am happy to leave it here at mutual “yikes”, with apologies to everyone for the very characteristic and very “yikes”-worthy length and breadth of my writing on this issue.
Happy 4th.
Peace, Jean
jean,
my “yikes” was at the number of comments. i haven’t seen this many before, ever, on this blog, and i was wondering if it was too late to post anything that wouldn’t just be forgotten or missed, as sister julie has moved on to other posts by now.
i am sorry my comment on the hg blog evoked a “yikes” from you, though. i certainly didn’t intend to upset anyone.
because of what you wrote, though, i went back and re-read my comment re: heather graham. i certainly didn’t intend a character assassination; it isn’t my style. i was bothered by hg’s desire to be seen as a bad girl, mostly, and then the post by sister julie was about dour nun stereotypes and… well, i know many nuns and they are nowhere near dour. i was writing in support of active, amazing nuns in my life and experience. saying hg “…wishes she was cool enough to be a nun” was uncalled for, i guess, but i really just was comparing her flaunted “badness” or vampiness (???) to the real work of nuns…… anyway…….
lying awake does have stereotypes that bother me, but i think the book is fascinating. part of the appeal of a discussion of the book is in addressing those stereotypes, though i must confess, the dilemma in which the main character finds herself interests me more. it is fiction, jean. i have never seen any book of fiction adequately and accurately describe religious life, but i have been moved by them anyway. in this house of brede, a nun in the closet, cutting for stone…. lots of great fictional nun stories, but none portrays religious life with absolute accuracy.
anyway, i’m sorry i upset you. mea culpa, mea culpa. mea maxima culpa.
Marla – Thanks for your response. I hope that you will accept my mea culpa for misreadng your “yikes”. That was pretty “yikes-y” of me, and I do apologize and hope you will forgive me.
The book is not, actually, a concern for me. I love fiction and, often, my entre into learning about some historical figure starts with reading a fictional biography. I fell in love with Anne Rice’s little novels on Jesus, and I also read a beautiful fictional biography of Augustine that helped me get back into The Confessions. I have no true concern about inaccuracies in fiction. Again, my favorite form of essay is “the creative non-fiction essay”, which is basically institutionalized exaggeration, tall tales, even some flat out lying to manipulate the story into making one’s larger point. My favorite novelist of the moment is a great Cajun writer James Lee Burke. Interestingly, his main character in the vast majority of his books – blanking on his name – up in a very beautiful and erotic marriage with a former Catholic activist nun who is later murdered by the target of his criminal investigation, and his characters often go to confession; in his post-Katrina novel, there is a junkie priest who loves and lives with a hooker. It is very good and fun Catholic stuff and it is truly fine writing. And take it from a yankee transplant to both cultures, it is full of New Orleans and Cajun (and Catholic) stereotypes. Now, I just know his mama taught him better than that and, still, I say emphatically “Go James Lee!” and wait for the next one.
In the end, my real concern is the Heather Graham thread. I consciously exploited the fact of the book’s many apparent stereotypes and inaccuracies about nuns in service of my grievance about the Heather Graham/stereotypes thread. End result was that I confused everyone about the focus of my concern. Which was, again, not the book. I apologize for that confusion.
My concern is the way Heather Graham, a Catholic woman who spoke about herself as a Catholic woman, was treated and, until today with your post, the lack of engagement with my frank talk about everyone’s frank talk about Heather Graham. The defense of the book and its stereotypes, unfortunately, threw into high relief for me the way Heather Graham and her story about herself as a Catholic woman was treated. It upset me all over again for her, for us. In my very genuine distress, I overreacted to your “yikes” in (as I said) a very “yikes-y” way and I am sorry for it, Marla.
I sent some information to Sister Julie, posted to the other thread and, h0peefully , she’ll put it through. I think it is important back story for the whole HG thing. And enjoy the book (and check out ANYTHING by James Lee Burke ).
Jean
FYI: The James Lee Burke character is Dave Robicheaux. There was just a film out: In the Electric Mist with Tommy Lee Jones as Dave Robicheaux based on Burke’s book “In the Electric Mist of the Confederate Dead”. I don’t know much how the film did but I love the books and film the way I love (all) Joyce Carol Oates but, most especially, her books and short stories that are set in the regional culture and landscapes of her native western New York State (Buffalo, etc.). James Lee Burke’s pen loves South Louisiana the way Joyce Carol Oates’ pen loves that corner of New York State. Maybe the way you all seem to be saying Salzman’s pen loves spirituality and faith. The glimpse of Catholicism that Burke offers is stereotyped but there is no mistaking that it is South Louisiana Catholicism – NOLA and Cajun country – that he is stereotyping. And there is no mistaking that Burke’s pen loves South Louisiana Catholicism, which is the regional expression of Catholicism that speaks to me; it is the regional expression of Catholicism that convinced me I could be Catholic again; that has a very Franciscan flavor about it (go out and preach the Gospel and, only when necessary, use words). Burke nails it in his passing stereotypes. Jean
jean,
i will look for burke stuff right away. he sounds like someone i’d like a lot.
i’m glad you called me on the hg thing. my reaction was intended to be a defense of my nun friends, but my derision of hg was not justified. i’m glad you pointed it out.
peace.
Jean and Marla, thank you for the clarifications. Each of us brings our own experience and assumptions to what we read — be it in the news or on a blog. It can take some time to sort through things and figure out what why we respond/react to things the way we do.
And thanks for the Burke suggestion. Joyce Carol Oates is one of my favorite authors and I’m glad to be introduced to someone else in her league. I’ll definitely check him out too.
I just bought the book at a used bookstore, and I’m very interested in participating in the book club – though I’ve never done an online book club before!
Definitely Interested!
Anyone up for being a test subject? I created a “beta” discussion forum for the book and want to see what you think and to make sure it’s working. Please check it out at http://anunslife.org/discussion and provide feedback in the “Feedback” section. Thanks!!