Theology in the Real World: A Week with Kathleen Norris
Sunday, July 22 through Saturday, July 28, 2012
Theology in the Real World: A Week with Kathleen Norris aims to help pastors, independent writers, and academic theologians write about difficult theological concepts in an accessible way by grounding them in the world in which we live.
Like poetry, theology does not exist on the page so much as in our lives. We will use story and metaphor to unpack religious concepts, making them more comprehensible and potent. The goal? To help readers understand what notions such as grace, atonement, repentance, and dogma might mean in a life of faith.
The Collegeville Institute will cover travel expenses to and from the workshop, as well as room and board. Those who join the workshop will be expected to reside at the Institute throughout the entire week. Participants will share apartment space, though each person will be assigned a private bedroom. The program is limited to 12 participants.
Kathleen Norris is the award-winning poet, writer, and author of The New York Times bestsellers The Cloister Walk, Dakota: A Spiritual Geography, Amazing Grace: A Vocabulary of Faith, and The Virgin of Bennington. She has published seven books of poetry. Her first book of poems was entitled Falling Off and was the 1971 winner of the Big Table Younger Poets Award. Kathleen settled down in her grandparents' home in Lemmon, South Dakota, where she lived with her husband, the poet David Dwyer, for over twenty-five years. In Lemmon, she joined the Presbyterian Church, where her grandmother had been a member for 60 years. When the church was between full-time pastors, members called on her to fill-in, saying, "You're a writer, you can preach." In 1986 she became an oblate of a Benedictine monastery, Assumption Abbey in North Dakota. Subsequently, in the early 1990s, she spent two years in residence at the Collegeville Institute. Widowed in 2003, Kathleen Norris now divides her time between South Dakota and Honolulu, Hawaii, where she volunteers at an Episcopal church, cooks for a homeless shelter and helps teach a spirituality class for teenagers. She travels to the mainland regularly to speak to students, medical professionals, social workers, and chaplains at colleges and universities, as well as churches and teaching hospitals. She is also poetry editor of Spirituality & Health, and the nonfiction editor of the Saint Katherine Review. In fall 2011, Kathleen returned to the Collegeville Institute where she was named as the Kilian McDonnell Writer-in-Residence.