The Greatest Sin
Perhaps shame is the greatest sin, worse than any other.
--Gwynneve, Confessions of a Pagan Nun
On many levels I agree with the above statement; however, I think I'd alter it to read, "Perhaps to inflict shame is the greatest sin." This morning I finished Kate Horsley's, Confessions of a Pagan Nun. It's one of the best books I've read all year. The story affected me the way great poetry or music affects me: I feel both diminished and enlarged; I have both nothing to say in response and much too much to say. I suppose you could argue that the main theme of the novel is the paradox of saying but not saying--the elusive yet reconciliatory embrace of mystery.
Confessions is about Gwynneve, a medeival Irish nun who was raised by pagans. Though she loves Christ, she is also--much to St. John's and her contemporaries' consternation--a lover of "the world and the things in the world" (see I John 2:15). She's somehow able to harmonize the many dualities she encounters during this transitional period of history by means of two things: imagination and words. Both are incredibly powerful--able to instigate bloodshed and able to course like familiar blood in veins. It's in both that she puts her faith.
Ultimately, Gwynneve muses, "The truth may be too brilliant a light, too vast for words or other mental geometries." To revere the light while refusing to be ashamed or afraid of what lurks in the dark is, according to the novel, to be free. "I am dangerous," writes Gwynneve, "only when I am urged to be what I am not."
I have much more to say (about the love story between Gwynneve and the druid Giannon, her "soul's twin," about her vibrant, earthy mother, Murrynn, and about the lyricism of Horsley's writing), but at the same time, I'm rendered mute (!). I'll let the book speak (or not speak?) for itself. By all means, read it. Receive its shadows and secrets, its emerald-and-moss-covered luminosity. As John Lennon said, "It's all about God anyway."
--Gwynneve, Confessions of a Pagan Nun
On many levels I agree with the above statement; however, I think I'd alter it to read, "Perhaps to inflict shame is the greatest sin." This morning I finished Kate Horsley's, Confessions of a Pagan Nun. It's one of the best books I've read all year. The story affected me the way great poetry or music affects me: I feel both diminished and enlarged; I have both nothing to say in response and much too much to say. I suppose you could argue that the main theme of the novel is the paradox of saying but not saying--the elusive yet reconciliatory embrace of mystery.
Confessions is about Gwynneve, a medeival Irish nun who was raised by pagans. Though she loves Christ, she is also--much to St. John's and her contemporaries' consternation--a lover of "the world and the things in the world" (see I John 2:15). She's somehow able to harmonize the many dualities she encounters during this transitional period of history by means of two things: imagination and words. Both are incredibly powerful--able to instigate bloodshed and able to course like familiar blood in veins. It's in both that she puts her faith.
Ultimately, Gwynneve muses, "The truth may be too brilliant a light, too vast for words or other mental geometries." To revere the light while refusing to be ashamed or afraid of what lurks in the dark is, according to the novel, to be free. "I am dangerous," writes Gwynneve, "only when I am urged to be what I am not."
I have much more to say (about the love story between Gwynneve and the druid Giannon, her "soul's twin," about her vibrant, earthy mother, Murrynn, and about the lyricism of Horsley's writing), but at the same time, I'm rendered mute (!). I'll let the book speak (or not speak?) for itself. By all means, read it. Receive its shadows and secrets, its emerald-and-moss-covered luminosity. As John Lennon said, "It's all about God anyway."
posted by Susan Adams Kauffman at 8:29 AM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home