However, when the novel opens, Sister John is in the midst of a period of great intimacy with God. There was no shade, no shelter, no water.” Mirages of peace simmered and beckoned, only to recede as her spirit approached. Each hour in choir was a desert to be crossed on her knees. Her arms ached, her back felt sore, and she was hungry. The Gregorian melodies, sung without harmony sounded like dirges. God thirsted, but she had nothing to offer. The majority of that time, Sister John was plagued by spiritual aridity, and suffered her daily tasks and prayers as an enormous burden. Named after the famed Spanish mystic and poet of the 16th century, Sister John is a modern-day cloistered Carmelite nun who has spent almost two decades in the Carmel. Unlike Mariette in Ecstasy, the novel is written from the first personal perspective, giving the reader a privileged view into the inner life of the protagonist, Sister John of the Cross. In Lying Awake, Salzman paints a vivid portrait of a woman grappling with the delicate relationship between pathology and mysticism. But today, I take up an extraordinary work of a non-Christian author, Mark Salzman. In the first post of this series, I reviewed a novel that explores similar questions: Ron Hansen’s Mariette in Ecstasy.
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