Motherhouse

by Jeanine Hathaway

Book Overview

Drawn by her devout faith, young Jeanine enters the Dominican order of nuns to prepare for a life of service and self-denial, but the death of her beloved brother and her father's abandonment of his... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1562829890
• ISBN13: 9781562829896
• Release Date: February 1993
• Publisher: Hyperion Books
• Length: 184 Pages
• Weight: 0.80 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.8" x 5.8" x 8.6"

Customer Reviews

"IN THE BEGINNING WAS THE WORD..."

...and words play an integral role in this well-written, autobiographical novel of a young woman's spiritual calling to enter the Dominican Sisterhood -- and the trials, illuminations, doubts and epiphanies that are given to her over the course of a few years. Unlike Remy Roucheau's novel ALL WE KNOW OF HEAVEN (following the life of a Cistercian monk in Alberta), the narrator of MOTHERHOUSE feels herself called strongly and deeply to her vocation from an early age -- it is later, after her novitiate is completed, that events transpire to bring forth the doubts that begin to cloud her once-clear path of devotion. Coming from a large, closely-knit working class family, Jeanine is devastated by the death of her beloved brother -- and later by the sudden abandonment of her mother and siblings by her father.Jeanine is also more and more troubled by her growing confusion about the nature of God, of God's love, and of her place in the scheme of things. She feels her independent spirit blossoming -- not always a welcome event in a convent -- and she is drawn to psychological self-examination, desperately trying to find a mode of self-expression that can be reconciled with her vocation. As her studies progress -- she is trained as a teacher -- words come to mean more and more to her. She is pulled as if by a magnet to their deeper meanings, to the common roots that some of them share -- much of her meditation time is spent probing their interconnections and deeper, core meanings. One of her greatest epiphanies comes when she learns that the root for the words 'have' and 'gift' is the same. 'I have a gift -- I give what I have' becomes almost a mantra for her. It is this love of words, and their power of expression -- and her seemingly inborn predeliction for poetry -- that allows her to turn her doubts and questions into strengths.The journey that she takes to reach this turning point in her thinking, in her life and vocation, is a moving one -- and the author's talent in setting in onto the page is filled with light and grace. This is the story of one woman's journey toward fulfillment and enlightenment -- and the lesson is that this journey is different (and just as valid) for everyone who makes it. The concept of God, of religious thought and belief, is a deep, wide sea -- each of us must dip from it as our needs require, and each of us will give back into it our understanding of it, as we are able. We will each see it through only our own eyes, heart and soul -- no one else can explain it as fully as a professor lays out a theorem or axiom.Similarly, each reader will find something a little different in this book -- and it's an experience worth holding, a journey worth taking.