STALKING THE DIVINE: CONTEMPLATING FAITH WITH THE POOR CLARES

"Stalking the Divine: Contemplating Faith With the Poor Clares" is a modern-day "Seven Storey Mountain." My job requires me to read a lot of books, and this is simply the best one that I have read in the past 20 years.

Not since St. Clare turned back the invading armies of Frederick II in 1234, by raising a ciborium containing the Blessed Sacrament, have her descendants been considered a military threat. But recently, two Poor Clares of Perpetual Adoration in Cleveland found themselves in conflict with the U.S. Department of Homeland Security. The two cloistered nuns, South Korean biological sisters, faced deportation. A ruling will permit them to stay as temporary business workers. Their story had made national headlines thanks in part to the author of this book about their community.

Author Kristin Ohlson found her secure world shaken when she stumbled upon the Poor Clares community a few years ago. Fascinated, she asked to enter the walls in order to write about their lives. The sisters resisted this, but did allow her to interview them, with the grill that separates them from the outside world between them. What unfolds in "Stalking the Divine" is an exposition of the spiritual life, not only of the sisters but of Ohlson and of whoever reads this fascinating book.

There is a touching moment in one of Ohlson's encounters with the Poor Clares that especially moved me. I realized, and I think most readers will also see, that the words spoken to the author are a testament of why Poor Clares pray night and day for the world. An elderly sister that Ohlson had just finished interviewing took Ohlson's hand, kissed it, and said, "I love you." Ohlson writes, "Usually, the people who say that get an automatic 'I love you' back, but it didn't seem right: She was loving me as a fellow creature made in the image of God, and my love is confined to a much tinier slice of humanity."

Therein lies the charm of this book, which could easily become the spiritual classic of our time. Ohlson's almost happenstance encounter with this cloistered community suddenly transforms her life. And her life is at the center of "Stalking the Divine." I say her life, but it would be more accurate to say that it is our life that she brings to her weekly interviews. Her questions are the questions of the modern world confronted with the seeming absurdity of those who leave it behind, forsaking all to give themselves fully to God.

Ohlson, a self-described former Maoist and lapsed Catholic, is moved by the witness of the nuns. I think anyone who reads her moving narrative will share in this admiration. She writes, "I guess I'm tired of a world with so little faith. I'm tired of marriages that fall apart because people won't persevere through the dry, dull, miserable periods; I'm tired of people who have given up on making the world better; I'm tired of people who cynically deconstruct everything for their own amusement -- and I've been all these people. These nuns fell in love with God, married him after a long, careful courtship, and have stuck with him year after year."

Ohlson's account reads like a pilgrimage of discovery both of the lives and vocations of the sisters but also her own call from God as she struggles to encounter God in prayer and belief.

Perhaps Poor Clares, who give up everything and follow Christ in a radical way, do present a "security risk," not to our country but to those of us who have grown complacent in our faith.

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Dubruiel holds a master's in Christian spirituality from Creighton University and is the author of "The How-To Book of the Mass" and "Praying the Holy Rosary with the Joyful, Luminous, Sorrowful and Glorious Mysteries."