Project and content management for Contemporary Authors volumes
WORK TITLE: How to Live: What the Rule of St. Benedict Teaches Us About Happiness, Meaning, and Community
WORK NOTES:
PSEUDONYM(S):
BIRTHDATE:
WEBSITE: http://www.judithvalente.com/
CITY: Normal
STATE: IL
COUNTRY: United States
NATIONALITY: American
RESEARCHER NOTES:
LC control no.: n 2005035920
Personal name heading:
Valente, Judith
Found in: Twenty poems to nourish your soul, 2005: ECIP t.p. (Judith
Valente)
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LIBRARY OF CONGRESS AUTHORITIES
Library of Congress
101 Independence Ave., SE
Washington, DC 20540
Questions? Contact: ils@loc.gov
PERSONAL
Daughter of Charles and Theresa Valente; married Charles Granville Reynard, 2005.
EDUCATION:Attended the Academy of St. Aloysius. St. Peter’s College, B.A.; Art Institute of Chicago, M.F.A.
ADDRESS
CAREER
Essayist, poet, broadcast journalist, and author. Washington Post, Washington, DC, staff reporter; Wall Street Journal, New York, NY, reporter; People, special correspondent; Chicago Public Radio, contributing correspondent; National Public Radio, contributing correspondent; Religion & Ethics NewsWeekly, Chicago correspondent. Appeared on This is the Day.
AVOCATIONS:Traveling across the Illinois countryside, Judy Collins, theater.
MEMBER:Illinois Master Naturalist Program.
AWARDS:Inducted into Jesuit Honor Society, 2015. Silver Screen Award, 2001, for “Rural Churches”; Illinois Arts Council Poetry Award, 2003, for “Green”; Unity Award in Media, 2004, for Misericordia; National Aldrich Poetry Prize, 2004, for Inventing an Alphabet; Jo-Anne Hirshfield Poetry Award, 2005, for Inventing an Alphabet; First Place Award, Catholic Press Association, 2014, for Atchison Blue: A Search for Silence, A Spiritual Home and a Living Faith; Edward R. Murrow Award, for Police and Race in the Twin Cities, 2015; Association of Women in Communications Award, 2016; Woman of Distinction Award, McLean County YWCA, 2016; Illinois Press Association Award, 2017, for What’s In Your Water?; Illinois Associated Press Broadcaster’s Association Award, 2018, for “best reporter.” Pulitzer Prize nominations, 1992, 1993.
WRITINGS
Also contributor to Dallas Times Herald.
SIDELIGHTS
Judith Valente maintains a long and noteworthy career within the broadcast journalism field. She is most well known for her work with PBS, having served as a Chicago correspondent for Religion & Ethics NewsWeekly. Prior to joining PBS, Valente worked with Dallas Times Herald, Wall Street Journal, Washington Post as a reporter, as well as with Chicago Public Radio and National Public Radio under a correspondent position. In addition to her journalism work, Valente has also authored her own books of poetry. She and her spouse, Charles Reynard, collaborated on the book, Twenty Poems to Nourish Your Soul. Valente has received numerous awards for her writing, both journalistic and poetic, including an Eric Hoffer Award, a Jo-Anne Hirshfield Poetry Award, a Silver Screen Award, a Unity Award, numerous Pulitzer nominations, and an Emily Dickinson Prize nomination.
Atchison Blue: A Search for Silence, a Spiritual Home, and a Living Faith is another one of Valente’s books. The book follows Valente’s time at a monastery within the town of Atchison, Kansas—specifically, the Mount St. Scholastica Monastery. She was originally meant to speak there about Twenty Poems to Nourish Your Soul, but soon found her life was filled with too much turmoil to speak honestly about her chosen subject. Thus began the experiences that culminated into Atchison Blue.
She went into further detail regarding her feelings at the time in an interview. “This monastery has a way of reaching out to me that I can’t get from the self-help books lining the shelves at Barnes & Noble that argue we can have it all if we just keep charging forward,” she remarked to David Crumm, a writer on the Read the Spirit website. “As a result, I began working on these new books about how important it is to cultivate silence, or pausing, to nourish the contemplative side of life.”
As Valente recounts in her memoir, her first time visiting the monastery isn’t her last. She feels welcomed by the monastery’s residents, who are all women, and it is through her contact with them and their lifestyle that Valente begins to reconsider her life from a personal and spiritual standpoint. Many of her own internal conflicts were forced to the surface for her to turn over and deal with out in the open. Over time, Valente became a regular guest at the monastery, visiting there on a monthly basis. Valente delves into full detail regarding her experiences at the monastery with its residents, as well as how their views and teachings came to help her create a new sense of balance within her own life. In time, Valente is able to repair her relationship with her own faith and carve out a new spiritual identity for herself that is altogether fulfilling. “For those who know the rhythm and ethos of monastic life, Valente’s story will be a familiar one,” remarked Dana Greene, a writer in National Catholic Reporter. “For those who do not, Atchison Blue will serve as an introduction.” In an issue of U.S. Catholic, Carol DeChant concluded: “It’s worth reading this book to see why Valente now views the Benedictine sisters as ‘the only truly free people’ she knows.” Christian Century reviewer Deborah Smith Douglas stated: “Valente’s memoir will be a welcome introduction to monastic retreat for those who have not yet ventured across the threshold of one of those priceless, irreplaceable sanctuaries.” She added: “And anyone who already knows the amazing grace of silence, solitude and prayer offered in a monastic setting will resonate with Valente’s story.” A Publishers Weekly contributor wrote: “This honest and deeply reflective book … deserves a wide audience.”
BIOCRIT
PERIODICALS
Christian Century, September 18, 2013, Deborah Smith Douglas, review of Atchison Blue: A Search for Silence, a Spiritual Home, and a Living Faith, p. 38; May 14, 2014, “Second life,” p. 8.
National Catholic Reporter, February 14, 2014, Dana Greene, “Author finds a ‘spiritual home’ at monastery,” review of Atchison Blue, p. 7a.
Publishers Weekly, August 12, 2013, review of Atchison Blue, p. 54; February 26, 2018, review of How to Live: What the Rule of St. Benedict Teaches Us About Happiness, Meaning, and Community, p. 82.
Reviewer’s Bookwatch, January, 2010, Karyn Saemann, Karyn, review of Twenty Poems to Nourish Your Soul.
U.S. Catholic, December, 2013, Carol DeChant, review of Atchison Blue, p. 43.
ONLINE
Ave Maria Press website, https://www.avemariapress.com/ (September 4, 2018), author profile.
CatholicTV, http://www.catholictv.org/ (March 21, 2014), E. Butler, “Journalist Judith Valente to Appear on The CatholicTV Network.”
Illinois State University website, https://cas.illinoisstate.edu/ (September 4, 2018), author profile.
Judith Valente website, http://www.judithvalente.com (September 4, 2018), author profile.
Loyola Press website, https://www.loyolapress.com/ (September 4, 2018), author profile.
NPR Illinois, http://www.nprillinois.org/ (September 4, 2018), author profile.
New York Times Online, https://www.nytimes.com/ (September 4, 2005), “Judy Valente and Charles Reynard,” author profile.
PBS, http://www.pbs.org/ (September 4, 2018), author profile.
Peoria Public Radio, http://www.peoriapublicradio.org/ (September 4, 2018), author profile.
Read the Spirit, https://www.readthespirit.com/ (September 4, 2018), David Crumm, “Interview with poet and PBS journalist Judith Valente,” author interview.
WGLT, http://www.wglt.org/ (September 4, 2018), author profile.
Judy Valente and Charles Reynard
SEPT. 4, 2005
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Judy Valente and Charles Granville Reynard were married yesterday at Immaculate Conception Catholic Church in Chicago. The Rev. Dominic Grassi performed the ceremony.
The bride, 49, will continue to use her name professionally. She is a correspondent in Chicago for Religion & Ethics NewsWeekly, a national news show broadcast on PBS stations. She is also a contributing correspondent for National Public Radio and Chicago Public Radio. She was previously a special correspondent for People magazine and a reporter for The Wall Street Journal. She graduated from St. Peter's College in Jersey City and received a master's degree in creative writing from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.
She is a daughter of Charles Valente of Mobile, Ala., and the late Theresa Valente. The bride's father retired as a truck driver for Palmer Asphalt in Bayonne, N.J.
The bridegroom, 59, is a circuit court judge of the 11th judicial circuit of Illinois, in Bloomington. Between 1987 and 2002, he was the state's attorney of McLean County, Ill. He graduated from St. Joseph's College in Rensselaer, Ind., and received a law degree from Loyola University in Chicago.
He is the son of the late Helen Rizzoli Reynard Phoebus, who lived in Bloomington, and Granville Reynard, who lived in Indianapolis. The bridegroom's mother retired as a nurse with the health service at Southern Illinois University in Edwardsville, Ill. His father was an independent real estate broker in Indianapolis.
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The bridegroom's previous marriage ended in divorce.
A love of poetry brought the couple together in April 2002. Ms. Valente had been invited by a friend, Kathleen Kirk, to be a guest reader at her monthly poetry workshop at the public library in Normal, Ill. Mr. Reynard, who had just been elected a judge, was also a friend of the woman's and a student at the workshop.
Ms. Kirk had also invited another woman, who was both a lawyer and a poet, thinking she and Mr. Reynard had a lot in common, Ms. Valente remembered.
When the reading was over, the three women and Mr. Reynard went to dinner together.
"I went along as sort of a fourth wheel," Ms. Valente recalled. After dinner, the group went to Ms. Kirk's house, and Ms. Valente mentioned that she had an extra ticket to a reading in Chicago featuring the poet Lisel Mueller.
"Neither of the women were available on the night of the reading, but much to my surprise, Charley asked if he could go," Ms. Valente recalled. "I blurted out, 'Sure, you're welcome to come along."'
After Ms. Valente and Mr. Reynard went to the poetry reading six weeks later, they stopped at her apartment for coffee and shared their own poems with each other.
"I was amazed at how a man who had been a prosecutor and was about to become a judge could make himself so vulnerable in his poems," Ms. Valente said, recalling one poem in which Mr. Reynard described a childhood incident when he was frightened by his father's driving. The bride said she remembers saying goodbye that evening thinking they would never see each other again because Chicago, where Ms. Valente lives, is a two-and-a-half-hour drive from Normal, where Mr. Reynard lives.
"But over the next two months Charley kept popping up in Chicago at places where I was reading my poetry," Ms. Valente said.
One weeknight in July, he showed up for another one of Ms. Valente's poetry readings in Chicago. After the reading he learned that she was going to spend a long weekend with Ms. Kirk in Normal, so he invited her out to lunch. She accepted.
Having remembered that Ms. Valente liked the work of the singer and songwriter Judy Collins, he gave her a copy of the CD "Colors of the Day." After lunch he invited her to his house to listen to the album. When they arrived, she sat on a small couch in the front room, and he put on the CD and sat at a desk nearby. In the second song, "Since You Asked," Ms. Collins uses the imagery of a couple experiencing small moments in life together as symbols of their intimacy.
Ms. Valente said wistfully that she wished someone would say similar things to her.
Mr. Reynard remembers confessing: "I haven't been coming to Chicago just for the poetry."
Journalist Judith Valente to Appear on The CatholicTV Network
Submitted by EButler on Fri, 2014-03-21 11:20
WATERTOWN, MA (March 21, 2014) On Tuesday, March 25, 2014, award-winning print and broadcast journalist, poet and essayist, Judith Valente, will appear on the nationally broadcasted talk show, This is the Day to discuss her new book, Atchison Blue: A Search for Silence, a Spiritual Home and a Living Faith.
Ms. Valente began her work in journalism at the age of 21 as a staff reporter for The Washington Post. She later joined the staff of The Wall Street Journal, reporting from that paper's Chicago and London bureaus. She was twice a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize, first in the public service category as part of a team of reporters at The Dallas Times Herald investigating airline safety in the 1980's. In 1993, she was a finalist for the Pulitzer in the feature writing category for her front page article in The Wall Street Journal.
For the past eight years, Ms. Valente has been a regular contributor to the national PBS-TV news program "Religion & Ethics NewsWeekly." She has won eight broadcast awards for her work on the show. Her work has also appeared on PBS-TV's "The News Hour with Jim Lehrer." She is also a commentator for National Public Radio and Chicago Public Radio where she covers religion, interviews poets and authors, and is a guest essayist.
.Award winning Journalist, Poet, Author and Producer Judith Valente offers intervals of silence, contemplation and contemporary spirituality to busy professionals all over the world.
Between regular contributions to PBS, NPR and the NPR affiliate in Central Illinois, WGLT Radio, she has published two widely acclaimed poetry collections, edited an anthology of poems and has recently completed a nonfiction book on monastic life and it's application for people in the work world.
.Award winning Journalist, Poet, Author and Producer Judith Valente offers intervals of silence, contemplation and contemporary spirituality to busy professionals all over the world.
Between regular contributions to PBS, NPR and the NPR affiliate in Central Illinois, WGLT Radio, she has published two widely acclaimed poetry collections, edited an anthology of poems and has recently completed a nonfiction book on monastic life and it's application for people in the work world.
.Award winning Journalist, Poet, Author and Producer Judith Valente offers intervals of silence, contemplation and contemporary spirituality to busy professionals all over the world.
Between regular contributions to PBS, NPR and the NPR affiliate in Central Illinois, WGLT Radio, she has published two widely acclaimed poetry collections, edited an anthology of poems and has recently completed a nonfiction book on monastic life and it's application for people in the work world.
List of Awards
2018 Illinois Associated Press Broadcaster's Association for "Best Reporter"
2017 Illinois Press Association Award, "Best Investigative Series," for "What's In Your Water?"
Three 2017 Illinois Press Association Awards
2016 McLean County YWCA Woman of Distinction Award
2016 Association of Women in Communications Award
2015 Edward R. Murrow Award, Best Investigative Series, Radio, for "Police and Race in the Twin Cities"
Five 2015 Illinois Press Association Awards
2015 Jesuit Honor Society Induction
2014 Religion Newswriters Association, Second Place, Non-Fiction Religion Book of the Year, for "Atchison Blue: A Search for Silence, a Spiritual Home and a Living Faith"
2014 Catholic Press Association First Place Award, "Best Spirituality Book in Paperback" for "Atchison Blue: A Search for Silence, A Spiritual Home and a Living Faith."
2014 Catholic Press Association Award, Second Place, "Best Spirituality Book in Paperback," for "The Art of Pausing: Meditations for the Overworked and Overwhelmed."
2008, Muriel Craft Bailey Finalist:
"Mother of God Monastery, Watertown, South Dakota." (Poem).
2005 Jo-Anne Hirshfield Poetry Award: "Inventing an Alphabet" (Poem).
Best Catholic Writing of 2004
-National Catholic Reporter
2004 National Aldrich Poetry Prize:
"Inventing an Alphabet" (Book), awarded by Pulitzer Prize winning poet, Mary Oliver.
In February, Judith and her staff at WGLT Public Radio won two Associated Press of Illinois, 1st Place Awards in
Best Newswriter and
Best Series or Documentary.
Also, three 2nd Place Awards in
Best Investigative Feature,
Best Hard News Feature and
Best Use of Sound.
2004 Unity Award in Media: “Misericordia” (Feature Film).
2003 Illinois Arts Council Poetry Award: "Green" (poem).
2002 Certificate for Creative Excellence: “Deaf Mass.” (Televised Report).
2001 Silver Screen Award: “Rural Churches“ (Televised Report).
Finalist, 2004 Emily Dickinson Prize
2008 Eric Hoffer Award (Poetry Book) First Runner Up: "Twenty Poems to Nourish Your Soul".
Judith Valente
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About Judith Valente
Judith Valente is an awarding-winning print and broadcast journalist, poet and essayist.
She began her work in journalism at the age of 21 as a staff reporter for The Washington Post. She later joined the staff of The Wall Street Journal, reporting from that paper's Chicago and London bureaus. She was twice a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize, first in the public service category as part of a team of reporters at The Dallas Times Herald investigating airline safety in the 1980's. In 1993, she was a finalist for the Pulitzer in the feature writing category for her front page article in The Wall Street Journal chronicling the story of a religiously conservative father caring for his son dying of AIDS.
For the past eight years, Ms. Valente has been a regular contributor to the national PBS-TV news program "Religion & Ethics NewsWeekly." She has won eight broadcast awards for her work on the show. Her work has also appeared on PBS-TV's "The News Hour with Jim Lehrer." She is also a commentator for National Public Radio and Chicago Public Radio where she covers religion, interviews poets and authors, and is a guest essayist.
Judith Valente grew up in Bayonne, NJ in the shadow of New York City. She graduated from the Academy of St. Aloysius in Jersey City, NJ, and received a bachelor's degree in English and classical languages from St. Peter's College in Jersey City. She holds a masters in fine arts in creative writing from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. She is the daughter of the late Charles and Theresa Valente.
Judith is married to Charles Reynard, an Illinois Circuit Court Judge and poet. The couple lives in Chicago and Normal, IL.
They frequently hold workshops and symposiums in all corners of the country.
Abbreviated List of Awards
2008, Muriel Craft Bailey Finalist:
"Mother of God Monastery, Watertown, South Dakota." (Poem).
2005 Jo-Anne Hirshfield Poetry Award: "Inventing an Alphabet" (Poem).
Best Catholic Writing of 2004
-National Catholic Reporter
2004 National Aldrich Poetry Prize:
"Inventing an Alphabet" (Book), awarded by Pulitzer Prize winning poet, Mary Oliver.
2004 Unity Award in Media: “Misericordia” (Feature Film).
2003 Illinois Arts Council Poetry Award: "Green" (poem).
2002 Certificate for Creative Excellence: “Deaf Mass.” (Televised Report).
2001 Silver Screen Award: “Rural Churches“ (Televised Report).
Finalist, 2004 Emily Dickinson Prize
2008 Eric Hoffer Award (Poetry Book) First Runner Up: "Twenty Poems to Nourish Your Soul".
After traveling the country for PBS-TV for the past 15 years, Judy Valente was looking for a new challenge. She is delighted to have found one WGLT as a member of the GLT news team, allowing her to grow here in Normal where she is planted. Judy is also an award-winning poet and the author of two poetry collections. She recently completed a memoir of her regular visits to Mount St. Scholastica, a Benedictine monastery in Atchison, Kansas, called "Atchison Blue: A Search for Silence, a Spiritual Home and a Living Faith." She is often invited to speak on how to slow down and live a more contemplative life.
In her free time, this New Jersey native likes to traverse the Illinois prairie and is a member of the Illinois Master Naturalist program. She enjoys theater, especially Broadway musicals and Heartland Theater's 10-Minute Play Festival. She is also a lay associate of the monastery in Atchison, having taken vows to live out the monastic values of listening, humility, hospitality, simplicity and stability in her life as a married woman – and as a professional writer and journalist.
Judith Valente
Contributing Correspondent
valente-bio
Judy Valente is an award-winning journalist and a published poet. She served as a staff writer for The Washington Post and at The Wall Street Journal in the Chicago and London bureaus. She was twice a Pulitzer Prize finalist — most recently in 1993 — for her front page story in The Wall Street Journal chronicling the life of a Midwest father caring for his son dying of AIDS. Her articles have also appeared in People and Parade magazines. Valente is also the author of “Twenty Poems to Nourish Your Soul,” an anthology of poems and reflections on finding the sacred in the everyday.
Valente gives frequent talks on faith and work issues and often serves as a speaker at spiritual retreats for women and young professionals. She also has been a consultant to the Garrett-Medill Center for Religion and News Media at Northwestern University.
As a correspondent for RELIGION & ETHICS NEWSWEEKLY, Valente has received numerous awards for her reports, including the Unity Award in Media from Lincoln University and a Silver Angel Award from Excellence in Media for “Disabled Accessibility;” the U.S. International Film and Video Festival 2001 Silver Screen Award for her report on “Rural Churches“; and the 2002 Certificate for Creative Excellence for “Deaf Mass.”
In 2003, “AIDS and the African-American Church” was awarded a Gold World Medal from the New York Festivals, a Clarion Award from the Association for Women in Communications, and the Unity Award in Media from Lincoln University, and it was also honored by the National Association of Black Journalists. Her 2004 feature on “Misericordia” was recognized by the Angel Awards, the U.S. International Film and Video Festival, the Gabriel Awards, the Unity Award in Media from Lincoln University, and the New York Festivals.
Valente has also received acclaim for her poetry; winning the 2005 Aldrich Poetry Prize for her chapbook, “Inventing an Alphabet.” Her book “Twenty Poems to Nourish the Soul” was honored as the 2008 first runner-up for the Eric Hoffer Book Award in the poetry category. The Hoffer Awards recognize excellence in publishing by independent presses.
Valente has a bachelor’s degree in English and the classics from St. Peter’s College in Jersey City, N.J., certificates from the Sorbonne in Paris and the Dante Alighieri School of Languages in Siena, Italy, and an MFA in creative writing from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. She resides in Chicago and Normal, Illinois, with her husband, Illinois circuit court judge Charles G. Reynard.
After traveling the country for PBS-TV for the past 15 years, Judy Valente was looking for a new challenge. She is delighted to have found one WGLT as a member of the GLT news team, allowing her to grow here in Normal where she is planted. Judy is also an award-winning poet and the author of two poetry collections. She recently completed a memoir of her regular visits to Mount St. Scholastica, a Benedictine monastery in Atchison, Kansas, called "Atchison Blue: A Search for Silence, a Spiritual Home and a Living Faith." She is often invited to speak on how to slow down and live a more contemplative life.
In her free time, this New Jersey native likes to traverse the Illinois prairie and is a member of the Illinois Master Naturalist program. She enjoys theater, especially Broadway musicals and Heartland Theater's 10-Minute Play Festival. She is also a lay associate of the monastery in Atchison, having taken vows to live out the monastic values of listening, humility, hospitality, simplicity and stability in her life as a married woman – and as a professional writer and journalist.
Judith Valente
Radio-TV Producer-Announcer II
Radio Station WGLT
Office Phone
(309) 438-0672
Email
javalen@ilstu.edu
Judith Valente covers the religion beat for PBS-TV's national program Religion & Ethics NewsWeekly. Her reports have also appeared on The News Hour on PBS and on Chicago Public Radio and National Public Radio. She has worked as a news producer for WTTW/Chicago and is a former staff writer of The Washington Post and The Wall Street Journal, where in 1992, she was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in in the feature writing category. She has won nine broadcast awards and was twice nominated for an Emmy.
Valente is a speaker, retreat leader, and the author of two collections of poetry. In 2004, she won the Aldrich Poetry Prize, which was judged by Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Mary Oliver. She is co-editor of the anthology Twenty Poems to Nourish Your Soul. She has been a frequent guest on WTTW's weekly program 30 Good Minutes to talk about monastic wisdom for the modern world. She recently became a Benedictine Oblate. Valente and her husband Judge Charles Reynard live in Chicago and Normal, IL.
About Judith Valente
Work
PBS
Contributing Correspondent · 1998 to present
Education
St. Peter's College; the Sorbonne; School of the Art Institute of Chicago
Academy of St. Aloysius
Jersey City, New Jersey
Current City and Hometown
Normal, Illinois
Current city
Bayonne, New Jersey
Hometown
About Judith
After spending time as a staff writer for The Washington Post and later The Wall Street Journal, I entered broadcast news, covering religion and ethics for PBS-TV since 1998. Additionally, I have published two collections of poetry, "Inventing an Alphabet," selected by Mary Oliver for the 2005 Aldrich Poetry Prize, and most recently, "Discovering Moons." In 2005, I co-edited with my husband Charles Reynard, "Twenty Poems to Nourish Your Soul," an anthology of poems and reflections on finding the sacred in the ordinary. My two latest books are just out. "Atchison Blue: A Search for Silence, a Spiritual Home and a Living Faith," is a memoir of my experiences as a regular visitor to Mount St. Scholastica, a Benedictine women's monastery in Atchison, KS and how I learned to apply monastic practices and values to my family and professional life. The other book is "The Art of Pausing: Meditations for the Overworked and Overwhelmed," a book of poems, photographs and short reflections, which I co-wrote with my dear friend Brother Paul Quenon of the Trappist Abbey of Gethsemani. As a busy professional myself, I saw the need for a book that offers moments of contemplation within our hectic days. I will be speaking and giving presentations in several venues across the country in the coming months. Please check my website, www.judithvalente.com for all the details. Thanks for your interest in reading this Facebook page and hope to see you when I am on the road!
Favorite Quotes
'Be a pro. The differentiating status between that and something less is mercilessly hard work and total dependability. Most people don't have what it takes." James C. G. Conniff, my writing professor at St. Peter's College in Jersey City, NJ.
"Be the first to show respect to the other." -- The Rule of St. Benedict
Favorites
Music
[Diva Tech Talk]
Diva Tech Talk
Books
[Gospel According to Pooh by Bruce Epperly]
Gospel According to Pooh by Bruce Epperly
Other
ISz, Center for Action and Contemplation, Wayfinder Solutions: Life & Work Development, ACTA Publications, Downstate Story, YWCA McLean County, WGLT, Image Journal, Humble Hearts Organization, Religion Communicators Council, Social Justice Bloomington Normal, The 40 Day Challenge, WILL Radio TV Online, The 21st, League of Women Voters of McLean County, Kathleen Norris, Judith Valente, Sick Pilgrim, Sisters of St. Benedict of Ferdinand, Indiana, Sophia Spirituality Center, Harold Washington Library, The Poetry Society of New York, Catholic News Service, Contemplative Outreach Chicago, OSB Website Org., Benedictine Oblates World Congresses, For A Better Tomorrow, Paraclete Press, Olivetan Benedictine Sisters of Holy Angels Convent, Network for Good, Accent Nature LLC, School of Communication at Illinois State University, John R. Levison, Hobart, Alexander Book Co., Green Apple Books and Music, The Booksmith, Powell's Books, Inc., Book Riot, Literary Hub, March For Our Lives, Sister Helen Prejean, National Catholic Reporter, America Magazine - The Jesuit Review, Being Benedictine, Daniel Biss, BloNo4ERA, Gail K. Lukasik, International Thomas Merton Society, The Immigration Project, Kirstin Hotelling Zona, Full Potential Coaching LLC, All Things Marketing LLC, The Mesa Refuge
Interview with poet and PBS journalist Judith Valente
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Overworked? Overwhelmed?
Click the cover to visit the book's Amazon page.
Click the cover to visit the book’s Amazon page.
Overall, you need Judith Valente.
As Editor of ReadTheSpirit, my own long career has been blessed by working with other journalists around the world. I have known Judith for decades and she was among our first author interviews when we founded ReadTheSpirit magazine in 2007. At that time, we were recommending her book Twenty Poems to Nourish Your Soul.
You may feel that you know Judith, already, because of her many appearances as a journalist on PBS’s Religion and Ethics News Weekly and because of her occasional NPR stories that reach a national radio audience.
Today, we are talking with Judith about two new books, perfect for the depths of mid-winter. In them, Judith writes from two perspectives about finding peace in the midst of a chaotic world. The books’ titles capture these themes. The first is, Atchison Blue: A Search for Silence, a Spiritual Home, and a Living Faith. The second is, The Art of Pausing.
AND—Don’t miss the links at the end of this interview, which point to two inspiring columns about steps you can take to find greater peace in your life.
HIGHLIGHTS OF OUR INTERVIEW
WITH JUDITH VALENTE
DAVID: Let’s start with the dramatic scene that opens Atchison Blue: your first morning at the Mount St. Scholastica Monastery. You arrive as a polished, veteran journalist and speaker, who the sisters have brought in as a teacher. Yet, you find yourself overwhelmed.
JUDITH: I went to the monastery in 2007 to give a presentation on poetry and the soul, both at the retreat center the monastery operates and at a Benedictine college down the road. But, I was arriving at the monastery during a very hectic period in my life. I was working so hard and doing so many things that, when I arrived, I realize now that I was exhausted—mentally, physically and emotionally. On the morning I was supposed to start speaking to this retreat group, I went into the chapel alone and just sat there surrounded by these beautiful blue windows. I wondered how I was going to stand up and tell people about nourishing their souls when I hadn’t nourished my own soul in weeks.
In the chapel is an image of St. Benedict with outstretched arms and the words, “Omni tempore silentio debent studere,” or “At all times, cultivate silence.”
The paradox I had been living stared me in the face: I had been traveling across the country and talking to people over and over again about the need to cultivate a contemplative life—without making time to develop my own interior life.
Something very strange happened at that moment. I began to weep. That is totally out of character for me. I don’t do that. And, in that moment, I realized: This monastery has a way of reaching out to me that I can’t get from the self-help books lining the shelves at Barnes & Noble that argue we can have it all if we just keep charging forward. As a result, I began working on these new books about how important it is to cultivate silence, or pausing, to nourish the contemplative side of life.
DAVID: I’ve known you for years and you are the very definition of a senior journalist: smart, self-assured and articulate. It’s a remarkable image to think of you sitting in this chapel, weeping. As our readers are thinking about this interview, they probably can envision a moment when they were trying to keep their own self-assured world together—and things just overwhelmed them.
JUDITH: That was a huge moment for me as a woman and as a journalist. I’ve always understood that we must keep our emotions in check. What I discovered in the monastery was that the women living there were not afraid to be vulnerable. They have almost zero façade in their lives. Here I was: a journalist who is used to meeting people every day and trying to spin whatever they’re telling you into a good story. Suddenly, I was surrounded by women who have no spin. They’re completely open about their own flaws and shortcomings.
DAVID: We meet some of them in this book.
Judith Valente
Judith Valente
JUDITH: Yes, I write about an early encounter with sister Lillian Harrington, this 90-year-old sister who was so honest with me about her own life. She understood that she was talking to me, a journalist, and yet she didn’t hesitate to say that she had misgivings about her choice of a religious life. She doesn’t always find it easy to believe there is a life after death, she told me. We can’t be sure of it, she said. She was so open that I found this refreshing. That honesty opened the curtain for me to be a little more vulnerable myself. I was not prepared to be so deeply moved both by the stories that the sisters told and the lives they lived.
DAVID: Readers will find themselves swept into the pages of Atchison Blue, I think, by just this kind of story. And, along with our interview, we also will publish that column you’ve written about your visit to the monastery and 10 insights to ponder about finding peace in one’s life.
JUDITH: Here’s something that isn’t in the book, which we had to cut out to make the book a manageable length. I spent time with one sister who had been a well-respected part of the community for many years: Sister Loretta Schirmer. She had held a number of leadership positions and, at one point, I went into her room to talk with her. She was nonchalant and almost dry in her recitation of all the positions she had held over the years.
Then, she began talking about working as a seamstress and that, very late in life, she was now helping her community by sewing and repairing altar cloths and garments for the sisters. As she talked about this work, she began to cry. “My sewing is the one thing I have left that I can give to my community,” she said.
And, I began to cry, too. At that point she was 87 and was still determined to serve her community. I remember the tears were just streaming down my face. That was totally unprofessional to be crying like that, while I was talking to her as a journalist. Yet, I was just moved to tears by this women who had held so many very important positions over the years—and, yet, even at the point in life when I met her, she still was focusing her life on service, the service she could still provide.
DAVID: I just typed her name into Google and we’ll share a link to her obituary with our readers. Sister Loretta died in May, 2013.
A TIME-TESTED SPIRITUAL DISCIPLINE
DAVID: You explain in Atchison Blue that the whole culture of these communities dates back many, many centuries. We really are reaching back to the early men and women who went out into the desert to achieve more spiritual focus in their communities. In other words, this isn’t some kind of new spiritual technique you’re teaching.
JUDITH: That’s right, this isn’t some new-wave-voodoo we’re discovering. This really is the art of our faith that dates back to within a few hundred years of Jesus living on this earth. Monastic life was a reaction against the codification of Christianity by the state. These desert fathers and mothers were trying to get back to what was essential in Christ’s message: service, prayer, praise, and simplicity. This is what Jesus emulated in his time on earth and they were trying to remove themselves from the system that was emerging as the state, the Roman Empire, legitimized Christianity.
DAVID: It’s rather surprising to many people to discover that these communities have survived—and many are thriving—all over the U.S. They’re in other parts of the world, too. Most of us have simply overlooked them.
JUDITH: I would put it more strongly: Monasteries are the best open secret in our world. They’re right there, yet many people do overlook them. Or, people may be aware of them, but may think that these are people who want to be completely removed from the world.
In fact, hospitality toward strangers is a major monastic value. People can go to virtually any monastery in America as a guest. Try it. Ask to stay there as a guest for a few days, or even a few weeks. You can participate in the prayer life of the community, the Liturgy of the Hours. This is even true at Trappist monasteries, some of the most cloistered monasteries. And, of course, most monasteries welcome people as volunteers for short periods and even for long periods.
THE ART OF PAUSING
SHARING PRAYERS IN HAIKU
Click on the cover to visit the book's Amazon page.
Click on the cover to visit the book’s Amazon page.
DAVID: This leads me to your other book, The Art of Pausing. If Atchison Blue is an introduction to the whole idea of visiting monasteries—then The Art of Pausing is more like a little spiritual toolkit to tuck into your bag as you go about a busy day. Is that fair to say, do you think?
JUDITH: Yes. As a really busy person myself, I saw the need for people like me to have a little book we can carry around to read bite-sized bits of contemplation in the middle of our jam-packed days.
DAVID: You say “bite-sized.” We should explain that the book’s format is a short haiku on the left-hand page, matched with a short meditation in prose. The titles of each two-page set is an attribute of God. This idea cuts across religious boundaries. For example, Muslim devotions revolve around the 99 Names (or attributes) of God.
Some of your titles are God, the Straightener; God, the Protector; God, the Unity; God, the Patient; and God, the Opener.
JUDITH: I am a poet, but it takes a long time to write a good poem. There are poems I’ve worked on for more than a year and I’m still not satisfied with them. But I can write a Haiku every day. So, in working on this book, each day I would pause for a short period of time; I would try to connect in a deeper way with the world around me, and I would write these three lines of a haiku.
DAVID: Tell a little bit about how this idea took hold.
JUDITH: As a reporter, I was sent to the Abbey of Gethsemane to do a news segment on the 40th anniversary of the death of Thomas Merton. I was introduced to Brother Paul Quenon who also happens to be a poet. He had known Merton. He told me that one of the things he does as part of his daily practice is to write a three-line haiku. After meeting him, I asked if we could exchange haikus; and he thought that was a fabulous idea. So, we would send each other our daily haiku.
The two books actually are interrelated. While I was with the sisters at Mount St. Scholastica, at lunchtime they would begin eating with a reading from what they called the Book of Days. Each one was a couple of lines from scripture and a brief reflection on it. This was just enough—a moment of contemplation—in the middle of each day.
That’s where I got the idea that we should put a haiku together with a brief reflection and, with Brother Paul Quenon, we finished this book for busy people who need a way to offer just a moment of contemplation in their otherwise hectic day.
You’d be surprised how many people are telling me that this book inspired them to try writing a Haiku every day!
DAVID: It’s a form of poetry with a mixed heritage. Students in school are assigned to write them by their teachers. Sometimes, I think, people wind up pretty skeptical of this form of poetry. But, I like the form. In fact, I’ve taught workshops for journalists on long-form writing that start with assigning each writer to summarize his or her project in a haiku. If they can accomplish that, then the long-form prose they are writing flows naturally from a central focus.
JUDITH: As ancient as haiku is—it’s a perfect art form for the Twitter generation. There are a lot of people who’ve contacted me through Facebook just so they can send me their haiku.
I’m very pleased to see this catch on—and it’s a point I make in the introduction to the book. We hope people will start writing these little three-line holy sentences everyday and will begin to exchange them. We hope people will find a friend who also likes the idea. If you don’t know each other very well, you will after the daily haikus go back and forth.
SPIRITUAL DISCIPLINES FOR THE FUTURE
DAVID: I find both of these books inspiring, because they demonstrate the vitality of monastic wisdom for our contemporary world.
JUDITH: That’s something I hope more people will understand. And I admit that I used to think of monastic living as a throwback. It was like: “Will the last living monk turn out the lights.”
Now, I look at this wisdom and these experiences as a light into the future. These men and women represent a window into values we desperately need in our society. They emphasize community over competition, consensus over conflict, simplicity over consumption—and silence over the constant nattering that surrounds us today.
DAVID: Let’s close with another example.
JUDITH: Here’s one I can share: There’s this little saying I learned at the monastery: Before I begin speaking, I ask myself three questions. Is what I’m about to say true? Is it kind? And, is it necessary?
Now, when you start applying that standard to what comes out of your mouth, you’re going to be a lot more quiet than you might have been.
And here’s another one: They don’t do this anymore, but for decades the sisters had a practice whenever two or more sisters were assigned to perform a task. They would bow to each other and say: “Have patience with me.”
I’ve often mused on how much more pleasant my work would be if, before I start an assignment, I bow to the producer, to the audio technicians and to each person I encounter and ask, “Have patience with me.”
That’s such a counter-cultural idea, yet it is so central to monastic communities to see and to honor the sacredness in the other person.
DAVID: And that’s a perfect sign that I should stop asking you questions and recommend that our readers learn more from your wonderful new books Judith. Plus, you’ve sent us a column that shares even more of these insights about finding peace. So, let’s move right to the next links …
Care to read more?
Judith Valente
Judith Valente
GET THE BOOKS! Click on either of the book covers shown with today’s story—or there are text links to Amazon in the introduction to today’s interview.
JUDITH’S REPORTING: Make a point of finding and watching PBS’s Religion and Ethics News Weekly. In addition, Judith works both regionally for public radio and occasionally you will hear her reports on NPR stations nationwide.
CONTACT JUDITH: Her personal website, www.JudithValente.com, has more information about her books, the events where she appears, and also contains further information about contacting her and following her on Facebook.
PLEASE SHARE THIS INTERVIEW WITH FRIENDS: Click on the blue-“f” Facebook buttons or the small envelope-shaped icons to share the news about Judith Valente and her work with others.
Looking for renewal close to home?
FROM JUDITH VALENTE: We’re very pleased to share a special column by Judith Valente, today, that describe 10 Steps Toward Peace that you may want to ponder in your own life, this year.
FROM CINDY LaFERLE: This week, we also are publishing a column by author Cindy LaFerle about a simple solution she has found to making retreats a more regular part of her life, each year.
(This interview was originally published at www.ReadTheSpirit.com, an online magazine covering religion, spirituality, values and interfaith and cross-cultural issues.)
Judith Valente is an awarding-winning print and broadcast journalist, poet and essayist.
She has worked for The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, and The Dallas Times Herald, she has been nominated for the Pulitzer Prize on numerous occasions. For past eight years, Ms. Valente has been an award-winning contributor to the national PBS-TV news program Religion & Ethics NewsWeekly.
She is the author and contributor to several poetry books including Discovering Moons and Inventing An Alphabet plus a wide variety of other publications. She was co-editor with her husband, Charles Reynard, on the inspirational book, Twenty Poems to Nourish Your Soul (Loyola Press, 2005).
Judith holds a masters in fine arts in creative writing from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and lives in Illinois.
After traveling the country for PBS-TV for the past 15 years, Judy Valente was looking for a new challenge. She is delighted to have found one WGLT as a member of the GLT news team, allowing her to grow here in Normal where she is planted. Judy is also an award-winning poet and the author of two poetry collections. She recently completed a memoir of her regular visits to Mount St. Scholastica, a Benedictine monastery in Atchison, Kansas, called "Atchison Blue: A Search for Silence, a Spiritual Home and a Living Faith." She is often invited to speak on how to slow down and live a more contemplative life.
In her free time, this New Jersey native likes to traverse the Illinois prairie and is a member of the Illinois Master Naturalist program. She enjoys theater, especially Broadway musicals and Heartland Theater's 10-Minute Play Festival. She is also a lay associate of the monastery in Atchison, having taken vows to live out the monastic values of listening, humility, hospitality, simplicity and stability in her life as a married woman – and as a professional writer and journalist.
How to Live: What the Rule of St. Benedict Teaches Us About Happiness, Meaning, and Community
Publishers Weekly. 265.9 (Feb. 26, 2018): p82.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2018 PWxyz, LLC
http://www.publishersweekly.com/
Full Text:
* How to Live: What the Rule of St. Benedict Teaches Us About Happiness, Meaning, and Community
Judith Valente. Hampton Roads, $16.95 trade paper (240p) ISBN 978-1-57174-798-3
In this accessible guide to the good life, journalist and poet Valente (Atchison Blue) illustrates how St. Benedict's sixth-century monastic manual for healthy communal living can address contemporary conundrums, such as the echo chamber of social media, information overload, and the challenges of "Workaholism and Over-Achieverism." In 21 short chapters, Valente highlights key selections from the Rule of St. Benedict, analyzing how ancient directives on topics such as paying attention, living fully, silence, humility, prayer, forgiveness, trust, and leadership can strengthen relationships and communities. Valente picks out the Mount St. Scholastica Benedictine Monastery in Atchison, Kans., for their guidance on cultivating harmony: "Before you open your mouth to speak ... ask yourself three questions: Is what I am about to say true? Is it kind? Is it necessary?" Valente argues that contemporary workplaces could benefit from Benedict's management model, which mandates hours for leisure and gives workers opportunities to request help or work reassignment, allowing them to "serve without distress." While acknowledging that many businesses lack the time required for monastics' consensus-building, she posits that the rule's emphasis on transparency and openness to multiple viewpoints promotes sound decision-making. These astute reflections on the rule's tools for nurturing community provide valuable guidance for those seeking balance in a conflict-ridden world. (Apr.)
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
"How to Live: What the Rule of St. Benedict Teaches Us About Happiness, Meaning, and Community." Publishers Weekly, 26 Feb. 2018, p. 82. General OneFile, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A530637490/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=570151e4. Accessed 12 Aug. 2018.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A530637490
Second life
The Christian Century. 131.10 (May 14, 2014): p8.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2014 The Christian Century Foundation
http://www.christiancentury.org
Full Text:
SECOND LIFE: When Judith Valente started making regular visits to a Benedictine women's monastery in Atchison, Kansas, she made friends with 90-year-old Sister Lillian Harrington. Valente asked Sister Lillian if she ever thinks of death. "I don't think about dying," she said. "I think about living." At 75, after retiring as a professor of speech and drama, Sister Lillian reinvented herself as the "pilgrim minister." She traveled to schools, parishes, and retreat centers where she dramatized Gospel passages and wisdom stories. She performed without notes or a script well into her nineties. She died soon after celebrating her 96th birthday in March (RNS).
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
"Second life." The Christian Century, 14 May 2014, p. 8. General OneFile, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A371969706/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=681b5a8e. Accessed 12 Aug. 2018.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A371969706
Author finds a 'spiritual home' at monastery
Born: Bayonne, New Jersey, United States
Nationality: American
Occupation: Journalist
National Catholic Reporter. 50.9 (Feb. 14, 2014): p7a.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2014 National Catholic Reporter
http://ncronline.org/
Full Text:
If you come this way,
Taking any route, starting from anywhere.
At any time or at any season.
It would always be the same: you would have to put off
Sense and notion. You are not here to verify
Instruct yourself; or Worm curiosity,
Or carry report. You are here to kneel
Where prayer has been valid.
--TS. Eliot, "Little Gidding"
T.S. Eliot's instructions to the visitor to Little Gidding apply equally to the 150-year-old Benedictine monastery of Mount St. Scholastica in Atchison, Kan. Here women religious have lived in community, helping to hold the world together through prayer. Atchison Blue is an appreciation of this community and a spiritual memoir of Judith Valente, a hard-driving journalist who lived with these women episodically for three years. The book's enigmatic title derives from the color of the stained glass windows of the monastery's chapel, which over the years have been changed to a unique blue-gray by the prairie's sun, rain and wind. Atchison blue stands as a metaphor for the transformation made possible by monastic life.
Valente's intent is double: to tell the story of " the inner life of this community and to show 13' how she was challenged to confront her own Benedictine Rule and the goal of conversatio morum (the continuous conversion of life) serve these ends. For those who know the rhythm and ethos of monastic life, Valente's story will be a familiar one. For those who do not, Atchison Blue will serve as an introduction. The book is brief and the writing accessible and journalistic. Its tone is admiring of these women who offered Valente hospitality, and from whom she realized she had much to learn.
Vatente arrives at me monastery Deleaguerea, anxious and exhausted. She is immediately startled by the saturating silence that surrounds her. As the alchemy of silence begins to transform, she discovers how the monastic day, regulated as it is by the chanting of the Hours, gives context and form to community life. Prayer becomes not some separate activity but the day itself. She resonates with the alternating rhythms of work and leisure, the attention to detail and beauty the care of each person, and the concern for the world beyond the monastery's walls. She encounters women who find meaning and zest in life, who form lifelong friendships, who are humble and filled with gratitude, and who have no fear of death. She is stunned by the conundrum that it is precisely their restriction that offers them great freedom. In this context ot love ana care, almost ay osmosis, Valente learns self-acceptance and an openness and vulnerability She finds what she needs--a "spiritual home"--and gains the courage to face forthrightly her own limitations--her striving, her resentments, her loneliness and fear of death. On the weeks during which she lives apart from Mount St. Scho-lastica, she tries to adapt what she learned to her daily life. In search of a "living faith" she calms her flickering mind by recitation of the Hours and by praying. Through these efforts she re-engages with her Catholic tradition and confronts her hopelessness over the church's scandals and the poverty of parish life. Ultimately, she joins these sisters as a Benedictine oblate, one who lives in the spirit of the Benedictine Rule while engaged in family and professional life.
Valente demonstrates the hidden treasures of monastic life--the gift of silence, the value of community, and the order and meaning given by a life of prayer. What would have made this story more poignant was discussion of two painful realities confronting every community of women religious. What do these good women think about the stark reality that their way of life will have largely disappeared in the next two decades? How do they understand their institutional demise? And what is their response to the scurrilous questioning of women religious by the church hierarchy? These questions of necessity have shaped and formed these sisters and their community as well, causing them suffering. But like the prairie wind and sun, this suffering may make their Atchison blue even more translucent.
Caption: --Courtesy of Mount St. Scholastica A window in the Mount St. Scholastica Chapel depicts three Benedictine saints: from left, Walburga. Hildegard and Gertrude.
Reviewed by DANA GREENE
[Dana Greene is author of biographies of Evelyn Underhill, Maisie Ward and Denise Levertov and serves on the board of the Shalem Institute.] 1
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
"Author finds a 'spiritual home' at monastery." National Catholic Reporter, 14 Feb. 2014, p. 7a. General OneFile, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A362776679/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=224c0055. Accessed 12 Aug. 2018.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A362776679
Atchison Blue
Carol DeChant
U.S. Catholic. 78.12 (Dec. 2013): p43.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2013 Claretian Publications
http://uscatholic.claretians.org
Full Text:
ATCHISON BLUE
Judith Valente (Sorin Books, 2013)
[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]
As is the case for so many Catholics today, Judith Valente's faith had been chipped away by the clergy sexual abuse scandals, by increasingly politicized statements of bishops, and by priestly homilies "pointing to splinters in everyone else's eyes but their own." In Atchison Blue: A Search for Silence, a Spiritual Home, and a Living Faith, Valente tells how frequent visits to Mount St. Scholastica in Atchison, Kansas taught her that spiritual peace requires not so much a change in thinking as a change in habits.
Immersed in the monastery's rhythms, teachings, and silence, she began acquiring those habits. Praying for strangers with the Benedictine nuns and helping the sisters serve neighbors regardless of their faith--or lack of it--Valente was reminded that we do not love and serve others because they're Catholic; we do it because we are Catholic.
Yet communal living has its own challenges. One day each week, the prioress shuts herself off, absorbed in a hobby. It's her attempt to remain a "nonanxious presence" among her sisters during the other six days. This "free us from all anxiety" quest resonated with Valente, who was coping with losing her job as a Wall Street Journal correspondent and sorrow over being rejected by her adult stepdaughters.
Valente began to replace her "I want it all--Now!" career focus by asking, "Do I need this? Do I need it now? And do I need this much of it?" Before speaking, she began thinking: "Is what I am about to say true? Is it kind? Is it necessary?"
Valente went to the Mount dismayed by what she saw as an unfeeling and patriarchal church bureaucracy whose fear of scandal, women, and open discussion trumped its pastoral mandate. Especially for readers who may be seeking the same sort of spiritual home, it's worth reading this book to see why Valente now views the Benedictine sisters as "the only truly free people" she knows.--Carol DeChant
DeChant, Carol
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
DeChant, Carol. "Atchison Blue." U.S. Catholic, Dec. 2013, p. 43. General OneFile, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A352848612/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=3aa79e56. Accessed 12 Aug. 2018.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A352848612
Atchison Blue: A Search for Silence, a Spiritual Home, and a Living Faith
Deborah Smith Douglas
The Christian Century. 130.19 (Sept. 18, 2013): p38+.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2013 The Christian Century Foundation
http://www.christiancentury.org
Full Text:
Atchison Blue: A Search for Silence, a Spiritual Home, and a Living Faith
By Judith Valente
Ave Maria Press, 224 pp., $15.95 paperback
Judith Valente's memoir takes its title from the distinctive color of the stained-glass windows in the chapel of Mount St. Scholastica, a community of Benedictine sisters in Atchison, Kansas. Time, strong light and relentless wind have transformed the original, conventionally bright color of the glass to a striking clear blue-gray reminiscent of the sea. It is said to be found nowhere else.
Atchison blue is an apt metaphor for the general wisdom of monastic life and the specific way it is lived out in one particular place, as well as for Valente's own transformation, over time, by the light of the Gospels and the lives of the sisters.
When Valente first came to Mount St. Scholastica, she was a religion news correspondent for PBS television and a prizewinning poet. She intended only, as part of her own packed schedule of professional obligations, to lead a weekend retreat for other busy professionals. But under the clear gaze of those blue windows, she was suddenly aware of her own deep exhaustion and confusion, of her need for "silence, a spiritual home, and a living faith."
Disconnected from her Catholic roots by scandal within the church, longing to mend broken relationships within her new husband's family, wearied by clashes with colleagues at work, and secretly--and increasingly--fearing death, Valente craved the peace and quiet of the monastery and the counsel of the serene women who had vowed to live and die within its walls. She began to return to the Mount for regular retreats until she was spending about a week out of every month there for nearly three years.
With sometimes startling candor, Valente tells the story of her personal journey, detailing the concrete ways in which all of those hidden struggles surfaced and were addressed in that place and in that company. She admits that she has found no simple solutions or easy answers; her struggles continue. But she has found abiding hope and a new quietness of mind with which to persevere.
Although she refers to the Rule of St. Benedict in the course of these musings, especially the elusive Benedictine charism of conversatio morum (usually translated as ongoing conversion of life, a constant turning toward God), Valente is more concerned with lifting up the witness of the mostly elderly sisters whom she has come to love.
This is due in part to her journalistic instinct and in part to an explicit decision to pay homage to the remarkable Benedictine sisters still at the Mount lest there be "no one left to tell." The community is vibrant and sizable as women's monastic communities go these days, but there is a poignant urgency to Valente's desire to ensure that their stories will not go untold.
In her affectionate portraits of various sisters--illumining their fidelity to God, their compassion for the poor, their opposition to war and violence, and the tender way they care for each other in sickness and death--Valente has honored these women. She also evoked my own remembrance of the Catholic sisters I have known and loved.
Monastically speaking, I have found my own spiritual home with the Camaldolese Benedictine monks of Big Sur, California, but Valente has reminded me of the debt I owe to and the love I have for many of the Sisters of Charity of Cincinnati. Though their imposing brick Victorian motherhouse on a bluff over the Ohio River, from which generations of nurses and teachers were sent out into the world, is nearly empty now, I treasure the sisters and the time I've spent among them. I am grateful for their loving hospitality to me and their example of lifelong fidelity to God--and I am similarly concerned for their future.
While writing elegiacally of the sisters at the Mount, Valente nowhere mentions one threat to their slowly disappearing way of life: the Vatican's sharp 2012 rebuke of American sisters--as represented by the Leadership Conference of Women Religious--for their focus on the plight of the poor and marginalized and for their lack of sufficiently vocal opposition to abortion and same-sex marriage. Investigation of the LCWR and various women's congregations is ongoing.
Although it more closely resembles Mitch Albom's Tuesdays with Morrie than Kathleen Norris's The Cloister Walk, Valente's memoir will be a welcome introduction to monastic retreat for those who have not yet ventured across the threshold of one of those priceless, irreplaceable sanctuaries. And anyone who already knows the amazing grace of silence, solitude and prayer offered in a monastic setting will resonate with Valente's story. Like the blue windows in the Atchison chapel, any Benedictine experience will be both like and unlike any other: uniquely valuable, potentially transformative, at once universal and deeply personal.
Reviewed by Deborah Smith Douglas, author of The Praying Life: Seeking God in All Things, She is a spiritual director, retreat leader and Camaldolese Benedictine oblate.
Douglas, Deborah Smith
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
Douglas, Deborah Smith. "Atchison Blue: A Search for Silence, a Spiritual Home, and a Living Faith." The Christian Century, 18 Sept. 2013, p. 38+. General OneFile, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A347520549/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=f3fce368. Accessed 12 Aug. 2018.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A347520549
Atchison Blue: A Search for Silence, a Spiritual Home, and a Living Faith
Publishers Weekly. 260.32 (Aug. 12, 2013): p54.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2013 PWxyz, LLC
http://www.publishersweekly.com/
Full Text:
Atchison Blue: A Search for Silence, a Spiritual Home, and a Living Faith
Judith Valente. Sorin, $16.95 trade paper (224p) ISBN 978-1-933495-58-3
Valente (Twenty Poems to Nourish Your Soul) is arara avis--a poet and journalist. Her spiritual memoir is happily rooted in the heartland: Atchison, Kans., the city that Mount St. Scholastica, a community of Benedictine nuns, has called home since 1863. Valente goes to Mount St. Scholastica to lead a workshop on poetry, and then returns, again and again. The hospitable Midwest community of women religious is also, for Valente, a crossroads for her own spiritual life, a place for self-confrontation and growing awareness. The rhythms of life and liturgy and the quietly remarkable residents of Mount St. Scholastica create spiritual openings for the author. Women religious live, pray, and die in their community, affording Valente opportunities to face her own fears, resentments, and hopes. Her journalistic witness of the community of women is also a witness of moving faith. This honest and deeply reflective book, which implicitly critiques the myths of success by which so many live and are haunted, deserves a wide audience. Agent: Michele Rubin, Writers House. (Sept.)
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
"Atchison Blue: A Search for Silence, a Spiritual Home, and a Living Faith." Publishers Weekly, 12 Aug. 2013, p. 54. General OneFile, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A339853159/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=ab194f9d. Accessed 12 Aug. 2018.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A339853159
Twenty Poems to Nourish Your Soul
Karyn Saemann
Reviewer's Bookwatch. (Jan. 2010):
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2010 Midwest Book Review
http://www.midwestbookreview.com
Full Text:
Twenty Poems to Nourish Your Soul
Judith Valente and Charles Reynard, authors
Loyola Press
344 N. Ashland Avenue, Chicago IL 60657
0829418695, $13.95
Poetry is ill suited to our frenetic, over-tasked lives, Judith Valente and Charles Reynard sagaciously note. It "forces you to slow down, to listen intently, to live in the moment, or else the poem will pass you right by," Valente writes. As they ponder 18 poems written by others, and one each self-authored, it's clear the husband and wife duo has found the balance and inner harmony needed to grasp this art form and to live well in general. That hasn't come without struggle. In just over 200 pages, in essays interspersed with the work of selected poets including Stanley Kunitz, Mary Oliver and Judith Moffett, they comment candidly on Reynard's failed first marriage. He concedes it fell apart due to his working too much and neglecting his family. They talk of Valente's career shift, to freelance writing, from a once all consuming "seven-dayer" reporting career with heavyweight newspapers like the Wall Street Journal and Washington Post. The latter earned her a Pulitzer Prize nomination but left her hospitalized with exhaustion and malnutrition. The poems and personal meditations speak of simplicity, of noticing grandeur in small things. Without being preachy they infuse religion and God, discussing ideas like finding the sacred rooted in the everyday. They bring in a variety of other voices, including Annie Laurie Gaylor from the Freedom From Religion Foundation, who says she may appreciate life more than others because she doesn't believe in an afterlife. You have one chance to make it good, Gaylor says. They talk of appreciating a morning walk, the process of making a proper British cup of tea. They talk of life-changing things that get us to wake up and live at a heightened level--death, divorce, job loss, cataclysmic events like Sept. 11. "Twenty Poems" will be best understood by those who, like Valente and Reynard, have found peace in the complex layers of their lives, who trowel beyond pain and disappointment to find joy. It should be required reading for those who aren't yet there, but who are ready to be challenged. Drawing on a small collection of one form of writing, "Twenty Poems" simply points out the obvious--that life is too short and needs constant nourishment. It's honestly insightful, well-written soul food.
Saemann, Karyn
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
Saemann, Karyn. "Twenty Poems to Nourish Your Soul." Reviewer's Bookwatch, Jan. 2010. General OneFile, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A216347111/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=4c95aad0. Accessed 12 Aug. 2018.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A216347111