Virgin Time: In Search of the Contemplative Life

In Catholic parochial school, writes Hampl ( A Romantic Education ), she learned the virtue of contemplation: ``Pondering was the highest vocation. . . . Pondering was a special kind of thinking. It was not done in the mind, that chilly place, but in the heart, where the real mystery of intelligence--intuition rather than thought--lay catlike and feminine, ready to pounce.'' Accordingly, as she seeks the meaning of faith--by visiting several Catholic pilgrimage sites in Europe and a California-based Cistercian women's monastery, and by musing over her religious upbringing in Minnesota--she exercises her observational skills with a fury. She describes the wildflowers of Umbria and the quirks and passions of English agnostic travel companions; she relates how, in Assisi, touring Franciscans ``spoke of Francis and Clare as of people who had just left the room for a moment''; in Lourdes, she is overwhelmed by a crowd of supplicants, many of them in wheelchairs; and in the California monastery, she probes the meaning of silence. But for all its prettiness and earnestness, Hampl's prose is finally prolix and enervating. (Aug.)