What does it mean to truly see another person—beyond their struggles, labels, or limitations—and to meet them with empathy and love?

In this profound conversation, Kathleen Norris reflects on her sister Becky’s life with disability, illness, and transformation, inviting us to recognize the full humanity in every person. Drawing on the wisdom of Benedictine spirituality, storytelling, and the power of film, Kathleen explores how cultivating humility, presence, and empathy is a spiritual discipline that expands our capacity to love even those who seem hardest to understand.

Join us to discover how seeing with new eyes can be a path to healing—for others, and for ourselves.

Speaker bio: 

I found my vocation as a writer early; and poetry was my first love. My first collection, "Falling Off," was published in 1971, when I was 24 years old. I've since published several volumes of poetry, the last being "Journey:: New & Selected Poems." I met my husband, poet David Dwyer, in New York City and we moved in 1974 to my mother's home town in western South Dakota, a place where I had spend childhood smmers. There, when what was called "the farm crisis" hit in 1983, I realized that the subject was too large for my lyric poetry and I wrote my first prose book, Dakota: A Soiritual Geography.

Returning to my South Dakota roots also triggered a return to the Christian faith in which I'd been raised. I began attending my grandparents' Presbyterian church in town, and was delighted to discover Benedictine men and women in nearby monasteries who were remarkably hospitable to a Protestant woman whose faith harbored many doubts. I became a Benedictine oblate at Assumption Abbey in North Dakota in 1987.

Getting to know these people triggered my book "The Cloister Walk", and then I felt that I had to write a book about the Christian vocabulary that had presented me with many obstacles when I was returning to church. That became "Amazing Grace: A Vocabulary of Faith." My other non-fiction books include "The Virgin of Bennington," an account of my college years and first post-college job in New York City, and "Acedia & Me: Monks, Marriage, and a Writer's Life." My most recent book, written with Irish storyteller Gareth Higgins is "A Whole Life in Twelve Movies: A Cinematic Path to a Deeper Spirituality," and reflects my life-long love of films. My upcoming memoir, Rebecca Sue: A Sister's Reflections on Disability, Faith, and Love" will be published this September.

Some basic facts: my parents were both musicians, and my family circle includes an older brother and two younger sisters. One, Rebecca, the subject of my forthcoming memoir, is deceased. My family moved to Hawaii in 1958, when it was a territory - it became a state in 1959. After graduating from high school in Honolulu I went to Bennington College in Vermont, then worked for The Academy of American Poets in New York City. I met my husband in New York, and we moved to South Dakota in 1974. We intended to stay there until my mother decided what to do with her parents house in a small town and some farmland that she inherited. We stayed there for 25 years, until my husband's health and my parents aging caused us to move to Honolulu in 2000. My husband died in 2003.

I am a member of the Cathedral of Saint Andrew (Episcopal) in Honolulu, and serve as a lector there. I'm on the board of the School of Theology at St Johns University in Minnesota, and often teach a week-long course there during the summer. This gives me the opportunity to worship every day with the monastic community there, and catch up with my many friends in the community.

I enjoy walking, swimming, reading, and working out in a gym for seniors.