Kathleen Norris on the Power of Scripture

Have just finished Kathleen Norris' Acedia & Me: A Marriage, Monks, and A Writer’s Life (Riverhead Books, 2008). It is up to her usual impressive standard. Here's something that caught my eye about the power of Scripture:

Perhaps the most radical aspect of the psychology of the desert monastics is the extent to which they believed that Scripture itself had the power to heal. In The Word in the Desert, his study of how thoroughly the early monks integrated Scripture into their lives, Douglas Burton-Christie notes that they regarded these “sacred texts [as] inherently powerful, a source of holiness, with a capacity to transform their lives.” 141