Presumably, Sister John’s “mystical” experiences were episodes of excessive neural firing in this brain region. He diagnoses her with epilepsy, the origin of which is a tumor in the temporal lobe of her cortex. There, the doctor tests her with a CT scan and EEG. After one particularly severe episode, Sister John awakes in a hospital. And so, since her visions began three years ago, Sister John has published a collection of essays and poems called Sparrow on a Roof, the financial success of which is a source of security for the convent.īut as the novel proceeds, Sister John suffers from increasingly debilitating migraines, and begins even to lose consciousness. Furthermore, each experience is accompanied by an irresistible urge to write. As a result, she is respected by her sister as a testament to hope in God’s love. The content of her visions varies, but each one is characterized by the feeling of leaving her body and being joined to an unearthly bliss. that she is leaving her body and is joined to an unearthly bliss. Every once in a while in prayer and at work, Sister John is granted moments of ecstatic mystical experiences. However, when the novel opens, Sister John is in the midst of a period of great intimacy with God. There was no shade, no shelter, no water.” Mirages of peace simmered and beckoned, only to recede as her spirit approached. Each hour in choir was a desert to be crossed on her knees.

Her arms ached, her back felt sore, and she was hungry.

The Gregorian melodies, sung without harmony sounded like dirges. God thirsted, but she had nothing to offer. The majority of that time, Sister John was plagued by spiritual aridity, and suffered her daily tasks and prayers as an enormous burden. Named after the famed Spanish mystic and poet of the 16th century, Sister John is a modern-day cloistered Carmelite nun who has spent almost two decades in the Carmel.

Unlike Mariette in Ecstasy, the novel is written from the first personal perspective, giving the reader a privileged view into the inner life of the protagonist, Sister John of the Cross. In Lying Awake, Salzman paints a vivid portrait of a woman grappling with the delicate relationship between pathology and mysticism. But today, I take up an extraordinary work of a non-Christian author, Mark Salzman. In the first post of this series, I reviewed a novel that explores similar questions: Ron Hansen’s Mariette in Ecstasy.

Lying awake salzman