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New Habits: Today's Women Who Choose to Become Nuns
 
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New Habits: Today's Women Who Choose to Become Nuns (Paperback)

by Isabel Losada (Editor)
4.8 out of 5 stars See all reviews (16 customer reviews)

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Product details

  • Paperback: 195 pages
  • Publisher: Hodder & Stoughton Ltd (18 Feb 1999)
  • Language English
  • ISBN-10: 034072238X
  • ISBN-13: 978-0340722381
  • Product Dimensions: 19.7 x 13 x 1.8 cm
  • Average Customer Review: 4.8 out of 5 stars See all reviews (16 customer reviews)
  • Amazon.co.uk Sales Rank: 61,570 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

    Popular in this category:

    #89 in  Books > Religion & Spirituality > Christianity > Catholic

Product Description

Synopsis
Isabel Losada interviewed ten young nuns from Anglican convents. She began with a suspicious attitude, prepared to dismiss their motives as immature and escapist, but in these interviews she learned more than she bargained for. The nuns talk about boyfriends, travel, love and spiritual yearning.

From the Author
Ten first person interviews with young novices
This book is a series of ten interviews with young novices in the Church of England who are currently considering whether to enter their religious communities for life. It is the only series of interviews that exist which explores why women would want to make such a radical choice with their lives.

Some of the novices are from active Franciscan communities and some are from strict enclosed commuities dedicated entirely to prayer but they all answer the difficult questions put to them with huge courage, honesty and humour.

This book makes essential reading for anyone who wants to know about the religious life today either from the academic or personal perspective. Also the book has been enjoyed by the general public purely as ten women's fascinating and inspiring personal stories.

The Sunday times review said that these young women are 'a different breed from the rosary wielding educators of my childhood.'

The Daily Telegraph said, 'The intruiging thing about this thought provoking book is the amount of genuine happiness on display... happiness based on being at peace with oneself.'

The Mail on Sunday said it is: 'Remarkably revealing.'

The Independent described the book as 'Fascinatingly nosey'

and 'The Scotsman' as, 'Brazenly Probing.'

New Habits is all these things and meeting these ten young women in these pages is a joy and a priviledge as well as providing the reader with insights into the spiritual and personal struggles of these women the book also has a mass of information about daily life in a convent today.


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Customer Reviews

16 Reviews
5 star:
 (13)
4 star:
 (2)
3 star:
 (1)
2 star:    (0)
1 star:    (0)
 
 
 
 
 
Average Customer Review
4.8 out of 5 stars (16 customer reviews)
 
 
 
 
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

 
32 of 32 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars CURIOUS ABOUT NUNS?, 3 Dec 1999
By A Customer
Why would any woman in today's world become a nun?

I spent six years in a Roman Catholic religious order, from 1966 to 1972, because I experienced a strange and unsettling call. Those post-Vatican years generated a wind sweeping through the world of Catholic nuns, monks and priests, a vast raising of dust in the corners of our self-consciousness. We wondered if religious life was "relevant" to a future-shocked society as we deliberated whether to saty or leave. Refreshingly, that kind of sociological navel gazing is entirely absent in New Habits.

Rather, ten Anglican novices of varying ages and orders reveal with warmth and intimacy the core of commitment to God. This personal quality, rather than a stab at psycholsocial analysis, distinguishes the book. Sister Lynn, for example, typifies the ingenousness of the novices: "What I most love about the life here is the freedom. It sounds weird because I was just moaning about the restrictions and the timetable and stuff, but at the same time community has allowed me to be who I am. I don't have to pretend." Ten women, ten stories, ten souls laid bare. No pretense. And Losada graciously stands in the wings and allows each nun center stage.

What do we imagine about nuns and their lives? New Habits rings with faith, honesty and simplicity as each woman conveys her profound inner reflections and her humdrum daily experiences. The parallel format of the interviews - personal history followed by insights into poverty, celibacy and obedience - lends a mantra-like rhythm to the book. Through this gentle repetition, what comes across is the goodness of a life dedicated to enjoying and manifesting God's love in a faith community - which thus becomes its own excuse for existence. Relevance? Who cares? That every sister in the book was an active participant in life prior to her vocation cannot be doubted. That each of them is currently fulfilled is equally obvious. Thy will be done!

New Habits may not send any readers into the convent, but minimally it satisfies our curiousity. Beyond that, it makes it eminently clear that whatever fun,joy and accomplishment life in the lay world has to offer, something intangibly deeper and quietly ecstatic lurks within convent walls, in God's world, where only a few of us ever savor it. I've had both, and I know.

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27 of 27 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars This book CAN change lives - it has changed mine., 12 Jun 2000
By luppaloula@sunbeach.net (Barbados, West Indies.) - See all my reviews
'New Habits' brings to light the real humanity of women who are nuns. It dislodges all those previous concepts of what a nun is, ie locked away from the world, condemning of sex and sexuality, unapproachable, humorless, stern and ALWAYS Roman Catholic. In nearly every woman's story I saw pieces of myself. An alarming fact at first! Isabel Losada has done a wonderful job in her interviewing, bringing out the woman in the nun. The photo and intro to each woman gives the reader a sense of sitting and having a private chat, in which there is laughter and an unstuffy, spiritual awareness. I am sure for some of them it was a difficult decision to speak in such a public way and I take my hat off to each one of them for doing so and allowing us, the public, a glimpse behind those Convent doors, which are not so firmly closed anymore. The reader cannot help but be touched by and hold respect for each one of the women and their very personal journeys. I was so enchanted by the book that three months later I picked it up and read it again, slowly this time, allowing myself to realise and absorb the idea that I too could be and may be a nun some day. This book CAN change lives - it has changed mine.
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25 of 25 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars A MOVING MEDITATION, 11 Nov 1999
By A Customer
This book, it's like a walk through a beautiful garden on one of God's many exquisite days -- all that makes the Universe radiant and miraculous is there. Every half hour we meet one of Isabel's ten novice nuns -- women she has interviewed who have chosen a life of service and prayer, simplicity and love. And we walk wtih them for a while. These women are magnificent, not because they have chosen a 'noble' life but because they remind us, in the simplist and purest sense, of how precious and fragile life is. The author allows her novices to speak for themselves, and each is so eloquent in sharing with us why she has chosen to 'have time with God.' And the most wonderful thing about the book -- aside from the pleasure of meeting them -- is the peace one feels in the company of these women, that is to say in the presence of human beings who have consciously chosen a life relationship with that which is divine and eternal. In meeting them, we are invited into their world and enriched by their humanity, their centeredness and wisdom, their simple and profound appreciation for the power of Love, which is God, in the Universe. Our walk with them in the garden is a healing moment. Thank you, Isabel.
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Most Recent Customer Reviews

5.0 out of 5 stars This book may just change your life...
Ok, so it may not encourage everyone to renounce their current lifestyles and skip off to a convent but it will certainly make you wonder if you could! Read more
Published 21 days ago by Bess_Wheat

5.0 out of 5 stars Amazing, Inspiring, Unexpected
I found this book SO refreshing. Not because I'm thinking of becoming a nun or anything but just because these women are so different. Read more
Published on 21 Sep 2005 by jessicat232

3.0 out of 5 stars Slightly disappointed
After reading the reviews already on this page, I thought I really must read this book. I have been fascinated by the religious life since I was a child, especially since... Read more
Published on 7 Sep 2004 by csyounger

5.0 out of 5 stars Impressing and though provoking
You cannot help but being impressed with the novices interviewed in ‘New Habits’. Firstly it is their determination that this is the right life for them, and their... Read more
Published on 8 May 2002 by asha

5.0 out of 5 stars Well written and refreshingly honest
This collection of interviews with ten novices in different Anglican Orders gives a great insight into life within a convent. Read more
Published on 10 Dec 2001

5.0 out of 5 stars Find out what Sister Rose means by 'Zinging'
Challenged by a close friend of hers who one day announced she was going to become a nun, Isabel Losada decided to find out what really motivates relatively young women to try... Read more
Published on 12 Nov 1999

4.0 out of 5 stars Happy, well adjusted women sharing their stories
What a concept! So often these days it seems that we only hear from those people who are unhappy and seem to want to make everyone else feel unhappy too. Read more
Published on 10 Nov 1999

5.0 out of 5 stars Anyone who has ever wondered about nuns should read this
I wish this book had been around when I was a young girl being taught by Catholic nuns. Ms Losada succeeds in unravelling the mysteries surrounding, and sometimes the stigma... Read more
Published on 6 Nov 1999 by ckmack@mindspring.com

5.0 out of 5 stars Challenging, Revealing and Inspiring: READ THIS BOOK!
"New Habits" is a book which will challenge every preconception you've ever had about the women who choose a confined religious life. Read more
Published on 1 Nov 1999 by C. O'DONNELL

4.0 out of 5 stars Fascinating insight.
Surprised, enlightened and challenged. I came to this book as a rather sceptical non Christian, who's perception of nuns was, to say the least, somewhat stereotypical. Read more
Published on 28 Oct 1999

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