Review: "This Wheel of Rocks" by Sister Marya Grathwohl

This Wheel of Rocks by Sister Marya Grathwohl
Published November 2023 via Riverhead Books
★★★

In 1963, Judy Grathwohl stepped out of high school and into a convent and became Sister Marya. But hers was and is not a cloistered life: rather, she found herself taking her Catholic teachings as a starting point and then leaping into a more layered understanding of both her own spirituality and connections between the literal, physical earth.

At one point, reading about Sister Marya's work to reduce the use of fossil fuels within her community—and, perhaps more importantly, to inspire the next generation to do the same—I thought to myself that she was (is!) ahead of her time. But it would be more accurate to say that she was ahead of her time by listening to those who came before her. This is a book some twenty years in the making (per the Acknowledgements, I believe the original book contract was signed in 2003!), but also a lifetime in the making, and then some lifetimes before that.

One of the things that struck me most, reading this, was how different Sister Marya's journey as a nun has been from those described in other nuns' memoirs I've read. I'm not sure whether that's because I tend toward religious memoirs about restrictive (and often cloistered) orders or because I also tend toward religious memoirs by people who have left, whether that means 'no longer a nun but still a practicing Catholic' or 'agnostic now and haven't been to church in decades'; I imagine that both would make rather large differences! But the richness Sister Marya describes in her religious life is one that is at least partly due to the freedom she had, within the strictures of her religious order, to choose her own path: to explore the topics that called to her, work on projects that interested her, and advocate for matters that, ah, mattered to her. Just the fact that her interest in Native American spirituality raised no eyebrows amongst her Sisters is fascinating, but it goes far beyond that. On a sense of discernment/call to religious life, she says this:

The sense of call continues throughout our lives: a call to a different ministry or to a particular group of people, a call that responds to a newly emerged need in society or the Church, a call to serve in a foreign country. Call is lively and energetic; it morphs with a Sister's age, acquired skill sets, interests. It also runs deep like a river in her soul, changing but constant in its flow. (loc. 1776*)

I've never seen call described this way, and I love it. All things considered (e.g., I'm not Catholic...) I'm unlikely to ever become a nun, but in another life I might make an okay Franciscan nun.

The earlier parts of the book, describing Sister Marya's life among the Crow in Montana, interested me most. This is where she started to question what she'd been raised to believe—not to reverse her worldview but to expand it—and to learn just how much she didn't know, but also where some of the most concrete scenes and connections are described. As the book goes on (and Sister Marya moves away from Crow and Northern Cheyenne land), the book becomes more about applying some of the lessons she started learning with the Crow to her broader environmental work, and also more about her further educational pursuits. I lean towards scenes and learning more about other characters when I read, and it's hard, I think, to be quite as invested in another person's revelatory learnings as they are. Still worth the read, but if Sister Marya had written a book twenty years ago focusing exclusively on her work in Montana, I've have gobbled that up. Recommended to those who like their religion grounded in social justice and tangible action.

Thanks to the author and publisher for inviting me to read this book. I received a review copy through NetGalley.

*Quotes are from an ARC and may not be final.