Light in the Shoe Shop: A Cobbler's Contemplations

Light in the Shoe Shop offers readers a unique and intimate glance into the day-to-day experience of living the cloistered life in feminine mode. In her “cobbler’s contemplations”—no metaphor here: the author did indeed make and mend her sisters’ shoes for many years—Mother Agnes reveals the very simple secret of monastic life, a secret she shows to be an inseparable combination of mindfulness and fidelity. It is continual mindfulness of God’s transformative presence and action and, in response, equally continual fidelity to each of the minutely detailed ways in which that loving divine presence woos the contemplative’s heart. Even those who strive for a more contemplative life outside of literal cloisters will find her reflections to be a great gift and inspiration. “This book is decidedly not just one more item in the picturesque genre of the ‘nun’s story.’ Rather, for all its slenderness, the volume bears a strong witness to the fact that a human life that stakes its all on loving will gradually become transfused with light.” From the foreword by Simeon Leiva, OCSO