Karen Armstrong speaks to the troubling years following her decision
to leave the life of a Roman Catholic nun and join the secular
world in 1969. What makes this memoir especially fascinating is
that Armstrong already wrote about this era once---only it was
a disastrous book. It was too soon for her to understand how these
dark, struggling years influenced her spiritual development, and
she was too immature to protect herself from being be bullied
by the publishing world. As a result, she agreed to portray herself
only in as "positive and lively a light as possible"---a
mandate that gave her permission to deny the truth of her pain
and falsify her inner experience. The inspiration for this new
approach comes from T. S. Eliot's Ash
Wednesday, a series of six poems that speak to the process
of spiritual recovery. Eliot metaphorically climbs a spiral staircase
in these poems---turning again and again to what he does not want
to see as he slowly makes progress toward the light. In revisiting
her spiral climb out of her dark night of the soul, Armstrong
gives readers a stunningly poignant account about the nature of
spiritual growth. Upon leaving the convent, Armstrong grapples
with the grief of her abandoned path and the uncertainty of her
place in the world. On top of this angst, Armstrong spent years
suffering from undiagnosed temporal lobe epilepsy, causing her
to have frequent blackout lapses in memory and disturbing hallucinations---crippling
symptoms that her psychiatrist adamantly attributed to Armstrong's
denial of her femininity and sexuality. The details of this narrative
may be specific to Armstrong's life, but the meaning she makes
of her spiral ascent makes this a universally relevant story.
All readers can glean inspiration from her insights into the nature
of surrender and the possibilities of finding solace in the absence
of hope. Armstrong shows us why spiritual wisdom is often a seasoned
gift---no matter how much we strive for understanding, we can't
force profound insights to occur simply because our publisher
is waiting for them. With her elegant, humble and brave voice,
she inspires readers to willingly turn our attention toward our
false identities and vigilantly defended beliefs in order to better
see the truth and vulnerability of our existence. Herein lies
the staircase we can climb to enlightenment. --
Gail Hudson
