Most Helpful Customer Reviews
|
|
266 of 286 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
An Important Autobiography, April 3, 2004
I recently read Karen Armstrong's "Jerusalem" and had a strong urge to learn more about her, which itself was an unusual reaction for me on finishing a work of general non-fiction. I therefore was thrilled to find that she had already written an autobiography, "Through the Narrow Gate," which ends with her decision to leave the convent. When I finished "Through the Narrow Gate," I wanted to know more. So I was beyond thrilled when I went online the day I finished that book and discovered that "The Sprial Staircase" was scheduled for release in another two weeks or so. I am not a dispassionate reviewer of this book; I felt as if she had written this book just for me. Something in my life has been leading me to Karen Armstrong's life and work, and the more I research the more it seems that I am not alone.This book is easily the most important religious autobiography I know of since Thomas Merton's "Seven Storey Mountain," and I suspect that the analogy between the titles is deliberate. I think Armstrong knows now that her life story and work are taking on some just-dawning importance in the story of the "modern" world, East and West. It would not surprise me if this book ultimately takes a place alongside Augustine's "Confessions." Many readers will find that "The Spiral Staircase" helps set them free -- free to find their own path, free to practice a religious tradition, free to be self-emptying and compassonate -- and not to be enslaved by ideas, beliefs, or certainty. Armstrong's story is a guide to living our humanity, which is all we can aspire to anyhow, by embracing our own suffering and the suffering and humanity of all people. The feeling I have on closing this book for the first of what will be many times is: "Let's stop the nonsense and get on with it." If you are fortunate enough to find "The Spiral Staircase" along your path, then I encourage you, with apologies to Augustine: "Take it up and read it."
|
|
|
72 of 75 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A Work of Amazing Religious Maturity - A MUST READ!, April 17, 2004
Karen Armstrong is -- here's the word again -- an amazing woman. Having read all of her other books with the exception of her autobiographies, I envisioned a solid academic, with cadres of graduate students pulling together masses of data for her review. No -- Armstrong is a theological autodidact! Her personal religious and spiritual journey has, to paraphrase one of her favorites, T. S. Eliot, said, led her to where she started only to know it for the first time. The God she ran from as a young adult has come to greet her in a very different form -- but I'll leave the specifics of this reverse quest for you to discover for yourself.Where her earlier work was clever and provocative, Armstrong has matured into one of the most thoughtful liberal religious writers of our day. She recognizes that the world cannot be healed without dialogue, and that you cannot have dialogue without running the risk that YOU may be changed. "It is not enough to understand other people's beliefs, rituals, and ethical practices intellectually," Armstrong says. "You have to feel them too and make an imaginative, though disciplined, identification." (p. 290. As one might expect from the breadth of her writings, Armstrong draws from the wells of myriad religious traditions, identifying what this reviewer believes to be the enduring truth, the thread that unities all genuine religious searching. She learns from her own varied experiences, grows from adversity (e.g. a failed PhD thesis; years of undiagnosed epilepsy; and, of course, her much-noted years as a Catholic religious) and confronts both herself and her culture with unfailing honesty. Although Armstrong is far from the end of her journey (one hopes), she has adopted a theology of orthopraxy, which draws her into authentic living, honoring and accepting both weaknesses and strengths. Armstrong attempts to ground her life in the conviction that "compassion is a habit of mind that is transforming. . . You have to be prepared to extend your compassionate interests where there is no hope of a return." This reviewer is particularly delighted by her conclusion, based on her exhaustive research of Christianity, Islam and Judaism, that "fundamentalist movements distort the tradition they are trying to defend by emphasizing the belligerent elements in their tradition and overlooking the insistent and crucial demand for compassion." (p. 295) These points and many others, emerge in the theological commentary that forms the final chapter in this book. This chapter alone could form the basis for several month's active discussion. If you read no other spiritual or religious work this year -- make it this chapter. But be warned -- Armstrong's honest exploration can be dangerous to your complacency!
|
|
|
219 of 240 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
She makes you believe a religious life is worth the effort, March 15, 2004
Karen Armstrong's first memoir, Through the Narrow Gate, ended not long after she acted upon her decision to leave the convent where, after seven years, she had become a skeptical nun. The Spiral Staircase pick up her intellectual and religious questing and brings her devoted readers up to date on the result of her explorations into the nature of God and his/her/? place in our world and lives.
Armstrong garnered many degrees and awards as she pursued a solitary, scholarly life. While she still harbors bitter feelings about how she was treated (and NOT treated, for her epilepsy) within the convent, her life since she left the cloister has been devoted to a style of intellectual live that bears some deep similarity to the routines followed in religious orders - and the irony of this similarity does not escape her. On her lifelong quest, she found herself straying far from orthodox Christianity, delving into the teachings of both Buddhism and Islam - and she has written books on both subjects.
Here's the interesting thing: Lots of modern authors who write memoirs focus with near obsession on their illnesses, disabilities, eating disorders, depression, etc. Armstrong discusses all these issues, too, but while other memorists build them up, Armstrong seems to want to minimize them. What interests her are things she is capable of, not those she is incapable of, and her book's impact is all the richer for her minimalist approach.
This intensely personal book is also an exceedingly solitary book. The only relationship that seems to matter for Karen Armstrong is her relationship with God, a being who, in her view, probably does not exist.
This doesn't stop her from ultimately deciding (with characteristic pragmatism and without retreating from her skepticism), that leading a religious life is worth it, because "Faith is not about belief but about practice...The laws of religion are true because they are life-enhancing."
That's good enough for me.
|
|
|
Most Recent Customer Reviews
|
by Karen Armstrong
by Karen Armstrong
