Rating: Summary: worth reading again and again Review: I read this book in a week, picking it up every spare moment I had. In dealing with her convent life and how it affected her once she left, she helped me understand better how the pre-Vatican church has continued to influence me. In speaking of the disappointments in her life, she helped me get a better grasp on how I have let the disappointments in my life affect me. Her courage to move on, take risks, and share her life is admitrable. In the last chapter, she puts together all she has learned, her struggles with God and apart from God, and the course of her life to sum up the essentials of religious/spiritual faith -- through compassion we empty ourselves and enable ourselves to be open to how God comes into our lives. Her conclusions will likely anger anyone who is convinced they have a corner on the truth, and will open the eyes of the many people who are sincerely seeking to understand their own lives. Her life story shows how she finally learned to be compassionate with herself and then with others. She deserves great praise for her honesty, lack of self-pity, and lucid writing.
Rating: Summary: An Important Autobiography Review: 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."
Rating: Summary: An Important Autobiography Review: 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."
Rating: Summary: Honest, Insightful, Uplifting... Review: I was entirely unfamiliar with Ms. Armstrong until I heard an interview with her recently on NPR's 'Speaking of Faith'. Her intelligence and ability to articulate precisely what she wanted to convey led me to purchase this book. What a poignant and brutally honest memoir this is. Armstrong's striking self-awareness is amazing and inspiring given her early experience in a convent and her undiagnosed epilepsy, which contributed to her failure at several endeavors following her re-entry into secular life. As a person who has struggled with clinical depression for most of my 41 years, and having been raised as a Roman Catholic myself, her story resonates strongly with me and is a hopeful beacon. Ms. Armstrong writes with clarity and conviction - having heard her speak (on the radio), I can only say that meeting her in person would be a great treat. As she has stated, T.S. Eliot's poem series 'Ash Wednesday' is the 'spine' of this book - by which she means that its structure and message mirror the book's and her own journey. A fascinating and enlightening book that I recommend highly.
Rating: Summary: A keeper, don't wait for the paper. Review: If you have trouble believing in God, this may be the book for you. Especially if you find Sunday School depictions a bit off-putting. Possibly for the first time, Miss Armstrong reveals how she lost faith and then found it in a new and better form. Her insights are both bold and unavoidable. Her journey, from feeling isolated and resigned, to a confident and articulate advocate is remarkable.
Rating: Summary: Truth and Spiritual Awakening Review: Karen Armstrong brings to light her deep journey to know and understand God, often pained by illness, her desire to remain loyal to her faith, and the decisions she made when she was just 17 and how she accounts for her spiritual unfolding through the years that followed. As a result of her spiritual awakening, she embraces other spiritual paths, and has the courage to be true to herself, which is why this book is such a fascinating and compelling read. Filled with poignant stories gilded with the golden threads of her deep search within, we are gifted to have a book based on truth, without any other agenda. A fascinating read! Barbara Rose, author 'If God Was Like Man'
Rating: Summary: The story of how a nun dismantled the prison she had made Review: Karen Armstrong has given us a candid and engaging memoir. Her love, then hate, then finally acceptance of the Catholic Church and Christianity, is omnipresent throughout the book.
"I wanted to find God" Armstrong states. And so with unflinching honesty, she wrote this memoir about her search through the labyrinths of religions. Her title (from T.S. Eliot poem `Ash Wednesday) describes her climb out of despair, regrets, setbacks, medical misdiagnoses, academic failures and religion, and how she slowly, painfully, emerges from her darkness to find international success as a writer about religions.
For Karen, "Religion is not about accepting 20 impossible propositions before breakfast, but about doing things that change you" and by the end of the book, she concludes, that ultimately, God maybe `Nothing': "Perhaps in our broken world we can only envisions an absent God. Maybe the only revelation we can hope for now is an experience of absence and emptiness. The best theologians and teachers have never been afraid to admit that in the last resort, there may be `Nothing' out there."
Throughout the book she doesn't let you forget that she was a nun, damaged by the system, yet because of friends, mentors and a commitment to her spiritual quest, she prevails. Karen Armstrong has a soul-mate with Elaine Pagels [Beyond Belief] and the legions of others who struggle with the dogmas of Christianity and other religions. Highly recommended. 4.5 stars.
Rating: Summary: Painful jouney toward the light Review: Karen Armstrong has produced a series of thoughtful and intelligent books about the major religions, and seeking the divine, which I read without knowing much about her. I found her Through the Narrow Gate which was a narative about her seven years in a convent to be alternately enlightening and horrifying about how she was treated as an adolescent and then a young woman hpoing to become a nun. The Spiral Staircase describes what happened next and it continues to show both how sensitive and how cruel we human can act toward one another. The author moved from the cloister to the world of academia and then to teaching treasuring the moments of unexpected grace and surviving the insults of narrow minded tormentors. All the while she had undiagnosed temporal lobe epilepsy. Psychiatric (mis)treatment seems to be the only part of her life in which she found no redeeming features. With the publication of Through the Narrow Gate, Ms. Armstrong became engaged in activites designed to show the exploititve side of religion. When she became medically stable and through academic exploration of her unbelief she found herself slowing climbing the spiral staircase toward the re-experince of the holy. This is a fascinating account of one person' spiritual journey.
Rating: Summary: A stunning book! Review: Karen Armstrong in her autobiography "Spiral Staircase" examines her own life with a maturity and honesty that is breathtaking. She begins with her time in a Benedictine monastery in England and continues with her leaving the monastery in 1969, her re-entry into the modern world and her choices and their consequences. This incredibly strong woman had so many set backs that she describes with a startling depth of insight. She is afraid of no corner of her own motivation and recounts it all with a sense of humor that suprises the reader in the midst of grief and sadness. Writers will want to memorize her last chapter "To Turn Again" in which she describes her own process of writing. This book is a treat that you will not be able to put down!
Rating: Summary: A stunning book! Review: Karen Armstrong in her autobiography "Spiral Staircase" examines her own life with a maturity and honesty that is breathtaking. She begins with her time in a Benedictine monastery in England and continues with her leaving the monastery in 1969, her re-entry into the modern world and her choices and their consequences. This incredibly strong woman had so many set backs that she describes with a startling depth of insight. She is afraid of no corner of her own motivation and recounts it all with a sense of humor that suprises the reader in the midst of grief and sadness. Writers will want to memorize her last chapter "To Turn Again" in which she describes her own process of writing. This book is a treat that you will not be able to put down!
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