Through The Narrow Gate

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Summary: An insider's look at a cloistered life
Review: ....cloistered in a psychological as well as a physical sense.
Karen Armstrong, a woman of prodigious intellect and talent, a woman who has written seminal books on the subject of religion, goes inside her own personal experience as a cloistered nun in Through the Narrow Gate.
It's not a particularly pretty picture, this story of her seven years immersed in a life full of bleakness, medical neglect, sexual frustration, and mindless negation of intellect. For someone of Armstrong's mind-set, that last privation must have been hardest to bear. Outside the walls of the cloister, meanwhile, the chaos of the 60s was raging, making the life within more inexplicable - and ultimately, irrelevant.
There is one bright, kind, and encouraging Mother Superior, however, who provides the necessary window of light, a person who provides Armstrong with both a reason to stay and a reason to leave the convent.
It's a blessing for us that she did leave and go on to live her life as a scholar, teacher and author. It's almost an equal blessing, however, that she endured those 7 years and writes about it so poitnantly; it makes her presence in the world all the more valuable.

Rating:
Summary: Revealing, honest memoir
Review: A beautifully narrated walk through the years of formation of a Catholic nun during the turbulent sixties. Armstrong's voice is unabashed and pure. Reading of her quest for God gives one pause to ponder the difference between knowing God and knowing what we want God to be. An alarming book in its revelation of the Marine-like cruelty of some religious orders before Vatican II. A must read for anyone who is questioning the makings of their spirituality.

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Summary: Armstrong's painstaking class act..
Review: A distinctive memoir of life-altering decisions is made utterly interesting by the author's painstaking class act as a writer. All the verve and clear insights of 'A History of God' are here under a more intimate patina. Karen Armstrong's patient English temperament can almost drive you to distraction as she seeks the calling God, but reward for your own patience is found on nearly every page. Surprising is Armstrong's regularly vivid self-criticism, and it's interesting she possesses a post-Christian understanding true enough to keep her at all times from recrimination, toward both the Church and her own decisions. It's a mark of post-cloister spiritual maturity that colors the whole book & makes it a satisfying read on many levels. Armstrong's intelligent economy of thought and language combine with sharp insight and simple English forthrightness to make a winner. You wont be disappointed with Narrow Gate.

Rating:
Summary: Armstrong's painstaking class act..
Review: A distinctive memoir of life-altering decisions is made utterly interesting by the author's painstaking class act as a writer. All the verve and clear insights of 'A History of God' are here under a more intimate patina. Karen Armstrong's patient English temperament can almost drive you to distraction as she seeks the calling God, but reward for your own patience is found on nearly every page. Surprising is Armstrong's regularly vivid self-criticism, and it's interesting she possesses a post-Christian understanding true enough to keep her at all times from recrimination, toward both the Church and her own decisions. It's a mark of post-cloister spiritual maturity that colors the whole book & makes it a satisfying read on many levels. Armstrong's intelligent economy of thought and language combine with sharp insight and simple English forthrightness to make a winner. You wont be disappointed with Narrow Gate.

Rating:
Summary: An Intense Story of A Young Woman's Spiritual Struggle
Review: Amazing detail about internal sturggles; the book manages to be both compassionate and honest at the same time, especially when discussing some of the cruelty she suffered under her superiors, especially Mother Walter. Mother Walter is a particularly chilling figure.

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Summary: thank you, karen
Review: Behind the walls of the cloister, religious life goes on, hidden, and it is difficult for the lay person or anyone who has never attempted religious life to understand or imagine its character. For this reason, Karen Armstrong's Through the Narrow Gate (1981) provides an uncommon, precious look into religious life not simply in its externals but more importantly from the perspective of the individual psyche of the member of the religious community.

Several aspects of the book commend it for its insights into religious life.

First, the inner religious motivation of the individual is acknowledged so that a transcendent reality is even indicated: "As I looked at the tabernacle, which contained the Real Presence of Christ, I felt a pull toward Him that was almost physical in its intensity" (p. 38).

Second, the strictures that paradoxically both sustain and undermine religious life are highlighted. For example, there is the obligation of unthinking obedience: "One of the things that had to die was my mind....But the mind dies hard. To think and judge is a reflex. How do you ever manage to embrace the absurd?" (p. 163). There is also the injunction against preferential human affection, "particular friendship," so that in some cases the natural emotional life is distorted: "What a fuss! They celebrate when one of the sisters dies, but look at the emotion produced when something happens to a cat! There was something wrong here" (p. 226). In grappling with the many apparent contradictions, the author accounts for the inner struggles that eventually lead her to decide in conscience to leave religious life, and in the process, without condemnation, she raises troubling questions that institutions of religious life would do well to ponder.

Finally, at the moment of truth, the author continues to affirm the validity of the total commitment of the religious to a transcendent reality: "I did want things other than God's love. I wanted human closeness, beauty, freedom of mind....God's love should have been enough" (p. 260).

The whole book, then, affirms the genuine inspiration of religious life, while at the same time upholding the painful decision of the author, who comes across as a person of integrity, to pursue the spiritual quest elsewhere.

The most poignant moment in the book for me is when the author is counseled with words of memorable kindness to separate from the community: "We'll miss you, dear. You yourself. But you must find your own peace. God bless you" (p. 258).

I would agree with Kirkus Reviews, "An emotive, spiritually intimate, and often quite moving memoir...written with affection, some humor, and a bittersweet regret."

Thank you, Karen, for leading us to this refreshing pool wherein we may all find our own reflection.

Rating:
Summary: Revealing, honest, respectful
Review: Detailing step by step how she reached the decision to enter a convent, the process noviceship, postulantship, the trials and joys of being a nun, and her gradual realization that her spiritual quest lay outside the walls of the convent, Karen Armstrong's autobiography is rich with detail, honest, and reflective. She avoids painting the church and its adminstration as demons, yet vividly describes the search for the personal annihilation her superiors demanded of her with unabashed candor. A truly fascinating read; it is a tragedy that the sequel, _Beginning the World_, is out of print.

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Summary: Hooked by A Nun Who Writes mit glorious adverbs!
Review: I admit that I was really hooked when I got to Chap 3, page 62, when each of her fellow postulants began telling how they felt about their motives for being there. Best Example: "Marie, What brings you here?" (as though we'd met accidentally at a street corner.) Marie's answer, "It's such a beautiful life." Her black eyes which usually glinted in her face like shiny currants, misted over dreamily!" On the same page comes, "I smiled vaguely ... I nodded at her sympathetically...I told myself urgently!" On one page as in other places, Sister Karen uses 10 adverbs!

Again in Chap 6, "A Nun Takes the Veil..." Karen had the joyous task of ringing the Convent Bell... When she tries to get Mother Albert to hear her problem, as Mother is rushing down the hall "impatiently, shaking her heard "crossly and says, "I can't stop now, Sister," She said firmly. "I'm terribly busy!" When Sister Karen gets the words out, "I've broken the bell." Mother Albert was laughing helplessly, "You would, wouldn't you?"

Sister Karen not only lightened up in these early chapters but she gave far more seriously disappointing times that same touch of humor...even tho she was upbraided and reprimanded by Mother Albert. In her quandaries she comes forth with adverbs like "rebelliously." At her sewing machine with no neddle, "She knelt before the Mother and said, huskily." Next her feet treadled "busily" As she repeated, "mechanically, I cannot possibly spend my time more fruitfully!" Enough to show that it all seemed to become delightfully humorous, even tho she was surely thwarted and starved intellectually and many other ways!

Hooray for such a wonderful set-up to become an internationally famous OT Professor and an awesomely ingenius writer!
Retired Chap Fred W Hood

Rating:
Summary: Well done autobiography
Review: I enjoy Armstrong's books generally, and I thought this one would be interesting, since I entered a convent during the same period. But our experiences were entirely different. I hope no one thinks all orders were like hers! I guess I must have been in a house entirely populated by nuns like Armstrong's saintly and brilliant Mother Bianca! I did not stay either, but am honest enough with myself to see that 1) I hadn't a vocation, and 2) everything I did was my own choice. Why would anyone stay in a place with a Mother Walter? And why would her order put someone like that in charge? I would be interested in hearing that nun's rebuttal. Having said all that, I did enjoy the book. Armstrong is simply one of the best writers on religious subjects. I am sorry she has no faith herself any longer.

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Summary: Mixed emotions
Review: I enjoyed this book for it's view into the cloistered life of a nun- pre-Vatican II era, but the problems I perceived from the author's vocation seems to have resulted more from personality conflicts and clashes than anything. I couldn't relate effectively to her plight and wondered why she stayed as long as she did. I was also bewildered by her declaration that she didn't believe in the resurrection of Christ. I'm still scratching my head over that one since she obviously believed in the virgin birth (which requires alot of faith as well) and the divinity of Christ or else why the heck was she there in the first place??? I think there was more going on in her head when she decided to leave the convent than she leads us to believe, especially considering her more recent books like The History of God. I think maybe one of the mother superiors in her book had it nailed when she said that karen had a problem with intellectual pride.