Карен Армстронг – Through the Narrow Gate: A Nun’s Story (страница 1)
KAREN ARMSTRONG
A Nun’s Story
William Collins
An imprint of HarperCollins
First published in Great Britain by Macmillan in 1981
Copyright © Karen Armstrong 1981, 1995
Karen Armstrong asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
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HarperCollins
Source ISBN: 9780006550549
Ebook Edition © JANUARY 2014 ISBN: 9780007382880
Version: 2016-02-22
CONTENTS
Writing
In fact, the process of writing redeemed the past for me, in ways that I could not have imagined. I have written several books since, but none has proved as difficult as
The first draft of the book was very black and angry. June read it, said that it was probably publishable but that she couldn’t help wondering why, if things had been that bad, I had stayed in the religious life for seven whole years. I could see that she had a point, and I started all over again. During the next two drafts, I began to remember the things that had made me stay so long—things that I no longer wanted to recall because I thought that I had lost them forever: the beauty of the liturgy, the belief that every single moment of the day had eternal significance, and, above all, the sense of a spiritual quest for meaning that would make my life wholly significant. I had gone into the convent searching for Something that remained tantalizingly elusive but that, with the optimism of youth, I felt certain I would one day find.
I did not find that Something (which, for want of a better word, we call “God”) in the convent. These pages explain why. The 1960s were a difficult time for religious orders, and I must have been one of the last people to be trained before the Second Vatican Council reforms were implemented. At that time, it had unfortunately become customary to train young nuns by making them excruciatingly aware of their failings. This meant that most of us lived in a state of such acute anxiety and preoccupation with ourselves that a positive religious experience could become well nigh impossible. After all, the great masters of the spiritual life insist that the true spiritual path leads us away from the ego. Guilt and an undue concentration on one’s own performance can only further embed the struggling soul in the self that it is trying to transcend. There were certainly nuns in my order who were well aware of this problem, but as a mere teenager I lacked the maturity or the confidence to see the particular obsessions of my superiors in a larger perspective.
When I wrote
At first my new involvement in religion remained on an intellectual, critical level. But as I went deeper into the history of religion, I began to experience that sense of being on a quest that had impelled me to become a nun and had kept me in the convent for all those years. It was different, of course, because I was an older and—I hope—wiser person this time around. Though particularly drawn to the study of mysticism, I knew from my attempts at meditation in the convent that I did not have it in me to be a mystic. Yet occasionally, when I am studying—either at my desk at home or in the British Library—I have what can only be described as a glimmer of transcendence. It only lasts a fraction of a second, but it gives one the sense that life has some ultimate meaning and value for that brief moment, in much the same way as a great piece of music or an inspiring poem. There is no way of categorizing that Something any more than it is possible to explain why art or music has this power; it cannot be summed up in a message or doctrine. But I now know enough to realize that what I am engaged in is what the Benedictine monks call
When I spoke of this experience to some of my colleagues at the Leo Baeck College in London, where I do a little teaching, they laughed and told me that I was very Jewish in my spirituality. Jews, they explained, immerse themselves in the Bible and the Talmud not simply to gain information; they see the text as a place where they can encounter the ineffable God. Sometimes they like to speak the Hebrew words aloud, savoring the words that God himself used when he revealed himself to Moses on Mount Sinai, until they have learned them “by heart” (a revealing phrase). They sometimes sway backwards and forwards while they recite the Hebrew words, as though they were blown by the breath of the Holy Spirit, pliable before God as a flame before a breeze. Occasionally, they get a sense of Something greater that lies behind and within the words but defies explanation.
I am not claiming any great visionary experience, yet occasionally while studying theology, I too feel uplifted by a second of wonder and delight that momentarily illuminates the whole page. This type of spirituality would, it seems, have suited me better than the kind of meditation we learned in the convent. Everybody comes to the divine in his or her own way, and it seems that my writing and broadcasting career, which has often been critical of certain aspects of religion, has led me back to some form of religious life.