The Spiral Staircase |
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24 January 2024 - Adetswil
Karen Armstrong is an ex-nun who's written a number of books about religion. As someone who was a fervent Christian in my teens and then rejected religion while remaining interested in it, I can relate to Armstrong's perspective in her very personal memoir, The Spiral Staircase. Indeed, my latest deep dive has been into Japanese, which has me writing kanji every day and reading about Shinto. Armstrong has focused on Christianity and its close neighbors Judaism and Islam, but also written a book on Buddha. But before becoming a world renowned writer Armstrong was just a woman bouncing around between professions trying to find her place in the secular world. She is halfway through an undergraduate degree in English when she leaves the convent and first decides to pursue an academic career. When she fails her doctoral exam that plan is derailed and she ends up teaching high school English. Her memoir is also a struggle with mental health, as she goes from doctor to doctor getting little help and descending further into epilepsy. Mirroring her own mental health problems she lives with and partially takes care of a young autistic boy to make ends meet. Eventually her illness causes her to lose her teaching job, but she finds a doctor who gets her on medication that keeps her epilepsy at bay. At the same time her first book also comes out about her time as a nun and her leaving the church. The book is a success and leads to a career in television, first writing and shooting a series about Paul with an Israeli company. She makes some other successful appearances on TV, but her next series about the crusades falls into limbo repeatedly before getting cancelled. The book she wrote to accompany it is also a flop. But she keeps writing. Eventually she finds literary success again writing about religion and comes to peace with her relationship with it. She subscribes to the idea that the practice of religion is what's important and transformative, not any particular set of beliefs. In fact she sees beliefs as limiting and generally disapproves of rationality. Leave it to an English major to reject belief as dangerous and not see scientific rationality as a improvement that lifted humanity into the modern world where life is long and comfortable. Still, I walked the Camino de Santiago de Compostela across Spain and found it to be a very rewarding experience. And I do yoga regularly. I think of these activities as physical rather than spiritual though - taking care of the body the mind inhabits. Despite our differences I found her book a worthwhile read.
