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The Spiral Staircase: My Climb Out of Darkness (平装)
by Karen Armstrong
| Category:
Religion, Spirituality, Memoir |
| Market price: ¥ 158.00
MSL price:
¥ 148.00
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| Stock:
In Stock |
MSL rating:
 Good for Gifts |
| MSL Pointer Review:
An enduring spiritual classic, this book is an intensely personal story about one person's journey in search of God. |
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AllReviews |
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Booklist (MSL quote), USA
<2006-12-30 00:00>
Remarkable… Unflinching… This candid memoir will clarify thinking about the search for the sacred. |
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The Times (MSL quote), USA
<2006-12-30 00:00>
Armstrong writes with sensitivity and wisdom… She employs a breadth of learning that reflects the scintillating, shifting light and shade of human experience. |
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San Francisco Chronicle (MSL quote), USA
<2006-12-30 00:00>
The story of the making of a writer… It manages to dramatize the writer's process of intellectual development and to find in it genuine interest, and, indeed, suspense… As an account of the intellectual journey of an intelligent and unique individual, the book is often gripping. |
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The New York Times Book Review (MSL quote), USA
<2006-12-30 00:00>
In… Armstrong's memoir there lurks wisdom about the making and remaking of a life… from which all of us could learn. |
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The Washington Post Book World (MSL quote), USA
<2006-12-30 00:00>
A story about becoming human, being recognized, finally recognizing oneself… It fills the reader with hope. |
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Bryce Christensen (Booklist) (MSL quote), USA
<2006-12-30 00:00>
Only a remarkable life course could transform a devout nun into a sophisticated iconoclast. Armstrong here recounts precisely such a journey with an unflinching honesty that exposes unanticipated ironies in her personal metamorphosis. Thus the embittered nun who repudiated religion when she abandoned the convent now wryly contemplates her professional status as a writer passionately attracted to religion and personally devoted to a regimen of silent reflection strikingly similar to that of religious orders. To be sure, Armstrong maintains her distance from Christian orthodoxy and still recalls her convent years as deeply painful. But taking her title metaphor from poet T. S. Eliot, Armstrong views all of the wrenching reversals of her life - including not only the spiritual trauma of renouncing religious vows but also the psychological distress of dealing with misdiagnosed epilepsy and the academic disappointment of failing to win her doctorate - as parts of a coherent pattern of gradual enlightenment. Though that enlightenment has left Armstrong far from orthodoxy, it has awakened in her a new appreciation for the moral teachings of Jesus and - much to her surprise - even a profound sympathy for St. Paul. This enlightenment has also led Armstrong to explore the spiritual riches of Islam and Buddhism, so deepening her awareness of interfaith parallels. Even among readers who embrace doctrines Armstrong dismisses (such as the reality of a personal God), this candid memoir will clarify thinking about the search for the sacred. |
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C. Doyle (MSL quote), USA
<2006-12-30 00:00>
When I was a young boy, I would sometimes tell my parents that I wanted to be a priest when I grew up, to which they were surprised and honored to have a son who wanted to spend his life so close to God. By the time I was seventeen, however, I had traveled far from that goal. I went through adolescent rebellion, as many teens do, however I became angry with, not "God," but rather the establishment that was erected in God's name- the Catholic Church. I went to mass, and couldn't help noticing how boring it was, and concluded that Jesus would not want me to experience boredom while his message was taught. Based on this attitude, I started to notice many other things in Catholicism, including blasphemy, control, power, and other general corruption that was contrary to Gospel. After having been through Catholic school for 12 years, I now realize that my feelings, although true in some ways, were not important. The role of the RC Church in the world is not to control, to intimidate, to scare, or to hijack Jesus for their own selfish motives, but rather it was to guide people into coming closer to God on a personal level. After the death of John Paul II, and seeing the extent to which he influenced so many across the globe, I realized that this greedy establishment I had grown to hate, was in reality a family of (mostly) good people, coming together to come together, to be together, in the presence of the divine in themselves and all around them. No, it does not take an actual church to do this, but for some people, it represented a type of brotherhood of fulfillment and faith in what Jesus was all about: Love. This is the purpose of religion.
In Karen Armstrong's The Spiral Staircase, Karen goes from an eager, excited seventeen year-old girl, to a nun, to a frustrated (but patient) nun, to a depressed nun, to a layperson, to an epileptic, to an outcast, to an atheist, to a researcher, to an author, to a theologian, etc, etc... Yes, she has been through a lot. She vividly describes the pain and anguish she felt during her convent years, the years of frustrating psychiatric therapy (which never did diagnose her epilepsy), and basically feeling that she had been wandering her whole life, at least since entering the convent as a teenager. She ends up leaving with a subconscious animosity towards God and all religion, and, upon encountering the anti-religious England she had never known before, found her feelings surfacing, and culminating, to a point where she stops believing all together, dismissing it all as "bonkers." On the advice of a friend, Karen began to write about her journey, and after more and more writing, found herself immersed into the vast array of the world's religions. She unknowingly started back on the path towards God.
What I found interesting was that instead of turning away from God at seventeen (as many adolescents such as myself do), and later turning back, Karen turned towards God and religion as an adolescent, and later turned away. Because of this, for most of her adulthood, it was hard for her to even think about religion without becoming angry. She felt that it was a prison that held humanity in a mental cage, built of lies, corruption, and covered in blood. Only after experiencing "the experience" of Jerusalem, and spending hours and hours researching such people as Mohammed, Buddha, Jesus, several saints, apostles, and mystics, she realized how deep it really went. Eventually, she "grew to love" what she studied, and made it her life's work to bring them, and their common messages, to others. In a way, trying to make sense of her hatred for God, actually led her to dismiss it, and to "turn again" on the same "stairway" that she had been on when she was seventeen.
I've never actually read anything of Karen's before, but I have noticed her for a while in the "Religion" section of the local bookstore. Perhaps I wanted to know about why she had written such a variation, as opposed to many religious authors, who mostly write on one particular religion. Now I know, and when you finish this one, you will too. It is a great story of growth in the midst of sickness and confusion, in regret and frustration. Little by little, Karen had been climbing the "Spiral Staircase" without even knowing it. In the end, she makes peace with God, whether real or not, and finds, in the incredible, inspirational messages of history's religious "artists," a common ground within herself that she never knew was there. If you've ever struggled and wondered if God exists, if you ever get angry with religion, or feel that either you have a spirit that is cursed or don't have one at all, then you will relate to Karen's climb. If you want to see an example of why people believe in God, or don't believe in God, this is the book for you. If you get the feeling that you're on your own spiral staircase, encountering the same pain over and over, and if you feel like you're on it all alone, then yes, I would recommend this book to you... |
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M. Nichols (MSL quote), USA
<2006-12-30 00:00>
Having read and enjoyed a couple of Karen Armstrong's other books, I was curious to read her life story. I read this one before Through The Narrow Gate mostly because I was more curious about her recent life. This book starts with the years immediately following Armstrong's exit from a convent. She moves to Oxford, gets one degree (and does her best to do a second), lives with an unconventional family, and eventually finds her way into a career as writer and religious commentator. Throughout she is struggling with her faith and with a serious, undiagnosed illness.
I wouldn't say Armstrong's life is the most interesting I've ever read. She seems like an almost typical example of the clash between religious beliefs and intellectualism. Initially it is the world of books and literature that comfort her in a way her faith cannot. She sees parallels between the two: "As soon as I had stopped trying to use it (literature) to advance my career, it began to speak to me again. Now I was having exactly the same experience with theology." Eventually religious texts begin to speak to her in new ways, and by the end she has found a type of spirituality more profound than what she found in the convent. As her readers know, she uses this insight to explore the Abrahamic faiths (and Buddhism) in subsequent books.
Is this compelling? For me, not really. It is well written and an easy read but didn't grab me the way a lot of memoirs do. The ending in particular seems overly optimistic, a far too sunny epitaph to a stormy life. |
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Dennis Mitton (MSL quote), USA
<2006-12-30 00:00>
Read this book for the prose even if the topic doesn't interest you! But it's my guess that you'll be captivated by the end of the first ten or so pages. It's interesting to juxtapose this book against Frey's "A Million Little Pieces" that is currently under intense debate. There are no drug addicts here or secret sex romps or death threats or even wide-eyed dental procedures - but I found the book to be just as compelling.
Armstrong's retelling of her years as a nun will make most modern readers squirm. The discipline and poverty of spirit required by her vows are completely foreign to most of us. And in many cases, I think, should be. It's interesting to see that she came to view her subsequent years at Oxford in a similar, though self-imposed, light. Interesting, too, is her battle with her unknown illness. She became increasingly convinced that she was unhinged until learning the `happy' news that she was merely epileptic. Finally she relates her introduction into comparative theology, film, and finally, to publishing. She infuses all of this with a deep humanity and longing and writes in a way that makes you feel with her the pain of her growing agnosticism. I think that anyone who has come to question and then doubt their beliefs will find this a gripping story. |
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An American reader (MSL quote), USA
<2006-12-30 00:00>
Karen Armstrong has written & crafted a wondrous odyssey of an individual finding herself while undergoing breakdowns of a spiritual, physical, & emotional basis. Scholarly, witty, and written in a masterful prose style, the book ends with a plea for fairness and compassion.
Ay, there's the rub, for the author refuses to exhibit this fairness and compassion to Christianity in general and Catholicism in particular. While this is understandable based on her negative experience as a nun, it can hardly be acceptable on a scholarly and objective basis.
Thus, whereas Ms. Armstrong is scholarly and objective towards Judaism and, in particular, Islam, she does not exhibit these characteristics to Christianity. The examples: A)- she forever refers to the Bible as filled with myths, but accepts the Koran at face value; B)- she castigates and condemns all of Christianity for the Crusades and the Holocaust, but she doesn't mention a word about the Islamic Crusaders who ravaged Europe centuries ago; C)- worst of all, while she expresses disappointment about the 9/11 attacks, she says absolutely nothing about other terrorist activities, including the suicide bombers; she then further asserts that the 9/11 terrorists were really only marginal Muslims and that the vast majority of Muslims are kind, gentle, and peace-loving (for some reason, she does not attribute these qualities to Christians or Jews).
Finally, Ms Armstrong has the unmitigated chutzpah to suggest that 9/11 is 'karma' for us in the West, where "our deeds have consequences". l hope that someone will remind her that 'karma' applies equally to terrorists and their adherents.
(A negative review. MSL remarks.)
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