Karen Armstrong’s memoir, The Spiral Staircase, is an inspiring story of her continual spiritual searching, first through the convent, which she entered at seventeen, then through intellectual study and writing, and finally as she writes about and explores not only the Christian religious tradition, but other religious traditions as well - particularly the Abrahamic traditions of Judaism, Islam, and Christianity.
Ms. Armstrong leaves the convent after seven difficult years of beating herself up, as well as being beaten up, spiritually, intellectually, and emotionally. She goes there seeking to find intimacy and connection with God, but for her, in that place, it just doesn’t happen as the convent’s structure lays out for her how it should happen. Upon leaving the convent, Ms. Armstrong then has to face the outside world, a world which she had been isolated from, all while facing the reality of her loss of faith and eventual dismissal of God’s existence. Karen discovers over these years that she has epilepsy, which for her finally explained a lot of what was happening to her in her convent years and beyond as she found herself having black outs about how she had come to be places, passing out, and having dizzy spells.
It was only when she began to explore comparative religions that she became open to a genuine return to spirituality that always seemed to be there just below the surface. The spirituality she finds later, which is not a return to the orthodoxy, dogmas and doctrines of her early years, is bathed more in compassion. She writes:
Compassion has been advocated by all the great faiths because it has been found to be the safest and surest means of attaining enlightenment. It dethrones the ego from the center of our lives and puts others there, breaking down the carapace of selfishness that holds us back from an experience of the sacred. (p. 296)
As a Christian who does believe in the existence of God, I found myself being pulled deeper and deeper into her stuggle because she was asking many of the same questions that even I ask, but my conclusions, to this point, have not brought me to denying God’s existence. As I read, I found myself routing for her. I kept thinking, there’s going to be a “turning” at some point. How inspirational can her story be without a “turning back.” Then I came to chapter eight called, “To Turn Again.” I thought, “Okay, here we go. She’s going to come back to faith. The stars will all line up. She’ll become the Christian that I expect her to become. And all will be right with the world.” However, that’s not what I got. And I am pleased that she did not say what I had expected her to say.
In the end, Ms. Armstrong comes to a renewed understanding of her spirituality that moves away from what one might call “right belief,” or orthodoxy, and discovers that it is more truly in the practicing of a faith that one might feel more intimate and deeply connected with God. She writes:
The one and only test of a valid religious idea, doctrinal statement, spiritual experience, or devotional practice was that it must lead directly to practical compassion. If your understanding of the divine made you kinder, more empathetic, and impelled you to express this sympathy in concrete acts of loving-kindness, this was good theology. But if your notion of God made you unkind, belligerent, cruel, or self-righteous, or if it led you to kill in God’s name, it was bad theology (p. 293).
The faith and spiritual life we have must manifest itself in practical expression in our lives. This is not something that is unbiblical. It is something Jesus teaches and that finds expression in Ms. Armstrong’s own story. Although she does not come back around to the kind of faith and spirituality many orthodox Christians might want from her, primarily because much of what we Christians expect is based on orthodox belief, Karen Armstrong says much to Christians that we need to hear. She offers a great challenge to an apathetic faith that suggest that if we just say the right things then we are somehow in God’s graces. She acknowledges the great value of spiritual disciplines that when continually made part of our lives helps us to more closely live in more intimate relationship with our God and in more compassionate relationship with one another.
I encourage everyone to read her story for themselves but I would warn Christians who think they have it all figured out and have God packaged neatly in a box – this may not be the book for you – or maybe it’s the perfect book for you.
