|
|
 |
| Product |
| The Spiral Staircase : My Climb Out of Darkness |
|
|
Never Give Up
Karen Armstrongs book is both an autobiography and a very intimate record of a remarkable spiritual journey.Like many other pilgrims her quest takes her through several stages of development as she survives such personal catastrophes as a debilitating illness and a succession of failures in a Roman Catholic convent, a doctoral program at Oxford and even in secondary school teaching. Above all THE SPIRAL STAIRCASE contains a message of hope as it describes how one intrepid wayfarer can endure continual hardships and setbacks.Armstrong has a scholarly background and she certainly is a gifted writer but her academic training is in neither theology nor biblical studies. She is really an amateur in those fields and consequently approaches her subject with refreshing eagerness. Much of what she knows seems to be the result of her research for A HISTORY OF GOD and her other books. The most interesting part of THE SPIRAL STAIRCASE for me appears toward the end of the text when she gives a glimpse into her present state of mind regarding God and religion. In discussing the three Abrahamic traditions she tends to emphasize their similarities instead of their differences. I highly recommend THE SPIRAL STAIRCASE to anyone who feels drawn to the lure of the pilgrimmage. Religious fundamentalists, however, will probably not enjoy this book.
|
A former nuns story
This is the story of a woman who left the religious life at the end of the 1960s and how she coped with life in the secular world. Karen Armstrong entered the convent in 1962 at the age of 17 and left seven years later at the end of the Swinging Sixties. Armstrong wrote an account of her convent years called Through the Narrow Gate, and The Spiral Staircase begins as Karen leaves the convent to resume her studies at Oxford. She was hampered by what she felt was the conditioning she had undergone in the convent, where she was seen as a hopeless hysteric who dramatised every problem. She was left with feelings of worthlessness and failure that it took many years to overcome. She was also suffering from the misdiagnosis of physical symptoms that only increased her feelings of isolation in the modern world. This is a fascinating account of the journey of a woman to find her own inner peace after many years of struggle to find her own place in the world.
|
| |
|
Up the Down Staircase
|
This book is amazing! Bel Kaufman shows the problems of inner-city schools and the teachers who work there, while keeping with the light of subtle humor. It is easy to read, in that the format leaves room for breaks (the chapters are short). I would recommend this book to anyone, whether you are a t..
|
|
|
|
Up the Down Staircase
|
This book is amazing! Bel Kaufman shows the problems of inner-city schools and the teachers who work there, while keeping with the light of subtle humor. It is easy to read, in that the format leaves room for breaks (the chapters are short). I would recommend this book to anyone, whether you are a t..
|
|
|
|
The Spiral Staircase
|
Karen Armstrong speaks to the troubling years following her decision to leave the life of a Roman Catholic nun and join the secular world in 1969. What makes The Spiral Staircase: My Climb out of Darkness especially fascinating is that Armstrong already wrote about this era once--only it was a disastrous book. It was too soon for her to understand how these dark, struggling years influenced her spiritual development, and she was too immature to protect herself from being be bullied by the..
|
|
|
|
Spiral Staircase
|
"I have decided to try again", Karen Armstrong writes at the beginning of The Spiral Staircase, in explaining why she is telling her life story for a second time, 20 years after doing so in Beginning the World. "We should probably all pause to confront our past from time to time, because it changes its meaning as our circumstances alter." Thats a clue to the sort of open-minded and intensive inquiry that Armstrong is capable of, which has made her, in those 20 years, a bestselling ..
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
