Karen Armstrong

I first heard of Karen Armstrong while driving along in my truck on my way to Mackenzie a few months ago.  She was the featured guest on CBC’s Tapestry and I found myself completely enthralled with what she was saying.  A few weeks after the broadcast I was wandering around in the Kamloops Chapter’s when I suddenly remembered her name and thought that I should look for one of her books.  Well as luck would have it her latest book, The Spiral Staircase, My Climb out of Darkness, a biography, was inexplicably in the bargain books section so I picked it up for a measly $8.

Throughout the book I have consistently been surprised by many of the insights that Karen has mentioned discovering through the various travails of her life.  Reasons for the surprise vary but they all seem to draw to a final conclusion – I relate.  Below I have taken a few excerpts that particularly stood out among an astonishing book.

“I didn’t want to make those years a dark secret.  After all, I hadn’t robbed a bank or been in prison.’ ‘Despite all my negative feelings about religion, I still felt protective about the nuns and still felt sorrow and regret for a lost ideal.”

When reading this passage, where Karen is relating her experiences going to dinner parties in London where most of the guests were very interested in knowing about her 7 years in a convent as a nun.  Reading about this experience I quite honestly thought about Prairie and the time that I spent there.  For obvious reasons Prairie wasn’t a great period in my life but I do feel I grew out of the experience.  The weird thing I usually hold back on telling people that I went there, yet have a weird pride that I did and still stay in contact with many of the people I met there.  The school is now a part of my personal history and for some reason remains important to me.

“As T.S. Elliot had noted: “time was all we had.  But that night, for once, I was wholly present in the moment, not looking before or after, or pining for what was not.  And the present moment was not a bad place to be.”

Coming upon this passage was absolutely staggering as I have been struggling with the concept of being in the moment for a long time.  My Counsellor often wraps up our sessions with a reminder to live wholly in the present moment and it’s something that I’m really not very good at.  Knowing that someone as accomplished as Karen has the same struggles is comforting.

“As I left the school grounds to wait for the bus that had been the bane of my life during the last six years, I felt as though I were beginning a new journey.  Other people seemed to progress much more smoothly through life, I reflected wryly, as the bus finally crested the hill and roared toward me.  They went through college chose a career and a partner without all this drama.  But that didn’t seem to happen to me.  I kept getting derailed, ejected from one job, one lifestyle after another.  Doors kept slamming in my face.  But had I really wanted to be ordinary; had I really wanted what T.S. Elliot had called “the usual reign”?  I forced myself to remember all the times I had been bored and frustrated by school, despite the regular salary.  I couldn’t have it both ways.  And now, here I was again, heading into the unknown, and yet I felt in some strange way as though I were back on track.  The bus was taking me away from my nice safe job, but it seemed to be going in the right direction.”

This passage happened right after Karen had been fired from her post as a High School Teacher.  A job she absolutely despised and resented, yet it was comfortable.  Even this early in my career having failed more than I’ve succeeded I completely relate.  How is it that it does seem so easy for some people and that their lives just seem to float along merrily with the current while mine seems to be hurtling along in some kind of manic riptide.  Not standing still, just moving along at such an insane pace it seems like it.