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The Spiral Staircase
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The Spiral Staircase (2005) (edit title/settings)

My Climb Out of Darkness

by Karen Armstrong (Author) (edit contributors)

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Description edit see section history

In 1962, at age seventeen, Karen Armstrong entered a convent, eager to meet God. After seven brutally unhappy years as a nun, she left her order to pursue English literature at Oxford. But convent life had profoundly altered her, and coping with the outside world and her expiring faith proved... read more

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Quotes edit see section history

  • “It is always difficult to forgive people we have harmed.”
  • “As far as I could see, certainty made people heartless, cruel, and inhuman. It closed their minds to new possibilities; it made them complacent and pleased with themselves. It also did not work.”
  • Popular Highlights from Kindle Customers
  • 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.
    Highlighted by 126 Kindle customers
  • Compassion has been advocated by all the great faiths because it has been found to be the safest and surest means of attaining enlightenment.
    Highlighted by 96 Kindle customers
  • He had told me that in most traditions, faith was not about belief but about practice. Religion is not about accepting twenty impossible propositions before breakfast, but about doing things that change you. It is a moral aesthetic, an ethical alchemy. If you behave in a certain way, you will be transformed. The myths and laws of religion are not true because they conform to some metaphysical, scientific, or historical reality but because they are life enhancing.
    Highlighted by 94 Kindle customers
  • In the course of my studies, I have discovered that the religious quest is not about discovering “the truth” or “the meaning of life” but about living as intensely as possible here and now.
    Highlighted by 92 Kindle customers
  • Faith was really the cultivation of a conviction that life had some ultimate meaning and value, despite the tragic evidence to the contrary—an attitude also evoked by great art.
    Highlighted by 90 Kindle customers
  • You must first live in a certain way, and then you would encounter within a sacred presence that which monotheists call God, but which others have called the Tao, Brahman, or Nirvana.
    Highlighted by 85 Kindle customers
  • Compassion was the litmus test for the prophets of Israel, for the rabbis of the Talmud, for Jesus, for Paul, and for Muhammad, not to mention Confucius, Lao-tzu, the Buddha, or the sages of the Upanishads.
    Highlighted by 78 Kindle customers
  • Most would agree with the Greek Orthodox that any statement about God had to have two characteristics. It must be paradoxical, to remind us that God cannot be contained in a neat, coherent system of thought; and it must be apophatic, that is, it should lead us to a moment of silent awe or wonder, because when we are speaking of the reality of God we are at the end of what words or thoughts can usefully do.
    Highlighted by 75 Kindle customers
  • Hillel’s Golden Rule, which tells you to look into your own heart, find out what distresses you, and then refrain from inflicting similar pain on other people. That, Hillel had insisted, was the Torah, and everything else was commentary. This, I was to discover, was the essence of the religious life.
    Highlighted by 74 Kindle customers
  • What is vital to all of the traditions, however, is that we have a duty to make the best of the only thing that remains to us— ourselves. Our task now is to mend our broken world; if religion cannot do that, it is worthless. And what our world needs now is not belief, not certainty, but compassionate action and practically expressed respect for the sacred value of all human beings, even our enemies.
    Highlighted by 68 Kindle customers
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First Sentence edit see section history

I was late.

Table of Contents edit see section history

Preface

T.S. Eliot, Ash-Wednesday, I

1. Ash Wednesday
2. The Devil of the Stairs
3. I Renounce the Blessed Face
4. Consequently I Rejoice
5. Desiring This Man's Gift and That Man's Scope
6. The Usual Reign
7. Infirm Glory
8. To Turn Again

Authors & Contributors edit see section history

  1. Karen Armstrong (Author)

First Edition edit see section history

Original Language: English
Publisher: Anchor
Country: USA
Publication Date: February 22, 2005
ISBN: 978-0385721271
Page Count: 305 pages

Classification edit see section history

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