Karen Armstrong (1) (1944–)

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 to be excruciating. Her deep solitude and a terrifying illness–diagnosed only years later as epilepsy—marked her forever as an outsider. In her own mind she was a complete failure: as a nun, as an academic, and as a normal woman capable of intimacy. Her future seemed very much in question until she stumbled into comparative theology. What she found, in learning, thinking, and writing about other religions, was the ecstasy and transcendence she had never felt as a nun. - from the publisher… (altro)

In A Brief History of Myth, Karen Armstrong poses a question to readers: what will we do now that science has replaced the rich landscape of mythology, full of existential inquiry, with a dry and factual explanation for how life works, without any attempt to answer why. In this book she goes further. The materialist, uncurious, uncompassionate view of nature that has largely determined modern culture now endangers our whole civilization. Nature, our victim as we declare ourselves all powerful on this planet, will remind us that we cannot exist without her. We desperately need to regain those elements of awe, purpose, and ritual that once kept us in a bond with the natural world.

She proceeds to detail how each of the world religions contains this reverence for nature and a sense of equality and humility before all creatures. Even the western traditions, with all their otherworldly focus on God and life beyond this world, contains reminders of the sacredness of this one. Armstrong throws in some advice for us modern secular readers on how we can return to that sacredness. I find these passages less compelling, somehow, although she makes some strong points about the casual disregard we express as we consume, acquire, and travel wastefully. The need is massive. Small steps seem too paltry.… (altro)