Beginning the World

279 Pages·1983·0.89 MB·English

by  Armstrong

BEGINNING THE WORLD
Karen Armstrong was born at Wildmoor, Worcestershire, into a family of Irish
ancestry who, after her birth, moved to Bromsgrove and later to Birmingham.
In 1962, at the age of 18, she became a member of the Sisters of the Holy Child
Jesus, a teaching congregation, in which she remained for seven years.
Armstrong claims she suffered physical and psychological abuse in the convent;
according to an article in The Guardian newspaper, "Armstrong was required to
mortify her flesh with whips and wear a spiked chain around her arm. When she
spoke out of turn, she claims she was forced to sew at a treadle machine with no
needle for a fortnight."
Once she had advanced from postulant and novice to professed nun, she enrolled
in St Anne's College, Oxford, to study English. Armstrong left her order in 1969
while still a student at Oxford. After graduating with a Congratulatory First, she
embarked on a DPhil on the poet Tennyson. According to Armstrong, she wrote
her dissertation on a topic that had been approved by the university committee.
Nevertheless, it was failed by her external examiner on the grounds that the topic
had been unsuitable. Armstrong did not formally protest this verdict, nor did she
embark upon a new topic but instead abandoned hope of an academic career. She
reports that this period in her life was marked by ill-health stemming from her
lifelong but, at that time, still undiagnosed temporal lobe epilepsy. Around this
time she was lodged with Jenifer and Herbert Hart, looking after their disabled
son, as told in her memoir The Spiral Staircase.
Career
In 1976, Armstrong took a job teaching English at James Allen's Girls' School in
Dulwich while working on a memoir of her convent experiences. This was
published in 1982 as Through the Narrow Gate to excellent reviews. That year
she embarked on a new career as an independent writer and broadcasting
presenter. In 1984, the British Channel Four commissioned her to write and
present a television documentary on the life of St. Paul, The First Christian, a
project that involved traveling to the Holy Land to retrace the steps of the saint.
Armstrong described this visit as a "breakthrough experience" that defied her
prior assumptions and provided the inspiration for virtually all her subsequent
work. In A History of God: The 4,000-Year Quest of Judaism, Christianity and
work. In A History of God: The 4,000-Year Quest of Judaism, Christianity and
Islam (1993), she traces the evolution of the three major monotheistic traditions
from their beginnings in the Middle East up to the present day and also discusses
Hinduism and Buddhism. As guiding "luminaries" in her approach, Armstrong
acknowledges (in The Spiral Staircase and elsewhere) the late Canadian
theologian Wilfred Cantwell Smith, a Protestant minister, and the Jesuit father
Bernard Lonergan. In 1996, she published Jerusalem: One City, Three Faiths.
Armstrong's The Great Transformation: The Beginning of Our Religious
Traditions (2006) continues the themes covered in A History of God and
examines the emergence and codification of the world's great religions during
the so-called Axial age identified by Karl Jaspers. In the year of its publication
Armstrong was invited to choose her eight favourite records for BBC Radio's
Desert Island Discs programme. She has made several appearances on television,
including on Rageh Omaar's programme The Life of Muhammad. She was an
advisor for the award-winning, PBS-broadcast documentary Muhammad:
Legacy of a Prophet (2002), produced by Unity Productions Foundation.
In 2007 the Islamic Religious Council of Singapore invited Armstrong to deliver
the MUIS Lecture. Armstrong is a fellow of the Jesus Seminar, a group of
scholars and laypeople which attempts to investigate the historical foundations
of Christianity. She has written numerous articles for The Guardian and for other
publications. She was a key advisor on Bill Moyers' popular PBS series on
religion, has addressed members of the United States Congress, and was one of
three scholars to speak at the UN's first ever session on religion. She is a vice-
president of the British Epilepsy Association, otherwise known as Epilepsy
Action.
Armstrong, who has taught courses at Leo Baeck College, a rabbinical college
and centre for Jewish education located in North London, says she has been
particularly inspired by the Jewish tradition's emphasis on practice as well as
faith: "I say that religion isn't about believing things. It's about what you do. It's
ethical alchemy. It's about behaving in a way that changes you, that gives you
intimations of holiness and sacredness." She maintains that religious
fundamentalism is not just a response to, but is a product of contemporary
culture and for this reason concludes that, "We urgently need to make
compassion a clear, luminous and dynamic force in our polarized world. Rooted
in a principled determination to transcend selfishness, compassion can break
down political, dogmatic, ideological and religious boundaries. Born of our deep
interdependence, compassion is essential to human relationships and to a
fulfilled humanity. It is the path to enlightenment, and indispensable to the
fulfilled humanity. It is the path to enlightenment, and indispensable to the
creation of a just economy and a peaceful global community."
Awarded the $100,000 TED Prize in February 2008, Armstrong called for
drawing up a Charter for Compassion, in the spirit of the Golden Rule, to
identify shared moral priorities across religious traditions, in order to foster
global understanding and a peaceful world.[15] It was presented in Washington,
D.C. in November 2009. Signatories include Queen Noor of Jordan, the Dalai
Lama, Archbishop Desmond Tutu and Paul Simon.
Wikipedia
KAREN ARMSTRONG
Beginning the World
A Sequel To
Through the Narrow Gate
Also by Karen Armstrong
Through the Narrow Gate (1982)
The First Christian: Saint Paul's Impact on Christianity (1983) Tongues of Fire:
An Anthology of Religious and Poetic Experience (1985) The Gospel According
to Woman: Christianity's Creation of the Sex War in the West (1986) Holy War:
The Crusades and their Impact on Today's World (1988) Muhammad: A
Biography of the Prophet (1991) The English Mystics of the Fourteenth Century
(1991) The End of Silence: Women and the Priesthood (1993) A History of God
(1993)
Jerusalem: One City, Three Faiths (1996) In the Beginning: A New
Interpretation of Genesis (1996) Islam: A Short History (2000)
The Battle for God: Fundamentalism in Judaism, Christianity and Islam (2000)
Buddha (2001)
Faith After 11 September (2002)
The Spiral Staircase (2004)
A Short History of Myth (2005)
Muhammad: A Prophet For Our Time (2006) The Great Transformation: The
Beginning of Our Religious Traditions (2006) (ISBN 978-0-375-41317-9) The
Bible: A Biography (2007)
The Case for God (2009) Vintage (ISBN 978-0-307-26918-8) Twelve Steps to a
The Case for God (2009) Vintage (ISBN 978-0-307-26918-8) Twelve Steps to a
Compassionate Life (2010) (ISBN 978-0-307-59559-1) A Letter to Pakistan
(2011) Oxford University Press (ISBN 978-0-19-906330-7) Fields of Blood:
Religion and the History of Violence (2014) Bodley Head (ISBN
9781847921864)
Acknowledgements
I should like to thank my Head Mistress, who was my very good patron while I
was writing this book,and also thank my colleagues and pupils for their
encouragement and support.
© Karen Armstrong 1983

For my Mother and Lindsey
My guardian, the picture of a good man, sat down by my place, keeping his hand
on Richard’s.
‘My dear Rick,’ said he, ‘the clouds have cleared away, and it is bright now. We
can see now. We were all bewildered, Rick, more or less. What matters! And
how are you, my dear boy?’
‘I am very weak, sir, but I hope I shall be stronger. I have to begin the world.’
‘Aye, truly; well said!’ cried my guardian.
‘I will not begin it in the old way now,’ said Richard with a sad smile. ‘I have
learned a lesson now, sir. It was a hard one; but you shall be assured, indeed, that
I have learned it.’
BLEAK HOUSE
Charles Dickens
Table of Contents
CHAPTER ONE - In the World but not of it, 1969.
CHAPTER TWO - Home
CHAPTER THREE - Success, 1970
CHAPTER FOUR - Shalott, 1971
CHAPTER FIVE - Dicing with Death
CHAPTER SIX - For Dear Life
CHAPTER SEVEN - Guy
CHAPTER EIGHT - Departures
CHAPTER NINE - No Abiding City
CHAPTER TEN - Cloud of Unknowing (1975-6)
CHAPTER ONE
In the World but not of it, 1969.
I WAS LATE.
Nervously I pushed open the heavy glass door of my college dining hall and felt
the immense noise strike me in the face.
Four hundred students and thirty dons on High Table had already started dinner
and were chatting in a roar of conversation that cruelly assaulted my cloistered
ear drums. Feeling conspicuous, I pulled down my mini-skirt selfconsciously,
reminded myself of the Oxford custom of bowing slightly to the Principal in
mute apology for being late for the formal meal, and then started walking across
the room, trying to look nonchalant.
Keep on walking casually, I told myself firmly. Head up, don’t forget! Shoulders
back. And try swinging your arms. Nearly opposite the Principal now - oh, yes -
don’t forget to apologize. It was then that it happened. To my horror I found
myself kneeling on the ground and felt winded with confusion as I realized what
I had done.
I had kissed the floor.
Abruptly the cheerful hum of conversation and clatter of cutlery ceased and,
scarlet-faced in the momentary silence, I looked up to face a host of curious,
amused and uncomprehending eyes. Unconvincingly I blew my nose as I
scrabbled to my feet, trying to look as though I’d knelt down to pick up my
handkerchief. The babble of voices broke out again, explosions of laughter
erupted in various parts of the hall and the meal was resumed. It was then that I
fully realized the enormous task before me.
For seven years I was a nun, vowed to poverty, chastity and obedience in an
austere teaching order which lived by the Rule laid down by St Ignatius Loyola,
the founder of the Jesuits. I entered the order aged only seventeen on a warm
September day in 1962 and began an intensive period of training which was to
transform me from a schoolgirl into a nun, a conditioning that was designed to
last a lifetime. But in 1967 the Order sent me to Oxford to gain a degree in
English Language and Literature with a view to teaching in one of their schools.
English Language and Literature with a view to teaching in one of their schools.
At Oxford I was taught once again to criticize and to think. The critical faculty
which I had learned to quell came to life again while I was studying in college,
but when I returned each evening to my convent, I found that I could not switch
it off to become again the obedient, self-effacing nun. For a year I struggled with
this new, emergent self, for I desperately wanted to stay in my Order. It still
seemed to me the best life that anyone could have to be professionally intent on
seeking and loving God. Finally, however, the two selves snapped apart. I
suffered a breakdown and eventually had to admit that I could not continue.
Sadly I wrote to the Sacred Congregation for Religious in Rome and two weeks
ago the dispensation from my Vows had co”me through. I was no longer a nun.
Or was I? Breathless with embarrassment I searched the dining hall for an empty
seat. What a fool everybody must think me.
Just now my body had automatically knelt in its customary gesture of contrition
and apology; it could not remember that I was no longer a nun. There had been
many other moments like this, but none so spectacular. I still tried to lift the
heavy skirt of my habit when I went up a flight of stairs. My hands constantly
fumbled for the long ceremonial sleeves to hide in. I missed the voluminous
protection of my habit like a newly amputated limb. But up till now I’d been
able to hide this.
‘Karen!’ An ear-splitting yell pierced the column of conversation, and looking in
its direction I saw Rose, waving energetically from the other side of the room
and indicating an empty space between her and Brigid. Thankfully I started
threading my way through the tables trying to avoid the curious stares that some
of the students were giving me, but as I went many of them tugged at my
cardigan calling out ‘Quite a dramatic entrance, Karen!’ Their cheerful laughter
transformed my journey to Rose’s table into a kind of royal progress and I felt
stunned by their warmth. Far from disapproving, they seemed positively to have
enjoyed my mistake!
Rose beamed up at me, her fresh, intelligent face alive with curiosity. ‘What on
earth were you doing?’ she demanded. I looked round the table, tentatively
testing their reactions. Rose was sitting next to Brigid, a dark, pretty Scottish
girl, and next to her was Jane, a modern languages student, who at first I’d found
rather alarming. She had a mass of aggressively dyed red hair, a confident
manner and an outrageous selection of clothes. Long dangly earrings weighed
down her lobes and her purple, silky dress might well have been borrowed from
her grandmother’s wardrobe. She was, I knew, a lapsed Catholic, and at first I’d