Karen Armstrong

I had to create a whole new account because I don't remember my old password from my previous blog.  Anyway, I suppose its like a fresh start for 2009.  

I wanted to post this amazing quote from "The Spiral Staircase" by Karen Armstrong.  This book is one of the best, most intriguing books I read last year and I have rummaged through its pages more than once since finishing it to reference beautiful things that she says throughout the book.  It more or less tells the story of her life following her decision to leave the convent she had been a nun in for seven years.  She entered the convent when she was 17 because she desperately wanted to know God better, yet found that while she was there she was driven further and further from His presence until she was left with nothing but a human shell and a shrinking soul.  This book is not a Roman Catholic basher, its just an incredible story of someone's spiritual journey that I found very interesting.  She is now a famous, very well-respected theologian and calls herself a "freelance theist".  I guess that means she believes in a god, but is keeping things casual?  Anyway, I first heard her in an interview on NPR and was very impressed, and have since read three of her books.  She's amazing; here is one of the conclusions that she draws as she reflects on her life journey, and how she became who she is.  I hope you're as inspired as I was:

~ The great myths show that when you follow someone else's path, you go astray.  The hero has to set off by himself, leaving the old world and the old ways behind him.  He must venture into the darkness of the unknown, where there is no map and no clear route.  He must fight his own monsters, not somebody else's, explore his own labyrinth, and endure his own ordeal before he can find what is missing in his life.  Thus transfigured, he can bring something of value to the world that has been left behind.  But if the knight finds himself riding along an already established track, he is simply following in someone else's footsteps and will not have an adventure.  In the words of the Old French text of The Quest of the Holy Grail, if he wants to succeed, he must enter the forest "at a point that he, himself, has chosen, where it was darkest and there was no path." ~  

I am beginning to see as my own life-path develops that this is absolutely the truth for humanity.  I really believe that the purpose for being on the earth is to find what is missing in life (try not to let your subconscious automatically insert "Jesus" here- even though at a very fundamental and bare-bones level, I do believe that to be true), and "bring something of value to the world".  I think that honestly, there are few people who would devote their life to this type of honest commitment, and that is why we become so enthralled and inspired when we see someone who has in one form or another figured this out, and entered "the forest".  Cheesy, but inherently worthwhile I think.