Karen Armstrong - Through the Narrow Gate - A Nun’s Story

So chapter by chapter, page by page, I dragged myself on through all four volumes. My eyes glazed with boredom, I ploughed my way through the dusty paths of mathematics, science, industry, and commerce. One evening, as I was engaged with a study of the iron and steel trade, my father came into the room.

“Oh, you’re reading the encyclopedia, are you?”

I glowed with satisfaction at his pleasure.

“What are you reading now?” he asked, looking over my shoulder, and, ablaze with virtue, I announced:

“Trades.”

“Trades?” said my father, surprised. “Do you like that?”

“Well, no, this bit is awfully boring.”

My father scratched his head, bewildered. “Then why on earth read it?”

I explained. My father looked at me as though he had spawned a monster and then threw back his head and roared with laughter. Helpless, he staggered to the bed and collapsed, shoulders heaving with mirth. Then, seeing my indignation, he explained to me how to use an encyclopedia. It was a relief to put Volume II back on the shelf and open the enticing Volume IV. But I had a lingering suspicion that I had cheated.

One thing that school did for me in those early years was to introduce me to religion. At home religion was cut down to a minimum. My father was a recent convert to Catholicism and never felt completely at home in the church. When we went to Mass he knelt there, glasses on the end of his nose, peering dubiously at his English translation of the Latin that was being gabbled mechanically at the altar.

It took years for religion to mean much more than this to me—an hour of excruciating boredom on Sunday morning which I longed to be over and done with. “Can’t we go to seven o’clock Mass, Mummy?” I’d plead, knowing that we would then be home just after eight and the rest of the day would be my own. Often I got up at six on Sunday mornings and walked to Mass by myself, arriving home just in time to wave off my family who were dutifully setting off for the nine o’clock Mass. I watched them go with a heady sense of freedom.

But gradually religion got through to me. At school we lived the rhythm of the church’s year, and that rhythm formed the liturgical background to my own view of life. At Lent the drapings of the altar turned to purple. Gloomy hymns were sung; I listened to the story of Jesus’ fight with the devil in the wilderness after his six weeks’ fast. Lent became a heroic and arduous pilgrimage. We were taught to make “acts”. “What are you giving up for Lent?” we asked one another. Sweets, sugar in tea, watching television? Or, “What are you going to do for Lent?” Go to Mass twice, three times a week? Every day? Say the rosary regularly? Make a special effort not to quarrel?

The possibilities were endless, and, for me, Lent became another race with myself. Can I keep it up? Can I go to Mass every day for six solid weeks, through the wet, cold spring mornings? Can I force myself to say the rosary every single evening? Lent grew darker; at Passiontide the statues in the convent were covered in purple drapes and stood there clumsy, bulky, and reproachful. For always by that time I had failed. There would be the morning I slammed down the alarm clock as it pealed heartlessly at six o’clock and turned over for another half-hour in bed. Or the orgy of eating sweets. Failure. But I persevered. Now let’s have another go during Passiontide. Only two weeks—you can do it; you can do it. Then Holy Week: the long dramatic services that spoke to me more deeply than I could readily put into words. The long lines of people on Good Friday bending to kiss the feet of the crucified Christ, the aching knees. The church stripped and empty in deep mourning. And then suddenly it was Holy Saturday night. We’d stand outside the church at eleven o’clock while the priest struck a new flame and lit the great Paschal candle. Flame passed then to each of us as we handed the Easter light to one another. And then the procession wove its way into the pitch-black church, the light of Easter piercing the darkness, overcoming it as more and more of us entered the church with our candles.

“The light of Christ!” chanted the priest.

“Thanks be to God!” we replied in unison.

The ancient symbolism spoke to something very deep in me. There was the joy of that moment at midnight when suddenly all the electric lights were switched on, flowers were rushed to the stark altars, the organ—silent during the six weeks of Lent—pealed joyously, and all the congregation took out the bells they had brought and rang them: “Christ is risen.” Death is swallowed up in victory.

I must have been just twelve years old when death once again threatened our family. One Sunday afternoon my sister Lindsey, who was then nine, complained of a sore throat. I didn’t take much notice.

Lindsey and I rarely got on well together; we were too different. She was an attractive child with huge blue myopic eyes and long, dark plaits. Her beauty threw my own plump toothiness into harsher relief, I felt. So did her charm. She was a charismatic child who, wherever she was, attracted a swarm of friends. I had friends, too, in a quiet sort of way, but not spectacularly like Lindsey. At home I liked to be quiet and I resented Lindsey’s constant claims on my time and energy. I wanted to read; Lindsey wanted to play. I hated conflict and quarreling. She, turbulent and dramatic by nature, loved it, goading me into arguments and rows. So on that first afternoon of her illness I glanced briefly from my book as she was shepherded up to bed and smiled to myself at the prospect of a couple of days of peace.

But her temperature soared up and up. After two days she was weeping with the pain in her throat, until finally she could scarcely breathe. I heard people whisper “Diphtheria” darkly, and the house was filled with doctors and muttered consultations. My parents crept about looking pale and stricken and I was left to my own devices. Huddled miserably in a corner of the dining room, I tried to read but couldn’t. I could scarcely think. Outside the cold March evening blew wetly. Oh, my God, if she died how would I ever forgive myself? I kept thinking of that afternoon when I had repeatedly refused to play with her, and she had gone to my father and climbed on his knee. “I do love Karen so. Why is she always so horrid to me?” At the time I had been disgusted, wondering how anyone could descend to such a sentimental method of getting her own way. Now, inevitably, the words returned with terrible poignancy. If she died, how would my parents ever be able to forgive me for my rejection of my little sister? And how would I be able to forgive myself? She was so small. Death seemed monstrously unfair.

If God took Lindsey away now, He could take anyone at any time. The world once more seemed a frightening and unpredictable place, as it had after Caroline died and those dragons pursued me over endless hills in my dreams.

In bed that night I thought I should be quite unable to sleep. “Dear God,” I prayed before getting into bed, “if you make Lindsey better I’ll always be nice to her.” Outside I could hear the specialist going downstairs to make a phone call. I heard the door closing behind him, and my ears strained in the darkness trying to catch a sound. Nothing. Death made everything fraught with anxiety. “Dear God,” I found myself continuing, “if Lindsey gets better I’ll think about being a nun.”

I listened to myself in astonishment. Why had I promised that? Never in my wildest moment had I ever considered being a nun. The thought of the renunciation involved took my breath away. I heard the surgeon padding quietly upstairs. I heard my mother’s voice, strained and anxious, talking about an ambulance. Just a word here and there. But I didn’t hear any tears. My mother despised tears. And then suddenly I dropped off to sleep.