Through the Narrow Gate: A Nun’s Story. Karen Armstrong
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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.
In the morning Lindsey was better. She had had a huge inflammation in her throat, and the surgeon had been just about to perform a tracheotomy when the poisonous thing broke and she could breathe again. We could all breathe again, but now once more the world seemed ringed round with a threat. I had forgotten how insubstantial life really was; Caroline’s death had been so long ago. There would be many times in the next three or four years when I would forget this again, but Lindsey’s illness had scarred my trust in life, and from time to time I would taste again that frightening emptiness of the world I lived in.
I kept remembering the promise I’d made to God. It almost seemed as though someone else had made it for me while I was off guard. Who? God? Had He been trying to tell me something? I turned away from that idea; it was full of disturbing implications, but time and again in the years to come I would flinch at the memory uneasily. Now I tried to salve my conscience. I only said I’d think about it, I reassured myself. I didn’t say I’d actually do it.
“Children! I have something very wonderful to tell you!” Mother Katherine, my headmistress, stood on the raised dais in the school hall, presiding over the morning assembly. I was in the Senior School now and at twelve was still slightly in awe of the formality and the size of my new surroundings. We stood in alphabetical order in lines of classes. Mine, the First Form, by the wall. Mother’s eyes were shining with enthusiasm; her hands, draped in the long, black ceremonial sleeves, were clasped together with suppressed emotion.
I shifted from foot to foot uneasily. These ecstatic announcements were frequent and never seemed to me to occasion much rejoicing.
“You all know Miss Jackson,” she continued. “Some of you, the older girls, will know her very well indeed.” What can she have done? I thought to myself. Miss Jackson taught A-level physics to a handful of girls in the Sixth Form. She was a pale, colorless figure. Sometimes I glanced at her as she strode round the school with her white overall flapping round her short legs, her frizzy hair gripped back from a bony face. I glanced at her and mentally dismissed her. Perhaps she’s got married, I thought with a flicker of interest. Then I shrugged. Unlikely.