Ash Wednesday : Part 2

The Spiral Staircase: My Climb Out of Darkness
By Karen Armstrong

(Page 2 of 2)

Without giving it a second's thought, I had instinctively knelt in the customary attitude of contrition and abasement. We always kissed the floor when we entered a room late and disturbed a community duty. This had seemed strange at first, but after a few weeks it had become second nature. Yet a quick glance at the girls seated at the tables next to the door, who were staring at me incredulously, reminded me that what was normal behavior in the convent was little short of deranged out here. As I rose to my feet, cold with embarrassment, I realized that my reactions were entirely different from those of most of my contemporaries in this strange new world. Perhaps they always would be.

But there may have been another reason why I kissed the ground that evening. Ever since my dispensation had come through, many of my fellow students and tutors had made a point of congratulating me. "You must be so relieved to be out of all that!" one of them had said. "It never seemed quite right for you." "How exciting!" others had exclaimed. "You can start all over again! You can do anything, be anything you want to be! Everything is ahead of you!" It was true, in a sense: now I could fall in love, wear beautiful clothes, travel, make a lot of money - all the things that, most people presumed, I had been yearning to do for the past seven years. But I didn't feel excited or relieved. I didn't want to do any of the things that people expected. I had no sense of boundless opportunity.

Instead I felt, quite simply, sad, and was constantly wracked by a very great regret. When I pictured that dedicated Lenten scene in the convent, it seemed unbearably poignant because it was now closed to me forever. I mourned the loss of an ideal and the absence of dedication from my new life, and I also had a nagging suspicion that if only I had tried just a little bit harder, I would not have had to leave. There had been something missing in me. I had failed to make a gift of myself to God. And so I felt like a penitent, and perhaps, when I kissed the floor that night, I had unconsciously wanted - just once - to appear in my true colors to the rest of the world.

In Beginning the World I described how I had threaded my way through the tables, flinching from the curious gaze of the other students, until I was rescued by a group who had become my friends and who had kept a kindly but tactful eye on me during the past difficult weeks. There was Rosemary, a cheerful extrovert, who was reading modern languages; Fiona, a gentler, more thoughtful girl; her constant companion, Pat, who had been a pupil at one of the boarding schools run by my order; and finally Jane, who was also reading English. All were Catholics.

All had some experience of nuns. Jane retained a great fondness for the kindly semienclosed sisters at her rather exclusive school. Pat had actually known me as a nun, since I had been sent to help out at her school in Harrogate. There were other people at the table for whom Catholicism and convents were alien territory and who clearly intended to keep it that way. In Beginning the World I made them all tease me good-naturedly about my gaffe, question me about convent life, and express shock and horror at such customs as kissing the floor, confessing faults in public, and performing elaborate penances in the refectory. Maybe there was some discussion along these lines; certainly people were curious, up to a point. But I doubt that anybody was really very interested.

These young women had been quite wonderful to me. It had been Rosemary, Fiona, and Pat who had marched me down to Marks & Spencer a couple of hours after my dispensation had come through and helped me to buy my first secular clothes. Rosemary had cut and styled my hair, and all three had escorted me to dinner, my first public appearance as a defrocked nun. But they were probably wary of prying too closely into the reasons for what they could see had been a traumatic decision. I certainly had no desire to discuss the matter with them.

In the convent we had been carefully trained never to tell our troubles to one another and it would never have occurred to me to unburden myself to my peers. And these girls had their own concerns. They too had essays to write; they were falling in love, and trying to juggle the demands of concentrated academic work with those of an absorbing social life. They were making their own journeys into adulthood, and now that the drama of my exodus was over, they almost certainly assumed that I was happily reveling in my new freedom, and were content to leave well alone.

I also knew that they could not begin to imagine my convent existence. Occasionally one of them would express astonishment if I inadvertently let something slip. "My nuns weren't a bit like that!" Jane would insist stoutly. "Your lot must have been abnormally strict." Pat would look even more bewildered, because she and I had lived with exactly the same community, but her perspective, as a secular, was different. "They were so modern and up-to-date, even sophisticated!" she would protest. "They drove cars, were starting to go to the cinema again, and were changing the habit!" Both girls would look at me reproachfully, because I was spoiling a cherished memory.

Nobody likes to be told that things were not as they imagined. But I was quite certain that my own order had not been particularly austere, and agreed with Pat that it had been far more enlightened than many. Most nuns had observed these arcane rituals, had kissed the ground, confessed their external faults to one another, and were forbidden to have what were known as "particular friendships," since all love must be given to God. That was why the reforms of the Second Vatican Council were so necessary.

Copyright © 2004 by Karen Armstrong.

About the Author

Karen Armstrong's first book, the bestselling Through the Narrow Gate, described her seven years as a nun in a Roman Catholic order. She has since published numerous bestselling books, including A History of God, Islam: A Short History, Buddha, The Spiral Staircase and most recently The Great Transformation. She is a freelance writer and she lives in London.