Spiral Paths

It should not come as a surprise that sometimes setting out on a particular path will lead to very different results than that which was intended.  This may very well even lead someone in the direction that was the opposite of which they thought they were supposed to travel.  How many times do we set out trying to accomplish something only to encounter divergences along the way that draw our attention elsewhere?  And how many times do these lead to something more satisfying than that which we set out to obtain in the first place?

If you read the stories of two women, St. Faustina and Karen Armstrong, whose relationship and experiences may be curiously considered either as entirely contrary or stunningly complementary, you will find two people who share the joy and burden of each leading their own disparate paths.  For those not familiar, St. Maria Faustina Kowalska was a nun who is responsible for the dispensation of the teachings of Divine Mercy, due to her mystical visions of Christ in which she received various messages from Jesus on the extent of his mercy and how she should be the dispenser of his message.  She was born as Helen Kowalska on August 25th 1905 in the village of Glogowiec in Poland.  Hearing a spiritual call from the Lord within her as early as 7 years of age, it is no surprise that she later joined a convent.  However, she initially spurned the callings she felt within herself, prompting her to envision the suffering Christ and hear "How long shall I put up with you and how long shall you keep putting me off?" Eventually she announced her decision to join a convent.  However, shortly after entering, just before 20 years of age, she felt she was in the wrong place and wanted to go to a convent that focused more on prayer and contemplation.  Yet she heard Christ's call to remain where she was and ended up facing many challenges but receiving many joys, leading to her Sainthood at the turn of the century.

Karen Armstrong was likewise a nun - at least for a time (seven years to be exact).  Today she is the established author of many books, all dealing mainly with religion.  She was the initial opposite of Helen Kowalska - at approximately the age of seventeen she longed to enter a convent in order to delve into the mystery of God, yet having no prior mystical experience.  As she lived in the convent she was also educated at Oxford, and, besides her studies of theology, also studied English.  But instead of the spiritually imbued life she thought she would encounter, she instead lost her spiritual vivacity.  This was largely due to her experience of the lifestyle of the Catholic female religious and her interactions with her superiors.  She ended up leaving the convent and became an atheist, until later when she again enkindled her passion for the spiritual, this time, however, through other religions and not as a Catholic.

Why do I write about these two persons, who shared much but who ultimately were lead to different paths?  It is probably because what struck me most was how similar their initial circumstances were and yet how differently they thought about and took to what was happening around them.  And what I ultimately saw was how different people are and why it is necessary to understand these differences.  I set out reading St. Faustina's Diary looking for relatability and a naïve desire for a how-to to encounter the Divine. Initially I expected to relate well to whatever St. Faustina had to say - but in the end found myself more and more frustrated.  This was especially difficult for me since I believe that the words St. Faustina received were from Jesus himself and that therefore I could not relate to what Jesus was saying, but instead felt more spiritually divergent from him than before.

On the other side I found myself often relating well to Karen's experiences, even including her atheistic approaches at times.  In fact, I feel that her writings have helped me to understand myself better than perhaps almost any other writings I have ever read.

Unfortunately I cannot write out how this is so all here on this blog as it would take much too long.  However I can say a little.  One thing is that I did find St. Faustina relatable at times and for that I am very grateful.  This however, often came when she was discussing her feelings of rejection from God when she initially became a nun.  Other times it was her descriptions of her frustration with her superiors who did not listen to her or believe her or who belittled her.  Later, however, I felt more alienated from her.  If I am honest I can accept that this is because I am certainly no saint and therefore am not yet able to relate or am even jealous of those who I perceive as having a higher level of spirituality than I.  Therefore it is also because her actions later on, and those that lead her deeper into the Divine experience encompassed that which I have often desired but which I rarely find myself capable of.  These are also incidentally the same types of circumstances and experiences which Karen Armstrong found herself so upset with.

To give an example, often in the convent it is expected that one remain silent during certain periods, attend prayer regularly, and be completely obedient to superiors.  Although this is also the case today, before Vatican II it could be said that there were stricter standards, although this of course varied and still varies amongst different convents.  However, as a nun Karen found herself repeatedly walled by this lifestyle.  Often her mind raced during prayer and she could not find any still moments.  Her superiors belittled her and did not sincerely admonish her intelligent queries or comments.  They also ignored her fainting problems and instead scolded her for them.  St. Faustina encountered similar challenges as she lead a very similar lifestyle; yet in the end she found solace in the silence.  Both during St. Faustina's and Karen's time in the convent there was a stigma of forming close friendships or favoring one person over another.  This left Karen cold and hard while it developed St. Faustina wonderfully by focusing her attention on Christ. Despite their similar circumstances, and with Karen having had such a strong desire to be a nun that she kept with it for seven years, she ultimately left the convent exhausted, secularly awkward, and more spiritually drained than ever.  Yet with much the same conditions St. Faustina was gifted with deeper spirituality, more visions, and such intense yearnings and mystical desires for Christ that she ended up eventually being canonized by Pope John Paul II in November. 

After her period of being a nun, Armstrong had difficulties fitting into secular culture.  She continued studying at Oxford, yet became more and more disillusioned with the idea of being a professor, her previous number one objective.  She experienced "visions" of a horrible nature that lead her to see the world in an almost ghastly appearance and even had to spend a very short amount of time in an insane asylum until the true culprit was revealed; her condition of temporal lobe epilepsy.  She later joined a film crew, surveying holy spots in the Middle East and narrating documentaries designed to put a debunking spotlight on religious beliefs.  Yet as she continued to study religion she grew more empathetic to the way in which religion is practiced and demonstrated among its practitioners.  She eventually ended up finding a spiritually fulfilling devotion to the study of theology and religious texts and revitalized her feelings and compassion for others.  And she concludes that this is the real mystical reality for her and many others.  It is not in the visions she originally sought because she realizes in many ways that God cannot be contained by visions.  In fact she goes on to allude to God as a sort of Nothingness, similar to Buddhist thought, because the Divine cannot be contained in any one way.  Her mystical experience lies then in glimpses of the Divine after patiently waiting and working with a religious text. 

It is interesting to note that in at least one point in St. Faustina's Diary that Jesus responds to a question she has by telling her to let those who are wise worry about it.  Instead he tells her to remain in her simplicity because it is exactly in her simplicity that she is most beautiful and suited for him.  Compare this to the fact that although Armstrong's intelligence was one of the primary factors for leaving the convent, she finally came back to religion through it.

It seems to me that God often leads us on a spiral path as Karen Armstrong's book The Spiral Staircase: My Journey Out of Darkness often iterates throughout the major points of her life.  Because of this we are constantly turning, forced to find alternatives, and are often not suited for others' paths.  Karen makes a major point that a lot of the problems and frustrations she encountered were in desiring another person's way of living.  Likewise Christ admonishes St. Faustina and instructs her in her simplicity.  Yet he guides both of them in learning how to be themselves, although ultimately this leads in some respects to very different results.  In the end, though, it seems that if we are true to ourselves that we will end up exactly where God intended us to be in the first place.  Often the only way we can do this is through heartache and stumbling so that we can first find out who we are not.  Afterwards we can eliminate these factors and brush them away to reveal the true gem of our being beneath, which we previously had not been able to see before.