Religion. My first staff bookclub read of 2015 was “Through the Narrow Gate” by Karen Armstrong. Armstrong entered a convent as a teenager, straight out of Catholic school, and left 7 years later. She was emotionally mistreated in the convent, medically neglected, and eventually her relationship with God, a relationship that never stopped being important to her throughtout this experience, was tragically impacted by the facts of the religious life offered to her by her convent.
At the staff bookclub we have a nifty method of selecting titles. Instead of choosing one book to read, we choose a genre and everyone reads a different book. This month was memoirs.
Like many young women, I wanted to be a nun. As a teen I converted to Islam and spent several very contended years as an observant person. I often wish I could devote a nice big chunk of years to a religious life but we don’t seem to have a good way to balance being “of the world” and “practicing a devote way of life” in the West.
I’ve learned a lot about my family’s religious leanings over the past 300 years. One of those things is that we can’t seem to stick to any particular religion. Dutch Reformed… Catholic… Anabaptist… “pas” (French for “none” was recorded on one census takers sheet)… Presbyterian… Baptist… faithful (as opposed to “religious”).. atheist. We’ve got ’em loaded up.
It’s tricky to write about religion but one thing my atheist parents taught me that I’ve really internalized is not to be afraid of religion. Not to be afraid of ideas in general, but to be particularly thoughtful in a detached way about religion and religious ideas.
I consider myself a religious person. My belief in God is absolute. As real to me as the chair I’m sitting in. You can read about my religious questing by clicking on the “religion” thread over on the right.
Religion in many forms has been considered by and written about by great people for centuries and there’s a lot of goodness there, a lot of careful thinking, and a lot of truth. I enjoy reading it. There are a lot of memoirs written by women who left Catholic orders and I enjoy them in particular. Feel free to suggest any titles that meet the “religious memoir ” criteria. I’m interested!
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