Karen Armstrong
Karen Armstrong
Karen Armstrong OBE FRSLis a British author and commentator known for her books on comparative religion. A former Roman Catholic religious sister, she went from a conservative to a more liberal and mystical Christian faith. She attended St Anne's College, Oxford, while in the convent and majored in English. She became disillusioned and left the convent in 1969. She first rose to prominence in 1993 with her book A History of God: The 4,000-Year Quest of Judaism, Christianity and Islam...
NationalityEnglish
ProfessionWriter
Date of Birth14 November 1944
I remind myself that my pain is not unique. Everybody suffers.
Beethoven's string quartets express pain itself; it is not MY pain.
Let's use our stories to encourage listening to one another and to hear not just the good news, but also the pain that lies at the back of a lot of people's stories and histories.
Pain is something that's common to human life. When we ignore it, we aren't engaging in the whole reality, and the pain begins to fester.
Compassion is aptly summed up in the Golden Rule, which asks us to look into our own hearts, discover what gives us pain, and then refuse, under any circumstance whatsoever, to inflict that pain on anybody else. Compassion can be defined, therefore, as an attitude of principled, consistent altruism.
Let us bring something new to the table. Let us use our pain always to remember the others, bring them into the conversation, and get beyond the stereotypes and prejudices that create injustice all over the world.
Look into your own heart, discover what it is that gives you pain and then refuse, under any circumstance whatsoever, to inflict that pain on anybody else.
The other day when I was driving over to Edina, there was a bald eagle that flew overhead on Highway 6. There's even a nest documented on the Chariton River.
Even before 9/11 I was gripped by a sense of dread: our lack of criticism about what we were doing in the Middle East - the slagging off of a whole religious tradition.
They taught that compassion brings you into the presence of God. They weren't saying this simply because it sounds good. They said it because it works.
Clashes and vitriol only make it worse. I think what we must learn to do is to read the imagery. We need to analyze and understand the subtext.
We will have a wet lab, displays, exhibits, hands-on activities, a 1,500-gallon aquarium and amphibian and reptile displays. The following summer we will have a trail behind the center.
Well, the idea of God as a supreme being means that he is simply like us, writ large, and just bigger and better, the end product of the series; whereas this divine personality that we meet in the Bible was, for centuries, regarded simply as a symbol of a greater transcendence that lay beyond it.
I believe in holiness and sacredness in other people. It doesn't mean that the clouds part and I see God. That's a juvenile way of thinking about it.