The religion scholar Elaine Pagels writes with rigor and depth about the compelling, provocative nature of spirituality. The author of nine books, including "Adam, Eve, and the Serpent" and "The Origin of Satan," Pagels is an acclaimed historian of early Christianity and a professor at Princeton University. I first discovered her work decades ago, when I came across an old copy of "The Gnostic Gospels," her best-selling, National Book Award-winning treatise on the remarkable Nag Hammadi texts, discovered in Egypt in 1945. Four years ago, The New Yorker published "Finding the Heart," a poignant essay about a wrenching family tragedy. Pagels spent years trying to conceive a child; when her son was finally born, she and her husband were informed that the baby possessed a rare ailment, nearly always fatal. "Suffering feels like punishment," Pagels writes. "That's one reason why people still tell the story of Adam and Eve, which suggests that human choice—the choice to sin—brought death into a once perfect world. . . . This notion of suffering offers the illusion of control: if we believe that our pain is a form of punishment, then that pain isn't meaningless." In her essay, Pagels weaves together strands of faith and personal revelation, sharing intimate notes from her own spiritual reckoning. Suffering inevitably involves loss, yet it can also offer, Pagels notes, a sense of greater connection with those grieving or experiencing similar life-changing events. The writer endures the unthinkable and then asks whether we're able to strip ourselves of the illusions we carry about faith, misfortune, and hardship. What is it that continues to anchor us in the world long after we've experienced a great loss? Pagels ventures a simple yet elegant answer—guiding us toward a restorative vision of the constancy of the soul. —Erin Overbey, archive editor |
No comments:
Post a Comment