Admiration

Passages

Every passage tagged with this emotion in the Vela corpus. Search the body text, narrow by source or register, click through to a book’s profile to see how the passage sits with the rest of the work.

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• From Beyond Respectability: The Intellectual Thought of Race Women (2017)

  In this regard, these new Black women leaders—including Johnetta Elzie, Brittany Packnett, Brittany Ferrell, Alexis Templeton, Charlene Carruthers, Samantha Master, Elle Hearns, Jasmine Abdullah Richards, and Melina Abdullah3—are shaping a movement that rejects the kind of masculinist posturing that caused so much grief for women like Ida B. Wells in the nineteenth century and Pauli Murray in the twentieth century. This movement is inherently Cooperian in its insistence that Black women’s bodies and lives (cis and trans) offer a space of possibility and place through which to cathect our best thinking about how to get free. Yet, Garza’s fears about the erasure of Black women’s intellectual and political labor are well-founded and avoiding this common trap with Black women’s contributions requires a critical vigilance to document, respect, engage, and take seriously the thinking of Black women who continue to lead our movements. My goal in Beyond Respectability is to take seriously the work of Black women thinkers and to demonstrate the value that Black women’s long histories of knowledge production on behalf of Black people can have to contemporary intellectual conversations. Despite the fact that Black feminism, as a critical locus of Black women’s twentieth-century knowledge production, has become a fully institutionalized field of academic specialization since the late 1970s, my contention in this book is that there is still a requisite and tacit failure to take Black women’s work, as thinkers and theorists on broader questions affecting Black people, seriously. Yes, Black feminist women’s arguments about the centrality of gender to racial concerns have gained major academic currency, as evidenced by the broad use of intersectional discourse in numerous fields and disciplines. And yes, this new Black Lives Matter Movement, particularly as conceived by Garza, Tometi, and Khan-Cullors has made Black feminist politics the currency of Black radical thought. But the fact that Alicia Garza’s comments written in the second decade of the twenty-first century, sound eerily similar to commentary from Anna Julia Cooper writing in the nineteenth century, and Pauli Murray, Toni Cade Bambara, and bell hooks writing in the twentieth suggests that not enough has changed.

• From Henry Miller on Writing (1964)

  As the recipient of thousands of letters, most of them from young people, I get such a different picture. (Could it be that there is this difference in comprehension between the British and the American youth?) At any rate, the young who write me do “get” me to an amazing extent. Naturally, they ‘‘identify” with me, particularly those who are trying to express themselves. But how interesting it is that the same situations are at work eternally and eternally molding new artists. One could almost sum it up, like Lawrence, and say our troubles are largely, almost exclusively, societal. The social pattern remains the same, fundamentally, despite all the dazzling changes we have witnessed. It gets more thwarting all the time—for the born individualist. And, as you know, I am interested—like God—only in the individual. One of the things which irks me most, with the critics, is the statement you throw out—about being unlike myself. This is simply impossible. I don’t care who the artist is, if you study him deeply, sincerely, detachedly, you will find that he and his work are one. If it were otherwise the planets would be capable of leaving their orbits. I think your trouble may lie here, that the part of me you don’t know from direct experience—I mean the me of youth, of long before we met—you tend to idealize. The man you met in the Villa Seurat was a kind of monster, in a way, in that he was in the process of transformation. He had become partially civilized, so to speak. The tensions had eased up, he could be himself, and his own, natural self was, at the risk of being immodest, what you always sense and respect in me. (To myself I always think I was born “ultra civilized.” Another way of saying it, a more invidious way, would of course be to say that I was oversensitive.) And I suppose it is always the oversensitive creatures who, if they are bent on surviving, grow the toughest hides. This tough hide revealed itself in my case, more in what I passively permitted to be done for me and to me than by what I did of my own volition—vindictively, outrageously, and so on. The coward in me always concealed himself in that thick armor of dull passivity. I only grew truly sensitive again when I had attained a certain measure of liberation. I don’t want to embark on another autobiographical fragment! Stop me, for God’s sake. If I let myself go it is only because with the years I get new visions of myself, new vistas, and their one value to me is that they are more inclusive pictures of the parts that go to make the whole—the enigmatic whole. Here I digress a moment to mention a noticeable difference in the reactions of Europeans to my work. Seldom do they, for instance, speak of these “discrepancies.” Perhaps they have had too much contact with discordant authors all their lives.

• From Henry Miller on Writing (1964)

  It doesn’t matter what road we take so long as we are giving of ourselves, so long as we are not holding on. The Supreme Subject—Liberation—The Books in My LifeWhere the specific influences commence is at the brink of manhood, that is, from the time I first dreamed that I too might one day become “a writer.” The names which follow may be regarded then as the names of authors who influenced me as a man and as a writer, the two becoming more and more inseparable as time went on. From early manhood on my whole activity revolved about, or was motivated by, the fact that I thought of myself, first potentially, then embryonically, and finally manifestly, as a writer. And so, if my memory serves me right, here is my genealogical line: Boccaccio, Petronius, Rabelais, Whitman, Emerson, Thoreau, Maeterlinck, Romain Rolland, Plotinus, Heraclitus, Nietzsche, Dostoievski (and other Russian writers of the nineteenth century), the ancient Greek dramatists, the Elizabethan dramatists (excluding Shakespeare), Theodore Dreiser, Knut Hamsun, D. H. Lawrence, James Joyce, Thomas Mann, Élie Faure, Oswald Spengler, Marcel Proust, van Gogh, the Dadaists and Surrealists, Balzac, Lewis Carroll, Nijinsky, Rimbaud, Blaise Cendrars, Jean Giono, Celine, everything I read on Zen Buddhism, everything I read about China, India, Tibet, Arabia, Africa, and of course the Bible, the men who wrote it and especially the men who made the King James version, for it was the language of the Bible rather than its “message” which I got first and which I will never shake off. What were the subjects which made me seek the authors I love, which permitted me to be influenced, which formed my style, my character, my approach to life? Broadly these: the love of life itself, the pursuit of truth, wisdom and understanding, mystery, the power of language, the antiquity and the glory of man, eternality, the purpose of existence, the oneness of everything, self-liberation, the brotherhood of man, the meaning of love, the relation of sex to love, the enjoyment of sex, humor, oddities and eccentricities in all life’s aspects, travel, adventure, discovery, prophecy, magic (white and black), art, games, confessions, revelations, mysticism, more particularly the mystics themselves, the varieties of faith and worship, the marvelous in all realms and under all aspects, for “there is only the marvelous and nothing but the marvelous.” Have I left out some items? Fill them in yourself! I was, and still am, interested in everything. Even in politics—when regarded from “the perspective of the bird.” But the struggle of the human being to emancipate himself, that is, to liberate himself from the prison of his own making, that is for me the supreme subject. That is why I fail, perhaps, to be completely “the writer.” Perhaps that is why, in my works, I have given so much space to sheer experience of life.

• From The Case for God (2009)

  It is clear that the meditation, yoga, and rituals that work aesthetically on a congregation have, when practiced assiduously over a lifetime, a marked effect on the personality—an effect that is another form of natural theology. There is no dramatic “born-again” conversion but a slow, incremental, and imperceptible transformation. Above all, the habitual practice of compassion and the Golden Rule “all day and every day” demands perpetual kenosis. The constant “stepping outside” of our own preferences, convictions, and prejudices is an ekstasis that is not a glamorous rapture but, as Confucius’s pupil Yan Hui explained, is itself the transcendence we seek. The effect of these practices cannot give us concrete information about God; it is certainly not a scientific “proof.” But something indefinable happens to people who involve themselves in these disciplines with commitment and talent. This “something” remains opaque to those who do not undergo these disciplines, however, just as the Eleusinian “mystery” sounded trivial and absurd to somebody who remained obstinately outside the cult hall and refused to undergo the initiation. Like the ancient Sky Gods, the remote God of the philosophers tends to fade from people’s minds and hearts. The domineering God of modern “scientific religion” overexternalized the divine and pushed it away from humanity, confining it, like Blake’s Tyger, to “distant deeps and skies.” But premodern religion deliberately humanized the sacred. The Brahman was not a distant reality but was identical with the atman of every single creature. Confucius refused to define ren (later identified with “benevolence”) because it was incomprehensible to a person who had not yet achieved it. But the ordinary meaning of ren in Confucius’s time was “human being.” Ren is sometimes translated into English as “human-heartedness.” Holiness was not “supernatural,” therefore, but a carefully crafted attitude that, as a later Confucian explained, refined humanity and elevated it to a “godlike” (shen) plane. 8 When Buddhists contemplated the tranquillity, poise, and selflessness of the Buddha, they saw him as the avatar of the otherwise incomprehensible Nirvana; this was what Nirvana looked like in human terms. They also knew that this state was natural to human beings and that if they put the Buddhist method into practice they too could achieve it. Christians had a similar experience when their imitation of Christ brought them intimations of theosis (“deification”). Certain individuals became icons of this enhanced, refined humanity. We think of Socrates approaching his execution without recrimination but with openhearted kindness, cheerfulness, and serenity.

• From Another Country (1962)

  “I have to beat her up from time to time,” said Vivaldo, “but, otherwise, she’s great.” He stuck out his hand to the short man, who now stood behind Ida. “Hello there, Mr. Ellis. What brings you all the way down here?” Ellis raised his eyebrows exaggeratedly and threw out his palms. “What do you think brings me down here? I had an uncontrollable desire to see Sammy’s Bowery Follies.” Ida turned, smiling, still leaning on Vivaldo. “My God. I saw you down there at the bar, but I scarcely dared believe it was you.” “None other,” he said, “and you know”—he looked at her with tremendous admiration—“you are an extraordinary young woman. I’ve always thought so, I must say, but now I’ve seen it. I doubt if even you know how great a career is within your grasp.” “I’ve got an awfully long way to go Mr. Ellis, I’ve got such an awful lot to learn.” “If you ever stop feeling that way, I will personally take a hairbrush to you.” He looked up at Vivaldo. “You have not called me and I take that very unkindly.” Vivaldo suppressed whatever rude retort was on his tongue. He said, mildly, “I just don’t think I’ve got much of a future in TV.” “Oh, what an abysmal lack of imagination!” He shook Ida playfully by the shoulder. “Can’t you do anything with this man of yours? Why does he insist on hiding his light under a bushel?” “The truth is,” said Ida, “that the last time anybody made up Vivaldo’s mind for him was the last time they changed his diapers. And that was quite a long time ago. Anyway,” and she rubbed her cheek against Vivaldo’s shoulder, “I wouldn’t dream of trying to change him. I like him the way he is.” There was something very ugly in the air. She clung to Vivaldo, but Eric felt that there was something in it which was meant for Ellis. And Vivaldo seemed to feel this, too. He moved slightly away from Ida and picked up her handbag from the table—to give his hands something to do?—and said, “You haven’t met our friend, he just came in from Paris. This is Eric Jones; this is Steve Ellis.” They shook hands. “I know your name,” said Ellis. “Why?” “He’s an actor,” said Ida, “and he’s opening on Broadway in the fall.” Vivaldo, meanwhile, was paying the check. Eric took out his wallet, but Vivaldo waved it away. “I have heard of you. I’ve heard quite a lot about you,” and he looked Eric appraisingly up and down. “Branson’s signed you for Happy Hunting Ground. Is that right?” “That’s right,” said Eric. He could not tell whether he liked Ellis or not.

• From The Beautiful Room Is Empty (1988)

  I met Maria during my next-to-last year in prep school. She was studying painting at the art academy just across the street from my school, Eton, and she was seven years older than I, but she scarcely seemed to notice the difference. I see her even now striding along in black pants and a man’s white shirt spotted with paint, her hair slicked back behind her ears, squinting into the faint winter sunlight. She’s wearing white sneakers, also spattered with paint, a sailor’s pea coat and no makeup, although her eyebrows have been slightly plucked. She looks very scrubbed and German but also faintly glamorous; the glamour clings to her like the smell of Gitanes in wool. Is it the hard defiance in her eyes or just the slicked-back hair with its suggestion of the high-school bad girl that lends her this dangerous aura? It’s terribly cold, snow is excitingly in the air like the promise of Christmas, we’re hurrying up the steps leading to the academy’s museum, and she has a cigarette dangling from her small blue hand purely for ornamental effect, since she doesn’t know how to inhale. It must be Sunday because there are two middle-aged ladies out for the day from the big ugly city nearby, bundled up in old furs and posing on the steps for a man who is swaddled in a car coat. He’s signaling the ladies to squeeze together, now he’s inviting them to smile, now he’s adjusting the focus and about to snap—when Maria sails between him and his subjects muttering to me, “Don’t worry about this guy. Believe me, he’s not exactly an artist.” I remember that moment because it was so out of character for Maria. In the 1950s in the Midwest there were very few culture vultures, the Abstract Expressionists were still beleaguered, and those ladies and the photographer were about to go into the school museum to look at the student show and, no doubt, have a good laugh. “Is that a Ferris wheel? A nose? Or did someone just toss his cookies?” they’d ask. The real cards would wonder if the painting had been hung upside down by mistake. Things were simpler, clearer then. On one side were the painters, a few taunted, poor, scrawny kids, and on the other the philistines, the fat-cat majority. Certainly the painters felt justified at striking back at what they called the “boor-zhwah-zee,” but Maria hated all sorts of cruelty, especially to other women and to animals. A little bit later, just a year or two later, and she’d never have insulted that Sunday photographer. She’d have said, “Who knows, maybe he’s a genius in disguise. After all, Rousseau was just a Sunday painter.” She thought some sort of second American Revolution would have to break out to equalize the wealth, but she prayed it would be bloodless.

• From Lost Christianities: Christian Scriptures and the Battles over Authentication (2002)

  71 The letter of 3 Corinthians is a response that takes on all these points one by one. “Paul” (that is, the forger writing in Paul’s name to address these second-century heretical views) claims that Jesus really was born of Mary (something the real Paul never mentions); that he was true À esh; and that God was the creator of all there is, who sent the Jewish prophets and Jesus to overcome the Devil, who had corrupted the À esh. He ends the letter with an attempt to demonstrate that the À esh is actually raised from the dead by pointing to three analogies: the sowing of wheat (which goes into the ground naked but emerges as a new plant); Jonah (who appeared again in the À esh after disappearing into the great ¿ sh); and an apocryphal tale of the prophet Elisha (whose dead bones could bring bodies back to life). The letter of 3 Corinthians is, then, a mid-second-century forgery in Paul’s name in which a proto-orthodox Christian appealed to the apostle’s authority to counteract doctrinal problems caused by heretical teachers of his own day. The dispute against heresy was not the only reason to pen letters in Paul’s name, however, as can be seen in the correspondence between Paul and the famous Roman philosopher Seneca. Seneca was probably the most well known and most inÀ uential philosopher of Paul’s day: tutor and later political advisor to the Emperor Nero and highly proli¿ c author of moral essays, philosophical tractates, poetical works, and scienti¿ c treatises. At a later time (fourth century), Christians were puzzled that the important ¿ gures in their religion, especially Jesus and Paul, were completely unknown to major political and intellectual leaders of their day (neither of them, in fact, is ever mentioned by any Roman author of the ¿ rst century). The pseudepigraphic correspondence between Paul and Seneca works to redress this situation. There are some fourteen letters that survive, eight allegedly from Seneca to Paul and six from Paul to Seneca. In them, Seneca and Paul are portrayed as close companions, with Seneca expressing admiration and astonishment at Paul’s brilliance and learning, and Paul acting as a teacher who has convinced Seneca of the truth of the Christian message. More than that, in these letters, Seneca indicates that he has read Paul’s writings to the Emperor Nero, who is amazed and moved by Paul’s learning. Several references in these forged letters attempt to provide verisimilitude for their claims to authenticity, especially letter 11, which mentions the ¿ re

• From Lost Christianities: Christian Scriptures and the Battles over Authentication (2002)

  The letter of 3 Corinthians is a response that takes on all these points one by one. “Paul” (that is, the forger writing in Paul’s name to address these second-century heretical views) claims that Jesus really was born of Mary (something the real Paul never mentions); that he was true (cid:192) esh; and that God was the creator of all there is, who sent the Jewish prophets and Jesus to overcome the Devil, who had corrupted the (cid:192) esh. He ends the letter with an attempt to demonstrate that the (cid:192) esh is actually raised from the dead by pointing to three analogies: the sowing of wheat (which goes into the ground naked but emerges as a new plant); Jonah (who appeared again in the (cid:192) esh after disappearing into the great (cid:191) sh); and an apocryphal tale of the prophet Elisha (whose dead bones could bring bodies back to life). The letter of 3 Corinthians is, then, a mid-second-century forgery in Paul’s name in which a proto-orthodox Christian appealed to the apostle’s authority to counteract doctrinal problems caused by heretical teachers of his own day. The dispute against heresy was not the only reason to pen letters in Paul’s name, however, as can be seen in the correspondence between Paul and the famous Roman philosopher Seneca. Seneca was probably the most well known and most in(cid:192) uential philosopher of Paul’s day: tutor and later political advisor to the Emperor Nero and highly proli(cid:191) c author of moral essays, philosophical tractates, poetical works, and scienti(cid:191) c treatises. At a later time (fourth century), Christians were puzzled that the important (cid:191) gures in their religion, especially Jesus and Paul, were completely unknown to major political and intellectual leaders of their day (neither of them, in fact, is ever mentioned by any Roman author of the (cid:191) rst century). The pseudepigraphic correspondence between Paul and Seneca works to redress this situation. There are some fourteen letters that survive, eight allegedly from Seneca to Paul and six from Paul to Seneca. In them, Seneca and Paul are portrayed as close companions, with Seneca expressing admiration and astonishment at Paul’s brilliance and learning, and Paul acting as a teacher who has convinced Seneca of the truth of the Christian message. More than that, in these letters, Seneca indicates that he has read Paul’s writings to the Emperor Nero, who is amazed and moved by Paul’s learning. Several references in these forged letters attempt to provide verisimilitude for their claims to authenticity, especially letter 11, which mentions the (cid:191) re 71

• From Becoming Myself: A Psychiatrist's Memoir (2017)

  The conversation stretched from salad and sandwiches to dessert and coffee and ranged over many topics. Unless we steered him in a particular direction, Whitehorn was prone to discuss his new ideas on the periodic table. He would walk to the blackboard and pull down the periodic table chart that was always hanging in his office. Though he had taken psychiatric training at Harvard and had been chairman of psychiatry at Washington University in St. Louis before coming to Hopkins, he had originally been a biochemist, and had done substantial research on the chemistry of the brain. I remember posing questions about the origins of paranoid thinking, to which he responded at great length. Once, when I was passing through a phase of highly deterministic thinking about human behavior, I suggested to him that total knowledge of all the stimuli imposing upon the individual would allow us to predict with precision his or her reaction, both in thought and action. I compared it to hitting a pool ball—if we knew the force, angle, and spin, we’d know the reaction of the ball being struck. My position prompted him to take the opposite view, a humanistic perspective that was foreign and uncomfortable for him. After a lively discussion, Dr. Whitehorn said to the others, “It is not out of the question that Dr. Yalom is having a bit of fun at my expense.” As I think back on it, he was probably right: I do recall feeling a bit amused that I had maneuvered him into the very humanistic point of view I usually espoused. My only disappointment with him came when I lent him a copy of Kafka’s The Trial , which I had loved in part for its metaphorical presentation of neuroticism and free-floating guilt. Dr. Whitehorn returned the book a couple of days later, shaking his head. He told me he just didn’t get it and that he’d rather talk to real people. By that time, I had been in psychiatry for three years, and I had yet to encounter any clinician who was interested in the insights of philosophers or novelists. After lunch we returned to observing Dr. Whitehorn’s interviews. By four or five o’clock I began getting antsy, eager to get out and play tennis with my regular partner, one of the medical students. The house staff tennis court was only two hundred feet away in an alcove between the departments of psychiatry and pediatrics, and on many Friday evenings I kept my hopes alive until the last rays of sunshine had vanished, then sighed and turned my full attention back to the interview. My final contact during my training with John Whitehorn came in my last month of residency. He summoned me to his office one afternoon, and when I had closed the door behind me and sat before him, I noticed his face seemed less severe. Was I mistaken, or did I discern friendliness, even a trace of a smile?

• From Another Country (1962)

  Rufus laughed. “You better quit trying to compete with me. You ain’t never going to make it. So long.” “So long.” He hung up, smiling, and went to find Leona. She stood helplessly in the foyer, watching the host and hostess saying good night to several people. “Think I’d deserted you?” “No. I knew you wouldn’t do that.” He smiled at her and touched her on the chin with his fist. The host turned away from the door and came over to them. “You kids go on inside and get yourselves a drink,” he said. “Go on in and get with it.” He was a big, handsome, expansive man, older and more ruthless than he looked, who had fought his way to the top in show business via several of the rougher professions, including boxing and pimping. He owed his present eminence more to his vitality and his looks than he did to his voice, and he knew it. He was not the kind of man who fooled himself and Rufus liked him because he was rough and good-natured and generous. But Rufus was also a little afraid of him; there was that about him, in spite of his charm, which did not encourage intimacy. He was a great success with women, whom he treated with a large, affectionate contempt, and he was now on his fourth wife. He took Leona and Rufus by the arm and walked them to the edge of the party. “We might have us some real doings if these squares ever get out of here,” he said. “Stick around.” “How does it feel to be respectable?” Rufus grinned. “Shit. I been respectable all my life. It’s these respectable motherfuckers been doing all the dirt. They been stealing the colored folks blind, man. And niggers helping them do it.” He laughed. “You know, every time they give me one of them great big checks I think to myself, they just giving me back a little bit of what they been stealing all these years, you know what I mean?” He clapped Rufus on the back. “See that Little Eva has a good time.”

• From Another Country (1962)

  He seemed checked; seemed, indeed almost to bow. “Oh, yes,” he said. “Please follow me.” Ida moved back slightly, to allow Cass to go before her, giving her the briefest of winks as she did so. Cass felt overcome with admiration and with rage, and at the same time she wanted to laugh. They walked, or, rather, marched through the bar, two lone and superbly improbable women, whose respectability had been, if not precisely defined, placed beyond the gates of common speculation. The place was crowded, but at a large table which gave the impression, somehow, of taking up more than its share of space, sat Steve Ellis, with two couples, one black and one white. He rose, and the waiter vanished. “I’m delighted to see you again, Mrs. Silenski,” he said, smiling, holding out that regal hand. “Each time I see Richard, I beg to be remembered to you—but has he ever given you any of my messages? Of course not.” “Of course not,” Cass said, laughing. She felt, suddenly, unaccountably, extremely lighthearted. “Richard simply has no memory at all. But I kept imagining that you would come back to see us, and you never have.” “Oh, but I will. You’ll be seeing much more of me, dear lady, than you have the courage to imagine.” He turned to the table. “Let me introduce you all.” He gestured toward the dark couple. “Here are Mr. and Mrs. Barry—Mrs. Silenski.” He bowed ironically in Ida’s direction. “Miss Scott.” Ida responded to this bow with an ironical half-curtsey. Mr. Barry rose and shook their hands. He wore a small mustache over narrow lips; and he smiled a tentative smile which did not quite mask his patient wonder as to who they were. His wife looked like a retired showgirl. She glittered and gleamed, and she was one of those women who always seem to be dying to get home and take off their cruel and intricate and invisible lacings. Her red lower lip swooped or buckled down over her chin when she smiled, which was always. The other couple were named Nash. The male was red-faced, gray-haired, heavy, with a large cigar and a self-satisfied laugh; he was much older than his wife, who was pale, blonde and thin, and wore bangs. Ida and Cass were distributed around the table, Ida next to Ellis, Cass next to Mrs. Barry. They ordered drinks. “Miss Scott,” said Ellis, “spends a vast amount of her time pretending to be a waitress. Don’t ever go anywhere near the joint she works in—I won’t even tell you where it is—she’s the worst. As a waitress. But she’s a great singer. You’re going to be hearing a lot from Miss Ida Scott.” And he grabbed her hand and patted it hard for a moment, held it for a moment. “We might be able to persuade those boys on the stand to let her sing a couple of numbers for us.”

• From History of the Christian Church: The Complete Set of Eight Volumes (1858)

  But then, this primitive catholic episcopal system must by no means be confounded with the later hierarchy. The dioceses, excepting those of Jerusalem, Ephesus, Alexandria, Antioch, and Rome, must have long remained very small, if we look at the number of professing Christians. In the Apocalypse seven such centres of unity are mentioned within a comparatively small compass in Asia Minor, and at a time when the number of Christians was insignificant. In the year 258, Cyprian assembled a council of eighty-seven bishops of North Africa. The functions of the bishops were not yet strictly separated from those of the presbyters, and it was only by degrees that ordination, and, in the Western church, confirmation also, came to be intrusted exclusively to the bishops. § 45. Development of the Episcopate. Ignatius. It is matter of fact that the episcopal form of government was universally established in the Eastern and Western church as early as the middle of the second century. Even the heretical sects, at least the Ebionites, as we must infer from the commendation of the episcopacy in the pseudo-Clementine literature, were organized on this plan, as well as the later schismatic parties of Novatians, Donatists, etc. But it is equally undeniable, that the episcopate reached its complete form only step by step. In the period before us we must note three stages in this development connected with the name of Ignatius in Syria (d. 107 or 115), Irenaeus in Gaul (d. 202), and Cyprian in North Africa (d. 258). The episcopate first appears, as distinct from the presbyterate, but as a congregational office only (in distinction from the diocesan idea), and as yet a young institution, greatly needing commendation, in the famous seven (or three) Epistles of Ignatius of Antioch a disciple of the apostles, and the second bishop of that see (Evodius being the first, and Hero the third). He is also the first who uses the term "catholic church," as if episcopacy and catholicity sprung up simultaneously. The whole story of Ignatius is more legendary than real, and his writings are subject to grave suspicion of fraudulent interpolation. We have three different versions of the Ignatian Epistles, but only one of them can be genuine; either the smaller Greek version, or the lately discovered Syriac.187 In the latter, which contains only three epistles, most of the passages on the episcopate are wanting, indeed; yet the leading features of the institution appear even here, and we can recognise ex ungue leonem.188 In any case they reflect the public sentiment before the middle of the second century.

• From Amplified Holy Bible (2015)

  Greet my beloved Epaenetus, who is the first convert to Christ from [the west coast province of] Asia [Minor]. 6 Greet Mary, who has worked so hard for you. 7 Greet Andronicus and d Junias, my kinsmen and [once] my fellow prisoners, who are held in high esteem e in the estimation of the apostles, and who were [believers] in Christ before me. 8 Greet Ampliatus, my beloved in the Lord. 9 Greet Urbanus, our fellow worker in Christ, and my beloved Stachys. 10 Greet Apelles, the one tested and approved in Christ. Greet those who belong to the household of f Aristobulus. 11 Greet my kinsman Herodion. Greet those of the household of Narcissus, who are in the Lord. 12 Greet those workers in the Lord, Tryphaena and Tryphosa. Greet my beloved Persis, who has worked hard in the Lord. 13 Greet Rufus, an eminent and choice man in the Lord, also his mother [who has been] a mother to me as well. 14 Greet Asyncritus, Phlegon, Hermes, Patrobas, Hermas, and the brothers who are with them. 15 Greet Philologus and Julia, Nereus and his sister, and Olympas, and all g God’s people who are with them. 16 Greet one another with a h holy kiss. All the churches of Christ greet you. 17 I urge you, brothers and sisters, to keep your eyes on those who cause dissensions and create obstacles or introduce temptations [for others] to commit sin, [acting in ways] contrary to the doctrine which you have learned. Turn away from them. 18 For such people do not serve our Lord Christ, but their own appetites and base desires. By smooth and flattering speech they deceive the hearts of the unsuspecting [the innocent and the naive]. 19 For the report of your obedience has reached everyone, so that I rejoice over you, but I want you to be wise in what is good and innocent in what is evil. 20 The God of peace will soon crush Satan under your feet. T he [wonderful] grace of our Lord Jesus be with you. 21 Timothy, my fellow worker, sends his greetings to you, as do Lucius, Jason and Sosipater, my kinsmen. 22 I, i Tertius, the writer (scribe) of this letter, greet you in the Lord. 23 Gaius, who is host to me and to the whole church here, greets you. Erastus, the city treasurer, and our brother Quartus, greet you. 24 j [ The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you all.

• From Henry Miller on Writing (1964)

  To be just a master is to be static, dead. As long as we are alive we are growing, stretching out our hands towards God … any God. And God is reaching down to us. No end, no conclusion, no completion. Perpetual becoming. And so pertinent to all the foregoing is what you say about spirit and flesh. They are one, of course. And suddenly I saw myself as the “earnest young man,” the youth with a book under his arm, wherever he went. And how is it all the critics, and even my good friends sometimes, forget what I have told about so often—my efforts to find a God, a religion, a belief, a way of life. At a very early age too. New Thought, Ethical Culture, Theosophy, the Bahai movement … what didn’t I look into? And that evangelist, Benjamin Fay Mills, whom Bob Challacombe introduced me to! How much I owe that man! How much I still revere him! Don’t you know that story of how I heard him lecture and, moved to the guts, I went down to speak to him (from the gallery) and I said, as only an “innocent” could: “Dear Sir, I believe that I am one who should hear your (private) lectures. I know what you are thinking about. Couldn’t you let me do something for you to pay for those lectures?” (It cost about a hundred dollars for the series.) And I shall never forget the look he gave me, a long, down-slanting look with piercing gimlet eyes, like those of a mage or an old witch. And after reading my very soul, it seemed, he said, breaking into a smile: “Of course you are the man! Certainly you shall hear the lectures.” And then he suggested that I pay for them by passing the salver around (for money) after his public lectures. Which I did. (Can you picture me doing that?) There’s another point in your letter which interests me—that of the seemingly perpetual décalage between the writer and his work, the man and his product. I can’t see why people dwell on this as much as they do, finding disappointment in either the man or his work. In life, it seems so obvious, man has a more limited scope to the play of his many-faceted being. There are exceptions to be sure—in the hero type—men like Alexander, Caesar, Napoleon, artists in action. But how many writers can do or be what they do and are through their characters in books? Exceptions again—Voltaire, Casanova, Cendrars, for example. But usually where life is exalted the art suffers, and vice versa. And this brings me, perhaps for the nth time, to the business which you all seem agreed upon and wish to explain away: the slag. Nice that image of the volcano. Flattering. But let me give you a look again at myself as I see myself, that is, see myself writing. What is my weakness? The desire to devour all.

• From Henry Miller on Writing (1964)

  In his book called A Challenge to Sex Censors , Mr. Schroeder quotes an anonymous clergyman of a century ago to the effect that “obscenity exists only in the minds that discover it and charge others with it.” This obscure work contains most illuminating passages; in it the author attempts to show that, by a law of reflection in nature, everyone is the performer of acts similar to those he attributes to others; that self-preservation is self-destruction, etc. This wholesome and enlightened viewpoint, attainable, it would seem, only by the rare few, comes nearer to dissipating the fogs which envelop the subject than all the learned treatises of educators, moralists, scholars and jurists combined. In Romans xiv: 14 we have it presented to us axiomatically for all time: “I know and am persuaded by the Lord Jesus that there is nothing unclean of itself, but to him that esteemeth anything to be unclean, to him it is unclean.” How far one would get in the courts with this attitude, or what the postal authorities would make of it, surely no sane individual has any doubts about. A totally different point of view, and one which deserves attention, since it is not only honest and forthright but expressive of the innate conviction of many, is that voiced by Havelock Ellis, that obscenity is a “permanent element of human social life and corresponds to a deep need of the human mind.”3 Ellis indeed goes so far as to say that “adults need obscene literature, as much as children need fairy tales, as a relief from the oppressive force of convention.” This is the attitude of a cultured individual whose purity and wisdom has been acknowledged by eminent critics everywhere. It is the worldly view which we profess to admire in the Mediterranean peoples. Ellis, being an Englishman, was of course persecuted for his opinions and ideas upon the subject of sex. From the nineteenth century on, all English authors who dared to treat the subject honestly and realistically have been persecuted and humiliated. The prevalent attitude of the English people is, I believe, fairly well presented in such a piece of polished inanity as Viscount Brentford’s righteous self-defense—“Do We Need a Censor?”

• From The Decameron (1353)

  A KNIGHT IN THE KING'S SERVICE OF SPAIN THINKING HIMSELF ILL GUERDONED, THE KING BY VERY CERTAIN PROOF SHOWETH HIM THAT THIS IS NOT HIS FAULT, BUT THAT OF HIS OWN PERVERSE FORTUNE, AND AFTER LARGESSETH HIM MAGNIFICENTLY "Needs, honourable ladies, must I repute it a singular favour to myself that our king hath preferred me unto such an honour as it is to be the first to tell of magnificence, the which, even as the sun is the glory and adornment of all the heaven, is the light and lustre of every other virtue. I will, therefore, tell you a little story thereof, quaint and pleasant enough to my thinking, which to recall can certes be none other than useful. You must know, then, that, among the other gallant gentlemen who have from time immemorial graced our city, there was one (and maybe the most of worth) by name Messer Ruggieri de' Figiovanni, who, being both rich and high-spirited and seeing that, in view of the way of living and of the usages of Tuscany, he might, if he tarried there, avail to display little or nothing of his merit, resolved to seek service awhile with Alfonso, King of Spain, the renown of whose valiance transcended that of every other prince of his time; wherefore he betook himself, very honourably furnished with arms and horses and followers, to Alfonso in Spain and was by him graciously received. Accordingly, he took up his abode there and living splendidly and doing marvellous deeds of arms, he very soon made himself known for a man of worth and valour.

• From Amplified Holy Bible (2015)

  For time will fail me if I tell of Gideon, Barak, Samson, Jephthah, of David and Samuel and the prophets, [Judg 4 ; 5 ; 6–8 ; 11 ; 12 ; 13–16 ; 1 Sam 1–30 ; 2 Sam 1–24 ; 1 Kin 1 ; 2 ; Acts 3:24 ] 33 who by faith [that is, with an enduring trust in God and His promises] subdued kingdoms, administered justice, obtained promised blessings, closed the mouths of lions, [Dan 6 ] 34 extinguished the power of [raging] fire, escaped the edge of the sword, out of weakness were made strong, became mighty and unbeatable in battle, putting enemy forces to flight. [Dan 3 ] 35 Women received back their dead by resurrection; and others were tortured [to death], refusing to accept release [offered on the condition of denying their faith], so that they would be resurrected to a better life; [1 Kin 17:17–24 ; 2 Kin 4:25–37 ] 36 and others experienced the trial of mocking and scourging [amid torture], and even chains and imprisonment. 37 They were stoned [to death], they were sawn in two, they were lured with tempting offers [to renounce their faith], they were put to death by the sword; they went about wrapped in the skins of sheep and goats, utterly destitute, oppressed, cruelly treated 38 (people of whom the world was not worthy), wandering in deserts and mountains and [living in] caves and holes in the ground. 39 And all of these, though they gained [divine] approval through their faith, did not receive [the fulfillment of] what was promised, 40 because God had us in mind and had something better for us, so that they [these men and women of authentic faith] would not be made perfect [that is, completed in Him] apart from us. Hebrews 12 Jesus, the Example 1 T HEREFORE, SINCE we are surrounded by so great a cloud of a witnesses [who by faith have testified to the truth of God’s absolute faithfulness], stripping off every unnecessary weight and the sin which so easily and cleverly entangles us, let us run with endurance and active persistence the race that is set before us, 2 [looking away from all that will distract us and] focusing our eyes on Jesus, who is the Author and Perfecter of faith [the first incentive for our belief and the One who brings our faith to maturity], who for the joy [of accomplishing the goal] set before Him endured the cross, b disregarding the shame, and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God [revealing His deity, His authority, and the completion of His work]. [Ps 110:1 ] 3 Just consider and meditate on Him who endured from sinners such bitter hostility against Himself [consider it all in comparison with your trials], so that you will not grow weary and lose heart.

• From Becoming Myself: A Psychiatrist's Memoir (2017)

  The gray East Coast, with its frigid winters and oppressively hot summers, no longer beckoned. I felt at home in Hawaii and began to fantasize about staying there for the rest of my life. A s we approached the end of our two years in Hawaii, we were faced with the decision of where to live. I had published two more professional articles and was leaning toward an academic career. But, alas, staying in Hawaii was not an option: the medical school offered only the first two nonclinical years and had no full-time psychiatry faculty. I felt very much on my own and sensed the lack of a mentor, someone who might have given me guidance about how to proceed. Not for an instant did it occur to me to contact my Hopkins teachers, John Whitehorn or Jerry Frank. Now, as I look back upon that time, I’m mystified: Why didn’t I think of asking them for advice or for a reference? I must have thought that I had passed entirely out of their minds when I had finished my residency. Instead, I took the least imaginative path possible: the want ads! I checked the ads in the American Psychiatric Association newsletter and found three postings of interest: faculty positions at Stanford University School of Medicine and the University of California at San Francisco (UCSF) Medical School, and a staff position at the Mendota State Hospital in Wisconsin (of interest only because the eminent psychologist Carl Rogers worked at that hospital). I applied for all three positions. They all agreed to interview me, and I caught a military plane to San Francisco. My first interview, at UCSF, was with a senior faculty member, Jacob Epstein, who at the end of an hour offered me a clinical faculty position and an annual salary of $18,000. Since my third-year salary as a resident had been $3,000, and my military salary $12,000, I was inclined to accept, even though I knew the demands on my time would be very high: I would not only be teaching medical students and psychiatric residents, but also running an extremely large, busy inpatient ward. The following day, David Hamburg, who was the new chairman of the Stanford Psychiatry Department, interviewed me. The Stanford Medical School and Hospital had just moved from San Francisco to newly constructed buildings on the Stanford campus in Palo Alto, and he was given full charge for creating an entirely new department. I was struck by Dr. Hamburg’s lofty vision, his concern about our field, and his wisdom. And by his sentences! Hearing one stately, complex sentence after another roll off his tongue was like listening to a fine concerto. Furthermore, I had the strong sense that, in addition to his mentorship, I would be provided with all the resources and academic freedom I needed. I say that in retrospect: at that time I don’t believe I had any idea what my future might be or what I was capable of.

• From Confessions of the Flesh (The History of Sexuality, Vol. 4) (2021)

  The last three discourses constitute the summit of the ascent. The most important is the eighth, Thecla’s. It will win the prize, in spite of the excellence of all the others. One mustn’t forget that in fact Thecla was celebrated as the companion of Saint Paul, nor that the Acta Pauli et Theclae was a text regularly referred to by the Encratists and all those among Tatian’s disciples who preached strict abstinence. Methodius’s use of Thecla as one of his characters signals a desire to emphasize the Paulinian nature of his intervention, and to involve this figure of the first virgin-martyr in a eulogy of virginity that would not be a precept of absolute and unconditional continence. So it’s a matter of having Thecla herself, the model of Christian virgins invoked by Encratism, reveal a different understanding of virginity. As for the fact that this “capital” discourse in the strict sense is the eighth one, the reason is easy to discover. Methodius’s eschatology attached a very special significance, in fact, to the number eight. Based on the seven days of Genesis, and on the calendar of Leviticus, with the seven holidays of the seventh month, whose observance is a permanent law for the descendants of Israel,56 Methodius reasoned that the world was destined to last seven millennia: the first five being those of obscurity and the Law; the sixth, which corresponds to creation of man, was that of the coming of Christ; the seventh that of Rest, the Resurrection, and the Feast of Tabernacles. As for the eighth millennium, it will be that of Eternity.57 Thecla’s discourse, in the eighth position, crowns all the others—it is placed at the end of time, so to speak: it reveals Eternity. It is both the culmination and foundation of everything that’s been said. Thecla reviews, in terms more Platonic than ever, the description of the movement of souls—souls that, if they’re able to avoid the world’s defilements, rise up to the spheres of the Incorruptible. She evokes the wings of those souls that “are strengthened by the sap of purity,” and whose flight is all the lighter “as they are accustomed daily to flying far from human preoccupations.”58 She also evokes “those who have lost their wings and fallen into pleasures” where “they wallow,”59 incapable of any honorable childbirth. To the rising souls Thecla, like those who spoke before her, promises access to incorruptibility: they “ascend into the supramundane life and see from afar what others do not see, the very pastures of immortality, bearing in abundance flowers of inconceivable beauty!”60 And in this movement, they manifest that resemblance to God that Platonic philosophy had always promised to souls broken free of the world of appearances. By giving virginity this very broad meaning of a purified, “peak” existence,61 Methodius is able to pair it with God. Parthenia = partheia.

• From Confessions of the Flesh (The History of Sexuality, Vol. 4) (2021)

  But the force that connects men and women is not just the trace of an origin. It is also the figure of another union: that which binds Christ and the Church. Redemption in the process of being realized, and no longer Creation. After having brought up the connection that establishes itself so abruptly between a man and a woman, breaking the long attachment to their parents, Chrysostom goes on to say that it’s in the same way that Christ “left his father and descended to the Church”:16 “You know what sort of mystery marriage is, what great things it symbolizes.”17 This idea comes from Origen.18 It makes marriage the figure representing the tie that Christ establishes with the Church in a perceptible way: he is the Bridegroom, he is the soul and he is the head; he’s the one who commands,19 whereas she is the betrothed; she is the body of his soul and the member of his body; she must obey him. He has come all the way to her, out of love, while men hated him, abhorred him, insulted him.20 He accepted her with all the flaws she might have, all the impurities she carried; but it was to watch over her, teach her, enlighten her, and save her finally. As a perfect husband, he sacrificed himself for her, enduring every suffering and lacerated a thousand times.21 But in return, Christ’s tie with the Church serves as a model for every marriage: it’s the same obedience that should connect the woman to the man; the same preeminence of him over her; the same task of education, and the same acceptance of sacrifice to save her. The marriage tie owes its value to the fact that it reproduces, in its own way, the form of love that attaches Christ and the Church to one another. “The home is a little church.”22