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 The Day the Revolution Began (2016)

  One can only stand in awe at the combination of insight and expression that could encapsulate so much in a mere seventy-six Greek words. What this tells me is that already in the very early church it was common coin, first, that Jesus’s death established God’s kingdom; second, that this came about because of his servant-shaped identification with sinful humanity, sharing their death and so bearing their sin; and third, that this action was not something Jesus did despite the fact that he was “in God’s form” and “equal with God,” but rather something that he did because he was those things. In whatever way the New Testament tells the story of the cross, it is always the story of self-giving divine love. This is why I have said that the real danger in expounding the meaning of Jesus’s death is to collapse it into a kind of pagan scenario in which an angry God is pacified by taking out his wrath on Jesus. The first Christians did not use the language of “Trinity,” but at the heart of what they believed about Jesus and his death, they affirmed, explained, insisted on, and turned into brilliant poetry the insight that what happened on the cross was the self-expression of the love that made the world. Colossians A passage from another “prison letter” that is vital for our purposes is Colossians 2:13–15: In the same way, though you were dead in legal offenses, and in the uncircumcision of your flesh, God made you alive together with Jesus, forgiving us all our offenses. He blotted out the handwriting that was against us, opposing us with its legal demands. He took it right out of the way, by nailing it to the cross. He stripped the rulers and authorities of their armor, and displayed them contemptuously to public view, celebrating his triumph over them in him. This is of course deliberately ironic. What seemed to be happening as Jesus of Nazareth hung in agony on the cross was that the “rulers and authorities” were celebrating their triumph over him , having stripped him of his clothes and held him up to public contempt. No, insists Paul, once you learn the meaning of the gospel, you have to see everything inside out.

• From The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma (2014)

  Most great instigators of social change have intimate personal knowledge of trauma. Oprah Winfrey comes to mind, as do Maya Angelou, Nelson Mandela, and Elie Wiesel. Read the life history of any visionary, and you will find insights and passions that came from having dealt with devastation. The same is true of societies. Many of our most profound advances grew out of experiencing trauma: the abolition of slavery from the Civil War, Social Security in response to the Great Depression, and the GI Bill, which produced our once vast and prosperous middle class, from World War II. Trauma is now our most urgent public health issue, and we have the knowledge necessary to respond effectively. The choice is ours to act on what we know. AcknowledgmentsThis book is the fruit of thirty years of trying to understand how people deal with, survive, and heal from traumatic experiences. Thirty years of clinical work with traumatized men, women and children; innumerable discussions with colleagues and students, and participation in the evolving science about how mind, brain, and body deal with, and recover from, overwhelming experiences. Let me start with the people who helped me organize, and eventually publish, this book. Toni Burbank, my editor, with whom I communicated many times each week over a two-year period about the scope, organization, and specific contents of the book. Toni truly understood what this book is about, and that understanding has been critical in defining its form and substance. My agent, Brettne Bloom, understood the importance of this work, found a home for it with Viking, and provided critical support at critical moments. Rick Kot, my editor at Viking, supplied invaluable feedback and editorial guidance. My colleagues and students at the Trauma Center have provided the feeding ground, laboratory, and support system for this work. They also have been constant reminders of the sober reality of our work for these three decades. I cannot name them all, but Joseph Spinazzola, Margaret Blaustein, Roslin Moore, Richard Jacobs, Liz Warner, Wendy D’Andrea, Jim Hopper, Fran Grossman, Alex Cook, Marla Zucker, Kevin Becker, David Emerson, Steve Gross, Dana Moore, Robert Macy, Liz Rice-Smith, Patty Levin, Nina Murray, Mark Gapen, Carrie Pekor, Debbie Korn, and Betta de Boer van der Kolk all have been critical collaborators. And of course Andy Pond and Susan Wayne of the Justice Resource Institute. My most important companions and guides in understanding and researching traumatic stress have been Alexander McFarlane, Onno van der Hart, Ruth Lanius and Paul Frewen, Rachel Yehuda, Stephen Porges, Glenn Saxe, Jaak Panksepp, Janet Osterman, Julian Ford, Brad Stolback, Frank Putnam, Bruce Perry, Judith Herman, Robert Pynoos, Berthold Gersons, Ellert Nijenhuis, Annette Streeck-Fisher, Marylene Cloitre, Dan Siegel, Eli Newberger, Vincent Felitti, Robert Anda, and Martin Teicher; as well as my colleagues who taught me about attachment: Edward Tronick, Karlen Lyons-Ruth, and Beatrice Beebe.

• From The Day the Revolution Began (2016)

  This is one place where the long traditions of displaying a romantic or sentimental Jesus figure have let us down. We are so used to the soppy picture of “gentle Jesus, meek and mild” and to the reaction that such a picture provokes, stressing Jesus’s occasional sternness and warnings against the Pharisees and others, that we have perhaps failed to notice how strange it is to have a major public figure who is treading a dangerous line between affirming ancient traditions and criticizing current abuses and who is known at the same time for a deeply caring approach to people of all sorts, especially those in distress. The reason for highlighting this here is not simply that it is an important and easily overlooked feature of the gospels, but that for all four evangelists this deliberately and explicitly constructs a picture of Jesus’s death not in terms of an angry father lashing out at an innocent and defenseless son, but in terms of someone embodying the love of God himself, acting as the personal expression of that love all the way to his death. If more attention had been paid to this feature, which is built into the narrative rather than being stuck in from the side by means of one or two scriptural quotations or allusions or the odd authorial “aside,” some of the more disturbing and unbiblical features of would-be “atonement” theology—and the social and cultural spinoffs that have sometimes accompanied them—could have been avoided. John, as we saw, opens his account of the events leading up to Jesus’s death by stressing that this was the completion of Jesus’s constant love (13:1). But this does not stand alone. For John, it draws out and makes explicit what has been implicit in passage after passage as Jesus transforms the lives of people of all sorts; biblical imagery, such as that of the “good shepherd,” also makes the same point.

• From The Day the Revolution Began (2016)

  The result is that the cross establishes the kingdom of God through the agency of Jesus . That is what the last three stanzas of the poem are celebrating. We are here exactly on the same page as the four gospels. Third, the poem in its present context is setting out the pattern of life that is both the foundation and the model for the way Jesus’s followers ought to behave in relation to one another. The first four verses of the chapter stress the shared life of the community, mutual love and partnership in the spirit, heartfelt affection, and sympathy. On this basis Paul instructs the church: Hold on to the same love; bring your innermost lives into harmony; fix your minds on the same object. Never act out of selfish ambition or vanity; instead, regard everybody else as your superior. Look after each other’s best interests, not your own. (2:2–4) The poem then sets out the story of Jesus himself not only as the example of how to do this but as, so to speak, the place where this kind of life is to be found. The “place” is the Messiah himself, “in whom” his people find their identity: “This is how you should think among yourselves—with the mind that you have because you belong to the Messiah, Jesus” (2:5). They already belong to him and this is how his “mind” worked, so theirs should work in the same way not only because they are copying him, but because his “mind” is at work in theirs. But this provides a clue to how Paul at least sees the logic of the cross underneath the surface of the poem. The Messiah was lord of all, yet became a slave. He was all-powerful, but became weak. He was equal with the Father, yet refused to take advantage of this status. Add to this the echoes throughout this passage from Isaiah 40–55, particularly the “servant” poems, and we can go one step farther: he was innocent, yet he died the death of the guilty. This is how the cross establishes God’s kingdom: by bearing and so removing the weight of sin and death . The kingdom of God is established by destroying the power of idolatry, and idols get their power because humans, in sinning, give it to them. Deal with sin, and the idols are reduced to a tawdry heap of rubble. Deal with sin, and the world will glorify God. There are many remarkable things about this poem, but we should note one in particular. Paul wrote this letter in the mid-50s of the first century, that is, less than thirty years after Jesus’s execution. Either he wrote this poem for use in this letter, which is quite possible, or he was quoting a poem that either he or somebody else had already written. The poem is a masterpiece of compressed biblical theology.

• From Saint Thomas Aquinas Collection (22 Books) (2016)

  BEDE. (i. 11. in Marc.) So also the same person is called Levi and Matthew; but Luke and Mark, on account of their reverence and the honour of the Evangelist, are unwilling to put the common name, while Matthew is a just accuser of himself, (Prov. 18. Vulg.) and calls himself Matthew and publican. He wishes to shew to his hearers that no one who is converted should despair of his salvation, since he himself was suddenly changed from a publican into an Apostle. But he says that he was sitting at the ‘teloneum,’ that is, the place where the customs are looked after and administered. For ‘telos’ in Greek is the same as ‘vectigal,’ customs, in Latin. THEOPHYLACT. For he sat at the receipt of custom, either, as is often done, exacting from some, or making up accounts, (λογοπραγῶν apud Theo.) or doing some actions of that sort, which publicans are wont to do in their abodes, yea this man, who was raised on high from this state of life that he might leave all things and follow Christ. Wherefore it goes on, And he saith to him, Follow me, &c. BEDE. (ubi sup.) Now to follow is to imitate, and therefore in order to imitate the poverty of Christ, in the feeling of his soul even more than in outward condition, he who used to rob his neighbour’s wealth, now leaves his own. And not only did he quit the gain of the customs, but he also despised the peril, which might come from the princes of this world, because he left the accounts of the customs imperfect and unsettled. For the Lord Himself, Who externally, by human language, called Him to follow, inflamed him inwardly by divine inspiration to follow Him the moment that He called him. PSEUDO-JEROME. Thus then Levi, which means Appointed, followed from the custom-house of human affairs, the Word, Who says, He who doth not quit all that he has, cannot be my disciple. THEOPHYLACT. But he who used to plot against others becomes so benevolent, that he invites many persons to eat with him. Wherefore it goes on; And it came to pass, that as Jesus sat at meat in his house.

• From White Oleander (1999)

  It was black comedy. There’s a writer, Sei Shonagon. She was a lady-in- waiting to the Heian empress in Japan in the 11th century. She wrote The Pillow Book. Yes. It was about a society based on aesthetics. Soldiers were promoted by how well they wrote poetry. Of course the Heian empire didn’t last very long. They were pretty easy to wipe out. It was a time of tremendous refinement, where the aristocrats would have a party in which they would go and look at moonlight on a pond. But they had no conventional morality. Sei Shonagon could see somebody beheaded right in front of her and it’s like, pfft, there’s no connection between her and that person. But if somebody wore the wrong color combinations in their robes, then for days she just couldn’t get over it, how disgusting it was. I thought, wouldn’t it be interesting to take someone like that, an aesthete, which is an aristocratic position, and put them at the end of the 20th century in America, with a crummy job and a crummy apartment, having to make a living, and see what happened. And so Ingrid emerged. People read that story and they hated my character, Ingrid. They didn’t want to walk a mile in her moccasins. They didn’t want to be her; they said, “She’s a monster, you cannot have her as your protagonist. Give her a co-worker, give her a friend, someone to see her through.” And so I gave her a daughter. And suddenly it wasn’t funny anymore. When you’re the kid of someone who is an extreme person, it’s not funny at all. And then the tone changed, and the perspective changed, and I got something very different, which was much better. Then you had a short story and... I had a short story and I sent it around. I send all my short fiction to Ontario Review because Joyce Carol Oates is associate editor there, and I think she’s fantastic. They rejected it, but I got a little Post-it note saying “Too long for us. Liked it but seemed more like the first chapter of a novel.” I thought, oh, Joyce Carol Oates thinks it might be the first chapter of a novel. So I started writing the novel, trying to continue the short story and trying to figure out what did happen to Ingrid and Astrid. Did you always have the idea of Ingrid being undone by an affair? Absolutely.

• From Blue Nights (2011)

  Connie Wald, wearing one of the several Chanel suits in evidence that afternoon, in her case one of blue-and-cream tweed lined in cyclamen-pink silk. It was Connie who gave Quintana one of the two long white dresses she wore at the church and after. Until Connie was in her nineties, when she developed a neuropathy, she still swam every day of her life. She cut back on the regimen of daily laps and stopped driving herself around Beverly Hills in an aged Rolls-Royce but otherwise continued exactly as before. She still wore the Claire McCardell dresses she had been given when she was a McCardell model in the 1940s. She still gave two or three dinner parties a week, cooked herself, mixed young and old in a way that flattered everyone present, lit huge fires in her library and filled the tables with salted almonds and fat pitchers of nasturtiums and the roses she still grew herself. Connie had been married to the producer Jerry Wald, who was said to have been Budd Schulberg’s model for Sammy Glick in What Makes Sammy Run and who had died a few years before I met her. She once told me about the six weeks she spent in Nevada establishing the residency she needed to divorce her previous husband and marry Jerry Wald. She did not spend the six weeks in Las Vegas, because Las Vegas as we later knew it did not yet exactly exist. She spent the six weeks twenty miles from Las Vegas, in Boulder City, which had been built by the Bureau of Reclamation as the construction camp for Hoover Dam and in which both gambling and union membership were prohibited by law. I asked her what she had found to do for six weeks in Boulder City. She said that Jerry had given her a dog, which she walked, every day, through the identical streets lined with matching government bungalows that constituted Boulder City and on across the dam. I recall this striking me as the most intrepid story I ever heard about how someone did or did not stay in Las Vegas, a topic not entirely deficient in intrepid stories. Diana. Diana Lynn, Diana Hall. Hers is another face that springs out from the photographs taken that day. In this photograph she is holding a champagne flute and smoking a cigarette. It occurs to me as I look at her photograph that it was Diana who had made that day possible. It was Diana who had drawn me into the conversation about adoption over the New Year’s weekend on Morty’s boat. It was Diana who had talked to Blake Watson, it was Diana who had intuited how deeply I needed Quintana. It was Diana who had changed my life.

• From The Pillar of Salt (1953)

  As I was not particularly scared of him, I was quite fond of this lackadaisical and friendly giant, in spite of my father’s constant teasing. Bichik was a jack-of-all-trades who always seemed to return from his other loves to the work as a saddler, when all other doors seemed to close before him. His colleagues appeared to like in him their own dreams that had never come true and spoke of him at all times with a mixture of envy and contempt. In my own memory the others have lost their faces, like those ancient statues whose features have been rubbed away by the years. Sebah, the forger, was accused of putting cardboard in the hooks of araba cart harnesses and hated because he sold his wares cheaper. Bissoum, a crazy old man, would spend a whole week working on each item, sewing it twice but refusing to add any decorative work, so that he never managed, out of sheer love for his trade, to earn even a meager livelihood. Among these colleagues, my father would crouch too, joining them in their collective meditations. With the help of Joseph, he soon pushed aside the rest to select, with an eye that never hesitated or failed him, the four or five skins that he wanted. Then he remained motionless, leaning forward and resting on the palms of his hands that lay flat on the floor while his eyes worked: he was cutting the skins with his mind’s eye and calculating how many cuts of his model would be possible. Sometimes, the body’s eyes refused to follow those of the mind, and he would then turn the skin to get a better view of it. I admired his knowledge and his ability to think so fruitfully. Joseph was perhaps more husky than Father, but lacked his intelligence and authority as a master craftsman. Whenever his employee would propose a skin, my father would spread it out before him, placing it on an imaginary worktable, then make up his mind and say either “Good,” or else “No, take a look at it.” His heavy calloused fingers then drew on the dust the one defective cut that would reduce the yield of the skin. Joseph rarely argued, forced to admit his inferiority. Then the long walk in the sun brought us back to the coffeehouse where we always found the same crowd of Sabbath friends, cheerful and loud, smelling of eau de Cologne and of snuff. How blessed was the Sabbath coffeehouse where we remained pure because there was no cigarette smoke and where our conversation remained courteous because we were forbidden to play cards! In addition, I enjoyed a child’s privileges: everyone had a smile for me and welcomed me, making room for me. Seeing myself treated in this manner by grown men, I felt that I assumed a man’s dignity. All new members of the group would question my father: “Is he your son?” “Yes, he’s my son.”

• From The Pillar of Salt (1953)

  Sometimes, the body’s eyes refused to follow those of the mind, and he would then turn the skin to get a better view of it. I admired his knowledge and his ability to think so fruitfully. Joseph was perhaps more husky than Father, but lacked his intelligence and authority as a master craftsman. Whenever his employee would propose a skin, my father would spread it out before him, placing it on an imaginary worktable, then make up his mind and say either “Good,” or else “No, take a look at it.” His heavy calloused fingers then drew on the dust the one defective cut that would reduce the yield of the skin. Joseph rarely argued, forced to admit his inferiority. Then the long walk in the sun brought us back to the coffeehouse where we always found the same crowd of Sabbath friends, cheerful and loud, smelling of eau de Cologne and of snuff. How blessed was the Sabbath coffeehouse where we remained pure because there was no cigarette smoke and where our conversation remained courteous because we were forbidden to play cards! In addition, I enjoyed a child’s privileges: everyone had a smile for me and welcomed me, making room for me. Seeing myself treated in this manner by grown men, I felt that I assumed a man’s dignity. All new members of the group would question my father: “Is he your son?” “Yes, he’s my son.” In his voice there was pride, I’m sure, and the pleasure of it put me ill at ease. “May God bless you and protect you,” they would then say to my father. And I would feel that I was powerfully protected. Above all, I kept watching for Abdesselam, the waiter, in order to perform the little ritual that, each week, confirmed my status. When he finally appeared, slipshod in his heelless Turkish shoes, with his baggy pants hanging loose between his legs like a sheep’s tail, I made the most of the few minutes that our friends needed to order their drinks and to tease Abdesselam. The good man had earned himself quite a reputation: as a waiter serving coffee in a native movie-house, he had howled with terror and dropped his tray when he had seen a railroad engine driving full-speed toward him on the screen. At last he leaned toward me: “What would you like, my son?” All the men looked at me with benevolence; so much attention made me feel important. I pretended to hesitate before ordering a grenadine in regal tones. This was the high point of the day, a voluptuous triumph of color and taste.

• From The Prophetic Imagination (1978)

  “Essential reading for generations of scholars and pastors, The Prophetic Imagination has been catalytic for those yearning to understand biblical prophecy and strengthen their own prophetic witness. Over against the hopelessness generated by repressive ideology, Brueggemann insists that we can choose as the prophets did: neither denial nor acquiescence, but visionary resistance. Brueggemann presses a brilliant case for prophetic imagination as the only choice that will not leave us co-opted by the relentless manipulations of empire.” — Carolyn J. Sharp, Yale Divinity School “Walter Brueggemann’s The Prophetic Imagination is timeless; yet, at the same time, it feels as if he wrote it ‘for such a time as this.’ The convicting yet hopeful voice of Brueggemann is much like the prophets he writes of from the Hebrew Bible—indeed, he is the conscience of our time.” — Cynthia Shafer-Elliott, William Jessup University “ The Prophetic Imagination opened our eyes and ears to the power and purposiveness of the prophets’ vision. Practicing prophetic imagination is no less urgent a vocation today, in the face of the omnipresent calculus of human expendability. That this slender book seems both as inspiring and as unerringly realistic today as forty years ago is testament that Walter Brueggemann has described that vocation with precision; this new edition frames his argument as a word on target for a time that critically needs it.” — Neil Elliott, author of Liberating Paul and The Arrogance of Nations THE PROPHETIC IMAGINATION 40th Anniversary Edition WALTER BRUEGGEMANN Foreword by Davis Hankins FORTRESS PRESS Minneapolis THE PROPHETIC IMAGINATION 40th Anniversary Edition Copyright © 2018 Fortress Press. All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations in critical articles or reviews, no part of this book may be reproduced in any manner without prior written permission from the publisher. Email copyright@1517.media or write to Permissions, Fortress Press, PO Box 1209, Minneapolis, MN 55440-1209. Biblical quotations are translated by the author. Cover design: Brad Norr Design Frontispiece: Door jamb figure of Jeremiah. St. Pierre, Moissac, France. © 2001 Giraudon/Art Resource, NY. Used by permission Print ISBN: 978-1-5064-4930-2 eBook ISBN: 978-1-5064-4931-9 The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of American National Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI Z329.48-1984. Manufactured in the U.S.A. For sisters in ministry For sisters in ministry who teach me daily about the power of grief and the gift of amazement Contents Foreword by Davis Hankins A Note about the 40th Anniversary Edition Preface to the Second (Revised) Edition Preface to the First Edition 1. The Alternative Community of Moses 2. Royal Consciousness: Countering the Counterculture 3. Prophetic Criticizing and the Embrace of Pathos 4. Prophetic Energizing and the Emergence of Amazement 5. Criticism and Pathos in Jesus of Nazareth 6. Energizing and Amazement in Jesus of Nazareth 7. A Note on the Practice of Ministry A Postscript on Practice In Retrospect (PI at Forty) Abbreviations Notes Selected Bibliography Scripture Index

• From White Oleander (1999)

  I could feel her looking at me through the spyhole. I tried to look calm. Just a neighbor doing a favor. The door opened. Olivia Johnstone was wearing a long print halter dress, her hair in a low chignon, her bare cinnamon shoulders smooth as bedposts. I held the box out to her. “The UPS man left this.” One tooth on the comb, one tooth. She was perfect. Olivia smiled and took the box. Her nails were short, white-tipped. She thanked me in an amused voice. I could tell she knew it was just a ploy, that I wanted to climb into her life. I tried to look past her but could only see a mirror and a small red-lacquered table. Then she said the words I’d been dreaming of, hoping for. “Would you like to come in? I was just pouring some tea.” Was there anything as elegant as Olivia’s house? In the living room, the walls were covered with a gold paper burnished to the quality of cork. She had a taupe velvet couch with a curved back and a leopard throw pillow, a tan leather armchair, and a carved daybed with a striped cotton cover. A wood table with smaller tables tucked underneath it held a dull green ceramic planter bearing a white spray of orchids like moths. Jazz music quickened the pace of the room, the kind the BMW man liked, complicated trumpet runs full of masculine yearning. “What’s this music?” I asked her. “Miles Davis,” she said. “‘Seven Steps to Heaven.’” Seven steps, I thought, was that all it took? Where we had sliding glass doors, Olivia had casements, open to the backyard. Instead of the air-conditioning, ceiling fans turned lazily. Upon closer examination, a big gilded bird-cage held a fake parrot wearing a tiny sombrero, a cigar clamped in its beak. “That’s Charlie,” Olivia said. “Be careful, he bites.” She smiled. She had a slight overbite. I could understand how a man would want to kiss her. We sat on the velvet couch and drank iced tea sweetened with honey and mint. Now that I was here, I was at a loss to begin. I’d had so many questions, but I couldn’t think of one. The decor bowled me over. Everywhere I looked, there was something more to see. Botanical prints, a cross section of pomegranates, a passionflower vine and its fruit. Stacks of thick books on art and design and a collection of glass paperweights filled the coffee table. It was enormously beautiful, a sensibility I’d never encountered anywhere, a relaxed luxury. I could feel my mother’s contemptuous gaze falling on the cluttered surfaces, but I was tired of three white flowers in a glass vase. There was more to life than that. “How long have you been over there?” Olivia asked, stroking down the condensation on her glass with a manicured forefinger. Her profile was slightly dish-shaped, her forehead high and round. “Not long. A couple months.”

• From The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma (2014)

  In my role as recreation leader I noticed other things: As a group the patients were strikingly clumsy and physically uncoordinated. When we went camping, most of them stood helplessly by as I pitched the tents. We almost capsized once in a squall on the Charles River because they huddled rigidly in the lee, unable to grasp that they needed to shift position to balance the boat. In volleyball games the staff members invariably were much better coordinated than the patients. Another characteristic they shared was that even their most relaxed conversations seemed stilted, lacking the natural flow of gestures and facial expressions that are typical among friends. The relevance of these observations became clear only after I’d met the body-based therapists Peter Levine and Pat Ogden; in the later chapters I’ll have a lot to say about how trauma is held in people’s bodies. Making Sense of SufferingAfter my year on the research ward I resumed medical school and then, as a newly minted MD, returned to MMHC to be trained as a psychiatrist, a program to which I was thrilled to be accepted. Many famous psychiatrists had trained there, including Eric Kandel, who later won the Nobel Prize in Physiology and Medicine. Allan Hobson discovered the brain cells responsible for the generation of dreams in a lab in the hospital basement while I trained there, and the first studies on the chemical underpinnings of depression were also conducted at MMHC. But for many of us residents, the greatest draw was the patients. We spent six hours each day with them and then met as a group with senior psychiatrists to share our observations, pose our questions, and compete to make the wittiest remarks. Our great teacher, Elvin Semrad, actively discouraged us from reading psychiatry textbooks during our first year. (This intellectual starvation diet may account for the fact that most of us later became voracious readers and prolific writers.) Semrad did not want our perceptions of reality to become obscured by the pseudocertainties of psychiatric diagnoses. I remember asking him once: “What would you call this patient—schizophrenic or schizoaffective?” He paused and stroked his chin, apparently in deep thought. “I think I’d call him Michael McIntyre,” he replied. Semrad taught us that most human suffering is related to love and loss and that the job of therapists is to help people “acknowledge, experience, and bear” the reality of life—with all its pleasures and heartbreak. “The greatest sources of our suffering are the lies we tell ourselves,” he’d say, urging us to be honest with ourselves about every facet of our experience. He often said that people can never get better without knowing what they know and feeling what they feel.

• From The Pillar of Salt (1953)

  The bohemian manner of Poinsot, my admiration for him, the satisfactions that my successes in philosophy classes assured me, all this made me feel that teaching was an intellectual profession that was not committed to middle-class values and that maintained its independence as far as prejudices and earnings are concerned. It was also about that time that I began to develop the habit of going on long walks, all by myself, in the poorer districts of the city. ~ 10. COMMENCEMENT DAY ~ Just one month before our final examinations, I learned by the high-school grapevine that my name had been proposed for the philosophy prize, an honor that was awarded every year to the one student in the whole country who had maintained the highest average in his grades. It thus came as a final reward at the end of a successful school career. And now an official and public recognition would consecrate my own past efforts and talents. Well- informed classmates added, however, that the discussion for the choice of the prize-winner was going to be difficult. Though I was heartily seconded by Poinsot, my philosophy instructor, I was opposed by others, particularly our chemistry instructor. These classmates quoted remarks that had been made in the heat of the debate as well as details of the discussions, as though they had actually been present. I pretended to disdain all this idle gossip, but listened all the more intently as I knew how surprisingly reliable were their sources of information. The parents of many of these boys often invited our instructors as guests to their homes, and these teachers, flattered at finding themselves in the homes of the wealthier middle class, often confided details of school administration to their hosts. Nor were they to be blamed, their sole motive was to assume an appearance of power. I happened to hate our chemistry instructor, and the science that he taught us suffered as a consequence. Foolishly, I felt that he gave tuition to too many private pupils and had thus transformed our noble profession, already his and some day to be mine, into a trade. This indignation of mine was inspired by a prejudice that I shared with the middle classes. Why shouldn’t a teacher make the most of his profession, just like a doctor or a lawyer? But I had reasons of my own, better ones, in fact the only ones: I despised money-makers, one and all.

• From Saint Thomas Aquinas Collection (22 Books) (2016)

  I answer that, Multiplicity of Orders was introduced into the Church for three reasons. First to show forth the wisdom of God, which is reflected in the orderly distinction of things both natural and spiritual. This is signified in the statement of 3 Kings 10:4,5 that “when the queen of Saba saw . . . the order of” Solomon’s “servants . . . she had no longer any spirit in her,” for she was breathless from admiration of his wisdom. Secondly, in order to succor human weakness, because it would be impossible for one man, without his being heavily burdened, to fulfill all things pertaining to the Divine mysteries; and so various orders are severally appointed to the various offices; and this is shown by the Lord giving Moses seventy ancients to assist him. Thirdly, that men may be given a broader way for advancing (to perfection), seeing that the various duties are divided among many men, so that all become the co-operators of God; than which nothing is more God-like, as Dionysius says (Eccl. Hier. iii). Reply to Objection 1: The other sacraments are given that certain effects may be received; but this sacrament is given chiefly that certain acts may be performed. Hence it behooves the sacrament of Order to be differentiated according to the diversity of acts, even as powers are differentiated by their acts. Reply to Objection 2: The division of Order is not that of an integral whole into its parts, nor of a universal whole, but of a potential whole, the nature of which is that the notion of the whole is found to be complete in one part, but in the others by some participation thereof. Thus it is here: for the entire fulness of the sacrament is in one Order, namely the priesthood, while in the other sacraments there is a participation of Order. And this is signified by the Lord saying (Num. 11:17): “I will take of thy spirit and give to them, that they may bear with thee the burden of the people.” Therefore all the Orders are one sacrament. Reply to Objection 3: In a kingdom, although the entire fulness of power resides in the king, this does not exclude the ministers having a power which is a participation of the kingly power. It is the same in Order. In the aristocratic form of government, on the contrary, the fulness of power resides in no one, but in all. Whether there are seven Orders?Objection 1: It would seem that there are not seven Orders. For the Orders of the Church are directed to the hierarchical acts. But there are only three hierarchical acts, namely “to cleanse, to enlighten, and to perfect,” for which reason Dionysius distinguishes three Orders (Eccl. Hier. v). Therefore there are not seven.

• From The Pillar of Salt (1953)

  As for my classmates, they made fun of his elegant way of dressing and rather theatrical manner, his majestic gait as he walked with slow movements but a springy step, which they all suspected, perhaps quite rightly, of being affected. It was whispered that he could be violent and brutal, that he had been divorced, and that his wife, a Frenchwoman, had no longer been able to bear his violent rages. It was even insinuated that he had struck her, and they then pretended to blame her for having had the strange idea of marrying outside her race. That was where all mixed marriages are bound to lead! Perhaps this very hostility aroused in me a greater sympathy for my French instructor. I could sense all the conflicts within him and his struggle to achieve calm and become an example of civilization. His continual play was but a sign of how he constantly repressed his passions. I felt a violent urge to communicate with him, transgressing all those conventional distances that exist between an instructor and his pupil, and to ask for his help in solving my own similar problems, even to offer him, in all simplicity, my assistance. But he was too preoccupied with himself and did not immediately understand me. To please him and attract his attention, I saw to it that all my compositions were well prepared, properly thought out, and carefully written. As he was a poet and an artist, I would do my best to surprise him. Unfortunately, I was never able to get into the front row among the best students in his class. Because he himself was both impulsive and passionate, Marrou could accept only the kind of art that is perfectly controlled. He used to declare with passion, allowing no contradiction, that there can be no such thing as an art that is not classical, and he even managed to force us to share his contempt for all Romantic makeshifts. But my own compositions, though they may well have been richer in content than most written by his class, were always defeated, in the matter of literary form, by the compositions handed in by a young Frenchman who had a natural felicity of expression and easy style. This made me feel angrily that Marrou’s obsession with form prevented him from discovering my talent, and I became even more attentive and eager, always at his elbow. On one or two occasions, when I thought that I had managed to attract his attention and that communication between us had been established, my heart beat faster out of sheer joy. I awaited a friendly word, only a veiled expression of comradeship, a mere allusion. I would have comprehended all, divined everything. But his heavy-lidded eyes, that expressed only contempt and sadness, never rested anywhere for very long.

• From Aquinas's Summa Theologiae (Critical Essays on the Classics Series) (2006)

  Environmental issues, as well as state despotism, invite renewed reflection on the natural law tradition. One of the finest recent retrievals of natural law ethics, and particularly of Thomas Aquinas’s version, is provided by Michael S. Northcott, in the context of working out a theological ethics adequate to respect for our physical environment. Thomas’s version develops from the natural law ethics to be found in the Hebrew prophets and Paul. It offers “the strongest conceptual base within the Christian tradition for an ecological ethic.” It remains particularly strong in English culture (Shakespeare, Hooker, Hopkins, C. S. Lewis). On the other hand, it is diminished in the “hu-manocentric” conception of natural law in modern papal ethics—which (Northcott contends) fails to maintain the “deep understanding of the moral significance of created order” in the “pre-modern natural law tradition.”10

• From Aquinas's Summa Theologiae (Critical Essays on the Classics Series) (2006)

  Finally, prospective readers of the Summa Theologiae should be advised that, contrary to what they might expect, it is a surprisingly modern work. For its philosophical content contains much that makes Aquinas more of a contemporary philosopher than were many thinkers who lived between 1600 and 1900. Between those dates Western philosophy was dominated by certain epistemological views, and by certain theories concerning the nature of people. Rightly or wrongly, these views and theories came in for considerable censure in the twentieth century. Yet Aquinas embraced few of them, and he manifestly anticipates what many of their critics have said. His philosophy of mind, for instance, bears serious comparison with that of Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889-1951).33 The same might be said of his approach to the topic of knowledge and reasonable belief. It has been claimed that philosophy disappeared between Aristotle and Descartes only to be reborn around 1641. A much more prevalent view today is that philosophy was as alive as ever from around 1100 to 1600, and those who sympathize with this position often cite Aquinas, and the Summa Theologiae, in its defense.34 Aquinas, they note, stands closer to contemporary Anglo-American philosophy than does post-Renaissance thinking.35 Their view, I think, is justified, and it is well borne out by a careful reading of the Summa Theologiae. Those able to work through some of Aquinas’s other writings will find this view equally corroborated by them. But the Summa Theologiae is a good place to start when turning to Aquinas for the first time. Hence the present volume.

• From The Pillar of Salt (1953)

  I remained standing in the doorway. At first, he said nothing, as if he hadn’t seen me. Then he raised his head and said, in an even voice: “Ah! Come in!” But he continued to write and I had not yet learned that businessmen dream up a personality for themselves which they forget to set aside, even when such histrionics are unnecessary. Impressed by the silence, I was embarrassed in this unaccustomed atmosphere of concentration and luxury, and continued to await some further invitation. At long last, Monsieur Bismuth set down his fountain pen, put his papers methodically in order, and asked me to be seated. He called his trembling hands to order by clasping the fingers together very tight. Then he launched forth on a long speech that had perhaps been prepared, all about the need to work uninterruptedly if one wants to succeed in life. He spoke slowly, his voice evenly poised, his words well chosen, with the diction of an intelligent and learned foreigner who has mastered the language through sheer will power. I think he made a great impression on me. He had reverted to the same themes as the school principal, though he avoided the theme of his own life while constantly referring to it indirectly. I had meanwhile had time to inform myself about him; everything that he now said to me was clear and I was able to refer each detail back to his own life story. Though the speech was intended as an exhortation referring to my future, it was actually a summary of his past, too. At least, that is how I understood it, approving and admiring his manner. A man’s worth may be weighed according to his degree of success, and he had succeeded. One’s background is of little importance: he was the son of a well-known rabbi who had been very poor and who died shortly after begetting him at the age of seventy, leaving a young wife in great indigence. Hard work will overcome, in the long run, all obstacles: as a brilliant student, I too had discovered this truism. Finally, he concluded by affirming outright: “If you study hard, we’ll make a druggist of you.” I revealed no surprise at all, though some muscular contraction of face or of body nearly always betrayed my feelings. Besides, he was not watching me. In the course of his long monologue, he never once tried with his eyes to catch mine. Instead, he seemed to be speaking only for himself. In the seven years of my life when I saw him regularly once a month, we never established any real contact.

• From The Pillar of Salt (1953)

  It was broad daylight when we reached the Roman aqueduct. As we passed under the enormous antique stone arches which cut across the same blue sky that its ancient builders had seen, I thought I was still dreaming. The men never stopped chattering. Again, they felt a group loyalty and that they were bound to each other by ties of affection. To me, however, they remained as alien as this historical monument. We stopped at the outskirts of the city. The driver could go no further. We paid him and walked toward the first houses. The city was motionless. We hesitated: how would we find it after our long separation? A door opened and a woman emerged with a can of milk. Everything was still in its place. One of the men rediscovered his tongue and his long frustrated desires. “Oh, a woman,” he exclaimed. After that, I went into hiding and thought only of saving my own skin. And I was fortunate, for I survived the raids and bombings until the final German collapse. ~ 5. THE SUMMER CAMP ~ I felt for my father a kind of admiration that included respect and some fear. His big and heavy hands were, in my eyes, the symbol of strength and skill. On one of our wonderful Saturdays I was running along beside him, with my tiny fist deep in his big hand where I could feel the horny skin and the scars. I wanted to dispose of some last doubt in my mind and asked: “Who is the more powerful, the saddler or the policeman?” The policeman with his uniform and his pistol was an arbitrary and mysterious power in our eyes. All the street vendors, so loud and vulgar in their arguments with housewives, suddenly became polite and quiet as soon as a cop appeared on his shining bicycle. The silence of a polite gathering then settled down on the street: they all wished the cop a good day in sweet tones and handed him little parcels that had been waiting, ready for him to come by. He accepted all this with a negligent contempt, without any thanks, and nevertheless, every once in a while, drove all the vendors off to the city pound . My father guessed at once whom I admired most, but he thought of my education as a good citizen and sacrificed himself to a proper respect for the established powers: “The policeman is the more powerful, my son,” he answered. I didn’t believe him and thought, for a while, that he had lied out of modesty. Later, in the midst of all my conflicts, we dealt each other wounds that would never heal. After having long remained silent and reserved, suddenly overwhelmed, we would explode one day in anger that had lost all control and burst out. After that, we avoided each other’s eyes and re-established some distance between us.

• From Aquinas's Summa Theologiae (Critical Essays on the Classics Series) (2006)

  The next question (Ia IIae, q. 64), about how virtues observe a mean, only appears to shift the focus away from God-given virtues and narrow it to naturally acquired virtues. As Thomas previously transformed Aristotle’s concept of virtue as a habit, he now transforms Aristotle’s doctrine of the mean, so that it applies not only to naturally acquired virtues but also to infused moral virtues (Ia IIae, q. 64, a. 1, ad 3; a. 4). Thus he lays the groundwork for the next, crucial discussion of how various virtues are connected with each other (Ia IIae, q. 65). At first, Thomas seems to follow Aristotle in arguing that nobody can have a perfect moral virtue without prudence, nor can somebody have prudence without perfection in all the moral virtues.27 Of course, one can have what people call “temperance” without what people call “courage” and vice versa. We often praise the “courage” of soldiers who habitually drink to excess, the “temperance” of abstemious but spineless neighbors, and so on. The character traits in question can indeed exist independently of each other; we might even regard them as imperfect virtues. But strictly speaking, they are only inclinations to certain kinds of actions or emotional responses that people have by native temperament, or frequent repetition or usage (ex naturali complexione vel ex aliqua consuetudine). Strictly speaking, someone who behaves well in one aspect of human life but not in another acquires a habit. Such a habit, however, will lack the essential character of a virtue unless accompanied by prudence (Ia IIae, q. 65, a. 1). The argument that no proper moral virtue can exist without prudence makes more sense if one recalls that a virtue cannot be put to bad use. The ability to face danger, in its own right, would go just as well to make a daring bank robber as an admirable war hero. A person needs prudence to judge correctly which dangers would be good to face. As moral virtue requires prudence, so, too, prudence requires moral virtue. A fearful person, with an excessive desire for safety, will naturally tend to judge too dangerous by half situations that it would actually be good to face. Someone’s sense of justice cannot consistently govern her actions if she often lacks the courage to do the right thing.