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 Twelve Steps to a Compassionate Life (2010)

  Compassion seems also to have been central to the Christian ethos from the beginning. Like Hillel, Jesus taught the Golden Rule—but in its positive formulation.61 Like the rabbis, he believed that the commandments to love God with your whole heart and soul and your neighbor as yourself were the most exalted commandments of the Torah.62 The gospels show him practicing “concern for everybody,” reaching out to “sinners”: prostitutes, lepers, epileptics, and those denounced as traitors for collecting the Roman taxes. His followers should refrain from judging others.63 The people admitted to the Kingdom of God, in which rich and poor would sit together at the same table, were those who practiced deeds of loving kindness, feeding the hungry and visiting those who were sick or in prison.64 His most devoted disciples must give all their possessions to the poor.65 Jesus is also presented as a man of ahimsa. “You have heard how it was said: Eye for eye and tooth for tooth,” he told the crowds. “But I say this to you: offer the wicked man no resistance. On the contrary, if anyone hits you on the right cheek, offer him the other as well.”66 You have heard how it was said; you must love your neighbour and hate your enemy. But I say this to you: love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you; in this way you will be sons of your father in heaven, for he causes his sun to rise on bad men as well as good and his rain to fall on honest men alike. For if you love those who love you, how can you claim any credit? Even the tax-collectors and the pagans do as much, do they not? And if you save your greetings for your brothers, are you doing anything exceptional? You must be perfect, as your heavenly father is perfect.67 Like the rabbis, Jesus brought the compassionate message of scripture to the fore by giving a more stringently empathetic twist to an ancient text. Here he comes close to the Buddhist ideal of upeksha, “equanimity.” His followers would offer kindness where there was little hope of any return. Saint Paul, the earliest extant Christian writer, quoting an early Christian hymn, presents Jesus as a bodhisattva figure who refused to cling to the high status befitting one made in God’s image and lived as the servant of suffering humanity.68 Christians should do the same: “Everybody is to be self-effacing,” Paul insisted. “Always consider the other person to be better than yourself, so that nobody thinks of his own interests first, but everybody thinks of other people’s interests instead.”69 Compassion was the test of true spirituality:

• From Twelve Steps to a Compassionate Life (2010)

  Sotah 8.7; M. Sanhedrin 1.5; B. Sanhedrin. 54. Louis Jacobs, “Peace,” in Jewish Values (London, 1960), pp. 155–60. 55. Sifra on Leviticus 19:17. 56. Aboth de Rabbi Nathan 2.16. 57. Ibid., 23; Cohen translation. 58. Mekhilta on Exodus 20:13. 59. B. Sanhedrin 4.5. 60. M. Baba Metziah 58b; M. Arkhim 15b. 61. Matthew 7:12; Luke 6:31 . 62. Matthew 22:34–40; Mark 12:29–31; Luke 10:25–28. 63. Matthew 7:1. 64. Matthew 25:31–46. 65. Matthew 19:16–22; Mark 10:13–16; Luke 18:18–23. 66. Matthew 5:39–40. All quotations from the Bible are taken from The Jerusalem Bible (London, 1966). 67. Matthew 5:43–48. Note: the written Torah does not condone the hating of enemies. “Hate your enemy” was probably an Aramaic idiom meaning “you need not love your enemies.” 68. Philippians 2:6–11. 69. Philippians 2:2–4. 70. I Corinthians 13:1–3. 71. Acts 4.32. 72. Acts 2.44–45. 73. Augustine, On Christian Doctrine , trans. D. W. Robertson (Indianapolis, 1958), p. 30. 74. Toshiko Izutsu, Ethico-Religious Concepts in the Qur’an (Montreal and Kingston, Ont., 2002), p. 46. 75. Ibid., pp. 28–45. 76. Ibid., pp. 28, 68–69. 77. Qur’an 14:47; 39:37; 15:79; 30:47; 44:16. 78. Qur’an 90:13–17. 79. Qur’an 25:63, in Muhammad Asad, trans., The Message of the Qur’an (Gibraltar, 1980). 80. Qur’an 55:10. 81. Qur’an 22:39–40. 82. Qur’an 16:125–26. 83. Qur’an 48:26; Asad translation. 84. Qur’an 20:114; cf. 75:17–19. THE SECOND STEP Look at Your Own World 1. Joseph Campbell, The Hero with a Thousand Faces (Princeton, N.J., 1949). 2. Majjhima Nikaya 26, 36, 85, 100. 3. Matthew 5:1–10 . 4. Confucius, Analects 2.7. 5. Analects 2.8. THE THIRD STEP Compassion for Yourself 1. Leviticus 19:18. 2. Sheila MacLeod, The Art of Starvation (London, 1981). 3. Quoted by Youssef M. Choueri, Islamic Fundamentalism (London, 1990), p. 36. 4. Vinaya: Mahavagga 1.6 (this book is part of the Vinaya Pitaka, The Book of Monastic Discipline , which codifies the rules of the Buddhist order); Samyutta Nikaya 22.59. 5. Norman Cohn, The Pursuit of the Millennium: Revolutionary Millenarians and Mystical Anarchists of the Middle Ages (London, 1970), pp. 76–78, 80, 86–87. 6. M. Montgomery Watt, The Influence of Islam on Medieval Europe (Edinburgh, 1972), pp. 74–86. 7. Vinaya: Mahavagga 1.6. 8. Madhyama Agama 86, in Thich Nhat Hanh, Teachings on Love (Berkeley, 2007), p. 13. 9. H. H. the Dalai Lama, Ethics for the New Millennium (New York, 1999), p. 24. 10. Ibid. 11. Ibid., p. 26. 12. I Corinthians 13:4–7. 13. Majjhima Nikaya 1. 14. Vinaya: Mahavagga 1.6. 15. M. Avoth 6.1, trans. Michael Fishbane, “From Scribalism to Rabbinism,” in The Garments of Torah: Essays in Biblical Hermeneutics (Bloomington and Indianapolis, 1989). 16. I Philippians 2:6–11. 17. Cyril of Jerusalem, Mystagogical Catechesis 3.1. 18. Maximus the Confessor, Ambigua 42. 19. The Book of Xunzi 21:34–39, in Burton Watson, trans. and ed., Xunzi: Basic Writings (New York, 2003). 20. Anguttara Nikaya 4.36 . THE FOURTH STEP Empathy 1. Agamemnon 177–84, in Robert Fagles, trans., Aeschylus: The Oresteia (London, 1975). 2. Charles Segal, “Catharsis, Audience and Closure in Greek Tragedy,” in M.

• From The Principles of Psychology (Volume 1 of 2) (1890)

  The same year that he married, James signed on with Henry Holt to create what would have been his first notable published work - a textbook in psychology. However, James seemingly drifted away from the field of psychology and into the study of philosophy, as evidenced by his membership in Harvard's Metaphysical Club. Other notable faces that were part of the club during James' time were Oliver Wendell Holmes and Charles Sanders Pierce, who was a founder of pragmatism in America. James became fond of philosophy and, in particular, of pragmatism. This is a philosophical approach to assessing the truth of the meaning behind a theory or belief via its successful practical application. One of the doctrines that came about from pragmatism was radical empiricism, which was actually proposed by James. It states that experience has to be viewed both at the physical level as well as how meaning or values can arise as a result of that experience. He became deeply involved with this idea, and it would frequently be seen in his writings. In 1879, James began teaching a philosophy class at Harvard, attaining professorship in the subject just a year later. His first contribution to the field was an article entitled "The Sentiment of Rationality," which was published in 1880. One of his main points in the essay makes the claim that sentiments are the mark of rationality. The essay was meant to be applicable to both the sciences and everyday life. In it, he also delves into some aspects of materialism and idealism, proposing a compromise between the two. He gained an affinity for the idea that one could feel something intimate with the universe, as proposed by idealists, while the universe could also be unpredictable and wild, as proposed by materialists. With the initial publication "The Sentiment of Rationality," he became a full-fledged professor in psychology in the year 1889. A year later, he finally published one of his most famous works entitled Principles of Psychology. It includes many of the initial founding principles of the field of study and goes into great detail about the methodologies he used to reach conclusions. A few of the chapters he included were inspired by some of the physiology classes he taught at Harvard, as well as the anatomy lessons he gave, drawing connections between the physical and psychological workings of the body. Many of the chapters in the book were highly influential to the future of the study of psychology, with other psychologists building off of these principles. In fact, many modern principles of psychology are based off of these initial teachings and continue to be relevant in the current field of study.

• From The Fixed Stars: A Memoir (2020)

  Catherine was one of two full-time employees, along with a man named Jay. Catherine and Jay bantered like teen siblings. Jay was clever, dry, and quick, but Catherine was truly funny. She was sarcastic and kind. She had smokers’ teeth, sinewy arms, and wavy blackish-brown hair cut into a haphazard shag. Her voice sounded like she had a cold. She worked hard and made cooking look easy. She heaved a case of green beans onto the counter and showed me how to snap off their stems and tails. I took it very seriously, as though I could be scolded at any moment, and she laughed at me. It was a pain in her ass to have me in the kitchen, a newbie and a kid, but Catherine was patient. She knew I was clueless, and she seemed to like me anyway. Catherine and Jay held, among other things, a firm belief that the ice cream in a Klondike bar was better than the ice cream in any other frozen confection, and I still find myself repeating that assertion, though I’ve never formally tested it. They made sure there was always a stash in the walk-in freezer, a treat at the end of the day. I got paid seven dollars an hour and I got a Klondike bar. The fact that Catherine was gay didn’t come up much, but she didn’t hide it. She never mentioned a partner, and I knew she had no children. I didn’t think a lot about it, except to note that her being gay was one more part of her—like her imperfect teeth and her raunchy puns—that made her different from other adult women I knew. Catherine wasn’t like my mother or my mother’s friends, and she didn’t seem to care. I cared, a lot. It wasn’t that I thought my mother lived only for beauty, or for men, or for any prescribed checklist of womanly attributes. But I did think my mother was everything. To me she was an ideal woman: an independent person with her own wants and drives plus a devoted mother and wife, and she was beautiful. I could see that other women envied her self-possession, her sophistication, that braid-bun hairstyle she made look so easy. It was right that they should envy her. She contained the best possibilities, all possibilities, of womanhood. My mother was what life as a woman would, and should, look like.

• From The Fixed Stars: A Memoir (2020)

  Shit, did I? My hair was now down to my shoulders, but seven years before, when I was nineteen, I’d torn out a magazine photo of a supermodel with a pixie cut and taken it to my hairdresser. There in his strip-mall salon in Oklahoma City, the guy gave it a go. I wore my hair short through college, slicked with pearly goop and mussed into soft spikes. For a while, I dyed swaths of it black or bleach-blond, which made a calico effect with my natural shade of red. I thought this was very punk. Instead, apparently, it looked gay. [image file=image_rsrc2FK.jpg] The first gay person I knew was my uncle Jerry, the second-oldest of my mother’s six siblings. Jerry lived with his partner, Tom, in Santa Rosa, California, in a sunlit single-story house on a property they called Know Creek Ranch. The house was set back from the road by a stand of trees, and at the end of its long gravel driveway sat a barn where Jerry bred Morgan horses and ran a mail-order business selling equine supplies. My mother told me that once, when one of Jerry’s horses bit him, he turned around, looked it in the eye, and bit it back. He was soft-spoken and fair, but when my cousins or I would start to whine, he could stop us with a single word. To want his validation was instinctive, obvious. Jerry had once been married to a woman, and they’d married young. He and his wife lived in Vermont, where she grew up, and had a young son, my cousin Jason. Jason once told me that his mother knew there was something secret in her husband’s life, but she was naive enough to not suspect what it was. She was a small-town girl. Jerry was worldly in comparison, having lived in both Vermont and his home state of Maryland. She was blindsided; he was less incredulous. He’d known since his early teens, but he’d hidden it. He figured that if he married a woman, and if he had enough sex with her, he’d grow out of it. I was born in 1978, four years after Jerry came out. By then he was divorced, and he’d fallen in love with Tom, and they’d moved to California, leaving Jason behind in Vermont. I only ever knew Jerry as one half of Jerry-and-Tom, as a compact man with a runner’s build; wavy, rust-colored hair; and a Magnum, P.I. mustache. In an album of photographs from Christmas 1979, Tom sits between my grandfather and my uncle Chris, his arms spread wide over the back of the sofa, smiling. In another photo, this one with wrapping paper and coffee mugs in the foreground, I sit on the same sofa, a year old, with my mother in a flannel nightgown on my right and Jerry on my left, my shoulder tucked under his arm. Tom is beside him, chest hair blooming from the open V of his bathrobe.

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

  Immediately after his arrival at the Saxon University, on the Elbe, Melanchthon entered into an intimate relation with Luther, and became his most useful and influential co-laborer. He looked up to his elder colleague with the veneration of a son, and was carried away and controlled (sometimes against his better judgment) by the fiery genius of the Protestant Elijah; while Luther regarded him as his superior in learning, and was not ashamed to sit humbly at his feet. He attended his exegetical lectures, and published them, without the author’s wish and knowledge, for the benefit of the Church. Melanchthon declared in April, 1520, that "he would rather die than be separated from Luther;" and in November of the same year, "Martin’s welfare is dearer to me than my own life." Luther was captivated by Melanchthon’s first lecture; he admired his scholarship, loved his character, and wrote most enthusiastically about him in confidential letters to Spalatin, Reuchlin, Lange, Scheurl, and others, lauding him as a prodigy of learning and piety.229 The friendship of these two great and good men is one of the most delightful chapters in the religious drama of the sixteenth century. It rested on mutual personal esteem and hearty German affection, but especially on the consciousness of a providential mission intrusted to their united labors. Although somewhat disturbed, at a later period, by slight doctrinal differences and occasional ill-humor,230 it lasted to the end; and as they worked together for the same cause, so they now rest under the same roof in the castle church at Wittenberg, at whose doors Luther had nailed the war-cry of the Reformation. Melanchthon descended from South Germany, Luther from North Germany; the one from the well-to-do middle classes of citizens and artisans, the other from the rough but sturdy peasantry. Melanchthon had a quiet, literary preparation for his work: Luther experienced much hardship and severe moral conflicts. The former passed to his Protestant conviction through the door of classical studies, the latter through the door of monastic asceticism; the one was fore-ordained to a professor’s chair, the other to the leadership of an army of conquest. Luther best understood and expressed the difference of temper and character; and it is one of his noble traits, that he did not allow it to interfere with the esteem and admiration for his younger friend and colleague. "I prefer the books of Master Philippus to my own," he wrote in 1529.231 "I am rough, boisterous, stormy, and altogether warlike. I am born to fight against innumerable monsters and devils. I must remove stumps and stones, cut away thistles and thorns, and clear the wild forests; but Master Philippus comes along softly and gently, sowing and watering with joy, according to the gifts which God has abundantly bestowed upon him."

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

  They do not mention the prophets or apostles, or even the name of Christ, but are full of God and sublime moral sentiments, only bordering somewhat on pantheism.1325 If it is the production of a heathen philosopher, he came nearer the genius of Christian ethics than even Seneca, or Epictetus, or Plutarch, or Marcus Aurelius; but the product has no doubt undergone a transformation in Christian hands, and this accounts for its ancient popularity, and entitles it to a place in the history of ecclesiastical literature. Rufinus took great liberties as translator; besides, the MSS. vary very much. Origen first cites in two places the Gnomae or Sententiae of Sextus (gnw'mai Sevxtou), as a work well known and widely read among the Christians of his times, i.e., in the first half of the second century, but he does not mention that the writer was a bishop, or even a Christian. Rufinus translated them with additions, and ascribes them to Sixtus, bishop of Rome and martyr. But Jerome, who was well versed in classical literature, charges him with prefixing the name of a Christian bishop to the product of a christless and most heathenish Pythagorean philosopher, Xystus, who is admired most by those who teach Stoic apathy and Pelagian sinlessness. Augustin first regarded the author as one of the two Roman bishops Sixti, but afterwards retracted his opinion, probably in consequence of Jerome’s statement. Maximus the Confessor and John of Damascus ascribe it to Xystus of Rome. Gennadius merely calls the work Xysti Sententiae. Pope Gelasius declares it spurious and written by heretics.1326 More recent writers (as Fontanini, Brucker, Fabricius, Mosheim) agree in assigning it to the elder Quintus Sextus or Sextius (Q. S. Pater), a Stoic philosopher who declined the dignity of Roman Senator offered to him by Julius Caesar and who is highly lauded by Seneca. He abstained from animal food, and subjected himself to a scrupulous self-examination at the close of every day. Hence this book was entirely ignored by modern church historians.1327 But Paul de Lagarde, who published a Syriac Version, and Ewald have again directed attention to it and treat it as a genuine work of the first Pope Xystus. Ewald puts the highest estimate on it. "The Christian conscience," he says," appears here for the first time before all the world to teach all the world its duty, and to embody the Christian wisdom of life in brief pointed sentences." .1328 But it seems impossible that a Christian sage and bishop should write a system of Christian Ethics or a collection of Christian proverbs without even mentioning the name of Christ. Notes. The following is a selection of the most important of the 430 Sentences of Xystus from the Bibliotheca Maxima Veterum Patrum, Tom. III. 335–339. We add some Scripture parallels: "1. Fidelis homo, electus homo est. 2. Electus homo, homo Dei est. 3. Homo Dei est, qui Deo dIgnus est. 4. Deo dIgnus est, qui nihil indigne agit. 5. Dubius in fide, infidelis est.

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

  After the death of Louis he threw in his fortune with Lothair and the defeat of the latter at Fontenai, June 25, 841, was a personal affliction and may have hastened his resignation of the abbotship, which took place in the spring of the following year. The relations, however, between him and his new king, Louis the German, were friendly. Louis called him to his court and appointed him archbishop of Mainz. Raban’s permanent fame rests upon his labors as teacher and educational writer. From these he has won the proud epithet, Primus Germaniae Praeceptor. The school at Fulda became famous for piety and erudition throughout the length and breadth of the Frankish kingdom. Many noble youth, as well as those of the lower classes, were educated there and afterwards became the bishops and pastors of the Church of Germany. No one was refused on the score of poverty. Fulda started the example, quickly followed in other monasteries, of diligent Bible study. And what is much more remarkable, Raban was the first one in Germany to conduct a monastic school in which many boys were trained for the secular life.1229 It is this latter action which entitles him to be called the founder of the German school system. The pupils of Raban were in demand elsewhere as teachers; and princes could not find a better school than his for their sons. One of the strongest proofs of its excellence is the fact that Einhard, himself a former pupil at Fulda, and now a great scholar and teacher, sent his son Wussin there, and in a letter still extant exhorts his son to make diligent use of his rare advantages, and above all to attend to what is said by that "great orator," Raban Maur.1230 Raban’s encyclopaedia, The Universe, attests his possession of universal learning and of the power to impart it to others. So, while Alcuin was his model, he enlarged upon his master’s conception of education, and in himself and his works set an example whose influence has never been lost. His Writings. Raban was a voluminous author. But like the other writers of his time, he made mostly compilations from the Fathers and the later ecclesiastics. He was quick to respond to the needs of his day, and to answer questions of enquiring students. He betrays a profound acquaintance with the Holy Scripture. His works may be divided into seven classes. I. Biblical. (1) Commentaries upon the whole Bible, except Ezra, Nehemiah, Job, Psalms, Ecclesiastes, Canticles, the Minor Prophets, Catholic Epistles and Revelation. He commented also on the Apocryphal books, Judith, Wisdom, Ecclesiasticus and Maccabees.1231 These commentaries were probably in part compiled by his pupils, under his direction. They preserved a knowledge both of the Bible and of the Fathers in an age when books were very scarce and libraries still rarer. A single fact very strikingly brings out this state of things.

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

  all the rest, carried the holy vessels of his chapel, the holy books, and the ornaments of the altar. The Frenchmen, seeing this train, exclaimed, "How wonderful must be the king of England, whose chancellor travels in such state!" In Paris he freely distributed his gold and silver plate and changes of raiment,—to one a robe, to another a furred cloak, to a third a pelisse, to a fourth a war-horse. He gained his object and universal popularity. When, notwithstanding his efforts to maintain peace, war broke out between France and England, the chancellor was the bravest warrior at the head of seven hundred knights, whom he had enlisted at his own expense, and he offered to lead the storming party at the siege of Toulouse, where King Louis was shut up; but the scruples of Henry prevented him from offering violence to the king of France. He afterwards took three castles which were deemed impregnable, and returned triumphant to England. One of his eulogists, Edward Grim, reports to his credit: "Who can recount the carnage, the desolation, which he made at the head of a strong body of soldiers? He attacked castles, razed towns and cities to the ground, burned down houses and farms without a touch of pity, and never showed the slightest mercy to any one who rose in insurrection against his master’s authority." Such cruelty was quite compatible with mediaeval conceptions of piety and charity, as the history of the crusades shows. Becket was made for the court and the camp. Yet, though his life was purely secular, it was not immoral. He joined the king in his diversions, but not in his debaucheries. Being in deacon’s orders, he was debarred from marriage, but preserved his chastity at a profligate court. This point is especially mentioned to his credit; for chastity was a rare virtue in the Middle Ages. All together, his public life as chancellor was honorable and brilliant, and secures him a place among the distinguished statesmen of England. But a still more important career awaited him.152 § 32. The Archbishop and the King. Compare §§ 22–24 (pp. 80 sqq.). A year after the death of Theobald, April 18, 1161, Becket was appointed by the king archbishop of Canterbury. He accepted reluctantly, and warned the king, with a smile, that he would lose a servant and a friend.153 The learned and energetic Bishop Gilbert Foliot of Hereford (afterwards of London) remarked sarcastically, perhaps from disappointed ambition, that "the king had wrought a miracle in turning a layman into an archbishop, and a soldier into a saint." Becket was ordained priest on the Saturday after Pentecost, and consecrated archbishop on the following day with great magnificence in Westminster Abbey, June 3, 1162. His first act was to appoint the Sunday after Whitsunday as a festival of the Holy Trinity in the Church of England. He acknowledged Alexander III. as the rightful pope, and received from him the pallium through his friend, John of Salisbury.

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

  Reuchlin pronounced Hebrew the oldest of the tongues—the one in which God and angels communicated with man. In spite of its antiquity it is the richest of the languages and from it other languages drew, as from a primal fountain. He complained of the neglect of the study of the Scriptures for the polite study of eloquence and poetry.1070 Reuchlin studied also the philosophy of the Greeks and the Neo-Platonic and Pythagorean mysticisms. He was profoundly convinced of the value of the Jewish Cabbala, which he found to be a well of hidden wisdom. In this rare branch of learning he acknowledged his debt to Pico della Mirandola, whom he called "the greatest scholar of the age." He published the results of his studies in two works—one, De verbo mirifico, which appeared at Basel in 1494, and passed through eight editions; and one, De arte cabbalistica, 1517. "The wonder-working word "is the Hebrew tetragrammaton Ihvh, the unpronounceable name of God, which is worshipped by the celestials, feared by the infernals and kissed by the soul of the universe. The word Jesu, Ihsvh, is only an enlargement of Ihvh by the letter s. The Jehovah- and Jesus-name is the connecting link between God and man, the infinite and the finite. Thus the mystic tradition of the Jews is a confirmation of the Christian doctrine of the trinity and the divinity of Christ. Reuchlin saw in every name, in every letter, in every number of the old Testament, a profound meaning. In the three letters of the word for create, bara, Gen. 1:1, he discerned the mystery of the Trinity; in one verse of Exodus, 72 inexpressible names of God; in Prov. 30:31, a prophecy that Frederick the Wise, of Saxony, would follow Maximilian as emperor of Germany, a prophecy which was not fulfilled. We may smile at these fantastic vagaries; but they stimulated and deepened the zeal for the hidden wisdom of the Orient, which Reuchlin called forth from the grave.

• From Lower than the Angels: A History of Sex and Christianity (2024)

  The rare inspiration of Mary Ward and her predecessor in Limerick, Helen Stackpole, must link to the peculiar conditions of Catholicism under Protestant government persecution in Elizabethan England and Ireland: the whole Catholic community was often sustained by devoted laywomen because it was easier for women than men to escape official punishment, but also because circumstances meant that access to male priestly ministry might be infrequent. [69] Alongside the Society of Jesus there did develop a loosely joined association of women that had begun in parallel to them though completely separately: the Ursulines. Their Italian founder, Angela Merici, companion to a widowed noblewoman in Brescia, naturally lacked the university education of Loyola and his companions. She drew on her experience of activism as a Third Order Franciscan and a member of the local Oratory of the Divine Love when she set up a society of unmarried women and widows; they would live a celibate life of charitable works and teaching the poor while still living in their own homes, in a style reminiscent of the Beguine communities of northern Europe. [70] The community that Merici formally organized in 1535 took its title from the popular late medieval cult of the supposed third- or fourth-century British martyr St Ursula, who in the course of legend-making had acquired eleven thousand virgin companions, massacred by the Huns at Cologne. The likelihood of scribal error in copying stories of the saints, plus a wish to account for a

• From Lower than the Angels: A History of Sex and Christianity (2024)

  partial institutional exceptions like the Vestal Virgins of Rome, Graeco-Roman culture produced nothing like a monastic community, any more than did mainstream Judaism. [19] Within the fourth-century Christian Church, the network of monastic life spread steadily outwards from its beginnings in Syria and Egypt. In early fourth-century Egypt, a former soldier called Pachomios imitated the Syrians in steering most Egyptian ascetics towards life in communities (above, Chapter 7). Far to the west, probably in the early 360s, Martin (another ex-soldier, from what is now Hungary) drastically reshaped a pre-Christian sacred site in Gaul; he created the first known Christian monastery in the western Mediterranean at a place now called Ligugé, near the Gaulish city of Pictavia (the modern Poitiers, in west-central France). [20] It is probably significant that these two charismatic pioneers emerged from the regulated single-sex life of the imperial army. Originally the Church had frowned on Christian men joining the imperial army, largely because of the regular religious rituals involved in swearing loyalty to the Emperor. That consideration no longer applied now that emperors were Christians. Effectively Pachomios and Martin were redeploying and remodelling military discipline for their communities, although their campaigns were now waged by prayer against the Satanic spiritual powers surrounding Christians. Supportive of that main end was an often spectacularly strenuous physical asceticism exceeding anything demanded of a legionary. Among the most picturesque examples of such feats were those ‘stylite’ hermits in Syria and Asia Minor, some 120 over seven centuries from the early fifth, who built themselves a stone pillar on which to live and preach, generally in positions frequented by travellers that would become public landmarks for devotion and instruction. [21] Even without such spiritual athleticism, monastic or eremitical life offered the chance for individuals to approach union with God by embracing a sort of living martyrdom: actual martyrdom was no longer a possibility at the hands of a Roman imperial power that had inconveniently replaced persecution with financial subsidies. All this was invitingly heroic, and not only the stylites aloft their strategically placed columns experienced the complicated enjoyment of a good deal of public admiration and even political influence. They were unmistakably a spiritual elite, when once all Christians could have been regarded as an elite. Just as the early Syrian phase of monasticism had overlapped with so-called ‘encratism’ and rebellion against Church authority, these monastic communities posed potential problems of authority for a Christian Church now firmly committed to government by monarchical male bishops. Very few hermits or monks were also priests, so if they were in some remote desert place, they had little connection with the Eucharistic life of a church congregation over which a bishop presided. Equally seriously, the manifest and strenuous holiness of spiritual leaders like Antony of Egypt, Pachomios or Martin of Tours offered a charismatic alternative to the episcopal hierarchy which based itself on cities of the Empire, and which owed its legitimacy to recognition and consecration by fellow bishops.

• From Twelve Steps to a Compassionate Life (2010)

  Joseph Campbell has shown that every single culture developed its own myth of the hero, an outstanding individual who transformed the life of his people at immense cost to himself. The story always takes the same basic form so must express a universal insight.1 In all these tales, the hero begins by looking around his society and finding that something is missing. Perhaps there is spiritual malaise; perhaps traditional ideas no longer speak to his contemporaries; perhaps they are facing some unusual danger. He can find no ready-made solution, so he decides to leave home, turn his back on everything safe and familiar, and find a different answer. His quest is heroic because it demands self-sacrifice: the hero will experience pain, rejection, isolation, danger, and even death. But he is willing to undertake this journey out of love for his people—a devotion that does not consist of wordy declarations but of practically expressed altruism. The purpose of this myth is to help us to unleash our own heroic potential, to show us what we must do if we want to create a better world and how best to meet the challenges of our time. Many of the biographies of the great religious leaders follow this pattern. The Buddha had to leave the comforts of home, abandon his weeping parents, shave his head, and don the yellow robes of a world-renouncing ascetic when he set out to find a cure for the world’s pain.2 At the start of his career, Jesus was “led by the Spirit” into the desert, a place of transformation in biblical lore but also the haunt of demons: he is taken to the pinnacle of the temple and up a high mountain to survey the world from a detached vantage point, where he assesses and rejects the allure of an easier, showier, and more obvious path.3 Long before he received any revelations, every year Muhammad used to retreat to Mount Hira just outside Mecca. Here he fasted, performed spiritual exercises, and gave alms to the poor while he meditated on the creeping malaise that was overtaking his fellow tribesmen, searching intently for a remedy. Many of the more recent heroes of compassion have undergone the same process. When he returned to India from South Africa, for example, Gandhi left the city elites behind and traveled all over the country, carefully observing the plight of the ordinary people, before deciding on a course of action.

• From Twelve Steps to a Compassionate Life (2010)

  They did not feel that religion mired them in the past but were ready to make fundamental changes in the traditions they had inherited: we need only think of the Buddha, going from one guru to another in search of enlightenment before deciding to go his own way. We also have the example of the rabbis, who were ready even to change the words of the Bible in order to address the current problems of the community. Finally, we should consider the heroism of Muhammad, whose plan to create a community based on a shared ideology rather than the sacred tie of blood was a radical break with the past. As we seek to create a more compassionate world, we too must think outside the box, reconsider the major categories of our time, and find new ways of dealing with today’s challenges. But as we approach this task, we need the guidance of such people as the Buddha or Confucius, because they are the experts. In the West, our achievements have been scientific and technological, and we have had few spiritual geniuses. Our scientific focus on the external world has been of immense benefit to humanity, but we are less adept in the exploration of the interior life. We have been unable spiritually to go beyond the paradigmatic insights of the great sages of the past. But we have also seen that many of these pivotal teachers and prophets were living in societies that had problems similar to our own: they were dealing with violence that seemed to be getting out of hand and an economy that marginalized the poor. All were disturbed by the spectacle of ubiquitous suffering. It is now time to apply what we have learned from them to our own circumstances and to the society in which we live. Joseph Campbell has shown that every single culture developed its own myth of the hero, an outstanding individual who transformed the life of his people at immense cost to himself. The story always takes the same basic form so must express a universal insight. 1 In all these tales, the hero begins by looking around his society and finding that something is missing. Perhaps there is spiritual malaise; perhaps traditional ideas no longer speak to his contemporaries; perhaps they are facing some unusual danger. He can find no ready-made solution, so he decides to leave home, turn his back on everything safe and familiar, and find a different answer.

• From Twelve Steps to a Compassionate Life (2010)

  But the Golden Rule requires us to use our afflictions to make a difference in the lives of others. We cannot allow ourselves to feel paralyzed by the immensity of global misery. Christina’s story reminds us of the significant difference that one person can make. We cannot all rush off to foreign parts as Christina did. Indeed, there is no need to do so: we will find plenty of opportunities on our own doorstep. Suffering is not confined to distant parts of the globe. During this step, take time to look around your world again. Your training in mindfulness and new appreciation of the ubiquity of pain should make you experience your immediate environment differently. You may find that you are now more sensitized to the sorrow that is present wherever we look. We need to train our minds to see it. Because we have a self-protective tendency to keep suffering at bay, insulating ourselves in a psychological equivalent of the Buddha’s pleasure park, we sometimes fail to recognize the signs of poverty, loneliness, grief, fear, and desolation in our own city, our own village, or our own family. So look at your world anew, and do not leave this step until you have chosen your mission. There is a need that you—and only you—can fulfill. Do not imagine that you are doomed to a life of grim austerity or that your involvement in suffering will drain your life of fun. In fact, you may find that alleviating the distress of others makes you a good deal happier. Journalists often compare Christina to the late Mother Teresa, but she will have none of it. I don’t know why they do that, it only proves they don’t really know me. I do all the things a saint wouldn’t do. I belt out songs in clubs … I enjoy a double whisky now and then. I love dancing. I like to ride fast on the back of a Honda. Although I detest violence if I have to protect a child by giving someone a wallop, I’ll do it. I’m more than a bit wild. I’m Irish. Mother Teresa I am not. 6 Reaching out generously to embrace the pain of another yields an ekstasis , because in such a moment we are leaving our egotistic selves behind. This is beautifully illustrated by the following three biblical myths, which all center on a moment of recognition. Remember that a myth is a program for action: you will recognize its truth only when you put it into practice in your own life.

• From The Nasty Bits: Collected Varietal Cuts, Usable Trim, Scraps, and Bones (2006)

  I think it's a long overdue development. Opening up more accessible, less formal, fashionably downscale outlets than their signature mothership operations(s) is, of course, nothing new. Alain Ducasse spawned his Spoons for a presumably less moneyed, more on-the-go crowd looking to suck up a little reflected glory with their bento boxes. Charlie Trotter's Trotter To Go enabled those who felt they weren't paying enough for a potato to fulfill their dreams of haute takeout. And Wolfgang Puck famously embraced the Beast entirely, opening a vast empire of airport pizza joints. Jean Georges Vongerichten, while maintaining the impeccable JeanGeorges mothership, has frenetically (and usually successfully) flirted with a variety of dining styles and themes—everything from family-style Chinese eaten at communal tables to Singaporean street food—without noticeably diminishing the "brand." Even Thomas Keller has opened a (nonetheless Keller-ized) bistro in the heart of ugly-shorts capitalist darkness, Las Vegas. But the most radical moves have been taken by chefs as far apart geographically as Paris, New York, Chicago, and Montreal, chef-operators as different in temperament and training as any could be. What seems to unite them is their willingness—nay, eagerness—to dispense almost entirely with all they deem unnecessary to the service of highest-quality food: the extensive glassware, the tablecloths, the expensive silver and floral arrangements, even the table itself. In this bold new vision of the way it could—and perhaps should— be, the finest ingredients, prepared by the very best chefs and cooks, are served over a counter, diner style. It's a revolutionary shift, or more accurately, a reactionary one. Not so much about what chefs want to do as much as about all the things they don't want to do anymore. And the change from black-and-white-penguin-suited tableside service to counter service looks to be an almost entirely chef-led trend, reflective of what chefs themselves like to eat in their few hours away from their own kitchens and, as significantly, where they are eating. I spend a lot of time in my nearly never-ending bounce around the world eating and drinking with chefs. It seems that in every city I visit, everywhere in the world, whether on a book-flogging tour, while making television shows, or just traveling for fun, I end up too late at night with the local hotshots and their crew, talking shop, talking food, talking about what we all really like to eat—and what we secretly consider to be bullshit. And I listen to what people tell me. I notice what they eat. When we play the "Death Row Game," naming those single dishes or ingredients that we'd choose if given only a few hours to live, as the last taste to ever cross our palates, I take note. Most chefs' choices for last meal are invariably simple. No one ever expresses a desire to experience a fourteen course degustation menu (or even any part of one) in an as-yet-unvisited three- star Michelin.

• From The Nasty Bits: Collected Varietal Cuts, Usable Trim, Scraps, and Bones (2006)

  He's "lost it" . . . he's dans la merde now . . . and because kitchen work requires a great deal of coordination and teamwork, he could take the whole line down with him. But if you're lucky enough to have a well-oiled machine working for you—a bunch of hardcore, ass-kicking, name-taking debrouillards on the payroll—the chances of catastrophe are slim in the extreme. Old-school cholos, assassinos, vato locos, veterans of many kitchens like my cooks, they know what to do when there's no space left on the stove for another saute pan. They know how to bump closed a broiler or shut a refrigerator door when their hands are full. They know when to step into another cook's station—and, more importantly, how to do it— without that station becoming a rugby match of crushed toes and sharp elbows. They know how to sling dirty pots twenty-five feet across the kitchen so that they drop neatly into the pot sink without disfiguring the dishwasher. It's when the orders are pouring in and the supplies are running low and the tempers are growing thin that one sees System D practiced at its highest level. Hot water heater explodes? No sweat. Just push the rillettes over and start boiling water, carnale. Run out of those nice square dinner plates for the lobster spring rolls? No problem. Dummy up a new presentation and serve on the round plates. We know what to do. Meat grinder broken? It's steak tartare cut by hand, papi. Few things are more beautiful to me than a bunch of thuggish, heavily- tattooed line cooks moving around each other like ballerinas on a busy Saturday night. Seeing two guys who'd just as soon cut each other's throats in their off hours moving in unison with grace and ease can be as uplifting as any chemical stimulant or organized religion. At times like these, under fire, in battlefield conditions, the kitchen reverts to what it has always been since Escoffier's time: a brigade, a paramilitary unit, in which everyone knows what they have to do, and how to do it. Officers make fast and necessarily irrevocable decisions, and damn the torpedoes if it isn't the best decision. There's no time to dither, to waffle, to ponder, to empathize when there's incoming fire threatening to bring the whole kitchen and dining room crashing down. Move forward! Take that hill! Forced out of expediency to lose that cute herbal garnish on the Saddle of Lamb en Crepinette?

• From The Nasty Bits: Collected Varietal Cuts, Usable Trim, Scraps, and Bones (2006)

  I'm sure that there were beautiful churches, fabulous museums, incredible public parks with unspeakably lovely waterfalls, a rich and fascinating history to be discovered. But I hit the beach. I had, I told myself, solid investigative reasons for this decision. In Brazil, and in Rio in particular, it is said there is no figure more important to the culture, no creature more admired and emulated, than the carioca. The carioca is a role model and the ideal state of being is his. What is a carioca?. Simply put, he's a lovable scamp, a guy who somehow finds a way, always, to avoid legitimate toil in favor of the popular Rio diversions of going to the beach, flirting, making love, dancing, and hanging out. He is a man who survives on charm and what are called jetinhos, improvisational, amiable hustler/joker strategies to avoid work and keep doing what he's doing, which is basically nothing. Rio is filled with cariocas: crowded around cafe tables, playing volleyball with their feet on the beaches, surfing, tanning, swaying to music, hanging out at lanchonetes and barracas, usually with fabulous-looking women feeling them up—in general behaving like aristocratic rogues in Speedos. Whether they go home at night to the walled compounds of the rich, or take the bus to a hillside fa vela, all cariocas—in fact most Brazilians—are shockingly sophisticated about fashion, culture, the events of the world, and stratagems for survival. Everyone, rich or poor, seems to know how to dress stylishly (even on a budget), handle themselves in most social situations, and make the most of their charm, winging it through life. Is there appalling poverty? Are there organized drug gangs, squalid housing, and rampant prostitution? Yes. Do I oversimplify? Yes. Remember, I didn't get too far from the beach. In fact, I confined my investigations exclusively to the coast, beach-hopping from Copacabana with its tourist hordes, big hotels, nightclubs, and family beaches, to the slightly more segmented Ipanema. In Ipa, there are beaches for surfers, beaches for gays, beaches for aging leftists and artists, a beach with a band shell for live music. The surf is stronger, and the social strata more intricate. A few blocks back from the beach, it's like Sutton Place. Ten blocks beyond? Slums that make the South Bronx of the 1970s look like Club Med. I traveled down the coast, through mountain tunnels to Barra (another one), a Montauk-esque beach community with even wilder waves and a less crowded beach—a sort of dress-down-if-you're-stinking-rich enclave strip of cafes and shops and modest but well-kept homes, a few full-bore pleasure palaces.

• From Why We Believe: Finding Meaning in Uncertain Times

  57 Beliefs are not limited to the realm of the mind, but are capable of being lived out through the realities of a life which they both inform and enrich. An exemplar is someone who has internalised a way of thinking so that it becomes their way of living. Instead of telling us to be good, they show us what a good life can and should look like. We need a definition of goodness that is not framed in the language of ideas, but in terms of the character, and an exemplar shows us what goodness is like, rather than telling us how it is to be understood. There is an important connection here with Pierre Hadot’s account of some schools of ancient philosophy. While there is a degree of overstatement in Hadot’s analysis, 58 he has clearly identified an aspect of earlier philosophical practice which has not found its proper counterpart in post-Enlightenment thought – the development of certain personal disciplines which help people assimilate and enact their vision of a good life. These transformed modes of seeing and being in the world were exemplified and lived out in the figure of the sage. In the ancient world, philosophy was eminently concerned with self-criticism and self-improvement. Plutarch spoke of ‘weaving’ or ‘painting’ our lives; Plotinus suggested we see ourselves as a sculptor, chipping away at a block of marble to allow the statue within to be seen. Philosophy is about seeing our potential, and guiding us as we try to achieve this, in company with appropriate mentors and exemplars. While ancient schools of philosophy were concerned with the development of argument and reasoning, they also developed what Hadot calls ‘spiritual exercises’ as a means of enacting their ideas and values. Aristotle’s discussion of the question of how we should live focuses on the idea of eudaimonia , a Greek term often translated as ‘happiness’, but which perhaps is better rendered as ‘flourishing’ or ‘fulfilment’. During the eighteenth century, the Enlightenment was seen as enfolding a single coherent manner of thought and life, valid for all places and times, so that its leading representatives might be regarded as sages – figures of wisdom with universal appeal and significance. Today, as the limitations of a purely rationalist worldview have become apparent, there is much greater interest in respecting the distinctiveness of different human understandings of rational and spiritual virtues, and retrieving older ways of thinking that had been sidelined during the Age of Reason. British Enlightenment philosophers – most notably, John Locke and George Berkeley (and to a lesser extent, David Hume), have also been scrutinised and reappraised in the light of their involvement in the slave trade. This does not, in my view, discredit the philosophical beliefs of such leading representatives of the Enlightenment, although it certainly complicates attempts to present this as an emancipatory social movement, and raises some awkward questions about the connections between its philosophies and forms of life.

• From The Fixed Stars: A Memoir (2020)

  But even in towns as conservative as ours, people were dying of AIDS, and local groups sprung up to help them. When Jerry got sick, my mother went to meetings and marches, began to volunteer. The entire family, all across the country, got involved. My aunt Tina was a “buddy” to men with AIDS, driving them to doctor’s appointments and caring for them as they died. My cousin Katie made a panel in Jerry’s memory for the NAMES Project AIDS Memorial Quilt, and my grandmother made another. Twice, in 1989 and 1992, we traveled—me, my mom, aunts, uncles, grandparents, cousins—to Washington, DC, to volunteer when the Quilt was displayed on the National Mall. I got white jeans for the occasion. We volunteers all wore white, an army of ghosts walking the tarpaulin pathways between sections of the Quilt. Each morning, we worked as Unfolders, teams of volunteers unfurling the panels over the grass. There was a beautiful ceremony to it, the way we unfolded a square of stitched-together panels, held it taut, and lowered it to the ground. During the unfolding, no one spoke. The length of the Mall was silent, from the Capitol to the Washington Monument. Every panel was the size of a grave; each day, we made and unmade a cemetery. During viewing hours, we took shifts as Monitors, walking the perimeter of a section of panels, making sure no one harmed or defaced them. I had just turned eleven, but they let me sign up for shifts like anyone else. I had a Swatch watch and a neon-pink fanny pack stocked with Kleenex and granola bars, and the only thing tethering me to my family was the marvelously thin rope of an agreed-upon meeting time. I had an important job to do: me, skinny hips and moussed bangs and too-big teeth, guarding an epidemic’s graveyard. [image file=image_rsrc2FK.jpg] Most of the other volunteers were gay men who’d lost friends and lovers. These men became some of my mother’s closest friends. Kids at my school talked about queers, called one another fags as an insult. Kids said you could get HIV from the water fountain. I had a black ACT UP sweatshirt with a pink triangle on the front and SILENCE=DEATH written beneath, and I wore it like a challenge, hoping someone would ask me about it. I liked being the know-it-all, explaining that gay people are born gay, the same way I was born with white skin and blue eyes. It’s not a choice, I told them. No one would choose that life. But back at home, my mother’s friends, these beautiful out gay men—they were like celebrities to me.