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 A History of God (1993)

  Muhammad died unexpectedly after a short illness in June 632. After his death, some of the Bedouin tried to break away from the ummah, but the political unity of Arabia held firm. Eventually the recalcitrant tribes also accepted the religion of the one God: Muhammad’s astonishing success had shown the Arabs that the paganism which had served them well for centuries no longer worked in the modern world. The religion of al-Lah introduced the compassionate ethos which was the hallmark of the more advanced religions: brotherhood and social justice were its crucial virtues. A strong egalitarianism would continue to characterize the Islamic ideal. During Muhammad’s lifetime, this had included the equality of the sexes. Today it is common in the West to depict Islam as an inherently misogynistic religion, but, like Christianity, the religion of al-Lah was originally positive for women. During the jahiliyyah, the pre-Islamic period, Arabia had preserved the attitudes toward women which had prevailed before the Axial Age. Polygamy, for example, was common, and wives remained in their father’s households. Elite women enjoyed considerable power and prestige—Muhammad’s first wife, Khadija, for example, was a successful merchant—but the majority were on a par with slaves; they had no political or human rights, and female infanticide was common. Women had been among Muhammad’s earliest converts, and their emancipation was a project that was dear to his heart. The Koran strictly forbade the killing of female children and rebuked the Arabs for their dismay when a girl was born. It also gave women legal rights of inheritance and divorce: most Western women had nothing comparable until the nineteenth century. Muhammad encouraged women to play an active role in the affairs of the ummah, and they expressed their views forthrightly, confident that they would be heard. On one occasion, for example, the women of Medina had complained to the Prophet that the men were outstripping them in the study of the Koran and asked him to help them catch up. This Muhammad did. One of their most important questions was why the Koran addressed men only when women had also made their surrender to God. The result was a revelation that addressed women as well as men and emphasized the absolute moral and spiritual equality of the sexes.35 Thereafter the Koran quite frequently addressed women explicitly, something that rarely happens in either the Jewish or Christian scriptures.

• From American Swing (2008)

  I DON'T THINK THERE MIGHT HAVE BEEN A VELVET ROPE. I NEVER SAW AN EAGER CROWD WAITING TO GET IN WITH BOUNCERS KEEPING THEM OUT. EVERYTHING AT PLATO'S, EVEN THE UGLY PERSON-- I DON'T THINK THERE WERE ANY-- WAS-- WAS-- HAD A CERTAIN CHARM. - IT WAS A POOR MAN'S PLAYBOY MANSION. - ABSOLUTELY. Matuschka: I ACTUALLY ADMIRE PEOPLE THAT ARE THAT FREE THAT COULD GO INTO A PLACE LIKE THAT AND JUST LET IT ALL HANG OUT, TAKE ALL THEIR CLOTHES OFF AND WALK AROUND-- INCLUDING THOSE FAT PEOPLE THAT LOOK LIKE THEY'VE GOT, YOU KNOW, DOUBLE SETS OF TWINS IN THEIR BELLY. I'M AMAZED THAT THEY CAN DO THAT BECAUSE EVEN THOUGH I LOOKED A LOT DIFFERENT THEN-- I WAS SKINNIER AND I HAD TWO BREASTS-- I COULDN'T TAKE MY CLOTHES OFF IN FRONT OF STRANGERS. I MEAN, I THINK IT TAKES A LOT OF SOMETHING TO BE ABLE TO DO THAT. ♪ I'LL MEET YA IN THE USUAL PLACE...♪ Dorfman: I THOUGHT THEY HAD RESUSCITATED THE ORGY FOR THE MAN IN THE STREET, WHICH IS EXACTLY WHAT THEY DID. YOU PAY WHATEVER IT IS-- 20, 25 BUCKS-- YOU GET IN AND YOU CAN JOIN IN AN ORGY. WHERE CAN YOU DO THAT IN THE UNITED STATES? YOU COULD DO IT AT PLATO'S. MY FRIENDS WERE VERY... YOU KNOW, BACKWARDS. AND I-- I GREW AWAY FROM MY FRIENDS. I GREW AWAY. I WENT TO THE CITY. I WENT TO BARS. I WENT UP ON SECOND AVENUE, FIRST AVENUE, UP TO UPTOWN. I WANTED TO MEET A MORE EDUCATED CROWD. I WAS NO BOY SCOUT. I WAS A WILD GUY, VERY UNINHIBITED. I WAS A MODEL. THE FIRST TIME I HEARD ABOUT PLATO'S RETREAT WAS I WENT TO CLUB MED AT MARTINIQUE WITH A FRIEND OF MINE AND THIS GUY WAS TELLING ME, "MILES, YOU'RE GONNA LOVE THIS PLACE. IT'S WILD. EVERYONE'S HAVING SEX ALL OVER THE PLACE." MY BOYFRIEND WAS A MINISTER. AND HE ASKED ME TO GO TO PLATO'S RETREAT THAT NIGHT AND WE WENT. I WAS A TINGLING MESS OF HORMONES. I WAS LIKE-- ALMOST LIKE WHEN YOU'RE A TEENAGER. Miles: AS SOON AS I WALKED DOWN THE STAIRS, A LITTLE REDHEADED GIRL COMES UP TO ME, REALLY PRETTY, GRABS ME BY THE ARM AND SAYS, "COME HERE. COME WITH ME." Betsy: AT FIRST WE TALKED TO EACH OTHER FOR A LITTLE BIT. AND, UM, YOU KNOW, HE WAS OBVIOUSLY MORE COMFORTABLE THERE THAN I WAS. WE GO RIGHT INTO A LITTLE PRIVATE ROOM. YOU'LL LOVE THAT. WE'RE IN PLATO'S RETREAT, WHERE EVERYONE'S HAVING SEX ALL OVER THE PLACE, THERE ARE LITTLE ROOMS CALLED "FOR THE INHIBITED." EVERYBODY WAS SO NICE TO ME. EVERYBODY MADE YOU FEEL AT HOME. I HAD A CHANCE TO... LOOK AROUND A LITTLE BIT. AND SOMEWHERE IN THERE HE DISAPPEARED. AND I FOUND MYSELF WITH A CONSTRUCTION WORKER FROM CONNECTICUT.

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

  CHRYSOSTOM. The Lord sought to heal the Jews by this mildness. But though they rejected Him, yet He did not resist them by destroying them; whence the Prophet, displaying His power and their weakness, says, A bruised reed he shall not break, and a smoking flax he shall not quench. JEROME. He that holds not out his hand to a sinner, nor bears his brother’s burden, he breaks a bruised reed; and he who despises a weak spark of faith in a little one, he quenches a smoking flax. AUGUSTINE. (ubi sup) So He neither bruised nor quenched the Jewish persecutors, who are here likened to a bruised reed which has lost its wholeness, and to a smoking flax which has lost its flame; but He spared them because He was not come to judge them, but to be judged by them. AUGUSTINE. (Quæst. Ev. i. 3.) In the smoking flax it is observed, that when the flame is out it causes a stink. CHRYSOSTOM. Or this, He shall not break a bruised reed, shews that it was as easy for Him to break them all, as to break a reed, and that a bruised reed. And, He shall not quench a smoking flax, shews that their rage was fired, and that the power of Christ was strong to quench such rage with all readiness; hence in this is shewn the great mercy of Christ. HILARY. Or, he means this bruised reed that is not broken, to shew that the perishing and bruised bodies of the Gentiles, are not to be broken, but are rather reserved for salvation. He shall not quench a smoking flax, shews the feebleness of that spark which though not quenched, only moulders in the flax, and that among the remnants of that ancient grace, the Spirit is yet not quite taken away from Israel, but power still remains to them of resuming the whole flame thereof in a day of penitence. JEROME. (Ep. 121.2.) Or, the reverse, He calls the Jews a bruised reed, whom tossed by the wind and shaken from one another, the Lord did not immediately condemn, but patiently endured; and the smoking flax He calls the people gathered out of the Gentiles, who, having extinguished the light of the natural law, were involved in the wandering mazes of thick darkness of smoke, bitter and hurtful to the eyes; this He not only did not extinguish, by reducing them to ashes, but on the contrary from a small spark and one almost dead He raised a mighty flame.

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

  CHRYSOSTOM. (Hom. xviii. [al. xvii.] c. 2) But wherefore went he not all about, preaching in every place of Judæa; instead of standing near the river, waiting for His coming, that he might point Him out? Because he wished this to be done by the works of Christ Himself. And observe how much greater an effort was produced; He struck a small spark, and suddenly it rose into a flame. Again, if John had gone about and preached, it would have seemed like human partiality, and great suspicion would have been excited. Now the Prophets and Apostles all preached Christ absent; the former before His appearance in the flesh, the latter after His assumption. But He was to be pointed out by the eye, not by the voice only; and therefore it follows: And looking upon Jesus us He walked, he saith, Behold the Lamb of God! THEOPHYLACT. Looking he saith, as if signifying by his looks his love and admiration for Christ. AUGUSTINE. (Tr. vii. c. 8) John was the friend of the Bridegroom; he sought not his own glory, but bare witness to the truth. And therefore he wished not his disciples to remain with him, to the hindrance of their duty to follow the Lord; but rather shewed them whom they should follow, saying, Behold the Lamb of God. CHRYSOSTOM. (Hom. xviii. 1. in Joan) He makes not a long discourse, having only one object before him, to bring them and join them to Christ; knowing that they would not any further need his witness. (c. 2.). John does not however speak to his disciples alone, but publicly in the presence of all. And so, undertaking to follow Christ, through this instruction common to all, they remained thenceforth firm, following Christ for their own advantage, not as an act of favour to their masterx. John does not exhort: he simply gazes in admiration on Christ, pointing out the gifty He came to bestow, the cleansing from sin: and the mode in which this would be accomplished: both of which the word Lamb testifies to. Lamb has the article affixed to it, as a sign of preeminence. AUGUSTINE. (Tr. vii. c. 5) For He alone and singly is the Lamb without spot, without sin; not because His spots are wiped off, but because He never had a spot. He alone is the Lamb of God, for by His blood alone can men be redeemed. (c. 6). This is the Lamb whom the wolves fear; even the slain Lamb, by whom the lion was slain. BEDE. (Hom. 1) The Lamb therefore he calls Him; for that He was about to give us freely His fleece, that we might make of it a wedding garment; i. e. would leave us an example of life, by which we should be warmed into love.

• From A History of Christianity (1976)

  Paul’. But the truth is that Paul did not invent Christianity, or pervert it: he rescued it from extinction. Paul was the first pure Christian: the first fully to comprehend Jesus’s system of theology, to grasp the magnitude of the changes it embodied, and the completeness of the break with the Judaic law. Herein lies the paradox. For by birth Paul was a pure Jew, of the tribe of Benjamin. ‘Circumcized on the eighth day,’ he intones, ‘of the people of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew born of Hebrews; as to law a Pharisee, as to zeal a persecutor of the church, as to righteousness under the law blameless.’ From a tradition passed on by Jerome, we learn that his family came from northern Galilee, near the Lake of Genasseret, and was ultra-conservative. The Pharisaic background went back to his great-grandparents. The family had moved to Tarsus at the time of the Roman occupation, had become wealthy Roman citizens, but remained pillars of the conformist diaspora. Thus Paul’s sister was taken to Jerusalem to be married, and his father sent Paul to the rabbinical high school there. He spoke Greek and Aramaic, and read the scriptures in Hebrew as well as in the Septuagint. As a young man Paul had assisted at the martyrdom of Stephen and had subsequently taken a leading part in the Pharisee drive in the diaspora against the Hellenizing Christian element. It is important to realize that Paul did not simply become a Christian. Many Jews might do this without any great change in ideas. Paul moved right across the religious conspectus, from narrow sectarianism to militant universalism, and from strict legalism to a complete repudiation of the law – the first Christian to do so: not even Jesus had gone so far Paul insists, repeatedly, that his change of view was instant and complete; it was in fact miraculous; he did not argue himself around but had the truth in all its plenitude revealed to him instantaneously by Jesus himself. Unless we accept Paul’s view of how he became a follower of Christ, it is impossible to understand him. He believed in it as passionately and completely as did the disciples who had seen the risen Christ: in fact he drew no distinction between the two types of vision. It was his title to the rank of apostle and his claim to preach the authentic Christian message. But Paul had more than a divine mandate for the gentile mission. He came from Tarsus, which has been termed ‘the Athens of Asia Minor’. It was a trading emporium, a centre of cults of every kind, gnostic, exotic, oriental and Stoic. It was a focal-point of syncretism, a cultural and religious crossroads, a city familiar with weird religious processions outdoors and Hellenic debate within. Paul was a product

• From Sex Matters: How Modern Feminism Lost Touch with Science, Love, and Common Sense (2018)

  In Coming Apart, Charles Murray describes the McGuffey Readers in wide circulation in American schools in the nineteenth century. These books, with their moral lessons and emphasis on character development, were almost as popular in nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century America as the Bible. One story featured a boy who “never forgot the lesson of that night; and he came to believe, and to act upon the belief, in after years, that true manliness is in harmony with gentleness, kindness, and self-denial.”11 William Bennett, the former education secretary, compiled inspiring examples of ideal manliness in his collection titled The Book of Man. He quoted James Freeman Clarke (1810–1888), for example, an American theologian and essayist who drew distinctions between true and false manliness: Truth, courage, conscience, freedom, energy, self-possession, self-control. But it does not exclude gentleness, tenderness, compassion, modesty. A man is not less manly, but more so, because he is gentle…The manly spirit shows itself in enterprise, the love of meeting difficulties and overcoming them—the resolution that will not yield…A false notion of manliness leads boys astray. All boys wish to be manly; but they often try to become so by copying the vices of men rather than their virtues.12 The nineteenth century had no monopoly on manliness, and one of the most enriching portraits in Bennett’s book is of David Gelernter, the computer scientist, Yale professor, artist, and social critic who was badly wounded by a mail bomb sent by the Unabomber. Instead of focusing on his scientific achievements or his personal courage in overcoming his injuries, Bennett’s portrait of Gelernter stresses his role as husband and father. Gelernter and his wife, in a countercultural act, raised their sons to be chivalrous gentlemen. The boys were taught that when they took a girl out on a date, they were to hold doors for her, pick up the check, treat her with respect, walk her to her door, and offer her their own coat if she felt cold. A man’s role with respect to women, Gelernter argues, “is to protect, to help, to support, [and] to cherish….Women have an urge to nurture and cherish children; men don’t have that, but they can substitute an urge to nurture and cherish women. Men need to turn their sexual interest into something that goes deeper, emotionally and spiritually.”13 Bennett also quotes Teddy Roosevelt to show that men were not always socialized to disparage women and neglect their families: “For unflagging interest and enjoyment, a household of children, if things go reasonably well, certainly makes all other forms of success and achievement lose their importance by comparison.”14 Historian Robert Griswold writes that even in the late 1800s, “all social classes conceived of family relations in affective terms, placed a premium on emotional fulfillment in the family, considered women’s opinions and contributions worthy of respect and consideration, emphasized male kindness and accommodation, and assumed that children were special members of the household in need of love and affection.”15

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

  HILARY. The natural order of things is here preserved; the dæmon is first cast out, and there the functions of the members proceed. And the multitude marvelled, saying, It was never so seen in Israel. CHRYSOSTOM. They set Him thus above others, because He not only healed, but with such ease, and quickness; and cured diseases both infinite in number, and in quality incurable. This most grieved the Pharisees, that they set Him before all others, not only those that then lived, but all who had lived before, on which account it follows, But the Pharisees said, He casteth out dæmons through the Prince of dæmons. REMIGIUS. Thus the Scribes and Pharisees denied such of the Lord’s miracles as they could deny; and such as they could not they explained by an evil interpretation, according to that, In the multitude of thy excellency thy enemies shall lie unto thee. (Ps. 66:3.) CHRYSOSTOM. What can be more foolish than this speech of theirs? For it cannot be pretended that one dæmon would cast out another; for they are wont to consent to one another’s deeds, and not to be at variance among themselves. But Christ not only cast out dæmons, but healed the lepers, raised the dead, forgave sins, preached the kingdom of God, and brought men to the Father, which a dæmon neither could nor would do. RABANUS. Figuratively; As in the two blind men were denoted both nations, Jews and Gentiles, so in the man dumb and afflicted with the dæmon is denoted the whole human race. HILARY. Or; By the dumb and deaf, and dæmoniae, is signified the Gentile world, needing health in every part; for sunk in evil of every kind, they are afflicted with disease of every part of the body. REMIGIUS. For the Gentiles were dumb; not being able to open their mouth in the confession of the true faith, and the praises of the Creator, or because in paying worship to dumb idols they were made like unto them. They were afflicted with a dæmon, because by dying in unbelief they were made subject to the power of the Devil. HILARY. But by the knowledge of God the frenzy of superstition being chased away, the sight, the hearing, and the word of salvation is brought in to them. JEROME. As the blind receive light, so the tongue of the dumb is loosed, that he may confess Him whom before he denied. The wonder of the multitude is the confession of the nations. The scoff of the Pharisees is the unbelief of the Jews, which is to this day. HILARY. The wonder of the multitude is followed up by the confession, It was never so seen in Israel; because he, for whom there was no help under the Law, is saved by the power of the Word.

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

  REMIGIUS. And it should be known, that the meaning not only of this passage, but of many others also, is supported by this testimony from the Prophet. The words, Behold my servant, may be referred to the place in which the Father had said above, This is my Son. (Mat. 3:17.) The words, I will put my Spirit upon him, is referred to the descent of the Holy Spirit upon the Lord at His baptism; He shall declare judgment to the Gentiles, to that which He says below, When the Son of Man shall sit in the seat of his Majesty. (Mat. 25:31) What he adds, He shall not strive nor cry, refers to the Lord how He answered but little to the Chief Priests, and to Pilate, but to Herod nothing at all. He shall not break the bruised reed, refers to His shunning His persecutors that they might not be made worse; and that In his name shall the Gentiles hope, refers to what Himself says below, Go ye, and teach all nations. (Mat. 28:19) 12:22–2422. Then was brought unto him one possessed with a devil, blind and dumb: and he healed him, insomuch that the blind and dumb both spake and saw. 23. And all the people were amazed, and said, Is not this the Son of David? 24. But when the Pharisees heard it, they said, This fellow doth not cast out devils, but by Beelzebub the prince of the devils. GLOSS. (non occ.) The Lord had refuted the Pharisees above, when they brought false charges against the miracles of Christ, as if He had broken the sabbath in doing them. But inasmuch as with a yet greater wickedness they perversely attributed the miracles of Christ done by divine power to an unclean spirit, therefore the Evangelist places first the miracle from which they had taken occasion to blaspheme, saying, Then was brought to him one that had a dæmon, blind and dumb. REMIGIUS. The word Then refers to that above, where having healed the man who had the withered hand, He went out of the synagogue. Or it may be taken of a more extended time; Then, namely, when these things were being done or said. CHRYSOSTOM. We may wonder at the wickedness of the dæmon; he had obstructed both inlets by which he could believe, namely, hearing and sight. But Christ opened both, whence it follows, And he healed him., insomuch that the blind and dumb both spake and saw. JEROME. Three miracles were wrought in one and the same person at the same time; the blind sees, the dumb speaks, the possessed is delivered from the dæmon. This was at that time done in the flesh, but is now daily being fulfilled in the conversion of them that believe; the dæmon is cast out when they first behold the light of the faith, and then their mouths which had before been stopped are opened to utter the praises of God.

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

  We may remember, again, how in Luke 1:80 it is written of St. John the Baptist, “And the child grew and was strengthened in spirit, and was in the desert until the day of his manifestation to Israel.” Bede comments on this text in the following words: “He who was to be the preacher of penance passed his early years in the desert. He acted thus in order more easily to draw his hearers, by means of his instructions, from the vanities of the world. He would not, as St. Gregory of Nyssa says, allow himself to become accustomed to the allurements of the senses, lest he should be misled or perplexed in his judgment concerning the true good. And, because he was pure, and because, from the beginning of his life to the end, he offered to the divine regard desires free from every passion, therefore he was raised to such a height of grace that he received gifts surpassing those of the prophets.” Therefore, not only is it lawful but even most expedient in order to obtain greater grace that some men, leaving the world, even in their childhood, should live in the solitude of the religious life. We read in Lamentations 3:27, “It is good for a man, when he has borne the yoke from his youth.” The reason given for these words being, “he shall sit solitary and hold his peace, because he has taken it up upon himself.” By this we are given to understand that they who bear the yoke of religious life from their youth upwards, arise above themselves and are rendered more fit for religious observance, which consists in silence and freedom from worldly care and disturbance. In the Book of Proverbs 22:6 the words occur, “A young man according to his way, even when he is old he will not depart from it.” Hence St. Anselm in his book De Similitudinibus compares those who have been brought up in monasteries to angels, while those who have been converted from an imperfect life he likens to men. This mode of thinking is not only confirmed by the authority of Holy Scripture, it is shared even by philosophers; for Aristotle in his Second Book of Ethics says, “It is by no means a matter of small moment whether from our youth we are accustomed to such or such a manner of life, but, on the contrary, it is of supreme importance that certain men should, from childhood, be instructed in those things which they must observe during the course of their life.” Again, in the Eighth book of his Politics, the same philosopher writes: “The chief concern of a legislator ought to be for the education of the young who should be trained in every good quality.”

• From H Is for Hawk (2014)

  But reading further back I find that in the seventeenth century goshawks weren’t vile at all. They were ‘sociable and familiar’, though by nature ‘altogether shye and fearfull’ wrote Simon Latham in 1615. They ‘take exception’ at ‘rough and harsh behaviour from the man’, but if treated with kindness and consideration, are ‘as loving and fond of her Keeper as any other Hawke whatsoever’. These hawks, too, were talked about as if they were women. They were things to win, to court, to love. But they were not hysterical monsters. They were real, contradictory, self-willed beings, ‘stately and brave’, but also ‘shye and fearfull’. If they behaved in ways that irritated the falconer it was because he had not treated them well, had not demonstrated ‘continuall loving and curteous behaviour towards them’. The falconer’s role, wrote Edmund Bert, was to provide for all his hawk’s needs so that she might have ‘joye in her selfe’. ‘I am her friend,’ he wrote of his goshawk, ‘and shee my playfellow.’ A more cynical eye might have seen these Elizabethan and Jacobean men as boasting about their hawk-training skills; old-school pick-up artists in a bar talking up their seduction routines. But I wasn’t cynical. They had won me over, these long-dead men who loved their hawks. They were reconciled to their otherness, sought to please them and be their friends. I wasn’t under any illusion that women were better off in early-modern England, and assumed it was a fear of female emancipation that had made goshawks so terribly frightening to later falconers – but even so I knew which kind of relationship I preferred. I look at Mabel. She looks at me. So much of what she means is made of people. For thousands of years hawks like her have been caught and trapped and brought into people’s houses. But unlike other animals that have lived in such close proximity to man, they have never been domesticated. It’s made them a powerful symbol of wildness in myriad cultures, and a symbol, too, of things that need to be mastered and tamed.

• From Introduction to the Hebrew Bible and Deutero-Canonical Books (2018)

  Sovereign, how majestic is your name in all the earth!”) or simply by calling on the congregation to praise the Lord, as in Psalms 146–50. They typically give the reasons for praising God, his works in creation or history, or his character. Psalms 8 and 104 put the emphasis on the works of creation. Psalm 114 recalls the exodus. Psalm 146 praises the Lord for liberating prisoners and opening the eyes of the blind. The hymn may conclude by echoing the introductory affirmation (Psalm 8) or call to praise (Psalms 146–50) or by pronouncing a wish (104:31: “may the glory of the L ORD endure forever”; 29:11: “May the L ORD bless his people with peace!”). The form allows some variation from one hymn to another, but nonetheless it is not difficult to recognize. Hymns praising deities figure prominently in all religions of the ancient Near East, and probably in all religions. Psalm 104 has a close parallel in the Egyptian Hymn to Aten (the deity represented by the solar disk, venerated by the heretical, “monotheistic” Pharaoh Akhenaten: ANET , 369–71). There are numerous examples of Mesopotamian hymns to various deities, some dating back to ancient Sumer, including the goddess Ishtar, Marduk, the moon-god, and the sun-god ( ANET, 383–92). Hymns were sung on a wide variety of occasions but were especially associated with the temple and holy places, and with the celebration of festivals. “Happy are those who live in your house, ever singing your praise” (Ps 84:4). “Enter his gates with thanksgiving, and his courts with praise” (100:4; in this case, the singing of hymns is associated with liturgical processions). According to 1 Chron 16:4-7, David appointed Levites as ministers before the ark to invoke, thank, and praise the God of Israel. The singing of praise seems to have been a prominent part of the temple worship throughout the history of Israel and Judah. CLASSIFICATION OF PSALMS IN THE HEBREW BIBLE Hymns 8, 19, 29, 33, 65, 67, 68, 96, 98, 100, 103–5, 111, 113, 114, 117, 135, 145–50 Psalms of YHWH’s Enthronement 93, 97, 99 Psalms of Individual 3, 5–7, 13, 17, 22, 25–28, 32, 38, 39, 42, 43, 51, 54–57, 59, 61, 63, 64, 69–71, Complaint 86, 88, 102, 109, 120, 130, 140–43 Psalms of Communal Complaint 44, 74, 79, 80, 83, 89 Psalms of Thanksgiving 18, 30, 34, 40:1-11, 41, 66, 92, 116, 118, 138 Royal Psalms 2, 18, 20, 21, 45, 72, 101, 110, 132, 144:1-11 Wisdom Psalms 1, 14, 37, 73, 91, 112, 119, 128 (Many psalms are difficult to classify and are omitted from this list.)

• From Times Square Red, Times Square Blue (1999)

  And there was Arly, who’d lost a leg at five when his crazed, drunken father had flung him under an oncoming subway (“You know, sometimes I still dream about them subway cars rushing over my head, man!”) and who played the drums in his mother’s Columbian Pentecostal church. I met him when he was twenty-one or twenty-two and he would come in to settle in the Cameo’s balcony. Good-looking, friendly, and extremely agile on his one-stick crutch, for the first three times I talked to him, he claimed to be too tired for sex. Finally I’d assumed he just wasn’t available, when, the next time he passed me in the balcony aisle, suddenly he seized my arm to explain in a low, excited voice (like someone taking a breath before plunging under water to perform some intricate task), that he was more highly sexed than most men, and thus anyone who sat with him but stayed only through the first of his orgasms would (in his words) “drive me crazy, man. It makes me wanna die—” he dragged down my arm at the emphasis—“if I can’t come three or four times, you know? I mean, I wanna die. So if you wanna do me, man, you got to promise to stay with me till I come at least three times, huh? All right? Okay?” And so we began a regular relationship in which, well . . . that’s what he did. Those first three orgasms usually took him about forty-five minutes. In a more relaxed, two- or two-and-a-half-hour session, he’d make five, and often six. “Now I’m relaxed, man. Maybe I’ll get off again, or, if I go home, man, I won’t feel like I wanna die, see?” Arly’s and my friendship did get to the point of going to each other’s houses. When I first visited him, he lived in an incredibly filthy apartment in an incongruous squatters’ building on West End Avenue at Ninety-eighth Street, his floor strewn inches deep with girly magazines around his corner mattress. Two years later, he moved back into his mother’s neat, green-and-yellow-and-pink-and-purple-and-orange-and-blue frilly project apartment, with poodle and flamingo mirrors and colorful religious statues. A couple of times Arly came to my five-flight walk-up writer’s digs. With his one leg and single-stem homemade crutch, he took my steps three at a bound. “Arly, how do you do that?” “See, I don’t weigh as much as you guys do, by thirty, thirty-five pounds! I can go a lot faster. Besides, I live on the eighth floor, man—our elevators never work. So I get a lot of practice.” In ’86 I remember running into him one afternoon at the Capri.

• From How to Be Yourself: Quiet Your Inner Critic and Rise Above Social Anxiety (2018)

  Each episode underwent intense care and deliberation. Excellence was the only acceptable standard. Every script went through multiple levels of review—Rogers himself, the show’s producers, and Rogers’s mentor and consultant, Dr. Margaret McFarland, a child psychologist at the University of Pittsburgh. Once, in the middle of shooting an episode, Rogers felt the script was not quite right, even after all the usual layers of input. So he did the unthinkable. He stopped production, left a highly paid, mostly unionized crew twiddling their thumbs on set, and walked down to the university campus to consult with Dr. McFarland. After about an hour, he came back, and the show rolled. But the incident was pure Rogers. If it was for the kids, it had to be right. With such exacting standards, one might think that Rogers would be difficult, an unreasonable autocrat, or at least deadly boring. But Fred Rogers wasn’t any of those things. Instead, he magically merged high standards with flexibility, responsibility with creativity. An ordained Presbyterian minister, he devoted himself to service, seamlessly combining rectitude with approachability and humility. Rogers’s mentor at the Pittsburgh Theological Seminary, the chain-smoking Dr. William Orr, taught Rogers the principle of “guided drift”: staying the course of one’s principles while embracing the flow of life. Uphold your integrity but take chances. Be open to change and serendipity rather than being confined by a rigid set of rules. This philosophy showed up in the show and in life. During one taping, for instance, Rogers began as usual by swapping his blazer for a cardigan and buttoning it up, only to realize that he was one button off—the Monday button was in the Tuesday hole. Familiar with Rogers’s standards, the crew expected him to call, “Cut!” and start over, but instead he ad-libbed a line and re-buttoned the sweater, noting that mistakes happen and, moreover, they can be corrected. Another time, the script called for a shot of the fish in the set’s tank eating their food. A production assistant fed the fish during rehearsal in order to calibrate the camera and avoid glare on the tank, so when actual taping came around, the fish were full. They just stared at the food as it sank unceremoniously to the bottom of the tank. Everyone settled in for a long day, assuming they’d have to wait for the fish to get hungry again so the scene could be shot as scripted. But, recalled longtime producer Elizabeth Seamans, “Fred just looked at it. And he looked at the camera and said, ‘I guess the fish aren’t hungry right now; you know sometimes we’re not hungry.’” It was a perfectly reasonable explanation, and he trusted his young viewers to be accepting of the circumstances. The moment became a mantra for the crew: “Do the fish really need to eat?” It reminded them that rolling with the punches made for a better TV show than shoehorning fish—and by extension, life—into a preconceived script.

• From The Evolution of Beauty: How Darwin's Forgotten Theory of Mate Choice Shapes the Animal World—and Us (2017)

  In 2005, this question resonated with the interests of my new colleague Patricia Brennan. Brennan is Colombian but has lived in the United States for more than fifteen years. She is vivacious, enthusiastic, and scientifically unstoppable. She is not at all timid about working on, or talking about, avian sex. With two young children and a bit of gray hair, she still looks like the aerobics instructor she was during graduate school at Cornell. She is also a mean salsa dancer, which is to say still una Colombiana. Her Ph.D. was on the dinosaur-like, male nest care breeding system of the tinamous (Tinamidae). In the tropical rain forests of Costa Rica, Brennan came to know these extremely shy, chicken-like birds better than nearly anyone alive. Once, when observing tinamous mating, Patty was shocked to see a fleshy spiral dangling down from the male’s cloaca. The cloaca (a word that memorably derives from the Latin for “sewer”) is the anatomical chamber inside the avian anus, which is a kind of one-stop business rear end that receives the outflow of the digestive, urinary, and reproductive tracts. In birds without penises, insemination takes place with a “cloacal kiss”—a poetical term for a chaste juxtaposition of orifices in which the male and female anuses come into contact, the male releases his sperm, and the female takes it up. The male does not enter the female, because he doesn’t have anything that would allow him to. The tinamou penis had been described by Victorian anatomists who had performed dissections on natural history museum specimens, but these anatomical monographs were not inspiring enough to keep the topic alive scientifically, and the existence of the tinamou’s penis had been almost completely ignored for more than a century. So when Brennan spotted the extrusion from the cloaca of the postcoital male tinamou, she was stunned. Her sighting was probably the first-ever observation of the tinamou penis in action. When Patty first arrived in my lab in 2005, she was interested in continuing her studies of the tinamous, focusing on the anatomy and function of their penises. But tinamous are eminently edible, and they are heavily hunted throughout their range, which is why they are among the shiest of all the birds in the world, and therefore very hard to study in the wild. Whereas ducks also have penises and are comparatively easy to work with. So, Patty thought that ducks might provide an easier route to study the evolution of genital anatomy and function in birds.

• From The Evolution of Beauty: How Darwin's Forgotten Theory of Mate Choice Shapes the Animal World—and Us (2017)

  The same phenomenon is evident in the brilliantly orange “Mohawk” crest of the male Guianan Cock-of-the-Rock (color plate 14). Normally, feathers on the crowns of birds grow out of their follicles toward the tail so that they lie flat on the surface of the skull and create a smooth plumage outline. However, in the curious crest of the male Guianan Cock-of-the-Rock, the feathers on each side of the crown grow toward the midline of the crown so that they stand up to create the elegant “Mohawk” effect. These feathers do not bend toward the center. Rather, the orientation of the individual feather follicles are rotated ninety degrees clockwise on the right side of the crown, and ninety degrees counterclockwise on the left side of the crown, so that the crown feathers grow inward. This is fancy stuff! And, like wing bones and bald heads, the critical orientation of the feather follicles is established with the origin of the feather follicles themselves around day 7 or 8 of development when the embryo has no sex yet. Again, as we would predict, a close look at the drab brown female Guianan Cock-of-the-Rock reveals that her dainty, little brown crown feathers are also reoriented ninety degrees on either side of the midline, creating a subtle, discreet, little tufted pleat on the top of her crown. Of course, the female has no use for even this modest crown tuft. The examples go on and on. Among polygynous bird species with extraordinary ornaments, useless non-ornaments in females are very common. Together, all these traits constitute more evidence of the decadent consequences of Beauty Happening. — If you were educated to think that evolution is synonymous with adaptation by natural selection and the persistent improvement of the species, then the evolution of aesthetic decadence may seem troubling. Yet a simple consideration of our own human capacity for irrational and impractical desires should help us reconsider that simplistic view. Why should animals be more rational than we are? As the American Jazz Age poet Edna St. Vincent Millay wrote in her poem “First Fig,” My candle burns at both ends; It will not last the night; But ah, my foes, and oh, my friends— It gives a lovely light! As Darwin and Millay understood, survival is not the only priority in life when sexual success is determined by mate choice. Sexiness can trade off with survival and fecundity—natural selection with sexual selection—and the frequent result is evolutionary decadence, the degradation of the adaptive fit between the organism and its environment. In many species like the Club-winged Manakin, the costs of sexual success may be very high indeed. Even females can be made adaptively worse off—that is, lower in survival and fecundity—through the evolution of their own aesthetically extreme sexual desires. Yet the escape from adaptive constraint that makes evolutionary decadence possible also facilitates aesthetic innovation and inspires the deep creativity of avian beauty. —

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

  This Argument is Equally Fallacious As Applied to Penitent SinnersFINALLY, let us see whether penitent sinners, who are not yet exercised in observing the Commandments, are to be excluded from religious life. The example of St. Matthew is germane to our question. Our Lord called him from the profits of a custom collection to be His follower; and Matthew, although not at once admitted to the number of the Apostles, immediately embraced the perfection of the counsels, for, “leaving all things he rose up and followed him” (Luke v. 28). “He who had robbed others abandoned his own possessions,” says St. Ambrose. From this example, it is abundantly evident that penitents may, even after most heinous sins, enter on the observance of the Counsels. In fact, we may go further, and say that it is fitting that such repentant sinners should embrace a life of perfection; for, as St. Gregory says in his comment on the words of Luke iii., “Bring forth therefore fruits worthy of penance”: “He who has committed no unlawful act may rightfully be granted the enjoyment of lawful things. But he who has fallen into sin, ought to deprive himself of lawful goods, in proportion as he is conscious of having committed unlawful deeds.” Again, he says: “It is fitting that if a man has impoverished himself by sin, he should so much the more eagerly seek by penance the riches of good works.” Since then in the religious life men abstain even from lawful things, and seek the treasure of perfection, it is reasonable that they who abandon sin (whereby they have been exercised, not in the practice, but in the transgression of the Commandments) should walk in the way of the Counsels, by entering religion, which is the state of true penance. Again we find, in quaest. XXXIII. cap. II. Admonere, that Pope Stephen, addressing a certain Astulphus, who had been guilty of great sins, says: “May our advice be pleasing to you. Go into a monastery: humble yourself to the Abbot; and, helped by the prayers of many brethren, perform in simplicity of heart whatever may be enjoined upon you.” “But,” he continues: “if you prefer to remain in your house or in the world and there to do public penance (which will be far more onerous and painful for you), we will tell you how you are to act.” The Pope then imposes severe penances upon him, telling him at the same time that it would be better and more advantageous for him to go into religion.

• From Sex God: Exploring the Endless Connections Between Sexuality and Spirituality (2007)

  It takes quite a spine to turn the other cheek. It takes phenomenal fortitude to love your enemy. It takes firm resolve to pray for those who persecute you.25 This isn’t true just on an individual, relational level. It’s true for families and people groups and even nations. Consider Ghandi, who is famous for his commitment to nonviolence. Think about what he accomplished. A short, bald man from India wearing a white robe and spectacles stood up to the British Empire.26 And won. Without a gun. This appeared at the time to be incredibly weak, but history teaches us, in this and many other cases, that there is a better way. It’s a way that may appear weak, but it is actually strong. Take, for example, the Roman soldiers who flogged, mocked, beat, and then nailed Jesus to the execution stake. Soldiers in the army, earning a decent wage, spending another day at work in the far reaches of the empire, taking care of another Jew who has caused some sort of ruckus about rules and rituals and religion that makes very little sense to a sophisticated Roman. These soldiers exercise power over Jesus in killing him, but it’s hollow and ungrounded strength. They are serving no greater cause than their masters’ conquering more lands and building larger armies and gaining more power and wealth. The whips and hammers and nails and stakes are in the service of no greater ideal than simple human greed. It is, in the end, pointless. Jesus is calling all of this into question. He sees it for the lie that it is and is willing to go the whole way to resist it. Including his own death. He is confronting an entire system of rank and exclusion and hierarchy that says some people are better than others and some people are worth more than others, and some are good enough for God and some aren’t, and some should triumph while others suffer at their expense. In Jesus’s public exposure, he exposes the lie of the empire. In Jesus’s vulnerability, he shows how vulnerable the “strength” of power and corruption really are. In Jesus’s thirst, he shows us how greed will always leave us thirsting for more. In Jesus’s emptiness, he shows us how empty the way of the world really is. It’s all upside down: an obscure Jewish rabbi challenging a world-dominating regime, and yet several days later, rumors spread that’s he’s risen from the dead. Perhaps this is why one of the soldiers at his execution starts to believe. He sees the two paths laid out before him. And in the midst of the blood and tears and suffering, he gets a glimpse of a better way.27 If there is a God who loves us and has acted in history to express that love, what would it look like?

• From Introduction to the Hebrew Bible and Deutero-Canonical Books (2018)

  JOB More than any other book in the Old Testament, the book of Job is recognized as a classic of world literature. The impatient saint, festering on his dunghill, has served as a symbol for the human condition for such diverse luminaries as Martin Luther, Immanuel Kant, William Blake, and D. H. Lawrence. Modern poets, authors, and dramatists (Robert Frost, Archibald MacLeish, Elie Wiesel) continued to find inspiration in his story. The power of the book lies not so much in its poetic language, powerful though it is, as in the directness with which it addresses a basic human problem: the righteous suffer while the wicked prosper. Job provides no easy answers, and indeed there has been endless debate as to just what answers the book does provide. But it plumbs the depths of the problem in a way that is without rival in the biblical corpus. The book consists of a narrative introduction or prologue followed by a series of poetic dialogues and a narrative conclusion or epilogue. The prologue sets the stage by telling how Job lost everything in a single day because of an arrangement between God and Satan. At first, Job’s piety is not shaken. Then three friends, Eliphaz the Temanite, Bildad the Shuhite, and Zophar the Naamathite, come to visit him. The greater part of the book is taken up with their exchanges with Job. These fall into three cycles. Job speaks first in chapter 3. Then each of the friends takes a turn (Eliphaz in chaps. 4 and 5; Bildad in chap. 8, Zophar in chap. 11). Job answers each in turn (chaps. 6–7, 9–10, 12–14). The cycle starts over in chapter 15, with Eliphaz, followed by Bildad in chapter 18 and Zophar in chapter 20. Again Job answers each in turn (16–17, 19, 21). The third cycle starts in chapter 22 with the speech of Eliphaz, followed by the response of Job in chapters 23–24. In this case, however, the speech of Bildad in chapter 25 is exceptionally short, and there is no speech of Zophar. Moreover, parts of the speech attributed to Job in chapters 26 and 27 match the arguments of the friends rather than those of Job. These incongruities have led to various proposals. A typical solution is to regard 26:5–14 as the conclusion of Bildad’s speech, and to supply the missing speech of Zophar from 27:8-23. Some verses

• From A History of Christianity (1976)

  literature. He seems to have worked all day and through most of the night, and was a compulsive writer. Even the hardy Jerome later complained: ‘Has anyone read everything that Origen wrote?’ His scriptural commentaries were so vast that none has been transmitted in full. Some have been lost, others survive as drastic paraphrases. The effect of Origen’s work was to create a new science, biblical theology, whereby every sentence in the scriptures was systematically explored for hidden meanings, different layers of meanings, allegory and so forth. And from the elements of this vast scriptural erudition he constructed, in his book First Principles, a Christian philosophy from which it was possible to interpret every aspect of the world. Hitherto, Christians had either dismissed philosophy as irrelevant or pagan, or had simply appropriated Plato and other writers, categorized them as incipient Christians, and fitted the Pauline superstructure on to their foundation. Origen waved aside this tradition, dismissed the Greek philosophers as false and constructed a new synthesis out of profane and sacred knowledge. Thus he offered to the world the first theory of knowledge conceived entirely from within Christian assumptions, prefiguring both the encyclopedists like Isidore of Seville, and the systematic summae of the medieval schoolmen. With Origen, Christianity ceased to be an appendage of the classical world and became, intellectually, a universe of its own. It was also, if only as yet by implication, becoming a society of its own. Origen was the first theorist of clericalism, as well as other aspects of mature Christianity. His own relations with the Church were stormy. He could not get ordination from his own bishop of Alexandria; aroused clerical censure by preaching in Palestine as a layman; was ordained uncanonically, and thereafter was frequently attacked for propagating a false doctrine. He had no respect for the clergy as individuals, and in general gave a gloomy picture of their avarice and ambition. But this in no way undermines his exaltation of the dignity and power of ecclesiastical office. Indeed, one might say he can afford to castigate clergymen precisely because he believes their position as a caste is indestructible. Origen accepted an absolute distinction between clergy and laity. He gave it juridical flavour. He portrayed the Church, as part of his theory of universal knowledge, as a sacred sociological entity. The analogy was with a political state. Of course the Church had to have its own princes and kings. Of course they governed their congregations far better than corresponding state officials. Their position was infinitely higher and holier, since they administered spiritual things, but

• From The Myth Made Fact: Reading Greek and Roman Mythology through Christian Eyes (2020)

  Title : The Myth Made Fact: Reading Greek and Roman Mythology through Christian Eyes Author: Markos, Louis ASIN : B08VPVLVZC Description: Discover Christ through Ancient Myths! Join renowned author Dr. Louis Markos on an unparalleled adventure for the modern Christian! In the spirit of C. S. Lewis, whose own acceptance of Christ hinged on his understanding that Christ is the myth become fact, The Myth Made Fact: Reading Greek and Roman Mythology through Christian Eyes mines wisdom of eternal value from the great storehouses of Greek and Roman mythology and traces the links that bind those myths to the Bible and the Christian life. The Myth Made Fact takes its readers on an exploration of Greco-Roman characters, art, and stories—one that spans 50 myths and sheds new light on the legends of Hercules, Orpheus, Jason, Phaedra, Oedipus, and many more! The journey through myth unfolds through six unique parts, each pointing beyond the lustful and wrathful Olympian gods to the One Holy Creator who stands, like Aslan, at the back of all our stories. Part I: Journeys and Origins Part II: Platonic Myths Part III: The Four Great Heroes Part IV: The Tragic House of Thebes Part V: The Tragic House of Atreus Part VI: Love Lost and Found The Myth Made Fact offers distinct insight into how the common people of pagan Greece and Rome received their myths and used them as guides to virtuous living. By doing so, Dr. Markos helps his readers receive myth in the right spirit: not as historical tales that contradict the Bible, but as testimonies to the yearnings of people who lacked clear revelation but nevertheless hungered and thirsted for Truth, Goodness, and Beauty. E ndorsements for The Myth Made Fact: Reading Greek and Roman Mythology through Christian Eyes [image file=Image00000.jpg] “C. S. Lewis once wrote that, in the face of modern Western civilization’s moral bankruptcy, it appeared ‘as though we shall have to set about becoming true Pagans if only as a preliminary to becoming Christians.’ Louis Markos demonstrates the wisdom of Lewis’s observation in this thorough and thoughtful book, a fascinating and helpful guide both to classical virtues and to their links with Christian discipleship.” —Michael Ward Fellow of Blackfriars Hall, University of Oxford, and author of Planet Narnia: The Seven Heavens in the Imagination of C. S. Lewis [image file=Image00001.jpg] “The Myth Made Fact is destined to become a go-to resource in the classroom and at home. Markos’s mastery of prose and his insightful foray through Greek and Roman mythology come together in an easy-to-read guide in which each myth is woven together with other stories, scripture, and insightful questions. Wisdom from Lewis, Tolkien, Chesterton, Newman, and others joins with the book’s punchy format and beautiful typesetting to make a reference work that is as fun as it is fruitful to read. This book brings myth alive in a uniquely Christian way.