Awe

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.

Page 106 of 217 · 20 per page

• From Henry Miller on Writing (1964)

  Sex was the last thing to be dreamed of; it was the world of Chronos and his ovicular progeny. It was the world of the iota, each iota being indispensable, frighteningly logical, and absolutely unpredictable. There was no such thing as a thing , because the concept “thing” was missing. I say it was a New World I was describing, but like the New World which Columbus discovered it turned out to be a far older world than any we have known. I saw beneath the superficial physiognomy of skin and bone the indestructible world which man has always carried within him; it was neither old nor new, really, but the eternally true world which changes from moment to moment. Everything I looked at was palimpsest and there was no layer of writing too strange for me to decipher. When my companions left me of an evening I would often sit down and write to my friends the Australian Bushmen or to the Mound Builders of the Mississippi Valley or to the Igorotes in the Philippines. I had to write English, naturally, because it was the only language I spoke, but between my language and the telegraphic code employed by my bosom friends there was a world of difference. Any primitive man would have understood me, any man of archaic epochs would have understood me: only those about me, that is to say, a continent of a hundred million people, failed to understand my language. To write intelligibly for them I would have been obliged first of all to kill something, secondly, to arrest time. I had just made the realization that life is indestructible and that there is no such thing as time, only the present. Did they expect me to deny a truth which it had taken me all my life to catch a glimpse of? They most certainly did. The one thing they did not want to hear about was that life is indestructible. Was not their precious new world reared on the destruction of the innocent, on rape and plunder and torture and devastation? Both continents had been violated; both continents had been stripped and plundered of all that was precious—in things . No greater humiliation, it seems to me, was meted out to any man than to Montezuma; no race was ever more ruthlessly wiped out than the American Indian; no land was ever raped in the foul and bloody way that California was raped by the gold-diggers. I blush to think of our origins—our hands are steeped in blood and crime. And there is no let-up to the slaughter and the pillage, as I discovered at first hand traveling throughout the length and breadth of the land. Down to the closest friend every man is a potential murderer.

• From Henry Miller on Writing (1964)

  It was morning now, a long, lazy morning of a holiday that was to last forever. I had elected to occupy a choice seat in Paradise. It was definite and certain. I could therefore afford to take my time, could afford to dawdle away the glorious hours ahead of me during which I would still be part of the world and its senseless routine. Once I ascended to the heavenly seat I would join the chorus of angels, the seraphic choir which never ceases to give forth hymns of joy. If I had long been reading the face of the world with the eyes of a writer, I now read it anew with even greater intensity. Nothing was too petty to escape my attention. If I went for a walk—and I was constantly seeking excuses to take a walk, “to explore,” as I put it—it was for the deliberate purpose of transforming myself into an enormous eye. Seeing the common, everyday things in this new light I was often transfixed. The moment one gives close attention to anything, even a blade of grass, it becomes a mysterious, awesome, indescribably magnified world in itself. Almost an “unrecognizable” world. The writer waits in ambush for these unique moments. He pounces on his little grain of nothingness like a beast of prey. It is the moment of full awakening, of union and absorption, and it can never be forced. Sometimes one makes the mistake or commits the sin, shall I say, of trying to fix the moment, trying to pin it down in words. It took me ages to understand why, after having made exhaustive efforts to induce these moments of exaltation and release, I should be so incapable of recording them. I never dreamed that it was an end in itself, that to experience a moment of pure bliss, of pure awareness, was the end-all and be-all. Many is the mirage I chased. Always I was overreaching myself. The oftener I touched reality, the harder I bounced back to the world of illusion, which is the name for everyday life. “Experience! More experience!” I clamored. In a frantic effort to arrive at some kind of order, some tentative working program, I would sit down quietly now and then and spend long, long hours mapping out a plan of procedure. Plans, such as architects and engineers sweat over, were never my forte. But I could always visualize my dreams in a cosmogonic pattern. Though I could never formulate a plot I could balance and weigh opposing forces, characters, situations, events, distribute them in a sort of heavenly lay-out, always with plenty of space between, always with the certitude that there is no end, only worlds within worlds ad infinitum , and that wherever one left off one had created a world, a world finite, total, complete. Like a finely trained athlete, I was easy and uneasy at the same time. Sure of the final outcome, but nervous, restless, impatient, fretful.

• From Henry Miller on Writing (1964)

  Clearer than all, I see my own grinning skull, see the skeleton dancing in the wind, serpents issuing from the rotted tongue and the bloated pages of ecstasy slimed with excrement. And I join my slime, my excrement, my madness, my ecstasy to the great circuit which flows through the subterranean vaults of the flesh. All this unbidden, unwanted, drunken vomit will flow on endlessly through the minds of those to come in the inexhaustible vessel that contains the history of the race. Side by side with the human race there runs another race of beings, the inhuman ones, the race of artists who, goaded by unknown impulses, take the lifeless mass of humanity and, by the fever and ferment with which they imbue it, turn this soggy dough into bread and the bread into wine and the wine into song. Out of the dead compost and the inert slag they breed a song that contaminates. I see this other race of individuals ransacking the universe, turning everything upside down, their feet always moving in blood and tears, their hands always empty, always clutching and grasping for the beyond, for the god out of reach: slaying everything within reach in order to quiet the monster that gnaws at their vitals. I see that when they tear their hair with the effort to comprehend, to seize this forever unattainable, I see that when they bellow like crazed beasts and rip and gore, I see that this is right, that there is no other path to pursue. A man who belongs to this race must stand up on the high place with gibberish in his mouth and rip out his entrails. It is right and just, because he must! And anything that falls short of this frightening spectacle, anything less shuddering, less terrifying, less mad, less intoxicated, less contaminating, is not art. The rest is counterfeit. The rest is human. The rest belongs to life and lifelessness. When I think of Stavrogin for example, I think of some divine monster standing on a high place and flinging to us his torn bowels. In The Possessed the earth quakes: it is not the catastrophe that befalls the imaginative individual, but a cataclysm in which a large portion of humanity is buried, wiped out forever. Stavrogin was Dostoievski and Dostoievski was the sum of all those contradictions which either paralyze a man or lead him to the heights. There was no world too low for him to enter, no place too high for him to fear to ascend. He went the whole gamut, from the abyss to the stars. It is a pity that we shall never again have the opportunity to see a man placed at the very core of mystery and, by his flashes, illuminating for us the depth and immensity of the darkness. Today I am aware of my lineage. I have no need to consult my horoscope or my genealogical chart.

• From Who Wrote the Bible? Searching for Its Origins and Authors (2025)

  5. Leviticus and the Priestly Writings 28 Purity and Sacrifice The first three chapters of Leviticus are about sacrifices made just because a person feels like it—to say thank you, to ask for something, or out of love and reverence for God. The next two chapters are about sacrifices made because the person has to; for instance, if they inadvertently transgress a prohibition or trespass on the sphere of what belongs to God. Chapters 6 and 7 cover the detailed procedures for all the different types of sacrifices. Here, the book gets into the biblical notion of atonement. In practical terms, people atone in Leviticus by literally applying the blood of the sacrificed animal to the sacred space, the sanctuary. The sacrificial blood ritually removes the contamination that has accumulated in the sanctuary—contamination that is created by sins and impurities. Remember, the Tabernacle is the dwelling place of God. If the deity’s house gets too dirty with Israel’s sins and impurities, God is going to leave. The priests get consecrated for their service in chapter 8, with Moses anointing them with oil. Moses also consecrates the Tabernacle and its furniture in this chapter. Then, with all the elements in place, sacrifices can actually be offered, beginning in chapter 9. Aaron is the high priest, and he offers the first sacrifices on the newly built and consecrated altar in the newly built and consecrated sanctuary. Then, something spectacular happens: The Presence of the Lord appeared to all the people. Fire came forth from before the Lord and consumed the burnt offering and the fat parts on the altar. And all the people saw, and shouted, and fell on their faces. (L ev. 9:23 –24) With chapter 10, it’s time to put the sacrificial system into practice on a regular basis. The first thing that happens is two of Aaron’s sons decide to bring offerings of incense that weren’t called for. The fire comes forth from the sanctuary and consumes Aaron’s sons instead of the incense. Clearly, these laws are serious—they must be followed to the letter. Even Aaron’s own sons don’t get to improvise.

• From Amplified Holy Bible (2015)

  10 “He opens their ears to instruction and discipline, And commands that they return from evil. 11 “If they hear and serve Him, They will end their days in prosperity And their years in pleasantness and joy. 12 “But if they do not hear and obey, they will die by the sword [of God’s destructive judgments] And they will die [in ignorance] without [true] knowledge. 13 “But the godless in heart store up anger [at the divine discipline]; They do not cry [to Him] for help when He binds them [with cords of affliction]. [Rom 2:5 ] 14 “They die in youth, And their life ends among the a cult prostitutes. [Deut 23:17 ] 15 “He rescues the afflicted in their affliction, And opens their ears [so that they pay attention to His voice] in times of oppression. 16 “Then indeed, He enticed you from the mouth of distress and confinement, Into a broad place where there is no constraint or distress; And that which was set on your table was full of fatness (rich food). 17 “But you [Job] were full of judgment on the wicked, Judgment and justice take hold of you . 18 “Do not let wrath entice you into scoffing; And do not let the greatness and the extent of the ransom turn you aside. 19 “Will your wealth [be sufficient to] keep you from [the confinement of] distress, Or will all the force of your strength do it? 20 “Do not long for the night, When people vanish from their places. 21 “Take heed and be careful, do not turn to wickedness, For you have chosen this [the vice of complaining against God] rather than [learning from] affliction. 22 “Behold, God is exalted in His power; Who is a ruler or a teacher like Him? 23 “Who has appointed God His way, And who can say [to Him], ‘You have done wrong’? 24 “Remember that you should magnify God’s work, Of which men have sung. 25 “All men have seen God’s work; Man looks at it from a distance. 26 “Behold, God is exalted, and we do not know Him; The number of His years is unsearchable. [1 Cor 13:12 ] 27 “For He draws up the drops of water, They distill rain from the mist, 28 Which the clouds pour down, They drop abundantly upon mankind.” 29 “Can anyone understand the spreading of the clouds Or the thundering of His pavilion? [Ps 18:11 ; Is 40:22 ] 30 “Behold, He spreads His lightning around Him [against the dark clouds], And He covers the depths of the sea. 31 “For by these [mighty acts] He judges the peoples; He gives food in abundance. 32 “He covers His hands with the lightning, And commands it to strike the mark. 33 “His thundering voice declares [awesomely] His presence; The cattle also are told of His coming storm.

• From Amplified Holy Bible (2015)

  22 The Lord said, “I will bring your enemies back from Bashan; I will bring them back from the depths of the [Red] Sea, 23 That your foot may crush them in blood, That the tongue of your dogs may have its share from your enemies.” 24 They have seen Your [solemn] e procession, O God, The procession of my God, my King, into the sanctuary [in holiness]. 25 The singers go in front, the players of instruments last; Between them the maidens playing on tambourines. 26 Bless God in the congregations, [give thanks, gratefully praise Him], The LORD , you who are from [Jacob] the fountain of Israel. 27 The youngest is there, Benjamin, ruling them, The princes of Judah and their company [the southern tribes], The princes of Zebulun and the princes of Naphtali [the northern tribes]. 28 Your God has commanded your strength [your power in His service and your resistance to temptation]; Show Yourself strong, O God, who acted on our behalf. 29 Because of Your temple at Jerusalem [Pagan] kings will bring gifts to You [out of respect]. 30 Rebuke the beasts [living] among the reeds [in Egypt], The herd of bulls (the leaders) with the calves of the peoples; Trampling underfoot the pieces of silver; He has scattered the peoples who delight in war. 31 Princes and envoys shall come from Egypt; Ethiopia will quickly stretch out her hands [with the offerings of submission] to God. 32 Sing to God, O kingdoms of the earth, Sing praises to the Lord! Selah. 33 To Him who rides in the highest heavens, the ancient heavens, Behold, He sends out His voice, a mighty and majestic voice. 34 Ascribe strength to God; His majesty is over Israel And His strength is in the skies. 35 O God, You are awesome and profoundly majestic from Your sanctuary; The God of Israel gives strength and power to His people. Blessed be God! Psalm 69 A Cry of Distress and Imprecation on Adversaries. To the Chief Musician; set to [the tune of] “Lilies.” A Psalm of David. 1 S AVE ME, O God, For the waters have threatened my life [they have come up to my neck]. 2 I have sunk in deep mire, where there is no foothold; I have come into deep waters, where a flood overwhelms me. 3 I am weary with my crying; my throat is parched; My eyes fail while I wait [with confident expectation] for my God. 4 Those who hate me without cause are more than the hairs of my head; Those who would destroy me are powerful, being my enemies wrongfully; I am forced to restore what I did not steal. [John 15:25 ] 5 O God, You know my folly; My wrongs are not hidden from You.

• From Amplified Holy Bible (2015)

  [Luke 3:16 ] 12 “His j winnowing fork is in His hand, and He will thoroughly clear out His threshing floor; and He will gather His wheat (believers) into His barn (kingdom), but He will burn up the chaff (the unrepentant) with unquenchable fire.” The Baptism of Jesus 13 Then Jesus came from Galilee to John at the Jordan [River], to be baptized by him. [Mark 1:9–11 ; Luke 3:21 , 22 ; John 1:32 ] 14 But John tried to prevent Him [vigorously protesting], saying, “It is I who need to be baptized by You, and do You come to me?” 15 But Jesus replied to him, “Permit it just now; for this is the fitting way for us k to fulfill all righteousness.” Then John permitted [it and baptized] Him. 16 After Jesus was baptized, He came up immediately out of the water; and behold, the heavens were opened, and he (John) saw the l Spirit of God descending as a dove and lighting on Him (Jesus), [John 1:32 ] 17 and behold, a m voice from heaven said, “This is My beloved Son, in whom I am well-pleased and delighted!” [Ps 2:7 ; Is 42:1 ] Matthew 4 The Temptation of Jesus 1 T HEN JESUS was led by the [Holy] Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil. [Luke 4:1–13 ] 2 After He had gone without food for forty days and forty nights, He became hungry. [Ex 34:28 ; 1 Kin 19:8 ] 3 And the tempter came and said to Him, “If You are the Son of God, command that these stones become bread.” 4 But Jesus replied, “It is written and forever remains written, ‘M AN SHALL NOT LIVE BY BREAD ALONE , BUT BY EVERY WORD THAT COMES OUT OF THE MOUTH OF G OD .’ ” [Deut 8:3 ] 5 Then the devil took Him into the holy city [Jerusalem] and placed Him on the pinnacle (highest point) of the temple. [Neh 11:1 ; Dan 9:24 ] 6 And he said [mockingly] to Him, “If You are the Son of God, throw Yourself down; for it is written, ‘HE WILL COMMAND HIS ANGELS CONCERNING YOU [to serve, care for, protect and watch over You]’; and ‘THEY WILL LIFT YOU UP ON their HANDS , SO THAT YOU WILL NOT STRIKE YOUR FOOT AGAINST A STONE .’ ” [Ps 91:11 , 12 ] 7 Jesus said to him, “On the other hand, it is written and forever remains written, ‘Y OU SHALL NOT TEST THE L ORD YOUR G OD .’ ” [Deut 6:16 ] 8 Again, the devil took Him up on a very high mountain and showed Him all the kingdoms of the world and the glory [splendor, magnificence, and excellence] of them; 9 and he said to Him, “All these things I will give You, if You fall down and worship me.” 10 Then Jesus said to him, “Go away, Satan!

• From Amplified Holy Bible (2015)

  39 When the centurion, who was standing opposite Him, saw the way He breathed His last [being fully in control], he said, “Truly this man was the Son of God!” 40 Now some women also were watching from a distance, among whom were Mary Magdalene, and l Mary the mother of James the Less and of Joses, and m Salome. [John 19:25 ] 41 When Jesus was in Galilee, they used to accompany him and minister to Him; and there were also many other women who came up with Him to Jerusalem. Jesus Is Buried 42 When evening had already come, because it was the preparation day, that is, the day before the Sabbath, [Deut 21:22 , 23 ; Matt 27:57–61 ; Luke 23:50–56 ; John 19:38–42 ] 43 Joseph of Arimathea came, a prominent and respected member of the Council (Sanhedrin, Jewish High Court), who was himself waiting for the kingdom of God—and he courageously dared to go in before Pilate, and asked for the body of Jesus. 44 Pilate n wondered if He was dead by this time [only six hours after being crucified], and he summoned the centurion and asked him whether He was already dead. 45 And when he learned from the centurion [that Jesus was in fact dead], he gave the body to Joseph [by granting him permission to remove it]. 46 So Joseph purchased a [fine] linen cloth [for o wrapping the body], and after taking Jesus down [from the cross], he wrapped Him in the linen cloth and placed Him in a tomb which had been cut out of rock. Then he rolled a [large, wheel-shaped] stone against the entrance of the tomb. [Is 53:9 ] 47 Mary Magdalene and Mary the mother of Joses were [carefully] watching to see where He was laid. Mark 16 The Resurrection 1 W HEN THE Sabbath was over, Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother of James, and Salome purchased [sweet-smelling] spices, so that they might go and a anoint Him. [Matt 28:1–8 ; Luke 24:1–10 ; John 20:1–8 ] 2 Very early on the first day of the week, they came to the tomb when the sun had risen. 3 And they were saying to one another, “Who will roll back the stone for us from the entrance of the tomb?” 4 Looking up, they saw that the stone had been rolled away, though it was extremely large. 5 Entering the tomb, they saw a young man sitting on the right, wearing a [long, stately] white robe; and they were amazed and bewildered. 6 And he said to them, “Do not be amazed; you are looking for Jesus the Nazarene, who was crucified. He has risen; He is not here. See, [here is] the place where they laid Him.

• From Henry Miller on Writing (1964)

  All my autobiographical novels, as they are sometimes called, starting with Tropic of Cancer and continuing through ten other volumes—a sort of modern Marriage of Heaven and Hell— bear little resemblance to most autobiographical outpourings. The difference lies primarily in the understanding and the use I have made of “reality.” To get at the nature of this reality which pervades all life, and which is life, I have had to grapple with the metaphysical aspects of suffering, freedom, experience. As Berdyaev so well puts it, when treating of Dostoievski, “Suffering is not only profoundly inherent in man, but it is the sole cause of the awakening of conscious thought.” Or again, in explaining what he means by “eschatology,” he says, and this thought underlies my whole work: “The Church is not the Kingdom of God; the Church has appeared in history and it has acted in history; it does not mean the transfiguration of the world, the appearance of a new heaven and a new earth. The Kingdom of God is the transfiguration of the world, not only the transfiguration of the social and the cosmic; and that is the end of this world, of the world of wrong and ugliness, and it is the principle of a new world, a world of right and beauty.” Let me quote yet another man, a friend of long standing, who writes under the pseudonym of Dane Rudhyar: “No man can become truly and actually ‘human’ save by reaching a state of maximum clarity and wakefulness. And this state is symbolized in Asia by the figure of the Buddha, the Awakened, the Illumined, the absolutely Clear One. In him humanity came to a condition of total and unqualified acceptance of all human experience, to a state of undisturbable wakefulness and lucidity, free from illusion, glamour and uncertainty. He dared to face facts, all the facts. He dared to contain all reality known to man—to include in his clear consciousness the experience of hell as well as of heaven. And, in him, every experience a human being ever lived anywhere became significant. He ‘shaped’ all experiences unto the likeness of his all-inclusive selfhood; for his being had become a vessel, container of all. Thus he overcame suffering.” And so, in a fashion quite other than that of realistic novelists and faithful chroniclers, I have made extensive use throughout these books of irruptive onslaughts of the unconscious, such as dream, fantasy, burlesque, Pantagruelian word play, etc., which lend the narrative a chaotic, whimsical, perplexing character—in the minds of many critics. But these ‘‘extravaganza,” so to speak, have great significance for me. Especially, need I add, the sexual eruptions. They represent my endeavor, successful or not, to portray the whole man. It is my contention, of course, that modern literature suffers precisely because, for one reason or another, writers in general now abstain from giving us man in all the heights and depths of his being.

• From The Beautiful Room Is Empty (1988)

  I was introduced to the artistic wives and their husbands, obese, amiable. Lots of loud polite talk—the skinny boy at the next table smirked with a thin Voltairian sneer. Maria was teaching a life-drawing class and she promised Marge, one of the two ladies, some extra time this afternoon. The rest of the morning we spent on the porch in front of Maria’s cabin. She was wearing a floppy straw hat and a halter top. She was painting a still life—wine bottle, apple, Cinzano ashtray—and she laughed and said, “This is hard. Abstract Expressionism eliminated all this tiresome observation.” Although she was a Communist, Maria liked the songs of Noel Coward, Mabel Mercer, and Marlene Dietrich, and she played their records for me in the underfurnished rec room at the inn. She was the first to see the irony in this inconsistency, but her merely personal taste scarcely counted, she thought, when the question was one of a “scientific theory of history.” I quickly came to love the tumbling wit of the Coward lyrics and the quixotic charms of Mercer and Dietrich, two stylists without voices and with a range of about five notes. Coward’s rolled r ’s and theatrical diction, joined to the gossip that he was “gay,” interested me. “Yes,” Maria said casually, “all slander, no doubt.” Closer to hand were Betts and Buddy, an ancient lesbian couple who lived in the most remote cabin at Solitaire. Just once I saw Buddy, who had been elected the local sheriff. I mistook her for a man, a short wide man, with grizzled, close-cropped hair and a swaggering walk. She was wearing her uniform and talking to the colony director, a much younger woman. I never saw Betts, but Maria often did, and loved describing her. “They’re terribly poor, but Betts must have been a debutante fifty years ago because she has such fussy, elegant manners. She never leaves the cabin and is always wearing silk lounging pajamas and angora high-heeled slippers. She draws and redraws her makeup. She smokes with a cigarette holder and languishes. We’re led to believe she’s ill, but of what no one is crude enough to ask. Buddy stops at the bar in town for a drink every evening to shoot the shit with the guys, but then hurries home to her better half. Isn’t it bizarre we find their marriage charming but we can’t endure the heterosexual original they’re aping?” As I listened to Maria, I absorbed each small wrenching of convention without a blink. The teasingly affectionate portrait of two such eccentrics stunned me, though I never let on. I knew I might be as diseased as they were—in fact, I had no doubt of it—but I’d never aired my neurosis as these women did, and if it were found out, I’d expect to be run to ground, not gently chided. But as the records spun, as Noel Coward talked about life coming to Mrs.

• From Amplified Holy Bible (2015)

  22 “Out of the north comes golden splendor [and people can hardly look on it]; Around God is awesome splendor and majesty [far too glorious for man’s eyes]. 23 “The Almighty—we cannot find Him; He is exalted in power And He will not do violence to [nor disregard] justice and abundant righteousness. [1 Tim 6:16 ] 24 “Men therefore fear Him; He does not regard nor respect any who are wise in heart [in their own understanding and conceit].” [Matt 10:28 ] Job 38 God Speaks Now to Job 1 T HEN THE LORD answered Job out of the whirlwind and said, 2 “Who is this that darkens counsel [questioning my authority and wisdom] By words without knowledge? [Job 35:16 ] 3 “Now a gird up your loins like a man, And I will ask you, and you instruct Me! 4 “Where were you when I laid the foundation of the earth? Tell Me, if you know and have understanding. 5 “Who determined the measurements [of the earth], if you know? Or who stretched the [measuring] line on it? 6 “On what were its foundations fastened? Or who laid its cornerstone, 7 When the morning stars sang together And all the sons of God (angels) shouted for joy? 8 “Or who enclosed the sea with doors When it burst forth and went out of the womb; 9 When I made the clouds its garment And thick darkness its swaddling band, 10 And marked for it My [appointed] boundary And set bars and doors [defining the shorelines], [Jer 5:22 ] 11 And said, ‘This far you shall come, but no farther; And here your proud waves shall stop’? [Ps 89:9 ; 93:4 ] God’s Mighty Power 12 “Since your days began, have you ever commanded the morning, And caused the dawn to know its place, 13 So that light may take hold of the corners of the earth And shake the wickedness out of it? 14 “The earth is changed like clay into which a seal is pressed; And the things [of the earth] stand out like a [multi-colored] garment. 15 “Their light is withheld from the wicked, And the uplifted arm is broken. 16 “Have you entered and explored the springs of the sea Or [have you] walked in the recesses of the deep? 17 “Have the gates of death been revealed to you, Or have you seen the gates of deep darkness? 18 “Have you understood the expanse of the earth? Tell Me, if you know all this. 19 “Where is the b way where light dwells? And as for darkness, where is its place, 20 That you may take it to its territory And that you may know the paths to its house? 21 “You [must] know, since you were born then, And c because you are so extremely old!

• From Henry Miller on Writing (1964)

  The bloody machine wouldn’t stop, that was the difficulty. I was not only in the middle of the current but the current was running through me and I had no control over it whatever. I remember the day I brought the machine to a dead stop and how the other mechanism, the one that was signed with my own initials, and which I had made with my own hands and my own blood, slowly began to function. I had gone to the theatre nearby to see a vaudeville show; it was the matinee and I had a ticket for the balcony. Standing on line in the lobby, I already experienced a strange feeling of consistency. It was as though I were coagulating, becoming a recognizable consistent mass of jelly. It was like the ultimate stage in the healing of a wound. I was at the height of normality, which is a very abnormal condition. Cholera might come and blow its foul breath in my mouth—it wouldn’t matter. I might bend over and kiss the ulcers of a leprous hand, and no harm could possibly come to me. There was not just a balance in this constant warfare between health and disease, which is all that most of us may hope for, but there was a plus integer in the blood which meant that, for a few moments at least, disease was completely routed. If one had the wisdom to take root in such a moment, one would never again be ill or unhappy or even die. But to leap to this conclusion is to make a jump which would take one back farther than the old stone age. At that moment I wasn’t even dreaming of taking root; I was experiencing for the first time in my life the meaning of the miraculous. I was so amazed when I heard my own cogs meshing that I was willing to die then and there for the privilege of the experience. What happened was this…. As I passed the doorman, holding the torn stub in my hand, the lights were dimmed and the curtain went up. I stood a moment slightly dazed by the sudden darkness. As the curtain slowly rose I had the feeling that throughout the ages man had always been mysteriously stilled by this brief moment which preludes the spectacle. I could feel the curtain rising in man . And immediately I also realized that this was a symbol which was being presented to him endlessly in his sleep and that if he had been awake the players would never have taken the stage but he, Man, would have mounted the boards. I didn’t think this thought—it was a realization, as I say, and so simple and overwhelmingly clear was it that the machine stopped dead instantly and I was standing in my own presence bathed in a luminous reality.

• From Amplified Holy Bible (2015)

  [Gen 1:9 ] 6 O come, let us worship and bow down, Let us kneel before the LORD our Maker [in reverent praise and prayer]. 7 For He is our God And we are the people of His pasture and the sheep of His hand. Today, if you will hear His voice, [Heb 3:7–11 ] 8 Do not harden your hearts and become spiritually dull as at Meribah [the place of strife], And as at Massah [the place of testing] in the wilderness, [Ex 17:1–7 ; Num 20:1–13 ; Deut 6:16 ] 9 “When your fathers tested Me, They tried Me, even though they had seen My work [of miracles]. 10 “For forty years I was grieved and disgusted with that generation, And I said, ‘They are a people who err in their heart, And they do not acknowledge or regard My ways.’ 11 “Therefore I swore [an oath] in My wrath, ‘They absolutely shall not enter My rest [the land of promise].’ ” [Heb 4:3–11 ] Psalm 96 A Call to Worship the LORD the Righteous Judge. 1 O sing to the LORD a new song; Sing to the LORD , all the earth! 2 Sing to the LORD , bless His name; Proclaim good news of His salvation from day to day. 3 Declare His glory among the nations, His marvelous works and wonderful deeds among all the peoples. 4 For great is the LORD and greatly to be praised; He is to be feared above all gods. [Deut 6:5 ; Rev 14:7 ] 5 For all the gods of the peoples are [worthless, lifeless] idols, But the LORD made the heavens. 6 Splendor and majesty are before Him; Strength and beauty are in His sanctuary. 7 a Ascribe to the LORD , O families of the peoples, Ascribe to the LORD glory and strength. 8 Ascribe to the LORD the glory of His name; Bring an offering and come into His courts. 9 Worship the LORD in the splendor of holiness; Tremble [in submissive wonder] before Him, all the earth. 10 Say among the nations, “The LORD reigns; Indeed, the world is firmly and securely established, it shall not be moved; He will judge and rule the people with fairness.” [Rev 11:15 ; 19:6 ] 11 Let the heavens be glad, and let the earth rejoice; Let the sea roar, and all the things it contains; 12 Let the field be exultant, and all that is in it. Then all the trees of the forest will sing for joy 13 Before the LORD , for He is coming, For He is coming to judge the earth. He will judge the world with righteousness And the peoples in His faithfulness. [1 Chr 16:23–33 ; Rev 19:11 ] Psalm 97 The LORD ’s Power and Dominion. 1 T he LORD reigns, let the earth rejoice; Let the many islands and coastlands be glad.

• From Amplified Holy Bible (2015)

  4 Then the glory and brilliance of the LORD moved upward from the cherubim to [rest over] the threshold of the temple; and the temple was filled with the cloud and the courtyard was filled with the brightness of the LORD ’s glory. [1 Kin 8:10 , 11 ; Ezek 43:5 ] 5 And the sound of the wings of the cherubim was heard [even] as far as the outer courtyard, like the voice of a God Almighty when He speaks. [Ps 29:3 , 4 ] 6 It came about when He commanded the man clothed in linen, saying, “Take fire from between the whirling wheels, from between the cherubim,” the man entered and stood beside a wheel. 7 Then a cherub stretched out his hand from between the cherubim to the fire that was between [the four of] them, and took some [of it] and put it into the hands of the man clothed in linen, who took it and departed. 8 Beneath their wings the cherubim seemed to have [something in] the form of a man’s hand. 9 Then I looked and behold, [there were] four wheels beside the cherubim, one wheel beside one cherub and another wheel beside each other cherub; and the appearance of the wheels was like a sparkling Tarshish stone (beryl). 10 As for their appearance, all four looked alike, as if one wheel were within another wheel. 11 When they moved, they went in any of their four directions without turning as they went; but they followed in the direction which they faced, without turning as they went. 12 Their whole body, their backs, their hands, their wings, and the wheels were full of eyes all around, even the wheels belonging to all four of them. 13 Regarding the wheels [attached to them], I heard them called, “the whirling (rolling, revolving) wheels.” 14 And each one had four faces: the first face was the face of the b cherub, the second the face of a man, the third the face of a lion, and the fourth the face of an eagle. 15 Then the cherubim rose upward. They are the [same four] living beings [regarded as one] that I saw by the River Chebar [in Babylonia]. [Ezek 1:5 ] 16 Now when the cherubim moved, the wheels would go beside them; and when the cherubim lifted up their wings to rise from the earth, the wheels would remain beside them. 17 When the cherubim stood still, the wheels would stand still; and when they rose upward, the wheels would rise with them, for the spirit of the living beings was in these [wheels]. [Ezek 1:21 ] 18 Then the [Shekinah] glory of the LORD departed from the threshold of the temple and rested over the cherubim.

• From Amplified Holy Bible (2015)

  31 Then He came down [from the hills of Nazareth] to Capernaum, a city of Galilee [on the shore of the sea], and He was teaching them on the Sabbath; [Mark 1:21–28 ] 32 and they were surprised [almost overwhelmed] at His teaching, because His message was [given] with authority and power and great ability. 33 There was a man in the synagogue who was possessed by the spirit of an unclean demon; and he cried out with a loud and terrible voice, 34 “Let us alone! b What business do we have [in common] with each other, Jesus of Nazareth? Have You come to destroy us? I know who You are—the Holy One of God!” 35 But Jesus rebuked him, saying, “Be silent (muzzled, gagged) and come out of him!” And when the demon had thrown the man down among them, he came out of him without injuring him in any way. 36 They were all astonished and in awe, and began saying to one another, “What is this message? For with authority and power He commands the unclean spirits and they come out!” 37 And the news about Him spread into every place in the surrounding district (Galilee). Many Are Healed 38 Then Jesus got up and left the synagogue and went to Simon’s (Peter’s) house. Now Simon’s mother-in-law was suffering from a high fever, and they asked Him to help her. [Matt 8:14–17 ; Mark 1:29–34 ] 39 Standing over her, He rebuked the fever, and it left her; and immediately she got up and began serving them [as her guests]. 40 While the sun was setting [marking the end of the Sabbath day], all those who had any who were sick with various diseases brought them to Jesus; and laying His hands on each one of them, He was healing them [exhibiting His authority as Messiah]. [Matt 8:16 , 17 ; Mark 1:32–34 ] 41 Demons also were coming out of many people, shouting, “You are the Son of God!” But He rebuked them and would not allow them to speak, because they knew that He was the Christ (the Messiah, the Anointed). 42 When daybreak came, Jesus left [Simon Peter’s house] and went to a secluded place; and the crowds were searching for Him, and [they] came to Him and tried to keep Him from leaving them. 43 But He said, “I must preach [the good news of] the kingdom of God to the other cities also, because I was sent for this purpose.” 44 So He continued preaching in the synagogues of Judea [the country of the Jews, including Galilee]. Luke 5 The First Disciples 1 N OW IT happened that while Jesus was standing by the Lake of Gennesaret (Sea of Galilee), with the people crowding all around Him and listening to the word of God; 2 that He saw two boats lying at the edge of the lake, but the fishermen had gotten out of them and were washing their nets.

• From Amplified Holy Bible (2015)

  My hands, stretched out the heavens, And I commanded all their host. 13 “I have stirred up Cyrus and put him into action in righteousness [to accomplish My purpose] And I will make all his ways smooth; He will build My city and let My exiles go, Without any payment or reward,” says the LORD of hosts. 14 For this is what the LORD says, “The products of Egypt and the merchandise of Cush (ancient Ethiopia) And the Sabeans, men of stature, Will come over to you and they will be yours; They will walk behind you, in chains [of subjection to you] they will come over, And they will bow down before you; They will make supplication to you, [humbly and earnestly] saying, a ‘Most certainly God is with you, and there is no other, No other God [besides Him].’ ” [1 Cor 14:25 ] 15 Truly, You are a God who hides Himself, O God of Israel, Savior! 16 They will be put to shame and also humiliated, all of them; They who make idols will go away together in humiliation. 17 Israel has been saved by the LORD With an everlasting salvation; You will not be put to shame or humiliated for all eternity. [Heb 5:9 ] 18 For the LORD , who created the heavens b (He is God, who formed the earth and made it; He established it and did not create it to be a wasteland, but formed it to be inhabited) says this, “I am the LORD , and there is no one else. 19 “I have not spoken in secret, In a corner of a land of darkness; I did not say to the descendants of Jacob, ‘Seek Me in vain [with no benefit for yourselves].’ I, the LORD , speak righteousness [the truth—trustworthy, a straightforward correlation between deeds and words], Declaring things that are upright. [John 18:20 ] 20 “Assemble yourselves and come; Come together, you survivors of the nations! They are ignorant, Who carry around their wooden idols [in religious processions or into battle] And keep on praying to a god that cannot save them. 21 “Declare and present your defense of idols; Indeed, let them consult together. Who announced this [rise of Cyrus and his conquests] long before it happened? Who declared it long ago? Was it not I, the LORD ? And there is no other God besides Me, A [consistently and uncompromisingly] just and righteous God and a Savior; There is none except Me. 22 “Turn to Me and be saved, all the ends of the earth; For I am God, and there is no other. 23 “I have sworn [an oath] by Myself, The word is gone out of My mouth in righteousness And shall not return, That to Me every knee shall bow, every tongue shall swear [allegiance].

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

  I offered him all I could but I knew that the one thing I could not say was, “When Greek women say ‘I love you,’ it doesn’t mean the same to them as in the US or perhaps in the UK. In fact, one afternoon fifty Greek women whispered those same words to me.” The day after the Hestia signing, the Panteion University awarded me my only honorary doctorate. I was awed to stand before a large audience in a grand hall whose walls were covered with paintings of Aristotle, Plato, Socrates, Epicurus, and Aeschylus. The following evening, Marilyn spoke at the University of Athens on feminist issues. Heady stuff for the Yalom family! My next visit to Greece came four years later, in 2009. Marilyn had been invited by the University of Ioannina to speak about her book A History of the Breast . Knowing we were coming to Greece, the Onassis Foundation invited me to give an address about my new book, The Schopenhauer Cure , in the Megaron, the largest concert hall in Athens. When we arrived in Athens, we were given a private tour of the new Acropolis Museum, due to open in a few weeks. Upon entering, we were astounded at the glass floors that allowed us to see, under our feet, layer after layer of ruins of civilizations going back thousands of years. Elsewhere in the museum were the Elgin Marbles, known by the name of the Englishman who carried about half of them off from the Acropolis to the British Museum. The missing (some would say stolen) sections were presented in plaster casts of a different color from the originals. Returning works of art to their country of origin is a bedeviling problem for all museums today. When in Greece, however, we empathized with the Greeks. L ECTURE AT M EGARON IN A THENS , 2009. A CROPOLIS M USEUM , A THENS , 2009. From Athens we flew to Ioannina, where Marilyn had been invited by Professor Marina Vrelli-Zachou to speak at the university, an impressive institution of 20,000 students. As always, when I heard Marilyn address an audience, I sat back happily and restrained my impulse to shout out, “Hey, hey, that’s my wife.” The following day our hosts took us on a tour of the countryside and to Dodona, an ancient site mentioned in Homer. We sat for a long time in the Greek amphitheater on seats constructed 2,000 years ago, and then strolled over to the grove of trees where oracles had once interpreted the language of blackbirds. Something about the site—its massiveness, its dignity and history—was deeply moving, and despite my skepticism, I had a taste, a faint taste, of the sacred. We strolled through the town of Ioannina, which bordered a beautiful lake, and ended up at a synagogue dating to Roman times that still functions as a place of worship for the city’s small Jewish community.

• From Amplified Holy Bible (2015)

  [Is 4:2 ; Jer 23:5 ; 33:15 ; Zech 6:12 ] 9 ‘For behold, the e stone which I have set before Joshua; on that one stone are seven eyes (symbolizing infinite intelligence, omniscience). Behold, I will engrave an inscription on it,’ declares the LORD of hosts, ‘and I will remove the wickedness and guilt of this land in a single day. [2 Chr 16:9 ; Jer 50:20 ; Zech 4:10 ] 10 ‘In that day,’ declares the LORD of hosts, ‘every one of you will invite his neighbor to sit under his vine and his fig tree [enjoying peace and prosperity in the kingdom].’ ” [Mic 4:1–4 ] Zechariah 4 The Golden Lampstand and Olive Trees 1 A nd the angel who was speaking with me came back and awakened me, like a man who is awakened out of his sleep. 2 He said to me, “What do you see?” I said, “I see, and behold, a a lampstand all of gold, with its bowl [for oil] on the top of it and its seven lamps on it with seven spouts belonging to each of the lamps which are on the top of it. [Matt 5:14 , 16 ; Luke 12:35 ; Phil 2:15 ; Rev 1:20 ] 3 “And there are two olive trees by it, one on the right side of the bowl and the other on its left side [supplying it continuously with oil].” [Rev 11:4–13 ] 4 So I asked the angel who was speaking with me, “What are these, my lord?” 5 Then the angel who was speaking with me answered me, “Do you not know what these are?” And I said, “No, my lord.” 6 Then he said to me, “This [continuous supply of oil] is the word of the LORD to Zerubbabel [prince of Judah], saying, ‘Not by might, nor by power, but by My Spirit [of whom the oil is a symbol],’ says the LORD of hosts. 7 ‘What are you, O great mountain [of obstacles]? Before Zerubbabel [who will rebuild the temple] you will become a plain (insignificant)! And he will bring out the capstone [of the new temple] with loud shouts of “Grace, grace to it!” ’ ” [Ezra 4:1–5 , 24 ; Is 40:4 ] 8 Also the word of the LORD came to me, saying, 9 “The hands of Zerubbabel have laid the foundations of this house, and his hands will finish it. Then you will know (recognize, understand fully) that the LORD of hosts has sent me [as His messenger] to you. 10 “Who [with reason] despises the day of small things (beginnings)? For these b seven [eyes] shall rejoice when they see the plumb line in the hand of Zerubbabel.

• From The Case for God (2009)

  412–85 CE) explained that some mystai were “stricken with panic” during the darker part of the rite and remained trapped in their fear; they were not sufficiently adept in this ritual of make-believe. But others achieved a sympatheia, an affinity that made them one with the ritual, so that they lost themselves in it “in a way that is unintelligible to us and divine.” Their ekstasis was a kenosis, a self-forgetfulness that enabled them to “assimilate themselves to the holy symbols, leave their own identity, become at home with the gods, and experience divine possession.” 17 Some Greeks, however, were beginning to be critical of the old mythology. How could anybody imagine that the gods “are born, and have clothes and speech and shape like our own,” asked the Ionian poet Xenophanes (560–480), or that they were guilty of theft, adultery, and deception? 18 To be truly divine, a god should transcend such human qualities and be beyond time and change. 19 The naturalist Anaxagoras of Smyrna (508–435) insisted that the moon and stars were just massive rocks; it was not the gods but Mind (nous), composed of sacred matter, that controlled the universe. Protagoras of Abdera caused a sensation when he arrived in Athens in 430 and delivered a lecture in the home of the playwright Euripides (480–406). No god could impose his will on human beings, and as for the Olympians, who could tell whether they existed or not? “There are many obstacles to such knowledge, including the obscurity of the subject and the shortness of human life.” 20 There was simply not the evidence to pronounce definitively on the existence of the divine, one way or the other. Athens was still a very religious city and Protagoras and Anaxagoras were both expelled from the polis. But people were looking for a deeper form of theism. For the tragedian Aeschylus (525–456) the ineluctable pain of human life was the path to wisdom. Zeus— “whoever Zeus may be”—had “taught men to think” and reflect on the sorrow of human experience. It was therefore ordained that we must suffer, suffer into truth. We cannot sleep, and drop by drop at the heart the pain of pain remembered comes again, and we resist, but ripeness comes as well. From the gods enthroned on the awesome rowing-bench there comes a violent love. 21 Euripides wanted a more transcendent god: “O you who give the earth support and me by it supported,” prays Queen Hecuba in his Trojan Women, “whoever you are, power beyond our knowledge, Zeus, be you stern law of nature or intelligence in man, to you I make my prayers; for you direct in the way of justice all mortal affairs, moving with noiseless tread.” 22 Euripides seems to have concluded that “the nous of each one of us is a god.” 23 The philosophers of Athens were about to arrive at the same conclusion.

• From The Case for God (2009)

  We hate poetry that has a palpable design upon us—and if we do not agree, seems to put its hands in its breeches pocket. Poetry should be great & unobtrusive, a thing which enters into one’s soul, and does not startle it or amaze it with itself but with its subject.—How beautiful are the retired flowers! how they would lose their beauty were they to throng into the highway crying out “admire me I am a violet! dote on me I am a primrose!”77 Where the philosophes had been wary of the imagination, Keats saw it as a sacred faculty that brought new truth into the world: “I am certain of nothing but of the holiness of the heart’s affections and the truth of Imagination—What the imagination seizes as Beauty must be truth—whether it existed before or not—for I have the same Idea of all our Passions as of Love they are all in their Sublime creative of essential Beauty.”78 The German theologian Friedrich Schleiermacher (1768–1834), who was greatly influenced by the Romantic movement, was also in retreat from Newtonian religion. He too sought a presence in “the mind of man.” In On Religion: Speeches to Its Cultured Despisers (1799), he argued that the religious quest should not begin with an analysis of the cosmos but in the depths of the psyche.79 A religion of this kind would not be an alienating force but involved with what was “highest and dearest” to us.80 God was to be found in the “depths of human nature,” in “the ground of its actions and thought.”81 The essence of religion lay in the feeling of “absolute dependence” that was fundamental to human experience.82 This did not mean abject servility toward a distant, externalized God. Crucial aspects of our lives—our parentage, genetic inheritance, and the time and manner of our death—were entirely beyond our control. We experienced life, therefore, as “given,” something that we received. This “dependence” was not merely something that had been implanted by God; it was God, the source and “whence” of our being.83 Yet this theology was somewhat reductive: for Schleiermacher, the human being had become the center, origin, and goal of the religious quest. Instead of being the ultimate explanation of the universe, God was a necessary consequence of human nature, a device that enabled us to understand ourselves.