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.

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• From The Fermata (1994)

  All the lily pads withdraw themselves from me. At those times I become amazed by the power I have: the power to lift my foot off the transcriber pedal at will and halt that sentence of hers right there for as long as I want in order to think about just where I am in it, and about what it can mean that this living, feeling creature is spending five days a week saying such things into a tape recorder, and about what her mouth looks like as she says them. I pause within her pause and float in the sensory-deprived lagoon of her suspended meaning. What is especially nice, in this state of “deep transcription,” as I call it, is to look up and discover that cheerful, unmysterious Joyce herself is walking briskly somewhere, perhaps toward my desk, wiggling a pen in her fingers. So there is, without a doubt, a strong chronanistic element to my doing of tapes. It may even be that if I hadn’t spent so large a portion of the last ten years of my life transcribing words, starting and stopping so many thousands and thousands of modest human sentences-in-progress with my foot-pedal, I would have long ago lost the ability to drop into the Fold altogether. The daily regimen of microcassettes has kept me unusually sensitive, perhaps, to the editability of the temporal continuum—to the fact that an apparently seamless vocalization may actually elide, glide over, hide whole self-contained vugs of hidden activity or distraction—sneezes, expletives, spilled coffee, sexual adventures—within. “The mind is a lyric cry in the midst of business,” says George Santayana, whose autobiography (volume one) I got out of the Boston Public Library yesterday; and it occurs to me that this aphorism illuminates the peculiar suggestiveness of the microcassette, and of all audiocassettes, in fact: these stocky, solid, paragraph-shaped material objects, held together with minuscule Phillips-head screws at each corner (the screws are smaller, incidentally, than the screws in the hinges of my glasses, so small that only SCARA robots could have twirled them in place in such quantity), with their pair of unfixed center sprockets left deliberately loose so that they can comply with slight variations in the spindle distances of different brands of machine—these chunky pieces of geometrical business within which, nonetheless, an elfin wisp of Mylar frisks around any tiny struts or blocks of felt placed in its path, minnowing the ferromagnetic after-sparkle of a voiced personality through whatever Baroque diagonals and Bezier curves it can contort from the givens of its prison. This said, the surprising thing really is how little luck I have had using the foot-pedal of my tape-transcription machine to trigger a true Drop.

• From The Fermata (1994)

  I put the spool in place on the nail and wrapped the loose end of the thread around the post of the washing machine. Now, as the spin cycle began, it pulled the thread through my callus, through a part of me, in winding it onto itself. The thread tugged through the hole in my skin surprisingly easily, faster and faster. My hand lay on the sill of the washer, face up. The heat of the friction began to hurt; when it became almost unbearable, and I was on the verge of closing my fist on the thread to snap it, the event, or non-event, happened. Everything stopped. I looked into the tub of the washing machine and was thrilled to be able to see and even touch that fiction of the physical sciences, centrifugal force. Without suffering harm, I could now reach in and hold clothes that were in the midst of spinning at six hundred r.p.m. I put my hand in the machine. The remaining blue water, immobilized in its turbulence and yet still wet to the touch, was especially beautiful. The world was again available for undressing. But I knew that if the thread that ran through my callus broke, time would resume. So I was unfortunately tethered to the washing machine. Over a period of ten minutes I laboriously paid out the thread through my callus so that I could walk upstairs and out to the yard. A bird was out there, a robin, paused in the air, about three feet off the lawn—I touched its spread wings, though not hard enough to dislodge it from its pausal locus. I continued to unspool my callus-thread until I had reached the street. A woman was in a station wagon with her elbow on the door. I touched her shoulder with my hand, then reached into her blouse and went under her bra and felt her hot heavy ostrich egg of a breast. Her nipple was amazingly soft. Her hair was motionlessly wind-fluffed; the speedometer said thirty miles an hour. That soft unselfconscious nipple I touched (my very first after infancy, recall) was driving down the street at thirty miles an hour while I, caressing it at leisure, stood in place! When I had learned enough about the weight and highly advanced mobility of her entire Jamaica in my coarse and threaded hand (joggling it reminded me, to my surprise, of the variable heft of a Slinky toy as you let its arched length recoil back and forth from palm to palm), I went back to the sidewalk so that I wouldn’t be run over, and I yanked on the thread until it broke. I pulled it from the hole in my callus. The station wagon sighed promptly by—I saw a flash of the woman in profile, then the back of her car, her meaninglessly specific license plate, then her turn-signal light blinking, then she turned down Southland Street, gone.

• From A Theology for the Social Gospel (1918)

  1 68 A THEOLOGY FOR THE SOCIAL GOSPEL of God is brought to a people ignorant and accustomed to superstitious methods of winning the favour or help of higher beings, it will soon be coarsened and materialized. The changes in the Hebrew conception of God were the result of the historical experiences of the nation and its leaders. The Christian idea of God has also had its ups and downs in the long and varied history of Chris- tian civilization. A fine and high conception of God is a social achieve- ment and a social endowment. It becomes part of the spiritual inheritance common to all individuals in that religious group. If every individual had to work out his idea of God on the basis of his own experiences and in- tuitions only, it would be a groping quest, and most of us would see only the occasional flitting of a distant light. By the end of our life we might have arrived at the stage of voodooism or necromancy. Entering into a high conception of God, such as the Christian faith offers us, is like entering a public park or a public gallery of art and sharing the common wealth. When we learn from the gospels, for instance, that God is on the side of the poor, and that he proposes to vie^v anything done or not done to them as having been done or not done to him, such a revelation of solidarity and humanity comes with a re- generating shock to our selfish minds. Any one studying life as it is on the basis of real estate and bank clearings, would come to the conclusion that God is on the side of the rich. It takes a revelation to see it the other way. Wherever we encounter such a strain of social feeling in our conceptions of God, it is almost sure to run straight THE CONCEPTION OF GOD 169 back either to Jesus or the prophets. The Hebrew proph- ets were able to realize God in that way because they were part of a nation which had preserved the traditions of primitive fraternal democracy. The prophets empha- sized God's interest in righteousness and solidarity be- cause they were making a fight to save their people from the landlordism and oppression under which other peoples have wilted and degenerated. When, therefore, we to- day feel the moral thrill of Hebrew theism, we are the heirs and beneficiaries of one untamed nation of moun- tain-dwellers. When such a conception of God is trans- mitted to other nations or to later times, it is the expor- tation of the most precious commodity a nation can pro- duce. On the other hand, if a conception of God originates among the exploiting classes in an age of despotism, it is almost certain to contain germs of positive sinfulness which will infect all to whom it is transmitted.

• From Tipping the Velvet (1998)

  The title role was taken by Dolly Arnold - a lovely girl with a voice like a linnet’s, and a waist so slim her trademark was to wear a necklace as a belt. It was rather odd to see Kitty spooning with her upon the stage, kissing her while the clock showed a minute-to-midnight - though it was odder still, perhaps, to think that no one in the audience called out Toms! now, or even appeared to think it: they only cheered when the Prince and Cinderella were united at the end, and drawn on stage, by half-a-dozen pygmy horses, in their wedding-car.Aside from Dolly Arnold, there were other stars - artistes whose turns I had once paid to watch and clap at, at the Canterbury Palace of Varieties. It made me feel very green, to have to work with them and talk to them as equals. I had only ever sung and danced, before, at Kitty’s side; now, of course, I had to act - to walk on stage with a hunting retinue and say, ‘My lords, where is Prince Casimir, our master?’; to slap my thigh and make terrible puns; to kneel before Cinderella with a velvet cushion, and place the slipper of glass upon her tiny foot - then lead the crowd in three rousing cheers when it was found to fit it. If you have ever seen a panto at the Brit, you will know how marvellous they are. For the transformation scene of Cinderella they dressed one hundred girls in suits of gauze and bullion fringe, then harnessed them to moving wires and had them swoop above the stalls. On the stage they set up fountains, which they lit, each with a different coloured lime. Dolly, as Cinderella in her wedding-gown, wore a frock of gold, with glitter on the bodice. Kitty had golden pantaloons, a shining waistcoat, and a three-cornered hat, and I wore breeches and a vest of velvet, and square-toed shoes with silver buckles. Standing at Kitty’s side while the fountains played, the fairies swooped, and the pigmy horses pranced and trotted, I was never sure I had not died on my way to the theatre and woken up in paradise. There is a particular scent that ponies give off, when they are set too long beneath a too-hot lamp. I smelled it every night at the Brit, mingled with that familiar music-hall reek of dust and grease-paint, tobacco and beer.

• From Worried about Everything Because I Pray about Nothing (2022)

  moon. You could say the same thing about prayer. Or more specifically, about how God responds to prayer. There is so much we don’t know about prayer, about God, and about faith. When it comes to God, there is—and always will be—a great deal of mystery. There is an unknown side, a hidden side, a “dark” side if you will, to prayer. That is not a bad thing. If we could reduce God to a science textbook, if we could describe Him, explain Him, and predict Him, He wouldn’t be God. And if we turned prayer into a hocus-pocus, abracadabra-style incantation, it wouldn’t be prayer. God cannot be contained by humans. Prayer is not a way to control God but a reminder that He is beyond our control. Remember Simon the sorcerer trying to pay Peter money in exchange for the power of the Holy Spirit? If you haven’t read the story, it’s found in Acts 8. Peter was in Samaria preaching. Simon was a local magician and warlock who was amazed at the miracles he saw happening. Simon assumed that if he paid enough, he could purchase the spells or knowledge to do those things himself. Peter was not amused. He practically yelled at him, “May your money perish with you, because you thought you could buy the gift of God with money!” (Acts 8:20). Humans haven’t changed much. We still dream about genie-in-the-bottle scenarios that give us access to infinite wealth and total control over the process. But God won’t fit into a bottle. Or a magic lamp. Or a sorcerer’s spell book. Or a pastor’s systematic theology book. Or a church building. Or any other human- made container. By definition, God is always beyond human understanding. Isaiah famously said, “As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts” (Isaiah 55:9).

• From The Spiral Staircase: My Climb Out of Darkness (2004)

  While writing Muhammad, I had to make a constant, imaginative attempt to enter empathically into the experience of another. This was a kind of ecstasy. For six months I was intent all and every day on trying to understand a man’s search for sanctification. Even though I was not a believer, I had to think myself into a religious frame of reference, and enter the mind of a man who believed that he was touched directly by God. Unless I could make that leap of sympathy, I would miss the essence of Muhammad. Writing his life was in its own way an act of islām —a “surrender” of my secular, skeptical self, which brought me, if only at second hand and at one remove, into the ambit of what we call the divine. During these months, I often recalled my conversation with Hyam. I noticed that the Koran spends very little time imposing an official doctrine; it propagates no creed, and is rather dismissive of theological speculation. Like Judaism, Islam is not especially bothered about belief: the word kafir, often translated “unbeliever,” really means one who is ungrateful to God. Instead of accepting a complex creed, Muslims are required to perform certain ritual actions, such as the hajj pilgrimage and the fast of Ramadan, which are designed to change them. One of the first things the Prophet asked his converts to do when he began to preach in Mecca was to prostrate themselves in prayer several times a day, facing the direction of Jerusalem. Arabs did not approve of kingship, and it was hard for them to grovel on the ground like slaves, but the posture of their bodies in the characteristic prostrations of Muslim prayer taught them, at a level deeper than the rational, what was required in the act of islām, the existential surrender of one’s entire being to God. For a set time each day, they had to lay aside that egotistic instinct to prance, strut, preen, and draw attention to themselves. The physical discipline was meant to affect their inner posture. Second, Muslims were commanded to give alms ( zakat: “purification”) to the poorer and more vulnerable citizens of Mecca. It seems that initially Muhammad called his religion not Islam but tazakkah, an obscure word, related to zakat, which is probably best translated as “refinement.” Muslims had to cultivate within themselves a caring, generous spirit that made them want to give graciously to all, just as God himself did. By concrete acts of compassion, performed so regularly that they became engrained, Muslims would find that both they and their society would be transformed. As long as people are motivated solely by self-interest, they remain at a bestial level. But when they learn to live from the heart, becoming sensitive to the needs of others, the spiritual human being is born.

• From Worried about Everything Because I Pray about Nothing (2022)

  Prayer is not a way to control God but a reminder that He is beyond our control. Remember Simon the sorcerer trying to pay Peter money in exchange for the power of the Holy Spirit? If you haven’t read the story, it’s found in Acts 8. Peter was in Samaria preaching. Simon was a local magician and warlock who was amazed at the miracles he saw happening. Simon assumed that if he paid enough, he could purchase the spells or knowledge to do those things himself. Peter was not amused. He practically yelled at him, “May your money perish with you, because you thought you could buy the gift of God with money!” (Acts 8:20). Humans haven’t changed much. We still dream about genie-in-the-bottle scenarios that give us access to infinite wealth and total control over the process. But God won’t fit into a bottle. Or a magic lamp. Or a sorcerer’s spell book. Or a pastor’s systematic theology book. Or a church building. Or any other human-made container. By definition, God is always beyond human understanding. Isaiah famously said, “As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts” (Isaiah 55:9). It would be irresponsible, even dangerous, to claim that God always makes sense or that prayers always get results. Some prayers will never be answered. Good people will go through bad things. Justice will not always be done. This reality has to be addressed if we are going to have a lifestyle of prayer. We must have a mature perspective of the mystery and sovereignty of God, or we’ll find ourselves discouraged or angry when we can’t make everything make sense. It doesn’t make sense to us because we aren’t God. God is not confused about anything that is going on. When we get to heaven, we’re going to have a better perspective on things. Paul wrote in 1 Corinthians 13, “For we know in part and we prophesy in part, but when completeness comes, what is in part disappears” (verses 9–10). I think he was saying that we can’t be totally sure about anything while we are here on earth. We do our best, but ultimately, we realize many things are reserved for God, for heaven, and for eternity. Religion (in the empty, human-created sense of the word) wants to eliminate mystery. It claims to have things figured out. It tries to turn God into a system and reduce faith to a formula. Prayer does the opposite. It doesn’t remove God’s mystery. Instead, it puts us into the story of His mystery. PRAYER IS CLOSENESS AND RESPECT One way that prayer puts us into the mystery of God is by reminding us that He is God, and we are not. In other ways, it puts us in our place. What “place” is that?

• From A Theology for the Social Gospel (1918)

  The personality which he achieved was a new type in humanity. Having the power to master and assimilate others, it became the primal cell of a new social organ- ism. Even if there had been no sin from which man- kind had to be redeemed, the life of Jesus would have dated an epoch in the evolution of the race by the intro- duction of a new type and consequently new social stand- ards. He is the real revelation of God. Other concep- tions have to be outlived ; his has to be attained. In the words of one of the most personal and orig- inal idealistic philosophers : “ The consciousness of the absolute unity of the human and the divine life is the profoundest insight possible to man. Before Jesus it did not exist. Since his time, we might say to this day, it has been almost lost again, at least in secular philos- ophy. Jesus evidently had this insight. How did he INITIATOR OF THE KINGDOM OF GOD 1 53 get it? There is nothing very wonderful in rediscov- ering the truth after another man has found the way; but how the first, separated by ages before and after by the sole possession of this insight, obtained it, this is matter for profound wonder. Therefore it is really true that Jesus of Nazareth, in a unique way, true of no other, is the only begotten and first born Son of God, and that all ages, if they are capable of understand- ing him at all, must recognize him as such. It is true enough that now any man can rediscover this doctrine in the writings of the apostles and appropriate it in his own convictions. It is also true, and we assert it, that the philosopher, — as far as he knows, — discovers the same truths independently of Christianity, and sees them with a clearness and breadth of vision which traditional Christianity can not match. Yet it remains for ever true that we, our entire age, and all our philosophical investi- gations are based on Christianity, and our thinking pro- ceeds from it; that this Christian faith has entered in the most manifold ways into our entire culture; and that we all would not be what we are, unless this power- ful principle had preceded us historically. It remains incontestably true that all those who since Jesus have arrived at union with God, have attained it only through him and by his mediation. Thus in every way it is con- firmed that to the end of time all wise men will bow before this Jesus of Nazareth, and the more of life they have themselves, the more humbly will they acknowledge the exceeding glory of this great personality.” ^ ^Johann Gottlieb Fichte, “Die Anweisiing zum seligen Leben,** Lecture VI. 1806. The translation , is mine. 154 A THEOLOGY FOR THE SOCIAL GOSPEL

• From Worried about Everything Because I Pray about Nothing (2022)

  ELEVEN These prayers are a waste of time Julia and I have moved to a new city or a new house several times in our marriage. That is a test of both mental and marital strength, if we’re being honest here. There’s one thing in particular that amazes me every time we move: how much junk we’ve managed to collect. We’re not hoarders. We’re the opposite of hoarders, whatever that is. Anti- hoarders? Clutter-haters? Enemies of all the things? I don’t know. My point is, we consider ourselves relatively neat, orderly, and efficient, yet we still have massive amounts of useless things crammed into cupboards and corners and cubbyholes, all because we “might need that someday.” Single socks, for example. We have an entire collection of them. Why are we stockpiling single socks? Do we really have faith that their partners are going to return for them? Do we expect to someday lose a leg? It’s probably not going to happen. They are useless socks. Ironically, one of our greatest sources of clutter is storage containers. That’s right—storage solutions are actually creating storage problems in the Veach household. Julia loves Netflix shows about tidying up, so she’ll get inspired to organize things in a new and better way. That naturally means purchasing more bins. The Holy Laws of Decluttering state that bins have to match each other, though, so she buys multiple bins at once. But since the old bins still hold some emotional promise of helping reduce clutter, she doesn’t throw those out. So we now have approximately five thousand plastic bins of assorted sizes, shapes, and colors. An empty storage bin is a double curse: It takes up lots of space without reducing any clutter. It’s as useless as a single sock, and it’s a lot bigger.

• From Worried about Everything Because I Pray about Nothing (2022)

  During this period, I met an Argentinian man named Yoel Bartolomé. We worked together at a church in California, and he became a close mentor. Every couple of weeks, we would meet at a gas station at six in the morning, then drive up to the San Gabriel Mountains. We would split up and wander the mountainside, praying and seeking God. Like the lunchroom prayer times, those mountaintop moments became part of the fabric of my walk with God. Being outdoors and surrounded by creation is always a good reminder that there is someone bigger than you out there. Maybe that’s what Jesus was doing when He would sneak away to the mountains to pray: He was connecting with a God whose power, like His love, is limitless. In high school, I met a personal God. He knew my name and cared about my needs. In the mountains, I met a big God. A sovereign, missional God who didn’t just know my name and care for me, but who loved the world. A God who wanted to use my life as part of His plan. PRAYING FOR PUYALLUP The mountaintop prayer times were a highlight of my season in East LA. But that stage of life came to an end when, in 2004, I moved to Puyallup, Washington, a town of thirty-five thousand people south of Seattle, known for hosting the Washington State Fair and having the world’s greatest scones. Seriously. I miss those scones. I had been offered a job at a church in Puyallup. I knew it was the right decision, but to be honest, I didn’t want to go. Nothing against Puyallup, but I was in love with LA. The way the city moved, the people, the culture, the weather, the palm trees, the Lakers, the food. Seemed like a lot to trade for scones. I remember leaving LA, driving north on the freeway, and complaining to God about where life was taking me. Suddenly, He interrupted my rant. I can’t really put the experience into words; I just knew it was Him. He spoke to me specifically: “You’ll move back here one day. You’ll start a church, and you’ll live here for the rest of your life.”

• From Worried about Everything Because I Pray about Nothing (2022)

  His help. When we pray, we connect directly with God. We skip the artificial protocols of empty religious systems. We bypass human-made rules about how to approach God, and we burst into His presence with a confidence and humility He adores. True prayer is anti-religious. Our raw, unfiltered, unpoliced conversations with God rebel against legalistic attempts to define and predict (and therefore control) God. The more we pray, the closer we get to God and the more we are in awe of Him. PRAYER IS THE LANGUAGE OF GRIEF A second way that prayer puts us into the mystery of God is by giving us a way to lament. Lament is not a word you hear very often today, but it has always been a part of Jewish and Christian beliefs, and many other religions as well. There is even a book in the Bible named Lamentations. I remember as if it were yesterday when my beloved Seattle SuperSonics moved to Oklahoma in 2008. Actually, they didn’t just move—they were stolen. And it cut deep. It still does, to be honest. When it happened, I went through my own personal book of Lamentations. I felt mad, sad, betrayed, lied to, crushed, numb, and a thousand other things all at once. That is lament. And that is sports. Funny how often they go together. Expressing our grief to God is one of the most spiritual things we can do. It doesn’t feel that way—it feels like venting. It feels like blasphemy, almost, to tell God what we really think and feel. Some people never do it because they’ve been taught to only approach God with carefully curated words of prayer. But God already sees your heart. Why not express what you are feeling with your mouth? God is not afraid of those feelings. He created them, after all; and Jesus felt them too. Historian and author Ernest Kurtz writes that to “experience sadness, despair, tears, and howls of pain demonstrates not some violation or deficit of spirituality, but rather the ultimate spirituality of acceptance.” 2

• From Worried about Everything Because I Pray about Nothing (2022)

  limb. Why? Because they were your parents, and you’d better talk to them with respect. Or else. I’m not going to argue for one culture over the other. Actually, they both have something to teach us. Familiar language implies closeness and trust, while more formal language implies respect. Both are good, and both are needed. Closeness and respect are not mutually exclusive, of course. Whether you say sir or sure, you can respect and honor your parents and simultaneously trust them, lean on them, laugh with them. The same goes for God. Prayer should bring us closer to God, but it should also inspire awe and respect. The love of God and the greatness of God go together. We love Him, but we also worship Him. We run into His presence, but we also realize that He is King, that we are running into the throne room of heaven. We have great confidence and access as His children, but we remember that our Father is the God of the universe. Prayer creates both absolute trust and humble dependency. That’s a great place to be. It’s healthy, it’s restful, it’s honest. The problem with unchecked religious systems is that they tend to replace closeness with protocol and respect with fear. Our relationship with God becomes more about walking on eggshells and less about coming confidently before His throne of grace. We begin to see God as distant, not close to us. And we’re okay with that, because why would we want to be close to someone we’re scared of? True prayer upends the toxicity of empty religion. It creates closeness and awe at the same time. Think about the last time you prayed from your heart, with urgency and rawness. Maybe you heard about a family member who was sick, or you lost your job, or you were facing serious financial pressure, or you found yourself spiraling into anxiety or depression. How did you talk to God in those moments? Probably very directly. I’m guessing you didn’t sound super “spiritual.” You simply cried out to Him in desperation, maybe even anger, because you needed

• From A Theology for the Social Gospel (1918)

  Finally we must inquire how the atonement affected men. What did the death of Christ add to his life in the way of reconciling, and redemptive power? The answer to this can not be narrowed down to a single influence. An event like the death of Jesus influences human thought and feeling in many ways. I shall mention three. First: It was the conclusive demonstration of the power of sin in humanity. I can not contemplate the force and malignancy of the six social and racial sins which converged on Jesus without a deep sense of the enormous power of evil in the world and of the bitter task before those who make up the cutting edge of the Kingdom of God. In various ways this realization comes to all who think of the cross of Christ. But the solidar- istic interpretation of the killing power of sin is by far 268 A THEOLOGY FOR THE SOCIAL GOSPEL the most impressive. The cross forever puts a question- mark alongside of any easy treatment of sin. Now, the surest way to make sin pall on us is to watch it go its full length. The first beginnings of drink, vice, or war are of exciting interest, but the fourth and fifth act make us very sick. If realistic art would only be faithful and tell the whole story to the end, preachers might suspend business. An evening out ; a broken girl ; a shamed family; a syphilitic baby; scrophulous bodies for several generations. Show us the last results at the beginning and we should sober up. Moreover, the moral cure worked by sin is most effec- tive in some way when we see our sin working in another life. A man may be willing to gamble with his own life and take the risk of his sport, but he may shrink from making another life pay for it by agony or death, — pro- vided he realizes the connection. Therefore it is the business of all who profit by sin to make the exploited sinner forget the social effects of his sin. The more innocent and lovable the victim, the more poignant the remorse when we realize what we have done. When discussing the problem of suffering, (Chapter XV ) , we made the point that pain in the physical organ- ism has a beneficent preventive use and purpose, and that social suffering serves the same purpose for society, provided it can be effectively brought home, and provided there is enough sense of sympathy and solidarity to care. From all these points of view the suffering of Christ is an incomparable demonstration of sin. Here we see hum.an sin in its mature and social form ; the victim has not contributed to it, so that the guilt can not be divided, THE SOCIAL GOSPEL AND THE ATONEMENT 269

• From Tipping the Velvet (1998)

  Behind him stood a tired-looking hard-faced woman - the man’s wife, I guessed - and she held another infant listlessly at her breast. The final member of the party, a stocky girl in a smartish jacket, was only partly visible beyond the edge of the curtain. Her face was hidden, but I could see her hands - which were slender and rather pale - with peculiar clarity: they held a card or a pamphlet, which they flapped in the still, warm air like a fan.All of these figures were gathered around a table, upon which stood a jar of flaccid little daisies and the remains of an economical supper: tea and cocoa, cold meat and pickle, and a cake. Despite the long faces and forced smiles, there was something celebratory about the scene. It was, I supposed, a sort of house-warming party - though I could not fathom the relationship between the lady mandolinist and the poor, drab little family to whom she played. Nor was I sure about the other girl, with the pale hands; she, I thought, could have belonged in either camp.The tune changed, and I could sense the family growing restless. I lit a cigarette and studied the scene: it was as good a thing to watch, I thought, as any. At length the girl behind the curtain ceased her intermittent fanning and rose. Stepping carefully around the group, she approached the window: it, like my own, opened on to a little balcony, upon which she now stepped, and from which she surveyed, with a mild glance and a yawn, the quiet street beneath.There were not more than twelve yards between us, and we were almost level; but, as I had guessed , I was only another shadow against my own shadowy chamber, and she hadn’t noticed me. 1, for my part, had still not seen her face. The window and curtains framed her beautifully, but the light was all from behind. It streamed through her hair, which seemed curly as a corkscrew, and lent her a kind of flaming nimbus, such as a saint might have in the window of a church; her face, however, was left in darkness. I watched her. When the music stopped, and there was a self-conscious smattering of applause and then a bit of desultory chatter, still she kept her place on the balcony and didn’t look round.At last my cigarette burned down, almost to my fingers, and I cast it into the street below. She caught the gesture: gave a start, then squinted at me, then grew stiff. Her confusion - despite the darkness, I could see from the tips of her ears that she flushed - disconcerted me, till I recollected my gentleman’s costume.

• From The Confessions of Saint Augustine (354)

  Behold, the heavens and the earth are; they proclaim that they were created; for they change and vary. Whereas whatsoever hath not been made, and yet is, hath nothing in it, which before it had not; and this it is, to change and vary. They proclaim also, that they made not themselves; “therefore we are, because we have been made; we were not therefore, before we were, so as to make ourselves.” Now the evidence of the thing, is the voice of the speakers. Thou therefore, Lord, madest them; who art beautiful, for they are beautiful; who art good, for they are good; who art, for they are; yet are they not beautiful nor good, nor are they, as Thou their Creator art; compared with Whom, they are neither beautiful, nor good, nor are. This we know, thanks be to Thee. And our knowledge, compared with Thy knowledge, is ignorance. But how didst Thou make the heaven and the earth? and what the engine of Thy so mighty fabric? For it was not as a human artificer, forming one body from another, according to the discretion of his mind, which can in some way invest with such a form, as it seeth in itself by its inward eye. And whence should he be able to do this, unless Thou hadst made that mind? and he invests with a form what already existeth, and hath a being, as clay, or stone, or wood, or gold, or the like. And whence should they be, hadst not Thou appointed them? Thou madest the artificer his body, Thou the mind commanding the limbs, Thou the matter whereof he makes any thing; Thou the apprehension whereby to take in his art, and see within what he doth without; Thou the sense of his body, whereby, as by an interpreter, he may from mind to matter, convey that which he doth, and report to his mind what is done; that it within may consult the truth, which presideth over itself, whether it be well done or no. All these praise Thee, the Creator of all. But how dost Thou make them? how, O God, didst Thou make heaven and earth? Verily, neither in the heaven, nor in the earth, didst Thou make heaven and earth; nor in the air, or waters, seeing these also belong to the heaven and the earth; nor in the whole world didst Thou make the whole world; because there was no place where to make it, before it was made, that it might be. Nor didst Thou hold any thing in Thy hand, whereof to make heaven and earth. For whence shouldest Thou have this, which Thou hadst not made, thereof to make any thing? For what is, but because Thou art? Therefore Thou spokest, and they were made, and in Thy Word Thou madest them.

• From The Lives of Great Christians (2007)

  Outline I. The idea of a life of discipline and “rejection of the world” is as old as Christianity itself. A. Jesus urged some to sell all they had and spoke of forsaking family and sex. B. Acts describes the first Christians in Jerusalem surrendering private property. C. Paul preferred that Christians not marry. II. We have early evidence of widows sharing in some elements of a common life in Rome and other cities and men who moved to the literal and metaphorical edges of towns to live lives of prayer. III. We usually identify Antony, a young man living in a town in Egypt, as the first monk. A. At age 18 in the year 269, the recently orphaned Antony arrived in church just as the gospel was being read in which Jesus told the rich man to sell what he had and give to the poor. 1. Antony understood this as a call from God. 2. He did what the gospel commanded and began an 87-year life of discipline, solitude, and prayer. ©2007 The Teaching Company. 17 B. During his long life as a hermit, Antony moved more than once farther into the desert to seek solitude. 1. People sought him out for counsel and advice. 2. Men (and a few women) chose to imitate his life. IV. During Antony’s lifetime, Christianity went from being a persecuted religion to a religion of the emperors. A. With martyrdom no longer a possibility and Christianity the favored religion, Antony’s pattern of life was understood to be a kind of “daily martyrdom.” B. There were doctrinal disputes among Christians at this time, and Antony supported the Council of Nicaea’s decrees. He entered Alexandria more than once to support his position against the Arians, whose beliefs had been rejected at Nicaea. V. Before describing how Antony lived his life and what he thought, it is worthwhile to explain the surviving sources. A. The famous Alexandrian bishop and theologian Athanasius wrote a life of Antony; this work became a model for future saints’ lives, called hagiographies. B. Several letters of Antony survive. C. Some of Antony’s sayings are incorporated into collections known as the sayings of the desert fathers, which are major sources for the discussion of desert fathers in the next lecture. VI. Athanasius describes Antony’s life as one of discipline. A. He ate little, wore itchy clothing, and rarely bathed. B. Antony constantly faced temptations in the form of family, money, glory, good food, and sex. C. Athanasius describes many of Antony’s struggles in terms of conflict with demons, and his imagery has entered into Christian lore and art. D. Antony grew some vegetables and wove baskets, which he would sell to buy necessities. E. Stability was important for Antony: “Just as fish die if they stay too long out of water, so the monks who loiter outside their cells … lose the intensity of inner peace.” ©2007 The Teaching Company. 18

• From Justine (Alexandria Quartet vol. 1) (1957)

  The gathering consisted of about twenty people drawn from various parts of the city. I noticed with some surprise the lean bored figure of Capodistria in one corner. Nessim was there, of course, but there were very few representatives of the richer or more educated sections of the city. There was, for example, an elderly clock-maker I knew well by sight — a graceful silver-haired man whose austere features had always seemed to me to demand a violin under them in order to set them off. A few nondescript elderly ladies. A chemist. Balthazar sat before them in a low chair with his ugly hands lying in his lap. I recognized him at once as if in an entirely new context as the habitué of the Café Al Aktar with whom I had once played backgammon. A few desultory minutes passed in gossip while the Cabal waited upon its later members; then the old clock-maker stood up and suggested that Balthazar should open proceedings, and my friend settled back in his chair, closed his eyes and in that harsh croaking voice which gradually gathered an extraordinary sweetness began to talk. He spoke, I remember, of the fons signatus of the psyche and of its ability to perceive an inherent order in the universe which underlay the apparent formlessness and arbitrariness of phenomena. Disciplines of mind could enable people to penetrate behind the veil of reality and to discover harmonies in space and time which corresponded to the inner structure of their own psyches. But the study of the Cabbala was both a science and a religion. All this was of course familiar enough. But throughout Balthazar’s expositions extraordinary fragments of thought would emerge in the form of pregnant aphorisms which teased the mind long after one had left his presence. I remember him saying, for example, ‘None of the great religions has done more than exclude, throw out a long range of prohibitions. But prohibitions create the desire they are intended to cure. We of this Cabal say: indulge but refine. We are enlisting everything in order to make man’s wholeness match the wholeness of the universe — even pleasure, the destructive granulation of the mind in pleasure.’

• From The Confessions of Saint Augustine (354)

  But that heaven of heavens was for Thyself, O Lord; but the earth which Thou gavest to the sons of men, to be seen and felt, was not such as we now see and feel. For it was invisible, without form, and there was a deep, upon which there was no light; or, darkness was above the deep, that is, more than in the deep. Because this deep of waters, visible now, hath even in his depths, a light proper for its nature; perceivable in whatever degree unto the fishes, and creeping things in the bottom of it. But that whole deep was almost nothing, because hitherto it was altogether without form; yet there was already that which could be formed. For Thou, Lord, madest the world of a matter without form, which out of nothing, Thou madest next to nothing, thereof to make those great things, which we sons of men wonder at. For very wonderful is this corporeal heaven; of which firmament between water and water, the second day, after the creation of light, Thou saidst, Let it be made, and it was made. Which firmament Thou calledst heaven; the heaven, that is, to this earth and sea, which Thou madest the third day, by giving a visible figure to the formless matter, which Thou madest before all days. For already hadst Thou made both an heaven, before all days; but that was the heaven of this heaven; because In the beginning Thou hadst made heaven and earth. But this same earth which Thou madest was formless matter, because it was invisible and without form, and darkness was upon the deep, of which invisible earth and without form, of which formlessness, of which almost nothing, Thou mightest make all these things of which this changeable world consists, but subsists not; whose very changeableness appears therein, that times can be observed and numbered in it. For times are made by the alterations of things, while the figures, the matter whereof is the invisible earth aforesaid, are varied and turned. And therefore the Spirit, the Teacher of Thy servant, when It recounts Thee to have In the Beginning created heaven and earth, speaks nothing of times, nothing of days. For verily that heaven of heavens which Thou createdst in the Beginning, is some intellectual creature, which, although no ways coeternal unto Thee, the Trinity, yet partaketh of Thy eternity, and doth through the sweetness of that most happy contemplation of Thyself, strongly restrain its own changeableness; and without any fall since its first creation, cleaving close unto Thee, is placed beyond all the rolling vicissitude of times. Yea, neither is this very formlessness of the earth, invisible, and without form, numbered among the days. For where no figure nor order is, there does nothing come, or go; and where this is not, there plainly are no days, nor any vicissitude of spaces of times.

• From Worried about Everything Because I Pray about Nothing (2022)

  But if your idea of safety is a god you can keep on a leash, then no, Jesus is not safe, any more than taking a lion on a walk would be. And prayer isn’t either. In prayer, we interact with the untamed and untamable God who created the universe, who sent Jesus to die in our place, who can and does do miracles, who knows us better than we know ourselves, and who has absolutely no problem getting all up in our business. In this chapter, I want to look at a few prayers that I call dangerous prayers. These are prayers such as commitment, surrender, dedication, repentance, transparency, and prayer for your enemies. They are dangerous because they will take you places you might not have anticipated—but you won’t regret them. Prayer isn’t safe. But it is good. 1. NOT MY WILL, BUT YOURS. Remember that iconic line in The Princess Bride that Wesley would repeat to the princess: “As you wish”? The last time he said the phrase, it was more like, “AS YOU WIIIIIIIIIISH,” because Wesley was shouting it while he tumbled down a hillside into the fire swamp. This was the climactic moment where the princess realized her true love had returned. And she had pushed him off a cliff. True love hurts, apparently. True love also surrenders itself to another. Not in a toxic, blind, codependent way, but in a faithful way. A covenant way. A trusting way. It says, “As you wish,” as part of a mutual surrender. God wants us to surrender to Him this way. Why? Because He’s a despot? Some celestial tyrant bent on control? No. Because He loves us, and we love Him. This is a mutual surrender, in a sense—God has already promised to be with us, to care for us, to listen to us, to respond to us. He has chosen to link himself to us, which is a crazy thought. We are in a committed relationship, and if that relationship is going to survive fire swamps, rodents of unusual size, and the ups and downs of regular life, there needs to be trust. Surrender means giving up control or ownership of something. If you have ever prayed the Lord’s Prayer (in the last chapter, for example), then you’ve asked God, “Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven.” That is surrender, at least in a general sense. Surrender, however, needs to be a lot more personal than just a blanket prayer for an entire planet. It involves asking God to do His will in the practical, day-to-day decisions you make—finances, marriage, career, character, friendships. It is a surrender motivated by love and trust. Jesus prayed this way.

• From The Confessions of Saint Augustine (354)

  Nor dost Thou by time, precede time: else shouldest Thou not precede all times. But Thou precedest all things past, by the sublimity of an ever-present eternity; and surpassest all future because they are future, and when they come, they shall be past; but Thou art the Same, and Thy years fail not. Thy years neither come nor go; whereas ours both come and go, that they all may come. Thy years stand together, because they do stand; nor are departing thrust out by coming years, for they pass not away; but ours shall all be, when they shall no more be. Thy years are one day; and Thy day is not daily, but To-day, seeing Thy To-day gives not place unto to-morrow, for neither doth it replace yesterday. Thy To-day, is Eternity; therefore didst Thou beget The Coeternal, to whom Thou saidst, This day have I begotten Thee. Thou hast made all things; and before all times Thou art: neither in any time was time not. At no time then hadst Thou not made any thing, because time itself Thou madest. And no times are coeternal with Thee, because Thou abidest; but if they abode, they should not be times. For what is time? Who can readily and briefly explain this? Who can even in thought comprehend it, so as to utter a word about it? But what in discourse do we mention more familiarly and knowingly, than time? And, we understand, when we speak of it; we understand also, when we hear it spoken of by another. What then is time? If no one asks me, I know: if I wish to explain it to one that asketh, I know not: yet I say boldly that I know, that if nothing passed away, time past were not; and if nothing were coming, a time to come were not; and if nothing were, time present were not. Those two times then, past and to come, how are they, seeing the past now is not, and that to come is not yet? But the present, should it always be present, and never pass into time past, verily it should not be time, but eternity. If time present (if it is to be time) only cometh into existence, because it passeth into time past, how can we say that either this is, whose cause of being is, that it shall not be; so, namely, that we cannot truly say that time is, but because it is tending not to be?