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 A Hebrew and English Lexicon of the Old Testament (BDB) (1907)

  adj. awe-inspiring, terror-strik-‏ עריץ1 W333 Je 20"; pl. as subst.‏ עָרִיץ , ing ;—’y of‏ D's", in bad sense of formidable adversaries,‏ Jb 6* (||7¥), and‏ ,(רְעִים |[) 15% personal, Je‏ ,(זדים||) 86% NW‏ )’= ,(ָרִים||) 54° / national,‏ Is 29° (||); esp. of Chaldeans Is 13",‏ המין ע' estr. DN) "SY most terrifying of the nations‏ ;32° (זרים||) 31 "30 (זָרִים |) 287 Ez‏ so Lo‏ "ד Is 49% (rd. “py also for PIS‏ עָריץ sg.‏ Dsa‏ עָרִיצִים Ew Che Gr 81.( ; without specif. ref.‏ Is 25° awe-inspiring nations (Du Che take ’y‏ WD}‏ ע, (.81 (del. as gloss Di‏ *ץ 079 ע" as subst.),‏ (del. verse as gloss Du Che); late, of wicked‏ ל T have‏ 37° ש רְאִיתִי YWI‏ ע' in gen., as ruthless‏ seen a wicked man ruthless; as subst., Is eer‏ *יצד 2% pl. 27% (\jéd.),‏ ,(רשע|) ”15 Jd‏ ,)175( Is 11* (for MT 7/38), so Che‏ עָרִיצִָים) rd. also‏ Br™? Du Gr al. (|| 37‏ n.f. awful shock, crash ;—Is‏ מערצה1 33 0%, of פ'י'‎ lopping off (tree-)crown (fig.). T [Pw ] vb. gnaw (Ar. gs td.; Syr. ors Pa.);—Qal Pt. pl. M¥ הערקים‎ Th 30° they who gnaw the dry (ground; fig. of scanty subsist- ence); 81. ייצ ערקי‎ my gnawing (pains) donotsleep. adj.gent. Arkite, inhabitant of city‏ ערקי1 ‘Arka (As. Arka COTS™ | DI**. Te) Ams.‏ Irkat(a), Egypt. Arkantu, cf. As. n.gent. Irka-‏ as‏ הָע' natat COT“, Ency. Bib.'**);—only‏ n.coll. Gn 10”, roy Apovxatov, = 1 Ch 1%, A id.,‏ 92 80 (prob.) ערער GL rov 6: mod.‘Arka, near Mediterranean, c. 60 miles N. of Beirut (cf. Ency. Bib."*). = 1 ערר‎ (“of foll.; on this [and not [עור‎ No 2MG xxx (1878), 404 7 il. 5 cf. Palm. מערתא‎ sepulchre). הי‎ My | 5 cave ;—abs.’ Gn 10" +; estr. ב 2 מַעָרת‎ pl. nny Ju 67+ , estr. zd. Is 215;---0006, esp. as place of sojourn or refuge Gn 19*(J),1S24°*78°(Ginsb; v***" van d.H. Baer), 1 K 19, Ez 33” Jos (מ' 77222( "סז‎ + 7 +t. Jos Io, ז ד‎ ₪8 13° | sr 2 1427; DY מַעָרות‎ Is 2%, hence מ' פֶּרְצִים‎ Je 7! robbers’ cave ; Is 32 den (of wild beasts);— - Dewy 2 + ₪ 22' 2823, whence in || 1 Ch 11”, rd. prob. ע'‎ NT or NID We, cf. Dr, Bu Kit HPS ;—as burial place, הַמַכְפָּלָה‎ 2 Gn 23%+ (v. כמי= = לה‎ 86 ee 720 49° (all P). לַצִינִים‎ WS מ'‎ Jos 13* (D), cave- region in Lebanon E. of Sidon, mod. Mughar Gezzin, acc. to most. but dub.; perhaps, rather, nea Tyré Buh] PY 1895, 55, ; fi. vy [ vb. strip oneself ((| form of

• From H Is for Hawk (2014)

  The hissing you hear from your computer speakers is a digitised amalgam of leaves, wind and chaffinch song. You see the nest itself, a bulky concatenation of sticks pushed hard up against conifer bark and lined with sprays of green leaves. On the webcam the male goshawk appears on the nest. It’s so sudden, and he’s so brightly shiny white and silver-grey, that it’s like watching a jumping salmon. There’s something about the combination of his rapidity and the lag of the compressed image that plays tricks with your perception: you carry an impression of the bird as you watch it, and the living bird’s movements palimpsest over the impression the bird has made until he fairly glows with substance. Goshawk substance. And he bows his head and calls. Chew-chew-chew-chew-chew-chew . Black mouth, soft smoke in the cold April morning. And then the female arrives. She’s huge. She lands on the edge of the nest and it shakes. Her gnarly feet make the male’s look tiny . She is like an ocean liner . A Cunard goshawk. And on each leg, as she turns, you can see the leather anklets she wears. This bird was bred in captivity somewhere, in an aviary just like the one in Northern Ireland that bred mine. She was flown by a nameless falconer , was lost , and now here she is, settling on four pale eggs, being watched on computer screens as the very type of the wild. Time passed on the Scottish quay and brightness moved in from the sea. Then a man was walking towards us, holding two enormous cardboard boxes like a couple of oversized suitcases. Strangely alien suitcases that didn’t seem to obey the laws of physics, because as he walked they moved unpredictably, in concert neither with his steps nor with gravity. Whatever is in them is moving , I thought with a little thump of my heart. He set the boxes down, ran his hand through his hair. ‘I’m meeting another falconer here in a bit. He’s having the younger bird. Yours is the older. Bigger too,’ he said. ‘So.’ He ran his hand through his hair again, exposing a long talon scratch across his wrist, angry at its edges and scurfed with dried blood. ‘We’ll check the ring numbers against the Article 10s,’ he explained, pulling a sheaf of yellow paper from the rucksack and unfolding two of the official forms that accompany captive-bred rare birds throughout their lives. ‘Don’t want you going home with the wrong bird.’ We noted the numbers.

• From H Is for Hawk (2014)

  Chalk landscapes do this to me; bring an exhilarating, on-tiptoe sense that some deep revelation is at hand. This makes me feel guilty. There’s a long vein of chalk-mysticism buried in English nature-culture, and I know that what I’m feeling, standing here, partakes of it. I’m guilty because I know that loving landscapes like this involves a kind of history that concerns itself with purity, a sense of deep time and blood-belonging, and assumes that these solitudinous windswept landscapes are finer, better, than the landscapes below. ‘The frequenter of downland is occupied with essentials; with structure, with forms and with textures,’ wrote chalk-cult ruralist H. J. Massingham in the 1930s. ‘Aloft, he breathes an air that tunes him to the grand, archaic, naked forms of things.’ It’s a landscape that is a parable of the aviator’s eye. I grew up in the lowland pine-forests and heaths of sandy Surrey. But there’s a photograph of me, wrapped in a tartan duffel coat, laying a five-year-old hand on one of the stones at Stonehenge, where my childish brain first grasped at intimations of history. And when I was a little older, corn buntings jangling from high-ground fence posts out near Wantage, I remember my father telling me that the track we walked upon, the Ridgeway, was an ancient, ancient path. This impressed me greatly. It was the 1970s, which had seen another great burst of the cult of chalk and history: there were experimental Iron Age re-enactment villages at Butser; scary children’s TV dramas about the stone circles at Avebury; great bustard reintroductions on top-secret military establishments on Salisbury Plain. Now, I wonder why. Was it some response to the oil crisis? To economic depression? I don’t know. But up on the Ridgeway path, aged nine or ten, was where for the first time I realised the power a person might feel by aligning themselves to deep history. Only much later did I understand these intimations of history had their own, darker, history. That the chalk-cult rested on a presumption of organic connections to a landscape, a sense of belonging sanctified through an appeal to your own imagined lineage. That chalk downlands held their national, as well as natural, histories. And it was much later, too, that I realised these myths hurt. That they work to wipe away other cultures, other histories, other ways of loving, working and being in a landscape. How they tiptoe towards darkness.

• From H Is for Hawk (2014)

  Geoffrey’s poem is the Vita Merlini – the Life of Merlin – and the feral figure who in forgetting himself flew with the birds is Merlin Sylvestris, the Merlin of the Woods, the prophet and seer who in later tales would be recast as the greatest magician of all, and who as Merlyn in The Sword in the Stone would educate the King. It’s tempting to imagine an originary moment, one perfect opening scene. An autumn evening in 1937, when White takes down a book from the shelves that he does not want to read. It is a small blue book with a cloth cover; the first volume of Le Morte D’Arthur , Sir Thomas Malory’s fifteenth-century retelling of stories about the legendary king. White had written his dissertation on it at Cambridge, and he is disinclined to return to it now. But he’s finished all the other books in the house, so he sits in his armchair and begins to read. It is plodding, slow work, like wading through treacle. He nearly puts it down. But suddenly it catches on him, grips him like Gos had his shoulder with eight fierce talons, and he is stricken with amazement. This is a proper story. A proper tragedy , he thinks. The people in it are real. They had not been real before. Over two days he reads the whole thing ‘ with the passion of an Edgar Wallace fiend then put it down and took up a pen’. It is easy to say – there. That is how The Sword in the Stone began. But I do not think that is the story at all. The book had been started months before, when a round thing that was something like a clothes-basket was set down before his door . White thought it a warm-hearted book, quite unlike his previous efforts. ‘ It seems impossible to determine whether it is for grown-ups or children,’ he wrote to Potts. ‘It is a preface to Mallory.’ The boy in the book is called the Wart. He is a kindly soul, loyal and slightly stupid. He is an orphan and does not know he will become king. Sir Ector has raised him along with his natural son. The Wart will never become a knight because he is not a gentleman. But in the book he is given a magical teacher – Merlyn – and a magical education, too. Eschewing schooldesks and lessons learned by rote, Merlyn turns the Wart into animals and sends him off on quests. As a fish the boy learns about the dictator’s passion for power by meeting the pike in the castle moat. As a snake he learns of history.

• From H Is for Hawk (2014)

  It is a field of a million tiny tillers – little shoots of wheat. They give the chalky earth a furry tint, like algae on a cliff-face. Even in this dark, watery light, the valley shines palely. And I see what Mabel had seen. About a hundred yards in front of us, crouched in its form, is a big brown hare, black-tipped ears laid to its ginger back. But there’s more, much more here: down at the bottom of the valley, where the river would be were there water, is a herd of thirty fallow deer. They are the colour of moleskin on their backs, shading to pale grey underneath. They’re tight-clustered, quivering with indecision. They’re watching me. Thirty upraised heads. The herd is delicate and powerful, and it is waiting to see what I will do. I can’t resist the urge that takes hold of me then. I hold on to Mabel, who is watching them too, and like a woman possessed, walk towards them, with that strange disconnect between head and feet you feel when walking downhill. I’m technically trespassing, but I can’t help it. I want to interact with them in some way. I want to get closer. And as I do, the pressure of my impending arrival pushes single deer off to the right, and they walk, then canter, in a long line, along the bottom of the valley and up to the wood at the far edge of the field, a good half-mile away. They are bewitching. Mabel watches them. She is ignoring the hare. The deer in procession resemble charcoal cave paintings rendered manifest. Art’s magic working backwards. The chalk behind them, bone. And now the hare runs, too. The hare runs in the opposite direction to the deer. The animals run, and the landscape seems then to be parting in front of me. Deer one way, hare the other. And now they are quite gone: the hare to the field-margin at the top of the hill to my left, the deer into the wood at the top of the hill to my right. There is nothing before me now but wind and chalk and wheat. Nothing. The hawk rouses again and begins to preen her covert feathers. The running deer and the running hare. Legacies of trade and invasion, farming, hunting, settlement. Hares were introduced, it is thought, by the Romans. Fallow deer certainly were. Pheasants, too, brought in their burnished hordes from Asia Minor. The partridges possessing this ground were originally from France, and the ones I see here were hatched in game-farm forced-air incubators. The squirrel on the sweet chestnut? North America. Rabbits? Medieval introductions. Felt, meat, fur, feather, from all corners. But possessing the ground, all the same. We set off, again, homeward this time.

• From A Hebrew and English Lexicon of the Old Testament (BDB) (1907)

  29 vb. thunder, lament, cf. NH רְעם‎ Hiph. thunder, Hithp. complain ; - Eth. 2897: n. thun- der, As. rimu, 70.2 Ar. ל‎ 2 dislike, etc.). Tayr n.[m.]| thunder ;—ascribed to %- ר"‎ abs. Is 29% OVI WD y- 81° (Baer Gi; thunder-cloud); a קול רעמף‎ 77° 104"; cstr. רעם גבורתו‎ Jb 26" (fig. of ”’s display of might ; opp. /2Y); fig. of captains, ONY ר'‎ 39%, thunderous Shere ) + (תְּרוּעָה‎ / [רעם]‎ vb.denom. thunder;—Qal make the sound of thunder, thunder: Impf. 3 ms. DYN let the sea thunder (in praise, || ,גיל ,שמח‎ dy, yan, (רנן ,מחא כף‎ +96"=1Ch 16”, ו‎ 8. —Pf. 3 pl. DB רעמו‎ Ez 27" is 600. : faces tremble (‘Toy are convulsed), or they tremble (cf. Hi-Sm Krae; AV RV are troubled) in face, lacks etym. support (otherwise Gerber”, but v. / supr.); G@ 6 Co 2735 WI. Hiph. (Gerber) thunder, cause thunder ;—Pf. 3 ms. DVI] ש‎ 29%; Impf. 3 ms. DYN (on — vy. Ki**"") וירעם ;+יפנש‎ 1S 7%; 2ms. DY 70 40°; 18 1° vy. infr.; thunder, of י'‎ (God) 21" 7° (both ע‎ pers. against whom), y 18%=2 ₪ 22% ¥ 29° Jb 37%, cf. 40° —7DYI 1S 1° is appar. 947 רע Inf. estr. sf. (Ges'”"*”*), but not understood by & and dub.: AV RV to make her fret, cf. Aram.utter (loud) complaints (Weir in Dr8™”"'); perhaps corrupt HPS. NOY) +. .זז‎ TY. Tr. MOY) (Git) n.f. vibration ! quivering mane? of horse’s neck: Jb 39" hast thow clothed his neck~(with) “4? so most, but very uncertain. TUL. MOP), NOY] (Git ™*) n. pr. m. son’ of Cush, ה‎ Gn 7077 = NS ד‎ Ch (Baer, v. his note; van d. H. Gi1__ yb); Peyxya, n— as trading people Ez 27™, Paya, Payya. Identified by many with city “Pey(a)pa (Ptol™*™"), שמת"‎ (Steph. Byz.), in SE. Arabia, on Pers. Gulf (so even DH M 76 ** 98%) 12 G]as Shige HTS) bab this 2 -) in inser. (Glas-*™); <Sab. רעמה‎ near Mein in SW. Arabia (Hom Siidar. Chr. 131 Hal 533, he cf. DHM'*), perh. =‘Pap- pavira of Strabo****, vy, Dio !?7, רַעְלְיָה 54 thunder of n) Ne id‏ 0 רְעַמִיָה Ga‏ רעמסס =,(7) "1 TERY n.prloc. Ex‏ 470 Ex ro Nu 33°’ (all P), Ramses, city in Egypt; Papeo(o)n; built by King Rameses II (hence 168 name; the king used Israelitish corvée ace. to Ex 1”), near 7 el-Maskhuta (Pithom), but not certainly identified, v. 125 and reff.; “1 PIS Gn 47” of district ו‎ T 1 y TY vb. only Pa‘lel be or grow luxu- riant, fresh, green ;—Pf. 3 fs. 13227 (De *) Jb 15* (of branch, in fig.). 1 רעב‎ adj. luxuriant, fresh ;—m. ך'‎ Dt *2ז‎ +; £2292 Ctr; ,ו רַענפִּים. וח‎ 92° ;—lucu- riant, of trees: ving Ho TACs My 52°°(both sim.), Je 11° (fig.); sim. ‘also, 7 AMS ץ‎ 37% (but rd. הַלְבָנון‎ TIS} ₪ S and most); esp. in phrase nna

• From A Hebrew and English Lexicon of the Old Testament (BDB) (1907)

  of limits of horizon Dt 4”, cf. 304 Ne 1°‏ השי ;יש as made by God Je51**(opp. Dan),‏ ;"19 (ה)ש' ו(הָ)אָךֶ enduring Dt1r' Jb 14" 8"; esp.‏ =universe (cf. in Sab., SabDenkm***-* 1°),‏ Dt 3" Gn1'(P)+(esp. Dt JeIs? yy), +030 Ex‏ Dt‏ א:% non DY)‏ לְאֶרֶץ + He 2% ete.,‏ "20 cf. Pr 304, ete.; opp. DIAN Pr 87 (+78 v*);‏ 5% as part of future glory‏ ש' NWIn PINT) DWIN‏ tIs 657 66%. b. phrases are: ‘WO MIDIS‏ (letting rain through) +Gn 7" 8*(P), Mal 3”‏ N37‏ ש' 80 ,729 (fig.), of. WA/8 ALY 2 K‏ Bn?‏ ש' (for manna), ef. W127 tv,‏ "78 + *18 שי IST; in|]‏ ||( 22° 28 מוסדות הָש' ;"הסנ towards‏ ;"22 חוג ש' ,"26 Jb‏ עמוּרי ש' /D),‏ הָרִים the sky is MONA Jos 8 (J), Ex 9°(P), Jb 2”‏ 0 יצ עַלדְהַשָמִיִם ;®6 Ju13” 20% 2 Ch‏ 6 ש" ,‘12 Dt 32* (poem), Dn‏ אלש ’ (all B),‏ 1K 87" Ibn? Pr 23% 2. a. as abode of‏ God (*) 1K 8% + oft., where he sits enthroned‏ Dt 33°°(poem), 7 68",‏ 327 ש/ .61 y 2% 1s 66% etc.,‏ whence he rains brimstone Gn 10% (J), bread‏ Ex 16* (E), cf. Neg”, casts hailstones Jos 11"‏ +( צ 631 (E), talks with Israel Ex 20”(E;‏ ef. Gn 21% 22° (E), looks down Dt 26"+‏ t. Chr, 666 ; he‏ 10 + 207 שי hears his people‏ he‏ ;"22 ₪ 2 מןדש' || ,18% "2 ₪ ז thunders ’W2‏ to come down v"=y 18", cf.‏ ש' (נטה) bends‏ in‏ 'ז NAD) Ez‏ הש ;"63 vy 144° and (rend) Is‏ vision of God, 61. הש'‎ WY Gn 23 (E; +3 DDN); though even ‘WI ‘DY the highest heavens cannot hold him +Dt 10" 1 K 8%=2 Ch % 2 Ch 2° Ne 9° ש‎ 148% DIP RY "NY 68% ; he is MON (post-ex. title) Ezr 15= 2 Ch 36%, +11 t. Ezr Ne, Jon 1° (cf. Aram., Dn-2® 19-87-44 in Gn 24’ add 6. ₪ PINT dN), as v°), אֶלַההַש'‎ 136"; his sword is 3 Is 34% but also his 101) 36% צַדֶק‎ 85”, TON 805% his word fixed 119°.—’W are +2 (of Israel) Dt 33% (poem), שְמִיכֶ ל‎ Ly 26% +BY y 8 144 +" DY La 3%, ץ ש' קרשו+‎ 20. +b. Elijah taken up הש'‎ in whirlwind 2K 2006735. 3. הש"‎ personified in various relations Is 1? Je 2” Th 15" ץש‎ 195 50°=97%, 89° 1484 $4, NID הש'‎ v."0 p. 573. \ שמם.ישמה.,‎ TDW v. ov, 1 שמהות‎ n.pr.m. captain of Israel 1Ch 27°, 20806, A GL 500000; prob.=11. MY 3 b, q.v. שמוּאֶל‎ v. sub DY, .שמם / THY,‏ .צנ .+ שמות 1030 שמם WT v. BY.‏ ,שמידע .שמם// v.‏ שמי Ezr 2% v. wb,‏ שמלי

• From A Hebrew and English Lexicon of the Old Testament (BDB) (1907)

  tog n.m. help (loan-word from Aram. Ie? NZ / help, so Lag i7, BN 275 Nose) only in sim, ’8 אַין‎ 7233 y 88°. trade] af. ia. sf TN y 22” my hel y help‏ אי אי (יהוה ||( DN (cf. 3 Talm. D8 terrify Lag’). Too adj. terrible, dreadful—terrible, of Chaldeans הוּא‎ 8712) O'S Hb 17; of dignified woman, awe-inspiring mor a3 MOS Ct 64”. nf. terror, dread (Talm. id., cf.‏ 17 אִימַה1 ד Ex‏ אִימְתָה ; +15 As. imtu, DIY)—’s Gn‏ (cf. Gesi™?™>); 086. NOS Pr 207; sf. ‘NDS Ex‏ Je 50°; DDS‏ אִימִים Jb 33’, 6%6.; pl.‏ אָמָתִי ; 237 D אימים Jb 20%; NOS 55% sf. TON y 881% ;—terror, dread (mostly poet.), inspired by " Ex 18" (song in E || (פחד‎ 23” (E) Dt 32” Jbo* 13” ef. 337; 20% y 838% )|| ON, OYA v"); cf. Gn 15? 7217) TdT ADS; 0 by enemies Jos 2° Is 33" Ezr 27 by king Pr2o0?; ef. ~ 55° my אמות‎ (|| TN, רעד‎ , MYdB v4); pred. of snorting ofa war-horse J b: 39”, of teeth of croco- dile Jb 41°; pl. fig.=idols (i.e. dreadful, shock- ‘ing things) Je 50% (|| .(פסלים‎ n.pr.m.pl. Emim (terrors) ancient‏ אימים1 Dt 2” (O87) ;‏ ; (הָאִימִים) 14° inhab. of Moab Gn‏ v8 (D8).‏ 1 fe aS PND whence? v. sub .אי‎ i אין ,אין‎ estr. אי[‎ subst. prop.nothing, monet (Moab. ,אן‎ As. tdnu). 1. +1 40% הנותן‎ Nd D's who bringeth princes to nothing; a as nothing, 0 AQ’ gaa? Hie 2 almost (|| מַאין+ ;73° ץ (כַּמְעַט‎ of nothing Har 2. cstr. אי[‎ very freq. as particle of nega- tion, is not, are not, was not, were not, etc. (corresp. to the affirm. יש‎ q.v. Similar in usage, though not etym. akin, BEE «pial nv, eq RA0:), prop. ‘there is nought Gp ea: a subst. or a pron. suffix (‘328 [verbal form, Ges 8195 0 TES FDS, BIN, FS, DDS, DS, also ~ 59" IDs, 435 DN): twice ab- ו‎ in late Heb., a nom. ‘28 אִין‎ ונְחנַא‎ PS Ne 4” (so sts. ny, KN, No™?-): once, in- correctly, את‎ Hg 27 ₪ denying existence absolutely Is 44° 47" אין ראָנִי‎ there is none a seeth me, lit. nought of one seeing me! אִין עלד‎ there is none else Dt 4% 1 K 5% Is 457°, 9 more commonly, in a limited sense, there is none here or at hand Ex 2” and he saw כִּי"א'[‎ איש‎ that there was no man (sc. there), Nu 21°;

• From Fields of Blood: Religion and the History of Violence (2014)

  It touches us within, lifts us momentarily beyond ourselves, so that we seem to inhabit our humanity more fully than usual and feel in touch with the deeper currents of life. If we no longer find this experience in a church or temple, we seek it in art, a musical concert, sex, drugs—or warfare. What this last may have to do with these other moments of transport may not be so obvious, but it is one of the oldest triggers of ecstatic experience. To understand why, it will be helpful to consider the development of our neuroanatomy . Each of us has not one but three brains that coexist uneasily. In the deepest recess of our gray matter we have an “old brain” that we inherited from the reptiles that struggled out of the primal slime 500 million years ago. Intent on their own survival, with absolutely no altruistic impulses, these creatures were solely motivated by mechanisms urging them to feed, fight, flee (when necessary), and reproduce. Those best equipped to compete mercilessly for food, ward off any threat, dominate territory, and seek safety naturally passed along their genes, so these self-centered impulses could only intensify. 13 But sometime after mammals appeared, they evolved what neuroscientists call the limbic system, perhaps about 120 million years ago. 14 Formed over the core brain derived from the reptiles, the limbic system motivated all sorts of new behaviors, including the protection and nurture of young as well as the formation of alliances with other individuals that were invaluable in the struggle to survive. And so, for the first time, sentient beings possessed the capacity to cherish and care for creatures other than themselves. 15 Although these limbic emotions would never be as strong as the “me first” drives still issuing from our reptilian core, we humans have evolved a substantial hard-wiring for empathy for other creatures, and especially for our fellow humans. Eventually, the Chinese philosopher Mencius (c. 371–288 BCE) would insist that nobody was wholly without such sympathy. If a man sees a child teetering on the brink of a well, about to fall in, he would feel her predicament in his own body and would reflexively, without thought for himself, lunge forward to save her. There would be something radically wrong with anyone who could walk past such a scene without a flicker of disquiet. For most, these sentiments were essential, though, Mencius thought, somewhat subject to individual will. You could stamp on these shoots of benevolence just as you could cripple or deform yourself physically. On the other hand, if you cultivated them, they would acquire a strength and dynamism of their own. 16 We cannot entirely understand Mencius’s argument without considering the third part of our brain.

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

  (d) The mystical explanation regards the Pentecostal Gift of Tongues in some way as a counterpart of the Confusion of Tongues, either as a temporary restoration of the original language of Paradise, or as a prophetic anticipation of the language of heaven in which all languages are united. This theory, which is more deep than clear, turns the heteroglossolalia into a homoglossolalia, and puts the miracle into the language itself and its temporary restoration or anticipation. Schelling calls the Pentecostal miracle "Babel reversed" (das umgekehrte Babel), and says: "Dem Ereigniss der Sprachenverwirrung lässt sich in der ganzen Folge der religiösen Geschichte nur Eines an die Seite stellen, die momentan wiederhergestellte Spracheinheit (oJmoglwssiva) am Pfingstfeste, mit dem das Christenthum, bestimmt das ganze Menschengeschlecht durch die Erkenntniss des Einen wahren Gottes wieder zur Einheit zu verknüpfen, seinen grossen Weg beginnt." (Einl. in d. Philos. der Mythologie, p. 109). A similar view was defended by Billroth (in his Com. on 1 Cor. 14, p. 177), who suggests that the primitive language combined elements of the different derived languages, so that each listener heard fragments of his own. Lange (II. 38) sees here the normal language of the inner spiritual life which unites the redeemed, and which runs through all ages of the church as the leaven of languages, regenerating, transforming, and consecrating them to sacred uses, but he assumes also, like Olshausen, a sympathetic rapport between speakers and hearers. Delitzsch (l.c. p. 1186) says: "Die apostolische Verkündigung erging damals in einer Sprache des Geistes, welche das Gegenbild der in Babel zerschellten Einen Menschheitssprache war und von allen ohne Unterschied der Sprachen gleichmässig verstanden wurde. Wie das weisse Licht alle Farben aus sich erschliesst, so fiel die geistgewirkte Apostelsprache wie in prismatischer Brechung verständlich in aller Ohren und ergreifend in aller Herzen. Es war ein Vorspiel der Einigung, in welcher die von Babel datirende Veruneinigung sich aufheben wird. Dem Sivan-Tag des steinernen Buchstabens trat ein Sivan-Tag des lebendigmachenden Geistes entgegen. Es war der Geburtstag der Kirche, der Geistesgemeinde im Unterschiede von der altestamentlichen Volksgemeinde; darum nennt Chrysostomus in einer Pfingsthomilie die Pentekoste die Metropole der Feste." Ewald’s view (VI. 116 sqq.) is likewise mystical, but original and expressed with his usual confidence. He calls the glossolalia an "Auflallen und Aufjauchzen der Christlichen Begeisterung, ein stürmisches Hervorbrechen aller der verborgenen Gefühle und Gedanken in ihrer vollsten Unmittelbarkeit und Gewalt." He says that on the day of Pentecost the most unusual expressions and synonyms of different languages (as ajbbav oJ pathvr, Gal. 4:6; Rom. 8:15, and mara;n ajqav 1 Cor. 16:22), with reminiscences of words of Christ as resounding from heaven, commingled in the vortex of a new language of the Spirit, and gave utterance to the exuberant joy of the young Christianity in stammering hymns of praise never heard before or since except in the weaker manifestations of the same gift in the Corinthian and other apostolic churches.

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

  The youth of Jesus is veiled in mystery. We know only one, but a very significant fact. When a boy of twelve years he astonished the doctors in the temple by his questions and answers, without repelling them by immodesty and premature wisdom, and filled his parents with reverence and awe by his absorption in the things of his heavenly Father, and yet was subject and obedient to them in all things. Here, too, there is a clear line of distinction between the supernatural miracle of history and the unnatural prodigy of apocryphal fiction, which represents Jesus as returning most learned answers to perplexing questions of the doctors about astronomy, medicine, physics, metaphysics, and hyperphysics.98 The external condition and surroundings of his youth are in sharp contrast with the amazing result of his public life. He grew up quietly and unnoticed in a retired Galilean mountain village of proverbial insignificance, and in a lowly carpenter-shop, far away from the city of Jerusalem, from schools and libraries, with no means of instruction save those which were open to the humblest Jew—the care of godly parents, the beauties of nature, the services of the synagogue, the secret communion of the soul with God, and the Scriptures of the Old Testament, which recorded in type and prophecy his own character and mission. All attempts to derive his doctrine from any of the existing schools and sects have utterly failed. He never referred to the traditions of the elders except to oppose them. From the Pharisees and Sadducees he differed alike, and provoked their deadly hostility. With the Essenes he never came in contact. He was independent of human learning and literature, of schools and parties. He taught the world as one who owed nothing to the world. He came down from heaven and spoke, out of the fulness of his personal intercourse with the great Jehovah. He was no scholar, no artist, no orator; yet was he wiser than all sages, he spake as never man spake, and made an impression on his age and all ages after him such as no man ever made or can make. Hence the natural surprise of his countrymen as expressed in the question: "From whence hath this men these things?" "How knoweth this man letters, having never learned?"99

• From The Four Vision Quests of Jesus (2015)

  At one point in his quest, Black Elk says that he noticed a small bird, “a black swallow flying all around me, singing, and stopped upon a bush not far away.”22 That image has power for me because what I saw one cold morning on a high building close to Harvard University was something very similar. I saw a black bird. I saw a crow. Let me stop for a moment before I say more because at times like this, when I share the substance of my first vision, I have to smile because I think I almost hear the “so that’s it?” reaction from my listeners, or in this case, my readers. I can almost hear the words inside their heads: You saw a crow? A bird? One bird? And that’s all? That’s the vision? Yes, that’s it. Not quite as impressive as the Book of Revelation or Black Elk Speaks . Not a burning bush or a rainbow teepee. Just a bird. A single bird. Like Black Elk, I saw a black bird, but in my case, it was a very large, very black, crow. As usual that morning I had been doing my lament, my praying for God to give me understanding. I stood in the center of my circle and turned to each of the six directions, drawing a spiritual gyroscope around myself to keep me in balance as I imagined myself stepping out into the mystery of God. I had been praying for quite a while, looking out, but with my eyes closed so I could remain within, when, quite unexpectedly, I felt someone watching me. This feeling is one I believe most people have experienced, but find difficult to define. It is that odd sensation that overtakes us when, for no reason we can clearly articulate, we believe we are being observed, watched. When that happens, we usually look around, which is exactly what I did on that gray Massachusetts morning. I looked around. And there, only a couple of yards away, sat an enormous black crow perched on the low wall that ran around the rooftop, staring directly at me with the obsidian eyes so characteristic of its species. It did not move. I did not move. I stared back, almost holding my breath, without any idea of what I should be doing except to remain quiet and pay attention. In that time, that strange vision quest time, all of the ordinary sounds around me (the distant traffic of a waking city) suddenly ceased. Nothing moved. Nothing made a noise. The crow and I were together in a soundless space. We were nowhere. We were everywhere. The time was now. The time was later. It felt alien. It felt intimate. I was me. I was not me. The only way to describe the encounter is to use this kind of paradoxical, poetic language. The vision was much more than what I physically saw.

• From The Four Vision Quests of Jesus (2015)

  This thought drove many people away from the Jesus community. It was a vision of messiahship that went to a place many people simply could not go. In both Jewish tradition and Native American tradition a Messiah figure could be several things (a visionary, a prophet, a war leader, a teacher), but not the Creator of the entire universe sitting next to you at dinner. The intimacy of that concept short circuits our almost primal thoughts about the distance between God and humanity. It can seem obscene, and certainly for those who persecuted the earliest Christians it was excuse enough for branding them as religiously perverted. Even today, many people find it impossible to embrace the messiahship of Jesus as the literal incarnation of God. They prefer to treat him like Wovoka, either accepting him as a well-meaning prophetic visionary or rejecting him as a delusional fanatic. Either way, the messiahship of Jesus remains firmly grounded in his identity as a human being. The radical Christian assertion that he is more than this, that he is a vision quest come to life, God in human form, is the quantum leap of faith that takes Jesus from Messiah to Christ. To take that leap we must accept Jesus not only as the messenger, but as the message itself. We must believe that what the human being, Jesus, experienced in his life was a spiritual quest so powerful that it could only have been taken by God. Therefore, God and Jesus are the same. They have the same name. In order to believe this, we need to do for Jesus what we have done for Black Elk and for Wovoka: we need to consider his vision. We need to understand what he saw. As much as we can, we need to enter into the quest with him and try to see the vision he experienced. Then we can come to the place of decision where we can decide whether we believe this is the God quest, the Christ vision, the thin place where God became human and dwelt among us. There are, of course, many different ways we can approach the Jesus story. We have the whole of the New Testament to explore in trying to understand Jesus and we have centuries of European church history to tell us what it all means. But I would like to offer a different path, one that begins in the ancient traditions of Native America and that takes us through the mystery of the vision quest to find the Christ we are seeking. If, in fact, the Jewish rabbi, Jesus of the first century, is truly the Christ of the twenty-first century, then he must be transcendent of time and culture. He must be as much a part of the Native story as he is of the story of any tribe or people. Consequently, we should be able to see his vision through the lenses of Native American tradition as clearly as through European thought.

• From The Four Vision Quests of Jesus (2015)

  Then I saw my mother and my father bending over a sick boy that was myself. And as I entered the teepee, someone was saying: ‘The boy is coming to; you had better give him some water.’”17 To what can we compare an epic vision such as Black Elk’s? The Book of Daniel? The Book of Revelation? Yes, exactly. Black Elk is the Native American equivalent of the prophet Daniel or John of Patmos. The visions he recounts are poetic images that are visual prophecy. They are spiritual ciphers for deeper theological meaning, a grand narrative of cosmic forces, all revolving around the central theme of revelation. There are animal figures, angelic beings, a host of elders, a mixture of colors, and mystic words of what is to come, all connected to this single person who, like Daniel and John, offers his testimony to us as an invitation into mystery. Christians from the Western tradition can look back to the visionaries of the Hebrew scriptures; Christians from the Native American tradition can do the same with Black Elk. His narrative, like Daniel’s and John’s, inspires a range of reactions. We can interpret these visions as imaginative poetry, spiritual prophecy, or private delusions. Whether or not we accept them, they are the provocative catalysts for some of our deepest theological questions: Do people really have visions like these? Are they real? Are they messages from God or just day dreams of an overly fervent faith? What do they mean, not only literally, but as mysterious elements in our religious tradition? Should we treat them as genuine encounters with the divine or as “religious CGI,” special effects that are stunning but fake? In his own prophetic way, Vine Deloria said that Black Elk’s meaning would come to us more clearly in an age when our heroes were only celebrities and our truths only choices from a menu of maxims. Maybe he was right. Ours is an age when vision has become more the property of Hollywood than of prophecy. Many people, Christians included, skip over the Book of Revelation as being either too convoluted to be of value or as the haunt of biblical fanatics who want to push an apocalyptic agenda. In the same way, Native American medicine men can be appreciated as colorful characters from America’s exotic past or as “witch doctors” who made up stories to impress the gullible. Our starting point to understand vision, from both the Native American and Christian perspective, must begin in this cultural climate that Vine anticipated when the level of our technology has rendered the idea of authentic spiritual vision suspect by making it too familiar. We trust the media, not the message. After all, Disney can produce dancing horses for us in any color we want. The path into vision that I want to chart is the broad area between the extremes of skepticism and literalism.

• From The Four Vision Quests of Jesus (2015)

  They embody the spiritual powers traditional Native Americans associate with the cardinal directions. Black Elk observes these spirit animals as they escort him into deeper levels of his vision. The vision shifts and Black Elk is brought to a great rainbow teepee where six old men are sitting, “and they looked older than men can ever be—old like hills, like stars.”7 These ancient beings present a cup of water to Black Elk, “the power to make live,”8 and a bow, “the power to destroy.”9 The elders, Grandfather figures, rise up to enormous size and prophesy to Black Elk ultimately showing him the tree of life that will shelter and prosper his people. But this bright vision is challenged by another reality as Black Elk is shown a time when the earth will be “silent in a sick green light”10 and “the hills look up afraid” and everywhere “the cries of frightened birds and sounds of fleeing wings”11 – the vision of the attack on his people by the blue coated Europeans. It is a dark and ominous portent, but in the end it is redeemed by a promise of healing, Then when the many little voices ceased, the great Voice said: “Behold the circle of the nation’s hoop, for it is holy, being endless, and thus all powers shall be one power in the people without end. Now they shall break camp and go forth upon the red road, and your Grandfathers shall walk with them. ” 12 These Grandfathers instruct Black Elk into the mysteries of his life, including his role as a healer. The Grandfather, “he of where the sun shines continually,”13 gives Black Elk a sacred pipe and tells him “With this pipe you shall walk the earth, and whatever sickens there you shall make well.”14 Finally, the sixth Grandfather, “he who was the Spirit of the Earth,”15 appears to Black Elk with “hair long and white, his face was all in wrinkles and his eyes were deep and dim,” and slowly transforms before him into a young boy, which Black Elk recognizes: “ … I knew that he was myself with all the years that would be mine at last.”16 This spirit tells Black Elk he is receiving his vision because his people will have great need of him in the days to come. Many other visions are part of his Great Vision: images of eagles and buffalo, of young men and maidens, of a sacred nation walking the sacred way. To fully appreciate the complexity and intricacy of the total vision one would need to read the book, but let us bring it to a close here by saying that at the end of his experience Black Elk is led by the original two angelic figures back to his home camp, where he is still lying sick as a boy: “I could see my people’s village far ahead of me, and I walked very fast, for I was homesick now.

• From The Four Vision Quests of Jesus (2015)

  Because it comes to him on a mountain, it comes from the combined power of all that is alive in the spiritual realm. Mountains are spirit-filled. They are like a camp meeting for what European Christians would call “the great cloud of witness,” the place where these clouds of spirit seem to be caught, mingled, and held into place by the anchor of the great mountain. It is no wonder to Native Christians that Moses went up Sinai to receive his vision of the tablets. In the same way, Jesus would go up the mountain to understand his role in life as a spiritual person. The purpose of the vision quest in Native tradition is to reveal how a person is to live in a spiritual way to help his or her people. The quest can show us what our holy assignment is to be, what gifts we have to share, or what work we can accomplish in bringing good medicine home with us. Among all of these possibilities, only one is missing: we never receive a vision that shows us how to be above others. People who place the bones of their dead together in a common grave do not believe that some people have a right to be buried in grand mausoleums. The pharaohs of Egypt wanted their burial sites to be unmistakably huge and imposing; the Emperors of China wanted armies of terracotta soldiers to guard them in their final resting place; the great leaders of the West are still interred in graves that seek to set them apart as special beings. The vision of the mountain would say to Native Christians, “It shall not be so among you.”18 In the Dakotas I would have to ask friends to point out the medicine man or medicine woman for me when we were at a gathering. You could not spot them. They wore no special clothing, no signs of office, no hints of who they were other than a part of the community. To catch the cultural nuance, imagine the Pope dressed like any other person on the street. The vision of the mountain took Jesus to the heights of spiritual power and surrounded him with the presence of the spirits, a cloud of witnesses. The temptation of the self to imagine that he is, therefore, better than others confronts him, just as it confronts any of us who inflate ourselves with power or status. In response, the Native Messiah asserts that he is only one of the People. Jesus calls out from the mountaintop: “worship only God and serve God alone.”19 He proclaims that in a community sealed under the Native Covenant there are no hierarchies. There are many roles to be filled, many visions to be shared, and some of us may be granted an especially powerful vision, but in the end we are all only servants of God, only one small part of a much greater mountain.

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

  In this view, the loss of so many of those old works of art, which, as the sheer apparatus of idolatry, were unsparingly destroyed by the iconoclastic storms of the succeeding period, is not much to be regretted. It was in. the later middle ages, when church architecture had already reached its height, that Christian art succeeded in unfolding an unprecedented bloom of painting and sculpture, and in far surpassing, on the field of painting at least, the masterpieces of the ancient Greeks. Sculpture, which can present man only in his finite limitation, without the flush of life or the beaming eye, like a shadowy form from the realm of the dead, probably attained among the ancient Greeks the summit of perfection, above which even Canova and Thorwaldsen do not rise. But painting, which can represent man in his organic connection with the world about him, and, to a certain degree, in his unlimited depth of soul and spirit, as expressed in the countenance and the eye, has waited for the influence of the Christian principle to fulfil its perfect mission, and in the Christs of Leonardo da Vinci, Fra Beato Angelico, Correggio, and Albrecht Dürer, and the Madonnas of Raphael, has furnished the noblest works which thus far adorn the history of the art. § 112. Consecrated Gifts. It remains to mention in this connection yet another form of decoration for churches, which had already been customary among heathen and Jews: consecrated gifts. Thus the temple of Delphi, for example, had become exceedingly rich through such presents of weapons, silver and golden vessels, statues, &c. In almost every temple of Neptune hung votive tablets, consecrated to the god in thankfulness for deliverance from shipwreck by him.1227 A similar custom seems to have existed among the Jews; for I Sam. xxi. implies that David had deposited the sword of the Philistine Goliath in the sanctuary. In the court of the priests a multitude of swords, lances, costly vessels, and other valuable things, were to be seen. Constantine embellished the altar space in the church of Jerusalem with rich gifts of gold, silver, and precious stones. Sozomen tells us1228 that Cyril, bishop of Jerusalem, in a time of famine, sold the treasures and sacred gifts of the church, and that afterwards some one recognized in the dress of an actress the vestment he once presented to the church.

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

  We should remember at the outset that we have to deal here with nothing less than a solution of the world-problem, and should approach it with reverence and an humble sense of the limitation of our mental capacities. We stand, as it were, before a mountain whose top is lost in the clouds. Many who dared to climb to the summit have lost their vision in the blinding snowdrifts. Dante, the deepest thinker among poets, deems the mystery of predestination too far removed from mortals who cannot see "the first cause in its wholeness," and too deep even for the comprehension of the saints in Paradise, who enjoy the beatific vision, yet "do not know all the elect," and are content "to will whatsoever God wills."848 Calvin himself confesses that, the predestination of God is a labyrinth, from which the mind of man can by no means extricate itself."849 The only way out of the labyrinth is the Ariadne thread of the love of God in Christ, and this is a still greater, but more blessed mystery, which we can adore rather than comprehend. The Facts of Experience. We find everywhere in this world the traces of a revealed God and of a hidden God; revealed enough to strengthen our faith, concealed enough to try our faith. We are surrounded by mysteries. In the realm of nature we see the contrasts of light and darkness, day and night, heat and cold, summer and winter, life and death, blooming valleys and barren deserts, singing birds and poisonous snakes, useful animals and ravenous beasts, the struggle for existence and the survival of the fittest. Turning to human life, we find that one man is born to prosperity, the other to misery; one a king, the other a beggar; one strong and healthy, the other a helpless cripple; one a genius, the other an idiot; one inclined to virtue, another to vice; one the son of a saint, the other of a criminal; one in the darkness of heathenism, another in the light of Christianity. The best men as well as the worst are exposed to fatal accidents, and whole nations with their innocent offspring are ravaged and decimated by war, pestilence, and famine. Who can account for all these and a thousand other differences and perplexing problems? They are beyond the control of man’s will, and must be traced to the inscrutable will of God, whose ways are past finding out. Here, then, is predestination, and, apparently, a double predestination to good or evil, to happiness or misery. Sin and death are universal facts which no sane man can deny. They constitute the problem of problems. And the only practical solution of the problem is the fact of redemption. "Where sin has abounded, grace did abound more exceedingly; that as sin reigned in death, even so might grace reign through righteousness unto eternal life, through Jesus Christ our Lord "(Rom. 5:20, 21).

• From Dreams from My Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance (1995)

  Eventually, the rain stopped, and we found ourselves looking on a barren landscape of gravel and shrub and the occasional baobab tree, its naked, searching branches decorated with the weaver bird’s spherical nests. I remembered reading somewhere that the baobab could go for years without flowering, surviving on the sparsest of rainfall; and seeing the trees there in the hazy afternoon light, I understood why men believed they possessed a special power—that they housed ancestral spirits and demons, that humankind first appeared under such a tree. It wasn’t merely the oddness of their shape, their almost prehistoric outline against the stripped-down sky. “They look as if each one could tell a story,” Auma said, and it was true, each tree seemed to possess a character, a character neither benevolent nor cruel but simply enduring, with secrets whose depths I would never plumb, a wisdom I would never pierce. They both disturbed and comforted me, those trees that looked as if they might uproot themselves and simply walk away, were it not for the knowledge that on this earth one place is not so different from another—the knowledge that one moment carries within it all that’s gone on before. It’s been six years since that first trip to Kenya, and much in the world has changed. For me, it’s been a relatively quiet period, less a time of discovery than of consolidation, of doing the things that we tell ourselves we finally must do to grow up. I went to Harvard Law School, spending most of three years in poorly lit libraries, poring through cases and statutes. The study of law can be disappointing at times, a matter of applying narrow rules and arcane procedure to an uncooperative reality; a sort of glorified accounting that serves to regulate the affairs of those who have power—and that all too often seeks to explain, to those who do not, the ultimate wisdom and justness of their condition. But that’s not all the law is. The law is also memory; the law also records a long-running conversation, a nation arguing with its conscience.

• From Get Out of Your Head: Stopping the Cycle of Anxious Thoughts (2020)

  What you have learned and received and heard and seen in me—practice these things, and the God of peace will be with you.6 Yes, I had been faithful to evict certain gloom-and-doom thoughts from my mind, but unless I helped better thinking move in and settle down, I’d keep trapping myself in terrible thoughts. There was something here in Philippians 4 that I knew I should not miss. In my time with Curt, I sensed Paul saying, “Look. Either you can try to guard your heart and mind on your own, or you can surrender that guardianship to God.” My way of guarding my heart evidently involved sky-high walls and a fondness for “Good” to mask my hurt and growing anger toward God and others. “How are you, Jennie?” “Good! Doing great!” “And now? Still good?” “Better than good…really! You talk! Let’s talk about you.” God’s way was better. His way would lead me to peace. Or that’s how I read what Paul was saying, anyway. If I would practice thinking what was honorable, what was just, what was lovely and excellent and all the rest, I would experience the peace of God in my heart. I really, really wanted that peace. Then why was I still so cynical? Surprised by Beauty The first time I ever saw a professional musical, I was a newlywed in my early twenties. A Broadway company was touring, and Les Misérables had come to our Little Rock stage. I’d been to school plays, and I remember thinking, How different can this be? Very different, it turned out. Zac and I were just out of college and poor, but we scraped together enough funds for the cheapest tickets. For the entirety of the show—as little Cosette, dreaming of a better life, sang “Castle on a Cloud,” and as Éponine, who was desperately in love with Marius, who sadly was not desperately in love with her, sang “On My Own,” and as the whole cast, it seemed, sang “One Day More”—I draped myself over the rail that separated me from the orchestra section down below, trying in vain to grasp all I was seeing: the rotating stage with its elaborate backdrops, the gorgeous costumes, the singing of phrases so beautiful they made me cry. I sat there stunned, as though I’d never seen a musical even once in my life, because as I realized that evening, until then I had not. Beauty interrupts us, it awakens us, it undoes us, it cuts us open, and restarts our hearts. Beauty is God’s evidence of something far more wonderful coming, a world beyond the one we can imagine, even in the most spectacular moments here. A God better than what we hope for. A God who blows our minds. At this and a thousand other encounters with things that are excellent, that are lovely, that are true, we come away different from how we were before. We come away impacted.