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 Way of Being (1980)

  Each moment of the nine days seemed to add more threads to a kind of complicated tapestry that was unfolding before our eyes and being woven by participants . . . some using strong threads, others bold colors, others delicate touches. For me it became so awesome, so complicated a masterpiece of artwork, that until I could stand back from a distance and view the entire tapestry against an uncluttered background, it could not be fully understood or appreciated. Even then, in its fullness, it would still appear to change each day and never be completely finished. The still unfinished part is all the insights that are hitting me at the most unexpected times. The diversity of the threads in this tapestry can be explained by the incredible variety that exists among; the participants: a youth of eighteen and a woman of seventy-five in the same group; ardent Marxists and conservative business and professional people in the Spanish workshop; devoutly religious persons of many faiths, and those who scoff at religion; athletic men and women, and paralyzed persons whose lives are spent in wheelchairs. All of these differing persons have been active participants, and each has contributed his or her distinctive self in the process. The Chaotic, Painful Aspects I would not want it to appear that the group develops smoothly. The initial sessions are often chaotic. Usually there is disbelief that the workshop plan is to arise from all of us together. Participants are suspicious of the staff. (In the international workshop in Spain, persons expressed a general dislike of the United States and its economic imperialism—a dislike that extended to American staff and participants.) There is confusion because of the lack of structure. The staff is criticized for not having made plans—the participants are reluctant to own their own power. There are sometimes violent disagreements. There is a tendency to make “speeches” without listening to what has been said. Rivalry and power-seeking are evident, as members attempt to take control of the group, or to “give leadership.” Squabbling arguments erupt over how to divide into small groups, a step desired by nearly everyone—but a dozen methods are proposed and then rejected. Similar tensions arise over such things as the scheduling of special-interest groups. But in the presence of the facilitative attitude created by staff and by many participants, individuals gradually begin to hear one another, and then slowly to understand and to respect. The atmosphere becomes a working atmosphere, both in the large and the small groups, as people begin to delve into themselves and their relationships. As this working process goes more deeply, it can bring great personal pain and distress. Nearly always, the pain has to do with insights into self, or with the fright caused by a change in the self-concept, or with distress over changing relationships. The same woman who, at the end of the workshop, was able to write poetically of her growth, wrote this while involved in the process:

• From The Erotic Mind (1995)

  To uncover what has long been hidden, be patient and gentle; allow the erotic mind to reveal itself at its own pace as it tests the waters. Practice offering yourself invitations to see more, to comprehend more, to accept more, to enjoy more. Each invitation carries with it the freedom to decline or to wait. The goal of erotic self-understanding is furthered by a willingness to ease up in the face of your own reluctance. These three attitudes taken together—suspending judgments, trusting yourself, and using a gentle approach—help bring you face to face with eros in action without being afraid. Armed with an appreciation of paradox, a willingness to venture boldly into uncharted territory, and a sense of awe and wonder, you are ready to uncap the wellsprings of passion. And what of fulfillment? You will discover that passion and fulfillment are intricately linked yet distinct experiences. Just as surely as passion strives for fulfillment, fulfillment longs for passion. Between the two, eros flourishes. Part IREALMS OF PASSION1PEAK EROTIC EXPERIENCESUnforgettable turn-ons are windows into your erotic mind. One of the most effective and enjoyable ways to unlock the mysteries of the eros is to reminisce about your most compelling turn-ons. During these moments of high arousal the crucial elements—your partner, the setting, perhaps a tantalizing twist of luck—all mesh like instruments of an orchestra, producing a crescendo of passion. Look closely at a peak turn-on and you’ll undoubtedly sense that something close to the core of your being has been touched. And because everything is accentuated during such moments, they reveal an enormous amount about how your eroticism works. As a young psychology student in the 1960s I was influenced by Abraham Maslow, who called for a “psychology of health” to counterbalance the overemphasis on problems that he believed was distorting our view of human beings. He broke new ground by studying people he called “self-actualizers”—those who are comfortable with themselves, relatively free of neurotic conflicts from the past, and available to tackle the challenges of living with creativity and zest. Self-actualizers are still largely ignored by psychologists, even though they have much to teach us about emotional well-being. Maslow was equally intrigued by a wide variety of peak experiences—such as being enraptured by a beautiful piece of music or a painting, a special communion with nature, or the joy of bodily expression in dance or athletics, to name just a few.1 During these moments of ecstasy we are fully present in the moment, unselfconsciously expressing our truest selves with ease and grace, grateful to be alive. Even though peak experiences aren’t “productive” in the usual sense, participants invariably describe them as profoundly positive and sometimes even life-changing.

• From Disrupted: My Misadventure in the Start-Up Bubble (2014)

  Eventually some customers would become disenchanted with the software and refuse to renew for a second year. By then HubSpot’s telemarketers would have found new customers to replace the ones who were leaving. By 2011, HubSpot had about five thousand customers. That year, the company raised a new round of funding and used the money to acquire a company with good engineers. The new team threw out the old coders and began rewriting the software from scratch. By 2013, when I arrive, HubSpot is selling a much better product. The software is still not perfect, and one program in particular, the content management system, needs a lot of improvement. The code is not based on cutting-edge computer science or sophisticated artificial intelligence algorithms. These are just fairly simple programs that automate basic marketing chores, like sending email to a list of contacts. But friends of mine who use HubSpot tell me the software can more than hold its own against other marketing software products. One market research website, which rates software based on customer reviews, ranks HubSpot in first place among marketing automation programs. Better yet, all those years of selling a weak product have forced HubSpot to get really good at generating hype. The vast majority of HubSpot’s employees work not in engineering or software development, but in sales and marketing. They spend their days cold-calling customers, cranking out blog posts, posting automated email campaigns, flooding Twitter and Facebook with promotional messages, running webinars and podcasts, talking to user groups, and preparing for HubSpot’s big annual customer conference, an extravaganza with musical acts, comedians, and inspirational speakers. Over the course of seven years, Halligan and Shah have built a hype machine that goes beyond anything I’ve ever encountered. There seems to be nothing HubSpot will not do to get publicity. In 2011, the company took advantage of a service that Guinness World Records offers in which anyone can suggest a new category, set a record, and get an official Guinness World Records title. A spokesperson for Guinness says HubSpot came to Guinness with an idea to hold the “world’s largest webinar,” and then won the honor by holding a webinar that drew 10,899 participants. The spokesperson says HubSpot paid Guinness $8,700 for the service. HubSpot’s record still stands, though more than a dozen others have tried and failed to do better, according to Guinness. So far, HubSpot has devoted all of its energy to selling software. But in 2013 Halligan and Shah are getting ready to point their hype cannon at a new customer, with a new product. The product they will sell is HubSpot’s stock, and the customers will be investors on Wall Street. Wall Street, I’m pretty sure, is going to eat this up. I take the job. Four The Happy!! Awesome!! Start-Up Cult One month later I’m driving home from my first day on the new job and telling myself that everything will be okay.

• From The Mammoth Book of Best New Erotica Volume 10 (2011)

  364 Rose B. Thorny they welcome it, that harbinger of flowers, those splashes of colour bursting from the neat gardens framed in manicured lawns. It is not the light spring rainfall I await. I bide my time, until the sultry, charged air of ponderous summer heat pulses and swells as a fecund belly, then births the relentless deluge of a thunderstorm. The rumbling stirs my blood and the bolts of lightning explode in my brain, tearing me open, even as they rip the sky apart, exposing my innards to the elements. This is what I wait for throughout the crisp brilliance of autumn, the glacial chill of winter, the fresh vibrancy of spring. I wait for the cloudburst and the torrents, the terrifying power of Thor himself, that drives even the bravest of ordinary souls indoors. I am not ordinary. But the time must be right, too. Mornings and afternoons are not the right time. Too many people rushing about trading whatever it is they have to offer in payment for their lives. They look like so many staccato raindrops stampeding across the pavement. And there are way too many children running back and forth, stomping in puddles, laughing and shouting and making more noise than the heavy raindrops beating a tattoo on my tin roof. Even during a daytime storm, there is too much light for me to indulge myself. Even in an ominous daytime storm, there is not enough darkness for ; me to watch the keepers of all those other hearths. Only when it rains at dusk and in the night do I allow myself the pleasure of making sport of their imagined safety. I wait until they’re all ensconced in their little dwellings, their tidy little homes, with the frilly curtains and the polished hardwood floors; their little stick houses. Many people favour the easy-to-spot yellow raincoats, the colour of sunshine and daffodils and fresh lemons. Others prefer the pretty paisleys and popular multi-hued geometric designs. I choose black, of course. Black doesn’t reflect the sweeping beams of random late headlights turning into driveways. If the conditions are just right — which is what they are this evening — if the summer storm is such that the heat of the day is not dissipated by the sheets of rain, I wear little, if anything, under the slicker. I am not without humour. Barefoot, I slip into my tall, black rain boots and stand before the full length mirror in the foyer. I perch the wide-brimmed rain hat atop my head and, otherwise naked, strike the cheesecake poses that made Bettie Page a hot chick. I am not a hot chick and that is Only When it Rains 365

• From The Mammoth Book of Best New Erotica Volume 10 (2011)

  A hammock stretches itself between two coconut trees. Erosion of the beach has exposed the skirted black roots of the trees, shameful like a widow’s slip showing. A bulbous, black termite nest hangs in one, a malignant tumor. The termites’ tunneled tracks scar the tree from the inside out, an old man’s raised and scabbed veins, but the termites shy from light and wow’t cross the whitewashed trunks. I shed my many-pocketed vest and lie in the hammock. She’ll know I’m no longer watching, the third eye closed. A skinny horse nearby strips a banana tree of its leaves, its grinding molars audible even over the constant, hammering waves. The harsh sun blotches the back of my eyelids. Inside the coconut trunk, the termites’ busy drone lulls me into siesta. Kiara approaches me on the beach, scarab skirts crackling around her. A mantilla, flowing from a tortoise shell comb, falls over her shoulders. She peels back her webbed veil, peels back the skin of her lovely face, revealing a travesty of decay. My Canon has captured the slivered hints of her deterioration just before her annual donning of full vestments. Her nose, earlobe, the corner of her lips: rotting like a leper. She climbs into the hammock and tucks the gecko tail behind her ear, a flower that grows reptilian limbs. The ocean froths behind her, beating its fists against the pebbles and shells, which chatter and clatter with each grasping wave. Her long nails tap, a beetling click click click. Castanets of my soul. Scrape scratch tease the inside of my skin, palms and shins inflamed with her inside me. She crouches over me, her back to me, astride me, so graceful the hammock doesn’t rock. I pry the comb from her scalp and run the mantis-limb prongs _ 96 J. D. Munro through her hair. She tips her head back, her black hair brushing my chest, scampering ants tickling. Her wet hair drips. Dark water stains my nipples, leaves tracks down my belly, pools in my navel. Her hair oozes, pungent unguent, an urgent seeping. Smell of damp mulch, a gold-bearing alluvial soil. Black secretion, amnion seething, leaching weeping coils in my fist, dripping ink tattooing my hide. Black dye. No, Malele points, shrieking. Roja. Sangre drips down my cheek. I poke out my tongue to lick, to taste the brine of her, but feel a tickling instead.

• From Cultish (2021)

  “It moved you, it inspired you. . . . I was just enthralled .” Jones didn’t convince all the people Leslie loved—bright, family-oriented folks who objectively had nothing in common with the guy—to follow him to the ends of the earth using some form of cryptic mind magic. “It was with language,” another Jonestown survivor told me fervently. “That’s how he gained and kept control.” Boasting the intonation and passion of a Baptist preacher, the complex theorizings of an Aristotelian philosopher, the folksy wit of a countryside fabler, and the ferocious zeal of a demented tyrant, Jim Jones was a linguistic chameleon who possessed a monster arsenal of shrewd rhetorical strategies, which he wielded to attract and condition followers of all stripes. This is what the most cunning cultish leaders do: Instead of sticking to one unchanging lexis to represent a unified doctrine, they customize their language according to the individual in front of them. Known for quote s like “Socialism is older than the Bible by far” and “A capitalist mentality [is] the lowest vibration at which one could operate in this already dense plane of existence,” Jones’s Frankensteinian oratory often referenced political theory and metaphysics in the same breath. “His vocabulary could change quickly from being rather backwoods and homey to being quite intellectual,” recalled Garry Lambrev, a poet and Peoples Temple vet from back in its Redwood Valley days. “He had an enormous vocabulary. He read an unbelievable amount. I don’t know where he found the time.” A quick-changing vocabulary used for social capital: A linguist might tell you Jones was a sly practitioner of code-switching, or fluidly alternating between multiple language varieties. Among the nondiabolical, code-switching is an efficient (and usually unconscious) way of using every linguistic resource at your disposal to handle a verbal exchange most effectively. One might code-switch between dialects or languages from one setting to the next, or even within a single conversation, to express a specific mood, emphasize a statement, adapt to a social convention, or communicate a certain identity. The stakes of code-switching can be as high as ensuring respect and even survival, as is the case for speakers of certain marginalized ethnolects, like African American English, who learn to shift to “Standard English” in settings where they could be judged or persecuted otherwise. And then, in a kind of opposite way, code-switching can be used to connivingly gain trust. This was Jim Jones’s specialty. Like a Machiavellian version of my twelve-year-old self slipping into evangelicalese at my friend’s megachurch, Jones learned how to meet each follower on their linguistic level, which sent an instant signal that he understood them and their backgrounds uniquely. Starting early in life, Jones carefully studied the speech stylings of compelling populist pastors and politicians from Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and Father Divine (a Black spiritual leader and mentor to Jones) to Hitler. He stole the best bits and added his own Jonesian twist.

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

  Among his peculiar expressions, besides the constant use of "kingdom of heaven," is the designation of God as "our heavenly Father," and of Jerusalem as "the holy city" and "the city of the Great King." In the fulness of the teaching of Christ he surpasses all except John. Nothing can be more solemn and

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

  He omits important parables, but alone gives the interesting parable of the seed growing secretly and bearing first the blade, then the ear, then the full grain in the ear (4:26–29). It is an interesting feature to which Dr. Lange first has directed attention, that Mark lays emphasis on the periods of pause and rest which "rhythmically intervene between the several great victories achieved by Christ." He came out from his obscure abode in Nazareth; each fresh advance in his public life is preceded by a retirement, and each retirement is followed by a new and greater victory. The contrast between the contemplative rest and the vigorous action is striking and explains the overpowering effect by revealing its secret spring in the communion with God and with himself. Thus we have after his baptism a retirement to the wilderness in Judaea before he preached in Galilee (1:12); a retirement to the ship (3:7); to the desert on the eastern shore of the lake of Galilee (6:31); to a mountain (6:46); to the border land of Tyre and Sidon (7:24); to Decapolis (7:31); to a high mountain (9:2); to Bethany (11:1); to Gethsemane (14:34); his rest in the grave before the resurrection; and his withdrawal from the world and his reappearance in the victories of the gospel preached by his disciples. "The ascension of the Lord forms his last withdrawal, which is to be followed by his final onset and absolute victory."961 Doctrinal Position. Mark has no distinct doctrinal type, but is catholic, irenic, unsectarian, and neutral as regards the party questions within the apostolic church. But this is not the result of calculation or of a tendency to obliterate and conciliate existing differences.962 Mark simply represents the primitive form of Christianity itself before the circumcision controversy broke out which occasioned the apostolic conference at Jerusalem twenty years after the founding of the church. His Gospel is Petrine without being anti-Pauline, and Pauline without being anti-Petrine. Its doctrinal tone is the same as that of the sermons of Peter in the Acts. It is thoroughly practical. Its preaches Christianity, not theology. The same is true of the other Gospels, with this difference, however, that Matthew has a special reference to Jewish, Luke to Gentile readers, and that both make their selection accordingly under the guidance of the Spirit and in accordance with their peculiar charisma and aim, but without altering or coloring the facts. Mark stands properly between them just as Peter stood between James and Paul. The Style. The style of Mark is unclassical, inelegant, provincial, homely, poor and repetitious in vocabulary, but original, fresh, and picturesque, and enlivened by interesting touches and flickers..963 He was a stranger to the arts of rhetoric and unskilled in literary composition, but an attentive listener, a close observer, and faithful recorder of actual events. He is strongly Hebraizing, and uses often the Hebrew and, but seldom the argumentative for.

• From A Way of Being (1980)

  ALTERED STATES OF CONSCIOUSNESS But some go even further in their theories. Researchers such as Grof and Grof (1977) and Lilly (1973) believe that persons are able to advance beyond the ordinary level of consciousness. Their studies appear to reveal that in altered states of consciousness, persons feel they are in touch with, and grasp the meaning of, this evolutionary flow. They experience it as tending toward a transcending experience of unity. They picture the individual self as being dissolved in a whole area of higher values, especially beauty, harmony, and love. The person feels at one with the cosmos. Hard-headed research seems to be confirming the mystic’s experience of union with the universal. For me, this point of view is confirmed by my more recent experience in working with clients, and especially in dealing with intensive groups. I described earlier those characteristics of a growth-promoting relationship that have been investigated and supported by research. But recently, my view has broadened into a new area which cannot as yet be studied empirically. When I am at my best, as a group facilitator or as a therapist, I discover another characteristic. I find that when I am closest to my inner, intuitive self, when I am somehow in touch with the unknown in me, when perhaps I am in a slightly altered state of consciousness, then whatever I do seems to be full of healing. Then, simply my presence is releasing and helpful to the other. There is nothing I can do to force this experience, but when I can relax and be close to the transcendental core of me, then I may behave in strange and impulsive ways in the relationship, ways which I cannot justify rationally, which have nothing to do with my thought processes. But these strange behaviors turn out to be right, in some odd way: it seems that my inner spirit has reached out and touched the inner spirit of the other. Our relationship transcends itself and becomes a part of something larger. Profound growth and healing and energy are present. This kind of transcendent phenomenon has certainly been experienced at times in groups in which I have worked, changing the lives of some of those involved. One participant in a workshop put it eloquently: “I found it to be a profound spiritual experience. I felt the oneness of spirit in the community. We breathed together, felt together, even spoke for one another. I felt the power of the ‘life force’ that infuses each of us—whatever that is. I felt its presence without the usual barricades of ‘me-ness’ or ‘you-ness’—it was like a meditative experience when I feel myself as a center of consciousness, very much a part of

• From A Way of Being (1980)

  The transformation from one state to another is a sudden shift, a nonlinear event, in which many factors act on one another at once. It is especially interesting to me that this phenomenon has already been demonstrated by Don (1977–1978) in his investigation of Gendlin’s concept of “experiencing” in psychotherapy (Gendlin, 1978). When a hitherto repressed feeling is fully and acceptantly experienced in awareness during the therapeutic relationship, there is not only a definitely fell: psychological shift, but also a concomitant physiological change, as a new state of insight is achieved. Prigogine’s theory appears to shed light on meditation, relaxation techniques, and altered states of consciousness, in which fluctuations are augmented by various means. It gives support to the value of fully recognizing and expressing one’s feelings—positive or negative—thus permitting the full perturbation of the system. Prigogine recognizes the strong resemblance between his “science of complexity” and the views of Eastern sages and mystics, as well as the philosophies of Alfred North Whitehead and Henri Bergson. His view points, he says, toward “a deep collective vision.” Rather amazingly, the title of his latest book is From Being to Becoming (1979), a strange label for a volume by a chemist-philosopher. His conclusion can be stated very briefly: “The more complex a system, the greater its potential for self-transcendence: its parts cooperate to reorganize it” (Ferguson, 1979). Thus, from theoretical physics and chemistry comes some confirmation of the validity of experiences that are transcendent, indescribable, unexpected, transformational—the sort of phenomena that I and my colleagues have observed and felt as concomitants of the person-centered approach. A HYPOTHESIS FOR THE FUTURE As I try to take into account the scope of the various themes I have presented, along with some of the available evidence that appears to support them, I am led to formulate a broad hypothesis. In my mind, this hypothesis is very tentative. But, for the sake of clarity, I will state it in definite terms. I hypothesize that there is a formative directional tendency in the universe, which can be traced and observed in stellar space, in crystals, in microorganisms, in more complex organic life, and in human beings. This is an evolutionary tendency toward greater order, greater complexity, greater interrelatedness. In humankind, this tendency exhibits itself as the individual moves from a single-cell origin to complex organic functioning, to knowing and sensing below the level of consciousness, to a conscious awareness of the organism and the external world, to a transcendent awareness of the harmony and unity of the cosmic system, including humankind. It seems to me just possible that this hypothesis could be a base upon which we could begin to build a theory for humanistic psychology. It definitely forms a base for the person-centered approach.

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

  worthless or even mischievous, because confounding and misleading. Darling’s list of English works on the Apocalypse contains nearly fifty-four columns (I., 1732–1786). General Character of the Apocalypse. The "Revelation" of John, or rather "of Jesus Christ" through John,1244 appropriately closes the New Testament. It is the one and only prophetic book, but based upon the discourses of our Lord on the destruction of Jerusalem and the end of the world, and his second advent (Matt. 24). It has one face turned back to the prophecies of old, the other gazing into the future. It combines the beginning and the end in Him who is "the Alpha and the Omega." It reminds one of the mysterious sphinx keeping ceaseless watch, with staring eyes, at the base of the Great Pyramid. "As many words as many mysteries," says Jerome; "Nobody knows what is in it," adds Luther.1245 No book has been more misunderstood and abused; none calls for greater modesty and reserve in interpretation.1246 The opening and closing chapters are as clear and dazzling as sunlight, and furnish spiritual nourishment and encouragement to the plainest Christian; but the intervening visions are, to most readers, as dark as midnight, yet with many stars and the full moon illuminating the darkness. The Epistles to the Seven Churches, the description of the heavenly Jerusalem, and the anthems and doxologies1247 which are interspersed through the mysterious visions, and glister like brilliant jewels on a canopy of richest black, are among the most beautiful, sublime, edifying, and inspiring portions of the Bible, and they ought to guard us against a hasty judgment of those chapters which we may be unable to understand. The Old Testament prophets were not clearly understood until the fulfilment cast its light upon them, and yet they served a most useful purpose as books of warning, comfort, and hope for the coming Messiah. The Revelation will be fully revealed when the new heavens and the new earth appear—not before.1248 "A prophet" (says the sceptical DeWette in his Commentary on Revelation, which was his last work) "is essentially an inspired man, an interpreter of God, who announces the Word of God to men in accordance with, and within the limits of, the divine truth already revealed through Moses in the Old Testament, through Christ in the New (the ajpokavluyi" musthrivou, Rom. 16:25. Prophecy rests on faith in a continuous providence of God ruling over the whole world, and with peculiar efficacy over Israel and the congregation of Christ, according to the moral laws revealed through Moses and Christ especially the laws of retribution.

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

  The eternal generation, conceived as an intellectual process, is the eternal self-knowledge of God; reduced to ethical terms, it is his eternal and absolute love in its motion and working within himself. In his argument for the consubstantiality of the Son, Athanasius, in his four orations against the Arians, besides adducing the proof from Scripture, which presides over and permeates all other arguments, sets out now in a practical method from the idea of redemption, now in a speculative, from the idea of God. Christ has delivered us from the curse and power of sin, reconciled us with God, and made us partakers of the eternal, divine life; therefore he must himself be God. Or, negatively: If Christ were a creature, he could not redeem other creatures from sin and death. It is assumed that redemption is as much and as strictly a divine work, as creation.1404 Starting from the idea of God, Athanasius argues: The relation of Father is not accidental, arising in time; else God would be changeable;1405 it belongs as necessarily to the essence and character of God as the attributes of eternity, wisdom, goodness, and holiness; consequently he must have been Father from eternity, and this gives the eternal generation of the Son.1406 The divine fatherhood and sonship is the prototype of all analagous relations on earth. As there is no Son without Father, no more is there Father without Son. An unfruitful Father were like a dark light, or a dry fountain, a self-contradiction. The non-existence of creatures, on the contrary, detracts nothing from the perfection of the Creator, since he always has the power to create when he will.1407 The Son is of the Father’s own interior essence, while the creature is exterior to God and dependent on the act of his will.1408 God, furthermore, cannot be conceived without reason (a[logo"), wisdom, power, and according to the Scriptures (as the Arians themselves concede) the Son is the Logos, the wisdom, the power, the Word of God, by which all things were made. As light rises from fire, and is inseparable from it, so the Word from God, the Wisdom from the Wise, and the Son from the Father.1409 The Son, therefore, was in the beginning, that is, in the beginning of the eternal divine being, in the original beginning, or from eternity. He himself calls himself one with the Father, and Paul praises him as God blessed forever.1410 Finally Christ cannot be a proper object of worship, as he is represented in Scripture and has always been regarded in the Church, without being strictly divine. To worship a creature is idolatry.

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

  This treatment of the mediaeval theory of the eucharist would be incomplete without giving some of the marvellous stories which bear witness to the excessive reverence for the sacred host and blood. One of the most famous, the story of the monk, who was cured of doubts by seeing the host exude blood, is told by Alexander of Hales, Bonaventura,1702 and others. Cases when real blood was seen in the chalice were not infrequent. The host sometimes remained uninjured amid the ashes of a burnt church.1703 Caesar of Heisterbach relates several cases when a snow-white dove was seen sitting near the chalice at the celebration of the mass and a number of cases of the appearance of Christ in visible form in the very hands of the consecrating priest. Thus one of the monks, present when the mass was being said by Herman, abbot of Himmelrode, saw after the consecration of the host the Christ as a child in the abbot’s hands. The child rose to the height of the cross and then was reduced again in size to the dimensions of the host, which was eaten by the abbot.1704 The same writer narrates that a certain monk, Adolf, of the Netherlands, after consecrating the host, saw in his hands the virgin carrying the child, Christ, in her arms. Turning the host, he saw on the other side a lamb. Turning it back again, he saw Christ on the cross. Then there was nothing left but the visible form of the bread, which the pious monk ate. The writer goes on to say that Adolf did not feel full joy over this vision, for he kept a concubine.1705 A Fleming woman of the town of Thorembais, who had been refused the sacrament by a priest, was visited the same night by Christ himself, who gave her the host with his own hands.1706 At a church dedication in Anrode, the invited priests engaged in conviviality and while they were dancing around the altar, the pyx was overthrown and the five hosts it contained scattered. The music was at once stopped and search was made but without result. The people were then put out of the building and every corner was searched till at last the hosts were found on a ledge in the wall where the angel had placed them.1707

• From The Mammoth Book of Best New Erotica Volume 10 (2011)

  I’d been reading about the aftermath of last Friday’s hurricane, 19 September 1947, a date we’ll not soon forget. The eye of the storm blew right over the city. It hit neighbouring Jefferson Parish far worse than here. New Orleans International Airport, as they now fancifully called Moisant Field, had wind gusts up to 112 mph and floodwater two feet deep, six feet in other parts of Jefferson. We had no flooding here in the French Quarter, thank God, but there was a call out for the dire need for tidal protection levees along Lake Pontchartrain. “T spotted you rounding the corner,” I said, “watched you walk up and sit. It took you nine sips to finish your coffee.” She smiled and those dark green eyes seemed to twinkle at me. She reached over and picked up the paper. “SO what’s news?” “The hurricane.” “Tsn’t that India?” She pointed to the front page. There was a picture of Lord Mountbatten standing behind a microphone in his white uniform. Caption beneath explained he was declaring India and Pakistan’s independence from Great Britain. That was a month ago, 15 August to be exact. Sometimes the newspaper was more “olds” than “news”. “So there was a hurricane here last week?” She had a mid-west accent. Maria came out with our Turkish coffees and I scooped in three sugars. Alice took six. The coffee was hot and strong. “You just get into town,” I said. “Two days ago. And I’ve been looking for you.” As so many women are wont to do. Ha. We each took a sip of coffee before she went on. “I want to hire you to investigate my uncle’s murder. The police have come up with nothing.” She Gleeked Me 305 She took another sip of coffee and didn’t seem all too flustered about her uncle’s murder, so I suggested, “Why don’t we finish our coffee and go down to my office and you can tell me all about it?” “Never thought you’d ask.” As she drank her coffee, I noted the diamond ring on her right ring finger, the ruby ring on her left ring finger and matching earrings. Was that an emerald brooch pinned to her dress? The bracelet on her left wrist was covered with diamonds. Lady was crazy to walk around this neighborhood with all that ice. My office in Suite 1B, 909 Barracks Street, was right below my apartment, Suite 2B. The landlady only recently started calling _ them suites instead of apartments in an attempt to dress up the place. The two-storey building at the corner of Barracks and Dauphine Streets was in better shape than most of the buildings in that portion of the lower Quarter, its wrought-iron lacework balcony wrapping around the building’s corner overlooked Cabrini Playground.

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

  I tarried with him a few days, unworthy though I was, and whichever way I turned my eyes, I marvelled and thought I saw a new heaven and a new earth, and also the old pathways of the Egyptian monks, our fathers, marked with the recent footsteps of the men of our time left in them. The golden ages seemed to have returned and revisited the world there at Clairvaux.... At the first glance, as you entered, after descending the hill, you could feel that God was in the place; and the silent valley bespoke, in the simplicity of its buildings, the genuine humility of the poor of Christ dwelling there. The silence of the noon was as the silence of the midnight, broken only by the chants of the choral service, and the sound of garden and field implements. No one was idle. In the hours not devoted to sleep or prayer, the brethren kept busy with hoe, scythe, and axe, taming the wild land and clearing the forest. And although there was such a number in the valley, yet each seemed to be a solitary.639 Here is another description by the novice, Peter de Roya, writing from Clairvaux:640 — "Its monks have found a Jacob’s ladder with angels upon it, descending to provide help to the bodies of the monks that they fail not in the way, and also ascending, and so controlling the monks’ minds that their bodies may be glorified. Their song seems to be little less than angelic, but much more than human.... It seems to me I am hardly looking upon men when I see them in the gardens with hoe, in the fields with forks and rakes and sickles, in the woods with axe, clad in disordered garments—but that I am looking on a race of fools without speech and sense, the reproach of mankind. However, my reason assures me that their life is with Christ in the heavens."

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

  Kings and princes desired to be clad in the monastic habit as they passed into the untried scenes of the future. So Frederick II., foe of the temporal claims of the papacy as he was, is said to have died in the garb of the Cistercians. So did Roger II. of Sicily, 1163, and Roger III., 1265. William of Nevers was clad in the garb of the Carthusian order before he expired. Louis VI. of France passed away stretched on ashes sprinkled in the form of a cross. So did Henry, son of Henry II. of England, expire, laid on a bed of ashes, 1184. William the Conqueror died in a priory with a bishop and abbot standing by.555 It was the custom in some convents, if not in all, to lay out the monks about to die on the floor, which was sometimes covered with matting. First they rapped on the death table. Waiting the approach of death, the dying often had wonderful visions of Christ, the Virgin, and the saints. The imagination at such times was very vivid, and the reports which the dying gave on returning for a moment to consciousness seem to have been generally accepted.556 The miraculous belonged to the monk’s daily food. He was surrounded by spirits. Visions and revelations occurred by day and by night.557 Single devils and devils in bands were roaming about at all hours in the cloistral spaces, in the air and on foot, to deceive the unwary and to shake the faith of the vigilant. The most elaborate and respectable accounts of monks, so beset, are given by Peter the Venerable in his work on Miracles, by Caesar of Heisterbach, and Jacobus de Voragine. Caesar’s Dialogue of Miracles and Voragine’s Golden Legend are among the most entertaining storybooks ever written. They teem with legends which are accepted as true. They simply reflect the feeling of the age, which did not for a moment doubt the constant manifestation of the supernatural, especially the pranks and misdemeanors of the evil one and his emissaries.

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

  scene in the temple, or rather in one of the thirty side buildings around it, which Josephus calls "houses" (oi[kou") in his description of Solomon’s temple (Ant. VIII. 3, 2), or in Solomon’s porch, which remained from the first temple, and where the disciples assembled afterwards (Acts 5:12, comp. 3:11). In favor of this view may be said, that it better agrees with the custom of the apostles (Luke 24:53; Acts 2:46; 5:12, 42), with the time of the miracle (the morning hour of prayer), and with the assembling of a large multitude of at least three thousand hearers, and also that it seems to give additional solemnity to the event when it took place in the symbolical and typical sanctuary of the old dispensation. But it is difficult to conceive that the hostile Jews should have allowed the poor disciples to occupy one of those temple buildings and not interfered with the scene. In the dispensation of the Spirit which now began, the meanest dwelling, and the body of the humblest Christian becomes a temple of God. Comp. John 4:24. IV. Effects of the Day of Pentecost. From Farrar’s Life and Work of St. Paul (I. 93): "That this first Pentecost marked an eternal moment in the destiny of mankind, no reader of history will surely deny. Undoubtedly in every age since then the sons of God have, to an extent unknown before, been taught by the Spirit of God. Undoubtedly since then, to an extent unrealized before, we may know that the Spirit of Christ dwelleth in us. Undoubtedly we may enjoy a nearer sense of union with God in Christ than was accorded to the saints of the Old Dispensation, and a thankful certainty that we see the days which kings and prophets desired to see and did not see them, and hear the truths which they desired to hear and did not hear them. And this New Dispensation began henceforth in all its fulness. It was no exclusive consecration to a separated priesthood, no isolated endowment of a narrow apostolate. It was the consecration of a whole church—its men, its women, its children—to be all of them ’a chosen generation, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a peculiar people;’ it was an endowment, of which the full free offer was meant ultimately to be extended to all mankind. Each one of that hundred and twenty was not the exceptional recipient of a blessing and witness of a revelation, but the forerunner and representative of myriads more. And this miracle was not merely transient, but is continuously renewed. It is not a rushing sound and gleaming light, seen perhaps for a moment, but it is a living energy and an unceasing inspiration.

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

  The literary history of the apostolic age, like its missionary progress, was guided by a special providence. Christ only finished a part of his work while on earth. He pointed his disciples to greater works, which they would accomplish in his name and by his power, after his resurrection. He promised them his unbroken presence, and the gift of the Holy Spirit, who, as the other Advocate, should lead them into the whole truth and open to them the understanding of all his words. The Acts of the Apostles are a history of the Holy Spirit, or of the post-resurrection work of Christ in establishing his kingdom on earth. Filled with that Spirit, the apostles and evangelists went forth into a hostile world and converted it to Christ by their living word, and they continue their conquering march by their written word. Unbelieving criticism sees only the outside surface of the greatest movement in history, and is blind to the spiritual forces working from within or refuses to acknowledge them as truly divine. In like manner, the materialistic and atheistic scientists of the age conceive of nature’s laws without a lawgiver; of a creature without a creator; and stop with the effect, without rising to the cause, which alone affords a rational explanation of the effect. And here we touch upon the deepest spring of all forms of rationalism, and upon the gulf which inseparably divides it from supernaturalism. It is the opposition to the supernatural and the miraculous. It denies God in nature and God in history, and, in its ultimate consequences, it denies the very existence of God. Deism and atheism have no place for a miracle; but belief in the existence of an Almighty Maker of all things visible and invisible, as the ultimate and all-sufficient cause of all phenomena in nature and in history, implies the possibility of miracle at any time; not, indeed, as a violation of his own laws, but as a manifestation of his law-giving and creative power over and above (not against) the regular order of events. The reality of the miracle, in any particular case, then, becomes a matter of historical investigation. It cannot be disposed of by a simple denial from à priori philosophical prejudice; but must be fairly examined, and, if sufficiently corroborated by external and internal evidence, it must be admitted. Now, the miracles of Christ cannot be separated from his person and his teachings. His words are as marvellous as his deeds; both form a harmonious whole, and they stand or fall together. His person is the great miracle, and his miracles are simply his natural works. He is as much elevated above other men as his words and deeds are above ordinary words and deeds. He is separated from all mortals by his absolute freedom from sin. He, himself, claims superhuman origin and supernatural powers; and to deny them is to make him a liar and impostor.

• From A Way of Being (1980)

  description of these and other trends, one can turn to Marilyn Ferguson’s provocative book, The Aquarian Conspiracy (1980), better explained by its subtitle, “Personal and Social Transformation in the 1980s.” First, some of the developments that enlarge our view of the potentialities of the person. (The categories I am using overlap to a considerable degree, but I am sorting them for convenience in thinking.) There is a strong and growing interest in all forms of meditation—the recognition and use of inner energy resources. There is an increased respect for and use of intuition as a powerful tool. Multitudes of people have experienced altered states of consciousness—many through drugs, but an increasing number through psychological disciplines. Our capacities in this direction open new worlds. Research in biofeedback shows that our nonconscious mind can learn in a few moments, without being taught, to control the activity of a single cell. With a visual display of the action of some of his or her muscle groups, the ordinary person can change the action of a muscle group controlled by one cell in the spinal cord (Brown, 1980). The implications of this potential are mind-boggling. Paranormal phenomena such as telepathy, precognition, and clairvoyance have been sufficiently tested that they have received scientific acceptance. Furthermore, there is evidence that most people can discover or develop such abilities in themselves. We are learning that we can often heal or alleviate many of our diseases through the intentional use of our conscious and nonconscious minds. Holistic health is broadening our understanding of the inner capacities of the person. There is a rapidly growing interest in the spiritual and transcendent powers of the individual. Leading scientific students of the brain concur in the opinion that there is a potent mind, with an enormous capacity for intelligent action, which exists quite apart from the structure of the brain (Brown, 1980). It is possible that evolution will lead us to a supra-consciousness and supermind of vastly more power than mind and consciousness now possess (Brown, 1980). Now let us look at other developments that alter our perception of reality. Some of them have to do with science. There is a convergence of theoretical physics and mysticism, especially Eastern mysticism—a recognition that the whole universe, including ourselves, is “a cosmic dance.” In this view, matter, time, and space disappear as meaningful concepts; there exist only oscillations. This change in our conceptual world view is revolutionary.

• From A Way of Being (1980)

  Empathic: An Unappreciated Way of Being It is my thesis in this paper that we should re-examine and re-evaluate that very special way of being with another person which has been called “empathic.” I believe we tend to give too little consideration to an element that is extremely important both for the understanding of personality dynamics and for effecting changes in personality and behavior. It is one of the most delicate and powerful ways we have of using ourselves. In spite of all that has been said and written on this topic, it is a way of being that is rarely seen in full bloom in a relationship. I start with my own somewhat faltering history in relation to this topic. ...