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 Twelve Steps to a Compassionate Life (2010)

  All too often people impose their own experience and beliefs on acquaintances and events, making hurtful, inaccurate, and dismissive snap judgments, not only about individuals but about whole cultures. It often becomes clear, when questioned more closely, that their actual knowledge of the topic under discussion could comfortably be contained on a small postcard. Western society is highly opinionated. Our airwaves are clogged with talk shows, phone-ins, and debates in which people are encouraged to express their views on a wide variety of subjects. This freedom of speech is precious, of course, but do we always know what we are talking about? The immense achievements of modern science can lead us to believe that we are steadily pushing back the frontiers of ignorance and will soon lay bare the last secrets of the universe. Science is by its very nature progressive: it continually breaks new ground, and once a theory is disproved and surpassed, it is of only antiquarian interest. But the knowledge we acquire through the humanities and the arts does not advance in this way. Here we keep on asking the same questions—What is happiness? What is truth? How do we live with our mortality?—and rarely arrive at a definitive answer, because there are no definitive answers to these perennial problems. Each generation has to start over and find solutions that speak directly to its unique circumstances. Philosophers today still discuss the issues that preoccupied Plato. The pursuit of knowledge is exhilarating, and science, medicine, and technology have dramatically improved the lives of millions of people. But unknowing remains an essential part of the human condition. Religion is at its best when it helps us to ask questions and holds us in a state of wonder—and arguably at its worst when it tries to answer them authoritatively and dogmatically. We can never understand the transcendence we call God, Nirvana, Brahman, or Dao; precisely because it is transcendent, it lies beyond the reach of the senses, and is therefore incapable of definitive proof. Certainty about such matters, therefore, is misplaced, and strident dogmatism that dismisses the views of others inappropriate. If we say that we know exactly what “God” is, we could well be talking about an idol, a deity we have created in our own image. This appreciation of the limits of our knowledge also lies at the heart of the Western rational tradition, one of whose founding luminaries was Socrates (c.

• From Twelve Steps to a Compassionate Life (2010)

  How could you prove that Persephone returned to the upper world each year?), they would have found these questions obtuse. The truth of the myth, they might have replied, was evident for all to see: it was clear in the way that the world came to life each spring, in the recurrent burgeoning of the harvest, and, above all, in the profound truth that death and life are inseparable. There is no new life if the seed does not go down into the ground and die; you cannot have life without death. The rituals associated with the myth, which were performed annually at Eleusis (where Demeter is said to have stayed during her search for Persephone), were carefully crafted to help people accept their mortality; afterward many found that they could contemplate the prospect of their own death with greater equanimity. 1 A myth, therefore, makes sense only if it is translated into action—either ritually or behaviorally. It is comprehensible only if it is imparted as part of a process of transformation. 2 Myth has been aptly described as an early form of psychology. The tales about gods threading their way through labyrinths or fighting with monsters were describing an archetypal truth rather than an actual occurrence. Their purpose was to introduce the audience to the labyrinthine world of the psyche, showing them how to negotiate this mysterious realm and grapple with their own demons. The myth of the hero told people what they had to do to unlock their own heroic potential. When Sigmund Freud and C. G. Jung charted their modern scientific exploration of the psyche, they turned instinctively to these ancient narratives. A myth could put you in the correct spiritual posture, but it was up to you to take the next step. In our scientifically oriented world, we look for solid information and have lost the older art of interpreting these emblematic stories of gods walking out of tombs or seas splitting asunder, and this has made religion problematic. Without practical implementation, a myth can remain as opaque and abstract as the rules of a board game, which sound complicated and dull until you pick up the dice and start to play; then everything immediately falls into place and makes sense. As we go through the steps, we will examine some of the traditional myths to discover what they teach about the compassionate imperative—and how we must act in order to integrate them with our own lives. It is not possible here to give an exhaustive account of the teachings of all the major traditions. I have had to concentrate on a few of the seminal prophets and sages who developed this ethos. But this brief overview can give us some idea of the universality of the compassionate ideal and the circumstances in which it came to birth.

• From Why We Believe: Finding Meaning in Uncertain Times

  Lewis, he suggested, was not setting out an evidential case for Christianity, appealing to the human reason. He was rather depicting and projecting its vision of reality, that it might capture the imaginations of his audience. Lewis allows us to ‘think we are listening to an argument’, when we are actually ‘presented with a vision, and it is the vision that carries conviction.’ 45 For Farrer, this vision is encountered and experienced as real, significant and imaginatively desirable – and so people are drawn into it, absorbing rather than merely accepting its core themes, and finding that these inform and motivate their existence. We do not simply observe this vision as spectators; we find that we are caught up in it, and participate in its account of reality. From a religious perspective, this leads to actions that express and enact this core vision of reality – in the case of Christianity, to prayer, adoration and worship, which are seen as authentic and natural ways of celebrating and expressing this ‘religious imaginary’. This once more highlights the need for outsiders to empathetically ‘step inside’ religion, and try to grasp how it changes the way people see and experience the world, and offers a framework for living. We will have more to say about this later, as we turn to engage the role of belief in exploring the great human questions of finding meaning, value, significance in life, and developing ways of living that express and embody them. Yet we now need to reflect on a question that many will see as essential to any discussion of beliefs, particularly religious beliefs – namely, how can these be evaluated? If a belief is something that cannot be proved to be true, what evidence can be set out in its support? We shall explore these questions further in the next chapter. Chapter 2 Seeking a ‘Big Picture’ Human beings need Big Pictures of reality to anchor their lives, allowing them to live meaningfully in a complex society. Worldviews, implicit or explicit, serve as anchor points for our understanding of what is good and meaningful in times of crisis, providing stability as the cultural landscape undergoes significant shifts. The problem, however, is that we often find ourselves trapped in webs of beliefs that are ultimately oppressive and inadequate, making it difficult to break free from their toxic thrall. The novelist and poet Hermann Hesse (1877–1962) had an ‘uncanny ability to give expression to the emotional and intellectual problems of his time’, offering penetrating reflections on the cultural disturbances of his age. 1 In 1926, Hesse published an article in UHU magazine, a modernist journal established in 1924, aimed at an urban bourgeois liberal readership in Weimar Germany.

• From Austerlitz (2001)

  pyramid against one of the side walls, and departing from their native custom, said Austerlitz, they had lined these casks themselves with wood shavings from a sawmill down beside the river. Most of them even survived the hard winter of 1947, since Adela kept the old orangery stove heated for them through the two icy months of January and February. It was wonderful, said Austerlitz, to see the dexterity with which the birds clambered around the trelliswork, hanging on by their beaks, and performing all kinds of acrobatic feats as they came down; to watch them flying in and out of the open windows or hopping and walking along the ground, always active and always, or that was the impression they gave, intent upon some purpose or other. In fact they were very like human beings in many ways. You might hear them sigh, laugh, sneeze, and yawn. They cleared their throats before beginning to converse in their own cockatoo language, they showed themselves alert, scheming, mischievous and sly, deceitful, malicious, vindictive and quarrelsome. They liked certain people, particularly Adela and Gerald, and persecuted others with downright malice, for instance the Welsh housekeeper who seldom showed her face out of doors. They seemed to know exactly when she would be going to chapel, always wearing a black hat and carrying a black umbrella, and on these occasions they lay in wait to screech at her in the most obnoxious way. They also reflected human society in the way they ganged up together in ever-changing groups, or then again paired off in couples sitting side by side as if they knew nothing but harmony and were forever inseparable. They even had their own cemetery, with a long row of graves in a clearing surrounded by strawberry trees, and one of the rooms on the upper floor of Andromeda Lodge had in it what was obviously a purpose-built wall cupboard, full of dark green cardboard boxes containing a number of dead birds of species related to the cockatoos, their red-chested or yellow-headed brothers, Hyacinth and Scarlet Macaws, Ruby Lorikeets and Blue-Winged Parrotlets, Horned Parakeets and Ground Parrots, all brought back by Gerald’s great-grandfather or great-great-grandfather from his circumnavigation of the globe, or alternatively ordered from a trader called Théodore Grace in Le Havre for a few guineas or louis d’or, as noted on the provenances placed inside the boxes. The finest of all these birds, in a collection which also included some native woodpeckers, wrynecks, kites, and orioles, was the African Gray parrot. I can still see the inscription on his green cardboard sarcophagus: Jaco, Ps. erithacus L. He came from the Congo and had reached the great age of sixty-six in his Welsh exile, as his obituary recounted, adding that he had been very tame and trusting, was a quick learner, chattered away to himself and others, could whistle entire songs and had composed some too, but best of all he liked to mimic the voices of children and to have them teach him new words. His one

• From Twelve Steps to a Compassionate Life (2010)

  O. Wilson, Comte did not regard compassionate behavior as hypocritical and calculated. Instead, he linked the “benevolent emotions” with the aesthetic, convinced that their “beautiful quality” had a power of its own. The very first extant documents of Homo sapiens indicate that we devised art forms at the same time and for many of the same reasons as we created religious systems. Our neocortex has made us meaning-seeking creatures, acutely aware of the perplexity and tragedy of our predicament, and if we do not discover some ultimate significance in our lives, we fall easily into despair. In art as in religion, we find a means of letting go and encouraging the “softness” and “pliability” that draw us toward the other; art and religion both propel us into a new place within ourselves, where we find a degree of serenity. The earliest cave paintings created by our Palaeolithic ancestors some thirty thousand years ago in southern France and northern Spain almost certainly had a ritual function. From the very beginning, therefore, art and religion were allied. These frescoes and engravings have an aesthetic power that still evokes awe in visitors. Their depiction of the animals on whom these hunting communities were entirely dependent has a numinous quality; intent as they were on the acquisition of food—the first of the Four Fs—the ferocity of the hunters was tempered by a manifest tenderness toward and affinity with the beasts they were obliged to kill. The vision that inspired the cave paintings so long ago may have been similar to the spirituality of modern indigenous hunting communities. 11 These tribesmen are disturbed by the fact that their lives depend on the slaughter of the animals they regard as friends and patrons, and they assuage their anxiety in rituals that evoke respect for and empathy with their prey. In the Kalahari Desert, for example, where wood is scarce, Bushmen rely on light weapons that can only graze the surface of the skin, so they anoint their arrows with a poison that kills the animal very slowly. The hunter has to remain with his victim during its last days—crying when it cries out, shuddering when it trembles, and entering symbolically into its death throes . In recent years, anthropologists, ethologists, and neuroscientists have all researched the development in the animal and human brain of these “benevolent” emotions, which, they argue, have made our thought patterns more flexible, creative, and intelligent. 12 In 1878, the French anatomist Paul Broca discovered that all mammals had a section of the brain that seemed older than the neocortex but was not present in the reptilian brain.

• From The Nasty Bits: Collected Varietal Cuts, Usable Trim, Scraps, and Bones (2006)

  To seduce, coerce, and induce people to eat better, try new things, experience joy, even enlightenment? I thought Ruhlman had made an unusually cogent case. In fact, it was this plaintive argument that had won me over, convinced me to put aside my own fear and loathing and come to Vegas myself. Was he right? To step into Bouchon is to step into a perfectly, seemingly effortlessly recreated French brasserie. The long zinc bar recreates Paris's famous La Coupole. The details are, typically for Keller, without a false note. It's another world, a little bit of France floating free of the grim realities only a few yards away. The menu is surprisingly traditional. Nothing daring about it in these early days. No boudin noir or tripes or even foie de veau or other less accessible brasserie classics; just perfectly—superbly—executed mainstream fare. A "Grand Plateau" of lobster, mussels, seasonal crab, shrimps, oysters, and clams, sourced from the same boutique purveyors used by the French Laundry and Per Se, was predictably awe-inspiring. Rillettes of smoked and fresh salmon could easily have been served at either of the motherships if scaled down and prettied up for their fancier rooms. Beignets of brandade de morue were light and fresh and as well seasoned and flavored as one could hope for. We ordered poulet roti, which is, as most professionals know, the measure of a cook's ability. You can tell almost everything you need to know about a kitchen by how they roast as simple a dish as a chicken. It was better than good. It was the best chicken ever. Moist, flavorful, inspiring in its simplicity. A flatiron steak frites made me miserable with its virtuosity. I had previously been comfortable with the idea that I served the best French fries in the country at my place, Les Halles in New York. I'm afraid we no longer hold the U.S. title. Needless to say, they know how to cook, and rest, a steak at Bouchon. Desserts (a tarte au citron and a chocolate mousse) were, yes, you guessed it, fantastic. They make it look easy. And it's easy to eat there. No behaving for the waiter. No jacket and tie required. Everything—the room, the service, the menu—conspires to make a beautiful argument that it is, in fact, possible to do it right in Vegas. That one can create a pocket of calm, casual, yet sophisticated pleasure, of culinary excellence smack in the middle of—yet comfortably removed from—the carnage and ugliness below. I found, I think, my perfect metaphor, had my final Vegas epiphany on my last day in town, as I hurtled face-down at accelerating speed toward the surface of the earth, free-falling from two miles above the desert, a Flying Elvis strapped to my back. When you jump out of a plane for the first time, the first thousand feet are pure adrenaline-pumping, endorphin-juiced thrill.

• From Twelve Steps to a Compassionate Life (2010)

  24 The two men cling together, mourning their dead. Then Achilles rises, takes Priam’s hand, and raises him gently to his feet “in pity for the grey head and the grey beard.” 25 Carefully, tenderly, he hands over Hector’s body, concerned that its weight might be too much for the frail old man. And then the two enemies look at each other in silent awe: Priam, son of Dardanos, gazed upon Achilles, wondering At his size and beauty, for he seemed like an outright vision Of gods. Achilles in turn gazed on Dardanian Priam And wondered, as he saw his brave looks, and listened to him talking . 26 In the midst of a deadly war, the shared suffering and pity of it all had enabled each man to transcend his hatred and see the sacred mystery of his enemy. PREFACE Wish for a Better World I n November 2007, I heard that I had won a prize. Each year TED (the acronym for Technology, Entertainment, Design), a private nonprofit organization best known for its superb conferences on “ideas worth spreading,” gives awards to people whom they think have made a difference but who, with their help, could make even more of an impact. Other winners have included former U.S. president Bill Clinton, the scientist E. O. Wilson, and the British chef Jamie Oliver. The recipient is given $100,000 and, more importantly, is granted a wish for a better world. I knew immediately what I wanted. One of the chief tasks of our time must surely be to build a global community in which all peoples can live together in mutual respect; yet religion, which should be making a major contribution, is seen as part of the problem. All faiths insist that compassion is the test of true spirituality and that it brings us into relation with the transcendence we call God, Brahman, Nirvana, or Dao. Each has formulated its own version of what is sometimes called the Golden Rule, “Do not treat others as you would not like them to treat you,” or in its positive form, “Always treat others as you would wish to be treated yourself.” Further, they all insist that you cannot confine your benevolence to your own group; you must have concern for everybody—even your enemies. Yet sadly we hear little about compassion these days. I have lost count of the number of times I have jumped into a London taxi and, when the cabbie asks how I make a living, have been informed categorically that religion has been the cause of all the major wars in history. In fact, the causes of conflict are usually greed, envy, and ambition, but in an effort to sanitize them, these self-serving emotions have often been cloaked in religious rhetoric.

• From Crazy Brave (2012)

  “But I’m placing a bet that I’ll have that Lewis wrapped around my finger by Saturday night.” “Yes, the most improbable candidate for your love in the whole school.” “I like a challenge,” he said. We laughed at the incongruity. Lewis was Clarence’s best friend. He rode bulls and even looked like a bull. He was square to the earth and thought of himself as a stud. He would beat Herbie up if he caught Herbie staring at him in public. Lupita’s singing pulled me up the hallway as I walked to my meeting with Mrs. Wilhelm. Her office was near the dorm entrance, where Lupita now perched, a crowd around her. I stopped to listen along with everyone else who was captured by her voice. Her voice was a living, breathing thing, like Jimi Hendrix’s guitar, like Jackson Pollock’s paintings. My father had told me that some voices are so true they can be used as weapons, can maneuver the weather and change time. He said that a voice that powerful could walk away from the singer if it is shamed. After my father left us, I learned that some voices could deceive you. There is a top layer and there is a bottom layer, and sometimes they don’t match. My stepfather’s voice had a top layer. It was jovial and witty and knew how to appeal to women. The bottom layer was a belt studded with anger. Everyone clapped when the song was over. “Forget opera,” I blurted out. “You can sing anything you want.” Everyone turned to look at me, including Clarence, who was leaning against the wall, pretending he was an innocent audience member. “Hey, thanks,” Lupita said warmly. “Do I know you?” We had met at the ditch. Maybe she had forgotten, and then I saw her eyes move sideways toward the dorm assistants, who were listening to everything. We couldn’t be too careful. Maybe she too was waiting for Mrs. Wilhelm. “I’m Lupita, from the planet Venus.” She smiled at me, aware of the rapt attention of the high school boys, who all snickered when she mentioned Venus. I introduced myself as being from Oklahoma and added, “Oklahoma is a long way from Venus.” Everyone laughed. We were all in awe of this girl with the magic voice whose easy sexual suggestiveness reminded us of an earthy goddess. Though she was my age, Lupita seemed suddenly older as she slid her hands along her tight sheath skirt. Her nails were long and manicured, the look Georgette strived for but would never get. In that small moment I felt sorry for Georgette. She didn’t have a chance. “Do you really like my singing?” She glanced over at Clarence, who gave her a shy dance of his eyes. It was obvious that despite his bet, they had a thing for each other. There was a light that jumped between them, an electrical force so strong that it sparkled in the late afternoon sun.

• From The Well of Loneliness (1928)

  There had been those young years of her mother’s in Ireland; she spoke of them sometimes but only vaguely, as though they were now very far away, as though they had never seriously counted. And yet she had been lovely, lovely Anna Molloy, much admired, much loved and constantly courted—And her father, he too had been in the world, in Rome, in Paris, and often in London—he had not lived much at Morton in those days; and how queer it seemed, there had been a time when her father had actually not known her mother. They had been completely unconscious of each other, he for twenty-nine years, she for just over twenty, and yet all the while had been drawing together, in spite of themselves, always nearer together. Then had come that morning away in County Clare, when those two had suddenly seen each other, and had known from that moment the meaning of life, of love, just because they had seen each other. Her father spoke very seldom of such things, but this much he had told her, it had all grown quite clear—What had it felt like when they realized each other? What did it feel like to see things quite clearly, to know the innermost reason for things? Morton—her mother had come home to Morton, to wonderful, gently enfolding Morton. She had passed for the first time through the heavy white doorway under the shining semi-circular fanlight. She had walked into the old square hall with its bearskins, and its pictures of funny, dressed-up looking Gordons—the hall with the whip-rack where Stephen kept her whips—the hall with the beautiful iridescent window, that looked over the lawns and herbaceous borders. Then, perhaps hand in hand, they had passed beyond the hall, her father a man, her mother a woman, with their destiny already upon them—and that destiny of theirs had been Stephen.

• From The Nasty Bits: Collected Varietal Cuts, Usable Trim, Scraps, and Bones (2006)

  Can we make a hot jellied consomme?"), about dining, about the fundamental nature of cuisine and gastronomy. For six months out of every year, Adria closes his restaurant, and along with his brother Alberto, chemist Pere Castells, industrial designer Luki Huber, and his chef, Oriol Castro, he works here, experimenting, scrupulously documenting everything, and asking questions—some of which are clearly threatening, even heretical to the status quo. What is a meal? What is dinner? What is a chef? One can't help but ask oneself these things, even as Adria and crew turn their attention to smaller, less metaphysical questions. On this day, as I watched, they were asking if a thick slab of ripe peach could be caramelized to mimic the appearance and consistency of pan-seared foie gras. (Apparently yes.) Can a beautiful fresh anchovy be cooked, yet still appear raw, leaving the attractive outer skin as untouched-looking as it appears in nature? (Seems like it.) Can one make "caviar" from fresh mango puree? (Again, yes.) Of five or six experiments —each conducted in various ways—during the course of the day, generally positive results were recorded in the accompanying charts and notebooks. "If I can come up with two or three important ideas a year, that's a very good year," said Adria. Many of you have no doubt seen the ripple effects of some earlier successfully executed ideas on menus near you: foam (which he no longer does), hot jellied consomme, pasta made of squid, jellied cheese, frozen foie gras "powder." Say what you will about Adria. Many of the same chefs who've been sneering at the very idea of him now shamelessly crib his ideas, peeling off the more applicable concepts to use in their more conventional menus. They may ask questions at the taller, but a high-risk, high-wire act like El Bulli demands questions of its diners as well. Big questions. Is it food? Or is it novelty? And is it "good"—in the traditional sense of that word (whatever that might be)? At El Bulli, the constantly evolving thirty-course meal seems to gleefully invite furious debate. The restaurant sits by a remote Mediterranean beach, about seven miles of twisting, clifftop road outside of the town of Roses on Spain's Costa Brava. Invited to join Adria for dinner in the El Bulli kitchen, I sat down and ate what was by turns a shattering, wondrous, confusing, delightful, strangely comforting, constantly surprising, and always marvelous meal. About thirty different plates appeared in the course of the four-hour experience. The kitchen itself defies convention: cool, quiet, elegant, and modern, with large picture windows and works of sculpture placed throughout. A crew of thirty-five to fifty-five cooks serve one seating per night to an equal number of customers. It is a serious, relatively serene environment, light years away from the fiery mosh pits and sweaty submarinelike spaces most cooks are familiar with. Voices are seldom raised. There are no shouts or curses, no clatter of pots, no oven doors being kicked closed.

• From Lower than the Angels: A History of Sex and Christianity (2024)

  WEDDINGS None of this would have mattered greatly for Christian futures had the impact of Muhammad’s revelations been confined to the Arabian Peninsula, or had Muslim expansion been as gradual and peaceful as that over the first three and a half centuries of Christianity. Muhammad is generally agreed to have died in 632 CE , leaving a flourishing community for Islam in Mecca. It had survived much conflict, not least with local Jews and Christians, but nothing in those skirmishes would have provided a clue to what happened next: within no more than five years of Muhammad’s death, Islamic forces had headed out of Arabia into the Mediterranean seaboard and what are now Syria, Iraq and Iran, repeatedly defeating major armies of Byzantium and the Sasanians. In 638 the Caliph Umar entered Jerusalem as conqueror, restoring to sacred uses the site of the Temple that Christians had so long left desecrated as a rubbish dump. The Sasanian Empire collapsed, and the last heir of the dynasty spent his days in exile as far away as China – ironically in view of his ancestors’ persecution of Christianity, he died as a devout member and benefactor of the Church of the East. [7] The Byzantines seemed in just as much peril as the Sasanians. Byzantine Alexandria and Egypt fell to Muslim armies within a year or two of the capture of Jerusalem, and then over a century Muslims remorselessly fought their way along the North African coast, into the Iberian Peninsula and on into central Francia (France), only being checked in battle at Poitiers in 733, a century after the death of Muhammad. [8] That belated Islamic defeat spared Christian Rome and the remaining Latin West, and during the seventh and eighth centuries, Christian Constantinople also survived repeated Muslim sieges. Yet much of the Christian world, including the land of Jesus’s life and ministry, was now under the control of the new monotheism. It was a remaking of global power as rapid as that of Alexander the Great, while far surpassing the range and long-term impact of Alexander’s conquests in both Asia and Europe. Now Christian Churches that over three centuries had become accustomed to wielding power in their territories had to become reacquainted with the experience of their rulers espousing a different religion. Not all Christians would have found this a trauma, since the imperial Church had done its best to make life difficult for both Miaphysites and Dyophysites, and non-Chalcedonians generally may not have been displeased to have new masters professing what initially may have seemed no more than an eccentric variant on their own creed. Early Islam remained the religion of a small military elite in its wide new dominions, and it was not a proselytizing faith, following the Qur’anic precept that ‘there is no compulsion in religion’. [9] Muslims were usually content to avoid trouble among their subjects by letting Christianity go its own way, on the understanding that it should accept a co-operative second-class status in society.

• From Lower than the Angels: A History of Sex and Christianity (2024)

  In their brief window of opportunity, western Europeans set up a Latin Kingdom in a Jerusalem devastated by Crusader massacres in 1099; the invaders targeted its Muslim, Jewish and even Eastern Christian inhabitants with a ferocity that Christian commentators did not deny. Yet the reality was that Crusaders had hit unawares on a moment of peculiar weakness and disarray in Islamic states, which was not repeated, and none of western Europe’s herculean efforts over the next centuries equalled that first fluke. [10] The Latin territorial presence in the eastern Mediterranean was only finally snuffed out by the Ottoman Turks who took the island of Crete from the Republic of Venice in 1669, but by then the Latin hold on the Holy Land itself had long been extinguished – in Jerusalem, since 1244. The saga of the Crusades had many consequences, but one of the most lasting was newly to associate Western Christianity with a masculine gender stereotype that it has still not entirely rejected: the holy warrior. We have already encountered military saints in the early Church – Sergius and Bacchus, Martin, George – but, whatever their popularity had been in the past among soldiers, their stories were constructed on the assumption that they gained their sanctity by renouncing earthly warfare. Right into the eleventh century, waging war still triggered heavy penances for those involved: that had been one major consideration when Europe’s monarchs and lords founded monasteries and nunneries, in order to construct a reservoir of grateful religious ready to take on the burden of penance vicariously in their prayers. Now the very act of being a soldier and killing Christ’s enemies could earn holiness. At the time, this was a specifically Western development: a Greek traveller who made it all the way to Compostela in the early twelfth century was apparently taken aback to hear St James admiringly called ‘a knight of Christ’. [11] Not just saints, but God himself: it is an equal surprise to enter the crypt of Auxerre Cathedral in Burgundy, where the vault is dominated by a fresco of Christ himself at the end of time, riding a white horse in knightly fashion and leading a warrior-band of mounted angels (see Plate 6). The motif is rare in the New Testament, but here it directly illustrates a scene from that exceptional text, the Book of Revelation (19.11–16). [12] The thought had an immediate resonance for the cleric commissioning the fresco: almost certainly Humbaud, Bishop of Auxerre, protégé of Pope Urban II and himself an active promoter of the First Crusade. Humbaud actually died on his return journey from a Jerusalem pilgrimage in 1115. [13] In the background was a new rhetoric of classifying Christian society three ways: those who prayed, those who fought and those who laboured ( oratores, bellatores, laboratores was a common summary of these categories).

• From The Master and Margarita (1966)

  When the unfortunate master of ceremonies was taken away, Rimsky ran back to the stage and saw that new wonders were taking place on it. Ah, yes, incidentally, either then or a little earlier, the magician disappeared from the stage together with his faded armchair, and it must be said that the public took absolutely no notice of it, carried away as it was by the extraordinary things Fagott was unfolding on-stage. And Fagott, having packed off the punished master of ceremonies, addressed the public thus: ‘All righty, now that we’ve kicked that nuisance out, let’s open a ladies’ shop!’ And all at once the floor of the stage was covered with Persian carpets, huge mirrors appeared, lit by greenish tubes at the sides, and between the mirrors—display windows, and in them the merrily astonished spectators saw Parisian ladies’ dresses of various colours and cuts. In some of the windows, that is, while in others there appeared hundreds of ladies’ hats, with feathers and without feathers, and—with buckles or without—hundreds of shoes, black, white, yellow, leather, satin, suede, with straps, with stones. Among the shoes there appeared cases of perfume, mountains of handbags of antelope hide, suede, silk, and among these, whole heaps of little elongated cases of gold metal such as usually contain lipstick. A redheaded girl appeared from devil knows where in a black evening dress—a girl nice in all respects, had she not been marred by a queer scar on her neck—smiling a proprietary smile by the display windows. Fagott, grinning sweetly, announced that the firm was offering perfectly gratis an exchange of the ladies’ old dresses and shoes for Parisian models and Parisian shoes. The same held, he added, for the handbags and other things. The cat began scraping with his hind paw, while his front paw performed the gestures appropriate to a doorman opening a door. The girl sang out sweetly, though with some hoarseness, rolling her r’s, something not quite comprehensible but, judging by the women’s faces in the stalls, very tempting: ‘Guérlain, Chanel No. 5, Mitsouko, Narcisse Noir, evening gowns, cocktail dresses . . .’ Fagott wriggled, the cat bowed, the girl opened the glass windows. ‘Welcome!’ yelled Fagott. ‘With no embarrassment or ceremony!’ The audience was excited, but as yet no one ventured on-stage. Finally some brunette stood up in the tenth row of the stalls and, smiling as if to say it was all the same to her and she did not give a hoot, went and climbed on-stage by the side stairs. ‘Bravo!’ Fagott shouted. ‘Greetings to the first customer! Behemoth, a chair! Let’s start with the shoes, madame.’ The brunette sat in the chair, and Fagott at once poured a whole heap of shoes on the rug in front of her. The brunette removed her right shoe, tried a lilac one, stamped on the rug, examined the heel. ‘They won’t pinch?’ she asked pensively.

• From Why We Believe: Finding Meaning in Uncertain Times

  40 Yet they each see , understand and experience this world in very different ways, as a result of the different perceptual frameworks they use to interpret it. 41 Although this statement needs to be treated with caution, we could say that these two observers live in different worlds, in that each has a quite distinct vision of the world and their place within it. And this affects how we feel about ourselves and the world. It makes no difference to me how many moons the planet Saturn has, or whether the scientific consensus about the age of the universe is 13.8 billion years or 13.797 billion years. These don’t affect me. I don’t connect with them. From a religious perspective, God is not an item of information but the basis of a meaningful life, evoking worship and adoration rather than an indifferent mental assent. Faith is affective, not simply cognitive, offering transformation and not merely information . Religion in general has the capacity to create a new and intensified engagement with the natural world and the fundamental questions of existence. My Oxford colleague Mark Wynn has explored the ways in which religious ideas or frameworks can help stimulate and shape our sensory experience. Wynn channels the Harvard psychologist William James, who noted that an individual’s perception and experience of the world often shifted radically as a result of their religious conversion: ‘It was like entering another world, a new state of existence. Natural objects were glorified, my spiritual vision was so clarified that I saw beauty in every material object in the universe, the woods were vocal with heavenly music.’ 42 This emphasis on a new way of seeing things, or a new quality of apprehending the world, needs further exploration. David Cooper suggests that a religious teacher or tradition offers not so much a set of ideas to be accepted but a ‘vision’ that is to be apprehended and inhabited – a way of beholding our world which, once it has been ‘properly absorbed’, leads to a new attitude towards the world. 43 While Cooper explores this question from a Daoist perspective, the same point is made repeatedly from other religious standpoints. One of the most important recent discussions of this point is found in Charles Taylor’s notion of the ‘social imaginary’, which shifts attention from abstract theories and ideas about reality to the way in which we imagine our world, and locate ourselves within it. The way we imagine the world is prior to what we believe about it, which is ‘not expressed in theoretical terms, but is carried in images, stories, and legends’, 44 more easily and naturally expressed using the language of ‘seeing’ than ‘thinking’. The Oxford philosopher of religion Austin Farrer saw this point as central to understanding why C. S. Lewis’s way of commending Christianity was so effective, particularly in comparison with more abstract rational defences of faith.

• From Why We Believe: Finding Meaning in Uncertain Times

  Significance . Many feel overwhelmed by the immensity of the universe and the depth of cosmic time, which seems to make human beings utterly insignificant. This point is explored by the novelist Marilynne Robinson, in a theologically engaged essay entitled ‘Psalm Eight’. Robinson here explores the deep human feeling of insignificance in the face of the temporal and spatial vastness of the universe by drawing on the opening verses of this psalm: When I look at your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars that you have established; what are human beings that you are mindful of them, mortals that you care for them? (Psalm 8:3–4). Robinson suggests that the fact that this ‘infinite distance between God and humankind’ is intentionally and graciously bridged by God. In the act of incarnation – the distinctively Christian idea that God enters and inhabits human history in Christ – God ‘visits’ humanity, deeming us to be worthy of such a divine act of humility and compassion. If the great heavens are the work of God’s fingers, what is small and mortal man? The poem answers its own question this way: Man is crowned with honor and glory. He is in a singular sense what God has made him, because of the dignity God has conferred upon him. 56 Beliefs shape our understanding of meaning, in a way that bare facts do not. Each worldview will articulate significantly different understandings of the nature and grounds of coherence, purpose and significance. The point is that beliefs can make human existence existentially viable. Yet while some beliefs liberate and ennoble, others enslave and impoverish. Wittgenstein’s dark broodings on the risk of being ‘held captive by a picture’ express a genuine concern, which I shall consider in the next chapter. Yet we need to move on to consider a further question: how can we understand how beliefs are best enacted in life? What is the most authentic or appropriate expression of certain beliefs? If beliefs make possible certain ways of life, where can we find models of such lives? What exemplars of embodied belief can be identified, that help us grasp both the impact of beliefs on human existence, and the forms of life that they inform and enable? Saints and Sages: Exemplars and a Meaningful Life In her important reflections on the growing importance of moral exemplars in a postmodern context, the American philosopher Edith Wyschogrod highlighted the importance of having someone we can observe or imagine who lives up to and lives out an ethical ideal, rather than simply being presented with an abstract theory that is detached from real life. ‘To lead a moral life one does not need a theory about how one should live, but a flesh and blood existent.’

• From The Nasty Bits: Collected Varietal Cuts, Usable Trim, Scraps, and Bones (2006)

  The chef and I ate at a plain, white-covered table devoid of elaborate setups or floral arrangement. Whether it was more "experience" or "dinner" I will probably spend the rest of my life figuring out. The evening was a long gastro-thrill ride ranging from the farthest reaches of chemistry class (a single raw egg yolk shellacked in caramel and encased in gold leaf) to the stunningly simple (two pristine, fresh prawns cooked in their own sauce—no other ingredient). Mr. Adria, who insists he can tell everything important about people by watching them eat, set the pace, eating every course along with me (and in some cases ahead of me), explaining which striking- looking objects to eat first, which second, and how. "Eat in one bite! Quickly!" Pace and rhythm are important, he insisted. "One musn't eat too slowly or one gets sluggish and tired." "Snacks" arrived first. A green "pine frappe cocktail," artichoke chips, an austere black plate with toasts, sea salt, finely chopped peanuts, and a white toothpaste tube of homemade peanut butter hit the table at the same time as "raspberry lily pads," hazelnut in "textures," lemon tempura with licorice, rhubarb with black pepper, a terrifically tasty row of salty sea cucumber "cracklings" arranged on a tiny black rack, and large puffs of pork scratchings with a yogurt dipping sauce. "Jamon de toro" arrived next. A pun on the word toro (bull), it was in fact fatty tuna belly cured like Iberico ham, served with silver pincers to pick up the ethereally thin slices without bunching or tearing them. The pincers looked (intentionally) like a surgical implement. Adria watched me. eat each course as it appeared, his face lighting up again and again as my expression registered surprise. "Cherries with ham" looked like fondant-covered cherries but were in fact cherries glazed entirely in ham fat. The "golden egg," a tiny golden pillow of egg yolk wrapped in caramel and gold leaf, confronted the palate with flavors in distinct sequence: shock, disorientation, then comforting reassurance. A tiny "Parmesan ice cream sandwich" was an extreme example of a play on comfort food: a salty-sweet remembrance of a childhood that never happened, one of many throughly delicious practical jokes. Apple "caviar"—tiny globules of unearthly apple essence—were served in a faux Petrossian tin. Two crepe courses, one made with chicken skin and the next made, improbably, entirely of milk (!), were a pleasure to eat.

• From Lower than the Angels: A History of Sex and Christianity (2024)

  tradition than it would be to consider Christianity as solely embodied in contemporary American Southern Baptists: a Christian variant that likewise happens ultimately to be a product of eighteenth-century revival. UNINTENDED CONSEQUENCES: ISLAMICATE LANDS AND CHURCH WEDDINGS None of this would have mattered greatly for Christian futures had the impact of Muhammad’s revelations been confined to the Arabian Peninsula, or had Muslim expansion been as gradual and peaceful as that over the first three and a half centuries of Christianity. Muhammad is generally agreed to have died in 632 CE, leaving a flourishing community for Islam in Mecca. It had survived much conflict, not least with local Jews and Christians, but nothing in those skirmishes would have provided a clue to what happened next: within no more than five years of Muhammad’s death, Islamic forces had headed out of Arabia into the Mediterranean seaboard and what are now Syria, Iraq and Iran, repeatedly defeating major armies of Byzantium and the Sasanians. In 638 the Caliph Umar entered Jerusalem as conqueror, restoring to sacred uses the site of the Temple that Christians had so long left desecrated as a rubbish dump. The Sasanian Empire collapsed, and the last heir of the dynasty spent his days in exile as far away as China – ironically in view of his ancestors’ persecution of Christianity, he died as a devout member and benefactor of the Church of the East. [7] The Byzantines seemed in just as much peril as the Sasanians. Byzantine Alexandria and Egypt fell to Muslim armies within a year or two of the capture of Jerusalem, and then over a century Muslims remorselessly fought their way along the North African coast, into the Iberian Peninsula and on into central Francia (France), only being checked in battle at Poitiers in 733, a century after the death of Muhammad. [8] That belated Islamic defeat spared Christian Rome and the remaining Latin West, and during the seventh and eighth centuries, Christian Constantinople also survived repeated Muslim sieges. Yet much of the Christian world, including the land of Jesus’s life and ministry, was now under the control of the new monotheism. It was a remaking of global power as rapid as that of Alexander the Great, while far surpassing the range and long-term impact of Alexander’s conquests in both Asia and Europe. Now Christian Churches that over three centuries had become accustomed to wielding power in their territories had to become reacquainted with the experience of their rulers espousing a different religion. Not all Christians would have found this a trauma, since the imperial Church had done its best to make life difficult for both Miaphysites and Dyophysites, and non-Chalcedonians generally may not have been displeased to have new masters professing what initially may have seemed no more than an eccentric variant on their own creed.

• From The Nasty Bits: Collected Varietal Cuts, Usable Trim, Scraps, and Bones (2006)

  Some, like Sydney's Tetsuya Wakuda, had clearly had life-changing experiences. (He immediately set about designing an upstairs "laboratory/workshop" along the lines of Adria's.) Others, like Scott Bryan of Veritas, were dazzled but confused by the experience. "It was . . . like . . . shock value. I had seawater sorbetl" I'd been gaping with a mixture of fear and longing at The Book for some months when I finally decided I was way past due. There was a massive, shameful, and gaping hole in my culinary education. There were things I needed to know. It was time to investigate the matter. Ferran Adria sat at a small table in the closet-size back room of Jamonisimo, an Iberico ham shop in Barcelona. He was nearly vibrating with enthusiasm as he held a thin slice of Salamanca ham in his hands and rubbed it slowly on his lips. At exactly blood temperature, the wide layer of white fat around the lean turned translucent, then melted to liquid. "See! See!" he exclaimed. We had already polished off a bottle of Cava, several glasses of sherry, a plate of tiny, unbelievably good tinned Galician clams, some buttery also-straight-from-the- can toro-quality tuna from Basque country, some anchovies—and numerous tastings of hand-cut Extremadura and Salamanca ham. The man generally thought of as the most innovative and influential chef in the world was not turning out to be the detached, clinical, mad scientist I'd expected. This guy liked food. He liked to eat. And he neatly linked the "scientific" approach of some of his cooking to simple pleasure: "What's wrong with science?" he asked. "What's wrong with transforming food?" He held up another slice of ham between his fingers. "The making of ham is a 'process.' You 'transform' pork. Iberico ham is better than pork. Good sherry is better than the grapes it's made with." At El Bulli Taller, Adria's laboratory/workshop in a restored Gothic palace in Barcelona's old quarter, metal shutters rolled up to the touch of a button to reveal a panoply of gadgets and utensils. A worktable slid back to uncover an induction stovetop. Cabinets opened, displaying an impressive hyperorganized array of backlit ingredients, each in identical, clear glass jars. The place looked more like Dr. No's sanctum sanctorum than a kitchen. But the subject here was always food. "What is 'better?'" asked Adria, holding up a small, lovely looking pear. "A pear? Or a white truffle? Is a white truffle 'better' because it's more expensive? Because it's rare?" He doesn't know, he said. But he wanted to find out. The taller, or studio, is a place where questions are constantly asked, about the physical properties of food ("Can we do this? Can we do that? Can we make a caramel that doesn't break down in humid conditions? Can we make a cappuccino froth that tastes of the essence of carrot?

• From The Nasty Bits: Collected Varietal Cuts, Usable Trim, Scraps, and Bones (2006)

  Pea "ravioli" was a seemingly impossible concoction in which the bright green, liquidy essence of baby peas was wrapped only in itself with no pasta or outer shell to contain it: a ravioli filling miraculously suspended in space. Carrot "air" was an intensely flavored, truly lighter-than-air froth of carrot and tangerine served in a cut-glass bowl. I accidentally inhaled while bringing the spoon to my mouth—aspirating some into my lungs—and struggled to maintain composure as I coughed and turned red. The inconceivable-sounding iced powder of foie gras with foie gras consomme was one of those revelatory concepts for which Adria is famous. A hot, perfectly clear consomme of foie shared a bowl with a just-fallen snow of foie gras "powder." Instructed to eat from one side of the dish then the other, alternating between hot and cold, I was awestruck by the fact that the frozen, finely ground powder somehow maintained its structural integrity in a bowl of hot broth. It defied all known physical properties of the universe. And it was as good as anything cooked anywhere—a direct rebuke to centuries of classical cooking, miles out in front of all the "foie gras cappuccinos" and stacks of "pan- seared foie gras with chutney and microgreens" one sees everywhere these days. I thought it the strongest, best argument for what Adria says he's trying to do. "Every night is like opening night," he says. "It has to be . . . magic." "Oysters with oysters and yogurt, rolled with macadamia nut" was another astonishing success. Two perfect oysters, in an essence of liquefied smaller oysters, a dot of lemon relish, and then a macadamia yogurt cream, when eaten precisely in sequence, took the tongue on a wild yet strangely familiar ride around the world—and then right back to my very first oyster. A shimmering, translucent globe of raw tuna marrow topped with a few beads of caviar was so good that Adria says, "I won't serve it to my Japanese customers. If the Japanese find out about this the price for tuna bones will go up!" He had a point. The ultralight, unearthly substance tasted like top-quality Edo-style sushi—from another planet. Like nearly everything I tried that night, it had a carefully calibrated progression of clean, precise flavors and a pleasurable aftertaste that didn't intrude on the course to follow. Cuttlefish and coconut "ravioli" was two tight pillows of cuttlefish that exploded unexpectedly (and disturbingly) in the mouth, flooding it with liquid. When I recovered from the surprise, I looked up to see Adria laughing delightedly.

• From Why We Believe: Finding Meaning in Uncertain Times

  Something transfigured and infinite. The beatific vision – God, I do not find it, I do not think it is to be found – but the love of it is my life. It the actual spring of life within me. 35 Russell’s intellectual motivation to discover the grounds of a powerful and indefinable experience of ‘curious, wild pain’ – something that seemed to point beyond ‘what the world contains’ – has parallels throughout human history. We might think of Isaac Newton’s reflection, dating from late in his life, in which he imagined himself standing on the threshold of something that was signposted by this world, yet which tantalisingly lay beyond his reach: I seem to have been only like a small boy playing on the sea-shore, diverting myself in now and then finding a smoother pebble or a prettier shell than the ordinary, whilst the great ocean of truth lay all undiscovered before me. 36 William Wordsworth expressed this idea in the phrase ‘spots of time’ – rare yet precious moments of profound feeling and imaginative strength, in which individuals sense that they have grasped something of ultimate significance within or beyond themselves. I can still recall vividly such an experience when, as an Oxford scientific researcher during the 1970s, I was travelling in the depths of a moonless night towards the Iranian city of Kermān on a dilapidated coach. Its sputtering engine finally failed, leaving the passengers to stroll around the ruins of an abandoned caravanserai while the coach driver tinkered with its fuel pump. I saw the stars that night as I had never seen them before – a solemn and beautiful brilliance amid a dark and silent desert landscape. I experienced a ‘rapturous amazement’ (to borrow a phrase from Albert Einstein), an inexpressible sense of awe, the memory of which still sends shivers down my spine. I felt very small and insignificant that night in comparison with the untamed immensity of the heavens, experiencing a strange intimation of transcendence in the face of the overwhelming vastness of the natural world that I, as a scientist, had once hoped to master. Richard Dawkins also recognises the importance of such experiences. ‘The great religions have a place for awe, for ecstatic transport at the wonder and beauty of creation. And it’s exactly this feeling of spine-shivering, breath-catching awe – almost worship – this flooding of the chest with epiphanic wonder, that modern science can provide.’ 37 Yet this experience is neither ‘religious’ nor ‘scientific’; it is simply an experience, until and unless it is connected with a conceptual framework, a network of beliefs that illuminates its nature and endows it with meaning. Psychological accounts of the origins of an experience of awe can easily be given. 38 These, however, are simply explanations of how an experience of awe arises within the human consciousness; it does not explain how meaning might arise from it, or what that meaning might be.