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 Books That Have Made History: Books That Can Change Your Life (2005)

  21 In the same way that the Romans were the cultural heirs of the Greeks, the United States of today is the cultural heir of Europe. Mohandas Gandhi called the Bhagavad Gita the “religious book par excellence,” and it is regarded as the supreme creation of Sanskrit literature. Composed in the same period as the Iliad, this poem, “ The Song of God ,” is also an epic statement of polytheism, of the belief that god has fashioned many roads to the truth. As in the Iliad, a story of war and battle provides the vehicle to explore deeper questions of the nature of god. The Bhagavad Gita proclaims that beyond the multitude of deities, there is an all- encompassing, single divine power. This god is truth, and the search for wisdom is the pathway to god and to the freedom that is eternal. Wisdom lies in understanding that material goods and success are false idols. Freedom comes by overcoming our desires for what is false and devoting ourselves and our work to what is true and eternal. The culmination of an image of god as a vision of truth can be found perhaps as early as 500 B.C. in the Bhagavad Gita . This work was a product of classical Indian civilization. Around 1800 B.C., the fl ourishing civilizations around the Indus River were overrun by invaders from the west. The language of these invaders was Sanskrit, also the language of the Bhagavad Gita. Sanskrit was related to Persian and more distantly to Greek, Latin, and the Germanic languages. These invaders, who called themselves Aryans, meaning “nobles,” imposed their rule by conquest. From warfare and destruction came a new civilization that produced rich poetry, including the Bhagavad Gita, in an epic form. The religion of this people was Hinduism, a polytheistic religion that rejects the notion that the world of the gods is fi nite, but is willing to recognize any new divine power capable of rendering supernatural benefi ts to the community of worshipers. All nature was seen Sanskrit verse from Bhagavad Gita. © Hemera/Thinkstock.

• From The Art of Seduction (2001)

  One night Caesar was meeting with his generals in the Egyptian palace, discussing strategy, when a guard entered to report that a Greek merchant was at the door bearing a large and valuable gift for the Roman leader. Caesar, in the mood for a little fun, gave the merchant permission to enter. The man came in, carrying on his shoulders a large rolled-up carpet. He undid the rope around the bundle and with a snap of his wrists unfurled it—revealing the young Cleopatra, who had been hidden inside, and who rose up half clothed before Caesar and his guests, like Venus emerging from the waves. Everyone was dazzled at the sight of the beautiful young queen (only twenty-one at the time) appearing before them suddenly as if in a dream. They were astounded at her daring and theatricality—smuggled into the harbor at night with only one man to protect her, risking everything on a bold move. No one was more enchanted than Caesar. According to the Roman writer Dio Cassius, "Cleopatra was in the prime of life. She had a delightful voice which could not fail to cast a spell over all who heard it. Such was the charm of her person and her speech that they drew the cold- est and most determined misogynist into her toils. Caesar was spellbound as soon as he set eyes on her and she opened her mouth to speak." That same evening Cleopatra became Caesar s lover. Caesar had had numerous mistresses before, to divert him from the rig- ors of his campaigns. But he had always disposed of them quickly to return to what really thrilled him—political intrigue, the challenges of warfare, the Roman theater. Caesar had seen women try anything to keep him un- der their spell. Yet nothing prepared him for Cleopatra. One night she would tell him how together they could revive the glory of Alexander the Great, and rule the world like gods. The next she would entertain him dressed as the goddess Isis, surrounded by the opulence of her court. Cleopatra initiated Caesar in the most decadent revelries, presenting herself as the incarnation of the Egyptian exotic. His life with her was a constant game, as challenging as warfare, for the moment he felt secure with her she In the mean time our good ship, with that perfect wind to drive her, fast approached the Sirens' Isle. But now the breeze dropped, some power lulled the waves, and a breathless calm set in. Rising from their seats my men drew in the sail and threw it into the hold, then sat down at the oars and churned the water white with their blades of polished pine. Meanwhile I took a large round of wax, cut it up small with my sword, and kneaded the pieces with all the strength of my fingers. The wax soon yielded to my vigorous treatment and grew warm, for I had the rays of my Lord the Sun to help me.

• From The Art of Seduction (2001)

  Today, anyone who has presence, who attracts attention when he or she tables of the testimony in enters a room, is said to possess charisma. But even these less-exalted types his hand as he came down from the mountain, Moses reveal a trace of the quality suggested by the word's original meaning. did not know that the skin Their charisma is mysterious and inexplicable, never obvious. They have an of his face shone because he unusual confidence. They have a gift—often a smoothness with language— had been talking with God. And when Aaron that makes them stand out from the crowd. They express a vision. We may and all the people of Israel not realize it, but in their presence we have a kind of religious experience: saw Moses, behold, the we believe in these people, without having any rational evidence for doing skin of his face shone, and so. When trying to concoct an effect of charisma, never forget the religious they were afraid to come near him. But Moses source of its power. You must radiate an inward quality that has a saintly or called to them; and Aaron spiritual edge to it. Your eyes must glow with the fire of a prophet. Your and all the leaders of the charisma must seem natural, as if it came from something mysteriously be-congregation returned to him, and Moses talked yond your control, a gift of the gods. In our rational, disenchanted world, with them. And afterward people crave a religious experience, particularly on a group level. Any sign all the people of Israel came of charisma plays to this desire to believe in something. And there is noth-near, and he gave them in commandment all that the ing more seductive than giving people something to believe in and follow. Lord had spoken with him Charisma must seem mystical, but that does not mean you cannot learn in Mount Sinai. And certain tricks that will enhance the charisma you already possess, or will when Moses had finished speaking with them, he put give you the outward appearance of it. The following are basic qualities a veil on his face; but that will help create the illusion of charisma: whenever Moses went in before the Lord to speak with him, he took the veil off, until he came out; and Purpose. If people believe you have a plan, that you know where you are when he came out, and going, they will follow you instinctively. The direction does not matter: told the people of Israel pick a cause, an ideal, a vision and show that you will not sway from your what he was commanded, the people of Israel saw the goal. People will imagine that your confidence comes from something face of Moses, that the skin real—just as the ancient Hebrews believed Moses was in communion with of Moses's face shone; and God, simply because he showed the outward signs. Moses would put the veil upon his face again, until

• From The Art of Seduction (2001)

  Caesar, in the mood for a little fun, gave the merchant permission to enter. But now the breeze The man came in, carrying on his shoulders a large rolled-up carpet. He dropped, some power lulled undid the rope around the bundle and with a snap of his wrists unfurled the waves, and a breathless calm set in. Rising from it—revealing the young Cleopatra, who had been hidden inside, and who their seats my men drew rose up half clothed before Caesar and his guests, like Venus emerging from in the sail and threw it into the waves. the hold, then sat down at the oars and churned the Everyone was dazzled at the sight of the beautiful young queen (only water white with their twenty-one at the time) appearing before them suddenly as if in a dream. blades of polished pine. They were astounded at her daring and theatricality—smuggled into the Meanwhile I took a large harbor at night with only one man to protect her, risking everything on a round of wax, cut it up small with my sword, and bold move. No one was more enchanted than Caesar. According to the kneaded the pieces with all Roman writer Dio Cassius, "Cleopatra was in the prime of life. She had a the strength of my fingers. delightful voice which could not fail to cast a spell over all who heard it. The wax soon yielded to my vigorous treatment and Such was the charm of her person and her speech that they drew the cold- grew warm, for I had the est and most determined misogynist into her toils. Caesar was spellbound as rays of my Lord the Sun to soon as he set eyes on her and she opened her mouth to speak." That same help me. I took each of my men in turn and plugged evening Cleopatra became Caesar s lover. their ears with it. They Caesar had had numerous mistresses before, to divert him from the rig- then made me a prisoner ors of his campaigns. But he had always disposed of them quickly to return on my ship by binding me hand and foot, standing to what really thrilled him—political intrigue, the challenges of warfare, me up by the step of the the Roman theater. Caesar had seen women try anything to keep him un- mast and tying the rope's der their spell. Yet nothing prepared him for Cleopatra. One night she ends to the mast itself. would tell him how together they could revive the glory of Alexander the This done, they sat down once more and struck the Great, and rule the world like gods. The next she would entertain him grey water with their oars. dressed as the goddess Isis, surrounded by the opulence of her court. • We made good progress Cleopatra initiated Caesar in the most decadent revelries, presenting herself and had just come within call of the shore when the

• From Books That Have Made History: Books That Can Change Your Life (2005)

  54 Lecture 10: Book of Job Book of Job Lecture 10 The Book of Job goes beyond anything that the rest of ancient Near Eastern literature except for the poetry of the Gilgamesh in its exploration of this question of good and evil. B eowulf, as we have seen, was an exploration of fate. In the world of Beowulf and in the epic of Gilgamesh, poets asked why people must die and whether there is a way to avoid death. After accepting that all people must die, the poets explore how people should live. The heroic image of Beowulf lives and dies, leaving behind the greatest of reputations. The divine plays little role in Gilgamesh and Beowulf. The heroes must work out their own destiny in a world in which humans are alone. But another great tradition makes the question of fate central to the question of the nature of God. If God is good, why does evil exist? Why do bad things happen to good people? The Book of Job is the most enduring attempt to answer that question. The author of Job took a widespread Middle Eastern folklore motif and transformed it into a dramatic and touching story of human suffering. In the hands of this unknown literary genius, that story became the means for a profound disquisition on the ultimate mystery of God and the frailty of any human attempt to understand the divine. The Book of Job raises questions of fate, as well as questions of good and evil. It is one of the most beautiful works ever composed. It is also a profound exploration of why bad things happen to good people. It explores the questions of absolute good and absolute evil. In addition, it asks what we deserve if we live our lives as well as we can and evil still happens to us. The Book of Job is classi fi ed as wisdom literature. Wisdom literature had its roots in the ancient Near East and includes such works as Ecclesiastes and Proverbs, as well as Egyptian works that give practical wisdom. Job is the story of a righteous man. Job is a wealthy man with 10 children. He is respected in his community. He does good works and has avoided evil his entire life. The God in the Book of Job is puzzling and almost non-Hebraic. God is in heaven meeting with the sons of heaven. Satan, the personifi cation

• From Middlesex (2002)

  There was no roadblock, no fence. The streetcar didn't so much as pause as it crossed the invisible barrier, but at the same time in the length of a block the world was different. The light seemed to change, growing gray as it filtered through laundry lines. The gloom of front porches and apartments without electricity seeped out into the streets, and the thundercloud of poverty that hung over the neighborhood directed attention downward toward the clarity of for- lorn, shadowless objects: red bricks crumbling off a stoop, piles of trash and ham bones, used tires, crushed pinwheels from last year's fair, someone's old lost shoe. The derelict quiet lasted only a moment before Black Bottom erupted from all its alleys and doorways. Look at all the children! So many! Suddenly children were running alongside the streetcar, waving and shouting. They played chicken with it, jumping in front of the tracks. Others climbed onto the back. Desde- mona put a hand to her throat. Why do they have so many children? What's the matter with these people? The mavro women should nurse their babies longer. Somebody should tell them. Now in the alleys she saw men washing themselves at open faucets. Half- dressed women jutted out hips on second-story porches. Desdemona looked in awe and terror at all the faces filling the windows, all the bodies filling the streets, nearly a half million people squeezed into twenty-five square blocks. Ever since World War I when E. I. Weiss, manager of the Packard Motor Company, had brought, by his own report, die first "load of 141 niggers" to the city, here in Black Bottom was where the establish- ment had thought to keep them. All kinds of professions now crowded in together, foundry workers and lawyers, maids and car- penters, doctors and hoodlums, but most people, this being 1932, were unemployed. Still, more and more were coming every year, every month, seeking jobs in the North. They slept on every couch in every house. They built shacks in the yards. They camped on roofs. (This state of affairs couldn't last, of course. Over the years, Black Bottom, for all the whites' attempts to contain it— and because of the inexorable laws of poverty and racism— would slowly spread, street by street, neighborhood by neighborhood, until the so-called ghetto would become the entire city itself, and by the 1970s, in the no-tax-base, white-flight, murder-capital Detroit of the Coleman Young administration, black people could finally live wherever they wanted to . . .) But now, back in 1932, something odd was happening. The streetcar was slowing down. In the middle of Black Bottom, it was stopping and— unheard of .'—opening its doors. Passengers fidgeted. The conductor tapped Desdemona on the shoulder. "Lady, this is it. Hastings." "Hastings Street?" She didn't believe him. She showed him the address again. He pointed out the door.

• From Holy Ghost Girl (2012)

  Then there were the visions: He foretold his uncle’s and then his grandmother’s death; and the voices: when he played alone he often heard God calling his name.My mother, too, grew up on a first-name basis with God. She was only eight when she heard the voice calling her name in the woods next to the Assemblies of God church where her daddy was pastor. There were no burning bushes, no glowing figures, only an ordinary and somewhat familiar voice calling, Carolyn. She wandered through the trees and looked behind the largest trunk. Carolyn . No one there. Carolyn.That night as she told her family the story, a feeling of awe swept over her. That voice, the voice that called her name in the trees, the voice that sounded so familiar yet belonged to no one, that voice was the eternal I Am, the same voice that spoke the world into existence. She knew it. When her parents asked how she knew, she shrugged and asked, “Well, who else could it have been?” In her family, no one would have suggested it was her imagination. My Pentecostal grandparents and their children existed in a reality that was an extension of biblical times. They believed the temporal world lay like a fine curtain over the realm of the eternal. At any moment the archangel Michael might reach through the veil and tap them on the shoulder with a heavenly message. Or the devil might slip through and tempt with some cheap bit of finery. It could be hard to tell one from the other at times, especially given Satan’s love of deception, but no one questioned the veracity of the experiences.Being singled out by God brought the kind of attention that was hard to come by for kids in large, poor families. Born in 1932 to Alabama sharecroppers, Brother Terrell was the youngest of seven kids. The family lived in a shack without running water or electricity. A broken-down horse provided the only transportation. The Great Depression and the death of Brother Terrell’s father turned the family’s subsistent poverty into a struggle for survival. His mother left him in the care of one of his sisters and went to work in the fields with her other five children. She left at sunrise and came home at sundown. On Sundays, she hitched the horse to a rickety wagon and drove her brood to the nearest holiness church, a backwoods term for a nondenominational Pentecostal offshoot. Her faith was her only source of hope.Mama’s childhood was slightly less desperate. She was one of the middle kids in a family of nine children. Her daddy was the pastor of a string of Assemblies of God churches throughout Alabama and Florida. He farmed to put food on the table. My mother and her siblings picked cotton to pay for their shoes and other necessities. Mama and Brother Terrell were thought to be sensitive children by their mothers and downright peculiar by their siblings.

• From Holy Ghost Girl (2012)

  He was the healer and prophet plucked by the hand of God from the Alabama countryside and given a worldwide ministry of faith and deliverance. He was a son of God, a voice crying out in the wilderness. Oh, hallelujah, he knew who he was, and the devil couldn’t take that away from him. His shoulders straightened and his voice grew stronger. The eulogy turned into preaching and the preaching wandered across a broad expanse of subjects. The 9/11 attack had come to him in a vision where he saw the towers fall. When he prophesied, you better believe it came to pass. The intermittent response of the crowd lengthened into a steady buzz of “amen, uh-huh, hallelujah, that’s right” running underneath and alongside every sound that issued from his mouth until his words and theirs formed one single affirmation.He began to pace and then to dance up and down the platform. His words came faster until he was shouting into the microphone. “There’s comin’ a revival, a dead-raising revival!”Family members, tense and silent, shifted in their seats.“It’s a revival that will restore everything the devil has stolen, a revival that will return everything that’s been lost . . . everything that’s been corrupted, everything you’ve lived without.”They jumped to their feet, waved their hands, and danced and danced. They understood that life takes it all, your last dime, your last hope, your last breath. They understood, and they laughed and shouted and careened about the church, drunk on faith. My husband, one of the most reserved and cerebral men I have known, had his hands in the air. My sister’s husband shouted “amen” until his face turned red. The funeral had turned into a revival meeting for everyone except Brother Terrell’s children, who sat red-eyed and rigid in the middle of the church facing the coffin.With the congregation in his thrall, Brother Terrell abruptly stopped preaching and handed the microphone to one of his associates. As the amens and hallelujahs softened, the associate minister waved forward a group of preachers. One of them carried a bottle of olive oil. They walked down the ramp to the casket. The church went silent. My sisters glanced over their shoulders, eyes wide. One of Pam’s younger sisters buried her face in her hands. The minister who had been Randall’s friend took the bottle of oil and tilted it onto a white handkerchief. He put the cloth on Randall’s forehead and spoke while the others laid hands on the corpse.“Brother Randall, in the name of Jesus, if you want to come back, then go ahead and come on. In the name of Jesus. We’d be glad to have you.”After what must have been one of the shortest prayers in Holy Roller history, the preachers stepped away from the body. Shoulders relaxed in the family section. Randall would remain dead and his body would stay in the coffin. The organ music swelled and Brother Terrell moved to the side of the coffin.

• From Middlesex (2002)

  Is there anything as incredible as the love story of your own parents? Anything as hard to grasp as the fact that those two over-the-hill play- ers, permanendy on the disabled list, were once in the starting lineup? It's impossible to imagine my father, who in my experience was aroused mainly by the lowering of interest rates, suffering the acute, adolescent passions of the flesh. Milton lying on his bed, dreaming about my mother in the same way I would later dream about the Ob- scure Object. Milton writing love letters and even, after reading Mar- veil's "To His Coy Mistress" at night school, \o\t poems. Milton mixing Elizabethan metaphysics with the rhyming styles of Edgar Bergen: You're just as amazing, Tessie Zizmo as some new mechanicalgizmo a GE exec mightgive a pal you're a World's Fair kind ofgal . . . 173 Even looking back through a daughter's forgiving eye, I have to admit: my father was never good-looking. At eighteen, he was alarm- ingly, consumptively skinny. Blemishes dotted his face. Beneath his doleful eyes the skin was already darkening in pouches. His chin was weak, his nose overdeveloped, his Brylcreemed hair as massive and gleaming as a Jell-O mold. Milton, however, was aware of none of these physical deficits. He possessed a flinty self-confidence that pro- tected him like a shell from the world's assaults. Theodora's physical appeal was more obvious. She had inherited Sourmelina's beauty on a smaller scale. She was only five foot one, thin-waisted and small-busted, with a long, swanlike neck supporting her pretty, heart-shaped face. If Sourmelina had always been a Euro- pean kind of American, a sort of Marlene Dietrich, then Tessie was the fully Americanized daughter Dietrich might have had. Her main- stream, even countrified, looks extended to the slight gap between her teeth and her turned-up nose. Traits often skip a generation. I look much more typically Greek than my mother does. Somehow Tessie had become a partial product of the South. She said things like "shucks" and "golly." Working every day at the florist's shop, Lina had left Tessie in the care of an assortment of older women, many of them Scotch Irish ladies from Kentucky, and in this way a twang had got- ten into Tessie's speech. Compared with Zoe's strong, mannish fea- tures, Tessie had so-called ail-American looks, and this was certainly part of what attracted my father. Sourmelina's salary at the florist's shop was not high. Mother and daughter were forced to economize. At secondhand shops, Sourme- lina gravitated to Vegas showgirl outfits. Tessie picked out sensible clothes. Back at O'Toole's, she mended wool skirts and hand-washed blouses; she de-pilled sweaters and polished used saddle shoes. But the faint thrift-store smell never quite left her clothes. (It would at- tach to me years later when I went on the road.) The smell went along with her fatherlessness, and with growing up poor.

• From Holy Ghost Girl (2012)

  This is the revival Jesus was talking about when he said in the scripture, ‘These things ye shall do and greater.’“Jesus showed me a vision of this revival spreading like wildfire across the whole earth. Then before the devil and the churches could get into it and destroy it, it was over. And then a time of great tribulation came upon us.” He buried his face in his hands and his shoulders shook. His voice wheezed out a cry.“I saw Christians persecuted in this country for refusing to renounce Christ, just like I saw in my vision back in fifty-nine.“Then it was over and I saw the Son of Man, Jesus, coming in the clouds. We don’t have much time, people. We got to lift up Jesus. We’re entering into a new dispensation. It’s got to be Jesus, Jesus, Jesus from now on out. I don’t understand everything that this means, but I believe as we seek the Lord, he’ll tell us.”He stretched out his hand toward the congregation. “And one more thing. Jesus told me if I would obey him, he’d supply all my needs. He said, ‘You’ll never have to beg for an offering again.’ That’s thus saith the Lord, people.”Brother Cotton brought the four offering buckets and handed them to Brother Terrell. My mother began to play softly on the organ. Brother Terrell set the buckets up on the ground in front of him. “Whatever y’all give tonight will be given back to you multiplied. The Lord will bless those that bless this ministry. That’s what he said.”The audience filled the buckets, then began to press money into Brother Terrell’s hands and pockets, telling him it was for his personal use. He shook hands and thanked people for their support. He inclined his head to listen to prayer requests. He hugged the older men and women and blessed the children of the younger ones. When people grabbed him and refused to let go, he waved Brother Cotton aside and patted their hands and nodded while they told him how much he meant to them. In him they saw a more powerful, dazzling image of themselves. He came from the same grim poverty that had shaped them, but it did not cling to him. His smile held out a promise; what it was they couldn’t have told you, but the memory of it lingered for days after they saw him. He was one of them, but his face lacked the hopeless, haunted expression they glimpsed as they walked past streaky storefront windows. When he spoke he sounded like them, and people listened. He stood on that platform in those fine store-bought suits and told stories of huntin’ coons and eatin’ stewed squirrel, and when the newspaper men came to take his picture and write about him, he laughed and didn’t try to talk in a prettified way. He was them without the shame. He was them without the hopelessness.

• From The Art of Seduction (2001)

  Kennedy's thousand days in office resonate as myth. and mythic— substance of the hero or heroine of the Kennedy's seduction of the American public was conscious and calculated. movies, and who in turn enriches this substance by It was also more Hollywood than Washington, which was not surprising: The Star • 125 Kennedy's father, Joseph, had once been a movie producer, and Kennedy his or her own contrib-himself had spent time in Hollywood, hobnobbing with actors and trying ution. When we speak of the myth of the star, we to figure out what made them stars. He was particularly fascinated with mean first of all the process Gary Cooper, Montgomery Clift, and Cary Grant; he often called Grant of divinization which the for advice. movie actor undergoes, a process that makes him the Hollywood had found ways to unite the entire country around cer- idol of crowds. tain themes, or myths—often the great American myth of the West. The —EDGAR MORIN, THE STARS, great stars embodied mythic types: John Wayne the patriarch, Clift TRANSLATED BY RICHARD the Promethean rebel, Jimmy Stewart the noble hero, Marilyn Monroe the HOWARD siren. These were not mere mortals but gods and goddesses to be dreamed and fantasized about. All of Kennedy's actions were framed in the conventions of Hollywood. He did not argue with his opponents, he confronted Age: 22, Sex: female, them dramatically. He posed, and in visually fascinating ways—whether Nationality: British, with his wife, with his children, or alone onstage. He copied the facial Profession: medical student " [ Deanna Durbin] became expressions, the presence, of a Dean or a Cooper. He did not discuss my first and only screen policy details but waxed eloquent about grand mythic themes, the kind idol. I wanted to be as that could unite a divided nation. And all this was calculated for television, much like her as possible, for Kennedy mostly existed as a televised image. That image haunted both in my manners and clothes. Whenever I was to our dreams. Well before his assassination, Kennedy attracted fantasies of get a new dress, I would America's lost innocence with his call for a renaissance of the pioneer spirit, find from my collection a a New Frontier. particularly nice picture of Deanna and ask for a dress Of all the character types, the Mythic Star is perhaps the most powerful like she was wearing. I did of all. People are divided by all kinds of consciously recognized categories— my hair as much like hers race, gender, class, religion, politics. It is impossible, then, to gain power on as 1 could manage. If I found myself in any a grand scale, or to win an election, by drawing on conscious awareness; an annoying or aggravating appeal to any one group will only alienate another. Unconsciously, how- situation . . . I found ever, there is much we share. All of us are mortal, all of us know fear, all of myself wondering what Deanna would do and

• From The Art of Seduction (2001)

  reduce his opponents to silence. When Benito Mussolini was challenged, had made others willing to he would roll his eyes, showing the whites in a way that frightened people. believe, that she was the mouthpiece of God. • On President Kusnasosro Sukarno of Indonesia had a gaze that seemed as if it Friday, April 29th, 1429, could have read thoughts. Roosevelt could dilate his pupils at will, making the news spread in Orléans his stare both hypnotizing and intimidating. The eyes of the Charismatic that a force, led by the never show fear or nerves. Pucelle of Domrémy, was on its way to the relief of All of these skills are acquirable. Napoleon spent hours in front of a the city, a piece of news mirror, modeling his gaze on that of the great contemporary actor Talma. which, as the chronicler The key is self-control. The look does not necessarily have to be aggressive; remarks, comforted them greatly. it can also show contentment. Remember: your eyes can emanate charisma, — V I T A SACKVILLE-WEST, but they can also give you away as a faker. Do not leave such an important SAINT JOAN OF ARC attribute to chance. Practice the effect you desire. Genuine charisma thus means the ability to internally generate and externally express extreme excitement, an ability which makes one the object of intense attention and unre-flective imitation by others. — L I A H GREENFIELD Charismatic Types—Historical Examples The miraculous prophet. In the year 1425, Joan of Arc, a peasant girl from the French village of Domrémy, had her first vision: "I was in my thirteenth year when God sent a voice to guide me." The voice was that of Saint Michael and he came with a message from God: Joan had been chosen to rid France of the English invaders who now ruled most of the country, and of the resulting chaos and war. She was also to restore the French crown to the prince—the Dauphin, later Charles VII—who was its rightful heir. Saint Catherine and Saint Margaret also spoke to Joan. Her visions were extraordinarily vivid: she saw Saint Michael, touched him, smelled him. The Charismatic • 103 At first Joan told no one what she had seen; for all anyone knew, she Amongst the surplus was a quiet farm girl. But the visions became even more intense, and so in population living on the margin of society [ in the 1429 she left Domrémy, determined to realize the mission for which God Middle Ages] there was had chosen her. Her goal was to meet Charles in the town of Chinon, always a strong tendency to where he had established his court in exile. The obstacles were enor- take as leader a layman, or mous: Chinon was far, the journey was dangerous, and Charles, even if she maybe an apostate friar or monk, who imposed

• From What Are Biblical Values? (2019)

  Elsewhere in the Bible, we occasionally encounter human sacrifice in early Israel, but it seems to be exceptional. The most famous instance is the sacrifice of Isaac in Genesis 22. God commands Abraham: “Take your son, your only son Isaac, whom you love, and go to the land of Moriah, and offer him there as a burnt offering on one of the mountains that I shall show you.” Abraham does not hesitate. In the end, Abraham is not required to kill the boy. But, he is praised for his willingness: Because you have done this, and have not withheld your son, your only son, I will indeed bless you, and I will make your offspring as numerous as the stars of heaven and as the sand that is on the seashore. (22:16–17) It is not apparent from this story that God intended to abolish human sacrifice, and there is certainly no suggestion that Isaac had a right to life. Abraham has no difficulty in accepting the command to sacrifice his son as a valid divine command.12 Jephtah’s daughter is less fortunate than Isaac. Her father made a vow to the Lord: If you will give the Ammonites into my hand, then whoever comes out of the doors of my house to meet me, when I return victorious from the Ammonites, shall be the LORD ’s, to be offered up by me as a burnt offering. (Judges 11:30–31) There can be little doubt that human sacrifice was intended. Jephtah would surely not have sacrificed a dog if the animal had come out to meet him. His vow has often been judged rash by modern critics, but the biblical text passes no judgment on it. Indeed, the Epistle to the Hebrews in the New Testament lists him among the heroes of faith (11:32). He is heartbroken when his daughter comes out to meet him, but father and daughter agree that the vow must be honored.13 There are parallels for the efficacy of human sacrifice in other ancient cultures. The Spartan king Agamemnon allegedly sacrificed his daughter to gain favorable winds to sail to Troy. In 2 Kings 3:26 the king of Moab reportedly sacrificed his firstborn son to turn the tide of battle against Israel and succeeded. Two kings of Judah, Ahaz and Manasseh, are accused of child sacrifice, and the prophet Micah imagines that an Israelite might think that he should offer his firstborn as atonement for sin (6:7). To be sure, many voices in the Hebrew Bible, including Micah’s, were raised in protest against the practice of child sacrifice. Jeremiah claims that the idea had never entered God’s mind (19:4–6). Ezekiel says that God gave the Israelites “statutes that were not good, and ordinances by which they could not live. I defiled them through their very gifts, in their offering up all their firstborn, in order that I might horrify them” (20:25–26).

• From Middlesex (2002)

  "No, I don't," said Desdemona. "SIXTY TRILLION YEARS AGO A GOD -SCIENTIST DUG A HOLE THROUGH THE EARTH, FILLED IT WITH DYNA- MITE AND BLEW THE EARTH IN TWO. THE SMALLER OF THESE TWO PIECES BECAME THE MOON. DO YOU RE- CALL THAT?" My grandmother clamped her hands over her ears; on her face was a look of refusal. But through her lips a question slipped out: "Somebody blew up the earth? Who?" "TODAY I WANT TO TELL YOU ABOUT ANOTHER GOD-SCIENTIST. AN EVIL SCIENTIST. BY THE NAME OF YACUB." And now her fingers spread apart, letting the voice reach her ears . . . "YACUB LIVED EIGHTY-FOUR HUNDRED YEARS AGO IN THE PRESENT TWENTY-FIVE-THOUSAND-YEAR-CYCLE OF HISTORY. HE WAS POSSESSED, THIS YACUB, OF AN UNUSUALLY LARGE CRANIUM. A SMART MAN. A BRIL- LIANT MAN. ONE OF THE PREEMINENT SCHOLARS OF THE NATION OF ISLAM. THIS WAS A MAN WHO DISCOV- 153 ERED THE SECRETS OF MAGNETISM WHEN HE WAS ONLY SIX YEARS OLD. HE WAS PLAYING WITH TWO PIECES OF STEEL AND HE HELD THEM TOGETHER AND DISCOVERED THAT SCIENTIFIC FORMULA: MAG- NETISM." Like a magnet itself, the voice worked on Desdemona. Now it was pulling her hands down to her sides. It was making her lean for- ward in her chair . . . "BUT YACUB WASN'T CONTENT WITH MAGNETISM. WITH HIS LARGE CRANIUM HE HAD OTHER GREAT IDEAS. AND SO ONE DAY YACUB THOUGHT TO HIMSELF THAT IF HE COULD CREATE A RACE OF PEOPLE COM- PLETELY DIFFERENT FROM THE ORIGINAL PEOPLE- GENETICALLY DIFFERENT — THAT RACE COULD COME TO DOMINATE THE BLACK NATION THROUGH TRICKNOL- OGY." . . . And when leaning wasn't enough, she moved closer. Walking across the room, moving silk bolts aside, she knelt down before the grate, as Fard continued his explanation: "every black man is MADE OF TWO GERMS: A BLACK GERM AND A BROWN GERM. AND SO YACUB CONVINCED FIFTY-NINE THOU- SAND NINE HUNDRED AND NINETY-NINE MUSLIMS TO EMIGRATE TO THE ISLAND OF PELAN. THE ISLAND OF PELAN IS IN THE AEGEAN. YOU WILL FIND IT TODAY ON EUROPEAN MAPS, UNDER A FALSE NAME. TO THIS IS- LAND YACUB BROUGHT HIS FIFTY-NINE THOUSAND NINE HUNDRED AND NINETY-NINE MUSLIMS. AND THERE HE COMMENCED HIS GRAFTING." She could hear other things now. Fard's footsteps as he paced the stage. The squeaking of chairs as his listeners bent forward, hanging on his every word. "IN HIS LABORATORIES ON PELAN, YACUB KEPT ALL ORIGINAL BLACK PEOPLE FROM REPRODUCING. IF A BLACK WOMAN GAVE BIRTH TO A CHILD, THAT CHILD WAS KILLED. YACUB ONLY LET BROWN BABIES LIVE. HE ONLY LET BROWN-SKINNED PEOPLE MATE." "Terrible," Desdemona said, up on the third floor. "Terrible, this Yacub person." 154

• From Middlesex (2002)

  "Let me ask you something. Where was King George when they dumped all that tea into the drink? Was he in Boston? Was he in America even? No. He was way the hell over there in England, eating crumpets." 257 The implacable black Cadillac powered along, bearing my father, brother, and me out of the war-torn city. We crossed over a thin canal which, like a moat, separated Detroit from Grosse Pointe. And then, before we had time to register the changes, we were at the house on Middlesex Boulevard. The trees were what I noticed first. Two enormous weeping wil- lows, like woolly mammoths, on either side of the property. Their vines hung over the driveway like streamers of sponge at a car wash. Above was the autumn sun. Passing through the willows' leaves, it turned them a phosphorescent green. It was as though, in the middle of the block's cool shade, a beacon had been switched on; and this impression was only strengthened by the house we'd now stopped in front of. Middlesex! Did anybody ever live in a house as strange? As sci-fi? As futuristic and outdated at the same time? A house that was more like communism, better in theory than reality? The walls were pale yellow, made of octagonal stone blocks framed by redwood siding along the roofline. Plate glass windows ran along the front. Hudson Clark (whose name Milton would drop for years to come, despite the fact that no one ever recognized it) had designed Middlesex to har- monize with the natural surroundings. In this case, that meant the two weeping willow trees and the mulberry growing against the front of the house. Forgetting where he was (a conservative suburb) and what was on the other side of those trees (the Turnbulls and the Picketts), Clark followed the principles of Frank Lloyd Wright, ban- ishing the Victorian vertical in favor of a midwestern horizontal, opening up the interior spaces, and bringing in a Japanese influence. Middlesex was a testament to theory uncompromised by practicality. For instance: Hudson Clark hadn't believed in doors. The concept of the door, of this thing that swung one way or the other, was out- moded. So on Middlesex we didn't have doors. Instead we had long, accordion-like barriers, made from sisal, that worked by a pneumatic pump located down in the basement. The concept of stairs in the tra- ditional sense was also something the world no longer needed. Stairs represented a teleological view of the universe, of one thing leading to another, whereas now everyone knew that one thing didn't lead to another but often nowhere at all. So neither did our stairs. Oh, they went up, eventually. They took the persistent climber to the second 258

• From Holy Ghost Girl (2012)

  Society, or at least the respectable chunk of it, saw the tent and those of us who traveled with it as a freak show, a rolling asylum that hit town and stirred the local Holy Rollers, along with a few Baptists, Methodists, and even a Presbyterian or two, into a frenzy. Brother Terrell reveled in that characterization.“I know they’s people call me David Nut Terrell. I’m not ashamed of it.” He bounced up and down the forty-foot-long platform with the pop and spring of a pogo stick. “I’m crazy for Jesus, crazy for the Lord.” The crowd was on its feet, pogoing with him.The tent went up in all kinds of weather, but in my memory it’s always the hottest day of summer when the canvas rises. A cloud of dust hangs over the grounds, stirred by the coming and going of the twenty to thirty people it took to raise the canvas. Local churches sent out volunteers, but most of the work was done by families who followed Brother Terrell from town to town, happy to do the Lord’s work for little more than a blessing and whatever Brother Terrell could afford to pass along to them. When he had extra money, they shared in it. He had a reputation as a generous man who “pinched the buffalo off every nickel” that passed through his hands. He employed only two to four “professional” tent men, a fraction of the number employed by organizations of a similar size. The number of employees remained the same over the years even as the size of the tents grew larger. “World’s largest tent. World smallest tent crew,” was the joke.The air smelled of grease and sweat. Men dressed in long pants and long-sleeved shirts (the Lord’s dress code) ran back and forth, calling to one another over the gear grind of the eighteen-wheeler as it pulled one of seven thirty-foot center poles into the air. I held my breath as the men wrestled the poles into place, praying that a pole didn’t fall and knock a couple of men straight to glory, but making sure I didn’t miss it if it did. With a couple of center poles secured, the men broke for lunch, mopping their faces with red or blue bandanas or an already soaked shirtsleeve. Pam and I brought out the trays of bologna sandwiches our mothers had made and walked among them passing out the food. I tried not to wrinkle my nose at the greasy imprints their fingers made in the white bread or the sour hugs that accompanied their thank-yous.It took three to four days to put the tent up, and the site looked different each time we visited. Some days I picked my way through red and blue poles that lay on the ground in seemingly careless arrangements, imagining them as tall slender ladies who had fainted in the heat or young girls waiting to be asked to dance.

• From Middlesex (2002)

  As sperm meets egg, I feel a jolt. There's a loud sound, a sonic boom as my world cracks. I feel myself shift, already losing bits of my prenatal omniscience, tumbling toward the blank slate of person- hood. (With the shred of all-knowingness I have left, I see my grand- father, Lefty Stephanides, on the night of my birth nine months from now, turning a demitasse cup upside down on a saucer. I see his cof- fee grounds forming a sign as pain explodes in his temple and he top- ples to the floor.) Again the sperm rams my capsule; and I realize I can't put it off any longer. The lease on my terrific little apartment is finally up and I'm being evicted. So I raise one fist (male-typically) and begin to beat on the walls of my eggshell until it cracks. Then, slippery as a yolk, I dive headfirst into the world. "I'm sorry, little baby girl," my mother said in bed, touching her belly and already speaking to me. "I wanted it to be more romantic." "You want romantic?" said my father. "Where's my clarinet?" 211 BOOK THREE HO IDE IHOVIES y eyes, switched on at last, saw the following: a nurse reaching out to take me from the doctor; my mother's triumphant face, as big as Mount Rushmore, as she watched me heading for my first bath. (I said it was impossible, but still I remember it.) Also other things, material and immaterial: the relentiess glare of OR lights; white shoes squeaking over white floors; a housefly contami- nating gauze; and all around me, up and down the halls of Women's Hospital, individual dramas under way. I could sense the happiness of couples holding first babies and the fortitude of Catholics accept- ing their ninth. I could feel one young mother's disappointment at the reappearance of her husband's weak chin on the face of her new- born daughter, and a new father's terror as he calculated the tuition for triplets. On the floors above Delivery, in flowerless rooms, women lay recovering from hysterectomies and mastectomies. Teenage girls with burst ovarian cysts nodded out on morphine. It was all around me from the beginning, the weight of female suffer- ing, with its biblical justification and vanishing acts. The nurse who cleaned me up was named Rosalee. She was a pretty, long-faced woman from the Tennessee mountains. After suc- tioning the mucus from my nostrils, she gave me a shot of vitamin K to coagulate my blood. Inbreeding is common in Appalachia, as are genetic deformities, but Nurse Rosalee noticed nothing unusual about me. She was concerned about a purple splotch on my cheek, 215 — thinking it was a port-wine stain. It turned out to be placenta, and washed off. Nurse Rosalee carried me back to Dr. Philobosian for an anatomical exam. She placed me down on the table but kept one hand on me for security's sake. She'd noticed the doctor's hand tremor during the delivery.

• From Holy Ghost Girl (2012)

  The scent of Noxzema signals my mother is nearby.The scene stretches into a story, a story I had forgotten but remember hearing and telling while growing up. We were in yet another revival in Columbia, South Carolina. It had to be Columbia because that’s where the Smiths lived. Pam and Randall were there and we spent the evening running in and out of the tent until our mother grabbed Gary and me and planted us in two wooden folding chairs a few feet away from where she sat on the platform.“I’ll be watching, so don’t you dare move, either of you.”And we didn’t. Not even when the music took off and the spirit fell and a tall, gangly man in a white shirt and black slacks whipsawed toward us in double time, arms churning and flapping. Desperate to escape the human windmill headed our way, I waved at my mother. Her hands popped up high above the keyboard and her body bounced to the beat. Her gaze focused straight ahead on Brother Terrell. Just as he put his hand on his hip and began to move his feet in the shuffle step he was known for, the white shirt crashed into Gary and me. We flipped through the tent canvas onto the ground outside, where we lay for an instant, staring up into the heavens. The lower halves of our bodies remained under the tent, bottoms firmly planted in the chairs, legs sticking straight up like disjointed doll limbs. We were stunned but not afraid. The tall man in the white shirt stood over us now, but we didn’t move until our mother gathered us close and pulled us back under the tent.We blinked against the glare of the floodlights. Adults stumbled around us, drunk on the spirit, hands waving slowly, lips moving without uttering a word. Since Mama was with us, there was no music, but people continued to dance, some in marionettelike jerks, others in neat toe-tapping shuffle-slide steps.The white-shirted man looked down at us. “You kids all right?”Gary and I nodded. Mama said we were fine.“When I start shoutin’ I don’t see nothing or nobody.” The next thing I knew, Mama was on her way to Barbados with the revival team and Gary and I were dodging Brother Smith’s holy delirium on a regular basis. During the months we lived with the Smiths, two of the stained-glass windows in the church the family attended were boarded up, testaments to Brother Smith’s spiritual abandon.Put the head and face of Lyndon Johnson atop the body of Ichabod Crane and you’ve got the spitting image of Brother Smith. He was all knees, ears, elbows, and beaky nose, and he towered over most grown-ups, including Sister Smith. A small, wiry woman with brittle black hair and stooped shoulders, Sister Smith announced her entry into every room with an exhalation that spoke of her profound disapproval and bitter disappointment. The woman was a potent breather.

• From Middlesex (2002)

  And then the Rouge appeared against the sky, rising out of the smoke it generated. At first all that was visible was the tops of the eight main smokestacks. Each gave birth to its own dark cloud. The clouds plumed upward and merged into a general pall that hung over the landscape, sending a shadow that ran along the trolley tracks; and Lefty understood that the men's silence was a recognition of this shadow, of its inevitable approach each morning. As it came on, the men turned their backs so that only Lefty saw the light leave the sky as the shadow enveloped the streetcar and the men's faces turned gray and one of the mavros on the runners spat blood onto the roadside. The smell seeped into the streetcar next, first the bearable eggs and manure, then the unbearable chemical taint, and Lefty looked at the other men to see if they registered it, but they didn't, though they continued to breathe. The doors opened and they all filed out. Through the hanging smoke, Lefty saw other streetcars let- ting off other workers, hundreds and hundreds of gray figures trudg- ing across the paved courtyard toward the factory gates. Trucks were driving past, and Lefty let himself be taken along with the flow of the next shift, fifty, sixty, seventy thousand men hurrying last cigarettes or getting in final words— because as they approached the factory they'd begun to speak again, not because they had anything to say but because beyond those doors language wasn't allowed. The main building, a fortress of dark brick, was seven stories high, the smoke- stacks seventeen. Running off it were two chutes topped by water towers. These led to observation decks and to adjoining refineries 94 studded with less impressive stacks. It was like a grove of trees, as if the Rouge's eight main smokestacks had sown seeds to the wind, and now ten or twenty or fifty smaller trunks were sprouting up in the in- fertile soil around the plant. Lefty could see the train tracks now, the huge silos along the river, the giant spice box of coal, coke, and iron ore, and the catwalks stretching overhead like giant spiders. Before he was sucked in the door, he glimpsed a freighter and a bit of the river French explorers named for its reddish color, long before the water turned orange from runoff or ever caught on fire.

• From Middlesex (2002)

  Her first project at Temple No. 1 was to convert the outhouse into a cocoonery. Calling upon the Fruit of Islam, as the military wing of the Nation was known, she stood by while the young men pulled out the wooden commode from the rickety shack. They covered the cesspool with dirt and removed old pinup calendars from the walls, averting their eyes as they tiirew the offending material in the trash. They installed shelves and perforated the ceiling for ventilation. De- spite their efforts, a bad smell lingered. "Just wait," Desdemona told them. "Compared to silkworms, this is nothing." Upstairs, the Muslim Girls Training and General Civilization Class wove feeding trays. Desdemona tried to save the initial batch of silkworms. She kept them warm under electric lightbulbs and sang Greek songs to them, but die silkworms weren't fooled. Hatch- ing from their black eggs, they detected the dry, indoor air and the false sun of the lightbulbs, and began to shrivel up. "Got more on the way," Sister Wanda said, brushing off this setback. "Be here direcdy." The days passed. Desdemona became accustomed to the pale palms of Negro hands. She got used to using the back door and to not speaking until spoken to. When she wasn't teaching the girls, she waited upstairs in the Silk Room. The Silk Room: a description is in order. (So much happened in that fifteen-by-twenty-foot space: God spoke; my grandmother re- nounced her race; creation was explained; and that's just for starters.) It was a small, low-ceilinged room, with a cutting table at one end. Bolts of silk leaned against the walls. The plushness extended floor to ceiling, like the inside of a jewelry box. Fabric was getting harder to come by, but Sister Wanda had stockpiled quite a bit. Sometimes the silks seemed to be dancing. Stirred by air currents of a mysterious origin, the fabrics flapped up and floated around the room. Desdemona would have to catch the cloth and roll it back up. And one day, in the middle of a ghostly pas de deux— a green silk leading as Desdemona backpedaled— she heard a voice. "I WAS BORN IN THE HOLY CITY OF MECCA, ON FEB- RUARY 17, 1877." 151 At first she thought someone had come into the room. But when she turned, no one was there. "MY FATHER WAS ALPHONSO, AN EBONY-HUED MAN OF THE TRIBE OF SHABAZZ. MY MOTHER'S NAME WAS BABY GEE. SHE WAS A CAUCASIAN, A DEVIL." A what? Desdemona couldn't quite hear. Or determine the loca- tion of the voice. It seemed to be coming from the floor now. "my FATHER MET HER IN THE HILLS OF EAST ASIA. HE SAW POTENTIAL IN HER. HE LED HER IN THE RIGHTEOUS WAYS UNTIL SHE BECAME A HOLY MUSLIM."