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.

Page 9 of 217 · 20 per page

• From Lit: A Memoir (2009)

  they’d go for. At the symphony one night when Shirley couldn’t go, Walt pressed on flaws in my method, asking, Any way you’re swaying them? You mean I’m unintentionally signaling them somehow? I said. Maybe intoning the gorgeous ones in some hyper-approving way? The violins were tuning up, the different bows trying to find the same note. It was that instant before a concert when I always wanted to bolt, because what if I didn’t like Beethoven, which I’d never heard? Maybe I should beg off and say I’m feeling sick. At home, I could make a hoagie and turn on the tube, rather than stay captive in an overheated hall in a seat that made your legs sweaty with a stranger on one side hogging your armrest. Walt’s face had that expectant air, though, he maybe knew the music was so magnificent that even a plebe like me could hear it. He said, Let’s say the women do have some innate taste, despite lacking any analytical tools they could articulate. What’s that mean, you think? I can’t remember how I said it—and we both knew I cared too much about the outcome for my little test to pass as science. I told him I wanted to believe in quality the way I had as a kid, when a great poem could flood me with certainty that there was something good in the world. Or somebody out there knew who I was even if we’d never met—or never would meet. Which made poetry one of the sole spiritual acts in our mostly godless household. Just because the ladies never went to school didn’t mean they couldn’t tell the difference between Beethoven and The Hokey-Pokey. Awe was okay with them, possibly their natural state. No really crap teachers had ruined their native taste by preaching what they were supposed to like. Such a small, pure object a poem could be, made of nothing but air, a tiny string of letters, maybe small enough to fit in the palm of your hand. But it could blow everybody’s head off. Which was what the symphony did that night for the first time, me sitting alongside Walt while the soft timpani mallets with the dandelion-puff heads banged loud enough for the dead, deaf composer to rouse from the distant German dirt. Afterward, Walt and I didn’t say much, just walked through the parking lot exhaling steam with the crowd, everybody’s eyes glancing in opposing vectors, brushing off each other but meeting, too, with that soft recognition you have after being drenched awhile by the same orderly chaos. We were like swimmers walking out of the sea. Every ten paces or so, headlights flipping on would turn shadow figures into full-fledged human units. Unlocking the car, Walt brought up my half-assed experiment again, saying, How’re you sure you know which poem’s best? I slid inside, saying, I just do. Which—ignorant though I knew I was—the ladies had proved to me in some way. And the next day, at Walt’s urging, I sent away for that graduate application.

• From A Greek-English Lexicon (Liddell-Scott) (1957)

  πῦρόω, fut. wow, (πῦρ) to burn with fire, burn up, Tas ᾿Αθήνας Hat. 7. 8, 2., 8.102; στέγην Aesch. Fr. 280; ναούς Soph. Ant. 286: to burn as a burnt sacrifice, ὀσφύν Aesch. Pr. 497; πυροῦτε σώματα Eur. H. F. 2443 πὶ Κύκλωπος ὄψιν to burn out his eye, Id. Cycl. 590, 600:—Med., παῖδα πυρωσαμένη having placed one’s son on the pyre, Anth. P. 7. 466: —Pass. to set on fire, to be burnt, Ἡρώων πυρωθέντων Pind. P. 11. 50; Ἴλιον πυρούμενον Eur. Andr. 400, cf. Tro. 1283; πυρωθῆναι δέμας Eur. I. T. 685, cf. Med. 1190; πυρούμενον τὸ σταῖς baked on the fire, Arist. Probl. 21. 10, cf. 23. 2. metaph. Zo set on fire, inflame, ἔρως π. τινα Anacreont. (9) :—Pass. to be inflamed or excited, παραγγέλμασιν... πυρωθεὶς καρδίαν Aesch. Ag. 481; τινι by a person (with love), Anth. P. 12. 87. II. 4050]. to produce fire, Arist. P. A. 2. 2, 26 :—Pass. to become fire, to be ignited, Plat. Tim. 51 B, 52 Ὁ, Arist. Cael. 3. 8, 11, al. IIT. Pass. to be affected by fire, 6 χρύσος μόνος οὐ πυροῦται Arist. Meteor. 3. 6, 14. 2. also of gold, to be proved or tested by γε, Apocal. 3.18; metaph. of persons, proved by fire, approved, LXx (Psa τὴν 30.5 119. 120): IV. to fumigate, δῶμα θεείῳ Theocr. 24. 94. ; TUPTGAG LGW, ν. sq. πυρ-πάλᾶμος, ἡ, ον, cunningly wrought from fire, βέλος π.. of the thunderbolt, Pind. O. τὸ (11). 963 cf. πυριγενής 2. II. acc. to Hesych., πυρπάλαμοι were of διὰ τάχους TL μηχανᾶσθαι δυνάμενοι, καὶ οἱ ποικίλοι τὸ ἦθος ; cf. Eust. 513. 30, Suid., Phot.:—in Eust. l.c., φήγινον π. acorns or mast, πυρπαλαμᾶσθαι --κακοτεχνεῖν, with reference to ἢ. Hom. Merc. 357, πυρπαλάμησεν he played cunning tricks. g } πυρνοτόκος ἔστε το Tuppos. πύρ-πνοος, ov, contr. -πνους, ovy, = πυρίπνοος, jire-breathing, Τυφών Aesch, Theb. 511, cf. 493; ταῦροι, λέαινα Eur. Med. 478, El. 474; χίμαιρα Anaxil. Neorr. 1. 3; πὶ βέλος; of lightning, Aesch, Pr. 917; βέλεσι πυρπνόου ζάλης, of Aetna, Ib. 371. Adv. -πνόως, Eust. in Mai’s Spicil. 5. 311. πυρ-πολέω, to light « and keep up a fire, watch a fire, Od. 10. 30, Xen. Cyr. 3. 3, 28: π. Tous ἄνθρακας to stir up, fan the fire, Ar. Av. 1580. II. to waste with fire, burn and destroy, τὴν οἰκίαν Ar. Nub. 1497; πόλιν Id. Vesp. 1079; π. καὶ καίουσι καὶ σφάττουσι Luc. Calumn. 19 :—also to burn with fire, 7. τοὺς βαρβάρους Anaxil. Νεοττ. 1. 9, cf. Ar. Thesm. 727:—also in Med., πυρπολέεσθαι πᾶσαν τὴν ᾿Αττικήν to cause it to be burnt with fire, Hdt. 8. 50, cf. Palaeph. 39. 2. metaph. of grief, Nic. Th. 245, 364; of love, Ach. Tat. 1. 11, Anacreont. 63. 6, Eumath., etc. πυρπόλημα, τό, a watchfire, beacon, Eur. Hel. 767.

• From A Greek-English Lexicon (Liddell-Scott) (1957)

  Symp. 4, 533 τί με τὸ δεινὸν ἐργάσει ; what is the dreadful thing which .. ? Eur. Bacch. 492, cf. Soph. O. C. 598, 1488, etc.; τίν᾽ ὄψιν σὴν προσδέρκομαι ; what face is this I see of thine? Eur. Hel. 557; παρὰ τίνας τοὺς ὑμᾶς; who are ‘ you’ to whom [I am to come]? Plat. Lys. 203 B:—the Art. is added to τίς, when the speaker intends immediately to answer his own question, ληφθήσῃ ... Πανήμου εἰκάδι καὶ Λώου τῇ---τίνι ; TH δεκάδι ; on the 2oth of the month Pa- nemus and of Lotis on—what day? the tenth, Call. Ep. 48 :—in Com. also τὸ τί ; what is that? Ar. Nub. 775, Pax 696, Av. 1039, Plut. 902, etc.; and with pl. Art., τὰ τί; Ar. Pax 693. 8. with prop. names (v. τις indef. I. 1. 7), to express admiration, τίς Κύπρις ἢ τίς Ἵμερος ; Soph. Fr. 710; τίς σε Θηρικμλῆς πότε ἔτευξε ; (ironically), Eubul. Καμπ. 2; τίς... Χίμαιρα πυρπνόος ; Anaxil. Neotr. 1. 3. 4. the question is modified by a change of mood: τίς ἄν or κεν, with the opt., expresses strong doubt, who could, who would do so? Od. 21. 259, Il. Io. 303, etc.; (rarely so with the indic., as in Hes. Sc. 73) ;—ris ἂν δοίη ; like πῶς ἄν, would that some one .., Soph. O. C. 1100, cf. Aesch. Ag. 1448 :—the Poets however perhaps omit ἄν or κεν with the opt. when the doubt becomes in fact a denial, wko could do so? i.e. no one could, v. Aesch. Cho. 315, Soph. Ant. 604 :—but τίς with the subjunct. expresses deliber- ation whether a thing shall be done or not, what must I do? what must I say? Herm. Vig. n. 108. 5. a question with τίς often amounts to a strong negation, τῶν δ᾽ ἄλλων Tis Kev οὐνόματ᾽ εἴποι"; 1]. 17. 260; τίς ἂν ἐξεύροι ποτ᾽ ἄμεινον ; Ar. Pl. 498; τίνες ἂν δικαιότερον . . μι- σοῖντο; Thue. 3. 64, etc. 8. τίς 7..;=Ths ἄλλος H..; Ken. Occ. Shar 7. sometimes two questions are asked in one clause by dif- ferent cases of τίς, as ἐκ Tivos τίς ἔγένετο; from whom is who descended ὃ i.e. who is he and from whom descended? Wytt. Ep. Cr. p. 181 ; ἡ τίσι τί ἀποδιδοῦσι τέχνη δικαιοσύνη ἂν καλοῖτο Plat. Rep. 332 D; τί λα- βόντα τί δεῖ ποιεῖν Dem. 50. 15 :—a like doubling of the question lies in the union of τίς with other interrog. words, Tis πόθεν εἷς ἀνδρῶν Od. 1. 170, cf. Soph. Tr. 421; πῶς τί; Heind. Plat. Hipp. Ma. 297 E. 8. tis with Particles: ris yap; Lat. quisnam? why who? who ee Tis yap σε θεῶν... ἧκεν ; Il. 18. 182, cf. 2. 803, etc.; v. infr. 9. f. b. τίς δέ; marking impatience, ὦ κοῦραι, Tis δ᾽ ὔμμιν. . πωλεῖται; h. Hom. Ap. 169, cf. Herm. Soph. O. T. 1049. e. τίς δή ; who then?

• From Lit: A Memoir (2009)

  How would the society page editor chronicle my lineage for this historic visit to Fairweather Hall? At that time my family is broke out in the kind of misery common to sharecroppers in Faulkner novels. Just that month Daddy had suffered a stroke. While drinking at the VFW bar, he’d toppled off a bar stool. He’s still alive but paralyzed and speechless, barely aware that Mother’s popping valium like pop-tarts. But the Whitbreads’ photo album bulges with enough presidents to fill a high school history book. Both Roosevelts practiced in the family firm. Here’s Great-grandfather in the old touring car with McKinley right before he was shot. Warren gets quiet during the stories. He was bred in quiet and carries quiet in him but elegance also. Even picking burrs out of Tiger’s tail he can pull off with gravitas. But he can also drift far from me into himself. Sitting across from him, I can’t meet his eyes. Maybe he’s patiently irritated with how awed I am by the posh household he’s fleeing. Or maybe I’m breaking rules of comportment subtle enough to resemble the minuscule gaffes you get demerits for in precision diving contests. Warren’s grandfather—in riding gear circa 1930-something, holding a polo mallet—is Warren’s exact double. Here’s the cover of The New York Times that falsely reported his death after a fall. Mr. Whitbread stares into some decades’-old distance, saying, The old man was on a horse again the next morning. Infuriated my mother. People in New York were sending wreaths to the house, and he was galloping across a field. Effortless, excellence has to be. Tossed off, reflecting the ease you’re born to, which opposes what little I’ve garnered about comportment. I’m bred for farm work, and for such folk, the only A’s you get come from effort. Strife and strain are all the world can offer, and they temper you into something unbreakable, because Lord knows they’ll try—without letup—to break you. Where I come from, house guests have to know you’ve sweated over a stove, for sweat is how care is shown. At the Whitbreads’, preparations are both slapdash and immaculate. You toss some melba toast on a plate next to a fragrant St. André triple-crème cheese, or on Christmas Eve, half a pound of caviar casually flipped into a silver urn. It’s taken me so much effort just to do as medium-shitty as I’ve heretofore done. Just to drop out of college, stay alive, and have my teeth taken care of. I take another sip of port, which slides down as if greased. Warren seems thousands of miles away, and why has he kept all this from me? Here’s Mrs. Whitbread in her dress for Queen Elizabeth’s coronation. Some polo connection? They’ve stopped explaining why they were various places. Here’s Mr. Whitbread flanked by briefcase-carrying aides, striding confidently up the steps of the Supreme Court. Warren says, I remember sitting behind you, and you pulled out some notecards. You were there? Mr. Whitbread asks.

• From A Greek-English Lexicon (Liddell-Scott) (1957)

  ὑπερέκεινα, Adv. like ἐπέκεινα, on yon side, beyond, c. gen., 2 Ep. Cor. το. 16, Eccl. ὑπερεκθερἄπεύω, fo seek to win by excessive attention, Aeschin, 48. fin. ὑπερεκκαίω, to burn fiercely, Eccl. ὑπερέκκειμαι, f. 1. for ὕπαρ ἐκις--, Plut. 2. 1066 C. imepekkptais, ἡ, excessive secretion or evacuation, Alex. Trall. 3. 204. ὑπερέκκρουσις, 7, complete deception, Epiphan. ὑπερεκκύπτω, fo rise and emerge, Eus. D. E. 129 Ὁ. ὑπερεκλάμπω, to shine forth very brightly, Byz. ὑπερεκντκάω, to conquer completely, Bus. H. E. 8. 14. ὑπερεκπαίω, to strike out beyond: metaph. to exceed, Clem. Al. 239. ὑπερεκπερισσοῦ, Adv., better written divisim ὑπὲρ ἐμ περισσοῦ, super- abundantly, Ep. Eph. 3. 20., 1 Thess. 3. 10 (with v. |. ὑπερεκπερισσῶς, as in Clem. Rom. 1. 20: hence Jo. Chrys. forms ὑπερεκπεριοσεύω, Zo be superabundant. ὑπερεκπίπτω, fut.—recovpat, to fall out beyond, to exceed, c. gen., Plut. 2.877 A, Galen. II. absol. to go beyond all bounds, Luc. Hermot. 67; τοσοῦτον ὑπ. ὥστε... Id. Salt. 83, cf. Sext. Emp. M. 6. 6. ὑπερεκπλέω, to sail out beyond, Theod. Prodr. ὑπερεκπληκτέον, verb, Adj. one must admire exceedingly, Tt kus. L. Const, ΤΙ. 11. ὑπερέκπληκτος, ον, most amazing’, Eccl. ὑπερεκπλήσσω, fut. fw, to frighten or astonish beyond measure, τινά Joseph. A. J. 8. 6, 4:—Pass. to be much astonished, be in amazement, ἐπί τινι Xen, Cyr. 1. 4, 25; ὑπερεκπεπληγμένος ws ἄμαχόν τινα Φίλιπ- mov astonished at or admiring him exceedingly, Dem. 19. 16, cf. Plut. 2. 523 D, etc.; absol., ὑπερεκπλαγείς Id. 870 B, etc. ὑπερέκπτωσιξ, 7, exaggeration, excess, Longin. 15. 18, Clem, Al. 605. ὑπερεκτείνω, to stretch out beyond measure, ἑαυτόν 2 Ep. Cor. 10. 14: —Pass. to stretch out beyond, τινος Greg. Naz. ; cf. παρεπκτείνω. ὑπερεκτιμάω, 10 overvalue, Eccl. ὑπερεκτίνω [1], to pay for any one, τινός Luc. de Mort. 22. 2. ὑπερέκτϊσις, ews, 7, payment for any one, Hesych. ὑπερεκτιστήσ, ov, 6, one who repays beyond measure, Basil. ὑπερεκτρέπομαι, Pass. to eschew utterly, τινα Aretae. Caus. M. Diut. 1. 5, ὑπερεκφεύγω, to come out beyond and escape, c. acc., Hipp. 482. 14. ὑπερεκχέω, to pour out over :—Pass. to overflow, Diod, 11. 89, Acl. N. A. 12. 41, etc.—A form ὑπερεκχύνομαν, in Ey. Luc. 6, 38, and Eccl. ὑπερέκχυσις ---- ὑπερήμερος. ὑπερέκχὕσις, ews, ἡ, an overflowing, of the Nile, Heliod. 1. sea, Plut. 2. 731 C. ὑπερέλἄσις, ews, 7, -- ὑπερβολή, Hesych. ὑπερελαύνω, do pass over, ῥοάς Q. Sm. 11. 330. Phot., Theod. Met. ὑπερέλαφρος, ov, exceeding light or nimble, Xen. Cyn. 5, 31. ὑπερεμέω, to vomit violently: metaph. of over-full veins, fo cause suffu- ston, Hipp. 467. 23, 32; yet cf. ὑπεραιμόω. ὑπερεμπίπλημι, to fill overfull, τὴν γαστέρα Greg. Naz. :—Pass. to be over-full, τινος of a thing, Xen. Cyr. 1. 6, 17, Luc. Symp. 35, Ael. N. A. 14. 25. ὑπερεμφορέομαι, Pass. to be filled quite full, ὄψου Luc. D. Meretr. 6. 3; absol., Id. Saturn. 32. ὑπερένδοξος, ov, exceeding glorious, Lxx (Cant. Trium Puer. 30, al.). ὑπερενιαυτίζω, to last above a year, Julian 392 A.

• From The Tides of Lust (1973)

  Should I just stop maybe. The two figures saving me from the eruption in the village where I was born are the first two. They have changed me. Not by what they said or taught—though that too—but because of this light they suddenly have. Or maybe it is something I put. The closest thing I can talk about it is the feeling I had when I read that story, you understand? To understand what I am talking about, I guess you have to read science fiction. The first two were those saved me from the shack where I was a baby. The third is Herr Bildungs. I was nine then. We played on the beach. He was with the engineering people who came for the oil. Herr Bildungs was the first to tell me my father was a black soldier from the U.S. and my mother was a Negro who had come down from Haiti. He found it out from the people in the town: my father was gone and my mother was dead. Besides the teacher at the school who taught me to read Spanish, no one had ever told me anything before Herr Bildungs. The day we were first on the beach I asked, “Who are you?” He laughed, and said, “I am Faustus, the magician.” He let me work for him. And, he was a magician. In his house he had books and magazines with pictures of all over the world. He had a microscope he would let me look in as a reward when I finished my work. He had lenses, rolls of graph paper, compass and inking pens, and a drawing board that tilted when you fixed the nut. I made him tell me what it all was. After I cleaned for him and ran his errands for a year, he taught me how to use some of them. He made me learn English. The other engineers who came to talk with him all spoke English. He had a chart of the elements and a map of the sky he said was almost useless to us because it was a map of the northern sky and we were just under the Tropic of Capricorn. He made me learn the names of all the countries of Europe. Many in Asia. He had been in lots of them. He read me stories in Spanish and English. Once I tried to make him teach me German. Herr Bildungs liked teaching, and every time I wanted to learn, he would leave what he was doing and go on with me for hours—I lost interest before he did. But this time he only spent two evenings to help me with the sounds you have to make like a rasp on the back of your tongue. I had to coax and pull every word from him. I gave up.

• From The Tides of Lust (1973)

  It is liking to read makes me write. I do not like sea stories. I only read them in port. On warm nights I take the lamp on the back deck and read the science fiction stories the Americans write so well. They write about space. When I read them, I can look up into night and feel how it must feel to write about traveling between the stars because how I feel between ports. You read these stories, however, in this way, with this attention. The pictures form on the page, or out where the night stops, or when you close your eyes. Because it is something you have never seen, you must bring all your memories of touch, of taste, or what you have seen to make them. But you must be ready to let them break up and come back together different. It is very different from how to read a detective story or a novel. An interesting experience. One night reading a magazine with a blue cover from one of the U.S. universities I found a story by a woman whose name I knew because I had read a science fiction novel and some stories by her. The first paragraph had all sorts of words and colors like science fiction, so I got my mind all ready with this attention. The story didn’t mean anything to me! I didn’t know what it was about. But everything was clear and mysterious, bright and mixed up. Three pages to the end, I realized it was a story about a woman teaching school who gets one of her students to bed with her. I read it again. The story was clear. Only the first paragraph was like science fiction, and it was for the feeling, I think. My attention, you see, turned everything different. I want to write about me so that it happens when you read it like the first way I read that story. I can’t tell all my life. I am too lazy, for one. For two—well, one will do. Its common fabric is charred, in some of the holes of the edge still glows. Or the burning threads cover what is behind. But I want to write about what is at these. There are only half a dozen, and I am twenty-eight, maybe twenty-nine. There was an earthquake while I was almost a baby. I was in the dark, while everything around me swung and rattled. Somebody broke the door. I saw a man and a woman. The mountain behind them roared and tried to shake the fire out of its hair. Bright rock fell down the crags and made steam. They ran for me and I screamed. One picked me up. The other pulled me away when the first one fell.

• From The Tides of Lust (1973)

  It is liking to read makes me write. I do not like sea stories. I only read them in port. On warm nights I take the lamp on the back deck and read the science fiction stories the Americans write so well. They write about space. When I read them, I can look up into night and feel how it must feel to write about traveling between the stars because how I feel between ports. You read these stories, however, in this way, with this attention. The pictures form on the page, or out where the night stops, or when you close your eyes. Because it is something you have never seen, you must bring all your memories of touch, of taste, or what you have seen to make them. But you must be ready to let them break up and come back together different. It is very different from how to read a detective story or a novel. An interesting experience. One night reading a magazine with a blue cover from one of the U.S. universities I found a story by a woman whose name I knew because I had read a science fiction novel and some stories by her. The first paragraph had all sorts of words and colors like science fiction, so I got my mind all ready with this attention. The story didn’t mean anything to me! I didn’t know what it was about. But everything was clear and mysterious, bright and mixed up. Three pages to the end, I realized it was a story about a woman teaching school who gets one of her students to bed with her. I read it again. The story was clear. Only the first paragraph was like science fiction, and it was for the feeling, I think. My attention, you see, turned everything different. I want to write about me so that it happens when you read it like the first way I read that story. I can’t tell all my life. I am too lazy, for one. For two—well, one will do. Its common fabric is charred, in some of the holes of the edge still glows. Or the burning threads cover what is behind. But I want to write about what is at these. There are only half a dozen, and I am twenty-eight, maybe twenty-nine. There was an earthquake while I was almost a baby. I was in the dark, while everything around me swung and rattled. Somebody broke the door. I saw a man and a woman. The mountain behind them roared and tried to shake the fire out of its hair. Bright rock fell down the crags and made steam. They ran for me and I screamed. One picked me up. The other pulled me away when the first one fell.

• From Lit: A Memoir (2009)

  Once the line curves, I lose sight of him till both boys pop up at the altar. Before the priest, Dev stands slim and solemn. I think how ancestors on both sides of his family sought this sacrament, which is painfully carnal if you think of it. The body of the god is absorbed by the human body to nourish the spirit. Dev’s mouth pops open wide as a baby bird’s. Afterward, the boys plop down beside me whispering, their hands busy. What obscene gestures, I wonder, are they practicing? But I crane over to catch them in the middle of that old hand game: Here’s the church. Here’s the steeple. Open the door and see all the people. The game’s been passed down for decades, one kid teaching another how to bear long, adult-prescribed intervals of inertia—a lineage I belong to. While the priest speaks and the responses come out, I feel myself as an animal herded among similar animals—an echo of the homeless shelter. I think how horses in the Colorado of my youth—huddled together in the cold. At one point parishioners call out their intentions, people they want prayers said for. For my daughter whose tumor has metastasized. For the refugees from Bosnia and Rwanda. In gratitude for the safe return of my mother from Ireland... Catholics aren’t who I thought they’d be, not even close. It isn’t the ritual of the high Mass that impresses me, but the people—their collective surrender. If I can’t do reverence to that, how dead are my innards? Within a week or two, it’s turning out that I forget to bring a paperback to Mass, so obviously, I’m not just coming for Dev anymore. It’s historical interest, I tell myself, when I start reading all manner of theology. When a married couple—he a former Jesuit, she once a nun—invite me to the Peace and Social Justice Committee, I stumble onto the lay tradition of working with the poor and against political tyranny. (I know, historically, plenty of Catholics worked for tyranny.) They protest nuclear arms and host refugees from Haiti and El Salvador. Every Sunday they have some batch of parolees who need jobs, or welfare moms looking for baby clothes. Plus they argue like mad. Say what you will about Catholic dogma, like it or lump it, it sure gets people yakking it up. I confess to this couple that Jesus Himself seems sappy—a chump or fool. For all my pretense of practicing surrender, I can’t grasp signing up for crucifixion. The wife says, Long time ago, I started focusing my faith on the Holy Spirit. She’s the female pronoun in the Greek Bible. C’mon, the husband says. It’s not called Holy Spirit-anity; it’s called Christianity. After Mass one day, I challenge Father Kane on certain aspects of the liturgy that bother me. Missal in hand, I bargain like an insurance salesman to convince him how crappy Jesus is.

• From The Tides of Lust (1973)

  The captain halted long enough to raise his face. Thick lips opened over Gunner’s. The captain filled the boy’s mouth with his tongue. And raised further to unstick Kim, who moaned till something moved to fill her. Gunner felt his master’s hand press his face down the sweating belly. The familiar cock plugged his throat, flavored with unfamiliar juice. A chuckle shook the belly above him. Gunner worked his mouth around the shaft. One cock was snatched from his face, another thrust in: it swelled, heated, and bellied his cheeks with bitter syrup. The captain’s fingertips were like pebbles on the back of his skull. And the captain’s laughter was like (suede . . . ? maroon . . . ?) Gunner pulled away, managed to kneel, whispering, “Hey, Captain? What . . . ? Why . . . ?” The captain put Gunner’s hand into his crotch. The dick was half hard. “You little bastards got it all this afternoon. It goes up; nothing comes out.” “But . . . ?” He pushed the boy away. Gunner, puzzled, moved toward the line of light that should be the door, unsteady on the mattresses. Once a woman reached up to play the cords of his inner thigh. He lingered long enough to stiffen but pulled away at the kiss. By the door he found his pants, slipped his legs in, tied his belt and stepped into the hall. A breeze blew from the alley. Gunner walked to the doorway, stood with his toes over the broken top step. A breeze dried and cooled his chest. Nazi stood by the drain pipe, taking his dick out to piss. He saw the boy. (Does he grin or does he smile?) “Hey.” He beckoned Gunner, took his shoulder. Nazi swiveled his boot toe, then he put his bare foot on Gunner’s (the chain is cold against Gunner’s ankle; the gritty sole is hot). Gunner reached for Nazi’s cock, his small fingers slipping between the big, dirty knuckles. Nazi’s mouth broke a wide grin. He kneaded the boy’s neck. On the hard shiny arm a dragon writhed about a blue swastika. Nazi smelled. Gunner heard water; a hot splash on his belly. He looked down to the arc glittering: Nazi guided it to Gunner’s groin, leg, sparkling and darkening the canvas. A rain on their doubled foot. The hand on Gunner’s shoulder became a weight. Gunner gave, and his wet knees knocked Nazi’s shins. Nazi’s urine beat belly, chest, chin. He caught the boy’s hair, yanked. Gunner’s face flooded and he lost the view of the spurting cock. His eyes went tight before the burning. His head was pushed back, so his mouth opened. The taste of hot ocean foamed between his cheeks. Nazi laughed.

• From Healing Our Broken Humanity: Practices for Revitalizing the Church and Renewing the World (2018)

  We can choose to worship as one body, the one who calls women and men together from every nation in every part of the globe. We can be hospitable. Hospitality and the New HumanityIn chapter one we outlined the biblical vision for the new humanity in Jesus Christ. New-humanity churches embrace the diversity of the body of Christ. They embrace this fully, not in a partial or tokenistic way. They welcome diversity in its many forms. They grasp the importance of ethnic, linguistic, cultural, gender, racial, socioeconomic, and theological diversity. New-humanity churches know that they are one body. As a diversity-in-unity people, they have one Messiah, one Spirit, one life, one table, one politic, one righteousness, one peace, one mission, one faith, one hope, and one love. The local and global Christian community is stunningly diverse. It is 2.2 billion people, united together in love and through the gospel of Jesus Christ. Bruce Milne puts it this way: What contrasts of race and ethnicity are here! What ranges of generation and gender, language and culture, customs and worship styles, social status and wealth indices, education levels and forms of employment; what degrees of freedom, involving in some places intrusive restrictions and even persecution; what varieties of personal faith stories, and levels of comprehension and commitment! Yet all that incredible diversity has a single, authentic point of unity: Jesus Christ. In the supernatural reality of his risen presence through the Holy Spirit, the multi-faceted community is one as his body on earth. In Jesus they are one people, one life.3 He continues, Here is the great Ephesian image of the church. It is a new humanity, a community consisting of people remade. This is, I believe, the supreme image for our time, both for the church universal and for the church local. . . . [In Ephesians 2:11-18 the apostle Paul] is asserting nothing less than a sheer creative action of God . . . . [The creation of this new-humanity church] is a prodigy, a wonder, brought about by a supernatural, divine intervention, and hence a divine attestation to the gospel.4 When we posted this quote on Facebook, our friend Mark DeYmaz responded in this way: Certainly, a beautiful thought and sentiment. That said, I agree only in so far as this reality is intentionally expressed in authentic, tangible ways via the unity and diversity of a local church. Otherwise, the wondrous, beautiful, diversity of the universal church, and subsequent proclamation of the gospel, i.e., a credible witness of God’s love for all people, is unintentionally undermined when and wherever systemically (unnecessarily) segregated churches stubbornly remain the status quo. In an increasingly diverse and cynical society, those without Christ view ethnically segregated churches as if each worship its own god as expressed in its own desires and likeness . . .

• From Healing Our Broken Humanity: Practices for Revitalizing the Church and Renewing the World (2018)

  Here’s how Yancey puts it: The Sermon on the Mount forces us to recognize the great distance between God and us, and any attempt to reduce that distance by somehow moderating its demands misses the point altogether. . . . The worst tragedy would be to turn the Sermon on the Mount into another form of legalism; it should rather put an end to all legalism. . . . The Sermon on the Mount proves that before God we all stand on level ground: murderers and temper-throwers, adulterers and lusters, thieves and coveters.1 So what kind of life together in the world does Jesus call us to embrace (in complete dependence on his grace and on the power of his Spirit)? Let’s walk through the Sermon on the Mount and see what kind of people Jesus calls and invites us to be. The Blessed and Ethical Community (Matthew 5:1-12 )Jesus describes the postures, outlook, and behaviors of blessed (happy and God-pleasing) people. These people display a compelling and distinct ethic. This ethic is personal and social, and it’s rooted in the character of God. The Beatitudes should move God’s people to be like God and to depend entirely on God’s grace for this to be so. The Beatitudes are a kind of prologue outlining Jesus’ vision for his kin-dom, church, and disciples. This way of life together in the world is then made more explicit in the rest of the Sermon on the Mount. As our friend John Dickson says, the Beatitudes are statements of future fact.2 Those who are poor in spirit now will receive the kin-dom now and in the future. Those who are meek now will inherit the earth now and in the future. Those who are peacemakers now will be called the children of God now and in the kin-dom. The Beatitudes speak of the “already” and “not yet” dimensions of Jesus’ age to come. We live for the future age in the present because the kin-dom was inaugurated in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ. The kin-dom will bring complete peace; we seek peace now. The age to come will bring final justice; we act in justice now. The kin-dom will bring full reconciliation; we exercise the ministry of reconciliation now. The age to come will make love supreme; we love each other and our enemies now. The kin-dom will finally free the poor and oppressed; we seek their liberation now. The age to come will bring final dignity to all people, regardless of their gender, ethnicity, class, or age; we honor all people now. And so on. But Dickson reminds us that these Beatitudes also function as commands, both to individual disciples and to the whole church. The Beatitudes say to us: this is how the people of the kin-dom should live. That is why there are such strong connections between the Beatitudes and the themes and commands of the rest of the Sermon on the Mount.

• From Healing Our Broken Humanity: Practices for Revitalizing the Church and Renewing the World (2018)

  He also relinquished status and power throughout his life. Consider, for example, John 4, where Jesus meets a Samaritan woman. Emmanuel Katongole observes, “Driven by fear, many Jews in Jesus’ day made a point to walk around Samaria. . . . Jesus takes the most direct route right thru Samaria. Jesus gets tired and thirsty. He sits by the well and when a Samaritan woman (the enemy) comes to draw water he asks her for help ‘Will you give me a drink?’ He comes vulnerable into (so-called) enemy territory. He opens space.”1 Embracing vulnerability and powerlessness, Jesus asks the Samaritan woman for water. Jesus isn’t just setting up a conversation about living water. He asks her for help. We often miss this. Jesus relinquishes his power to a woman of low racial and societal status, and in the process he changes the power dynamic between them. Brenda Salter McNeil writes, “In that instant he skillfully and profoundly empowers her to be the ‘helper’ and he becomes the ‘helped.’ Jesus has challenged the structural and personal alienation generated by their power differential. On the surface this may seem like a simple gesture, but upon closer inspection it becomes apparent that what Jesus has done is actually transformational!”2 After reflecting on the example of Jesus, Paul shares how he is also seeking to relinquish his own righteousness and power. Paul basically says, “If anyone should have confidence in their personal, moral, religious, and racial power, it’s me.” He was a “Hebrew of Hebrews” (Phil 3:5 ), in full possession of the covenantal, racial, and religious privileges that came with that. His ancestry and racial credentials were impeccable. Not only this, but he was a leading religious figure, outstanding even among his peers. He was religiously observant, spiritually zealous, personally ambitious, and, “as for righteousness based on the law, faultless” (Phil 3:6 ). But Jesus Christ has called him to relinquish all that, just as Jesus himself had relinquished his power. Paul tells us what it means for him to practice relinquishment: But whatever were gains to me I now consider loss for the sake of Christ. What is more, I consider everything a loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, for whose sake I have lost all things. I consider them garbage, that I may gain Christ and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which is through faith in Christ—the righteousness that comes from God on the basis of faith. I want to know Christ—yes, to know the power of his resurrection and participation in his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, and so, somehow, attaining to the resurrection from the dead. (Phil 3:7-11 ) Paul relinquishes his personal, sexual, moral, religious, and racial power for the sake of Christ. He counts it all as loss, filth, and rubbish. Instead, following the example of Jesus, he lets all that go.

• From The John Dominic Crossan Essential Set (Jesus; The Birth of Christianity; The Power of Parable; The Greatest Prayer) (2004)

  Have you still no faith?” And they were filled with great awe and said to one another, “Who then is this, that even the wind and the sea obey him?” (2) Immediately he made his disciples get into the boat and go on ahead to the other side, to Bethsaida, while he dismissed the crowd. After saying farewell to them, he went up on the mountain to pray. When evening came, the boat was out on the sea, and he was alone on the land. When he saw that they were straining at the oars against an adverse wind, he came towards them early in the morning, walking on the sea. He intended to pass them by. But when they saw him walking on the sea, they thought it was a ghost and cried out; for they all saw him and were terrified. But immediately he spoke to them and said, “Take heart, it is I; do not be afraid.” Then he got into the boat with them and the wind ceased. And they were utterly astounded. That first version is simply a Markan duplication of the traditional one given in second place. That is why, independent of Mark, the early tradition knows only one meal miracle and one sea miracle, those in Mark 6:35–44 and 45–51, respectively. In what follows, therefore, only Mark 6:45–51 will be considered and 4:35–41 will be ignored. Here is the second and independent version of that sea story, in John 6:15b–21: When Jesus realized that they were about to come and take him by force to make him king, he withdrew again to the mountain by himself. When evening came, his disciples went down to the sea, got into a boat, and started across the sea to Capernaum. It was now dark, and Jesus had not yet come to them. The sea became rough because a strong wind was blowing. When they had rowed about three or four miles, they saw Jesus walking on the sea and coming near the boat, and they were terrified. But he said to them, “It is I; do not be afraid.” Then they wanted to take him into the boat, and immediately the boat reached the land toward which they were going. The point is surely clear: without Jesus the disciples get nowhere all night, but when Jesus arrives all is immediately well. But there are also three motifs in Mark 6:45–51, a nature miracle from before the death of Jesus, that are remarkably similar to ones in Luke 24, apparitional accounts from after the death of Jesus. Those common elements help emphasize the common matrix from which both nature miracles and risen apparitions were originally derived. First, the time. Jesus walks to them on the waters “early in the morning,” or, literally, “about the fourth watch of the night,” between 3:00 and 6:00 A.M ., in Mark 6:48.

• From The John Dominic Crossan Essential Set (Jesus; The Birth of Christianity; The Power of Parable; The Greatest Prayer) (2004)

  God asks Jesus whether he has “preached” to them, and they reply that he has indeed done so. That translation “preached” is very misleading. It makes you wonder, Preached what? The Greek verb means “announce” or “proclaim,” and what Jesus announced or proclaimed was liberation from death. It was a proclamation that effected what it announced . That scene is, of course, serenely mythological. It is also theologically profound and communally beautiful. It was created by Christian Jews who cared about the past of their people and who could not imagine or celebrate a resurrection that left their past behind in the dust. That belief would hang on by its fingernails in the Christian creed (“He descended into hell”), but our lack of enthusiasm for it merits an examination of conscience. The problem is not that it is mythological. Of course it is. The problem is that we do not like its meaning. With all that as background, I now pursue the debate across five propositions, each one building on the preceding one. The first proposition is that Brown and I agree on a consecutive and canonically independent source in Gospel of Peter 8:28–11:49. Neirynck is both perceptive and correct on that point. Here, in confirmation, are several assertions of that position from Brown’s The Death of the Messiah , each a little more detailed than the preceding one. Notice the keys terms, “consecutive” and “independent,” in these citations. “The author of GPet drew not only on Matt but on an independent form of the guard-at-the-sepulcher story” (1287). Again: “The author of GPet may well have known Matt’s account of the guard (a judgment based on his use of Matthean vocabulary), but a plausible scenario is that he also knew a consecutive form of the story and gave preference to that” (1301 note 35). And again: “Matt broke up a consecutive guard-at-the-sepulcher story to interweave it with the women-at-the-tomb story [from Mark], while GPet preserved the original consecutive form of the guard story” (1305–1306). Finally, and most completely: “GPet … had a source besides Matt, namely, a more developed account of the guard at the tomb. (That point is also supported by the consecutiveness of the story in GPet.) The supplying of the centurion’s name, the seven seals, the stone rolling off by itself, the account of the resurrection with the gigantic figures, the talking cross, the confession of Jesus as God’s Son by the Jewish authorities, and their fear of their own people—all those elements could plausibly have been in the more developed form of the story known to the author of GPet and absent from the form known to Matt” (1307). We are not, I emphasize, dealing with random nuggets of tradition but with a sequential story involving about a third of the extant Gospel of Peter . The second proposition is that Brown and I also agree on the redactional function of Gospel of Peter 11:44.

• From The John Dominic Crossan Essential Set (Jesus; The Birth of Christianity; The Power of Parable; The Greatest Prayer) (2004)

  44 So far the discussion has mostly involved two texts, the Q Gospel and the Gospel of Thomas , as well as the Common Sayings Tradition, out of which they both developed in very different ways. I now add a third and equally important text, the Didache . I place this new text in tensive dialogue with the Q Gospel , but at an earlier stage than the finished document we now have in Matthew and Luke. For example, both the Didache and the Q Gospel contain secondary apocalyptic eschatology, but, while the latter expects the advent of the Son of Man, the former awaits the arrival of the Lord God (with no mention of the Son of Man or the Lord Jesus). It is as if the Didache knows the Q Gospel at a stage somewhere in between the Common Sayings Tradition and the final Q Gospel itself. Recall that in the preceding chapter the Q Gospel criticized some Christians in 6:46 for calling Jesus “Lord, Lord” but not doing what Jesus wanted and warned them in 6:47–49 about hearing but not doing . That is the voice of the radical itinerants reproaching the settled householders. But in the Didache , the conservative householders get to answer back, both respecting and containing the radicalism of those itinerants. Those three texts—the Q Gospel , the Gospel of Thomas , and the Didache —were hidden from sight for centuries in very different ways. The Q Gospel was hidden in the gospels of Matthew and Luke. The Gospel of Thomas was hidden in a sealed jar near the Nile-side cliffs. The Didache was hidden in a manuscript codex, along with six other early Christian texts, in an ancient library. Over one hundred years ago, about a decade after the Didache ’s discovery and almost immediately after its publication, Philip Schaff gave this description of its location: “The Jerusalem Monastery of the Most Holy Sepulchre is an irregular mass of buildings in the Greek quarter of Constantinople….It belongs to the Patriarch of Jerusalem….The Jerusalem Monastery possesses, like most convents, a library. It is preserved in a small stone chamber, erected for the purpose and detached from the other buildings. It receives scanty light through two strongly barred windows. Its entrance is adorned with holy pictures, it contains about a thousand bound volumes and ‘from four hundred to six hundred manuscripts,’ as the present superior, the archimandrite Polycarp, informed a recent visitor ‘with characteristic indefiniteness.’ Among the books of this library was one of the rarest treasures of ancient Christian literature. It is a collection of [seven] manuscripts bound in one volume, covered with black leather, carefully written on well preserved parchment by the same hand, in small, neat, distinct letters, and numbering in all 120 leaves or 240 pages of small octavo (nearly 8 inches long by 6 wide)” (1–2).

• From Sometimes an Art: Nine Essays on History (2015)

  One startles at some of his comments, as at his wonderful observation that the locusts and other insects in North America sing in the key of C-sharp. Some of his perceptions are troubled and uncertain. He, like his Methodist kin, was a radical abolitionist, but he confessed that he could see only two eventualities for the slave society of the American Deep South: either the growing black population would in time “eat the white out of house and home” and take over the area most compatible to them, or a mulatto race would emerge “claiming an equality of rights and consideration.” But his broadest generalizations are more confident and striking. The American people, La Trobe wrote, are separated from the Old World by the vast ocean, but they are not without the influence of the vortex; every thing, their language, literature, necessities, increasing facility of communication with Europe, all render them intimately connected with us. We whirl, they whirl too.…[T]here may be this difference, that as yet they have more room, the sweep is a wider one than our’s, but they still obey the same law as ourselves. No one, La Trobe concluded, who travels through the United States from east to west and from north to south can fail to come away with the impression “that if on any part of His earthly creation, the finger of God has drawn characters which would seem to indicate the seat of empire—surely it is there!”2 Australia, he soon found, was different—different but yet similar to what he had discovered in North America, and it would be a project of some interest to examine that ambiguous relationship through La Trobe’s eyes: to explore, through the many letters, official and personal, that he wrote in Australia and after,3 something of the global diaspora of British culture and its creative encounters with two quite different environments.4 To do that would not be easy, if only because of the difficulty of remaining faithful to the context of the time—the difficulty, that is, of resisting the compelling, almost irresistible tendency to select from the data of La Trobe’s era anticipations of what we know eventuated in the later efflorescence and the subsequent decline of Britain’s cultural empire. And that—the problem of contextualism—is the issue I would like to comment on in what follows.

• From Sometimes an Art: Nine Essays on History (2015)

  Similarly, no one in the Tuscan countryside ravaged by the Black Death in the mid-fourteenth century associated that fearful manifestation of God’s wrath with an earlier population decline that had been in motion for a century before the plague struck Europe. It was modern historians who uncovered this latent, long-term event, entered it, so to speak, into the record, and associated it with the manifest devastation of the plague. This earlier decline could be discovered only in statistics created out of the manuscript tax records and the great Florentine survey, the Catasto, of 1427. It is not simply that quantification is making possible a more precise description of these latent events. The events I am referring to were known, if at all, only vaguely by contemporaries or by previous historians to have been events. Taken together, they form a new landscape, like that of the ocean floor, assumed to have existed in some vague way by people struggling at the surface of the waves but never seen before as actual rocks, ravines, and cliffs. And like the newly discovered ocean floor the world of latent events can be seen to be directly involved in the manifest history of the surface world itself. And that is my point. One of the most important developments in current historiography, it seems to me, is the emerging integration of latent and manifest events. I do not mean simply that a deeper picture of the context of public events is appearing, although that is happening, but that events of one order are being brought together with events of another order. The resulting conflation is beginning to produce the outline of a general history different from what we have known before. Major public events will of course remain in their key locations, but when seen in connection with the clarifying latent landscape they appear to occupy rather different positions than heretofore. The American Revolution, for example, transformed American life and influenced the course of events elsewhere in the world. That manifest event will not be obscured by discoveries of events of another order, but explanations of the origins, development, and consequences of the Revolution are beginning to take on quite different forms in the light of latent events that are now being uncovered; events in the population and migration history of the pre-Revolutionary years, settlement patterns, and attitudes to authority, all of which helped shape the origins and outcome of the Revolution. How could the treatment of slavery have been uniform throughout the newly independent American states given the different balances of Creoles and Africans that we have recently discovered existed and given the different degrees and forms of assimilation that we now know developed and that have only recently been located with some precision on the chronological map of American history?

• From The John Dominic Crossan Essential Set (Jesus; The Birth of Christianity; The Power of Parable; The Greatest Prayer) (2004)

  Skeat, the British Museum’s manuscript curators and the Egerton Gospel’s official editors, dated the document to “the middle of the second century,” describing that date as “highly probable and … likely to err, if at all, on the side of caution, for there are features in the hand which might suggest a period yet earlier in the century” (1935a:1). How and why sacred names were invented and used in earliest Christianity is about as controversial as how and why papyrus codices were adopted (or invented) in earliest Christianity. Ludwig Traube and Anton Paap thought the practice of sacred names derived directly from Jewish usage in writing the name of God, but Schuyler Brown has argued for a much more indirect connection. In unpointed or unvocalized Hebrew script, the sacred name of God looks like any other word. In order to give its sanctity appropriate emphasis, Jewish tradition spoke it with a special pronunciation, wrote it with an archaic script, or decorated it with gold leaf. Maybe, then, that practice gave Jewish Christians the idea of treating certain names as uniquely special to them. Notice, therefore, this severely qualified conclusion by Colin Roberts: “The ineffability of the name of God, expressed when the Law was read in Hebrew by replacing the vowels proper to it by those of Adonai (‘Lord’), is directly or indirectly the psychological origin of the nomina sacra ” (1979:29). What must be emphasized, in any case, is that we are faced with two huge jumps of imagination in earliest Christianity. One giant leap was from casual parchment notebooks to sacred papyrus codices. The other was from the unique case of a single sacred name (YHWH ) as one that could be written normally but not pronounced normally to a set of sacred names that could be pronounced normally but not written normally. No amount of debate about the exact how or why should obscure the fact that both those jumps had taken place as early back as material remains let us go . What does that dual phenomenon say about central authority and scribal tradition in earliest Christianity? Central Manuscript Control? We may perhaps imagine the invention as originating with some leading figure in the early Church, who, whatever the ultimate source of his inspiration, succeeded both in devising a distinctive format for Christian manuscripts of the Scriptures, differentiated equally from the parchment roll of Judaism and the papyrus roll of the pagan world, and in imposing its use throughout the Church…. [T]he introduction of the nomina sacra seems to parallel very closely the adoption of the papyrus codex…. It is no less remarkable that they seem to indicate a degree of organization, of conscious planning, and uniformity of practice among the Christian communities which we have hitherto had little reason to suspect, and which throws a new light on the early history of the Church. T. C. Skeat, “Early Christian Book-Production,” pp.

• From The John Dominic Crossan Essential Set (Jesus; The Birth of Christianity; The Power of Parable; The Greatest Prayer) (2004)

  Julius [Caesar] his name, from Julus handed down” (13), linked heaven and earth, connected Troy and Rome, and gave the Roman people and the Augustan principate a divine origin and a mythic destiny. Those preceding paragraphs make a very simple point. The general Mediterranean culture would find nothing impossible about that vision of Hector to Aeneas. Nothing in that story would have raised a first-century eyebrow. The dead existed in the realm of Hades or Sheol and could reappear thence to the living. Thus, although Hector’s body had flamed to ashes on a Trojan funeral pyre, his “body” was still visible and recognizable to Aeneas. That the dead could return and interact with the living was a commonplace of the Greco-Roman world, and neither pagans nor Jews would have asserted that it could not happen. That such interaction could generate important processes and events, as with Hector saving Aeneas to found the Roman people and the Julian ascendancy, was also a commonplace. You did not expect the dead to return from Hades simply to say hello. You could easily say that such a return did not happen this time or that time. You could not say that it never happened anywhere or could never happen at all. That is a first pointer toward the core problem of this book. Now on to a second pointer. Visions Then, Visions Now Others, too, are visited. [Dale Murphy’s] mother looks out the bedroom window one day and sees Murph ambling down their street in huge deck boots. Someone else spots him in traffic in downtown Bradenton. From time to time Debra dreams that she sees him and runs up and says, “Dale, where’ve you been?” And he won’t answer, and she’ll wake up in a cold sweat, remembering. Sebastian Junger, The Perfect Storm , p. 214 Not only were visions and apparitions an accepted and even commonplace possibility in the early first century, they are also an accepted and even commonplace possibility in the late twentieth century. In a paper presented to the 1995 spring meeting of the Jesus Seminar, Stacy Davids summarized recent psychiatric literature on grief and bereavement. “Review of well-conducted studies of the past three decades shows that about one-half to eighty percent of bereaved people studied feel this intuitive, sometimes overwhelming ‘presence’ or ‘spirit’ of the lost person…. These perceptions happen most often in the first few months following the death but sometimes persist more than a year, with significantly more women than men reporting these events…. The American Psychiatric Association, author of The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders-IV , considers these phenomena (when ‘one hears the voice of, or transiently sees the image of, the deceased person’) as non-pathological. They are viewed as common characteristics of uncomplicated grief, and not attributable to a mental disorder….