Contempt

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 Cults Inside Out: How People Get In and Can Get Out (2014)

  York also maintained a private residence in an affluent neighborhood in nearby Athens, Georgia.157 The York house was later sold for $695,000 at auction.158 US attorney Maxwell Wood, who prosecuted Malachi York, pronounced the convicted felon a “con man.”159 York’s son, Malik, seemed to confirm this description in an interview. His son said that York told him, “I don’t believe any of this [expletive]. If I had to dress up like a nun, if I had to be a Jew, I’d do it for this kind of money.” 160 Malachi York (inmate 17911-054) is currently incarcerated at the US Penitentiary in Florence, Colorado. His projected release date is April 2122.161 2005—Polygamistic Child Abuse In June 2005 an Arizona grand jury indicted Warren Jeffs, leader of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of the Latter-Day Saints (FLDS), on charges of sexual misconduct with a minor and conspiracy to commit sexual misconduct with a minor. Jeffs was accused of arranging a marriage between a teenage girl and an older man.162 Some polygamistic groups, such as the FLDS, have been called “cults.”163 The FLDS is believed to be the largest organized polygamistic group in North America, with an estimated membership of ten thousand primarily located in the twin towns of Hildale, Utah, and neighboring Colorado City, Arizona.164 Jeffs went into hiding after his indictment. Arizona authorities then charged him with unlawful flight to avoid prosecution. Meanwhile the attorney general of Utah froze the assets of the FLDS, valued at $110 million. A judge appointed a fiduciary to manage the FLDS trust, called the United Effort Plan (UEP), which controls its holdings. Utah and Arizona authorities then announced a $10,000 reward for information leading to Jeffs’ arrest. He would be named one of the FBI’s “Ten Most Wanted” criminals.165 In August 2006 the Nevada Highway Patrol apprehended Warren Jeffs near Las Vegas. He was traveling as a passenger in a 2007 Cadillac Escalade. Inside the vehicle officers found more than $60,000 in cash, fourteen cell phones, a radar detector, two GPS units, three wigs, a laptop computer, several knives, three iPods, multiple credit cards, and seven sets of keys.166 Mark Shurtleff, Utah attorney general, called Jeffs’ arrest a victory for his victims, “who had the courage to stand up against a man some consider God on Earth.” He added, “The message is nobody is above the law.”167 But the FLDS and other polygamist groups had been able to operate with relative impunity, seemingly “above the law,” for decades. It wasn’t until 1998, when a badly beaten sixteen-year-old girl escaped the fifteen-hundred-member polygamistic Kingston Clan, known as “The Latter-Day Church of Christ,” that the general public began to realize the extent of child abuse within these secretive groups. The teenager testified in court that her father had brutally whipped her for refusing to marry her uncle. “10 licks for every wrongdoing,” she said. After twenty-eight lashes across her back and thighs, she reportedly lost consciousness.

• From The Girls (2016)

  beloved. “We got a bunch of food,” she said. I made the usual smiling excuses, but finally I took off my jacket. Already getting used to attention. — They’d stopped for groceries on the way back from Humboldt: a giant frozen pizza, some discount ground beef in a Styrofoam tray. “A feast,” Zav said. “You’ve got your protein, your calcium.” He pulled a pill bottle from his pocket. “Your vegetables.” He started rolling a joint on the table, a process that involved multiple papers and much fussing over the construction. Zav eyed his work from a distance, then pinched a little more from the pill bottle, the room marinating in the stench of damp weed. Julian was cooking the beef on the stove, the meat losing its sheen. He poked at the crude patties with a butter knife, prodding and sniffing. Dorm-room cookery. Sasha slid the pizza in the oven, balling up the plastic wrap. Setting out paper towels at each chair, a suburban memory of chores, of setting the table for dinner. Zav drank a beer and watched Sasha with amused contempt. He hadn’t lit the joint yet, though he twirled it in his fingers with obvious pleasure. I listened while he and Julian talked about drugs with the intensity of professionals, exchanging stats like bond traders. Greenhouse yield vs. sun-grown. Comparing THC levels in varying strains. This was nothing like the hobby drugs of my youth, pot grown alongside tomato plants, passed around in mason jars. You could pick out seeds from a bud and plant them yourself, if you felt like it. Trade a lid for enough gas to get to the city. It was strange to hear drugs flattened to a matter of numbers, a knowable commodity instead of a mystic portal. Maybe Zav and Julian’s way was better, cutting out all the woozy idealism. “Fuck,” Julian said. The kitchen smelled of ashes and burning starch. “Damn, damn, damn.” He opened the oven and pulled the pizza out with his bare hands, swearing as he tossed it on the counter. It was black and smoky. “Man,” Zav said, “that was the good kind, too. Expensive.”

• From The Well of Loneliness (1928)

  As for those who were ashamed to declare themselves, lying low for the sake of a peaceful existence, she utterly despised such of them as had brains; they were traitors to themselves and their fellows, she insisted. For the sooner the world came to realize that fine brains very frequently went with inversion, the sooner it would have to withdraw its ban, and the sooner would cease this persecution. Persecution was always a hideous thing, breeding hideous thoughts—and such thoughts were dangerous. As for the women who had worked in the war, they had set an example to the next generation, and that in itself should be a reward. She had heard that in England many such women had taken to breeding dogs in the country. Well, why not? Dogs were very nice people to breed. ‘Plus je connais les hommes, plus j’aime les chiens.’ There were worse things than breeding dogs in the country. It was quite true that inverts were often religious, but church-going in them was a form of weakness; they must be a religion unto themselves if they felt that they really needed religion. As for blessings, they profited the churches no doubt, apart from which they were just superstition. But then of course she herself was a pagan, acknowledging only the god of beauty; and since the whole world was so ugly these days, she was only too thankful to let it ignore her. Perhaps that was lazy—she was rather lazy. She had never achieved all she might have with her writing. But humanity was divided into two separate classes, those who did things and those who looked on at their doings. Stephen was one of the kind that did things—under different conditions of environment and birth she might very well have become a reformer. They would argue for hours, these two curious friends whose points of view were so widely divergent, and although they seldom if ever agreed, they managed to remain both courteous and friendly. Valérie seemed well-nigh inhuman at times, completely detached from all personal interest. But one day she remarked to Stephen abruptly: ‘I really know very little about you, but this I do know—you’re a bird of passage, you don’t belong to the life here in Paris.’ Then as Stephen was silent, she went on more gravely: ‘You’re rather a terrible combination: you’ve the nerves of the abnormal with all that they stand for— you’re appallingly over-sensitive, Stephen—well, and then we get le revers de la médaille; you’ve all the respectable county instincts of the man who cultivates children and acres—any gaps in your fences would always disturb you; one side of your mind is so aggressive tidy. I can’t see your future, but I feel you’ll succeed; though I must say, of all the improbable people . . .

• From Tropic of Cancer (1934)

  He rummages around in the kitchen a while and then comes back to the studio with a bottle of Anjou. I have to sit up and down a glass with him. As far as I can piece the story together the whole thing started at the Rond- Point des Champs Elysées where he had dropped off for a drink on his way home. As usual at that hour the terrasse was crowded with buzzards. This one was sitting right on the aisle with a pile of saucers in front of her; she was getting drunk quietly all by herself when Fillmore happened along and caught her eye. “I’m drunk,” she giggled, “won’t you sit down?” And then, as though it were the most natural thing in the world to do, she began right off the bat with the yarn about her movie director, how he had given her the go-by and how she had thrown herself in the Seine and so forth and so on. She couldn’t remember any more which bridge it was, only that there was a crowd around when they fished her out of the water. Besides, she didn’t see what difference it made which bridge she threw herself from—why did he ask such questions? She was laughing hysterically about it, and then suddenly she had a desire to be off—she wanted to dance. Seeing him hesitate she opens her bag impulsively and pulls out a hundred franc note. The next moment, however, she decided that a hundred francs wouldn’t go very far. “Haven’t you any money at all?” she said. No, he hadn’t very much in his pocket, but he had a checkbook at home. So they made a dash for the checkbook and then, of course, I had to happen in just as he was explaining to her the “No tickee, no shirtee” business. On the way home they had stopped off at the Poisson d’Or for a little snack which she had washed down with a few vodkas. She was in her element there with everyone kissing her hand and murmuring Princesse, Princesse. Drunk as she was, she managed to collect her dignity. “Don’t wiggle your behind like that!” she kept saying, as they danced. It was Fillmore’s idea, when he brought her back to the studio, to stay there. But, since she was such an intelligent girl and so erratic, he had decided to put up with her whims and postpone the grand event. He had even visualized the prospect of running across another princess and bringing the two of them back. When they started out for the evening, therefore, he was in a good humor and prepared, if necessary, to spend a few hundred francs on her.

• From Tropic of Cancer (1934)

  He’s been on a bender, as he calls it, for the last five days. That means a continuous drunk, a peregrination from one bar to another, day and night without interruption, and finally a layoff at the American Hospital. Marlowe’s bony emaciated face is nothing but a skull perforated by two deep sockets in which there are buried a pair of dead clams. His back is covered with sawdust—he has just had a little snooze in the water closet. In his coat pocket are the proofs for the next issue of his review, he was on his way to the printer with the proofs, it seems, when some one inveigled him to have a drink. He talks about it as though it happened months ago. He takes out the proofs and spreads them over the bar; they are full of coffee stains and dried spittle. He tries to read a poem which he had written in Greek, but the proofs are undecipherable. Then he decides to deliver a speech, in French, but the gérant puts a stop to it. Marlowe is piqued: his one ambition is to talk a French which even the garçon will understand. Of Old French he is a master; of the surrealists he has made excellent translations; but to say a simple thing like “get the hell out of here, you old prick!”—that is beyond him. Nobody understands Marlowe’s French, not even the whores. For that matter, it’s difficult enough to understand his English when he’s under the weather. He blabbers and spits like a confirmed stutterer... no sequence to his phrases. “You pay!” that’s one thing he manages to get out clearly. Even if he is fried to the hat some fine preservative instinct always warns Marlowe when it is time to act. If there is any doubt in his mind as to how the drinks are going to be paid he will be sure to put on a stunt. The usual one is to pretend that he is going blind. Carl knows all his tricks by now, and so when Marlowe suddenly claps his hands to his temples and begins to act it out Carl gives him a boot in the ass and says: “Come out of it, you sap! You don’t have to do that with me!” Whether it is a cunning piece of revenge or not, I don’t know, but at any rate Marlowe is paying Carl back in good coin. Leaning over us confidentially he relates in a hoarse, croaking voice a piece of gossip which he picked up in the course of his peregrinations from bar to bar. Carl looks up in amazement. He’s pale under the gills. Marlowe repeats the story with variations.

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

  Such was the drama of sufferings through which the Jews were made to pass during the mediaeval period in Western Europe. As against this treatment, what efforts were made to win the Jews by appeals to the gospel? But the question might well be asked whether any appeals could be expected to win them when such a spirit of persecution prevailed. How could love and such hostility go together? The attempts to convince them were made chiefly through tracts and disputations. Anselm, while he did not direct his treatise on the atonement, cur deus homo, to the Jews, says, that his argument was sufficient to persuade both Jew and pagan. Grosseteste sought to show the fulfilment of the old law and to prove the divinity of Christ in his de cessatione legalium, written in 1231.938 The most famous of these tracts was written by Peter the Venerable. In Migne’s edition it fills more than one hundred and forty columns, and would make a modern book of more than three hundred pages of the ordinary size. Its heading, little adapted to win the favor of the people to whom it was addressed, ran "A Tract against the Inveterate Hardness of the Jews" (inveteratam duritiem). The author proceeded to show from the Hebrew Scriptures the divinity of Christ, at the same time declaring that "to the blind even the light is as night and the sun as the shades of darkness." Some idea can be gotten of the nature of some of Peter’s arguments from one of the many Scripture texts adduced to prove that Christ is the Son of God, Isa. lxvi. 9: "Shall I bring to the birth, and not cause to bring forth? saith Jehovah. Shall I that caused to bring forth shut the womb? saith thy God." "What could be more clear, O Jews," adds the author, "in proving the generation of the Son of God? For if God begat, so far as He begat, He is necessarily Father, and the Son of God, so far as He is begotten, is necessarily Son." In taking up the proof that the Messiah has already come, Peter naïvely says that "if the Jew shall presume to think when the argument is finished that he lives, Peter holds the sword of Goliath, and, standing over the Jew’s prostrate form, will use the weapon for his destruction, and ’with its edge’ cleave his blasphemous head in twain."939 If the mild abbot of Cluny, Peter the Venerable, approached the Jews in such an arrogant tone, what was to be expected from other writers, like Peter of Blois who wrote upon the Perfidy of the Jews?

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

  In the churches of Galatia many fell back from grace and from the freedom of the gospel to the legal bondage of Judaism and the "rudiments of the world." In the church of Corinth, Paul had to rebuke the carnal spirit of sect, the morbid desire for wisdom, participation in the idolatrous feasts of the heathen, the tendency to uncleanness, and a scandalous profanation of the holy Supper or the love-feasts connected with it. Most of the churches of Asia Minor, according to the Epistles of Paul and the Apocalypse, were so infected with theoretical errors or practical abuses, as to call for the earnest warnings and reproofs of the Holy Spirit through the apostles.735 These facts show how needful discipline is, both for the church herself and for the offenders. For the church it is a process of self-purification, and the assertion of the holiness and moral dignity which essentially belong to her. To the offender it is at once a merited punishment and a means of repentance and reform. For the ultimate end of the agency of Christ and his church is the salvation of souls; and Paul styles the severest form of church discipline the delivering of the backslider "to Satan for the destruction of the flesh, that the spirit may be saved in the day of the Lord Jesus."736 The means of discipline are of various degrees of severity; first, private admonition, then public correction, and, finally, when these prove fruitless, excommunication, or temporary exclusion from all the means of grace and from Christian intercourse.737 Upon sincere repentance, the fallen one is restored to the communion of the church. The act of discipline is that of the whole congregation in the name of Christ; and Paul himself, though personally absent, excommunicated the fornicator at Corinth with the concurrence of the congregation, and as being, in spirit united with it. In one of the only two passages where our Lord uses the term ecclesia, he speaks of it as a court which, like the Jewish synagogue, has authority to decide disputes and to exercise discipline.738 In the synagogue, the college of presbyters formed the local court for judicial as well as administrative purposes, but acted in the name of the whole congregation. The two severest cases of discipline in the apostolic church were the fearful punishment of Ananias and Sapphira by Peter for falsehood and hypocrisy in the church of Jerusalem in the days of her first love,739 and the excommunication of a member of the Corinthian congregation by Paul for adultery and incest.740 The latter case affords also an instance of restoration.741 § 64. The Council at Jerusalem. (Comp. § 34, pp. 835 sqq.

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

  What is your body, exclaimed Damiani, who contented himself with prescribing forty psalms a day for his monks,—"what is your body? Is it not carrion, a mass of corruption, dust, and ashes, and what thanks will the worms give for taking good care of it?"2117

• From I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings (1969)

  8 Stamps, Arkansas, was Chitlin' Switch, Georgia; Hang 'Em High, Alabama; Don't Let the Sun Set on You Here, Nigger, Mississippi; or any other name just as descriptive. People in Stamps used to say that the whites in our town were so prejudiced that a Negro couldn't buy vanilla ice cream. Except on July Fourth. Other days he had to be satisfied with chocolate. A light shade had been pulled down between the Black community and all things white, but one could see through it enough to develop a fear- admiration-contempt for the white “things”—whitefolks' cars and white glistening houses and their children and their women. But above all, their wealth that allowed them to waste was the most enviable. They had so many clothes they were able to give perfectly good dresses, worn just under the arms, to the sewing class at our school for the larger girls to practice on. Although there was always generosity in the Negro neighborhood, it was indulged on pain of sacrifice. Whatever was given by Black people to other Blacks was most probably needed as desperately by the donor as by the receiver. A fact which made the giving or receiving a rich exchange. I couldn't understand whites and where they got the right to spend money so lavishly. Of course, I knew God was white too, but no one could have made me believe he was prejudiced. My grandmother had more money than all the powhitetrash. We owned land and houses, but each day Bailey and I were cautioned, “Waste not, want not.” Momma bought two bolts of cloth each year for winter and summer clothes. She made my school dresses, under-slips, bloomers, handkerchiefs, Bailey's shirts, shorts, her aprons, house dresses and waists from the rolls shipped to Stamps by Sears and Roebuck. Uncle Willie was the only person in the family who wore ready-to-wear clothes all the time. Each day, he wore fresh white shirts and flowered suspenders, and his special shoes cost twenty dollars. I thought Uncle Willie sinfully vain, especially when I had to iron seven stiff starched shirts and not leave a cat's face anywhere. During the summer we went barefoot, except on Sunday, and we learned to resole our shoes when they “gave out,” as Momma used to say. The Depression must have hit the white section of Stamps with cyclonic impact, but it seeped into the Black area slowly, like a thief with misgivings. The country had been in the throes of the Depression for two years before the Negroes in Stamps knew it. I think that everyone thought that the Depression, like everything else, was for the whitefolks, so it had nothing to do with them. Our people had lived off the land and counted on cotton-picking and hoeing and chopping seasons to bring in the cash needed to buy shoes, clothes, books and light farm equipment.

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

  present Ghetto or Jewry. They were mostly descendants of slaves and captives of Pompey, Cassius, and Antony. They dealt then, as now, in old clothing and broken ware, or rose from poverty to wealth and prominence as bankers, physicians, astrologers, and fortunetellers. Not a few found their way to the court. Alityrus, a Jewish actor, enjoyed the highest favor of Nero. Thallus, a Samaritan and freedman of Tiberius, was able to lend a million denarii to the Jewish king, Herod Agrippa.487 The relations between the Herods and the Julian and Claudian emperors were very intimate. The strange manners and institutions of the Jews, as circumcision, Sabbath observance, abstinence from pork and meat sacrificed to the gods whom they abhorred as evil spirits, excited the mingled amazement, contempt, and ridicule of the Roman historians and satirists. Whatever was sacred to the heathen was profane to the Jews.488 They were regarded as enemies of the human race. But this, after all, was a superficial judgment. The Jews had also their friends. Their indomitable industry and persistency, their sobriety, earnestness, fidelity and benevolence, their strict obedience to law, their disregard of death in war, their unshaken trust in God, their hope of a glorious future of humanity, the simplicity and purity of their worship, the sublimity and majesty of the idea of one omnipotent, holy, and merciful God, made a deep impression upon thoughtful and serious persons, and especially upon females (who escaped the odium of circumcision). Hence the large number of proselytes in Rome and elsewhere. Horace, Persius, and Juvenal, as well as Josephus, testify that many Romans abstained from all business on the Sabbath, fasted and prayed, burned lamps, studied the Mosaic law, and sent tribute to the temple of Jerusalem. Even the Empress Poppaea was inclined to Judaism after her own fashion, and showed great favor to Josephus, who calls her "devout" or "God-fearing" (though she was a cruel and shameless woman).489 Seneca, who detested the Jews (calling them sceleratissima gens), was constrained to say that this conquered race gave laws to their conquerors.490 The Jews were twice expelled from Rome under Tiberius and Claudius, but soon returned to their transtiberine quarter, and continued to enjoy the privileges of a religio licita, which were granted to them by heathen emperors, but were afterwards denied them by Christian popes.491 When Paul arrived in Rome he invited the rulers of the synagogues to a conference, that he might show them his good will and give them the first offer of the gospel, but they replied to his explanations with shrewd reservation, and affected to know nothing of Christianity, except that it was a sect everywhere spoken against. Their best policy was evidently to ignore it as much as possible. Yet a large number came to hear the apostle on an appointed day, and some believed, while the majority, as usual, rejected his testimony.492 Christianity in Rome.

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

  The English clergy and the barons looked upon these practices with disfavor, and, as at the Mad Parliament, 1258, demanded the freedom of capitular elections. The Constitutions of Clarendon, 1164, clearly expressed the national opposition, but the pope continued to go his own way. The convents, for the most part, escaped papal interference in the election of their abbots. The reason is to be sought in the support which the orders gave to the pope in his struggle to reduce the episcopate to subjection. Nor did the crown venture to interfere, repelled, no doubt, by the compact organization of the monastic orders, the order rising to the defence of an attacked abbey. The participation of the English bishops in the House of Lords was based originally upon the tax of scutage. From this followed their equal right to deliberate upon public affairs with the barons. At a time when this body contained less than forty lay peers, it included twenty bishops and twenty-six abbots. Most of the bishops and abbots, it would seem, had houses in London, which had taken the place of Winchester as the centre of national life.1971 As the emoluments of the higher ecclesiastical dignities increased, they were sought and secured by noblemen for their sons and by members of the royal house. Odo, bishop of Bayeux, d. 1097, was the brother of William the Conqueror. Two of Stephen’s nephews were made respectively bishop of Durham and archbishop of York. Ethelmar, brother of Henry III., received the see of Winchester, 1250,1972 and the archbishopric of Canterbury was provided for Henry’s uncle, Boniface. Geoffrey, son of Henry II., was made bishop of Lincoln when a lad, and afterwards transferred to York. Among the men of humble birth who rose to highest ecclesiastical rank were Edmund Rich and Robert Kilwardby. The honors of canonization were reached by Hugh of Lincoln, Rich of Canterbury, and Richard of Wyche, bishop of Chichester, not to speak of Anselm and Thomas à Becket. The cases of proud and warring prelates were numerous, and the custom whereby bishops held the chief offices at the court was not adapted to develope the religious virtues. Richard Flambard, bishop of Durham under William Rufus, Hugh, bishop of Lichfield, 1188–1195, and Peter des Roches of Winchester, 1205–1238, supporter of John, are among the more flagrant examples of prelates who brought no virtues to their office and learned none. William Longchamp, bishop of Ely and favorite of Richard I., was followed by a retinue of 1000 men.1973 The council of London, 1237, presided over by the cardinal legate, Otho, reminded the bishops of their duty to "sow the word of life in the field of the Lord." And, lest they should forget their responsibilities, they were to listen twice a year to the reading of their oath of consecration.

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

  in 1210, if he did not condemn them altogether, condemned their abuse.2111 The synod of Treves, 1227, and other synods forbade priests holding "theatrical plays" in the church buildings. Caesar of Heisterbach represents the rigoristic feeling when, hearing from a priest of a stage that was struck by lightning and twenty men burned to death, declared the burning was a proper punishment for the friends of frivolity and that it was a wonder the priest, who was present, escaped.2112 By the end of the thirteenth century, the plays were no longer acted in the churches, but were transferred to the public squares and other open spaces. Gilds and companies of actors took them up and acting again began to be a recognized vocation. The religious element, however, was retained, and religious and moral subjects continued to be the basis of all the plays. Even after they began to be acted on the public squares, the plays, like a modern political gathering, were introduced with prayers and the Veni creator spiritus was chanted. Among the earlier societies, which made it their business to present them, was the confraternity of the Gonfalone. In its chapel, St. Maria della Pieta in the Colosseum, plays were given perhaps as early as 1250. In Passion week the roof of the chapel was turned into a stage and the passion was acted.2113 The first company of play actors in Paris was called confrèrie de la passion, the brotherhood of the passion." The Feasts of the Fools and the Ass.—In these strange festivals, which go back to the eleventh century, full vent was given by the clergy to the love of the burlesque. At first, they were intended to give relief to the otherwise serious occupation of the clergyman and, while they parodied religious institutions, they were not intended to be sacrilegious, but to afford innocent amusement. Later, the observance took on extravagant forms and received universal condemnation. But, already in this period, the celebration in the churches and cathedrals was accompanied with revels which called forth the severe rebuke of Bishop Grosseteste2114 and two centuries later of John Huss. Both festivals were celebrated at Christmas tide and the early days of January. The descriptions are confusing, and it is difficult to get a perfectly clear conception of either festival. On the Feast of the Fools,—festum stultorum,2115 — the deacons and subdeacons elected a boy as bishop or pope and in drollery allowed him episcopal functions. Prescriptions for the boy-bishop’s dress are found in the annals of St. Paul and York and Lincoln cathedrals, and included a white mitre and a staff. The ceremony was observed at Eton. The festival, however, was most popular in France. The boy-prelate rode on an ass at the head of a procession to the church amid the ringing of bells and the jangle of musical instruments. There he dismounted, was clad in bishop’s vestments, and seated on a platform.

• From The Letter to the Hebrews (The New Daily Study Bible) (2002)

  No one ever achieved personal salvation by devoting all time and energy to that purpose; but many have saved their souls by being so concerned for others that they forgot that they had their own souls to save. It is easy to drift into a kind of selfish Christianity; but a selfish Christianity is a contradiction in terms. But the writer to the Hebrews goes on to outline our duty to others in the most practical way. He sees that duty extend in three directions. (1) We must encourage one another to noble living . We can do that best by setting a good example. We can do it by reminding others of their traditions, their privileges and their responsibilities when they are likely to forget them. It has been said that a saint is someone in whom Christ stands revealed; we can seek always to encourage others to goodness by showing them Christ. We may remember how the dying soldier looked up at Florence Nightingale as she helped the wounded of the Crimean War, and murmured: ‘You’re Christ to me.’ (2) We must worship together . There were some among those to whom the writer of the Hebrews was writing who had abandoned the habit of meeting together. It is still possible for some to think that they are Christians and yet abandon the habit of worshipping with God’s people in God’s house on God’s day. They may try to be what James Moffatt called ‘a pious particle’, a Christian in isolation. Moffatt distinguishes three reasons which keep people from worshipping with their fellow Christians. (a) They may not go to church because of fear . They may be ashamed to be seen going to church. They may live or work among people who laugh at churchgoers. They may have friends who have no time for that kind of thing and may fear their criticism and contempt. They may, therefore, try to be secret disciples; but it has been well said that this is impossible because either ‘the discipleship kills the secrecy or the secrecy kills the discipleship’. It would be a good thing if we remembered that, apart from anything else, to go to church is to demonstrate where our loyalty lies. Even if the sermon is poor and the worship uninspiring, the church service still gives us the chance to show to others what side we are on. (b) They may not go because they are over-particular . They may shrink from contact with people who are ‘not like them’. There are congregations which are as much clubs as they are churches. There may be congregations where a form of social snobbery is practised. We must never forget that there is no such thing as a ‘common’ person in the sight of God. It was for all , not only for the ‘respectable’ classes, that Christ died. (c) They may not go because of conceit .

• From Bastard Out of Carolina (1992)

  Granny turned to Aunt Alma for support. “He’s always looking at me out the sides of his eyes like some old junkyard dog waiting to steal a bone. And you know Anney’s the bone he wants.” “You just don’t think anybody’s good enough for Anney,” Alma teased. “You want her to go on paying you to keep her girls every day till she’s dried up and can’t imagine marrying again.” It was a continuation of a fight that had been dragging on all week. Now it was Sunday, and Glen was coming over to take everyone out to the lake for a picnic. Granny was refusing to come along even though Mama had packed chicken hash and Jell-O with her in mind. “Let it go, Anney, and help me with this camera.” Aunt Alma had a new Brownie and was determined to document every family occasion she could. “You can’t win a fight with Mama no way. Just leave her alone and let her come to her senses in her own good time.” When Glen arrived, it was the camera that coaxed Granny out of the house and onto the porch with the rest of us. But then it was Glen who didn’t want his picture taken. “I an’t no movie star,” he told Alma, and kept putting his hand up in front of his face when she pointed her camera at him. “It’s that new haircut,” Earle joked. “Glen don’t want people to know his ears stick out that far. I’m with you, Glen. We’re too ugly for photographs. Let the women and kids line up for ’em and leave us alone.” Uncle Earle liked Glen Waddell well enough, but like Granny he didn’t think much of the Waddell family. He’d even said so to Glen’s face, but the boy had just grinned at him, and that didn’t seem right. Even if he didn’t get on with his people, Earle believed that Glen shouldn’t let anybody bad-mouth them. If they had traded a few punches over it, bled on each other a little and made up after, the whole thing would have felt better to Earle all around. But Glen was a quiet sort who never fought in friendly style. He either gave you that slow grin or went all out and tried to kill you. The latter earned him a little respect, Earle admitted. The cops had had to be called on Glen once at the foundry before he left to take the job at the RC Cola plant. Glen was a grown man, a working man, and he loved Anney Boatwright. Everybody knew that, even Granny. “Now, Earle, don’t you be making no trouble.” Granny pushed her hair back behind her ears and smoothed down the wrinkles on her green print blouse. “I want Alma to get pictures of everybody. I want a book of family pictures for my cedar chest.”

• From I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings (1969)

  I looked at the items that weren't on display. I knew, for instance, that white men wore shorts, as Uncle Willie did, and that they had an opening for taking out their “things” and peeing, and that white women's breasts weren't built into their dresses, as some people said, because I saw their brassieres in the baskets. But I couldn't force myself to think of them as people. People were Mrs. LaGrone, Mrs. Hendricks, Momma, Reverend Sneed, Lillie B, and Louise and Rex. Whitefolks couldn't be people because their feet were too small, their skin too white and see-throughy, and they didn't walk on the balls of their feet the way people did—they walked on their heels like horses. People were those who lived on my side of town. I didn't like them all, or, in fact, any of them very much, but they were people. These others, the strange pale creatures that lived in their alien unlife, weren't considered folks. They were whitefolks. 5“Thou shall not be dirty” and “Thou shall not be impudent” were the two commandments of Grandmother Henderson upon which hung our total salvation. Each night in the bitterest winter we were forced to wash faces, arms, necks, legs and feet before going to bed. She used to add, with a smirk that unprofane people can't control when venturing into profanity, “and wash as far as possible, then wash possible.” We would go to the well and wash in the ice-cold, clear water, grease our legs with the equally cold stiff Vaseline, then tiptoe into the house. We wiped the dust from our toes and settled down for schoolwork, cornbread, clabbered milk, prayers and bed, always in that order. Momma was famous for pulling the quilts off after we had fallen asleep to examine our feet. If they weren't clean enough for her, she took the switch (she kept one behind the bedroom door for emergencies) and woke up the offender with a few aptly placed burning reminders. The area around the well at night was dark and slick, and boys told about how snakes love water, so that anyone who had to draw water at night and then stand there alone and wash knew that moccasins and rattlers, puff adders and boa constrictors were winding their way to the well and would arrive just as the person washing got soap in her eyes. But Momma convinced us that not only was cleanliness next to Godliness, dirtiness was the inventor of misery. The impudent child was detested by God and a shame to its parents and could bring destruction to its house and line. All adults had to be addressed as Mister, Missus, Miss, Auntie, Cousin, Unk, Uncle, Buhbah, Sister, Brother and a thousand other appellations indicating familial relationship and the lowliness of the addressor. Everyone I knew respected these customary laws, except for the powhitetrash children.

• From Comrade Loves of the Samurai (1972)

  69. Kawai, Kawai. (My dear, my dear)The firefly singing not Burns in silence; She suffers more Than the loud insect who says: 'Kawai, kawai!' Why have I given all my soul To a man without sincerity? I regret it, I rather regret it. 70. Notes taken in my Bedroom.It must be late Autumn night The moon falls Wind is cold. My dwarf harp, my little koto Is by me on the pillow, Lying lightly. I flutter a chord On the seven strings. I hear the first wild goose crying: 'We have come back, come back.' It is very late. 71. Wanting to Write a Letter.I want to send him a letter But do not know what to write. Tell me something, White paper. 72. Heat.Noon on feet of felt Has come into the city. Not a leaf airs. On the rope of the temple bell A butterfly is sleeping. 73. Bindweed.Every morning You flower with new colours And garland the well bucket, Your petals are eyes Blinded with dew. You are delightful. Flower long, flower differently, Emerald cup. 74. Faith.I am the ordinary cherry tree Whose flower is single. It blossoms in the plain. I am not one of those double Cherry trees. 75. If you Promise.If you promise, do it lightly. Look at the maple leaves. The light resist, The heavy break away And fall. Is that not so? 76. South-East Quarter.Light affairs become frivolous At Fukagawa, My body is frivolous. A thin, uncoloured chord on the samisen. In intimate Nakatcho Street Affairs are private, And the news of our love Spreads gallantly, The way of the South-East. Two lovers are in the little room And the screen has double hinges. We pretend worldly fidelity, Painting moles on each other. Perhaps We shall know in heaven. 77. Dew and Rush.The dew pretends she Loves the love of the rush, The rush that he loves no dew. But the rush will blossom And both understand. 78. Wonder.If I think she loves me The snow is light On my umbrella. Crying plovers, Dishevelled wind. 79. Joy.Visitor this evening We run up the long corridor Clicking of clogs. Only one man, Only one person to be loved. I go back to my room, Retreat, honour, Lacquered pillow, Silence. I hear the watchman's rattle, Laughter in the next room. 80. Under Snow.Flowers under the snow Scarcely betray their colour. We meet and she smiles and is silent. 'If I must die/ she is thinking, 'I will die of love As the snow dies.' 81. Before my Birds.I moan for love Before my birds. They also are in a cage. My small complaints Are sorry like mouse cries. The birds hop forward to tease me And I like it, Being so shut in. The sake is cold Because my torment Makes me inefficient. There is such a thing as great grief, Such a thing as Being shut in. 82. Getting out of Bed.He rises and goes. There are Rather dark clouds.

• From The Pisces (2018)

  He was no better. He asked stupid questions—“So how long have you lived here?” and “Do you like it?”—but every question was a chance to put his own hotness into action. Why were they even bothering to speak? Who had time for all of this? Why weren’t they just fucking, right there, out in the open? The entire performance was merely a vessel for something else. It was nothingness. Sure, compared to the greater nothingness—the void, the lack of explicit meaning in life, the fact that none of us knows what is going on here—it was at least something. Their engagement in this dance of elevating a stupid restaurant to high levels of importance, discussing kombucha, making the fleeting matter, the shorts: all of these were a fuck-you to emptiness. Or perhaps these details were symptomatic of their ignorance of nothingness. Was nothingness so imperceptible to them that these things could matter? Could anyone be totally ignorant of the void? Didn’t all of us have an awareness of it, a brush with it—perhaps only once or twice, like at a funeral for someone very close to you, when you walked out of the funeral home and it stopped making sense for just a blip that you existed. Or perhaps a bad mushroom trip where one’s fellow trippers looked like plastic. Could there be people on this Earth who never stopped for a moment, not once, to say: What is everything? Whether these were those people or not, I knew that in this moment neither of them was asking that question. If they had tasted the nausea of not knowing why we are here or who we are, or if they had not, now they were willfully and successfully ignoring it. Or maybe they were just stupid. Oh, the sweet gift of stupidity. I envied them. But really, I knew that everything came down to her shorts. All of the answers were in that ass line—the reduction of all fear, all unknown, all nothingness, eclipsed by the ass line. It was holding its own in all of this. It was just existing as though living was easy. The ass line didn’t really have to do anything, but it was running the whole show. All dialogue began and ended at that ass line. The direction of their evening, their conversation, and in a way, the universe ended there. I hated them. I hated their ease with everything. I hated their lack of loneliness, their sense of time stretching out languidly like something to be toyed with, as though it were never going to get too late tonight or in their lives. I didn’t know who I resented more: the man or the woman.

• From Whipping Girl: A Transsexual Woman on Sexism and the Scapegoating of Femininity (2007)

  Unlike the “deceivers,” whose ability to “pass” is a serious threat to our culture’s ideas about gender and sexuality, “pathetic transsexuals”—who barely resemble women at all—are generally considered harmless. Perhaps for this reason, some of the most endearing pop culture portrayals of trans women fall into the “pathetic” category: John Lithgow’s Oscar-nominated portrayal of ex-football player Roberta Muldoon in 1982’s The World According to Garp, and Terence Stamp’s role as the aging showgirl Bernadette in 1994’s The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert. More recently, the 1998 indie film The Adventures of Sebastian Cole begins with its teenage protagonist learning that his stepdad Hank, who looks and acts like a roadie for a ’70s rock band, is about to become Henrietta. A sympathetic character and the only stable person in Sebastian’s life, Henrietta spends most of the movie wearing floral-print nightgowns and bare-shouldered tops with tons of jewelry and makeup. Yet despite her extremely femme manner of dress, she continues to exhibit only stereotypical male behaviors, overtly ogling a waitress and punching out a guy who calls her a “faggot” (after which she laments, “I broke a nail”). In the case of Henrietta, this extreme combination of masculinity and femininity does not seem designed to challenge audiences’ assumptions about maleness and femaleness. On the contrary, Henrietta’s masculine voice and mannerisms are meant to demonstrate that, despite her desire to be female, she cannot change the fact that she is really and truly a man. As with Garp’s Roberta and Priscilla’s Bernadette, the audience is encouraged to respect Henrietta as a person, but not as a woman. While we are supposed to admire their courage—which presumably comes from the difficulty of living as women who do not appear very female—we are not meant to identify with them or to be sexually attracted to them, as we are to “deceivers” like Dil. Interestingly, while the obvious outward masculinity of “pathetic transsexual” characters is always played up, so too is their lack of male genitalia (or their desire to part with them). In fact, some of the most memorable lines in these movies are uttered when the “pathetic transsexual” character makes light of her own castration. At one point during Priscilla, Bernadette remarks that her parents never spoke to her again, “after [she] had the chop.” In Garp, when a man is injured while receiving a blow job during a car accident, Roberta delivers the one-liner, “I had mine removed surgically under general anesthesia, but to have it bitten off in a Buick ...” In the 1994 fictionalized biography Ed Wood, Bill Murray plays another “pathetic transsexual,” Bunny Breckinridge. After seeing Wood’s film Glen or Glenda, Bunny is inspired to go to Mexico to have a “sex change,” announcing to Wood, “Your movie made me realize I’ve got to take action. Goodbye, penis!”

• From The Letter to the Hebrews (The New Daily Study Bible) (2002)

  They contemptuously dismiss people as having no ancestry. Further, apatōr has a technical legal use in the contemporary Greek of the papyri. It is the word which is used on legal documents, especially on birth certificates, for father unknown and, therefore, illegitimate. So, for instance, there is a papyrus which speaks of: ‘Chairēmōn, apatōr, father unknown, whose mother is Thasēs.’ It is amazing that the writer to the Hebrews took words like these to stress his meaning. The Christian writers had a strange way of redeeming words as well as redeeming men and women. No phrase seemed too strong to the writer to the Hebrews to insist upon the fact that Jesus’ authority lay in himself and came from no one else. THE GREATNESS OF MELCHIZEDEK Hebrews 7:4–10 Just see how great this man was – Abraham gave him the tenth part of the spoils of victory – and Abraham was no less than the founder of our nation. Now look at the difference – when the sons of Levi receive their priesthood, they receive an injunction laid down by the law to exact tithes from the people. That is to say, they exact tithes from their own brothers, even although they are descendants of Abraham. But this man, whose descent is not traced through them at all, exacted tithes from Abraham and actually blessed the man who had received the promises. Beyond all argument, the lesser is blessed by the greater. Just so, in the one instance, it is a case of men who die receiving tithes; but, in this instance, it is the case of a man whom the evidence proves to live. Still further – if I may put it this way – through Abraham, Levi, too, the very man who receives the tithes, had tithes exacted from him, for he was in his father’s body when Melchizedek met him. T HE writer to the Hebrews is here concerned to prove the superiority of the Melchizedek priesthood to the ordinary priesthood. He proceeds on the matter of tithes, because Abraham had given to Melchizedek a tenth part of the spoils of his victory. The law of tithes is laid down in Numbers 18:20–1. There, Aaron is told that the Levites will have no actual territory in the promised land set apart for them but that they are to receive a tenth part of everything for their services in the tabernacle. ‘Then the Lord said to Aaron: “You shall have no allotment in their land, nor shall you have any share among them; I am your share and your possession among the Israelites. To the Levites I have given every tithe in Israel for a possession in return for the service that they perform, the service in the tent of meeting.”’ So now, in a series of contrasts, the writer to the Hebrews works out the superiority of Melchizedek over the Levitical priests. He makes five different points.

• From I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings (1969)

  “Stand up when you see a lady, you contemptuous scoundrel.” Her tongue had thinned and the words rolled off well enunciated. Enunciated and sharp like little claps of thunder. The dentist had no choice but to stand at R.O.T.C. attention. His head dropped after a minute and his voice was humble. “Yes, ma'am, Mrs. Henderson.” “You knave, do you think you acted like a gentleman, speaking to me like that in front of my granddaughter?” She didn't shake him, although she had the power. She simply held him upright. “No, ma'am, Mrs. Henderson.”