Contentment

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

  On the whole, that is what religion was to John. The first chapter of his gospel is one of the greatest attempts in the world to state religion in a way that really satisfies the mind. (4) To some, religion is access to God. It is that which removes the barriers and opens the door to his living presence. That is what religion was to the writer of the Letter to the Hebrews. His mind was dominated with that idea. He found in Christ the one person who could take him into the very presence of God. His whole idea of religion is summed up in the great passage in Hebrews 10:19–22: Therefore, my friends, since we have confidence to enter the sanctuary by the blood of Jesus, by the new and living way that he opened for us through the curtain (that is, through his flesh) ... let us approach with a true heart in full assurance of faith. If the writer to the Hebrews had one text, it was: ‘Let us draw near.’ The Double Background The writer to the Hebrews had a double background, and this idea fitted into both sides. He had a Greek background. Ever since the time of Plato, 500 years before, the Greeks had been occupied in their thinking by the contrast between the real and the unreal, the seen and the unseen, things that exist in time and things that are eternal. It was the Greek idea that somewhere there was a real world of which this was only a shadowy and imperfect copy. Plato had the idea that somewhere there was a world of perfect forms or ideas or patterns, of which everything in this world was an imperfect copy. To take a simple instance, somewhere there was laid up the pattern of a perfect chair of which all the chairs in this world were inadequate copies. Plato said: ‘The Creator of the world had designed and carried out his work according to an unchangeable and eternal pattern of which the world is only a copy.’

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

  And so the letter closes with a blessing. All through, it has been telling of the grace of Christ which opens the way to God; and it comes to an end with a prayer that that wondrous grace may rest upon its readers . INTRODUCTION TO THE LETTER TO THE HEBREWS God Fulfils Himself in Many Ways Religion has never been the same thing to everyone. ‘God’, as Tennyson said in Mort d’Arthur , ‘fulfils himself in many ways.’ The Irish writer George Russell said: ‘There are as many ways of climbing to the stars as there are people to climb.’ There is a saying which tells us very truly and very beautifully that ‘God has his own secret stairway into every heart.’ Broadly speaking, there have been four great conceptions of religion. (1) To some, it is inward fellowship with God . It is a union with Christ so close and so intimate that Christians can be said to live in Christ and Christ to live in them. That was Paul’s conception of religion. To him, it was something which mystically united him with God. (2) To some, religion is what gives us a standard for life and a power to reach that standard. On the whole, that is what religion was to James and to Peter. It was something which showed them what life ought to be and which enabled them to attain it. (3) To some, religion is the highest satisfaction of their minds. Their minds seek and seek until they find that they can rest in God. It was Plato who said that ‘the unexamined life is the life not worth living’. There are some people who have to understand things in order to make sense of life. On the whole, that is what religion was to John. The first chapter of his gospel is one of the greatest attempts in the world to state religion in a way that really satisfies the mind. (4) To some, religion is access to God. It is that which removes the barriers and opens the door to his living presence. That is what religion was to the writer of the Letter to the Hebrews. His mind was dominated with that idea. He found in Christ the one person who could take him into the very presence of God.

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

  In the garden, he accepted God’s will and came out at peace. To take the way of righteousness, to accept God’s will, is to remove the root cause of disquiet and find the way to lasting peace. The writer to the Hebrews piles up words to show that Melchizedek has no descent. He does this to contrast the new priesthood of Jesus Christ with the old Aaronic priesthood. A Jew could not be a priest unless he could trace an unbroken descent from Aaron; but, if he could trace such a descent, nothing could stop him from being a priest. If a priest married and his bride-to-be was the daughter of a priest, she must produce her pedigree going back four generations; if she was not the daughter of a priest, she must produce her pedigree going back five generations. It is an odd and almost incredible fact that the whole Jewish priesthood was founded on genealogy. Personal qualities did not enter into it at all. But Jesus Christ was the true priest, not because of what he inherited but because of what he was. Some of the words that the writer of Hebrews piles up here are amazing. He says that Jesus was without descent (agenealogētos). That is a word that, as far as we know, no Greek writer had ever used before. It may well be that, in his eagerness to stress the fact that Jesus’ power did not depend on descent, he invented it. It is in all probability a new word to describe a new thing. He says that Melchizedek was without father (apatōr) and without mother (amētōr). These words are very interesting. They have certain uses in secular Greek. They are the regular description of the homeless and people with no family ties, and of people of low birth. 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.

• From The Well of Loneliness (1928)

  Then Martin wished to learn about her, and they talked of her fencing, her studies, her riding, and she told him about Raftery who was named for the poet. And all the while she felt natural and happy because here was a man who was taking her for granted, who appeared to find nothing eccentric about her or her tastes, but who quite simply took her for granted. Had you asked Martin Hallam to explain why it was that he accepted the girl at her own valuation, he would surely have been unable to tell you—it had happened, that was all, and there the thing ended. But whatever the reason, he felt drawn to this friendship that had leapt so suddenly into being. Before Anna left the dance with her daughter, she invited the young man to drive over and see them; and Stephen felt glad of that invitation, because now she could share her new friend with Morton. She said to Morton that night in her bedroom: ‘I know you’re going to like Martin Hallam.’ CHAPTER 111M artin went to Morton, he went very often, for Sir Philip liked him and encouraged the friendship. Anna liked Martin too, and she made him feel welcome because he was young and had lost his mother. She spoilt him a little, as a woman will spoil who, having no son must adopt some one else’s, so to Anna he went with all his small troubles, and she doctored him when he caught a bad chill out hunting. He instinctively turned to her in such things, but never, in spite of their friendship, to Stephen. Yet now he and Stephen were always together, he was staying on and on at the hotel in Upton; ostensibly staying because of the hunting; in reality staying because of Stephen who was filling a niche in his life long empty, the niche reserved for the perfect companion. A queer, sensitive fellow this Martin Hallam, with his strange love of trees and primitive forests—not a man to make many intimate friends, and in consequence a man to be lonely. He knew little about books and had been a slack student, but Stephen and he had other things in common; he rode well, and he cared for and understood horses; he fenced well and would quite often now fence with Stephen; nor did he appear to resent it when she beat him; indeed he seemed to accept it as natural, and would merely laugh at his own lack of skill. Out hunting these two would keep close to each other, and would ride home together as far as Upton; or perhaps he would go on to Morton with her for Anna was always glad to see Martin. Sir Philip gave him the freedom of the stables, and even old Williams forbore to grumble: ‘ ’E be trusty, that’s what ’e be,’ declared Williams, ‘and the horses knows it and acts accordin’.’

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

  Chigi, to his mistress. The entertainment was given at Chigi’s beautiful house, the Farnesina. This man was considered the most fortunate banker of his day in Rome. The kings of Spain and France and princes of Germany sent him presents, and sought from him loans. Even the sultan was said to have made advances for his friendship. His income was estimated at 70,000 ducats a year, and he left behind him 800,000 ducats. This Croesus was only fifty-five when death separated him from his fortune. At one of his banquets, the gold plates were thrown through the windows into the Tiber after they were used at the table, but fortunately they were saved from loss by being caught in a net which had been prepared for them. On another occasion, when Leo and 18 cardinals were present, each found his own coat-of-arms on the silver dishes he used. At Agostino’s marriage festival, Leo held the bride’s hand while she received the ring on one of her fingers. The pontiff then baptized one of Chigi’s illegitimate children. Cardinals were not ashamed to dine with representatives of the demi-monde, as at a banquet given by the banker Lorenzo Strozzi.867 But in scandals of this sort Alexander’s pontificate could not well be outdone. With the easy unconcern of a child of the world, spoiled by fortune, the light-hearted de’ Medici went on his way as if the resources of the papal treasury were inexhaustible. Julius was a careful financier. Leo’s finances were managed by incompetent favorites.868 In 1517 his annual income is estimated to have been nearly 600,000 ducats. Of this royal sum, 420,000 ducats were drawn from state revenues and mines. The alum deposits at Tolfa yielded 40,000; Ravenna and the salt mines of Cervia, 60,000; the river rents in Rome, 60,000; and the papal domains of Spoleto, Ancona and the Romagna, 150,000. According to another contemporary, the papal exchequer received 160,000 ducats from ecclesiastical sources. The vendable offices at the pope’s disposal at the time of his death numbered 2,150, yielding the enormous yearly income of 328,000 ducats.869 Two years after Leo assumed the pontificate, the financial problem was already a serious one. All sorts of measures had to be invented to increase the papal revenues and save the treasury from hopeless bankruptcy. By augmenting the number of the officials of the Tiber—porzionari di ripa — from 141 to 612, 286,000 ducats were secured. The enlargement of the colleges of the cubiculari and scudieri, officials of the Vatican, brought in respectively 90,000 and 112,000 ducats more. From the erection of the order of the Knights of St. Peter,—cavalieri di San Pietro,—with 401 members, the considerable sum of 400,000 ducats was realized, 1,000 ducats from each knight. The sale of indulgences did not yield what it once did, but the revenue from this source was still large.870 The highest ecclesiastical offices were for sale, as in the reign of Alexander.

• From The Well of Loneliness (1928)

  After this he would sometimes look at her gravely with a puzzled expression; but she did not resent him, nor his rudeness, nor his technical interest in her muscles. Indeed, she liked the cross little man with his bristling black beard and his peppery temper, and when he remarked à propos of nothing: ‘We are all great imbeciles about nature. We make our own rules and call them la nature; we say she do this, she do that—imbeciles! She do what she please and then make the long nose.’ Stephen felt neither shy nor resentful. These lessons were a great relaxation from work, and thanks to them her health grew much better. Her body, accustomed to severe exercise, had resented the sedentary life in London. Now, however, she began to take care of her health, walking for a couple of hours in the Bois every day, or exploring the tall, narrow streets that lay near her home in the Quarter. The sky would look bright at the end of such streets by contrast, as though it were seen through a tunnel. Sometimes she would stand gazing into the shops of the wider and more prosperous Rue des Saints Pères; the old furniture shops; the crucifix shop with its dozens of crucified Christs in the window—so many crucified ivory Christs! She would think that one must surely exist for every sin committed in Paris. Or perhaps she would make her way over the river, crossing by the Pont des Arts. And one morning, arrived at the Rue des Petits Champs, what must she suddenly do but discover the Passage Choiseul, by just stepping inside for shelter, because it had started raining.

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

  A rotating crew of young girls scaled and cleaned the catch and busy women in starched aprons salted and rolled the fish in corn meal, then dropped them in Dutch ovens trembling with boiling fat. On one corner of the clearing a gospel group was rehearsing. Their harmony packed as tight as sardines, floated over the music of the county singers and melted into the songs of the small children's ring games. “Boys, don'chew let that ball fall on none of my cakes, you do and it'll be me on you.” “Yes, ma'am,” and nothing changed. The boys continued hitting the tennis ball with pailings snatched from a fence and running holes in the ground, colliding with everyone. I had wanted to bring something to read, but Momma said if I didn't want to play with the other children I could make myself useful by cleaning fish or bringing water from the nearest well or wood for the barbecue. I wandered into a retreat by accident. Signs with arrows around the barbecue pit pointed MEN, WOMEN, CHILDREN toward fading lanes, grown over since last year. Feeling ages old and very wise at ten, I couldn't allow myself to be found by small children squatting behind a tree. Neither did I have the nerve to follow the arrow pointing the way for WOMEN . If any grownup had caught me there, it was possible that she'd think I was being “womanish” and would report me to Momma, and I knew what I could expect from her. So when the urge hit me to relieve myself, I headed toward another direction. Once through the wall of sycamore trees I found myself in a clearing ten times smaller than the picnic area, and cool and quiet. After my business was taken care of, I found a seat between two protruding roots of a black walnut tree and leaned back on its trunk. Heaven would be like that for the deserving. Maybe California too. Looking straight up at the uneven circle of sky, I began to sense that I might be falling into a blue cloud, far away. The children's voices and the thick odor of food cooking over open fire were the hooks I grabbed just in time to save myself. Grass squeaked and I jumped at being found. Louise Kendricks walked into my grove. I didn't know that she too was escaping the gay spirit. We were the same age and she and her mother lived in a neat little bungalow behind the school. Her cousins, who were in our age group, were wealthier and fairer, but I had secretly believed Louise to be the prettiest female in Stamps, next to Mrs. Flowers. “What you doing sitting here by yourself, Marguerite?” She didn't accuse, she asked for information. I said that I was watching the sky. She asked, “What for?” There was obviously no answer to a question like that, so I didn't make up one. Louise reminded me of Jane Eyre.

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

  Momma said, “Sister, that's right pretty.” Then she turned back to the Store and resumed, “Glory, glory, hallelujah, when I lay my burden down.”

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

  Until we became familiar enough to belong to the Store and it to us, we were locked up in a Fun House of Things where the attendant had gone home for life. Each year I watched the field across from the Store turn caterpillar green, then gradually frosty white. I knew exactly how long it would be before the big wagons would pull into the front yard and load on the cotton pickers at daybreak to carry them to the remains of slavery's plantations. During the picking season my grandmother would get out of bed at four o'clock (she never used an alarm clock) and creak down to her knees and chant in a sleep-filled voice, “Our Father, thank you for letting me see this New Day. Thank you that you didn't allow the bed I lay on last night to be my cooling board, nor my blanket my winding sheet. Guide my feet this day along the straight and narrow, and help me to put a bridle on my tongue. Bless this house, and everybody in it. Thank you, in the name of your Son, Jesus Christ, Amen.” Before she had quite arisen, she called our names and issued orders, and pushed her large feet into homemade slippers and across the bare lye-washed wooden floor to light the coal-oil lamp. The lamplight in the Store gave a soft make-believe feeling to our world which made me want to whisper and walk about on tiptoe. The odors of onions and oranges and kerosene had been mixing all night and wouldn't be disturbed until the wooded slat was removed from the door and the early morning air forced its way in with the bodies of people who had walked miles to reach the pickup place . “Sister, I'll have two cans of sardines.” “I'm gonna work so fast today I'm gonna make you look like you standing still.” “Lemme have a hunk uh cheese and some sody crackers.” “Just gimme a coupla them fat peanut paddies.” That would be from a picker who was taking his lunch. The greasy brown paper sack was stuck behind the bib of his overalls. He'd use the candy as a snack before the noon sun called the workers to rest. In those tender mornings the Store was full of laughing joking, boasting and bragging. One man was going to pick two hundred pounds of cotton, and another three hundred. Even the children were promising to bring home fo' bits and six bits. The champion picker of the day before was the hero of the dawn. If he prophesied that the cotton in today's field was going to be sparse and stick to the bolls like glue, every listener would grunt a hearty agreement. The sound of the empty cotton sacks dragging over the floor and the murmurs of waking people were sliced by the cash register as we rang up the five-cent sales.

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

  The one denotes adulterous living; the other denotes all kinds of impurity and vice. The Christians brought into the world a new ideal of purity. Even the Greeks admitted that. Galen, in the passage we have already quoted, goes on: ‘And they also number individuals who, in ruling and controlling themselves and in their keen pursuit of virtue, have attained a pitch not inferior to that of real philosophers.’ When Pliny, the governor of Bithynia, examined the Christians and reported back to the Emperor Trajan, he had to admit, even though he was looking for a charge on which to condemn them, that at their Lord’s Day meeting: ‘They bound themselves by an oath not for any criminal end but to avoid theft or robbery or adultery, never to break their word nor repudiate a deposit when called upon to refund it.’ In the early days, the Christians presented such a purity to the world that not even their critics and their enemies could find a fault in it. (5) There is contentment . Christians must be free from the love of money. They must be content with what they have; and why should they not be, for they possess the continual presence of God? Hebrews quotes two great Old Testament passages – Joshua 1:5 and Psalm 118:6 – to show that those who belong to God need nothing more because they always have the presence and the help of God with them. Nothing that the world can give them can improve on that. OBEDIENCE AND PRAYER Hebrews 13:17–19 Obey your leaders and submit to them, for they sleeplessly watch over your souls, conscious that they will have to give account of their trust. This do that they may carry out this task with joy and not with grief, for, if you grieve them, there would be no profit to you either in that. Keep on praying for us, for we believe that we have a clear conscience, for we wish in all things to live in such a way that our conduct will be fair. I urge you to do this all the more that I may the more quickly be enabled to return to you. T HE writer to the Hebrews lays down the duty of the congregation to its present leaders and its absent leader. To the present leaders, the duty of the congregation is obedience. A church is a democracy but not a democracy taken to extremes; it must give obedience to those whom it has chosen as its guides. That obedience is not to be given in order to gratify the leaders’ sense of power or to increase their prestige. It is to be given so that at the end of the day the leaders may be seen to have lost none of the souls committed to their care.

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

  If he had dealt with these vast topics, the letter would never have ended at all. It is short – James Moffatt points out that you can read it aloud in less than an hour – in comparison with the greatness of the eternal truths with which it deals. What the reference to Timothy means, no one knows; but it sounds as if he, too, had been in prison because of Jesus Christ. And so the letter closes with a blessing. All through, it has been telling of the grace of Christ which opens the way to God; and it comes to an end with a prayer that that wondrous grace may rest upon its readers. INTRODUCTION TO THE LETTER TO THE HEBREWS God Fulfils Himself in Many Ways Religion has never been the same thing to everyone. ‘God’, as Tennyson said in Mort d’Arthur , ‘fulfils himself in many ways.’ The Irish writer George Russell said: ‘There are as many ways of climbing to the stars as there are people to climb.’ There is a saying which tells us very truly and very beautifully that ‘God has his own secret stairway into every heart.’ Broadly speaking, there have been four great conceptions of religion. (1) To some, it is inward fellowship with God . It is a union with Christ so close and so intimate that Christians can be said to live in Christ and Christ to live in them. That was Paul’s conception of religion. To him, it was something which mystically united him with God. (2) To some, religion is what gives us a standard for life and a power to reach that standard. On the whole, that is what religion was to James and to Peter. It was something which showed them what life ought to be and which enabled them to attain it. (3) To some, religion is the highest satisfaction of their minds. Their minds seek and seek until they find that they can rest in God. It was Plato who said that ‘the unexamined life is the life not worth living’. There are some people who have to understand things in order to make sense of life. On the whole, that is what religion was to John. The first chapter of his gospel is one of the greatest attempts in the world to state religion in a way that really satisfies the mind. (4) To some, religion is access to God. It is that which removes the barriers and opens the door to his living presence.

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

  3 Weighing the half-pounds of flour, excluding the scoop, and depositing them dust-free into the thin paper sacks held a simple kind of adventure for me. I developed an eye for measuring how full a silver-looking ladle of flour, mash, meal, sugar or corn had to be to push the scale indicator over to eight ounces or one pound. When I was absolutely accurate our appreciative customers used to admire: “Sister Henderson sure got some smart grandchildrens.” If I was off in the Store's favor, the eagle-eyed women would say, “Put some more in that sack, child. Don't you try to make your profit offa me.” Then I would quietly but persistently punish myself. For every bad judgment, the fine was no silver-wrapped Kisses, the sweet chocolate drops that I loved more than anything in the world, except Bailey. And maybe canned pineapples. My obsession with pineapples nearly drove me mad. I dreamt of the days when I would be grown and able to buy a whole carton for myself alone. Although the syrupy golden rings sat in their exotic cans on our shelves year round, we only tasted them during Christmas. Momma used the juice to make almost-black fruit cakes. Then she lined heavy soot-encrusted iron skillets with the pineapple rings for rich upside-down cakes. Bailey and I received one slice each, and I carried mine around for hours, shredding off the fruit until nothing was left except the perfume on my fingers. I'd like to think that my desire for pineapples was so sacred that I wouldn't allow myself to steal a can (which was possible) and eat it alone out in the garden, but I'm certain that I must have weighed the possibility of the scent exposing me and didn't have the nerve to attempt it. Until I was thirteen and left Arkansas for good, the Store was my favorite place to be. Alone and empty in the mornings, it looked like an unopened present from a stranger. Opening the front doors was pulling the ribbon off the unexpected gift. The light would come in softly (we faced north), easing itself over the shelves of mackerel, salmon, tobacco, thread. It fell flat on the big vat of lard and by noontime during the summer the grease had softened to a thick soup. Whenever I walked into the Store in the afternoon, I sensed that it was tired. I alone could hear the slow pulse of its job half done. But just before bedtime, after numerous people had walked in and out, had argued over their bills, or joked about their neighbors, or just dropped in “to give Sister Henderson a ‘Hi y'all,’” the promise of magic mornings returned to the Store and spread itself over the family in washed life waves. Momma opened boxes of crispy crackers and we sat around the meat block at the rear of the Store.

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

  On Sunday mornings Momma served a breakfast that was geared to hold us quiet from 9:30 A.M. to 3 P.M. She fried thick pink slabs of home-cured ham and poured the grease over sliced red tomatoes. Eggs over easy, fried potatoes and onions, yellow hominy and crisp perch fried so hard we would pop them in our mouths and chew bones, fins and all. Her cathead biscuits were at least three inches in diameter and two inches thick. The trick to eating catheads was to get the butter on them before they got cold—then they were delicious. When, unluckily they were allowed to get cold, they tended to a gooeyness, not unlike a wad of tired gum. We were able to reaffirm our findings on the catheads each Sunday that Reverend Thomas spent with us. Naturally enough, he was asked to bless the table. We would all stand; my uncle, leaning his walking stick against the wall, would lean his weight on the table. Then Reverend Thomas would begin. “Blessed Father, we thank you this morning …” and on and on and on. I'd stop listening after a while until Bailey kicked me and then I cracked my lids to see what had promised to be a meal that would make any Sunday proud. But as the Reverend droned on and on and on to a God who I thought must be bored to hear the same things over and over again, I saw that the ham grease had turned white on the tomatoes. The eggs had withdrawn from the edge of the platter to bunch in the center like children left out in the cold. And the catheads had sat down on themselves with the conclusiveness of a fat woman sitting in an easy chair. And still he talked on. When he finally stopped, our appetites were gone, but he feasted on the cold food with a non-talking but still noisy relish. In the Christian Methodist Episcopal Church the children's section was on the right, cater-cornered from the pew that held those ominous women called the Mothers of the Church. In the young people's section the benches were placed close together, and when a child's legs no longer comfortably fitted in the narrow space, it was an indication to the elders that that person could now move into the intermediate area (center church). Bailey and I were allowed to sit with the other children only when there were informal meetings, church socials or the like. But on the Sundays when Reverend Thomas preached, it was ordained that we occupy the first row, called the mourners' bench. I thought we were placed in front because Momma was proud of us, but Bailey assured me that she just wanted to keep her grandchildren under her thumb and eye.

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

  22 The wind blew over the roof and ruffled the shingles. It whistled sharp under the closed door. The chimney made fearful sounds of protest as it was invaded by the urgent gusts. A mile away ole Kansas City Kate (the train much admired but too important to stop in Stamps) crashed through the middle of town, blew its wooo-wee warnings, and continued to an unknown glamorous destination without looking back. There was going to be a storm and it was a perfect night for rereading Jane Eyre . Bailey had finished his chores and was already behind the stove with Mark Twain. It was my turn to close the Store, and my book, half read, lay on the candy counter. Since the weather was going to be bad I was sure Uncle Willie would agree, in fact, encourage me to close early (save electricity) and join the family in Momma's bedroom, which functioned as our sitting room. Few people would be out in weather that threatened a tornado (for though the wind blew, the sky was as clear and still as a summer morning). Momma agreed that I might as well close, and I went out on the porch, closed the shutters, slipped the wooden bar over the door and turned off the light. Pots rattled in the kitchen where Momma was frying corn cakes to go with vegetable soup for supper, and the homey sounds and scents cushioned me as I read of Jane Eyre in the cold English mansion of a colder English gentleman. Uncle Willie was engrossed in the Almanac , his nightly reading, and my brother was far away on a raft on the Mississippi. I was the first to hear the rattle on the back door. A rattle and knock, a knock and rattle. But suspecting that it might have been the mad wife in the tower, I didn't credit it. Then Uncle Willie heard it and summoned Bailey back from Huck Finn to unlatch the bolt. Through the open door the moonshine fell into the room in a cold radiance to rival our meager lamplight. We all waited—I with a dread expectancy—for no human being was there. The wind alone came in, struggling with the weak flame in the coal-oil lamp. Pushing and bunting about the family warmth of our pot-bellied stove. Uncle Willie thought it must have been the storm and told Bailey to close the door. But just before he secured the raw wooden slab a voice drifted through the crack; it wheezed, “Sister Henderson? Brother Willie?” Bailey nearly closed the door again, but Uncle Willie asked, “Who is it?” and Mr. George Taylor's pinched brown face swam out of the gray and into view. He assured himself that we hadn't gone to bed, and was welcomed in. When Momma saw him she invited him to stay for supper and told me to stick some sweet potatoes in the ashes to stretch the evening meal.

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

  Each one of us is like a stone in the Church; if one stone is weak, the whole structure is endangered. The Church stands firm only when each living stone in it is rooted and grounded in faith in Jesus Christ. THE REST WE DARE NOT MISS Hebrews 4:1–10 It is true that the promise which offers entry into the rest of God still remains for us; but beware lest any of you be adjudged to have missed it. It is indeed true that we have had the good news preached to us, just as those of old had. But the word which they heard was no good to them, because it did not become woven into the very fibre of their being through faith. It is we who have made the decision of faith who are entering into the rest, for of them God said: ‘I swore in my anger: “Very certainly they shall not enter into my rest.”’ This he said although his works had been finished after the foundation of the world. For somewhere in Scripture it speaks thus about the seventh day: ‘And God rested on the seventh day from all his labours.’ And it says in the same place: ‘Very certainly they shall not enter into my rest.’ Since then it remains that some people must enter into it and since those who in former times had the gospel preached to them did not enter because of their lack of trust, he again defines a day, when in David, after so long a lapse of time, he says: ‘Today,’ just as he had said before: ‘today if you will hear my voice do not harden your hearts’. If Joshua had actually brought them into rest, God would not then after that be speaking about another day. So a Sabbath rest remains for the people of God. He who has entered into this rest has rest from all his works, just as God rested from his works. I N a complicated passage like this, it is better to try to grasp the broad lines of the thought before we look at any of the details. The writer is really using the word rest ( katapausis ) in three different senses. (1) He is using it as we would use the peace of God . It is the greatest thing in the world to enter into the peace of God.

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

  14 The barrenness of Stamps was exactly what I wanted, without will or consciousness. After St. Louis, with its noise and activity, its trucks and buses, and loud family gatherings, I welcomed the obscure lanes and lonely bungalows set back deep in dirt yards. The resignation of its inhabitants encouraged me to relax. They showed me a contentment based on the belief that nothing more was coming to them, although a great deal more was due. Their decision to be satisfied with life's inequities was a lesson for me. Entering Stamps, I had the feeling that I was stepping over the border lines of the map and would fall, without fear, right off the end of the world. Nothing more could happen, for in Stamps nothing happened. Into this cocoon I crept. For an indeterminate time, nothing was demanded of me or of Bailey. We were, after all, Mrs. Henderson's California grandchildren, and had been away on a glamorous trip way up North to the fabulous St. Louis. Our father had come the year before, driving a big, shiny automobile and speaking the King's English with a big city accent, so all we had to do was lie quiet for months and rake in the profits of our adventures. Farmers and maids, cooks and handymen, carpenters and all the children in town, made regular pilgrimages to the Store. “Just to see the travelers.” They stood around like cutout cardboard figures and asked, “Well, how is it up North?” “See any of them big buildings?” “Ever ride in one of them elevators?” “Was you scared?” “Whitefolks any different, like they say?” Bailey took it upon himself to answer every question, and from a corner of his lively imagination wove a tapestry of entertainment for them that I was sure was as foreign to him as it was to me. He, as usual, spoke precisely. “They have, in the North, buildings so high that for months, in the winter, you can't see the top floors.” “Tell the truth.” “They've got watermelons twice the size of a cow's head and sweeter than syrup.” I distinctly remember his intent face and the fascinated faces of his listeners. “And if you can count the watermelon's seeds, before it's cut open, you can win five zillion dollars and a new car.” Momma, knowing Bailey, warned, “Now Ju, be careful you don't slip up on a not true.” (Nice people didn't say “lie.”) “Everybody wears new clothes and have inside toilets. If you fall down in one of them, you get flushed away into the Mississippi River. Some people have iceboxes, only the proper name is Cold Spot or Frigidaire. The snow is so deep you can get buried right outside your door and people won't find you for a year. We made ice cream out of the snow.” That was the only fact that I could have supported.

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

  Until I was thirteen and left Arkansas for good, the Store was my favorite place to be. Alone and empty in the mornings, it looked like an unopened present from a stranger. Opening the front doors was pulling the ribbon off the unexpected gift. The light would come in softly (we faced north), easing itself over the shelves of mackerel, salmon, tobacco, thread. It fell flat on the big vat of lard and by noontime during the summer the grease had softened to a thick soup. Whenever I walked into the Store in the afternoon, I sensed that it was tired. I alone could hear the slow pulse of its job half done. But just before bedtime, after numerous people had walked in and out, had argued over their bills, or joked about their neighbors, or just dropped in “to give Sister Henderson a ‘Hi y'all,’” the promise of magic mornings returned to the Store and spread itself over the family in washed life waves. Momma opened boxes of crispy crackers and we sat around the meat block at the rear of the Store. I sliced onions, and Bailey opened two or even three cans of sardines and allowed their juice of oil and fishing boats to ooze down and around the sides. That was supper. In the evening, when we were alone like that, Uncle Willie didn't stutter or shake or give any indication that he had an “affliction.” It seemed that the peace of a day's ending was an assurance that the covenant God made with children, Negroes and the crippled was still in effect. Throwing scoops of corn to the chickens and mixing sour dry mash with leftover food and oily dish water for the hogs were among our evening chores. Bailey and I sloshed down twilight trails to the pig pens, and standing on the first fence rungs we poured down the unappealing concoctions to our grateful hogs. They mashed their tender pink snouts down into the slop, and rooted and grunted their satisfaction. We always grunted a reply only half in jest. We were also grateful that we had concluded the dirtiest of chores and had only gotten the evil-smelling swill on our shoes, stockings, feet and hands. Late one day, as we were attending to the pigs, I heard a horse in the front yard (it really should have been called a driveway, except that there was nothing to drive into it), and ran to find out who had come riding up on a Thursday evening when even Mr. Steward, the quiet, bitter man who owned a riding horse, would be resting by his warm fire until the morning called him out to turn over his field. The used-to-be sheriff sat rakishly astraddle his horse. His nonchalance was meant to convey his authority and power over even dumb animals. How much more capable he would be with Negroes. It went without saying.

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

  To help these people, we have, as the writer to the Hebrews puts it, ‘to make their paths straight’. Christians have a double duty; they have a duty to God and a duty to other people. The Testament of Simeon (5:2–3) has an illuminating description of the duty of those who would strive for goodness. ‘Make your heart good in the sight of the Lord; and make your ways straight in the sight of men; so you will find favour in the sight of the Lord and of men.’ To God, individuals must present a clean heart; to others, they must present an upright life. To show others the right way to walk, by personal example to keep them on the right road, to remove from the path something that would make them stumble, to make the journey easier for faltering and lagging feet, is a Christian duty. Christians must offer their hearts to God and their service and example to their neighbours. (2) The writer to the Hebrews turns to the aims which must always guide Christians. (a) They must aim at peace . In Jewish thought and language, peace was not a negative thing; it was intensely positive. It was not simply freedom from trouble; it was two things. First, it was everything which makes for a person’s highest good. As the Jews saw it, that highest good was to be found in obedience to God. In the Authorized Version, Proverbs says: ‘My son, forget not my law; but let thine heart keep my commandments: for length of days and long life and peace shall they add unto thee’ (3:1–2). Christians must aim at that complete obedience to God in which life finds its highest happiness, its greatest good, its perfect consummation, its peace . Second, peace meant right relationships between individuals. It meant a state when hatred was banished and people sought nothing but the good of their neighbours. The writer to the Hebrews says: ‘Seek to live together as Christian men and women ought to live, in the real unity which comes from living in Christ.’ The peace to be sought is that coming from obedience to God’s will, which raises life to its highest fulfilment and enables us to live in and to produce right relationships with one another. One thing remains to be noted: that kind of peace is to be pursued . It requires an effort; it is not something which just happens.

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

  (4) There is purity. First, the marriage bond is to be universally respected. This may mean either of two almost opposite things. (a) There were some people who despised marriage. Some even went to the lengths of castrating themselves to secure what they thought was purity. Origen, for instance, took that course. Even someone like Galen, the Greek physician, noted of the Christians that ‘they include men and women who refrain from cohabiting all their lives’. The writer to the Hebrews insists against those who argued for abstinence that the marriage bond is to be honoured and not despised. (b) There were those who were always in danger of lapsing into immorality. The writer to the Hebrews uses two words. The one denotes adulterous living; the other denotes all kinds of impurity and vice. The Christians brought into the world a new ideal of purity. Even the Greeks admitted that. Galen, in the passage we have already quoted, goes on: ‘And they also number individuals who, in ruling and controlling themselves and in their keen pursuit of virtue, have attained a pitch not inferior to that of real philosophers.’ When Pliny, the governor of Bithynia, examined the Christians and reported back to the Emperor Trajan, he had to admit, even though he was looking for a charge on which to condemn them, that at their Lord’s Day meeting: ‘They bound themselves by an oath not for any criminal end but to avoid theft or robbery or adultery, never to break their word nor repudiate a deposit when called upon to refund it.’ In the early days, the Christians presented such a purity to the world that not even their critics and their enemies could find a fault in it. (5) There is contentment. Christians must be free from the love of money. They must be content with what they have; and why should they not be, for they possess the continual presence of God? Hebrews quotes two great Old Testament passages – Joshua 1:5 and Psalm 118:6 – to show that those who belong to God need nothing more because they always have the presence and the help of God with them. Nothing that the world can give them can improve on that. THE LEADERS AND THE LEADERHebrews 13:7–8 Remember your leaders, the men who spoke the word of God to you. Look back on how they made their exit from this life, and imitate their faith. Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever. IMPLICIT in this passage is a description of the real leader.

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

  The Authorized Version translates this word as perfection . But teleios , the adjective, and its kindred words have a technical meaning. Pythagoras divided his students into hoi manthanontes , the learners , and hoi teleioi , the mature . Philo divided his students into three different classes – hoi archomenoi , those just beginning , hoi prokoptontes , those making progress , and hoi teleiōmenoi , those beginning to reach maturity . Teleiotēs does not imply complete knowledge but a certain maturity in the Christian faith. The writer to the Hebrews means two things by this maturity . (1) He means something to do with the mind . He means that as people get older they should more and more have thought things out for themselves. They should, for instance, be able to say better who they believe Jesus to be. They should have a deeper grasp not only of the facts but also of the significances of the Christian faith. (2) He means something to do with life . As people grow older, their lives should more and more reflect Christ. All the time, they should be ridding themselves of old faults and achieving new virtues. Daily, a new serenity and a new nobility should be breaking upon life. As Karle Wilson has it in her poem ‘Old Lace’: Let me grow lovely, growing old; So many fine things do, Laces and Ivory and Gold and Silks, Need not be new. And there is healing in old trees, Old streets and glamour old, Why may not I, as well as these, Grow lovely, growing old? There can be no standing still in the Christian life. It is told that, on his pocket Bible, the Lord Protector of England, Oliver Cromwell, had a motto written in Latin – qui cessat esse melior cessat esse bonus – he who ceases to be better ceases to be good. This passage enables us to see what the early Church regarded as basic Christianity. (1) There is repentance from dead works . The Christian life begins with repentance , and repentance ( metanoia ) is literally a change of mind . There is a new attitude to God, to other people, to life, to self. It is a repentance from dead works . What does the writer to the Hebrews mean by this strange phrase? There are many things that he may mean, and each of them is relevant and thought-provoking. (a) Dead works may be deeds which bring death . They may be the immoral, selfish, godless, loveless, soiled actions which lead to death. (b) They may be defiling deeds .