Despair

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 Introduction to the Hebrew Bible and Deutero-Canonical Books (2018)

  of Jerusalem are found in this book. The violence of the rhetoric seems to make the violence that befell the city more acceptable. The destruction is completed in chapter 10, when the angel spreads burning coals over the city. In Isaiah’s vision burning coals were used to purify the prophet’s lips. Here, too, the burning can be understood as purgation. Jerusalem will rise again, in the last section of the book. For the present, however, the destruction is severe and complete. In conjunction with the destruction, the glory of the Lord abandons Jerusalem. This is in accordance with an ancient belief that no temple was destroyed unless its god had abandoned it. The Sumerian Lament for Ur gives a long list of deities who had abandoned the city ( ANET, 455). Shortly after the time of Ezekiel, the mother of Nabonidus, the last king of Babylon, explained the desolation of Haran and its temple by saying that Sin, the moon-god, became angry with his city and temple and went up to heaven ( ANET, 560). The departure of YHWH is described in elaborate detail. The glory of the Lord rises up from the temple and comes to rest on the Mount of Olives (Ezek 11:23). The entire destruction and abandonment are described without reference to the Babylonians. In Ezekiel’s view the responsibility for the destruction of Jerusalem was borne primarily by the people who had remained in the city with Zedekiah after the first deportation. These people had grown cynical: “The city is the pot, we are the meat.” Ezekiel twists the saying to highlight the violence done within the city by its leaders. They are not doomed to perish in Jerusalem but “at the borders of Israel.” This seems to be a reference to the fact that the leaders who were captured after the fall of Jerusalem were taken to the king of Babylon at Riblah in Syria and executed there (2 Kings 25). They were thus denied even the limited consolation of death in the land of Israel. In contrast to those who stayed in the land, the exiles in Babylon are regarded as the hope for the future. These people were written off by those left behind, on the grounds that they had “gone far from the L ORD ” and the land was left to those still in Israel (11:15). Ezekiel suggests, however, that divine presence is no longer bound to the land of Israel. YHWH is “a little sanctuary” for the exiles in Babylon (11:16). This phrase is admittedly obscure. The NRSV translates “a

• From Introduction to the Hebrew Bible and Deutero-Canonical Books (2018)

  to Syrians being taken captive to Kir). For Amos, YHWH is the God of all peoples and responsible for everything that happens, good and bad. The movements of the Arameans and Philistines were just as providential as those of the Israelites. In the eyes of God, Israel is no different than the Ethiopians. The final word of Amos is found in 9:8a-b: “The eyes of the L ORD are upon the sinful kingdom, and I will destroy it from the face of the earth.” It is unthinkable that the prophet from Tekoa would have added “except that I will not utterly destroy the house of Jacob.” To do so would have taken the sting out of the oracle of judgment. For a later editor, however, the addition was necessary. After all, Judah was also part of the house of Jacob. Amos, however, did not dilute his oracles of judgment with any glimmer of hope. In this he was exceptional. Most of the prophets alternate between words of doom and words of consolation. The oracles of Amos, however, were like the Day of the Lord, gloom with no brightness in them. The Judean Edition of Amos Amos found little acceptance from the political and priestly leadership of the northern kingdom, naturally enough. His oracles were preserved in Judah. No doubt, people were impressed that the destruction he had predicted was actually brought about by the Assyrians, a mere generation later. The final edition of the book was probably after the Babylonian exile. A few passages stand out as editorial markers. These include the superscription in 1:1, explaining who Amos was, and the verse asserting the priority of Jerusalem as the abode of God in 1:2. The oracle against Judah, “because they have rejected the law of the Lord” (2:4), betrays the influence of the Deuteronomic reform. The book is punctuated by doxologies, short passages giving praise and glory to God (4:13; 5:8-9; 9:5-6). Perhaps the most notable editorial addition, however, is found in 9:11-15, which promises that “on that day” the Lord will raise up the booth of David that is fallen. The phrase “on that day” often indicates an editorial insertion in the prophetic books. Such passages give the whole book an eschatological cast, insofar as they purport to speak about a time in the indefinite future when the

• From Introduction to the Hebrew Bible and Deutero-Canonical Books (2018)

  abandon the land after the final destruction of Jerusalem, but in no case would it be safe to infer that “the L ORD does not see.” The Vision of Destruction The same figure who had guided Ezekiel in his vision now summons “the executioners of the city.” These are six angelic figures accompanied by “a man dressed in linen, with a writing case at his side.” The linen dress is typical of priests, but the figure in question is clearly heavenly, what we might call a recording angel. This figure is commanded to go through Jerusalem and mark the foreheads of those who oppose the “abominations” with a taw, the last letter of the alphabet, which had the shape of an X in the Old Hebrew alphabet. The marking recalls the smearing of blood on the lintels and doorposts of the Israelites in Egypt, so that the angel of destruction would pass them by (Exod 12:23). In this case, however, the distinction is not between Israelite and Egyptian, but between the people of Jerusalem. The implication is that the people who are killed are sinners. This is a dangerous concept, which is surely not defensible. (The underlying logic, with regard to suffering in general, is criticized in the book of Job.) As Ezekiel sees it, the slaughter in Jerusalem is the work not of the Babylonians but of YHWH. It is pitiless in its execution of old and young, male and female. The prophet is moved to cry out in protest, but he does not contest the explanation given: “The guilt of the house of Israel and Judah is exceedingly great; the land is full of bloodshed and the city full of perversity; for they say, ‘The L ORD has forsaken the land, and the L ORD does not see’ ” (10:9). In short, Jerusalem is destroyed because the inhabitants deserve it. This explanation is essentially similar to what we find in the Deuteronomists, but there are some distinct nuances in Ezekiel. He is especially concerned with the defilement of the temple, which leads to its utter violation. He is also exceptional in the degree to which he portrays God as pitiless. Ezekiel’s way of dealing with the catastrophe that befell Jerusalem seems to be to persuade himself that it was utterly defiled so that destruction was the only remedy. Some of the most violent denunciations

• From Introduction to the Hebrew Bible and Deutero-Canonical Books (2018)

  are threatened with sword, pestilence, famine, and exile if they disobey the laws. (Note especially the motif of eating one’s children in both passages; Ezekiel goes further by saying that children will eat their parents.) The reason for such horrors is that “you have defiled my sanctuary” (Ezek 5:11). The logic of both passages is informed by the use of curses in Near Eastern treaties, especially by the Assyrians. The Annals of Ashurbanipal report how Arab rebels were reduced to eating their own children because the Assyrian gods “inflicted quickly upon them all the curses written down in their sworn agreements” ( ANET, 299–300). The lesson of the symbolic action is elaborated in an oracle in chapter 6. All of these visions portray the impending destruction of Jerusalem. The main explanation given is the cultic abominations, whether those of the high places or the defilement of the Jerusalem temple. The main emphasis, however, is on the announcement of inevitable doom. Ezekiel was speaking to the exiles in Babylon, who no doubt cherished hopes for the success of rebellion in Judah. Ezekiel disabuses them of any such illusions. Chapter 7 contains a powerful series of oracles in the tradition of Amos. The end has come upon the four corners of the land (cf. Amos 8:2). Ezekiel uses alliteration and repetition to drive the point home. Ezekiel 7:10 evokes Amos’s famous oracle on the Day of the Lord: “See the day! See it comes! Your doom has gone out.”

• From Introduction to the Hebrew Bible and Deutero-Canonical Books (2018)

  (6:25-26). Job appeals for honesty, and he is nothing less than candid himself. “Therefore I will not restrain my mouth; I will speak in the anguish of my spirit; I will complain in the bitterness of my soul” (7:11). At this point, he turns to address God directly. His complaint is not, as we might have expected, that God is absent or negligent with regard to humanity. Quite the contrary. Job complains that God is oppressing him as if he were the Sea or the Dragon, the cosmic enemies of ancient mythology. “What is man that you make so much of him?” Job asks (7:17). The question inverts the well- known psalm: “What is man that you are mindful of him? a human being [literally, ‘son of man’] that you attend to him?” (Ps 8:4). For Job, the attention of God is not a good or desirable thing, but an affliction. God should not be affected by human sin and should be able to overlook it. Instead, he is the “watcher of humanity” who targets a human being who will all too soon be dead. Bildad responds to the challenge in chapter 8. He is not as conciliatory as Eliphaz: “The words of your mouth are a great wind” (8:2). For Bildad, the issue is simple: “Does God pervert justice? Or does the Almighty pervert the right?” (8:3). These are rhetorical questions. The answer is axiomatic and negative. It is reinforced by the wisdom of the ages: “Inquire now of bygone generations, and consider what their ancestors have found; for we are but of yesterday, and we know nothing” (8:8-9). Bildad affirms the chain of act and consequence that was basic to proverbial wisdom: “Can papyrus grow where there is no marsh?” (8:11). Job must be guilty, and God must be proven right. Job’s reply to Bildad is a pivotal passage, as it anticipates much of what will happen at the end of the book. When Job asks, “How can a mortal be just before God?” (9:1), his point is different from that of Eliphaz, who asked a similar question in 4:17. Job is not speaking about the inner state of a person, but about juridical acquittal. The problem is that God is both accuser and judge, and so it is impossible to win one’s case before him. God prevailed over the Sea and over the mythical monster Rahab. How can a human being hope to withstand him? Where Bildad affirmed the justice of God, Job acknowledges only the raw power of the Creator. At issue is the very nature of justice. Is justice simply the will of

• From Introduction to the Hebrew Bible and Deutero-Canonical Books (2018)

  deeply despised, abhorred by the nations,” assuring him that kings and princes would be startled because of what the Lord would do. This points forward to the beginning of the fourth Servant Song in 52:13-15. The “covenant to the people” and the release of prisoners in 49:8-9 hearkens back to 42:6-7. These links suggest that at least three of the servant songs, those in chapters 42, 49, and 52– 53, have the same figure in mind. Duhm’s third Servant Song, 50:4-9, stands apart from the others, and in fact does not use the word “servant” at all. The figure, who speaks in the first person, is a teacher, or prophet, who listens faithfully to the word of the Lord and endures much resistance and abuse. Again, Jeremiah would seem to be the model here (cf. Jer 15:15-21). In this case, the reference is most probably to the prophet himself. The longest and most famous Servant Song begins at 52:13 and runs through chapter 53. The first few verses, 52:13-15, are an introduction in the name of the Lord that summarize the servant’s story: he was deformed beyond recognition but will be restored and exalted to the astonishment of kings. The main body of the poem in 53:1-10 is spoken by a collective group. If the servant is thought to be an individual, this group could be the Jewish community. If the servant is Israel, the speakers are the kings, whose astonishment is noted at the end of chapter 52. Again, they comment on the abject state of the servant, but now they add an explanation: “Surely he has borne our infirmities and carried our diseases . . . he was wounded for our transgressions, crushed for our iniquities, upon him was the punishment that made us whole.” Moreover, we are told that the servant was “cut off from the land of the living, stricken for the transgression of my people” (53:8). His life is made an offering for sin. The final verses, 11-12, are spoken again by YHWH, confirming that he will indeed atone for others, and that because of this, “I will allot him a portion with the great.” Since the servant is said to be done to death, he can hardly be the prophet himself. He could conceivably be a prophet, and the poem could be composed by his disciples, but this is an entirely hypothetical scenario. It is equally hypothetical to identify the servant with a royal figure (the heir to the throne?) and suppose that he had died “for the sin of my people.” The explanation that

• From Introduction to the Hebrew Bible and Deutero-Canonical Books (2018)

  understood anew by every generation. Understanding and insight cannot be accumulated. The fact that people of long ago are not remembered undermines a common hope in the ancient world that one might live on through one’s reputation and good name. This hope is what a modern psychologist might call an “immortality symbol,” a means by which we may hope to live on after we die. Qoheleth underlines the futility of such hope. Only a few people are remembered, and even they may not be remembered accurately. Qoheleth insists that there is no transcendence of death and no way out of the cyclical existence in which humanity is trapped. Qoheleth’s Experiments in Living In 1:12—2:24 Qoheleth adopts the persona of a king leaving a record of his experiences. (The fiction may be influenced by royal inscriptions from the ancient Near East.) He claims that he conducted a series of experiments, “to search out by wisdom all that is done under heaven.” The novelty of this procedure should not be missed. Normally, wisdom teachers in the ancient Near East were content to pass on the traditional wisdom they had learned from their own teachers. Qoheleth breaks the mold by insisting on finding out for himself. (Note the frequency of the first person pronoun, “I.”) He makes trial of pleasure, wealth, and even wisdom. What he finds is that “all is vanity and a chasing after wind.” Qoheleth’s experiments reflect the persona of Solomon. The king was famous for the number of his wives, for his wealth, and for his wisdom. What Qoheleth adds to the persona, however, is an angle of inquiry: What profit does a person have from all of this? Pleasure, by its nature, is transitory; it cannot be accumulated. Wealth can be accumulated, but to what purpose, if one does not enjoy it? In the end the person who accumulates wealth must leave it to someone who did not toil for it (2:21). We are reminded of the parable of the rich man in Luke 12:16-20, who built his barns but never lived to enjoy them. Wisdom, Qoheleth asserts, is better than folly just as light is better than darkness, yet the

• From Introduction to the Hebrew Bible and Deutero-Canonical Books (2018)

  from an oven.” Some commentators offer “absurd” as a modern equivalent, but while this term captures some of Qoheleth’s frustration, it does not convey the key aspect of hebel, which is transitoriness. As we shall see repeatedly in the book, what makes life “vanity” is the finality of death. Nothing lasts. The second basic theme has the form of a question: “What profit do people have from all the toil at which they toil under the sun?” (1:2). The idea of “profit” comes from business and perhaps reflects the growing commercialization of Jerusalem in the Hellenistic period. The Hebrew term is yitron, “that which is left over.” The quest for a “profit” from life defines the problem that concerns Qoheleth to a great degree. Again, this problem is impermanence or transitoriness. However much people may seem to gain for a while, in the end it all dissolves like vapor. The poem in 1:2-11 expresses another aspect of Qoheleth’s view of the world: “There is nothing new under the sun.” The Hebrew Bible is often said to have a linear view of time, in contrast to the cyclic view of ancient Near Eastern myth; that is, the Bible supposedly allows for a sense of progress and direction in history. This is true of some parts of the biblical corpus. The early history of Israel is constructed as a “history of salvation,” the journey of Israel to the promised land. Again, the prophets often look forward to a Day of the Lord, or to a time of restoration. But the prophets also knew that “all flesh is grass, and all its beauty is like the flower of the field” (Isa 40:6). The wisdom books of Proverbs, Job, and Qoheleth have no sense of a goal in history. Rather, as the Greek historian Thucydides saw, the same or similar things happen over and over again. Novelty is an illusion that results from our ignorance of history. Obviously, Qoheleth’s insight here has its limitation. The Hebrew sage never dreamed of the technological innovations of the modern world. But he might not have been impressed. While life in the ancient world was very tradition-bound, there was considerable innovation in the Hellenistic age. Yet no innovation, ancient or modern, has ever changed the basic constraints that govern human life. Moreover, the great advances in human understanding, by a Plato or a Shakespeare, are not accomplished once and for all but must be appreciated and

• From Introduction to the Hebrew Bible and Deutero-Canonical Books (2018)

  TOBIT A very different kind of story from the eastern Diaspora is found in the deuterocanonical book of Tobit. This book was not included in the Hebrew Bible, but it was originally composed in a Semitic language. Fragments of one Hebrew and four Aramaic manuscripts have been found in the Dead Sea Scrolls. The story is preserved in the Greek and Latin Bibles, and it is regarded as canonical in the Roman Catholic Church. Tobit was allegedly a man from the tribe of Naphtali in northern Israel, who was taken captive to Assyria when King Shalmaneser destroyed Samaria in 722 B.C.E. (2 Kgs 17:1-6). Even in exile he refrained from eating the food of the Gentiles. Nonetheless, he found favor with the king, and conducted business for him in Media, where at one time he left ten talents of silver on deposit. He lost favor with the king however, because of his practice of burying the dead who had been executed. Because of this he had to flee and lose all his property. He was restored after the death of Shalmaneser, through the intercession of his nephew Ahikar. Tobit meets with further misfortune, however, when bird droppings fall into his eyes and cause him to go blind. He is supported by his wife, but in his righteous zeal he accuses her of stealing. She retorts that his righteousness has done him little good. At this point, Tobit prays for death. At the same time, in Media a young woman, Sarah daughter of Raguel, a kinsman of Tobit, was praying for death because she had been married seven times and each husband had been killed by a demon before the marriage was consummated. The prayers of both are answered, not by death but by the sending of the angel Raphael to heal them. Tobit now remembers the money he had left on deposit in Media and sends his son Tobias to fetch it. He charges the young man not to marry any Gentile woman but to take a wife from his own kindred. The son looks for a man to go with him and finds Raphael, disguised as a human being, and hires him. So the young man and the angel set out, and the dog goes with them. On the way a

• From Little Sister: A Memoir (2019)

  For years, I had kept to myself my dreams of being married, having children, and living in an elegant house surrounded by rose-filled gardens. I dared not share those dreams with anyone, not even my parents, because I knew such longings were delusional. The course of my life had been laid out by Father and Sister Catherine, and it was out of my hands. My mind went into overdrive as Sister Catherine spoke and then in an instant, the meaning of her words hit me with full force, and I grasped with horror what was unfolding. Gentle as her delivery sounded, Sister Catherine was issuing an eviction order, expelling me from my home. It felt like a death sentence. The fantasies I had harbored of living a life in the world were suddenly replaced with the reality of being “kicked out”—the term that was used when someone was no longer part of our community. Sister Catherine was forcing me to leave the only people in the world I could call family. A feeling of nausea enveloped me. My throat went dry, and, behind my back, I gripped my long blue skirt with clammy hands. For a moment my mind went blank, as though I had just hit a wall at full speed. Then questions toppled over one another inside my addled brain. What does this mean? Where will I go? Where will I live? Why is this happening? Sister Catherine shifted in her seat and rearranged her skirt, taking a deep breath before she spoke again, and now she altered the tenor of her voice from gentle to serious. “And, dear, I must warn you about two words you will hear when you go out into the world.” She stopped, and in the ensuing silence, I wondered whether she was having second thoughts about sharing them. “They are diet and rape.” She said them in an almost haphazard way, as though once delivered, she was rid of the burden of disclosing them. Diet and rape? I repeated them in my head. I knew the word “diet.” Father had described many times the Diet of Worms, that monumental event in church history convened by the Emperor Charles V to condemn Martin Luther and his writings. But I was lost when Sister Catherine added in an all-knowing way, “Diet is something that lots of girls in their teens do because they think it will make them more attractive.” She offered not a shred of light on that enigmatic sentence. The very words “make them more attractive” denoted a concept verboten in the community. Our homemade clothing had been crafted to hide any semblance of femininity. I had never worn lipstick, much less put on makeup. I had no idea if I was attractive or not. As for the word “rape,” it was devoid of any meaning for me.

• From Little Sister: A Memoir (2019)

  For years, I had kept to myself my dreams of being married, having children, and living in an elegant house surrounded by rose-filled gardens. I dared not share those dreams with anyone, not even my parents, because I knew such longings were delusional. The course of my life had been laid out by Father and Sister Catherine, and it was out of my hands. My mind went into overdrive as Sister Catherine spoke and then in an instant, the meaning of her words hit me with full force, and I grasped with horror what was unfolding. Gentle as her delivery sounded, Sister Catherine was issuing an eviction order, expelling me from my home. It felt like a death sentence. The fantasies I had harbored of living a life in the world were suddenly replaced with the reality of being “kicked out”—the term that was used when someone was no longer part of our community. Sister Catherine was forcing me to leave the only people in the world I could call family. A feeling of nausea enveloped me. My throat went dry, and, behind my back, I gripped my long blue skirt with clammy hands. For a moment my mind went blank, as though I had just hit a wall at full speed. Then questions toppled over one another inside my addled brain. What does this mean? Where will I go? Where will I live? Why is this happening? Sister Catherine shifted in her seat and rearranged her skirt, taking a deep breath before she spoke again, and now she altered the tenor of her voice from gentle to serious. “And, dear, I must warn you about two words you will hear when you go out into the world.” She stopped, and in the ensuing silence, I wondered whether she was having second thoughts about sharing them. “They are diet and rape.” She said them in an almost haphazard way, as though once delivered, she was rid of the burden of disclosing them. Diet and rape? I repeated them in my head. I knew the word “diet.” Father had described many times the Diet of Worms, that monumental event in church history convened by the Emperor Charles V to condemn Martin Luther and his writings. But I was lost when Sister Catherine added in an all-knowing way, “Diet is something that lots of girls in their teens do because they think it will make them more attractive.” She offered not a shred of light on that enigmatic sentence. The very words “make them more attractive” denoted a concept verboten in the community. Our homemade clothing had been crafted to hide any semblance of femininity. I had never worn lipstick, much less put on makeup. I had no idea if I was attractive or not. As for the word “rape,” it was devoid of any meaning for me.

• From Little Sister: A Memoir (2019)

  “There was nothing we could do. We had promised to obey Father when we signed on as religious members in 1949.” I thought she might cry, but she regained her composure and repeated, shaking her head, “It was the most awful day of my life.” That was but the first step in the gradual destruction of family life for them. They had hardly acclimated to that devastating blow when Father summoned them to a private meeting at which he asked them if they would be willing to take vows of chastity; in other words, to forgo their marriage vows in favor of those of a religious nun and brother. My father told me that he responded with an adamant “No,” telling Father that their marital vows were of paramount importance to them. “I was hoping for twelve children,” my mother said, chuckling, “one for each of the twelve apostles. I loved having babies, and I wanted to raise as many good Catholics as I could.” But succumb they did after several more meetings with Father, who let them know that the other eleven couples had agreed to the new arrangement, and they were the only holdouts. It would be decades before I learned that other couples were also coerced into forsaking their marriage vows by Father’s duplicity— telling them that they, too, were alone in their decision not to embrace celibacy. At the time, Brother Augustine (one of the parents who had three boys, the youngest of whom was less than six months old) was seriously ill with cancer. My parents spoke of their soul searching and angst as they gradually convinced themselves that perhaps if they made the sacrifice of renouncing their marriage vows in favor of celibacy, God might cure Brother Augustine. With that rationalization, they acquiesced to the pressure that Father put on them. When Brother Augustine died several weeks later, there was no option to go back to their life as a married couple. “Did you think you would have been forced out of the Center if you had not agreed to keep that vow?” I asked them. My father paused. He was generally slow to answer questions that dealt with complex issues, and I could see he was choosing his words carefully. “That was never openly discussed,” he replied, “but your mother and I had the clear sense that if we didn’t comply, we would be asked to leave.”

• From Little Sister: A Memoir (2019)

  On Easter Monday, the afternoon editions of the Boston newspapers ran the story that the archbishop had officially silenced Father. The decree, which came without any warning, read: The Rev. Leonard Feeney, S.J., because of grave offense against the laws of the Catholic Church, has lost the right to perform any priestly function, including preaching and teaching of religion. Any Catholics who frequent Saint Benedict’s Center, or who in any way take part in or assist its activities forfeit the right to receive the Sacrament of Penance and Holy Eucharist. Given at Boston on the 18th day of April 1949. —Richard J. Cushing, Archbishop of Boston [image file=Image00008.jpg] Center members at the beach in the summer of 1948. The child in the foreground is Mariam Maluf, and her father, Fakhri, is on the right. [image file=Image00009.jpg] A picnic of Center members at the estate of a wealthy friend of the Center. My mother, standing in the middle, is eight months pregnant with me, and my father is slightly above and to the left of her. Leonard Feeney is in the front row. July 1948. [image file=Image00010.jpg] [image file=Image00011.jpg] Those “grave offense[s]” were embodied in Feeney’s refusal to obey his Jesuit superior’s order to leave the Center and report to Holy Cross College. Truth be told, the edict was a political gesture designed to silence a man who was embarrassing the Catholic hierarchy with his refusal to soft-pedal the doctrine of the Church that stated in no uncertain terms that salvation was granted only to those who were Catholics. This monumental announcement by the archbishop of the diocese of Boston acted as a catalyst in forging a spiritual and emotional bond among the members of Saint Benedict Center. Three months earlier, they had constituted their own religious community, some of them single and some married, but all of them more Catholic than the Church itself. A number of couples had become engaged and, when the Church authorities refused to grant them a Catholic wedding, they faced a quandary. Some parted ways with the Center, but four couples remained, and Father performed the marriage ceremony in secret. Each couple then went to Cambridge city hall and was married in a civil ceremony, as a security measure lest the Catholic authorities decree the Catholic nuptials invalid. [image file=Image00012.jpg] Fakhri Maluf giving a class to members of the Center after the silencing of Leonard Feeney. Young and idealistic, the members of the Center found ways to support each other financially, some doing menial jobs and bringing home money for the rest. Before long, the men and women, married and single, were pooling their resources—incomes, automobiles, and soon even homes and furniture. My parents sold the three-family house in North Cambridge that they had bought on the G.I. Bill and gave the proceeds to the Center.

• From Hunger: A Memoir of (My) Body (2017)

  Most of the choices I made during my lost year were ill advised. I was reckless. I did not care about my body because my body was nothing. I let men, mostly, do terrible things to my body. I let them hurt me because I had already been hurt and so, really, I was looking for someone to finish what had already been started.

• From Little Sister: A Memoir (2019)

  I was miserable and fearful? I knelt down, locking my gaze on Mount Wachusett in the distance. I blinked hard to squelch my own tears. The atmosphere at the Center that day was one of celebration. To mark the occasion of our postulancy, second breakfast was a feast with fried eggs, bacon, grapefruit, and coffee cake. Sister Catherine announced there would be a community meeting to celebrate the twelve new postulants. This was a much- appreciated surprise, because it had been months since our last one, and I wasn’t sure there would ever be another. As I sat with my family, Big Brothers and Big Sisters came by to congratulate me. I smiled and thanked them, doing my best to seem gracious. Inside I was crying. I wanted everyone to leave so that I could sit with my family. Soon the only family member I would be allowed to talk to would be Mary Catherine, who that morning had become Sister Mary Catherine. Toward the end of the community meeting, as the crowd was thinning out, Sister Elizabeth Ann tugged on my sleeve, gently pulling me aside. In a quiet voice she said, “Darling, if this is not what you want, if you don’t want to become a nun, you just let me know. I will support whatever you want to do in your life.” I was startled. Sister Elizabeth Ann had seemed so pleased for me during the ceremony and at the community meeting. Why this private advice and maternal support? Could it be that she understood the real me? The me who wanted marriage and children? How could she know? I nodded my head in silence. This was not the time for what seemed to be a dangerous conversation. What would Sister Catherine do if she found out? The bell clanged, signaling the end of the community meeting and the beginning of my new life as a nun. Unable to sleep that night, I replayed Sister Elizabeth Ann’s words in my mind again and again. “If this is not what you want, darling, I will support you in whatever you want to do.” A startling idea came to me. Was it possible that she didn’t want to be a nun either? Did she, too, feel trapped? What about Brother James Aloysius? Are we all in this boat together? I wondered. I thought back to the days in Cambridge, long before we moved to Still River, when the seven of us Walshes lived as a family on the top floor of St. Francis Xavier’s House, and life seemed blissful. How I wished for those days again.

• From Hunger: A Memoir of (My) Body (2017)

  77More often than not, I feel hopeless. I give up. I cannot overcome myself, my body, these hundreds of pounds shrouding my body. It is easier, I think, to be miserable, to remain mired in self-loathing. I don’t hate myself the way society expects me to until I have a bad day and then I do hate myself. I disgust myself. I cannot stand my weakness, my inertia, my inability to overcome my past, to overcome my body. This hopelessness is paralyzing. Working out and eating well and trying to take good care of myself start to feel futile. I look at my body, and I live in my body, and I think, I will never know anything but this. I will never know anything better than this. And then I think, If I am really this miserable, if my life really is this hard, why do I still do nothing? All too often, I look at myself in the mirror and all I can do is ask myself, Why? and What is it going to take for you to find the strength to change? 78One of the many things I have always loved about writing (not to be confused with publishing) is that all you need is your imagination. It doesn’t matter who you are, you can write. Your looks, especially, don’t matter. As a naturally shy person, I loved the anonymity of writing before my career took off. I loved how my stories didn’t care about my weight. When I started publishing that writing, I loved that, to my readers, what mattered were the words on the page. Through writing, I was, finally, able to gain respect for the content of my character. That changed when I started gaining a national profile, going on book tours, doing speaking engagements and publicity and television appearances. I lost my anonymity. It’s not that my looks mattered but my looks mattered.

• From Hunger: A Memoir of (My) Body (2017)

  60I am always uncomfortable or in pain. I don’t remember what it is like to feel good in my body, to feel anything resembling comfort. When walking through a door, I eye the dimensions and unconsciously turn sideways whether I need to or not. When I am walking, there is the twinge of my ankle, a pain in my right heel, a strain in my lower back. I’m often out of breath. I stop sometimes and pretend to look at the scenery, or a poster on the wall, or, most often, my phone. I avoid walking with other people as often as possible because walking and talking at the same time is a challenge. I avoid walking with other people anyway, because I move slowly and they don’t. In public bathrooms, I maneuver into stalls. I try to hover over the toilet because I don’t want it to break beneath me. No matter how small a bathroom stall is, I avoid the handicapped stall because people like to give me dirty looks when I use that stall merely because I am fat and need more space. I am miserable. I try, sometimes, to pretend I am not, but that, like most everything else in my life, is exhausting. I do my best to pretend I am not in pain, that my back doesn’t ache, that I’m not whatever it is I am feeling, because I am not allowed to have a human body. If I am fat, I must also have the body of someone who is not fat. I must defy space and time and gravity. 61And then there is how strangers treat my body. I am shoved in public spaces, as if my fat inures me from pain and/or as if I deserve pain, punishment for being fat. People step on my feet. They brush and bump against me. They run straight into me. I am highly visible, but I am regularly treated like I am invisible. My body receives no respect or consideration or care in public spaces. My body is treated like a public space.

• From Reading Biblical Literature: Genesis to Revelation (2016)

  Reading Biblical Literature: Genesis to Revelation56 Judges ‹ Scholars have often noted that where Joshua depicts triumph, Judges discloses vulnerability. And where Joshua celebrates faithfulness, Judges shows a pattern of unfaithfulness within Israel. In chapter 2, Judges outlines a cycle of actions and consequences that occur repeatedly. ● The cycle in chapter 2 is that first people turn away from the God of Israel and worship the gods of other nations. Second, God allows Israel to be dominated by those other nations. The idea is that if the people worship other gods, they will be ruled by other nations, and the narrative shows them being threatened by groups from the surrounding region. ● Third, the people ask God to deliver them. And fourth, God raises up a military leader who defeats their enemies. Then the cycle begins again. ‹ One example of this cycle comes from Judges 4, in which the narrator tells us that people did evil in the sight of the Lord. In response, God allows Israel to be oppressed by the Canaanite king, who has a general named Sisera. The people then call to their God for help, and God raises up Deborah to lead them. ● She is a prophet, which means that she communicates the word of God to people. She is also a judge, who deals with issues among the people of Israel. Deborah appoints a man named Barak to lead the Israelite warriors, but he’s hesitant, and he agrees only when Deborah assures him that she will go with him. ● The armies of Israel clash with those of Sisera, and as Sisera’s chariots advance, it seems like certain defeat for the Israelites. But at the critical moment, the sky opens up and there is a rainstorm. The rain turns the field into mud, and the heavy chariots get stuck. Sisera’s army then flees with the Israelites in hot pursuit. ‹ But the results of Deborah’s victory do not last. The cycle of unfaithfulness and oppression takes place again, until we come to the judge named Samson. What people often miss in the story of Samson is the fact that violence here takes on a different role. Deborah led a military response to a national crisis. But for Samson, violence is a tool for personal revenge. ● In chapter 13, the people of Israel have again turned away from God and are dominated by the Philistines. The people of Israel had come from the east Lecture 8—Violence and Kindness in the Promised Land 57 Samson belonged to a group called the Nazirites, who were set apart for special service to God; as a sign of this role, they did not cut their hair.

• From Hunger: A Memoir of (My) Body (2017)

  He said/she said is why so many victims (or survivors, if you prefer that terminology) don’t come forward. All too often, what “he said” matters more, so we just swallow the truth. We swallow it, and more often than not, that truth turns rancid. It spreads through the body like an infection. It becomes depression or addiction or obsession or some other physical manifestation of the silence of what she would have said, needed to say, couldn’t say. With every day that went by, I hated myself more. I disgusted myself more. I couldn’t get away from him. I couldn’t get away from what those boys did. I could smell them and feel their mouths and their tongues and their hands and their rough bodies and their cruel skin. I couldn’t stop hearing the terrible things they said to me. Their voices were with me, constantly. Hating myself became as natural as breathing. Those boys treated me like nothing so I became nothing. 12There is a before and an after. In the after I was broken, shattered and silent. I was numb. I was terrified. I carried this secret and knew, in my soul, that what those boys did to me had to stay secret. I couldn’t share the shame and humiliation of it. I was disgusting because I had allowed disgusting things to be done to me. I was not a girl. I was less than human. I was no longer a good girl and I was going to hell. I was twelve, and suddenly, I was no longer a child. I no longer felt free or happy or safe. I became more and more withdrawn. If I had a saving grace, it was that we moved all the time for my father’s job, and the summer after I was raped we moved to a new state where I could have my name again and no one knew I was the girl in the woods. I still had no friends and I did not try to make friends, because how could we possibly have anything in common? I did not dare subject what I had become to the children around me. I read, obsessively. When I read on the school bus, my classmates teased me. Sometimes, they took my book from me and threw it back and forth as I flailed, helplessly, just trying to get that book back into my hands. When I read, I could forget. I could be anywhere in the world except in the eighth grade, lonely and holding tightly to my secret. I often say that reading and writing saved my life. I mean that quite literally.

• From Hunger: A Memoir of (My) Body (2017)

  I worked the graveyard shift at a phone sex company in downtown Phoenix with a bunch of other lost girls. I mostly sat in my booth and did crossword puzzles while I talked to lonely men who wanted nothing more than the fantasy of a woman who might listen to them for ten minutes or an hour or two. Around four in the morning, on our lunch break, we would get food, greasy terrible food, from a Jack in the Box across the street. I was fat and I continued to eat to get fatter and I talked to men without having to be touched by men. When my shift was over, I went home and sometimes invited my coworkers over, and we sat around the pool at this man’s house, sleeping with our sunglasses on as the Arizona sun burned into our skin. One day the man who brought me to Arizona taught me to shoot a gun with wax bullets. It was exhilarating, holding a gun in my hand, the power of pulling the trigger, even if the bullets only hit an inanimate target with a quiet splat. I thought about turning the gun on the boys who had hurt me. I thought about turning the gun on myself. Most of the choices I made during my lost year were ill advised. I was reckless. I did not care about my body because my body was nothing. I let men, mostly, do terrible things to my body. I let them hurt me because I had already been hurt and so, really, I was looking for someone to finish what had already been started. Bottomless. Fearless. This is the reputation I developed in my social circle. One of those things was true. I went home with strangers. One man invited me over while his wife slept on the floor next to the bed where we lay. His floor was covered in cat litter. I can still remember the crunch of it beneath my bare feet as I snuck out the next morning, walked to a pay phone, and called the man I lived with to come get me. I started dating women because I naïvely thought that with women, I might be safe. I thought women would be easier to understand. For a couple of months, I lived with the man, and later, I got an apartment with a couple who would end up taking my share of the rent money and never paying the rent. When we were evicted, rather abruptly, a few months after I’d moved in, I was the only one who was shocked.