Disappointment

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

  The seat of sin is the intention, which is the root, bearing good and bad fruit.1387 Desire or concupiscence is not sin. This intention, intentio, is not the simple purpose, say, to kill a man in opposition to killing one without premeditation, but it is the underlying purpose to do right or wrong. In this consciousness of right or wrong lies the guilt. Those who put Christ to death from a feeling that they were doing right, did not sin, or, if they sinned, sinned much less grievously than if they had resisted their conscience and not put him to death. How then was it that Christ prayed that those who crucified him might be forgiven? Abaelard answers by saying that the punishment for which forgiveness was asked was temporal in its nature. The logical deduction from Abaelard’s premises would have been that no one incurs penalty but those who voluntarily consent to sin. But from this he shrank back. The godless condition of the heathen he painted in darkest colors. He, however, praised the philosophers and ascribed to them a knowledge through the Sibylline books, or otherwise, of the divine unity and even of the Trinity.1388 Bernard wrote to Innocent II. that, while Abaelard labored to prove Plato a Christian, he proved himself to be a pagan. Liberal as he was in some of his doctrinal views, he was wholly at one with the Church in its insistence upon the efficiency of the sacraments, especially baptism and the Lord’s Supper. Because Abaelard stands outside of the theological circle of his day, he will always be one of the most interesting figures of the Middle Ages. His defect was in the lack of moral power. The student often finds himself asking the question, whether his statements were always the genuine expression of convictions. But for this lack of moral force, he might have been the Tertullian of the Middle Ages, whom he is not unlike in dash and original freshness of thought. The African Father, so vigorous in moral power, the Latin Church excludes from the number of the saints on account of his ecclesiastical dissent. Abaelard she cannot include on account of moral weakness.1389 Had he been willing to suffer and had he not retracted all the errors charged against him, he might have been given a place among the martyrs of thought.1390 As it is, his misfortunes arouse our sympathy for human frailties which are common; his theology and character do not awaken our admiration. § 101. Younger Contemporaries of Abaelard. Literature: For Gilbert (Gislebertus) of Poictiers. His Commentaries on Boethius, De trinitate are in Migne, 64. 1266 sqq. T he De sex principiis, Migne, 188. 1250–1270. For his life: Gaufrid of Auxerre, Migne, 185. 595 sqq.—Otto of Freising, De gestis Frid., 50–57.—J. of Salisbury, Hist. pontif., VIII.—Poole, in Illustr. of the Hist. of Med. Thought, pp. 167–200. Hefele, V. 503–508, 520–524.—Neander-Deutsch, St. Bernard, II. 130–144.

• From The Well of Loneliness (1928)

  3The autumn passed, giving place to the winter, with its short, dreary days of mist and rain. There was now little beauty left in Paris. A grey sky hung above the old streets of the Quarter, a sky which no longer looked bright by contrast, as though seen at the end of a tunnel. Stephen was working like some one possessed, entirely re-writing her pre-war novel. Good it had been, but not good enough, for she now saw life from a much wider angle; and moreover, she was writing this book for Mary. Remembering Mary, remembering Morton, her pen covered sheet after sheet of paper; she wrote with the speed of true inspiration, and at times her work brushed the hem of greatness. She did not entirely neglect the girl for whose sake she was making this mighty effort—that she could not have done even had she wished to, since love was the actual source of her effort. But quite soon there were days when she would not go out, or if she did go, when she seemed abstracted, so that Mary must ask her the same question twice—then as likely as not get a nebulous answer. And soon there were days when all that she did apart from her writing was done with an effort, with an obvious effort to be considerate. ‘Would you like to go to a play one night, Mary?’ If Mary said yes, and procured the tickets, they were usually late, because of Stephen who had worked right up to the very last minute. Sometimes there were poignant if small disappointments when Stephen had failed to keep a promise. ‘Listen, Mary darling—will you ever forgive me if I don’t come with you about those furs? I’ve a bit of work here I simply must finish. You do understand?’ ‘Yes, of course I do.’ But Mary, left to choose her new furs alone, had quite suddenly felt that she did not want them. And this sort of thing happened fairly often. If only Stephen had confided in her, had said: ‘I’m trying to build you a refuge; remember what I told you in Orotava!’ But no, she shrank from reminding the girl of the gloom that surrounded their small patch of sunshine. If only she had shown a little more patience with Mary’s careful if rather slow typing, and so given her a real occupation—but no, she must send the work off to Passy, because the sooner this book was finished the better it would be for Mary’s future. And thus, blinded by love and her desire to protect the woman she loved, she erred towards Mary.

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

  At home I reviewed the failure and tried to evaluate my new position. I had had a man. I had been had. I not only didn't enjoy it, but my normalcy was still a question. What happened to the moonlight-on-the-prairie feeling? Was there something so wrong with me that I couldn't share a sensation that made poets gush out rhyme after rhyme, that made Richard Arlen brave the Arctic wastes and Veronica Lake betray the entire free world? There seems to be no explanation for my private infirmity but being a product (is “victim” a better word?) of the Southern Negro upbringing, I decided that I “would understand it all better by-and-by.” I went to sleep. Three weeks later, having thought very little of the strange and strangely empty night, I found myself pregnant.

• From How to Read the Bible and Still Be a Christian (2015)

  As I have already emphasized, this is not a renewal of that defunct opposition between the “Jesus of history” and the “Christ of faith,” but an opposition between the Jesus Christ of both history and faith as nonviolent or violent. To put it another way: When the academy reconstructs the historical Jesus, is he nonviolent or violent? Also, when the church confesses the evangelical Christ, is he violent or nonviolent? Of course, the historical Jesus is profoundly and theologically significant for the biblical Christ, and Christianity, whether we like it or not, requires a theology founded and grounded on the historical Jesus. In other words, for Christians, God is revealed in Christ, but Christ is revealed in Jesus. If the norm of the Christian Bible is the biblical Christ, then the norm of the biblical Christ is the historical Jesus. CHAPTER 11Christ and the Normalcy of CivilizationAll who take the sword will perish by the sword. MATTHEW 26:52 If you kill with the sword, / with the sword you must be killed. REVELATION 13:10 ALL TOO OFTEN, IN my opinion, we humans escalate our violence from ideological through rhetorical to physical violence. Ideological violence judges certain others to be inhuman, subhuman, and lacking in one’s own humanity. Rhetorical violence speaks on that presumption by debasing those others with rude names, crude caricatures, and derogatory stereotypes or by excluding them as political “traitors” or religious “heretics.” Physical violence, and even lethal violence, acts on those presuppositions either by illegal attack or, if one has attained social power, by official, legal, political action. In this chapter, I watch for any escalatory violence, ideological through rhetorical to physical, as the Kingdom movement of the historical Jesus is acculturated to the drag of Roman normalcy. In other words, assertion bows to subversion and the radicality of God succumbs to the normalcy of civilization, as seen for the Christian Bible so often throughout this book. “You Snakes, You Brood of Vipers!”HERE IS AN EXAMPLE of rhetorical violence, chosen almost at random. In Luke, Jesus says: “Do not judge, and you will not be judged; do not condemn, and you will not be condemned. Forgive, and you will be forgiven” (6:37). But in John, he says to “the Jews,” “You are from your father the devil, and you choose to do your father’s desires” (8:44). That is surely a statement of judgment, condemnation, and unforgiveness. That is surely rhetorical—but certainly not physical—violence, and rhetorical violence is all that happens within the Gospels themselves. Still, my question is this: Did Jesus change his mind, or did John change his Jesus? That case exemplifies, however, a far wider process. It exemplifies the de-radicalization of the nonviolent Jesus and his acculturation into the normal violence of civilization. Furthermore, that change is already present in the earliest accounts about Jesus, and it proceeds apace across the four canonical Gospels. But even granted the drag of normalcy, why does that acculturating happen to Jesus so soon?

• From How to Read the Bible and Still Be a Christian (2015)

  The Case of Job: In the 300s BCE , the book of Job laid bare the intransigence of Deuteronomic theology especially with regard to its bidirectionality. I mean that, as mentioned earlier, one could interpret and argue backward within covenant Sanction so that present sufferings were divine punishments for past sins. Hence, since Job was suffering terribly now, he must have sinned terribly then. In Job 3–37 we listen to bad theology clothed in great poetry as Job’s friends—all by-the-book Deuteronomists, or Deuteronomic fundamentalists—tell him that his sufferings are clearly divine punishments for sin and that if he repents, God will surely forgive him. It was not that Job had sinned and therefore suffering would happen; it was that suffering had happened and therefore Job had sinned. We—hearers or readers—know from the very start of the book that such a Deuteronomic interpretation of Job’s situation is false, and indeed, God negates it at the start (1:8) and finish (42:7) of the book. The book of Job should have served, as quoted from Robert Frost’s playlet in this chapter’s epigraph, “To stultify the Deuteronomist / And change the tenor of religious thought.” But, sadly, the book of Job was but a speed bump on the Deuteronomic superhighway. The delusion of divine punishments still prevails inside and outside religion over the clear evidence of human consequences, random accidents, and natural disasters. This does not simply distort theology; it defames the very character of God. Where Are We Now and What Comes Next?WHEN I CONSIDER ONE final time the start and finish of the Pentateuch and contrast again the Priestly tradition in Genesis 1 with the Deuteronomic tradition in Deuteronomy 28, I glimpse again that biblical rhythm of expansion-and-contraction, assertion-and-subversion. As that rhythm becomes ever clearer as the very heartbeat of the biblical tradition, we will see the basic solution for How to Read the Bible and Still Be a Christian . Read it all carefully and thoughtfully, recognize radicality’s assertion, expect normalcy’s subversion, and respect the honesty of a story that tells the truth. That insistent dialectic of assertion-and-subversion appears at the very core of covenant itself. That core is the threefold sequence from past History through present Law to future Sanction, and that allows theology to move backward and emphasize History or to move forward and emphasize Sanction. Both past History and future Sanction are always present in the biblical tradition, but sometimes direction or even emphasis is everything. The figure diagrams this movement: [image "image" file=Image00003.jpg] I call this model the Covenantal Divide, and I repeat that those directions are not absolutely exclusive options but are fatefully different emphases. It makes a profound difference whether from that central core of covenantal Law in the present, one moves mostly to past History in gratitude to God or mostly to future Sanction in fear of God.

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

  Just as cultural feminism’s binary flip fostered that movement’s inward focus on women-only culture and spaces, I believe that the recent rise of subversivism may be an early sign that the more outward-looking, changing-the-world-focused transgender and queer movements of the 1990s are shifting into a more insular and exclusionary queer/trans community, one that favors only a select group of queers and trans folks, rather than all people who fall under those umbrella terms. Indeed, unlike our predecessors in the groups Queer Nation (who held public “kiss-ins” in suburban malls) and Transsexual Menace (who staged protests in small Midwestern towns where trans people were murdered), many in the queer/trans community these days often seem more content celebrating our fabulous queer selves or enjoying the safety of our own organizations and events.6 While there is nothing inherently wrong with creating our own queer/trans spaces and culture, what troubles me is that we are clearly sacrificing diversity in the process. For example, in queer/trans spaces, one rarely sees MTF crossdressers (despite the fact that they make up a large portion of the transgender population) and there are very few trans women. Some might suggest that these groups are choosing not to attend of their own accord, but that only leads to the next question: Why are they choosing not to come? Often when trans women ask me when I’m performing next, and I tell them that it’s a queer/trans event, they will tell me that they’d rather not go because they do not feel comfortable or safe in those spaces, that they have been dismissed or belittled at such events before. Even trans women who are dyke-or bisexual-identified often don’t feel welcome or relevant in queer/trans spaces. And whenever a trans woman or ally points out aspects about the queer/ trans community that contribute to these feelings of irrelevancy and disrespect—such as the way our community coddles those who support transwoman-exclusionist events or who make transmisogynistic comments—we are described as being “divisive.” This use of the word “divisive” is particularly telling, as it implies that “queer/trans” represents a uniform movement or community—a “oneness”—rather than an alliance where all voices are respected.

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

  Dolores lived there with him and kept the house clean with the orderliness of a coffin. Artificial flowers reposed waxily in glass vases. She was on close terms with her washing machine and ironing board. Her hairdresser could count on absolute fidelity and punctuality. In a word, but for intrusions her life would have been perfect. And then I came along. She tried hard to make me into something she could reasonably accept. Her first attempt, which failed utterly, concerned my attention to details. I was asked, cajoled, then ordered to care for my room. My willingness to do so was hampered by an abounding ignorance of how it should be done and a fumbling awkwardness with small objects. The dresser in my room was covered with little porcelain white women holding parasols, china dogs, fat-bellied cupids and blown-glass animals of every persuasion. After making the bed, sweeping my room and hanging up the clothes, if and when I remembered to dust the bric-a-brac, I unfailingly held one too tightly and crunched off a leg or two, or too loosely and dropped it, to shatter it into miserable pieces. Daddy wore his amused impenetrable face constantly. He seemed positively diabolic in his enjoyment of our discomfort. Certainly Dolores adored her outsize lover, and his elocution (Daddy Bailey never spoke, he orated), spiced with the rolling er s and errer s, must have been some consolation to her in their less-than-middle-class home. He worked in the kitchen of a naval hospital and they both said he was a medical dietician for the United States Navy. Their Frigidaire was always stocked with newly acquired pieces of ham, half roasts and quartered chickens. Dad was an excellent cook. He had been in France during World War I and had also worked as doorman at the exclusive Breakers’ Hotel; as a result he often made Continental dinners. We sat down frequently to coq au vin, prime ribs au jus, and cotelette Milanese with all the trimmings. His specialty, however, was Mexican food. He traveled across the border weekly to pick up condiments and other supplies that graced our table as pollo en salsa verde and enchilada con carne. If Dolores had been a little less aloof, a little more earthy, she could have discovered that those ingredients were rife in her town proper, and Dad had no need to travel to Mexico to buy provisions. But she would not be caught so much as looking into one of the crusty Mexican mercados , let alone venturing inside its smelliness. And it also sounded ritzy to say “My husband, Mr. Johnson, the naval dietician, went over to Mexico to buy some things for our dinner.” That goes over large with other ritzy people who go to the white area to buy artichokes. Dad spoke fluent Spanish, and since I had studied for a year we were able to converse slightly.

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

  Having said all that, I will be the first to admit that many MTF spectrum folks seem to be rather oblivious to the impact that traditional sexism has on their lives—both with respect to the male privileges they gain because of it as well as the special social stigma they receive for their feminine transgender expression and/or for choosing to transition to female. Personally, it was only after I began living full-time as a woman, experiencing firsthand all of the inferior and negative assumptions that others projected onto me because of my femaleness, that I began to make a connection between traditional sexism and the discrimination that I faced because of the specific direction of my transition and transgender expression. Only then did I realize how inadequate the transgender movement’s mantra—that we are discriminated against for “transgressing binary gender norms”—is for those of us on the MTF spectrum who primarily grapple with effemimania and trans-misogyny. MTF spectrum folks need feminism in order to make sense out of our lives and to work toward ending our continuing marginalization. Unfortunately, many cissexual feminists seem to fear that MTF spectrum inclusion within feminism might dilute, distract, or undercut a movement that has historically centered itself on the struggles and issues of cissexual women. Typically, such fears arise from the assumption that we cannot work together because we supposedly have different goals, or that we are unable to relate to one another’s experiences. I believe that is a red herring. After all, many lesbian women, who typically do not have to deal with the issue of unwanted pregnancy, work hard for and are committed to protecting the availability of birth control and a woman’s right to choose. Similarly, a woman doesn’t necessarily have to be a survivor of sexual or physical assault herself to do crucial work in a domestic violence shelter or a rape crisis center. What truly unites feminists is not a shared history (as we each bring a unique set of life experiences to the table), but our shared commitment to fighting against the devaluation of femaleness and femininity in our society and the double standards that are placed onto both sexes. In this respect, cissexual female and MTF spectrum feminists do have a lot in common.

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

  He finished, and since there was no need to give any more than the most perfunctory thank-you's, he nodded to the men on the stage, and the tall white man who was never introduced joined him at the door. They left with the attitude that now they were off to something really important. (The graduation ceremonies at Lafayette County Training School had been a mere preliminary.) The ugliness they left was palpable. An uninvited guest who wouldn't leave. The choir was summoned and sang a modern arrangement of “Onward, Christian Soldiers,” with new words pertaining to graduates seeking their place in the world. But it didn't work. Elouise, the daughter of the Baptist minister, recited “Invictus,” and I could have cried at the impertinence of “I am the master of my fate, I am the captain of my soul.” My name had lost its ring of familiarity and I had to be nudged to go and receive my diploma. All my preparations had fled. I neither marched up to the stage like a conquering Amazon, nor did I look in the audience for Bailey's nod of approval. Marguerite Johnson, I heard the name again, my honors were read, there were noises in the audience of appreciation, and I took my place on the stage as rehearsed. I thought about colors I hated: ecru, puce, lavender, beige and black. There was shuffling and rustling around me, then Henry Reed was giving his valedictory address, “To Be or Not to Be.” Hadn't he heard the whitefolks? We couldn't be, so the question was a waste of time. Henry's voice came out clear and strong. I feared to look at him. Hadn't he got the message? There was no “nobler in the mind” for Negroes because the world didn't think we had minds, and they let us know it. “Outrageous fortune”? Now, that was a joke. When the ceremony was over I had to tell Henry Reed some things. That is, if I still cared. Not “rub,” Henry, “erase.” “Ah, there's the erase.” Us. Henry had been a good student in elocution. His voice rose on tides of promise and fell on waves of warnings. The English teacher had helped him to create a sermon winging through Hamlet's soliloquy. To be a man, a doer, a builder, a leader, or to be a tool, an unfunny joke, a crusher of funky toadstools. I marveled that Henry could go through with the speech as if we had a choice. I had been listening and silently rebutting each sentence with my eyes closed; then there was a hush, which in an audience warns that something unplanned is happening.

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

  A case of arrested development is always pathetic to see; and the world is full of people whose religious development has been arrested. They stopped learning years ago, and their conduct is that of a child. It is true that Jesus said the greatest thing in the world is the childlike spirit; but there is a tremendous difference between the childlike and the childish spirit. Peter Pan makes a charming play on the stage, but the person who will not grow up makes a tragedy in real life. Let us take care that we do not remain in the religion of childhood when we should have reached the faith of maturity. THE NECESSITY OF PROGRESSHebrews 6:1–3 So, then, let us leave elementary teaching about Christ behind us and let us be borne onwards to full maturity; for we cannot go on laying the foundations all the time and teaching about repentance from dead works and giving information about washings, about the laying on of hands, about the resurrection from the dead and upon that sentence which lasts to all eternity. God willing, this very thing we will do. THE writer to the Hebrews was certain of the necessity of progress in the Christian life. Teachers would never get anywhere if they had to lay the foundations all over again every time they began to teach. The writer to the Hebrews says that his people must be going on to what he calls teleiotēs. 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?

• From How to Read the Bible and Still Be a Christian (2015)

  33:9, 11–13, 18; italics mine) Actually, Manasseh was one of Esarhaddon’s subservient vassals according to the Assyrian annals, and furthermore, Esarhaddon ruled from Nineveh, not Babylon (681–669 BCE ). The italics above show how the later Chronicler attempted to bring royal history into line with Deuteronomic theology. The Case of King Josiah: Josiah was a very good king who had introduced that Deuteronomic Reform in 621 BCE , as we saw above. Furthermore, his birth had been prophesied a century and a half earlier: “A son shall be born to the house of David, Josiah by name,” said the Lord in 1 Kings 13:2. Finally, as the book of Sirach said of the kings of Judah, “Except for David and Hezekiah and Josiah, / all of them were great sinners, / for they abandoned the law of the Most High” (49:4). Yet, despite Deuteronomic theology, Josiah was killed in battle in 609 BCE . How is that possible? He must have done something wrong, and once again, the Chronicler invents a reason: History Written: “Pharaoh Neco king of Egypt went up to the king of Assyria to the river Euphrates. King Josiah went to meet him; but when Pharaoh Neco met him at Megiddo, he killed him. His servants carried him dead in a chariot from Megiddo, brought him to Jerusalem, and buried him in his own tomb.” (2 Kings 23:29–30) History Rewritten: King Neco of Egypt went up to fight at Carchemish on the Euphrates, and Josiah went out against him. But Neco sent envoys to him, saying, “What have I to do with you, king of Judah? I am not coming against you today, but against the house with which I am at war; and God has commanded me to hurry. Cease opposing God, who is with me, so that he will not destroy you.” But Josiah would not turn away from him, but disguised himself in order to fight with him. He did not listen to the words of Neco from the mouth of God, but joined battle in the plain of Megiddo. The archers shot King Josiah; and the king said to his servants, “Take me away, for I am badly wounded.” So his servants took him out of the chariot and carried him in his second chariot and brought him to Jerusalem. There he died, and was buried in the tombs of his ancestors.” (2 Chron. 35:20–24; italics mine) Again, the italics show what the Chronicler has inserted to bring history into conformity with theology. But with neither of these kings—one a model of evil, the other of goodness—does the Deuteronomic tradition’s Sanction work without history being rewritten. In other words, Deuteronomic theology does not even work within the Deuteronomic tradition itself. Classic discrepancies such as Manasseh and Josiah required historical “correction” by the Chronicler to bring history into line with theology. Furthermore, the same happens even more strikingly outside the Deuteronomic tradition.

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

  I believe that if the transgender movement had simply continued to view itself as an alliance of disparate groups working toward a shared goal (like making the world safer for gender-variant folks), it may have avoided such exclusivity while respecting the distinct differences and specific concerns of its various constituents. Instead, by promoting the idea that we must move beyond the supposedly outdated concept of “identity,” the transgender movement has created its own sense of “oneness.” Rather than viewing ourselves as a fragile political coalition of distinct subgroups, some activists instead encourage us to see ourselves as one big homogeneous group of individuals who blur gender boundaries. Rather than learning to respect the very different perspectives and experiences that each transgender subgroup brings to the table, the transgender community has instead become a sort of gender free-for-all, where identities are regularly co-opted by others within the community. These days, many transsexuals assume that they have the right to appropriate the language of, or speak on behalf of, intersex people; similarly, many cissexual genderqueers feel they have the right to do the same for transsexuals. This needlessly erases each group’s unique issues, obstacles, and perspectives. This sort of “gender anarchy”—where individuals are free to adopt or appropriate any identity as they please—might seem very limitless and freeing on the surface, but in practice it resembles gender-libertarianism, where those who are most marginalized become even more vulnerable to the whims of those who are more established. In this case, it leaves those of us who are cross-gender-identified susceptible to negation at the hands of the greater cissexual queer community. Indeed, it has become increasingly common for people who are primarily queer because of their sexual orientation to claim a space for themselves within the transgender movement.7 This is particularly true in the queer women’s community, which has become increasingly involved in transgender politics and discourses due to the recent sharp increase in the number of (1) previously lesbian-identified people transitioning to male, (2) dykes who now take on genderqueer or other FTM spectrum identities, and (3) nontrans queer women who seek a voice in the transgender community because they are partnered to FTM spectrum individuals.

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

  Neither possibility bothered me. Outside on the street we left each other with little more than “Okay, see you around.” Thanks to Mr. Freeman nine years before, I had had no pain of entry to endure, and because of the absence of romantic involvement neither of us felt much had happened. At home I reviewed the failure and tried to evaluate my new position. I had had a man. I had been had. I not only didn't enjoy it, but my normalcy was still a question. What happened to the moonlight-on-the-prairie feeling? Was there something so wrong with me that I couldn't share a sensation that made poets gush out rhyme after rhyme, that made Richard Arlen brave the Arctic wastes and Veronica Lake betray the entire free world? There seems to be no explanation for my private infirmity but being a product (is “victim” a better word?) of the Southern Negro upbringing, I decided that I “would understand it all better by-and-by.” I went to sleep. Three weeks later, having thought very little of the strange and strangely empty night, I found myself pregnant.

• From How God Became King (2012)

  The gospels are of course so dense, so full of splendid and vivid detail, that preachers, on the one hand, have quite enough to do with this week’s parable or miracle, and scholars, on the other, have quite enough to do with figuring out which source the passage comes from. Neither the preachers nor the scholars have bothered too much about what the story in question actually does within the longer and larger narrative the evangelist has constructed. (This is of course an overstatement. Many have done and continue to do this. I am talking about the large generality of preachers and teachers in the church and a fair proportion of scholars as well.) In part this may stem from personality. For a long time it has been much easier to get a Ph.D. in biblical studies if you’re a “details person” rather than a “big-picture person.” This has attracted into the field people with sharp eyes for small details; such an ability is a great asset for a scholar, but it needs to be balanced with the vision and imagination that will ask the big questions too, if scholarly study of the gospels is not to become seriously distorted. The meaning of a word is its use in a sentence; the meaning of a sentence is its use in a paragraph; and the meaning of a paragraph is its use in the larger document to which it contributes. Details are vitally important, but they are important as part of the overall picture. And the burden of my song in this book is that we’ve all forgotten what the big picture actually is. 2 The Opposite Problem All Body, No Cloak GRANTED all we have said so far, we should not be surprised that many devout readers of the gospels have tried to redress the balance. Actually, many nondevout readers have tried to do so as well. Let’s take the nondevout (perhaps, for charity’s sake, we should say the less devout) first. Jesus Without the Creeds? Ever since the eighteenth century it has been fashionable to come at the gospels by asking the historical question: Did it really happen? And the answer that the intellectual fashions of our skeptical age have demanded has been something like this. Yes, Jesus really existed, but all that material around the edge— his miraculous birth, the saving meaning of his death, and above all his resurrection and ascension—never happened. That’s what the later church added to express its own faith. But when we take that away, the bit in the middle that we’re left with—the body without the cloak, if you like—is a very different story from the one the church has told. Take away the beginning and the ending, the bits you find in the creeds, the bits that people refer to today when they talk about “preaching the gospel,” and the Jesus you’re left with is one of three things.

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

  I had chosen drama simply because I liked Hamlet's soliloquy beginning, “To be, or not to be.” I had never seen a play and did not connect movies with the theater. In fact, the only times I had heard the soliloquy had been when I had melodramatically recited to myself. In front of a mirror. It was hard to curb my love for the exaggerated gesture and the emotive voice. When Bailey and I read poems together, he sounded like a fierce Basil Rathbone and I like a maddened Bette Davis. At the California Labor School a forceful and perceptive teacher quickly and unceremoniously separated me from melodrama. She made me do six months of pantomime. Bailey and Mother encouraged me to take dance, and he privately told me that the exercise would make my legs big and widen my hips. I needed no greater inducement. My shyness at moving clad in black tights around a large empty room did not last long. Of course, at first, I thought everyone would be staring at my cucumber-shaped body with its knobs for knees, knobs for elbows and, alas, knobs for breasts. But they really did not notice me, and when the teacher floated across the floor and finished in an arabesque my fancy was taken. I would learn to move like that. I would learn to, in her words, “occupy space.” My days angled off Miss Kirwin's class, dinner with Bailey and Mother, and drama and dance. The allegiances I owed at this time in my life would have made very strange bedfellows: Momma with her solemn determination, Mrs. Flowers and her books, Bailey with his love, my mother and her gaiety, Miss Kirwin and her information, my evening classes of drama and dance.

• From How to Read the Bible and Still Be a Christian (2015)

  How did this magnificent theory work out in practice? What happened to the radical vision of the historical Paul in those letters written in his name but after his death? Next, then, with regard to Colossians: on one hand, this letter speaks directly to both slaves and masters, mentioning reciprocal responsibilities that a Roman householder might find offensive. On the other hand, it is now taken for granted in this letter that Christian householders will have Christian slaves: Slaves, obey your earthly masters in everything, not only while being watched and in order to please them, but wholeheartedly, fearing the Lord. Whatever your task, put yourselves into it, as done for the Lord and not for your masters, since you know that from the Lord you will receive the inheritance as your reward; you serve the Lord Christ. For the wrongdoer will be paid back for whatever wrong has been done, and there is no partiality. Masters, treat your slaves justly and fairly, for you know that you also have a Master in heaven. (3:22–4:1; see Eph. 6:5–9) What has happened is that a post-Pauline, pseudo-Pauline, and even or especially an anti- Pauline vision has quietly contradicted the vision of the historical Paul. But notice, of course, that all this is done in the name of Paul himself. In other words, Paul’s vision of the radicality of God has been co-opted by the Roman normalcy of civilization . In summary, then, from these two experimental probes (explored more fully later in the book), we see that as in the Old Testament so in the New, as with Torah so with Paul, a rhythm of assertion-and-subversion is emphatically present. A vision of the radicality of God is put forth, and then later, we see that vision domesticated and integrated into the normalcy of civilization so that the established order of life is maintained. Furthermore, both elements are cited from, in one case, the mouth of God and, in the other, the pen of Paul. These two probes are admittedly limited to two traditions—the Priestly tradition in the Old Testament and the Pauline tradition in the New Testament. But they are scarcely unimportant ones. What they have in common is a pattern of yes-and-no, declaration-and-invalidation, pronouncement-and-annulment, assertion-and-subversion. Hold on, for the rest of this book, to that pattern of assertion-and-subversion. A Rhythm of Assertion-and-SubversionALREADY IN CHAPTER 1 I specified the disjunction between nonviolence and violence—be it for God or Jesus—as being between two different visions or ideals, one about nonviolent distributive justice and the other about violent retributive justice. My next step is to combine that with the two other just-seen disjunctions: both radicality and normalcy with assertion and subversion. As we have already seen, even a superficial reading of the Christian Bible reveals God and Christ to be both violent and nonviolent in a somewhat bipolar if not schizophrenic fashion. It is as if the Biblical Express Train runs on twin parallel but very dissimilar rails.

• From How God Became King (2012)

  Usually the dots are numbered, and the child can see the order in which they must be joined. But suppose they are not, and the child has to join the dots and make whatever picture seems right? There are some Christians who manage to join the dots all right, to connect all the doctrinal boxes that the great early creeds and definitions have given them—but to do so in such a way that the picture turns out to be an elephant instead of a donkey. Or vice versa. Only when the story the gospels are telling is fully integrated with the dogmas the creeds are teaching can we be sure we are on track. Displacement Activities The result of all this has been, I believe, that though the gospels are so rich in material of all sorts, their underlying emphasis has been quietly but thoroughly overlooked. All those parables, moral teachings, remarkable deeds, and so on—one can easily make all kinds of perfectly good theological and practical points out of them. But one may be so busy with that exercise that the main point goes unnoticed. This is what, I believe, has actually happened. The result has been a series of displacement activities. The church has said, in effect: (a) we know the gospels are important, because they are the inspired apostolic witness to Jesus; and (b) we know what is important in Christian theology, namely, the divinity of Jesus and his saving death or, as it may be, his moral teaching and example; so (c) we assume that that is the primary message of the gospels. In fact, to sum up the proposal toward which I have been working, the four gospels are trying to say that this is how God became king. We have, partly deliberately and partly accidentally, forgotten this massive claim almost entirely. Since we cannot stop reading the gospels without ceasing to be proper Christians, we have developed all kinds of strategies for making alternative sense of the gospels and so screening out the dangerous and challenging picture they are actually sketching. That is at the heart of the problem I have been trying to identify. It has been a salutary exercise, I believe, to review in this way the different things that people have said as they face the question of why the gospels included all that material between Jesus’s birth and his death. All these proposals have been advanced quite seriously, and I have tried to take them in the same serious spirit. But it is clear to me that none of them have actually taken the gospels seriously as they stand. They have gone to them with the wrong questions and have found answers, of a sort, to those questions. The challenge now is to accept that we have all misunderstood the gospels and to set about finding ways in which we can put this right.

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

  Once I had settled on getting a job, all that remained was to decide which kind of job I was most fitted for. My intellectual pride had kept me from selecting typing, shorthand or filing as subjects in school, so office work was ruled out. War plants and shipyards demanded birth certificates, and mine would reveal me to be fifteen, and ineligible for work. So the well-paying defense jobs were also out. Women had replaced men on the streetcars as conductors and motor-men, and the thought of sailing up and down the hills of San Francisco in a dark-blue uniform, with a money changer at my belt, caught my fancy. Mother was as easy as I had anticipated. The world was moving so fast, so much money was being made, so many people were dying in Guam, and Germany, that hordes of strangers became good friends overnight. Life was cheap and death entirely free. How could she have the time to think about my academic career? To her question of what I planned to do, I replied that I would get a job on the streetcars. She rejected the proposal with: “They don't accept colored people on the streetcars.” I would like to claim an immediate fury which was followed by the noble determination to break the restricting tradition. But the truth is, my first reaction was one of disappointment. I'd pictured myself, dressed in a neat blue serge suit, my money changer swinging jauntily at my waist, and a cheery smile for the passengers which would make their own work day brighter. From disappointment, I gradually ascended the emotional ladder to haughty indignation, and finally to that state of stubbornness where the mind is locked like the jaws of an enraged bulldog. I would go to work on the streetcars and wear a blue serge suit. Mother gave me her support with one of her usual terse asides, “That's what you want to do? Then nothing beats a trial but a failure. Give it everything you've got. I've told you many times, ‘Can't do is like Don't Care.’ Neither of them have a home.” Translated, that meant there was nothing a person can't do, and there should be nothing a human being didn't care about. It was the most positive encouragement I could have hoped for. In the offices of the Market Street Railway Company, the receptionist seemed as surprised to see me there as I was surprised to find the interior dingy and the décor drab. Somehow I had expected waxed surfaces and carpeted floors. If I had met no resistance, I might have decided against working for such a poor-mouth-looking concern. As it was, I explained that I had come to see about a job. She asked, was I sent by an agency, and when I replied that I was not, she told me they were only accepting applicants from agencies.

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

  He kindly, not in the least condescendingly, bent to speak to the guard, and the three men walked into the hut. Within easy minutes, laughter burst from the shack and the crisis was over, but so was the enjoyment. Dad shook hands with all the men, patted the children and smiled winsomely at the women. Then, and without looking at the damaged cars, he eased himself behind the steering wheel. He called me to get in, and as if he had not been helplessly drunk a half hour earlier, he drove unerringly toward home. He said he didn't know I could drive, and how did I like his car? I was angry that he had recovered so quickly and felt let down that he didn't appreciate the greatness of my achievement. So I answered yes to both the statement and the question. Before we reached the border he rolled down the window, and the fresh air, which was welcome, was uncomfortably cold. He told me to get his jacket from the backseat and put it on. We drove into the city in a cold and private silence.

• From The Pisces (2018)

  At the encouragement of Dr. Jude, Brianne had been going online since last year to meet men. The websites she chose were Match.com and Millionaire Match, and she repeated them as though reciting a mantra: “Match and Millionaire Match, Match and Millionaire Match.” She seemed to be having a rough go of it on both sites, as the men kept disappearing. She would find someone who seemed promising, message with him for a few weeks, and then he would just vanish. On the rare occasion that one of the men didn’t disappear and actually asked her for a date, he would suddenly seem strangely repulsive to her. But mostly, they absconded. The most recent disappearance was a man who claimed to be a retired fighter pilot. She said she liked that, as she liked military men, and he seemed handsome. For two weeks he had sent her messages every day: never saying anything uncouth or sending a picture of his penis. Then, one day, she asked if he might like to meet in person. He deleted his account. “But if it’s meant for me, it’s meant for me. And if it’s not, it’s not,” she said quietly, adjusting the strap on her babydoll dress. She was wearing knee socks and Mary Janes too. “I have a very full life. Very full. I don’t even know if I really want anyone else in it.” Then she sighed. The only person I liked was a woman named Claire. She was British, crass, and irate, with long fiery-red curls. Claire kept saying “Fuck this bullshit” over and over. She had left her husband two years ago when she met a younger man at a juice bar and realized, as she put it, that she hadn’t had a proper dick inside of her in twelve years. The younger man was happy to fuck her, but he never encouraged her to leave her husband. It was she who assumed they would have a life together. For six months they were off and on, until finally, she threw a plate of pesto kelp noodles at him at Café Gratitude and broke it off for good. Clean and sober for nine years, she was afraid the drama would make her drink. Most recently, though, she was hurt and enraged again by a man named Brad. He sounded pretty bad—bald, baseball capped, and litigation lawyery—but she really liked him. She said that they had begun to get really intimate around his mother’s death, then he just disappeared. She wasn’t drinking, but she was taking up a lot of bad behaviors again to cope with her depression. “I left my children with a friend and rented a hotel room, where I could go self-harm in peace,” she said. “But then I got scared I would off myself. I didn’t know what else to do. So I’ve come back to this bloody hellhole.”