Fear

Passages

Every passage tagged with this emotion in the Vela corpus. Search the body text, narrow by source or register, click through to a book’s profile to see how the passage sits with the rest of the work.

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

  For example, ask questions about the future such as, “What plans do you have for next year?” or “How do you imagine yourself in five years?” or “What will you be doing then?” If such questions are asked honestly and sincerely—and not in a condescending or patronizing manner—they may spark spontaneous ideas and stimulate consideration and critical thinking. This might provide the basis for the cult member to consider his or her role in the group, sense of security, or concerns about the future. It would also be meaningful to discuss any education plans, medical care, or even retirement. Keep in mind—and be sensitive to—unreasonable fears he or she may have developed through group denunciations of such things as higher education or prescribed medicine. Conversation must thus be limited within certain parameters to avoid conflict. If unreasonable fears come up, try to put them into a more objective frame of reference by giving accurate feedback. For example, respond thoughtfully, “Why is that a serious concern?” Always allow the cult member to answer completely and listen courteously. Being a good listener is important. Don’t interrupt or in any way belittle or ridicule his or her responses. Always remember that you are largely dealing with a cult-influenced person. Be aware that what you think or feel is reasonable, rational, and logical may not be considered the same within the group or by its leaders. Also keep in mind that cult members go through a process of change to adapt themselves to the group norm. This may result in alternating moments of clarity when they seem reasonable and receptive, but then this may suddenly shift to suspicion or fear. In this sense it is often difficult to determine how a cult member is likely to perceive and receive an outsider, since this may vary due to the group’s ongoing influence. Ask simple questions about daily life such as, “What did you do this week?” or more generally, “How are things going?” Demonstrate genuine interest in the group, its daily life and activities. Don’t ask pointed questions that sound accusatory and never imply in any obvious way that something in a conversation might be wrong. Encourage family members and old friends to keep in contact with and visit the cult member. Be sure everyone is aware of the boundaries and limits to this communication, as previously outlined. Generally, the more communication exists with people outside the group, the better the situation can be. In any conversation with a cult member, connecting in some way with his or her past is meaningful. That is, mention things that occurred before his or her involvement with the group. This reminder can stimulate happy memories of life before group involvement, and these memories can be recalled and reinforced. You can do so by recalling happy times spent with family and friends, accomplishments at school, perhaps even old romantic interests. But this must be done without offending the group’s sensibilities and/or breaking any of its rules.

• From The Girls (2016)

  laughter in the other room. Voices. The pressurized swish of the refrigerator. I trawled for explanations but kept catching on the worst thought. After everything, this was how it would end. Trapped in someone else’s house, among the facts and habits of someone else’s life. My bare legs, jotted with varicose veins—how weak I’d appear when they came for me, a middle-aged woman scrabbling for the corners. I lay in bed, my breath shallow as I stared at the closed door. Waiting for the intruders, the horrors I imagined taking human shape and populating the room—there would be no heroics, I understood. Just the dull terror, the physical pain that would have to be suffered through. I wouldn’t try to run. — I only got out of bed after I heard the girl. Her voice was high and innocuous. Though it shouldn’t have been comforting—Suzanne and the others had been girls, and that hadn’t helped anybody. — I was staying in a borrowed house. The dark maritime cypress packed tight outside the window, the twitch of salt air. I ate in the blunt way I had as a child—a glut of spaghetti, mossed with cheese. The nothing jump of soda in my throat. I watered Dan’s plants once a week, ferrying each one to the bathtub, running the pot under the faucet until the soil burbled with wet. More than once I’d showered with a litter of dead leaves in the tub. The inheritance that had been the leftovers of my grandmother’s movies—hours of her smiling her hawkish smile on film, her tidy cap of curls—I’d spent ten years ago. I tended to the in-between spaces of other people’s existences, working as a live-in aide. Cultivating a genteel invisibility in sexless clothes, my face blurred with the pleasant, ambiguous expression of a lawn ornament. The pleasant part was important, the magic trick of invisibility only possible when it seemed to fulfill the correct order of things. As if it were something I wanted, too. My charges were varied. A kid with special needs, frightened of electrical outlets and traffic lights. An elderly woman who watched talk shows

• From Austerlitz (2001)

  valley, where Elias was to take evening prayers that same day. The ruins were still smoldering when we reached the center of the town, and people were standing about in the road in small groups, some with their hands still raised to their mouths in horror. The fire engine had driven straight across a round flower bed, and there on the grass, dressed in their Sunday best, lay the bodies of those who, as I hardly needed Elias to tell me, had sinned against the Lord’s commandment to keep the Sabbath day holy. In this way a kind of Old Testament mythology of retribution gradually built up inside my head, and I always saw its supreme expression in the submersion of the village of Llanwddyn beneath the waters of the Vyrnwy reservoir. As far as I can remember it was on the way back from one of his journeys to preach away from home, at either Abertridwr or Pont Llogel, that Elias stopped the pony-trap on the banks of this lake and walked out with me to the middle of the dam, where he told me about his family home lying down there at a depth of about a hundred feet under the dark water, and not just his own family home but at least forty other houses and farms, together with the church of St. John of Jerusalem, three chapels, and three pubs, all of them drowned when the dam was finished in the autumn of 1888. In the years before its submersion, so Elias had told him, said Austerlitz, Llanwddyn had been particularly famous for its games of football on the village green when the full moon shone in summer, often lasting all night and played by over ten dozen youths and men of almost every age, some of them from neighboring villages. The story of the football games of Llanwddyn occupied my imagination for a long time, said Austerlitz, first and foremost, I am sure, because Elias never told me anything else about his own life either before or afterwards. At this one moment on the Vyrnwy dam when, intentionally or unintentionally, he allowed me a glimpse into his clerical heart, I felt for him so much that he, the righteous man, seemed to me like the only survivor of the deluge which had destroyed Llanwddyn, while I imagined all the others—his parents, his brothers and sisters, his relations, their neighbors, all the other villagers—still down in the depths, sitting in their houses and walking along the road, but unable to speak and with their eyes opened far too wide. This notion of mine about the subaquatic existence of the people of Llanwddyn also had something to do with the album which Elias first showed me on our return home that evening, containing several photographs of his now sunk beneath the water.

• From The Girls (2016)

  naked, vulnerable holler. “What’s his problem?” Suzanne said, and I didn’t know, flushing with desperate embarrassment that morphed into fear: Tom was still shouting, scrambling down the steps into the pool. “The kid,” he said, “the boy.” Nico: I flashed on the silent shape of his body in the water, his little lungs sloshing and full. The porch tilted. By the time we hurried over to the pool, Tom already slogging the kid out of the slimy water, it was immediately clear that he was okay. Everything was fine. Nico sat down on the grass, dripping, an aggrieved look on his face. Fisting at his eyes, pushing Tom away. He was crying more because of Tom than anything else, the strange man who’d yelled at him, who’d dragged him from the pool when he was just having fun. “What’s the big idea?” Donna said to Tom. Patting Nico on the head roughly, like a good dog. “He jumped in.” Tom’s panic was reverberating through his whole body, his pants and shirt sopping. The wet suck of his shoes. “So?” Tom was wide-eyed, not understanding that trying to explain would make it worse. “I thought he’d fallen into the pool.” “But there’s water in there,” Helen said. “That wet stuff,” Donna said, sniggering. “The kid’s fine,” Suzanne said. “You scared him.” “Glug glug glug.” A fit of giggling overtook Helen. “You thought he was dead or something?” “He still could have drowned,” Tom said, his voice going high. “No one was watching him. He’s too young to really swim.” “Your face,” Donna said. “God, you’re all freaked, aren’t you?” The sight of Tom wringing the biological stink of pool water from his shirt. The junk in the yard catching the light. Nico got to his feet, shaking out his hair. Sniffing a little with his weird childish dignity. The girls were laughing, all of them, so Nico trundled off easily, no one noticing his departure. And I pretended I hadn’t worried, either, that I’d known everything was fine, because Tom seemed pathetic, his panic right on the

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

  In the time we have, it is our duty to do all the good we can to all the people we can in all the ways we can. THE THREAT AT THE HEART OF THINGS Hebrews 10:26–31 For, if we deliberately sin after we have received full knowledge of the truth, no sacrifice for sin is left. All that we can expect is to wait in terror for judgment and for that flaming wrath which will consume the adversaries of God. Anyone who regards the law of Moses as a dead letter dies without pity on the evidence of two or three witnesses. Of how much worse punishment, do you think, that man will be deemed worthy who has trampled underfoot the Son of God, who has failed to regard the blood of the new covenant, with which he was made fit for God’s presence, as a sacred thing, and who has insulted the Spirit through whom God’s grace comes to us? For we know who it was who said: ‘Vengeance belongs to me; it is I who will repay,’ and again: ‘The Lord will judge his people.’ It is a terrifying thing to fall into the hands of the living God. EVERY now and again, the writer to the Hebrews speaks with a sternness that is almost without parallel in the New Testament. Few writers have such a sense of the sheer horror of sin. In this passage, his thoughts are going back to the grim instruction in Deuteronomy 17:2–7. It is there laid down that, if any person shall be proved to have gone after strange gods and to have worshipped them, ‘you shall bring out to your gates that man or that woman who has committed this crime and you shall stone the man or woman to death. On the evidence of two or three witnesses the death sentence shall be executed; a person must not be put to death on the evidence of only one witness. The hands of the witnesses shall be the first raised against the person, to execute the death penalty, and afterwards the hands of all the people. So you shall purge the evil from your midst.’ The writer to the Hebrews has this horror of sin for two reasons. First, he lived in a day when the Church had been under attack and would be under attack again. Its greatest danger was from the possible evil living and rejection of the faith by its members. A church in such circumstances could not afford to carry members who were a bad advertisement for the Christian faith. Its members must be loyal or nothing. That is still true.

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

  Lecture 3—Abraham, Sarah, and the Promise 23 ‹ The opening line of this story says that God made this demand to test Abraham, but it offers no reason for the test. Instead, there is simply the command, which unfolds in excruciating detail. Abraham loves Isaac, yet he must put him to death. ‹ We would expect Abraham to object, but he says nothing. Instead, he silently takes Isaac to the mountains, carrying a knife and wood for the sacrifice. Of course, Isaac does not know the command that Abraham has been given. He innocently asks his father where they will get the lamb for the sacrifice, which Abraham tells him that God himself will provide. Is Abraham alluding to the fact that because God has given Isaac to him, he is, in a sense, providing the sacrifice? Or is he dissembling to hide the truth from his son? Or does he really think that God will spare Isaac? ‹ The text provides no clarity but moves on to the critical moment. Abraham holds the knife in one hand and Isaac in the other. At that instant, God intervenes; he says, “Don’t stretch out your hand against the boy.” Instead, Abraham sees a ram caught in a thicket and sacrifices it. ‹ What’s particularly striking about this story is the inscrutability of God’s ways. He puts Abraham in a situation that defies easy answers. For Abraham to disobey God would be wrong. But to be told to sacrifice Isaac also seems wrong; it runs counter to everything else he knows about God. Yet despite the inscrutable command, God remains true to his own character in the end. His commitment is finally for life, not death for Isaac. The story portrays a God whose ways are deeply hidden, but whose purpose is ultimately clear. His underlying commitment is the giving of life. Suggested Reading Blenkinsopp, Abraham. Levenson, Inheriting Abraham. Reading Biblical Literature: Genesis to Revelation24 Questions to Consider 1. Abraham is often remembered for his faith or obedience. What other traits of Abraham emerge from the narrative? What are the principal traits of Sarah and Hagar? How does each of them help move the story forward? 2. How is God portrayed in these episodes? What is God’s role in moving the story forward?

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

  159 LECTURE 24 Mark on the Crucifixion and Resurrection T he Gospel of Mark introduces Jesus and his message about the kingdom of God. For Jews of the time, hope for the kingdom usually meant a golden age of peace. But in Mark’s narrative, the kingdom is redefined in terms of healing and forgiveness, suffering and service. In the second part of Mark’s gospel, the process of redefining the kingdom continues. Jesus is given royal titles, but the opposition to his purported kingship ultimately intensifies and leads to his crucifixion. As a writer, the author of Mark must grapple with this apparent contradiction between kingship and crucifixion, between power and weakness. His challenge is to narrate a story in which crucifixion does not negate Jesus’s kingship but defines it. Jesus in Jerusalem ‹In Mark 11, the setting shifts from Galilee in the north to the city of Jerusalem in the south. Jesus approaches the city in a dramatic royal procession, riding a colt. The crowd in Mark’s gospel makes the royal theme explicit, saying, “Hosanna! Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord! Blessed is the coming kingdom of our ancestor David!” From Mark’s perspective, Jesus is the coming king. But how will his kingship be carried out? ‹As the story progresses, we find that the positive reception by the crowd is matched by a negative reaction from Jewish authorities. A pivotal moment comes when Jesus makes a prophetic critique of the central religious institution of the time: the Jerusalem temple. ●In the courtyard in front of the temple were merchants, selling animals to pilgrims for sacrifice, and moneychangers to exchange travelers’ foreign coins. ●Jesus chases both the merchants and their customers out of the temple and overturns the tables of the moneychangers. He announces that the temple is

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

  Lecture 3—Abraham, Sarah, and the Promise 23 ‹The opening line of this story says that God made this demand to test Abraham, but it offers no reason for the test. Instead, there is simply the command, which unfolds in excruciating detail. Abraham loves Isaac, yet he must put him to death. ‹We would expect Abraham to object, but he says nothing. Instead, he silently takes Isaac to the mountains, carrying a knife and wood for the sacrifice. Of course, Isaac does not know the command that Abraham has been given. He innocently asks his father where they will get the lamb for the sacrifice, which Abraham tells him that God himself will provide. Is Abraham alluding to the fact that because God has given Isaac to him, he is, in a sense, providing the sacrifice? Or is he dissembling to hide the truth from his son? Or does he really think that God will spare Isaac? ‹The text provides no clarity but moves on to the critical moment. Abraham holds the knife in one hand and Isaac in the other. At that instant, God intervenes; he says, “Don’t stretch out your hand against the boy.” Instead, Abraham sees a ram caught in a thicket and sacrifices it. ‹What’s particularly striking about this story is the inscrutability of God’s ways. He puts Abraham in a situation that defies easy answers. For Abraham to disobey God would be wrong. But to be told to sacrifice Isaac also seems wrong; it runs counter to everything else he knows about God. Yet despite the inscrutable command, God remains true to his own character in the end. His commitment is finally for life, not death for Isaac. The story portrays a God whose ways are deeply hidden, but whose purpose is ultimately clear. His underlying commitment is the giving of life. Suggested Reading Blenkinsopp, Abraham. Levenson, Inheriting Abraham. Reading Biblical Literature: Genesis to Revelation 24 Questions to Consider 1. Abraham is often remembered for his faith or obedience. What other traits of Abraham emerge from the narrative? What are the principal traits of Sarah and Hagar? How does each of them help move the story forward? 2. How is God portrayed in these episodes? What is God’s role in moving the story forward?

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

  Reading Biblical Literature: Genesis to Revelation 28 taken with Rachel that he offers to work for her father for seven years if he only will let them get married. And her father agrees—though he’ll fulfill the bargain on his own terms, not Jacob’s. ‹When the time comes for the wedding, Jacob goes into the tent to spend the night with his bride. But his new father-in-law has slipped Leah into the tent, and in the morning, Jacob discovers that he is now married to the wrong woman. Jacob’s father-in-law tells him that he will have to work for another seven years to gain Rachel for his wife. ‹Jacob fulfills this commitment and, by making some shrewd moves, becomes a wealthy man. But that, in turn, generates resentment in the extended family. With jealousy and conflict rising, Jacob decides to return home, even though it means facing Esau. ‹As Jacob nears his homeland, he sends messengers with gifts for Esau, but he remains afraid. We’re told that he spends the night wrestling with a man, but we’re not sure who that man is or why the struggle started. The encounter has a dreamlike quality, mirroring the struggles that have shaped Jacob’s life. ‹As the wrestling goes on, neither is winning. The mysterious man demands that Jacob let him go, but Jacob says, “I won’t let you go unless you bless me.” Finally, the man asks, “What is your name?” When he’s told “Jacob,” the man replies, “You will no longer be called Jacob. You will be called Israel, because you have striven with God and with human beings and have won.” That’s what the name Israel means: “one who strives with God.” ‹By wrestling with this mysterious man, Jacob is engaged in a deeper struggle with God himself. At the end of the story, Jacob says he’s amazed that when wrestling, he saw God face to face yet survived. Note, however, that we’re not told God is in the struggle until the end. Instead, we see Jacob pursuing the struggle in the hope that it will end in a blessing, which brings life. ‹The next day, this surreal encounter comes to fruition in practical terms: when Jacob must face a human adversary, Esau. He must swallow his pride and bow

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

  Reading Biblical Literature: Genesis to Revelation164 ● This gives divine affirmation to Jesus’s criticism of the temple. It signifies that in the crucifixion, the barrier separating God from human beings is removed. If the temple curtain concealed the place of God’s presence, the crucifixion reveals it. It reveals that God is present in the place of suffering. ● For Mark, this is a miraculous action, not something that bystanders at the crucifixion would have observed, and it gives a kind of surreal quality to the scene. But within Mark’s narrative, the tearing of the curtain provides divine commentary on the death of Jesus. ‹ God’s presence at the crucifixion is affirmed by the Roman guard who stands by the cross. As the guard looks at the dying Jesus, he says “T ruly this man was the Son of God.” Where the opponents assumed that Jesus’s death would put an end to such claims, the guard insists that his death bears out their truth. In Mark, what it means to be the Son of God is defined by Jesus’s willingness to enter fully into the reality of human suffering. The Resurrection ‹ Mark’s account of Jesus’s resurrection is both brief and filled with mystery. At the end of chapter 15, Mark says that Jesus died on the day before the Sabbath. As evening came, his body was placed in a tomb, with a large stone over the entrance. ‹ In chapter 16, three women come to the tomb on the day after the Sabbath to anoint Jesus’s body. But when they arrive, they find the tomb open, and a young man sitting inside. He says that Jesus has been raised and is going ahead of them to Galilee, where they will see him. T errified, the women run away and say nothing. ‹ That is where Mark’s Gospel ends, on this unsettling note of fear and silence. Many modern readers find this abrupt ending unsatisfying. Mark does not actually describe the risen Jesus appearing to the disciples. What the women have is the promise of seeing him. And they will find out if the promise is true only by embarking on a journey to Galilee. The question is whether they will do so or whether fear and silence will persist. Lecture 24—Mark on the Crucifixion and Resurrection 165 Suggested Reading Marcus, Mark 8–16. Senior, The Passion of Jesus in the Gospel of Mark. Questions to Consider 1. How does Mark portray opposition to Jesus in his narrative? What are the major factors that lead to the crucifixion? 2. How does Mark’s narrative connect the crucifixion to Jesus’s role as Christ or Messiah?

• From The Well of Loneliness (1928)

  The hand that was shading his pale face trembled, for he felt a great trembling take hold of his spirit. His spirit shrank back and cowered in his body, so that it dared not look out on Stephen. She was waiting, and now she was asking again: ‘Father, is there anything strange about me? I remember when I was a little child—I was never quite like all the other children—’ Her voice sounded apologetic, uncertain, and he knew that the tears were not far from her eyes, knew that if he looked now he would see her lips shaking, and the tears making ugly red stains on her eyelids. His loins ached with pity for this fruit of his loins—an insufferable aching, an intolerable pity. He was frightened, a coward because of his pity, as he had been once long ago with her mother. Merciful God! How could a man answer? What could he say, and that man a father? He sat there inwardly grovelling before her: ‘Oh, Stephen, my child, my little, little Stephen.’ For now in his pity she seemed to him little, little and utterly helpless again—he remembered her hands as the hands of a baby, very small, very pink, with minute perfect nails—he had played with her hands, exclaiming about them, astonished because of their neat perfection: ‘Oh, Stephen, my little, little Stephen.’ He wanted to cry out against God for this thing; he wanted to cry out: ‘You have maimed my Stephen! What had I done or my father before me, or my father’s father, or his father’s father? Unto the third and fourth generations. . . .’ And Stephen was waiting for his answer. Then Sir Philip set the lips of his spirit to the cup, and his spirit must drink the gall of deception: ‘I will not tell her, You cannot ask it—there are some things that even God should not ask.’ And now he turned round and deliberately faced her; smiling right into her eyes he lied glibly: ‘My dear, don’t be foolish, there’s nothing strange about you, some day you may meet a man you can love. And supposing you don’t, well, what of it, Stephen? Marriage isn’t the only career for a woman. I’ve been thinking about your writing just lately, and I’m going to let you go up to Oxford; but meanwhile you mustn’t get foolish fancies, that won’t do at all—it’s not like you, Stephen.’

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

  The Jewish BackgroundBut the writer to the Hebrews also had a Jewish background. To the Jews, it was always dangerous to come too near to God. ‘No one’, said God to Moses, ‘shall see me and live’ (Exodus 33:20). It was Jacob’s astonished exclamation at Peniel: ‘I have seen God face to face, and yet my life is preserved’ (Genesis 32:30). When Manoah realized who his visitor had been, he said in terror to his wife: ‘We shall surely die, for we have seen God’ (Judges 13:23). The great day of Jewish worship was the Day of Atonement. That was the one day of the whole year when the high priest entered the Holy of Holies where the very presence of God was held to dwell. No one ever entered in except the high priest, and he only on that day. When he did, the law laid it down that he must not linger in the Holy Place for long ‘lest he put Israel in terror’. It was dangerous to enter the presence of God; and, if anyone stayed there too long, that person might be struck dead. In view of this, the idea of a covenant entered into Jewish thought. God, in his grace and in a way that was quite unmerited, approached the nation of Israel and offered them a special relationship with himself. But this unique access to God was conditional on the observance by the people of the law that he gave to them. We can see this relationship being entered into and this law being accepted in the dramatic scene in Exodus 24:3–8. So, Israel had access to God, but only if the people kept the law. To break the law was sin, and sin put up a barrier which stopped the way to God. It was to take away that barrier that the system of the Levitical priesthood and sacrifices was constructed. The law was given; the people sinned; the barrier was up; the sacrifice was made; and the sacrifice was designed to open the way to God that had been closed. But the experience of life was that this was precisely what sacrifice could not do. It was proof of the ineffectiveness of the whole system that sacrifice had to go on and on and on. It was a losing and ineffective battle to remove the barrier that sin had erected between men and women and God.

• From The Girls (2016)

  My first night back was nothing like the old nights. The old nights had been alive with a juvenile sweetness in our faces—I’d pet the dog, who’d nose around for love, give him a hearty scratch behind his ears, my coursing hand urging me into a happy rhythm. And there had been strange nights, too, when we’d all taken acid or Russell would have to get in some drunk motorcycle guy’s face, using all his flip-flop logic on him. But I had never felt scared. That night was different, by the ring of stones with the barest of fires going. No one paid any attention when the flames dissolved to nothing, everyone’s roiling energy directed at Russell, who moved like a rubber band about to snap. “This right here,” Russell said. He was pacing, dinking out a quick song. “I just made it up and it’s already a hit.” The guitar was out of tune, twanging flat notes—Russell didn’t seem to notice. His voice rushed and frantic. “And here’s another one,” he said. He fussed with the tuning pegs before letting loose a jangle of strums. I tried to catch Suzanne’s eye, but she was trained on Russell. “This is the future of music,” he said over the din. “They think they know what’s good ’cause they got songs on the radio, but that’s not shit. They don’t have true love in their hearts.” No one seemed to notice his words unraveling around the borders: they all echoed what he said, their mouths twisting in shared feeling. Russell was a genius, that’s what I’d told Tom—and I could picture how Tom’s face would have moved with pity if he were there to see Russell, and it made me hate Tom, because I could hear it, too, all the space in the songs for you to realize they were rough, not even rough, just bad: sentimental treacle, the words about love as blunt as a grade-schooler’s, a heart drawn by a chubby hand. Sunshine and flowers and smiles. But I could not fully admit it, even then. The way Suzanne’s face looked as she watched him—I wanted to be with her. I thought that loving someone acted as a kind of protective measure, like they’d understand the scale and intensity of your feelings and act accordingly. That seemed fair to me, as if fairness were a measure the universe cared anything about. — There were dreams I had sometimes, and I’d wake from the tail end assuming some image or fact to be true, carrying forward this assumption

• From The Girls (2016)

  Another attempt to head straight back in, more useless swimming. The sun kept beating down, the horizon line wavered: it was all utterly indifferent. The end—here it was. This was punishment, she was certain of it. Strange, though, how this terror didn’t last. It only passed through her, appearing and disappearing almost instantly. Something else took its place, a kind of reptile curiosity. She considered the distance, considered her heart rate, made a calm assessment of the elements in play. Hadn’t she always been good at seeing things clearly? Time to change course. She swam parallel to the shore. Her body took over, remembering the strokes. She didn’t allow for any hesitation. At some point, the water started resisting her with less force, and then she was moving along, getting closer to shore, and then close enough that her feet touched the sand. She was out of breath, yes. Her arms were sore, her heartbeat juddered out of sync. She was much farther down the beach. But fine—she was fine. The fear was already forgotten. No one on the shore noticed her, or looked twice. A couple walked past, heads bent, studying the sand for shells. A man in waders assembled a fishing pole. Laughter floated over from a group under a sun tent. Surely, if Alex had been in any real danger, someone would have reacted, one of these people would have stepped in to help. — SIMON’S CAR WAS FUN to drive. Frighteningly responsive, frighteningly fast. Alex hadn’t bothered to change out of her swimsuit, and the leather upholstery cooked her thighs. Even at a good speed, the car windows down, the air was thick and warm. What problem did Alex need to solve at this moment? Nothing. No variables to calculate, the painkiller still doing its good work. Compared to the city, this was heaven.

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

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

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

  No one ever entered in except the high priest, and he only on that day. When he did, the law laid it down that he must not linger in the Holy Place for long ‘lest he put Israel in terror’. It was dangerous to enter the presence of God; and, if anyone stayed there too long, that person might be struck dead. In view of this, the idea of a covenant entered into Jewish thought. God, in his grace and in a way that was quite unmerited, approached the nation of Israel and offered them a special relationship with himself. But this unique access to God was conditional on the observance by the people of the law that he gave to them. We can see this relationship being entered into and this law being accepted in the dramatic scene in Exodus 24:3–8. So, Israel had access to God, but only if the people kept the law. To break the law was sin, and sin put up a barrier which stopped the way to God. It was to take away that barrier that the system of the Levitical priesthood and sacrifices was constructed. The law was given; the people sinned; the barrier was up; the sacrifice was made; and the sacrifice was designed to open the way to God that had been closed. But the experience of life was that this was precisely what sacrifice could not do. It was proof of the ineffectiveness of the whole system that sacrifice had to go on and on and on. It was a losing and ineffective battle to remove the barrier that sin had erected between men and women and God. The Perfect Priest and the Perfect Sacrifice What was needed was a perfect priest and a perfect sacrifice, someone who could bring to God a sacrifice that once and for all opened the way of access to him. That, said the writer to the Hebrews, is exactly what Christ did. He is the perfect priest because he is both perfectly human and perfectly God. In his humanity, he can take us to God; and in his Godhead, he can take God to us. He has no sin. The perfect sacrifice he brings is the sacrifice of himself, a sacrifice so perfect that it never needs to be made again. To the Jews, the writer to the Hebrews said: ‘All your lives, you have been looking for the perfect priest who can bring the perfect sacrifice and give you access to God. You have him in Jesus Christ and in him alone.’ To the Greeks, the writer to the Hebrews said: ‘You are looking for the way from the shadows to reality; you will find it in Jesus Christ.’ To the Jews, the writer to the Hebrews said: ‘You are looking for that perfect sacrifice which will open the way to God which your sins have closed; you will find it in Jesus Christ.’

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

  The reference is to Numbers 13 and 14. These chapters tell how the children of Israel came to the borders of the promised land, how they sent out scouts to spy out the land, how ten of the twelve scouts came back with the verdict that it was a good land but that the difficulties of entering into it were insuperable, how Caleb and Joshua alone were for going forward in the strength of the Lord, how the people listened to the advice of the cowards, and how the result was that that generation of distrusting cowards was barred forever from entering into the rest and the peace of the promised land. They did not trust God to bring them through the difficulties that lay ahead; and, therefore, they never enjoyed the rest they could have had. (3) Now, the writer switches the meaning of the word rest. It is true that these people long ago missed the rest they might have had; but, although they missed it, the rest remained. Behind this argument lies one of the favourite conceptions of the Rabbis. On the seventh day, the day after creation had been completed, God rested from his labours. In the creation story in Genesis 1 and 2, there is a strange fact. On the first six days of creation, it is said that morning and evening came; that is to say, each day had an end and a beginning. But on the seventh day, the day of God’s rest, there is no mention of evening at all. From this, the Rabbis argued that, while the other days came to an end, the day of God’s rest had no ending; the rest of God was forever. Therefore, although long ago the Israelites may have failed to enter that rest, it still remained. (4) Once again, the writer goes back to the meaning of rest as the promised land. The day came after the forty years of wandering in the wilderness when, under Joshua, the people did enter into the promised land. Now, the promised land was the rest and therefore it could be argued that then the promise was fulfilled. (5) But no, the promise is not fulfilled, because in Psalm 95:7–11 David hears God’s voice saying to the people that if they do not harden their hearts they can enter into his rest. That is to say, hundreds of years after Joshua had led the people into the rest of the promised land, God is still appealing to them to enter into his rest. There is more to this rest than merely entry into the promised land. (6) So, the final appeal comes. God still appeals to people not to harden their hearts but to enter into his rest.

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

  The cynical voices may try to take our faith away; the materialists and their arguments may try to make us forget God; the events of life may conspire to shake our faith. The writer Robert Louis Stevenson said that he so believed in the ultimate decency of things that if he woke up in hell he would still believe in it; and we must have a grip on the faith that nothing can loosen. (3) Let us put our minds to the task of taking thought for others. That is to say, let us remember that we are Christians not only for our own sake but also for the sake of others. No one ever achieved personal salvation by devoting all time and energy to that purpose; but many have saved their souls by being so concerned for others that they forgot that they had their own souls to save. It is easy to drift into a kind of selfish Christianity; but a selfish Christianity is a contradiction in terms. But the writer to the Hebrews goes on to outline our duty to others in the most practical way. He sees that duty extend in three directions. (1) We must encourage one another to noble living. We can do that best by setting a good example. We can do it by reminding others of their traditions, their privileges and their responsibilities when they are likely to forget them. It has been said that a saint is someone in whom Christ stands revealed; we can seek always to encourage others to goodness by showing them Christ. We may remember how the dying soldier looked up at Florence Nightingale as she helped the wounded of the Crimean War, and murmured: ‘You’re Christ to me.’ (2) We must worship together. There were some among those to whom the writer of the Hebrews was writing who had abandoned the habit of meeting together. It is still possible for some to think that they are Christians and yet abandon the habit of worshipping with God’s people in God’s house on God’s day. They may try to be what James Moffatt called ‘a pious particle’, a Christian in isolation. Moffatt distinguishes three reasons which keep people from worshipping with their fellow Christians. (a) They may not go to church because of fear. They may be ashamed to be seen going to church. They may live or work among people who laugh at churchgoers. They may have friends who have no time for that kind of thing and may fear their criticism and contempt. They may, therefore, try to be secret disciples; but it has been well said that this is impossible because either ‘the discipleship kills the secrecy or the secrecy kills the discipleship’. It would be a good thing if we remembered that, apart from anything else, to go to church is to demonstrate where our loyalty lies.

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

  you should scream as loud as possible; maybe the whipper will become embarrassed or else some sympathetic soul might come to your rescue. Our savior came for neither of these reasons, but because Bailey yelled so loud and disturbed what was left of the service, the minister's wife came out and asked Uncle Willie to quiet us down. Laughter so easily turns to hysteria for imaginative children. I felt for weeks after that I had been very, very sick, and until I completely recovered my strength I stood on laughter's cliff and any funny thing could hurl me off to my death far below. Each time Bailey said “Preach it” to me, I hit him as hard as I could and cried.

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

  He placed his hands on its head and, standing there in the full sight of the people, confessed his own sin and the sin of his family: Ah, Lord God, I have committed iniquity; I have transgressed; I have sinned – I and my house. O Lord, I entreat thee, cover over [atone for] the iniquities, the transgressions and the sins which I have committed, transgressed and sinned before you, I and my house, even as it is written in the law of Moses, thy servant, ‘For in that day, he will cover over [atone] for you to make you clean. From all your transgressions before the Lord, you shall be cleansed.’ For the time being, the bullock was left in front of the altar. And then followed one of the unique ceremonies of the Day of Atonement. Two goats were standing by, and beside the goats was an urn with two lots in it. One lot was marked For Yahweh ; the other was marked For Azazel , which is the phrase the Authorized Version translates as the Scapegoat . The lots were drawn and laid one on the head of each goat. A tongue-shaped piece of scarlet was tied to the horn of the scapegoat. And for the moment the goats were left. Then the high priest turned to the bullock which was beside the altar and killed it. Its throat was slit and the blood caught in a basin by a priest. The basin was kept in motion so that the blood would not coagulate, for soon it was to be used. Then came the first of the great moments. The high priest took coals from the altar and put them in a censer; he took incense and put it in a special dish; and then he walked into the Holy of Holies to burn incense in the very presence of God. It was laid down that he must not stay too long ‘lest he put Israel in terror’. The people literally watched with bated breath; and, when he came out from the presence of God still alive, there went up a sigh of relief like a gust of wind. When the high priest came out from the Holy of Holies, he took the basin of the bullock’s blood, went back into the Holy of Holies and sprinkled it seven times up and seven times down. He came out, killed the goat that was marked For Yahweh , with its blood re-entered the Holy of Holies and sprinkled again. Then he came out and mixed together the blood of the bullock and the goat and seven times sprinkled the horns of the altar of the incense and the altar itself.