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

  The Greek for repentance is metanoia, which literally means a change of mind. It is better to say that it was now impossible for Esau to change his mind. It is not that he was barred from the forgiveness of God. It is just the grim fact that there are certain choices which cannot be unmade and certain consequences which not even God can take away. Once a choice has been made, it stands. God can and will forgive, but he cannot turn back the clock. We do well to remember that there is a certain finality in life. If, like Esau, we take the way of this world and make physical things our ultimate good, if we choose the pleasures of the present in preference to the joys of eternity, God can and will still forgive; but something has happened that can never be undone. There are certain things in which we cannot change our minds but must live our lives by the choice that we have made. THE TERROR OF THE OLD AND THE GLORY OF THE NEW Hebrews 12:18–24 It is not to something that can be touched that you have come, to a flaming fire, to mist and gloom and storm blast, and to the blare of a trumpet, and to a voice which spoke such words that those who heard it begged that not another word should be further spoken unto them, for they could not bear the command: ‘If even a beast touches the mountain, it shall be stoned.’ So terrifying was the apparition that Moses said: ‘I am in utter fear and trembling.’ But you have come to Mount Sion and to the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, to ten thousands of angels gathered in glad assembly, to the assembly of the honoured ones whose names are in the registers of heaven, to that God who is judge of all, to the spirits of just men who have come to that goal for which they were created, and to Jesus, the mediator of the new covenant, to the sprinkled blood which has a message greater than the blood of Abel. THIS passage is a contrast between the old and the new. It is a contrast between the giving of the law on Mount Sinai and the new covenant of which Jesus is the mediator. Down to verse 21, it has echo after echo of the story of the giving of the law on Mount Sinai. Deuteronomy 4:11 describes that first law-giving: ‘you approached and stood at the foot of the mountain while the mountain was blazing up to the very heavens, shrouded in dark clouds.

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

  It may come from conscience; it may come from some direct word of God to our souls; it may come from the advice or the rebuke of some good and godly person; it may leap out at us from the pages of the Bible or challenge us in some sermon. Wherever it comes from, we neglect it at our peril. (2) Noah was not deterred by the mockery of others . When the sun was shining, his conduct must have looked like that of a fool. Who in their right mind would build a great hulk of a ship on dry land far from the sea? Those who take God’s word may often have to adopt a course of action which looks like madness. We have only to think of the early days of the Church. One man meets a friend. He says to him: ‘I have decided to become a Christian.’ The other man replies: ‘Do you know what happens to Christians? They are outlaws. They are imprisoned, thrown to the lions, crucified, burned.’ The first man replies: ‘I know.’ And the other says: ‘You must be mad.’ It is one of the hardest challenges of Christianity that we have to be prepared sometimes to be a fool for Jesus’ sake. We should never forget that there was a day when Jesus’ friends came and tried to get him to go home because they thought that he was mad. The wisdom of God is so often foolishness to the world. (3) Noah’s faith was a judgment on others . That is why, at least in one sense, it is dangerous to be a Christian. It is not that Christians are self-righteous; it is not that they are censorious; it is not that they go about finding fault with other people; it is not that they say: ‘I told you so.’ It often happens that, simply by being themselves, Christians pass judgment on other people. Alcibiades, that brilliant but wild young man of Athens, used to say to Socrates: ‘Socrates, I hate you, for every time I meet you, you show me what I am.’ One of the finest men who ever lived in Athens was Aristides, who was called ‘the just’. But they voted to banish him. One man, asked why he had voted in that way, answered: ‘Because I am tired of hearing Aristides called “the just”.’ There is danger in goodness, for in its light evil stands condemned. (4) Noah was righteous through faith . It so happens that he is the first man in the Bible to be called dikaios , righteous (Genesis 6:9).

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

  He claimed to be a prophet revealing things which, to use his own words, "are beyond the scope of the knowledge which is natural to any creature." This element would have been a sign of weakness, if it had not been associated with a great personality, bent on noble ends. The severity of his warnings was often so fearful that the preacher himself shrank back from delivering them. On one occasion, he spent the entire night in vigils and prayer that he might be released from the duty of making known a message, but in vain. The sermon, he then went forth to preach, he called a terrific sermon. Savonarola’s confidence in his divine appointment to be the herald of special communications from above found expression not only from the pulpit but was set forth more calmly in two works, the Manual of Revelations, 1495, and a Dialogue concerning Truth and Prophecy, 1497. The latter tract with a number of Savonarola’s sermons were placed on the Index. In the former, the author declared that for a long time he had by divine inspiration foretold future things but, bearing in mind the Saviour’s words, "Give not that which is holy unto the dogs," he had practised reserve in such utterances. He expressed his conception of the office committed to him, when he said, "The Lord has put me here and has said to me, ’I have placed thee as a watchman in the centre of Italy ... that thou mayest hear my words and announce them,’ " Ezek. 3:17. If we are inclined to regard Savonarola as having made a mistake

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

  Then he removed his gorgeous robes, cleansed himself again in water, and dressed himself in the simple purity of white linen. There was brought to him a bullock bought with his own resources. 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.

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

  To die was to go out to nothingness and be lost in an eternal sleep. (4) Some have seen in death the supreme terror and the unmitigated evil . In Measure for Measure , Shakespeare makes Claudio say: Death is a fearful thing. Ay, but to die, and go we know not where; To lie in cold obstruction, and to rot; This sensible warm motion to become A kneaded clod; and the delighted spirit To bathe in fiery floods, or to reside In thrilling region of thick-ribbed ice; To be imprison’d in the viewless winds, And blown with restless violence round about The pendent world … The weariest and most loathed worldly life That age, ache, penury and imprisonment Can lay on nature, is a paradise To what we fear of death. To Claudio, the worst and bitterest experiences of life were to be preferred to death. W. S. Gilbert wrote in The Yeomen of the Guard : Is life a boon? If so, it must befall That Death, whene’er he call, Must call too soon. Robert Burns wrote of the early death of Highland Mary: But oh! fell death’s untimely frost That nipt my flower sae early! There are those who have seen only the grim terrorizer and despoiler in death. (5) Many have seen in death release . Weary of the world and of life, they have seen it as escape. In ‘The Eve of Saint Agnes’, Keats said that he had been ‘half in love with easeful death’. Shakespeare in one of his sonnets cried: Tir’d with all these, for restful death I cry. The seventeenth-century poet and dramatist Nicholas Rowe wrote: ‘Death is the privilege of human nature.’ The Stoics held that the gods had given people the gift of life and the still greater gift of taking their own lives away. Swinburne, best of all, caught this mood of world-weariness in ‘The Garden of Proserpine’: From too much love of living, From hope and fear set free, We thank with brief thanksgiving Whatever gods may be That no life lives forever, That dead men rise up never; That even the weariest river Winds somewhere safe to sea. Then star nor sun shall waken, Nor any change of light; Nor sound of waters shaken, Nor any sound or sight; Nor wintry leaves nor vernal Nor days nor things diurnal; Only the sleep eternal n an eternal night. There are those for whom death is good because it is the end of life. (6) Some have seen in death transition – not an end, but a stage on the way; not a door closing, but a door opening. In ‘Resignation’, Longfellow wrote: There is no Death! What seems so is transition; This life of mortal breath Is but a suburb of the life elysian, Whose portal we call death. The nineteenth-century novelist and poet George Meredith wrote: Death met I too, And saw the dawn glow through.

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

  Anything wrong?” That was from an outline blacker than the night. “No, ma'am. Not a thing Bless the Lord.” By the time she finished speaking we had left the worried neighbors far behind. Mr. Willie Williams' Do Drop Inn was bright with furry red lights in the distance and the pond's fishy smell enveloped us. Momma's hand tightened and let go, and I saw the small figure plodding along, tired and old-mannish. Hands in his pockets and head bent, he walked like a man trudging up the hill behind a coffin. “Bailey.” It jumped out as Momma said, “Ju,” and I started to run, but her hand caught mine again and became a vise. I pulled, but she yanked me back to her side. “We'll walk, just like we been walking, young lady.” There was no chance to warn Bailey that he was dangerously late, that everybody had been worried and that he should create a good lie or, better, a great one. Momma said, “Bailey, Junior,” and he looked up without surprise. “You know it's night and you just now getting home?” “Yes, ma'am.” He was empty. Where was his alibi? “What you been doing?” “Nothing.” “That's all you got to say?” “Yes, ma'am.” “All right, young man. We'll see when you get home.” She had turned me loose, so I made a grab for Bailey's hand, but he snatched it away. I said, “Hey, Bail,” hoping to remind him that I was his sister and his only friend, but he grumbled something like “Leave me alone.” Momma didn't turn on the flashlight on the way back, nor did she answer the questioning Good evenings that floated around us as we passed the darkened houses. I was confused and frightened. He was going to get a whipping and maybe he had done something terrible. If he couldn't talk to me it must have been serious. But there was no air of spent revelry about him. He just seemed sad. I didn't know what to think . Uncle Willie said, “Getting too big for your britches, huh? You can't come home. You want to worry your grandmother to death?” Bailey was so far away he was beyond fear. Uncle Willie had a leather belt in his good hand but Bailey didn't notice or didn't care. “I'm going to whip you this time.” Our uncle had only whipped us once before and then only with a peach-tree switch, so maybe now he was going to kill my brother. I screamed and grabbed for the belt, but Momma caught me. “Now, don't get uppity, miss, 'less you want some of the same thing. He got a lesson coming to him. You come on and get your bath.” From the kitchen I heard the belt fall down, dry and raspy on naked skin. Uncle Willie was gasping for breath, but Bailey made no sound.

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

  Since the whites had refrigerators, their butchers bought the meat from commercial slaughterhouses in Texarkana and sold it to the wealthy even in the peak of summer. Crossing the Black area of Stamps which in childhood's narrow measure seemed a whole world, we were obliged by custom to stop and speak to every person we met, and Bailey felt constrained to spend a few minutes playing with each friend. There was a joy in going to town with money in our pockets (Bailey's pockets were as good as my own) and time on our hands. But the pleasure fled when we reached the white part of town. After we left Mr. Willie Williams' Do Drop Inn, the last stop before whitefolksville, we had to cross the pond and adventure the railroad tracks. We were explorers walking without weapons into maneating animals' territory. In Stamps the segregation was so complete that most Black children didn't really absolutely know what whites looked like. Other than that they were different, to be dreaded, and in that dread was included the hostility of the powerless against the powerful, the poor against the rich, the worker against the worked for and the ragged against the well dressed. I remember never believing that whites were really real. Many women who worked in their kitchens traded at our Store, and when they carried their finished laundry back to town they often set the big baskets down on our front porch to pull a singular piece from the starched collection and show either how graceful was their ironing hand or how rich and opulent was the property of their employers. I looked at the items that weren't on display. I knew, for instance, that white men wore shorts, as Uncle Willie did, and that they had an opening for taking out their “things” and peeing, and that white women's breasts weren't built into their dresses, as some people said, because I saw their brassieres in the baskets. But I couldn't force myself to think of them as people. People were Mrs. LaGrone, Mrs. Hendricks, Momma, Reverend Sneed, Lillie B, and Louise and Rex. Whitefolks couldn't be people because their feet were too small, their skin too white and see-throughy, and they didn't walk on the balls of their feet the way people did—they walked on their heels like horses. People were those who lived on my side of town. I didn't like them all, or, in fact, any of them very much, but they were people. These others, the strange pale creatures that lived in their alien unlife, weren't considered folks. They were whitefolks.

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

  One summer morning, after I had swept the dirt yard of leaves, spearmint-gum wrappers and Vienna-sausage labels, I raked the yellow-red dirt, and made half-moons carefully so that the design stood out clearly and masklike. I put the rake behind the Store and came through the back of the house to find Grandmother on the front porch in her big, wide white apron. The apron was so stiff by virtue of the starch that it could have stood alone. Momma was admiring the yard, so I joined her. It truly looked like a flat redhead that had been raked with a big-toothed comb. Momma didn't say anything but I knew she liked it. She looked over toward the school principal's house and to the right at Mr. McElroy's. She was hoping one of those community pillars would see the design before the day's business wiped it out. Then she looked upward to the school. My head had swung with hers, so at just about the same time we saw a troop of the powhitetrash kids marching over the hill and down by the side of the school. I looked to Momma for direction. She did an excellent job of sagging from her waist down, but from the waist up she seemed to be pulling for the top of the oak tree across the road. Then she began to moan a hymn. Maybe not to moan, but the tune was so slow and the meter so strange that she could have been moaning. She didn't look at me again. When the children reached halfway down the hill, halfway to the Store, she said without turning, “Sister, go on inside.” I wanted to beg her, “Momma, don't wait for them. Come on inside with me. If they come in the Store, you go to the bedroom and let me wait on them. They only frighten me if you're around. Alone I know how to handle them.” But of course I couldn't say anything, so I went in and stood behind the screen door. Before the girls got to the porch I heard their laughter crackling and popping like pine logs in a cooking stove. I suppose my lifelong paranoia was born in those cold, molasses-slow minutes. They came finally to stand on the ground in front of Momma. At first they pretended seriousness. Then one of them wrapped her right arm in the crook of her left, pushed out her mouth and started to hum. I realized that she was aping my grandmother. Another said, “Naw, Helen, you ain't standing like her. This here's it.” Then she lifted her chest, folded her arms and mocked that strange carriage that was Annie Henderson. Another laughed, “Naw, you can't do it. Your mouth ain't pooched out enough. It's like this.”

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

  The events of the day swarmed over me and made my breathing difficult. After all the decisive victories of the day my life was to end in sticky death. If Dad stayed a very long time in the house, I was too afraid to go to the door and ask for him, and besides, my feminine training would not allow me to walk two steps with blood on my dress. As I had always feared, no, known, the trials had been for nothing. (The dread of futility has been my lifelong plague.) Excitement, apprehension, release and anger had drained me of mobility. I waited for Fate, the string puller, to dictate my movements. My father came down the steps in a few minutes and angrily slammed into the car. He sat in a corner of blood and I gave no warning. He must have been pondering what to do with me when he felt the damp on his trousers. “What the hell is this?” He hunched himself up on a hip and brushed the pants. His hand showed red in the porch's cast-off light. “What is this, Marguerite?” I said with a coldness that would have done him proud, “I've been cut.” “What do you mean, cut?” It only lasted a precious minute, but I managed once to see my father perplexed. “Cut.” It was so delicious. I didn't mind draining away into the plaid seat cushions. “When? By whom?” Daddy, even in a critical moment, wouldn't say “By who?” “Dolores cut me.” The economy of words showed my contempt for them all. “How badly?” I would have reminded him that I was no doctor and therefore was ill equipped to do a thorough examination, but impudence would have diminished my lead. “I don't know.” He put the car in gear, smoothly, and I enviously realized that although I had driven his car I didn't know how to drive. I thought we were en route to an emergency hospital, and so with serenity I made plans for my death and will. As I faded into time's dateless night, I would say to the doctor, “The moving finger writes and having writ, moves on …” and my soul would escape gracefully. Bailey was to have my books, my Lester Young records and my love from the next world. I had groggily surrendered myself to oblivion when the car stopped. Dad said, “O.K., kid, errer let's go.”

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

  I wanted to be off but my shoes had glued themselves to the floor and I had to hold on to the sides of the coffin to remain standing. The unexpected halt in the moving line caused the children to press upon each other, and whispers of no small intent reached my ears. “Move along, Sister, move along.” It was Momma. Her voice tugged at my will and someone pushed from the rear, so I was freed. Instantly I surrendered myself to the grimness of death. The change it had been able to effect in Mrs. Taylor showed that its strength could not be resisted. Her high-pitched voice, which parted the air in the Store, was forever stilled, and the plump brown face had been deflated and patted flat like a cow's ordurous dropping. The coffin was carried on a horse-drawn wagon to the cemetery, and all the way I communed with death's angels, questioning their choice of time, place and person. For the first time the burial ceremony had meaning for me. “Ashes to ashes and dust to dust.” It was certain that Mrs. Taylor was returning to the earth from whence she came. In face, upon considering, I concluded that she had looked like a mud baby, lying on the white satin of her velvet coffin. A mud baby, molded into form by creative children on a rainy day, soon to run back into the loose earth. The memory of the grim ceremony had been so real to me that I was surprised to look up and see Momma and Uncle Willie eating by the stove. They were neither anxious nor hesitant, as if they knew a man has to say what he has to say. But I didn't want to hear any of it, and the wind, allying itself with me, threatened the chinaberry tree outside the back door. “Last night, after I said my prayers, I lay down on the bed. Well, you know it's the same bed she died on.” Oh, if he'd shut up. Momma said, “Sister, sit down and eat your soup. Cold night like this you need something hot in your stomach. Go on, Brother Taylor. Please.” I sat down as near Bailey as possible. “Well, something told me to open my eyes.” “What kind of something?” Momma asked, not laying down her spoon. “Yes, sir,” Uncle Willie explained, “there can be a good something and there can be a bad something.” “Well, I wasn't sure, so I figured better open 'em, 'cause it could have been, well, either one. I did, and the first thing, I saw a little baby angel. It was just as fat as a butterball, and laughing, eyes blue, blue, blue.” Uncle Willie asked, “A baby angel?” “Yes, sir, and it was laughing right in my face. Then I heard this long moan, ‘Agh-h-h-.’ Well, as you say, Sister Henderson, we been together over forty years. I know Florida's voice. I wasn't scared right then.

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

  (6) Finally, the writer to the Hebrews says that it was Jesus who initiated this new covenant and made this new relationship with God possible. It was he, the perfect priest and the perfect sacrifice, who made the unapproachable approachable; and he did this at the cost of his blood. So, the section ends with a curious contrast between the blood of Abel and the blood of Jesus. When Abel was slain, his blood upon the ground called for vengeance (Genesis 4:10); but, when Jesus was slain, his blood opened up the way of reconciliation. His sacrifice made it possible for us to be friends with God. Once, human beings were under the terror of the law; the relationship between them and God was one of unbridgeable distance and shuddering fear. But after Jesus came and lived and died, the God who was distant and unapproachable was brought near, and the way opened to his presence. THE GREATER OBLIGATIONHebrews 12:25–9 See that you do not refuse to listen to his voice; for if they who refused to listen to the one who brought the oracles of God upon earth did not escape, how much more shall we not escape if we turn away from him who speaks from heaven? Then his voice shook the earth but now the voice of the promise is: ‘Still once more I will shake not only the earth but heaven also.’ That phrase ‘still once more’ signifies the removal of the things that are shaken, because they are merely created things, in order that the things which cannot be shaken may remain. Therefore let us give thanks because we are receiving a kingdom that cannot be shaken, a kingdom in which we must worship God acceptably, with reverence and with fear, for our God, too, is a consuming fire. HERE, the writer begins with a contrast which is also a warning. Moses brought to earth the oracles of God. The word that he uses (chrēmatizein) implies that Moses was only the transmitter of these oracles, the mouthpiece through which God spoke; and yet anyone who broke these commandments did not escape punishment. On the other hand, there is Jesus. The word used of him (lalein) implies the direct speech of God. He was not merely the transmitter of God’s voice, he was God’s voice. If that is so, how much more will someone who refuses to obey him find punishment? If someone deserves to be condemned for neglecting the imperfect message of the law, how much more does that person deserve to be condemned for neglecting the perfect message of the gospel? Because the gospel is the full revelation of God, there is laid on those who hear it a double and a terrible responsibility; and their condemnation must be all the more if they neglect it.

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

  The choice comes to each one of us either to listen to or to disregard the message of God. We may live as if that message is of no importance or as if it is the most important thing in the world. To put it another way: Noah was the man who heeded the warning of God; and, because he heeded, he was saved from disaster. God’s warning comes to us in many ways. It may come from conscience; it may come from some direct word of God to our souls; it may come from the advice or the rebuke of some good and godly person; it may leap out at us from the pages of the Bible or challenge us in some sermon. Wherever it comes from, we neglect it at our peril. (2) Noah was not deterred by the mockery of others. When the sun was shining, his conduct must have looked like that of a fool. Who in their right mind would build a great hulk of a ship on dry land far from the sea? Those who take God’s word may often have to adopt a course of action which looks like madness. We have only to think of the early days of the Church. One man meets a friend. He says to him: ‘I have decided to become a Christian.’ The other man replies: ‘Do you know what happens to Christians? They are outlaws. They are imprisoned, thrown to the lions, crucified, burned.’ The first man replies: ‘I know.’ And the other says: ‘You must be mad.’ It is one of the hardest challenges of Christianity that we have to be prepared sometimes to be a fool for Jesus’ sake. We should never forget that there was a day when Jesus’ friends came and tried to get him to go home because they thought that he was mad. The wisdom of God is so often foolishness to the world. (3) Noah’s faith was a judgment on others. That is why, at least in one sense, it is dangerous to be a Christian. It is not that Christians are self-righteous; it is not that they are censorious; it is not that they go about finding fault with other people; it is not that they say: ‘I told you so.’ It often happens that, simply by being themselves, Christians pass judgment on other people. Alcibiades, that brilliant but wild young man of Athens, used to say to Socrates: ‘Socrates, I hate you, for every time I meet you, you show me what I am.’ One of the finest men who ever lived in Athens was Aristides, who was called ‘the just’. But they voted to banish him. One man, asked why he had voted in that way, answered: ‘Because I am tired of hearing Aristides called “the just”.’ There is danger in goodness, for in its light evil stands condemned.

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

  My eyes followed the cane up to his good brown hand on the curve and up the long, long white sleeve to his face. The one side pulled down as it usually did when he cried (it also pulled down when he laughed). He stuttered, “I'm gonna whip you this time myself.” I have no memory of how we got out of church and into the parsonage next door, but in that overstuffed parlor, Bailey and I received the whipping of our lives. Uncle Willie ordered us between licks to stop crying. I tried to, but Bailey refused to cooperate. Later he explained that when a person is beating you 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 I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings (1969)

  The altar wobbled and threatened to overturn and the collection table sat at a rakish angle. One leg had yielded itself to the loose dirt. Would God the Father allow His only Son to mix with this crowd of cotton pickers and maids, washer women and handymen? I knew He sent His spirit on Sundays to the church, but after all that was a church and the people had had all day Saturday to shuffle off the cloak of work and the skin of despair. Everyone attended the revival meetings. Members of the hoity-toity Mount Zion Baptist Church mingled with the intellectual members of the African Methodist Episcopal and African Methodist Episcopal Zion, and the plain working people of the Christian Methodist Episcopal. These gatherings provided the one time in the year when all of those good village people associated with the followers of the Church of God in Christ. The latter were looked upon with some suspicion because they were so loud and raucous in their services. Their explanation that “the Good Book say, ‘Make a joyful noise unto the Lord, and be exceedingly glad’” did not in the least minimize the condescension of their fellow Christians. Their church was far from the others, but they could be heard on Sunday, a half mile away, singing and dancing until they sometimes fell down in a dead faint. Members of the other churches wondered if the Holy Rollers were going to heaven after all their shouting. The suggestion was that they were having their heaven right here on earth. This was their annual revival. Mrs. Duncan, a little woman with a bird face, started the service. “I know I'm a witness for my Lord … I know I'm a witness for my Lord, I know I'm a witness …” Her voice, a skinny finger, stabbed high up in the air and the church responded. From somewhere down front came the jangling sound of a tambourine. Two beats on “know,” two beats on “I'm a” and two beats on the end of “witness.” Other voices joined the near shriek of Mrs. Duncan. They crowded around and tenderized the tone. Handclaps snapped in the roof and solidified the beat. When the song reached its peak in sound and passion, a tall, thin man who had been kneeling behind the altar all the while stood up and sang with the audience for a few bars. He stretched out his long arms and grasped the platform. It took some time for the singers to come off their level of exaltation, but the minister stood resolute until the song unwound like a child's playtoy and lay quieted in the aisles. “Amen.” He looked at the audience. “Yes, sir, amen.” Nearly everyone seconded him. “I say, Let the church say ‘Amen.’” Everyone said, “Amen.” “Thank the Lord. Thank the Lord.” “That's right, thank the Lord. Yes, Lord.

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

  I didn't want to hear it if she did, but I wasn't eager to leave the lighted room where my family sat around the friendly fire. “Well, she said ‘Aaah’ a few more times and then that angel started to walk off the ceiling. I tell you I was purt' near scared stiff.” I had reached the no man's ocean of darkness. No great decision was called for. I knew it would be tortuous to go through the thick blackness of Uncle Willie's bedroom, but it would be easier than staying around to hear the ghoulish story. Also, I couldn't afford to aggravate Momma. When she was displeased she made me sleep on the edge of the bed and that night I knew I needed to be close to her. One foot into the darkness and the sense of detachment from reality nearly made me panic. The idea came to me that I might never get out into the light again. Quickly I found the door leading back to the familiar, but as I opened it the awful story reached out and tried to grab my ears. I closed the door. Naturally, I believed in hants and ghosts and “thangs.” Having been raised by a super-religious Southern Negro grandmother, it would have been abnormal had I not been superstitious. The trip to the kitchen and back could not have taken more than two minutes, yet in that time I tramped through swampy cemeteries, climbed over dusty gravestones and eluded litters of night-black cats. Back in the family circle, I remarked to myself how like a cyclopean eye was the belly of the red-hot stove. “It reminded me of the time when my daddy died. You know we're very close.” Mr. Taylor had hypnotized himself into the eerie world of horrors. I broke into his reminiscences. “Momma, here's the fork.” Bailey had lain down on his side behind the stove and his eyes were shining. He was more fascinated with Mr. Taylor's morbid interest in his story than with the tale itself. Momma put her hand on my arm and said, “You shaking, Sister. What's the matter?” My skin still rippled from the experience of fear. Uncle Willie laughed and said, “Maybe she was scared to go in the kitchen.” His high little laugh didn't fool me. Everyone was uneasy at being beckoned into the unknown. “No sir, I ain't never seen nothing so clear as that little angel baby.” His jaws were scissoring mechanically on the already mushy sweet potatoes. “Just laughing, like a house on fire. What you reckon it mean, Sister Henderson?” Momma had reared back in her rocking chair, a half smile on her face, “If you sure you wasn't dreaming, Brother Taylor …” “I was as wide awake as I am”—he was becoming angry again—“as I am right now.” “Well, then, maybe it means—” “I ought to know when I'm asleep and when I'm awake.”

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

  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. E VERY 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. The Anglican pacifist priest Dick Sheppard spent much of his life preaching in the open air to people who were either hostile or indifferent to the Church. From their questions and their arguments and their criticisms, he said that he had learned that ‘the greatest handicap the Church has is the unsatisfactory lives of professing Christians’. Christians who lead such unsatisfactory lives undermine the very foundations of the Church. Second, the writer to the Hebrews was sure that sin had become doubly serious because of the new knowledge of God and of God’s will which Jesus had brought. One of the early theologians wrote a kind of catechism. He ended by asking what happens if people disregard the offer of Jesus Christ. His answer was that condemnation must necessarily follow, ‘and so much the more because you have read this book ’. The greater the knowledge, the greater the sin.

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

  Once, Bailey was reading The Katzenjammer Kids to me, and then without a pause for sleeping, Mother was looking closely at my face, and soup trickled down my chin and some got into my mouth and I choked. Then there was a doctor who took my temperature and held my wrist. “Bailey!” I supposed I had screamed, for he materialized suddenly, and I asked him to help me and we'd run away to California or France or Chicago. I knew that I was dying and, in fact, I longed for death, but I didn't want to die anywhere near Mr. Freeman. I knew that even now he wouldn't have allowed death to have me unless he wished it to. Mother said I should be bathed and the linens had to be changed since I had sweat so much. But when they tried to move me I fought, and even Bailey couldn't hold me. Then she picked me up in her arms and the terror abated for a while. Bailey began to change the bed. As he pulled off the soiled sheets he dislodged the panties I had put under the mattress. They fell at Mother's feet.

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

  Freeman was there and he was washing me. His hands shook, but he held me upright in the tub and washed my legs. “I didn't mean to hurt you, Ritie. I didn't mean it. But don't you tell … Remember, don't you tell a soul.” I felt cool and very clean and just a little tired. “No, sir, Mr. Freeman, I won't tell.” I was somewhere above everything “It's just that I'm so tired I'll just go and lay down a while, please,” I whispered to him. I thought if I spoke out loud, he might become frightened and hurt me again. He dried me and handed me my bloomers. “Put these on and go to the library. Your momma ought to be coming home soon. You just act natural.” Walking down the street, I felt the wet on my pants, and my hips seemed to be coming out of their sockets. I couldn't sit long on the hard seats in the library (they had been constructed for children), so I walked by the empty lot where Bailey was playing ball, but he wasn't there. I stood for a while and watched the big boys tear around the dusty diamond and then headed home. After two blocks, I knew I'd never make it. Not unless I counted every step and stepped on every crack. I had started to burn between my legs more than the time I'd wasted Sloan's Liniment on myself. My legs throbbed, or rather the insides of my thighs throbbed, with the same force that Mr. Freeman's heart had beaten. Thrum … step … thrum … step … STEP ON THE CRACK … thrum … step. I went up the stairs one at a, one at a, one at a time. No one was in the living room, so I went straight to bed, after hiding my red-and-yellow-stained drawers under the mattress. When Mother came in she said, “Well, young lady, I believe this is the first time I've seen you go to bed without being told. You must be sick.” I wasn't sick, but the pit of my stomach was on fire—how could I tell her that? Bailey came in later and asked me what the matter was. There was nothing to tell him. When Mother called us to eat and I said I wasn't hungry, she laid her cool hand on my forehead and cheeks. “Maybe it's the measles. They say they're going around the neighborhood.” After she took my temperature she said, “You have a little fever. You've probably just caught them.” Mr. Freeman took up the whole doorway “Then Bailey ought not to be in there with her. Unless you want a house full of sick children.” She answered over her shoulder, “He may as well have them now as later. Get them over with.” She brushed by Mr. Freeman as if he were made of cotton. “Come on, Junior.

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

  I was able to answer the first and last concern promptly. Buoyed by the adrenaline that had flooded my brain as we careened down the mountainside, I had never felt better, and my father's snores cut through the cacophony of protestations outside my window. I got out of the car, intending to ask for the policías , but the guard beat me to the punch. He said a few words, which were strung together like beads, but one of them was policías . As the people in the other car fumbled out, I tried to recover my control and said loudly and too graciously, “Gracias, señor.” The family, some eight or more people of every age and size, walked around me, talking heatedly and sizing me up as if I might have been a statue in a city park and they were a flock of pigeons. One said “Joven,” meaning I was young. I tried to see which one was so intelligent. I would direct my conversation to him or her, but they shifted positions so quickly it was impossible to make the person out. Then another suggested “Borracho.” Well, certainly, I must have smelled like a tequila farm, since Dad had been breathing out the liquor in noisy respirations and I had kept the windows closed against the cold night air. It wasn't likely that I would explain that to these strangers even if I could. Which I couldn't. Someone got the idea to look into the car, and a scream brought us all up short. People—they seemed to be in the hundreds—crowded to the windows and more screams erupted. I thought for a minute that something awful might have happened. Maybe at the time of the crash … I, too, pushed to the window to see, but then I remembered the rhythmic snores, and coolly walked away. The guard must have thought he had a major crime on his hands. He made moves and sounds like “Watch her” or “Don't let her out of your sight.” The family came back, this time not as close but more menacing, and when I was able to sort out one coherent question, “Quién es?” I answered dryly and with all the detachment I could summon, “Mi padre.” Being a people of close family ties and weekly fiestas they suddenly understood the situation. I was a poor little girl thing who was caring for my drunken father, who had stayed too long at the fair. Pobrecita . The guard, the father and one or two small children began the herculean job of waking Dad. I watched coolly as the remaining people paraded, making figure eights around me and their badly bruised automobile. The two men shook and tugged and pulled while the children jumped up and down on my father's chest. I credit the children's action for the success of the effort. Bailey Johnson, Sr., woke up in Spanish. “Qué tiene? Qué pasa?

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

  In that day, everything that can be shaken will be destroyed; the only things to remain will be the things which can never be shaken; and chief among them is our relationship with God. All things may pass away; the world as we know it may be uprooted; life as we experience it may come to an end; but one thing stands eternally sure – the relationship of every Christian to God. If that is so, there is a great obligation laid upon us. We must worship God with reverence and serve him with fear; for nothing must be allowed to disturb that relationship which will be our salvation when the world passes away. So, the writer to the Hebrews finishes with one of those threatening quotations which he so often flings like a thunderbolt at his readers. It is a quotation from Deuteronomy 4:24. Moses is telling the people that they must never break their agreement with God and lapse into idolatry, for he is a jealous God. They must worship only him, or they will find that he is a consuming fire. It is as if the writer to the Hebrews was saying: ‘There is a choice before you. Remain steadfastly true to God, and in the day when the universe is shaken into destruction your relationship with him will stand safe and secure. Be false to him, and the God who might have been your salvation will be to you a consuming fire of destruction.’ It is a grim thought; but in it there is the eternal truth that, if we are true to God, we gain everything; and, if we are untrue to God, we lose everything. In this present time and in eternity, nothing really matters except loyalty to God. THE LEADERS AND THE LEADER Hebrews 13:7–8 Remember your leaders, the men who spoke the word of God to you. Look back on how they made their exit from this life, and imitate their faith. Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever. I MPLICIT in this passage is a description of the real leader. (1) The real leaders of the Church preach Christ and thereby bring others to him. The British Methodist pastor and broadcaster Leslie Weatherhead tells of a public schoolboy who decided to enter the ministry. He was asked when he had come to that decision, and said it was after hearing a certain sermon in his school chapel. He was asked the name of the preacher, and his answer was that he had no memory of the preacher’s name. All he knew was that he had shown him Jesus. The duty of real preachers is to obliterate self and show to those listening nothing but Christ. (2) The real leaders of the Church live in the faith and thereby bring Christ to others.