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 Selected Works of Audre Lorde

  But four years before, I had had to find out if I was going to become pregnant, because a boy from school much bigger than me had invited me up to the roof on my way home from the library and then threatened to break my glasses if I didn’t let him stick his thing between my legs. And at that time I knew only that being pregnant had something to do with sex, and sex had something to do with that thin pencil-like thing and was in general nasty and not to be talked about by nice people, and I was afraid my mother might find out and what would she do to me then? I was not supposed to be looking at the mailboxes in the hallway of that house anyway, even though Doris was a girl in my class at St. Mark’s who lived in that house and I was always so lonely in the summer, particularly that summer when I was ten. So after I got home I washed myself up and lied about why I was late getting home from the library and got a whipping for being late. That must have been a hard summer for my parents at the office too, because that was the summer that I got a whipping for something or other almost every day between the 4th of July and Labor Day. When I wasn’t getting whippings, I hid out at the library on 135th Street and forged notes from my mother to get books from the closed shelf and read about sex and having babies and waited to become pregnant. None of the books were very clear to me about the relationship between having your period and having a baby, but they were all very clear about the relationship between penises and getting pregnant. Or maybe the confusion was all in my own mind, because I had always been a very fast but not a very careful reader. So four years later, in my fourteenth year, I was a very scared little girl, still half-afraid that one of that endless stream of doctors would look up into my body and discover my four-year-old shame and say to my mother, “Aha! So that’s what’s wrong! Your daughter is about to become pregnant!”

• From The Selected Works of Audre Lorde

  She has been an anthroposoph for many years, she says, and this is her second stay at the Klinik. The most frequent question from English-speaking patients and medical trainees, couched in different ways, is: how does an american—and a Black one at that, although the latter is only inferred because everyone here is much too well-bred and polite to ever let on they notice, although Sister Maria did tell me yesterday that her brother is a missionary in South Africa so she understands why I like to eat raw vegetables—how does an american come to be at the Lukas Klinik in Switzerland? americans are known for being quite provincial. One of the cardinal rules here is that we do not talk about our illness at mealtimes or at any social gathering, so everyone is very polite and small-talky and banal, because of course we are all preoccupied with our bodies and the processes going on within them or else we wouldn’t be here. I don’t know what makes the anthroposophs think this sort of false socializing is not more stressful than expressing real feelings, but I find it terribly wearing. Mercifully, I can usually retreat behind the language barrier. December 19, 1985 Arlesheim I sit lie paint walk dance weep in a Swiss hospital trying to find out what my body wants to do, waiting for doctors to come talk with me. Last night my stomach and liver cried all night. “So this is the way of dying,” I thought, my body feeling almost transparent. In the sunlight now I think someone was dying next door, and I felt the sadness through the walls coupled with my own. When the sun came up I felt a lot better, until I saw the bed stripped down in the hallway, and the next-door buzzer silent at last. The village of Arlesheim is very lovely and picturesque. Frances and I go for long walks in the park holding hands in our coat pockets, giving each other courage, and wondering about the future. I have written no letters, no poems, no journals except these notes, trying to make sense out of it all. I am often in pain and I fear that it will get worse. I need to sharpen every possible weapon against it, but even more so against the fear, or the fear of fear, which is what is so debilitating. And I want to learn how to do that while there is still time for learning in some state before desperation. Desperation. Reckless through despair. There is no more time left to decide upon strange afflictions. December 20, 1985 Arlesheim A men’s choir from the village sang Christmas carols tonight in the hospital stairwells, their voices echoing through the halls, sweet and poignant, and I cried for Christmases I have had that are past. But I simply cannot allow myself to believe that there will never be any more of them, so there surely must be.

• From Giovanni's Room (1956)

  My poor father was baffled and afraid. He was unable to believe that there could be any- thing seriously wrong between us. And this was not only because he would not then have known what to do about it; it was mainly because he would then have had to face the knowledge that he had left something, somewhere, undone, something of the utmost importance. And since neither of us had any idea of what this so signi- ficant omission could have been, and since we were forced to remain in tacit league against Ellen, we took refuge in being hearty with each 26 James Baldwin other. We were not like father and son, my father sometimes proudly said, we were like buddies. I think my father sometimes actually believed this. I never did. I did not want to be his buddy; I wanted to be his son. What passed between us as masculine candor exhausted and appalled me. Fathers ought to avoid utter nakedness before their sons. I did not want to know—not, anyway, from his mouth—that his flesh was as unregenerate as my own. The knowledge did not make me feel more like his son—or buddy—it only made me feel like an interloper, and a frightened one at that. He thought we were alike, I did not want to think so. I did not want to think that my life would be like his, or that my mind would ever grow so pale, so without hard places and sharp, sheer drops. He wanted no distance between US; he wanted me to look on him as a man like myself. But I wanted the merciful distance of father and son, which would have permitted me to love him. One night, drunk, with several other people on the way back from an out-of-town party, the car I was driving smashed up. It was entirely my fault. I was almost too drunk to walk and had no business driving; but the others did not know this, since I am one of those people who can look and sound sober while practically in a state of collapse. On a straight, level piece of highway something weird happened to all my reactions, and the car sprang suddenly out of 27 GIOVANNI'S ROOM my control. And a telephone pole, foam-white, came crying at me out of the pitch darkness; I heard screams and then a heavy, roaring, tear- ing sound. Then everything turned absolutely scarlet and then as bright as day and I went into a darkness I had never known before.

• From The Selected Works of Audre Lorde

  What more can they do to me? My time is limited, and this is so for each one of us. So how will the opposition reward me for my silences? For the pretense that this is in fact the best of all possible worlds? What will they give me for lying? A lifelong Safe Conduct Pass for everyone I love? Another lifetime for me? The end to racism? Sexism? Homophobia? Cruelty? The common cold? November 13, 1986 New York City I do not find it useful any longer to speculate upon cancer as a political weapon. But I’m not being paranoid when I say my cancer is as political as if some CIA agent brushed past me in the A train on March 15, 1965, and air-injected me with a long-fused cancer virus. Or even if it is only that I stood in their wind to do my work and the billows flayed me. What possible choices do most of us have in the air we breathe and the water we must drink? Sometimes we are blessed with being able to choose the time and the arena and the manner of our revolution, but more usually we must do battle wherever we are standing. It does not matter too much if it is in the radiation lab or a doctor’s office or the telephone company, the streets, the welfare department, or the classroom. The real blessing is to be able to use whoever I am wherever I am, in concert with as many others as possible, or alone if needs be. This is no longer a time of waiting. It is a time for the real work’s urgencies. It is a time enhanced by an iron reclamation of what I call the burst of light—that inescapable knowledge, in the bone, of my own physical limitation. Metabolized and integrated into the fabric of my days, that knowledge makes the particulars of what is coming seem less important. When I speak of wanting as much good time as possible, I mean time over which I maintain some relative measure of control. November 14, 1986 New York City One reason I watch the death process so acutely is to rob it of some of its power over my consciousness. I have overcome my earlier need to ignore or turn away from films and books that deal with cancer or dying. It is ever so much more important now for me to fill the psyches of all the people I love and who love me with a sense of outrageous beauty and strength of purpose. But it is also true that sometimes we cannot heal ourselves close to the very people from whom we draw strength and light, because they are also closest to the places and tastes and smells that go along with a pattern of living we are trying to rearrange.

• From The Selected Works of Audre Lorde

  It is very good for establishing perspective. And where the words of women are crying to be heard, we must each of us recognize our responsibility to seek those words out, to read them and share them and examine them in their pertinence to our lives. That we not hide behind the mockeries of separations that have been imposed upon us and which so often we accept as our own. For instance, “I can’t possibly teach Black women’s writing—their experience is so different from mine.” Yet how many years have you spent teaching Plato and Shakespeare and Proust? Or another, “She’s a white woman and what could she possibly have to say to me?” Or, “She’s a lesbian, what would my husband say, or my chairman?” Or again, “This woman writes of her sons and I have no children.” And all the other endless ways in which we rob ourselves of ourselves and each other. We can learn to work and speak when we are afraid in the same way we have learned to work and speak when we are tired. For we have been socialized to respect fear more than our own needs for language and definition, and while we wait in silence for that final luxury of fearlessness, the weight of that silence will choke us. The fact that we are here and that I speak these words is an attempt to break that silence and bridge some of those differences between us, for it is not difference which immobilizes us, but silence. And there are so many silences to be broken. Uses of the Erotic The Erotic as Power T here are many kinds of power, used and unused, acknowledged or otherwise. The erotic is a resource within each of us that lies in a deeply female and spiritual plane, firmly rooted in the power of our unexpressed or unrecognized feeling. In order to perpetuate itself, every oppression must corrupt or distort those various sources of power within the culture of the oppressed that can provide energy for change. For women, this has meant a suppression of the erotic as a considered source of power and information within our lives. We have been taught to suspect this resource, vilified, abused, and devalued within western society. On the one hand, the superficially erotic has been encouraged as a sign of female inferiority; on the other hand, women have been made to suffer and to feel both contemptible and suspect by virtue of its existence. It is a short step from there to the false belief that only by the suppression of the erotic within our lives and consciousness can women be truly strong.

• From My Life and Loves, Vol. 1 (of 4) (1922)

  “No, no, swim on round till I tell you to stop.” Away I went again quite proud; but when I got round the second time I was tired; I had never swum so far and I had sunk deep in the water and a little spray of wave had gone into my mouth; I was very glad to get near the steps, but as I stretched out my hand to mount them, my father waved his hand.— “Go on, go on!” he cried, “till you’re told to stop.” I went on: but now I was very tired and frightened as well, and as I got to the bow the sailors leant over the bulwarks and one encouraged me: “Go slow, Jim, you’ll get round all right.” I saw it was big Newton, the stroke-oar of my father’s gig, but just because of his sympathy I hated my father the more for making me so tired and so afraid. When I got round the third time, I swam very slowly and let myself sink very low, and the stranger spoke for me to my father, and then he himself told me to “come up.” I came eagerly, but a little scared at what my father might do; but the stranger came over to me, saying, “he’s all blue; that water’s very cold, Captain; someone should give him a good towelling.” My father said nothing but “Go down and dress”, adding, “get warm.” The memory of my fear made me see that he was always asking me to do too much, and I hated him who could get drunk and shame me and make me run races up the rigging with the cabin boys who were grown men and could beat me. I disliked him. I was too young then to know that it was probably the habit of command which prevented him from praising me, though I knew in a half-conscious way that he was proud of me, because I was the only one of his children who never got sea-sick. A little later he arrived in Armagh, and the following week was wretched: I had to come straight home from school every day, and go out for a long walk with the “governor” and he was not a pleasant companion. I couldn’t let myself go with him as with a chum; I might in the heat of talk use some word or tell him something and get into an awful row. So I walked beside him silently, taking heed as to what I should say in answer to his simplest question. There was no companionship!

• From Giovanni's Room (1956)

  'How do you feel?' he asked me. This is a very important day for you.' 1 feel fine,' I said. *How do you feel?' 74 James Baldwin Tiike a man,' he said, 'who has seen a vision/ *Yes?' I said. Tell me about this vision/ 1 am not joking/ he said. 1 am talking about you. You were the vision. You should have seen yourself tonight. You should see yourself now/ I looked at him and said nothing, Tou are—how old? Twenty-six or seven? I am nearly twice that and, let me tell you, you are lucky. You are lucky that what is happening to you now is happening now and not when you are forty, or something like that, when there would be no hope for you and you would simply be destroyed.' 'What is happening to me?* I asked. I had meant to sound sardonic, but I did not sound sardonic at all. He did not answer this, but sighed, looking briefly in the direction of the redhead. Then he turned to me. *Are you going to write to Hella?' 1 very often do/ 1 said. 1 suppose I wdll again/ That does not answer my question.' 'Oh. I was under the impression that you had asked me if I was going to write to HeUa.' 'Well. Let's put it another way. Are you going to write to Hella about this night and this morning?' 1 really don't see what there is to write about But what's it to you if I do or I don't?' He gave me a look full of a certain despair which I had not, till that moment, known was in him. It frightened me. 'It's not,' he said, 'what it is to me. It's what it is to you. And to her. And ' GIOVANNI'S ROOM 75 to that poor boy, yonder, who doesn't know that when he looks at you the way he does, he is simply putting his head in the lion's mouth. Are you going to treat them as you've treated me?' Tom? What have you to do with all this? How have I treated you?' Tou have been very unfair to me,' he said. Tou have been very dishonest.* This time I did sound sardonic. 1 suppose you mean that I would have been fair, I would have been honest if I had—if— despising me a little less.' 1 mean you could have been fair to me by Tm sorry. But I think, since you bring it up, that a lot of your life is despicable.' 1 could say the same about yours,* said Jacques. There are so many ways of being des- picable it quite makes one's head spin. But the way to be really despicable is to be contemptu- ous of other people's pain. You ought to have some apprehension that the man you see before you was once even younger than you are now and arrived at his present wretchedness by imperceptible degrees.'

• From Saint Thomas Aquinas Collection (22 Books) (2016)

  b. Barrenness of earth; If thou wilt not hear the voice of the Lord thy God, to keep and to do all His commandments.… cursed shall be.… the fruit of thy ground, the herds of thy oxen, and the flocks of thy sheep.… The Lord will send upon thee famine and hunger, and a rebuke upon all the works which thou shalt do. Deut. 28:15, 18, 20. To Adam He said, Because thou hast hearkened to the voice of thy wife, and hast eaten of the tree whereof I commanded thee that thou shouldest not eat, cursed is the earth in thy work.… thorns and thistles shall it bring forth to thee. Gen. 3:17, 18. c. Pestilence and Death; Therefore are there many weak and infirm among you, and many sleep. 1 Cor. 11:30, 31. While yet the flesh was between their teeth, neither had that kind of meat failed, behold, the wrath of the Lord was provoked against the people, and He smote them with an exceedingly great plague. Numb. 11:33. R. The triple remedy; a. Amendment of life; The country is wasted; the ground hath mourned, for the corn is wasted, the wine is dried up, the oil hath languished. The husbandmen are ashamed, the vinedressers have howled for the wheat and the barley, because the harvest of the field is perished.… Gird yourselves and mourn, O ye priests; howl, ye ministers of the Altar; go, lie in sackcloth, ye ministers of my God; because sacrifice and libation are cut off from the house of your God. Joel 1:10, 11, 13. b. Correction; Behold the day shall come, kindled as a furnace, and all the proud and all that do wickedly shall be as stubble; and the day that cometh shall set them on fire, saith the Lord of hosts, and shall not leave them root or branch. Mal. 4:1. Behold He cometh, saith the Lord of hosts; and who shall be able to think of the day of His coming? and who shall stand to see Him? For He is like a refining fire and like the fuller’s herb: and He shall sit refining and cleansing the silver; and He shall purify the sons of Levi, and shall refine them as gold and as silver, and they shall offer sacrifices to the Lord in justice. Mal. 3:1–3. c. Rejection; I will judge you, saith the Lord; and I will make you subject to My scepture, and will bring you into the bands of the convenant; and I will pick out from among you the transgressors and the wicked, and will bring them out of the land where they sojourn; and they shall not enter into the land of Israel, and you shall know that I am the Lord. Ezech. 20:36–38.

• From Saint Thomas Aquinas Collection (22 Books) (2016)

  A great obstacle to continence arises from extrinsic circumstances, such as constant intercourse with women. We read in Sirach (ix. 9), “Many have perished by the beauty of a woman, and hereby lust is enkindled as a fire..., for her conversation burns as fire.” And, in the same chapter, the following safeguard is proposed against these dangers: “Do not look upon a woman who has a mind for many, lest you fall into her snares. Do not frequent the company of a dancer, and do not listen to her lest you perish by the force of her charms.” Again (chapter xlii. 12), “Do not gaze on everybody’s beauty; and do not tarry among women. For from garments comes a moth, and from a woman the iniquity of a man.” St. Jerome, in his book against Vigilantius, writes that a monk, knowing his own frailty, and how fragile is the vessel which he carries, will fear to slip or stumble, lest he fall and be broken. Hence, he will chiefly avoid gazing at women, and especially at young ones, lest he be caught by the eyes of a harlot, and lest beauty of form lead him on to unlawful embraces. Abbot Moses, in his conferences to the fathers, says that, in order to preserve purity of heart, “we ought to seek solitude and to practise fasting, watching, and bodily labour: to wear scant clothing; and to attend to reading; in order, by these means, to be able to keep our heart uncontaminated by passion, and to ascend to a high degree of charity.” It is for this reason, that such exercises are practised in the religious life. Perfection does not consist in them; but they are, so to speak, instruments whereby perfection is acquired. Abbot Moses, therefore, continues, “Fasting, vigils, hunger, meditation on the scriptures, nakedness, and the privation of all possessions, are not themselves perfection; but they are the instruments of perfection. The end of discipline does not lie in them ; but, by their means we arrive at the end.”

• From The Selected Works of Audre Lorde

  That’s a switch, worrying about losing weight. My friend Dagmar, who teaches here, has given me the name of a homeopathic doctor specializing in the treatment of cancer, and I’ve made an appointment to see her when I come back from the feminist book fair in London next week. She’s an anthroposophic doctor, and they believe in surgery only as a last resort. In spite of all this, I’m doing good work here. I’m certainly enjoying life in Berlin, sick or not. The city itself is very different from what I’d expected. It is lively and beautiful, but its past is never very far away, at least not for me. The silence about Jews is absolutely deafening, chilling. There is only one memorial in the whole city and it is to the Resistance. At the entrance is a huge grey urn with the sign, “This urn contains earth from German concentration camps.” It is such a euphemistic evasion of responsibility and an invitation to amnesia for the children that it’s no wonder my students act like Nazism was a bad dream not to be remembered. There is a lot of networking going on here among women, collectives, and work enterprises as well as political initiatives, and a very active women’s cultural scene. I may be too thin, but I can still dance! June 7, 1984 Berlin Dr. Rosenberg agrees with my decision not to have a biopsy, but she has said I must do something quickly to strengthen my bodily defenses. She’s recommended I begin Iscador injections three times weekly. Iscador is a biological made from mistletoe which strengthens the natural immune system, and works against the growth of malignant cells. I’ve started the injections, along with two other herbals that stimulate liver function. I feel less weak. I am listening to what fear teaches. I will never be gone. I am a scar, a report from the front lines, a talisman, a resurrection. A rough place on the chin of complacency. “What are you getting so upset about, anyway?” a student asked in class. “You’re not Jewish!” So what if I am afraid? Of stepping out into the morning? Of dying? Of unleashing the damned gall where hatred swims like a tadpole waiting to swell into the arms of war? And what does that war teach when the bruised leavings jump an insurmountable wall where the glorious Berlin chestnuts and orange poppies hide detection wires that spray bullets which kill?

• From Barclay's Guide to the New Testament (2008)

  Meeting the Threat It had been Jude's intention to write a treatise on the faith which all Christians share; but that task had to be laid aside in view of the emergence of people whose conduct and thought were a threat to the Christian Church (verse 3). In view of this situation, the need was not so much to expound the faith as to rally Christians in its defence. Certain individuals who had insinuated themselves into the Church were busily engaged in turning the grace of God into an excuse for open immorality and were denying the only true God and Jesus Christ the Lord (verse 4). These people were immoral in life and heretical in belief. The Warnings Against these intruders, Jude marshals his warnings. Let them remember the fate of the Israelites. They had been brought in safety out of Egypt, but they had never been permitted to enter the promised land because of their lack of belief (verse 5). The reference is to Numbers 13:26-14:29. Despite receiving the grace of God, it was still possible to lose eternal salvation by drifting into disobedience and faithlessness. Some angels with the glory of heaven as their own had come to earth and corrupted mortal women with their lust (Genesis 6:2); and now they were imprisoned in deepest darkness, awaiting judgment (verse 6). Anyone who rebels against God must look for judgment. The cities of Sodom and Gomorrah had given themselves over to lust and to unnatural conduct, and their destruction in flames is a dreadful warning to everyone who similarly goes astray (verse 7). The Evil Life These intruders are visionaries of evil dreams; they defile their flesh, and they speak evil of the angels (verse 8). Not even Michael the archangel dared speak evil even of the evil angels. Michael had been given the task of burying the body of Moses. The devil had tried to stop him and claim the body for himself. Michael had spoken no evil against the devil, even in circumstances like that, but had simply said: `The Lord rebuke you!' (verse 9). Angels must be respected, even when evil and hostile. These evil people condemn everything which they do not understand; and spiritual things are beyond their understanding.

• From Heptaméron (1559)

  The poor woman did so, and seeing her two women and her man lying dead on the ground, was so horrified, that she remained motionless and speechless as a statue The villain, who did not want to have her for an hour only, did not think fit to offer her violence then, and said to her, " Have no fear, mademoiselle ; you are in the hands of that man in all the world who loves you most." So saying, he took off his robe, beneath which he had a smaller one, which he presented to the demoi- selle, threatening, if she did not put it on, that he would treat her as he had done the others. The demoiselle, more dead than alive, made a show of obeying him, as well to save her life as to gain time, in hopes that her husband would return. She took off her headdress, by the Cordelier's order, as slowly as she could ; and when she had done so, the monk, without regard to the beauty of her hair, cut it off in haste, made her strip to her shift, and put on the small robe, and then, resuming his own, set off with all the speed he could make along with the little Cordelier he had so long coveted. God, who has pity on the wronged innocent, was touched by the tears of this poor lady, and so ordered things that her husband, having despatched his business sooner than he expected, took that very road to return home by which the Cordelier was carrying off his wife. The monk, descrying the husband from a distance, said to the lady, " Here comes your husband. I know that if you look at him he will try to get you out of my hands ; so walk before me, and do not turn your head in his di- rection, for if you make him the least sign, I shall have Come out into the yard," said tlie moni<, "and you will see what I have done." i Fourth ciay.\ QUEEN OF XAVARKE. 295

• From The Selected Works of Audre Lorde

  so as wars go this was an easy one But for we here who never woke up before to see plane shitting fire into chimney it was a damn awful lot! The baby’s father buried without his legs burned bones in piles along the road “any Cubans around here, girl? any guns?” singed tree-ferns curl and jerk in the mortar rhythms strumming up from shore​uphill a tree explodes showering the house with scraps of leaves the sweetish smell of unseen rotting flesh. For a while there was almost enough water​enough rice​enough quinine the child tugs at her waistband but she does not move quickly she has heard how nervous these green men are with their grenades and sweaty helmets who offer cigarettes and chocolate but no bread free batteries and herpes but no doctors no free buses to the St. Georges market no reading lessons in the brilliant afternoons bodies strewn along Telescope Beach these soldiers say are foreigners but she has seen the charred bits of familiar cloth and knows what to say to any invader with an M–16 rifle held ready while searching her cooking shed overturning the empty pots with his apologetic grin Imelda steps forward the child pressing against her knees “no guns, man, no guns here. we glad you come. you carry water?” The american deputy assistant secretary of defense for equal opportunity and safety pauses in her speech​licks her dry lips “as you can see the Department has a very good record of equal opportunity for our women” swims toward safety through a lake of her own blood. Diaspora Afraid is a country with no exit visas a wire of ants walking the horizon embroiders our passports at birth Johannesburg Alabama a dark girl flees the cattle prods skin hanging from her shredded nails escapes into my nightmare half an hour before the Shatila dawn wakes in the well of a borrowed Volkswagen or a rickety midnight sleeper out of White River Junction Washington bound​again gulps carbon monoxide in a false-bottomed truck fording the Braceras Grande or an up-country river grenades held dry in a calabash leaving. A Question of Climate I learned to be honest the way I learned to swim dropped into the inevitable my father’s thumbs in my hairless armpits about to give way I am trying to surface​carefully remembering the water’s shadow-legged musk cannons of salt​exploding my nostrils’ rage and for years my powerful breast stroke was a declaration of war. Florida Black people fishing the causeway full-skirted​bare brown to the bellyband atilt on the railing​near a concrete road where a crawler-transporter will move the space shuttle from hangar to gantry. Renting a biplane to stalk the full moon in Aquarius as she rose under Venus between propellers Country Western surf feasting on frozen black beans Cubano from Grand Union in the mangrove swamp​elbows of cypress​scrub oak Moon​moon​moon on the syncopated road rimey with bullfrogs​walking beaches​fragrant and raunchy fire-damp sand between my toes. Huge arrogant cockroaches​with white people’s manners

• From The Selected Works of Audre Lorde

  While I watched this movie I was also thinking about the course of my own life, the paths I feel bound for inside myself, the way of life that feels most real to me. And I wonder what I may be risking as I become more and more committed to telling whatever truth comes across my eyes my tongue my pen—no matter how difficult—the world as I see it, people as I feel them. And I wonder what I will have to pay someday for that privilege, and in whose coin? Will those forces which serve non-life in the name of power and profit kill me too, or merely dismember me in the eyes of whoever can use what I do? When I stand in the radiance of a place like the Sapphire Sapphos dinner, with the elegant food and abundance of love and beautiful dark women, when I stand in that moment of sweetness, I sometimes become almost afraid. Afraid of their warmth and loving, as if that same loving warmth might doom me. I know this is not so, but it can feel like it. As if so long as I remained too different from my own time and surroundings I was safe, if terribly lonely. But now that I am becoming less lonely and more loved, I am also becoming more visible, and therefore more vulnerable. Malcolm saying to Martin in the film, “I love you, Martin, and we are both dead men.” February 9, 1984 New York City So. No doubt about where we are in the world’s story. It has just cost $32,000 to complete a government-commissioned study that purports to show there is no rampant hunger in the U.S.A. I wonder if they realize rampant means aggressive. So. The starving old women who used to sit in broken-down rooming houses waiting for a welfare check now lie under park benches and eat out of garbage bins. “I only eat fruit,” she mumbled, rummaging through the refuse bin behind Gristedes supermarket, while her gnarled Black hands carefully cut away the rotted parts of a cantaloupe with a plastic Burger King knife. February 18, 1984 Ohio How does it feel, Ms. L., to be a fifty-year-old Black woman who is still bleeding! Cheers to the years! Doing what I like to do best.

• From The Selected Works of Audre Lorde

  After I had gone to bed she called me back to her twice. The first time I could not pierce through the veil of sleep, but I saw her light and heard her in my dreams. Then at 4:30 in the morning, her little fingers of light reached under the lined window curtains, and I got up as if bidden and went out onto the terrace to greet her. The night was very very still; she was low and bright and brilliantly clear. I stood on the terrace in my robe bathed in her strong quiet light. I raised my arms then and prayed for us all, prayed for the strength for all of us who must weather this time ahead with me. My mother moon had awakened me, calling me out into her brightness, and she shone down upon me as a sign, a blessing on that terrace with the soft gurgle of flowing water in my ears, a promise of answering strength to be whoever I need to be. I felt her in my heart, in my bones, in my thin blood, and I heard Margareta’s voice again: “It’s going to be a hard lonely road, but remember, help is on the way.” That was her farewell Tarot reading for me, seventeen years ago. December 27, 1985 Arlesheim Last night I dreamed I was asleep here in my bed at the Klinik and there was a strange physical presence lying beside me on the left side. I couldn’t see it because it was dark, but I felt this body start to touch me on my left thigh, and I knew that this meant great danger. “It must think I’m dead so it can have (claim) me,” I thought, “but if I moan it will know I’m awake and alive and it’ll leave me alone.” So I began to moan softly, but the creature didn’t stop. I could feel its cold fingers beginning to creep over my left hip, and I thought to myself, “Oh, oh, nightmare time! I’ve got to scream louder. Maybe that noise will make it go away, because there is nobody else here to wake me up!” So I screamed and roared in my sleep, and finally after what seemed like a very long time, I woke myself up calling out, and of course there was nothing in my bed at all, but it still felt as if death had really been trying. December 30, 1985 Arlesheim Frances and I went to the Konditorei [pastry shop] in town this afternoon to have a cup of tea and be together away from the hospital, when the elderly schoolteacher with the rhodonite necklace came in and wanted to sit down with us. It was so apparent how badly she wanted to talk that we couldn’t say no, even though we never have enough time alone together.

• From The Selected Works of Audre Lorde

  In the light of those facts, and from all the reading I’ve been doing these past weeks (thank the goddess for Barnes & Noble’s medical section), I’ve made up my mind not to have a liver biopsy. It feels like the only reasonable decision for me. I’m asymptomatic now except for a vicious gallbladder. And I can placate her. There are too many things I’m determined to do that I haven’t done yet. Finish the poem “Outlines.” See what europe’s all about. Make Deotha Chambers’ story live. If I have this biopsy and it is malignant, then a whole course of action will be established simply by their intrusion into the suspect site. Yet if this tumor is malignant, I want as much good time as possible, and their treatments aren’t going to make a hell of a lot of difference in terms of extended time. But they’ll make a hell of a lot of difference in terms of my general condition and how I live my life. On the other hand, if this is benign, I believe surgical intervention into fatty tissue of any kind can start the malignant process in what otherwise might remain benign for a long time. I’ve been down that road before. I’ve decided this is a chance I have to take. If this were another breast tumor, I’d go for surgery again, because the organ comes off. But with the tie-in between estrogens, fat cells, and malignancies I’ve been reading about, cutting into my liver seems to me to be too much of a risk for too little return in terms of time. And it might be benign, some little aberrant joke between my liver and the universe. Twenty-two hours of most days I don’t believe I have liver cancer. Most days. Those other two hours of the day are pure hell, and there’s so much work I have to do in my head in those two hours, too, through all the terror and uncertainties. I wish I knew a doctor I could really trust to talk it all over with. Am I making the right decision? I know I have to listen to my body. If there’s one thing I’ve learned from all the work I’ve done since my mastectomy, it’s that I must listen keenly to the messages my body sends. But sometimes they are contradictory. Dear goddess! Face-up again against the renewal of vows.Do not let me die a coward, mother. Nor forget how to sing. Nor forget song is a part of mourning as light is a part of sun. March 22, 1984 En route to New York City This was a good trip. Good connections with the Sojourner Sisters and other women in St. Croix. And I finally taught myself to relax in water, swimming about under the sun in Gloria’s pool to the sound of Donna Summers blowing across the bright water, “State of Independence,” and the coconut tree singing along in the gentle trade winds.

• From Barclay's Guide to the New Testament (2008)

  Even the mighty will cry bitterly (Zephaniah 1:14); the inhabitants of the land shall tremble (Joel 2: 1); people will be terrified and will seek some place to hide and will find none (i Enoch 102:1, 102:3). (5) The last days will be a time when the world will be shattered, a time of cosmic upheaval when the universe, as we know it, will disintegrate. The stars will be extinguished; the sun will be turned into darkness and the moon into blood (Isaiah 13:10; Joel 2:30-1, 3:15). The firmament will crash in ruins; there will be a torrent of raging fire, and creation will become a molten mass (Sibylline Oracles 3:83-9). The seasons will lose their order, and there will be neither night nor dawn (Sibylline Oracles 3:796-806). (6) The last days will be a time when human relationships will be destroyed. Hatred and enmity will reign upon the earth. People will turn against their neighbours (Zechariah 14:13). Brothers will kill each other; parents will murder their own children; from dawn to sunset they shall slay one another (1 Enoch 100:1-2). Honour will be turned into shame, strength into humiliation, and beauty into ugliness. Jealousy will arise in those who did not think much of themselves, and passion will take hold of those who were peaceful (2 Baruch 48:31-7). ('7) The last days will be a time of judgment. God will come like a refiner's fire - and who can endure the day of his coming (Malachi 3:1-3)? It is by the fire and the sword that God will plead with people (Isaiah 66:15-16). The Son of Man will destroy sinners from the earth (1 Enoch 69:27), and the smell of brimstone will pervade all things (Sibylline Oracles 3:58-61). The sinners will be burned up as Sodom was long ago (Jubilees 36:10-11). (8) In all these visions, the Gentiles have their place - but it is not always the same place. (a) Sometimes the vision is that the Gentiles will be totally destroyed. Babylon will become such a desolation that there will be no place for the wandering Arabs to plant their tents among the ruins, no place for the shepherds to graze their sheep; it will be nothing more than a desert inhabited by the beasts (Isaiah 13:19-22). God will trample down the Gentiles in his anger (Isaiah 63:6). The Gentiles will come over in chains to Israel (Isaiah 45:14). (b) Sometimes one last gathering of the Gentiles against Jerusalem is depicted, and one last battle in which they are destroyed (Ezekiel 38:14-39:16; Zechariah 14:I- ir). The kings of the nations will throw themselves against Jerusalem; they will seek to ravage the shrine of the Holy One; they will place their thrones in a ring round the city, with their faithless people with them; but it will be only for their final destruction (Sibylline Oracles 3:663-72). (c) Sometimes there is the picture of the conversion of the Gentiles through Israel.

• From Saint Thomas Aquinas Collection (22 Books) (2016)

  THEOPHYLACT. Now the Lord permitted His disciples to be in danger, that they might learn patience; wherefore He did not immediately come to their aid, but allowed them to remain in danger all night, that He might teach them to wait patiently, and not to hope at once for help in tribulations. For there follows, And he saw them toiling in rowing, for the wind was contrary unto them: and about the fourth watch of the night, he cometh unto them walking upon the sea. PSEUDO-CHRYSOSTOM. (Vict. Ant. e Cat. in Marc.) Holy Scripture reckons four watches in the night, making each division three hours; wherefore by the fourth watch it means that which is after the ninth hour, that is, in the tenth or some following hour. There follows, And would have passed them. AUGUSTINE. (de Con. Evan. 2. 47) But how could they understand this, except from His going a different way, wishing to pass them as strangers; for they were so far from recognising Him, as to take Him for a spirit. For it goes on: But when they saw him walking upon the sea, they supposed it had been a spirit, and cried out. THEOPHYLACT. See again how Christ, though He was about to put an end to their dangers, puts them in greater fear. But He immediately reassured them by His voice, for it continues, And immediately he talked with them, and said unto them, It is I, be not afraid. CHRYSOSTOM. (v. Chrys. Hom. in Matt. 50) As soon then as they knew Him by His voice, their fear left them. AUGUSTINE. (ubi sup.) How then could He wish to pass them, whose fears He so reassures, if it were not that His wish to pass them would wring from them that cry, which called for His help? BEDE. (ubi sup.) Buty Theodorus, who was Bishop of Phanara, wrote that the Lord had no bodily weight in His flesh, and walked on the sea without weight; but the Catholic faith declares that He had weight according to the flesh. For Dionysius says, We know not how without plunging in His feet, which had bodily weight and the gravity of matter, He could walk on the wet and unstable subtance. THEOPHYLACT. Then by entering into the ship, the Lord restrained the tempest. For it continues, And he went up unto them into the ship, and the wind ceased. Great indeed is the miracle of our Lord’s walking on the sea, but the tempest and the contrary wind were there as well, to make the miracle greater. For the Apostles, not understanding from the miracle of the five loaves the power of Christ, now more fully knew it from the miracle of the sea. Wherefore it goes on, And they were sore amazed in themselves. For they understood not concerning the loaves.

• From Saint Thomas Aquinas Collection (22 Books) (2016)

  Whether Faith is Infused into Man by God1. It seems that faith is not infused into man by God. For Augustine says (14 De Trin. 1): “ by knowledge is faith begotten, nourished, defended, and strengthened in us. ” Now what is begotten in us by knowledge would seem to be acquired, rather than infused. Thus it appears that faith is not in us by divine infusion. 2. Again, what a man attains through hearing and seeing would seem to be acquired. Now a man comes to believe both through seeing miracles and through hearing the doctrine of the faith. Thus it is said in John 4:53: “ So the father knew that it was at the same hour in which Jesus said unto him, Thy son liveth: and himself believed, and his whole house, ” and in Rom. 10:17: “ faith cometh by hearing. ” Hence faith can be acquired. 3. Again, a man can acquire what depends on his will, and Augustine says that “ faith depends on the will of those who believe ” (De Praed. Sanct. 5). It follows that a man can acquire faith. On the other hand: it is said in Eph. 2:8 – 9: “ by grace are ye saved through faith; and that not of yourselves; it is the gift of God: . . . lest any man should boast. ” I answer: for faith, two things are required. In the first place, the things which a man is to believe must be proposed to him. This is necessary if anything is to be believed explicitly. Secondly, the believer must give his assent to what is proposed. Now faith is bound to be from God as regards the first of these conditions. For the things of faith are beyond human reason, so that a man cannot know them unless God reveals them. They are revealed by God immediately to some, such as the apostles and the prophets, and mediately to others, through preachers of the faith who are sent by God according to Rom. 10:15: “ And how shall they preach except they be sent? ” The cause of the believer ’ s assent to the things of faith is twofold. There is in the first place an external cause which induces him to believe, such as the sight of a miracle, or the persuasion of another who leads him to the faith. But neither of these is a sufficient cause. For of those who see one and the same miracle, or who hear the same prophecy, some will believe and others will not believe. We must therefore recognize that there is also an inward cause, which moves a man from within to assent to the things of faith.

• From The Selected Works of Audre Lorde

  Georges market no reading lessons in the brilliant afternoons bodies strewn along Telescope Beach these soldiers say are foreigners but she has seen the charred bits of familiar cloth and knows what to say to any invader with an M–16 rifle held ready while searching her cooking shed overturning the empty pots with his apologetic grin Imelda steps forward the child pressing against her knees “no guns, man, no guns here. we glad you come. you carry water?” The american deputy assistant secretary of defense for equal opportunity and safety pauses in her speech ​ licks her dry lips “as you can see the Department has a very good record of equal opportunity for our women” swims toward safety through a lake of her own blood. Diaspora Afraid is a country with no exit visas a wire of ants walking the horizon embroiders our passports at birth Johannesburg Alabama a dark girl flees the cattle prods skin hanging from her shredded nails escapes into my nightmare half an hour before the Shatila dawn wakes in the well of a borrowed Volkswagen or a rickety midnight sleeper out of White River Junction Washington bound ​ again gulps carbon monoxide in a false-bottomed truck fording the Braceras Grande or an up-country river grenades held dry in a calabash leaving. A Question of Climate I learned to be honest the way I learned to swim dropped into the inevitable my father’s thumbs in my hairless armpits about to give way I am trying to surface ​ carefully remembering the water’s shadow-legged musk cannons of salt ​ exploding my nostrils’ rage and for years my powerful breast stroke was a declaration of war. Florida Black people fishing the causeway full-skirted ​ bare brown to the bellyband atilt on the railing ​ near a concrete road where a crawler-transporter will move the space shuttle from hangar to gantry. Renting a biplane to stalk the full moon in Aquarius as she rose under Venus between propellers Country Western surf feasting on frozen black beans Cubano from Grand Union in the mangrove swamp ​ elbows of cypress ​ scrub oak Moon ​ moon ​ moon on the syncopated road rimey with bullfrogs ​ walking beaches ​ fragrant and raunchy fire-damp sand between my toes. Huge arrogant cockroaches ​ with white people’s manners and their palmetto bug cousins aggressive ridged slowness the obstinacy of living fossils. Sweet ugly-fruit ​ avocados ​ tomatoes and melon in the mango slot hibiscus spread like a rainbow of lovers arced stamens waving but even the jacaranda only last a day.