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 Boys & Sex (2020)

  Sameer thought this was his chance: since she was stranded, she could stay in his room, he suggested, but Anwen declined. He, characteristically, pushed. “I remember pulling a classic ‘soft boy’ move,” he told me. “Like, ‘Fine. Leave me alone. Everyone always does.’ Basically, ‘Oh, woe is me, my life is hard, you should feel bad for me, don’t leave me.’ Very emotionally manipulative shit. And it worked.” It was late. It was cold. Anwen didn’t know what else to do—so she eventually said okay. As they left the frat, she spotted a couple of guys from her dorm down the street and told Sameer thanks, but never mind: she would run and follow them home. Again he wasn’t giving up so easily. “You can’t just leave after kissing me like that,” he said. She gazed after the retreating boys, calculating whether she could actually catch them. If she didn’t, then what? So, believing she was taking charge of her situation, she turned to face Sameer. “Okay,” she said. “Let’s go talk about this.” They went inside an academic building that was open all night; Anwen could hear people whistling at them, calling out, “Get some!” They sat on a couch in a lounge and she tried to explain to Sameer that she wasn’t interested in dating him, she wasn’t interested in anything; at the same time, she was trying not to hurt his feelings, to let him down easy, to tell him he was a nice guy and she’d had fun dancing with him. It all came out kind of muddled. One point she was very clear on, though: “I don’t want to have sex with you.” “That’s okay,” he replied. “I don’t have any condoms.” Which was not, of course, an actual response to what she’d said. They started to kiss again, and Sameer, still very drunk, pushed Anwen down on the couch. “I can make you feel good,” he said, covering his body with hers. “He was so much larger than I am,” Anwen recalled. “I was totally trapped. That was the moment I started to panic a little bit. So I said, ‘No, Not here.’” He led her into the men’s room, pinned her to a wall Hollywood-style, and began kissing her again. Again she said, “Not here.”

• From Wild (2012)

  The following day I hiked over Santiam Pass and crossed into the Mount Jefferson Wilderness, named for the dark and stately summit to my north. I hiked past the rocky multipeaked Three Fingered Jack, which rose like a fractured hand into the sky, and continued hiking into the evening as the sun disappeared behind a blanket of clouds and a thick mist slowly enveloped me. The day had been hot, but within thirty minutes the temperature dropped 20 degrees as the wind picked up and then suddenly stilled. I walked as quickly as I could up the trail, the sweat dripping from my body in spite of the chill, searching for a place to camp. It was precariously close to dark, but there was no place flat or clear enough to pitch my tent. By the time I found a spot near a small pond, it was as if I were inside a cloud, the air eerily still and silent. In the time it took me to pitch my tent and filter a bottle of water with my insufferably slow water purifier, the wind started up again in great violent gasps, whipping the branches of the trees overhead. I’d never been in a mountain storm. I’m not afraid, I reminded myself as I crawled into my tent without eating dinner, feeling too vulnerable outside, though I knew my tent offered little protection. I sat in expectant wonder and fear, bracing for a mighty storm that never came. An hour after dark, the air went still again and I heard coyotes yipping in the distance, as if they were celebrating the fact that the coast was clear. August had turned to September; the temperatures at night were almost always bitingly cold. I got out of my tent to pee, wearing my hat and gloves. When I scanned the trees with my headlamp, they caught on something, and I froze as the reflection of two bright pairs of eyes gazed back at me. I never found out whose they were. An instant later they were gone. The next day was hot and sunny, as if the strange storm the night before had been only a dream. I missed a fork in the trail and later discovered that I was no longer on the PCT but on the Oregon Skyline Trail, which paralleled the PCT roughly a mile to the west. It was an alternate route my guidebook detailed adequately, so I continued on, unworried. The trail would lead back to the PCT the next day. The day after that I’d be at Olallie Lake. Hop, skip, jump, done. I walked in a dense forest all afternoon, once rounding a bend to come upon a trio of enormous elks, who ran into the trees with a thunderous clamor of hooves. That evening, only moments after I stopped to make camp near a trailside pond, two bow hunters appeared, walking southbound down the trail. “You got any water?” one of them burst out immediately.

• From Wild (2012)

  “Ah!” I yelled when a hairy beast materialized in front of me on the trail, so close I could smell him. A bear, I realized a moment later. His eyes passed blandly over me before he snorted and reeled and ran northward up the trail. Why did they always have to run in the direction I was going? I waited a few minutes and then hiked on, picking my way trepidatiously along, belting out lines from songs. “Oh I could drink a case of youuuuu, darling, and I would still be on my feet,” I crooned loudly. “She was a fast machine, she kept her motor clean …!” I growled. “Time out for tiny little tea leaves in Tetley Tea!” I chirped. It worked. I didn’t run into the bear again. Or Bigfoot. Instead, I came upon something I actually had to fear: a wide sheaf of icy snow covering the trail at a 40-degree angle. Hot as it was, not all the snow had melted off the north-facing slopes. I could see to the other side of the snow. I could practically throw a stone across it. But I couldn’t do the same with myself. I had to walk it. I looked down the mountain, my eyes following the course of the snow, should I slip and slide. It ended far below at a gathering of jagged boulders. Beyond them there was only air. I began to chip my way across, kicking each step with my boots, bracing myself with my ski pole. Instead of feeling more confident on the snow, given the experience I’d had with it in the Sierra, I felt more shaken, more aware of what could go wrong. One foot slipped out from beneath me and I fell onto my hands; slowly I stood again with my knees bent. I’m going to fall was the thought that came into my head, and with it I froze and looked down at the boulders below me, imagining myself careening into them. I looked at the place I’d come from and the place I was going, the two equidistant from me. I was too far from either, so I forced my way forward. I went down on my hands and crawled the rest of the way across, my legs shaking uncontrollably, my ski pole clanging along beside me, dangling from my wrist by its pink nylon strap.

• From Simply Jesus (2011)

  15:1–20), the question of whether Jesus and his followers are being loyal to Israel’s law is a question about whether Jesus is a true teacher or a false one. The law is quite specific (at least, as interpreted by the stricter minds of the day); if Jesus and his followers are transgressing it, that shows that they are on the wrong track, and that Jesus’s claim to be announcing and indeed spearheading God’s kingdom movement must be false, deluded, or perhaps even demonic. This is a decidedly political as well as a religious charge. And this in turn explains once more why Jesus only gives a cryptic answer in public and waits until he is in private before saying the truly explosive thing—that what you eat is irrelevant for genuine purity. That is tantamount to burning a flag or spray-painting a revolutionary slogan on a palace wall. No wonder he had to say it in private. In the second case too (Mark 10:1–12; Matt. 19:1–12), the stakes are high. The question of divorce is no abstract ethical problem. I remember once being asked by a reporter for my views on marriage and divorce—at just about the same time that Prince Charles, the Prince of Wales, was getting a divorce from Princess Diana. I remember thinking at the time that an “innocent” question about divorce and remarriage posed by a journalist to a churchman in the middle 1990s was no more “innocent” than the Pharisees’ question to Jesus. Mark and Matthew both locate the incident in question in “the districts of Judaea across the Jordan.” Memories are stirred. That was where John had been baptizing. That was where John had denounced Herod Antipas for taking his brother’s wife. To ask the question about divorce in that setting was no mere theoretical enquiry. It was inviting Jesus to incriminate himself, to say something that might lead Antipas to do to Jesus what he’d done to John. Jesus sticks to scripture, which they can hardly fault. But in doing so he demonstrates that he is speaking from a world in which God, becoming king on earth as in heaven, is transforming the very hearts of human beings as part of his project of new creation. Jesus’s hearers, thinking from within a world where the legislation for the hard-hearted still applies, cannot even recognize the kingdom when it is breaking in right there in their midst.

• From Simply Jesus (2011)

  There was, after all, no obvious model for what it might look like, how it might happen, that YHWH would do what all those psalms and prophets said and come in person to take charge, ruling the world, rescuing Israel, establishing his presence in the Temple, judging the nations, and causing the trees and the animals to shout for joy. The ancient scriptures are quite unhelpful on the matter. When YHWH visits Abraham, Abraham sees three men and entertains them at a meal. When YHWH meets Moses, what Moses sees is a burning bush. When, later, YHWH guides Moses and the Israelites through the desert, what they see is a pillar of cloud by day and a pillar of fire by night. When YHWH reveals his glory to the prophet Isaiah, all Isaiah tells us (in his terror) is that YHWH was high and lifted up, surrounded by angels, with the hem of his robe filling the Temple. Was that, we wonder, what was meant when, in the same book, we are told that the sentinels would shout for joy as in plain sight they saw YHWH returning to Zion? Was that what was meant when it said, “The glory of YHWH will be revealed, and all people shall see it together” (Isa. 40:5)? When Ezekiel saw the glory of YHWH, all he offered by way of a description was a strange account of YHWH’s chariot-throne, with its whirling wheels darting this way and that. Which of these models, if any, ought one to expect? Or would it be something different? The notion of YHWH himself as Israel’s true king thus became closely bound up with the idea of his powerful return. At the time of the exile, it was widely believed that Israel’s God had abandoned the Temple and the city of Jerusalem, leaving them to their fate. (How else, people reasoned, could they have fallen?) Ezekiel saw the glory depart because of the people’s wickedness (chaps. 10–11). But then, toward the end of his majestic book, he was given another vision of YHWH’s glory returning to the newly rebuilt Temple (43:1–5). For Isaiah and Ezekiel, then, not only would Israel return to its land, but YHWH would return to the Temple. That is at the heart of the vision of King YHWH in Isaiah 52. And that, we may suppose, is what devout Jews hoped and prayed for as they sang all those psalms about YHWH becoming king, taking charge at last, rescuing his people, and bringing justice to the world. But it hadn’t happened yet—or not as far as the prophets after the exile were concerned. Yes, they had returned from Babylon to Judaea. Yes, they had rebuilt the Temple. But YHWH had not returned to fill the house once more with his glory. The last two prophets in the canon both promise that he will indeed come, but this makes it all the clearer that he has not yet done so:

• From Simply Jesus (2011)

  (7:15–18) Then I desired to know the truth concerning the fourth beast, which was different from all the rest, exceedingly terrifying, with its teeth of iron and claws of bronze, and which devoured and broke in pieces, and stamped what was left with its feet; and concerning the ten horns that were on its head, and concerning the other horn, which came up and to make room for which three of them fell out—the horn that had eyes and a mouth that spoke arrogantly, and that seemed greater than the others. As I looked, this horn made war with the holy ones and was prevailing over them, until the Ancient One came; then judgment was given for the holy ones of the Most High, and the time arrived when the holy ones gained possession of the kingdom. This is what he said: “As for the fourth beast, there shall be a fourth kingdom on earth that shall be different from all the other kingdoms; it shall devour the whole earth, and trample it down, and break it to pieces . As for the ten horns, out of this kingdom ten kings shall arise and another shall arise after them. This one shall be different from the former ones, and shall put down three kings. He shall speak words against the Most High, shall wear out the holy ones of the Most High, and shall attempt to change the sacred seasons and the law; and they shall be given into his power for a time, two times, and a half a time. Then the court shall sit in judgment and his dominion shall be taken away, to be consumed and totally destroyed. The kingship and dominion and the greatness of the kingdoms under the whole heaven shall be given to the people of the holy ones of the Most High; their kingdom shall be an everlasting kingdom, and all dominions shall serve and obey them.” (7:19–27) From these it becomes clear, in case it wasn’t already, that the “monsters” or “beasts” are pagan kingdoms, who—especially the final king of the final kingdom—will rage against God’s people. But then, in a great heavenly court scene, God will take his seat and pronounce judgment, which will result in God’s people, “the holy ones of the Most High,” being vindicated and themselves being given “the kingdom” (7:18, 22, 27). The figure who is seen, in the original vision, as “one like a son of man”—one, in other words, like a human being—is to be interpreted as a symbol for the whole faithful people of God, the people who will be rescued and vindicated. But how will this happen?

• From Wild (2012)

  Hell, I thought. Bloody hell. I took out my ice ax and studied my course, which really only meant standing there for several minutes working up the nerve. I could see that Doug and Tom had made it across, their tracks a series of potholes in the snow. I held my ice ax the way Greg had taught me and stepped into one of the potholes. Its existence made my life both harder and easier. I didn’t have to chip my own steps, but those of the men were awkwardly placed and slippery and sometimes so deep that my boot got trapped inside and I’d lose my balance and fall, my ice ax so unwieldy it felt more like a burden than an aid. Arrest, I kept thinking, imagining what I’d do with the ax if I started to slide down the slope. The snow was different from the snow in Minnesota. In some places it was more ice than flake, so densely packed it reminded me of the hard layer of ice in a freezer that needs defrosting. In other places it gave way, slushier than it first appeared. I didn’t look at the bank of boulders below until I’d reached the other side of the snow and was standing on the muddy trail, trembling but glad. I knew that little jaunt was only a sample of what lay ahead. If I didn’t opt to get off the trail at Trail Pass to bypass the snow, I’d soon reach Forester Pass, at 13,160 feet the highest point on the PCT. And if I didn’t slip off the side of the mountain while going over that pass, I’d spend the next several weeks crossing nothing but snow. It would be snow far more treacherous than the patch I’d just crossed, but having crossed even this much made what lay ahead more real to me. It told me that I had no choice but to bypass. I wasn’t rightly prepared to be on the PCT in a regular year, let alone a year in which the snow depth measurements were double and triple what they’d been the year before. There hadn’t been a winter as snowy as the previous one since 1983, and there wouldn’t be another for more than a dozen years.

• From Wild (2012)

  The thing about hiking the Pacific Crest Trail, the thing that was so profound to me that summer—and yet also, like most things, so very simple—was how few choices I had and how often I had to do the thing I least wanted to do. How there was no escape or denial. No numbing it down with a martini or covering it up with a roll in the hay. As I clung to the chaparral that day, attempting to patch up my bleeding finger, terrified by every sound that the bull was coming back, I considered my options. There were only two and they were essentially the same. I could go back in the direction I had come from, or I could go forward in the direction I intended to go. The bull, I acknowledged grimly, could be in either direction, since I hadn’t seen where he’d run once I closed my eyes. I could only choose between the bull that would take me back and the bull that would take me forward. And so I walked on. It took all I had to cover nine miles a day. To cover nine miles a day was a physical achievement far beyond anything I’d ever done. Every part of my body hurt. Except my heart. I saw no one, but, strange as it was, I missed no one. I longed for nothing but food and water and to be able to put my backpack down. I kept carrying my backpack anyway. Up and down and around the dry mountains, where Jeffrey pines and black oaks lined the trail, crossing jeep roads that bore the tracks of big trucks, though none were in sight.

• From The Spiral Staircase: My Climb Out of Darkness (2004)

  So my fainting, we all agreed, was emotional self-indulgence. And in my last year in the order, my body did indeed seem to be staging a rebellion all its own. I wept uncontrollably, convulsed more by anger than grief. I found it impossible to keep my food down, suffered such severe nosebleeds that I had to have a vein cauterized, and . . . I fainted. It was as though my whole physical self had risen in protest and demanded that I take notice, telling me that however much I might want to stay in the convent, something was badly wrong. Finally, in the refectory of our convent in Harrogate, where I had been sent for the long vacation, I had given up the battle and succumbed to a breakdown. It was only logical to assume that there had been unconscious tension all along, which had finally and irrevocably surfaced and taken me out of the religious life. And now I was out in the world. I was no longer struggling to conform to a way of life for which I was not suited. I was free, fortunate, privileged to be attending one of the finest universities in the world, and even though I was having some trouble adjusting, I was now on the mend. Wasn’t I? So why were the symptoms recurring, as though my body had not been informed that the battle was over? Why was it behaving in the same old way? I was not kneeling in a convent chapel this time, but sitting in a pleasant library in Merton College. The room was full but not unduly crowded; it was not stuffy, even on this warm summer day. The tall leaded windows were open and a light, fragrant breeze wafted into the room, gently lifting the threadbare curtains. I was listening to John Jones’s lectures on nineteenth-century England, enjoying the slightly eccentric cast of his mind and his delightful command of the language, when the familiar stench choked me, the voice of the lecturer became a confused babble of meaningless sound, the light in the room looked suddenly uncanny, there was a moment of pure terror, and then I felt myself falling down that familiar narrow shaft. When I opened my eyes, I was conscious of a hard band of pain across my forehead; the brown blur in front of me composed itself into the grain of a polished wood floor. I groaned and rolled over onto my stomach to try to blot out the world for a few more minutes.

• From The Spiral Staircase: My Climb Out of Darkness (2004)

  But one night, the world broke apart again. It was early evening and I was tired, having stayed up most of the previous night to write my essay. This weekly essay crisis, as we called it, was a feature of Oxford life. Throughout the college, lights burned all through the night as students scribbled earnestly, trying to get their piece finished in time. Since leaving the convent, I had fallen into this weekly ritual and in a perverse way quite enjoyed it. There was something rather magical about sitting alone in the lamplight, surrounded by darkness and absolute stillness. Occasionally there would be a gentle scratching on the door, and Rosemary or Charlotte, whose essay night coincided with my own, would peer cautiously round the door, and we would have a midnight coffee break before returning to our books. The next day I felt hollow and depleted, but triumphant, and I used to revel in the post-tutorial euphoria: essay done, duly praised, and a lovely fresh assignment beckoning me invitingly into the next week. But on this particular occasion, my eyes prickled with fatigue. Suddenly I found myself invaded by the familiar stench, but this time it was different. My brain felt as though a cosmic potato masher was pounding it, reducing it to long worms of sensation like spaghetti, but spaghetti that was alive. I could hear a bell ringing mournfully in the distance and I was convinced that somebody was standing beside me. I could almost glimpse his face out of the corner of my eye. An aged, senile mask with empty eyes. Some part of me knew that there was nobody there, and that if I reached out to touch him my hand would encounter empty air. And yet I could not connect this knowledge with the specter because it had its own reality, its own absolutely commanding presence. I had no leisure to think about this, because I was gripped suddenly with a quite overwhelming fear. When I looked around me, the room was wholly unfamiliar, as though I had never seen any of these objects before. The world had become uncanny and horrifying. I did not know who, what, or where I was, but was aware only of my extreme terror, a cold, sickening dread that made everything around me seem brown, rotten, and repulsive because it had no meaning.

• From The Spiral Staircase: My Climb Out of Darkness (2004)

  And yet, of course, it wasn’t like that at all. I am trying to describe an experience that has nothing whatever to do with words or ideas and is not amenable to the logic of grammar and neat sentences that put things into an order that makes sense. Maybe I could explain it better if I were a poet. But I am sure that this is the kind of horror that Hieronymus Bosch tried to convey in his paintings. It is as though a comforting veil of illusion has been ripped away and you see the world without form, without significance, purposeless, blind, trivial, spiteful, and ugly to the core. T. S. Eliot describes something similar in the third poem of Ash-Wednesday. He is climbing a spiral staircase, a mythical image of the ascent of the mind and heart to spiritual enlightenment. But “at the first turning of the second stair” he sees a shape twisted into the banister, surrounded by vaporous, fetid air, and he is forced to struggle with “the devil of the stairs.” He leaves these convoluted forms behind, and at the next turning finds only darkness: “Damp, jaggèd, like an old man’s mouth drivelling beyond repair, / Or the toothed gullet of an agèd shark,” the underbelly of consciousness that lurks in the basement of all our minds. When the horror recedes and the world resumes its normal shape, you cannot forget it. You have seen what is “really” there, the empty horror that exists when the consoling illusion of our mundane experience is stripped away, so you can never respond to the world in quite the same way again. The revelation remains embedded in your soul and affects everything you feel and everything you see. But when you try to express this vision in words, you inevitably distort it and find yourself writing purple, melodramatic prose. Better to be as simple as Coleridge, when he describes the recurrent terror of the ancient mariner after his ordeal, which makes him feel Like one, that on a lonesome road Doth walk in fear and dread, And having once turned round walks on, And turns no more his head; Because he knows, a frightful fiend Doth close behind him tread. The words are flat, and the image of the “frightful fiend” deliberately banal, but the simple description of a fear that is constantly beside you but just out of reach captures the sensation exactly.

• From The Spiral Staircase: My Climb Out of Darkness (2004)

  The thesis was my passport to a job and a career, an earnest of my survival in a world that had once seemed so impossibly alien. I watched the girl behind the post office grille slap on the stamps and the registration forms. Then she put the parcel in a pile at the end of the room, whence they would be conveyed to Oxford. In some bewilderment, I stared around the art gallery. A student was copying William Dyce’s Pegwell Bay, and one or two other people were strolling round the Tate’s Pre-Raphaelite exhibits. I was stiff, as though I had been sitting for some time in an uncomfortable position. I got up and stretched. In front of me, John William Waterhouse’s Lady of Shalott reared up in her fragile little boat. Her tapestry, the fruit of so much dedicated toil, floated away downstream, waterlogged, stained, and ruined. The lady’s face had already assumed the pallor of death and her skin looked as gray as the sky behind her—Tennyson’s Lady of Shalott, who for so long had been my alter ego. She had tried to break out of her prison, as I had mine, but the effort had destroyed her. Waterhouse had caught the lady at the moment when she realized the folly of her rebellion. I shook my head hard and looked around the room again. On the other side of the gallery was John Millais’s Ophelia, who lay supine in the water. Having succumbed to madness, she too was about to die. Her hands were lifted slightly, as though she welcomed her fate; her expression was one of surrender. They were disturbing pictures, but that was not what was bothering me. My head was aching and my mind was foggy. I groped through the mists and suddenly—there it was. What on earth was I doing in the Tate? I was supposed to be in Greenwich with Richard and Jackie. We were taking a group of students to a matinee performance of Jean Genet’s The Maids. I looked at my watch. Too late: the play had started almost an hour ago. Weak with fright and trembling slightly, I sank back onto the leather banquette, staring at the Lady of Shalott without really seeing her. What had happened? The last thing that I could remember clearly was getting onto the tube train at Highgate. I had been due to meet the party at Charing Cross station at 2:15, but I had no recollection of the intervening period. My mind racing now, I realized that I must have left the tube at Charing Cross, and instead of taking the escalator up to the Mainline station, I must have walked all the way down the Embankment to the Tate. As I struggled to remember, I thought I could dimly recall the steely gray Thames, the wet cloudy sky, umbrellas, and mackintoshed figures. But nothing else, nothing at all. How was I going to explain this to Richard and Jackie?

• From Simply Jesus (2011)

  But imagine what it would be like if you’d lived for years and years under the vicious and repressive rule of a foreign tyrant. You have no system in place to change things. No elections are held, or if they are, they’re rigged from start to finish. And imagine that this takes place in a world without radio, TV, or printed media. The only way you hear about things is by rumor (often very effective, and sometimes remarkably accurate) or by some kind of public proclamation—perhaps as it finally filters down to your town, far away from the center of power. Proclamations would be used too to announce a change of ruler, but the continuation of the system. The old emperor dies, but the power brokers around him will take care that, before the bad news of his death is released, the good news of his successor is firmly in place. Then the heralds are sent off to provinces, cities, and towns across the whole empire, with a message that carries weight, authority, and a sense that this isn’t a new idea you might like to think about, but a new fact that you’d better get used to. “Good news—we have a new emperor!” So when Jesus was in his late teens, and the old emperor Augustus finally died after his four decades as master of the Western world, we can imagine Jesus, perhaps in the newly rebuilt city of Sepphoris, not far from Nazareth, being in the market square when the herald came in to read the proclamation. “Good news—Tiberius Caesar is emperor!” The herald might well be accompanied by a squad of soldiers, especially in potential trouble spots. Everybody knew then, as people who live under tyrannies today know equally well, that a change of ruler is a moment of vulnerability, a moment when a revolution could erupt. The reason Sepphoris had had to be rebuilt, perhaps with help from local carpenters such as Joseph and possibly even Jesus himself, was that it had been the center of a major anti- Roman revolt after the death of Herod the Great, and the Romans had smashed it to the ground. The proclamation of a new emperor, then, carried weight. It wasn’t a take-it-or-leave-it affair. It meant that Tiberius was now in charge—and that his local agents, with his backing, had to be obeyed. Or else. Celebration, Healing and Forgiveness So what about Jesus’s own kingdom announcement? His going around Galilee saying, like one of Caesar’s heralds, that God himself was now becoming king would be a poke in the eye for two people at least. In the north of the country, where Jesus was launching his campaign, there was Herod Antipas, one of the many sons of Herod the Great. Herod Antipas wasn’t particularly powerful, but, though the Romans hadn’t allowed him to keep his father’s title of “king of the Jews,” he was the nearest equivalent at the time.

• From Simply Jesus (2011)

  It’s like mustard seed, which starts small and grows to a great shrub for the birds to nest in; it’s like yeast mixed into dough, transforming the whole lump. And, in a solemn warning that resonates with many similar ones, Jesus warns his hearers that they may one day see Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and all the prophets—and people from east and west, from north and south!—sitting down to eat in the kingdom of God, while they themselves will be thrown out (Luke 13:18–30). The time of Jesus’s public career is the time of fulfillment, the time through which God’s new creation, his earth-as-in-heaven new reality, is being launched, up close and personal. But this means it is possible to miss the boat, to lose the one chance. That is the warning that goes with the note of fulfillment. A New Creation The theme of new creation that bubbles up from these stories emerges in our third category: matter. Reality. The physical world in all its complexity and glory. Here today’s readers of the New Testament have to take an even deeper breath than before. We have been schooled to believe, as a bedrock principle in our worldview, that the material world is relentlessly and reductively subject to the laws of physics, chemistry, and the more specific sciences of astronomy, biology, zoology, botany, and the rest. But as with geography (space) and chronology (time), so here also the Jewish worldview begs to differ. The world of matter, no less than those of space and time, was made by the creator God. It was made not only to display his beauty and power, but also as a vessel for his glory. Again and again the prophets and psalms hint at what we might conceivably have guessed from the story of creation itself: the material world was made to be filled with God’s glory. “The earth will be filled with the knowledge of the glory of YHWH , as the waters cover the sea” (Hab. 2:14). Suppose that isn’t just an extravagant way of speaking? Suppose it means what it says? What prevents us from thinking in these terms, I believe, is the long and often unrecognized triumph of the movement called Deism—a modern version of the ancient philosophy called Epicureanism. As long as we are thinking in that way, with God or the gods a long way away and earth trundling on entirely by its own steam, we will never glimpse that vision. As long as we are still in awe of the great Scottish philosopher David Hume, who declared that miracles don’t happen because they can’t happen, we will not only find it difficult to believe in the ancient Jewish worldview.

• From The Spiral Staircase: My Climb Out of Darkness (2004)

  But he slept on, while the alarm clock on the cluttered bedside table ticked loudly in the silence. Suddenly, Jacob reared up and gazed ahead, his eyes fixed and frightened and yet also, I sensed, unseeing. He began to make a strange keening sound in his throat and for a moment I felt pure panic. This was it: he was about to have an epileptic seizure. Snatching the rubber teething ring that Jenifer kept by her bed, I carefully inserted it into Jacob’s mouth, as instructed, and pushed him gently back on his side. Then we both waited. I was frightened: I had no idea what I would see or how I would cope. Jacob was a big child, taller and probably stronger than I. How could I prevent him from hurting himself? And what if he did not stop convulsing? If he had not regained consciousness within ten minutes, this would be a medical emergency. Status epilepticus, I had been told, could be fatal. But I was alone in the house and the nearest telephone was downstairs. Suddenly Jacob stopped breathing for what seemed like minutes but was probably only a few seconds. His face became distorted, and his eyes brutish and angry. The color drained from his skin, until it finally took on the mottled hue of a dirty stone. Then, after what seemed another long interval, his teeth locked on the teething ring and his body started to jerk convulsively. Please, let this stop, I prayed to nobody in particular, while it went on and on. Then, just as suddenly, the convulsions ceased and Jacob relaxed. The teething ring fell from his mouth, and he fell into a heavy, comatose sleep, his breathing rasping and ugly. The color gradually seeped back into his face. It was over. But I knew that there was always the danger of another seizure. If that happened, I must send for an ambulance immediately. Gradually, however, Jacob’s breathing returned to normal and he slid into a peaceful sleep. It seemed so unfair. Jacob had only recently started to have seizures. Did he not have enough to deal with? I wanted to blame somebody, and God was the obvious target, but somehow I could not get into this. Did I really believe that there was a Being up there somehow responsible for everything that happens on earth, including Jacob’s disabilities? No, I did not. Not only did it seem highly unlikely that there was an overseeing deity, supervising earthly events, apportioning trials and rewards according to some inscrutable program of his own, but the idea was also grotesque.

• From Wild (2012)

  “BEAR!” I yelped, and reached for my whistle the moment after he turned and ran, his thick rump rippling in the sun as my whistle peeped its murderously loud peep. It took me a few minutes to work up the courage to continue on. In addition to the reality that I now had to walk in the very direction in which the bear had run, my mind was reeling with the fact that he didn’t seem to be a black bear. I’d seen lots of black bears before; the woods of northern Minnesota were thick with them. Often, I’d startled them in this very manner while walking or running on the gravel road I grew up on. But those black bears were different from the one I’d just seen. They were black. Black as tar. Black as planting soil you bought in big bags from the garden store. This bear hadn’t been like any of them. Its coat was cinnamon brown, almost blond in places. I began to walk tentatively, attempting to make myself believe that surely the bear was not a grizzly or a brown bear—the black bear’s more predatory ursine cousins. Of course it was not. I knew it could not be. Those bears didn’t live in California any longer; they’d all been killed off years ago. And yet why was the bear I’d seen so very, very, indisputably … not black? I held my whistle for an hour, preparing to blow it while also singing songs so as not to take the refrigerator-sized whatever sort of bear it was by surprise should I come upon him again. I belted out my old fallback tunes—the ones I’d used when I’d become convinced the week before that a mountain lion was stalking me—singing Twinkle, twinkle, little star … and Country roads, take me home … in artificially brave tones, then letting the mix-tape radio station in my head take over so I simply sang fragments of songs I longed to hear. “A mulatto, an albino, a mosquito, my libido. YEAHH!” It was because of this very singing that I almost stepped on a rattlesnake, having failed to absorb that the insistent rattling that increased in volume was actually a rattle. And not just any old rattle, but one attached to the tail end of a serpent as thick as my forearm. “AH!” I shrieked when my eyes landed on the snake coiled up a few feet away from me. If I’d been able to jump, I would have. I jumped but my feet didn’t leave the trail. Instead, I scrambled away from the snake’s small blunt head, yowling in terror. It was a good ten minutes before I could work up the courage to step around it in a wide arc, my entire body quaking.

• From Another Country (1962)

  I’ve read his book, and I must say”—he smiled his cordial smile, everything about him was held within decent bounds—“it’s a very remarkable achievement.” For an instant, Cass said nothing. She sipped her drink and watched his face, which was as smooth as a black jellybean. At first, she was tempted to dismiss the face as empty. But it was not empty; it was only that it was desperately trying to empty itself, decently, inward; an impossibility leading to God alone could guess what backing up of bile. Deep, deep behind the carefully hooded and noncommittal eyes, the jungle howled and lunged and bright dead birds lay scattered. He was like his wife, only he would never be able to step out of his iron corsets. She felt very sorry for him, then she trembled; he hated her; and somehow his hatred was connected with her barely conscious wish to have the ginger-colored boy on the floor make love to her. He hated her—therefore?—far more than Ida could, and was far more at the mercy of his hatred; which, from ceaseless trampling down, yearned to go upward, blowing up the world. But he could not afford to know this. She said, smiling, with stiff lips, “Thank you very much.” Mrs. Barry said, “You must be very proud of your husband.” Cass and Ida glanced briefly at each other, and Cass smiled and said, “Well, I’ve always been proud of him, really; none of this comes as any surprise to me.” Ida laughed. “That’s the truth. Cass thinks Richard can do no wrong.” “Not even when she catches him at it,” Ellis grinned. Then, “We’ve been together quite a lot lately, and he often speaks of what a happy man he is.” For some reason, this frightened her. She wondered when, and how often, Richard and Ellis met and what Richard really had to say. She swallowed her fear. “Blind faith,” she said, inanely, “I’ve got it,” and thought, God. She looked toward the dance floor. But that particular couple had vanished. “Your husband’s a lucky man,” said Mr. Barry. He looked at his wife, and reached for her hand. “So am I.” “Mr. Barry’s just become a part of our publicity department,” Ellis said. “We’re awfully proud to have him on board. And I’m sorry if I sound like I’m bragging—hell, I’m not sorry, I am bragging—but I think it represents a tremendous breakthrough in our pussyfooting, hidebound industry.” He grinned, and Mr. Barry smiled. “And hidebound so soon!” “It was hidebound the instant it was born,” said Mr. Nash, “just as your cinema industry was hidebound, and for the same reason. It immediately became the property of the banks—part of what you people quaintly call free enterprise, though God knows there’s nothing free about it, and nothing even remotely enterprising about the lot of you.” Cass and Ida stared at him. “Where are you from?” Cass demanded.

• From The Spiral Staircase: My Climb Out of Darkness (2004)

  I had no leisure to think about this, because I was gripped suddenly with a quite overwhelming fear. When I looked around me, the room was wholly unfamiliar, as though I had never seen any of these objects before. The world had become uncanny and horrifying. I did not know who, what, or where I was, but was aware only of my extreme terror, a cold, sickening dread that made everything around me seem brown, rotten, and repulsive because it had no meaning. And yet, of course, it wasn’t like that at all. I am trying to describe an experience that has nothing whatever to do with words or ideas and is not amenable to the logic of grammar and neat sentences that put things into an order that makes sense. Maybe I could explain it better if I were a poet. But I am sure that this is the kind of horror that Hieronymus Bosch tried to convey in his paintings. It is as though a comforting veil of illusion has been ripped away and you see the world without form, without significance, purposeless, blind, trivial, spiteful, and ugly to the core. T. S. Eliot describes something similar in the third poem of Ash-Wednesday. He is climbing a spiral staircase, a mythical image of the ascent of the mind and heart to spiritual enlightenment. But “at the first turning of the second stair” he sees a shape twisted into the banister, surrounded by vaporous, fetid air, and he is forced to struggle with “the devil of the stairs.” He leaves these convoluted forms behind, and at the next turning finds only darkness: “Damp, jaggèd, like an old man’s mouth drivelling beyond repair, / Or the toothed gullet of an agèd shark,” the underbelly of consciousness that lurks in the basement of all our minds. When the horror recedes and the world resumes its normal shape, you cannot forget it. You have seen what is “really” there, the empty horror that exists when the consoling illusion of our mundane experience is stripped away, so you can never respond to the world in quite the same way again. The revelation remains embedded in your soul and affects everything you feel and everything you see. But when you try to express this vision in words, you inevitably distort it and find yourself writing purple, melodramatic prose. Better to be as simple as Coleridge, when he describes the recurrent terror of the ancient mariner after his ordeal, which makes him feel Like one, that on a lonesome road Doth walk in fear and dread, And having once turned round walks on, And turns no more his head; Because he knows, a frightful fiend Doth close behind him tread.

• From The Spiral Staircase: My Climb Out of Darkness (2004)

  He is climbing a spiral staircase, a mythical image of the ascent of the mind and heart to spiritual enlightenment. But “at the first turning of the second stair” he sees a shape twisted into the banister, surrounded by vaporous, fetid air, and he is forced to struggle with “the devil of the stairs.” He leaves these convoluted forms behind, and at the next turning finds only darkness: “Damp, jaggèd, like an old man’s mouth drivelling beyond repair, / Or the toothed gullet of an agèd shark,” the underbelly of consciousness that lurks in the basement of all our minds. When the horror recedes and the world resumes its normal shape, you cannot forget it. You have seen what is “really” there, the empty horror that exists when the consoling illusion of our mundane experience is stripped away, so you can never respond to the world in quite the same way again. The revelation remains embedded in your soul and affects everything you feel and everything you see. But when you try to express this vision in words, you inevitably distort it and find yourself writing purple, melodramatic prose. Better to be as simple as Coleridge, when he describes the recurrent terror of the ancient mariner after his ordeal, which makes him feel Like one, that on a lonesome road Doth walk in fear and dread, And having once turned round walks on, And turns no more his head; Because he knows, a frightful fiend Doth close behind him tread. The words are flat, and the image of the “frightful fiend” deliberately banal, but the simple description of a fear that is constantly beside you but just out of reach captures the sensation exactly. This was not an isolated experience. Some weeks later, while I was shopping in Cornmarket, the world seemed to have lost all connection with the fundamental laws that gave it meaning and coherence. It took on the grotesque aspect of a cartoon. The women ahead of me in the queue at Marks & Spencer looked as though they belonged in a primitive painting by Beryl Cook; their features became coarse and alien. Again there was that paralyzing fear. I had no idea where I was or what I was doing. When I reached the till, the woman sitting behind it seemed to be shouting at me, pointing to my purse. I stared back at her blankly, unable to understand what she was saying or what she wanted me to do. Somebody took my purse from me and opened it, but I could make nothing of the round metal discs inside. Dazed, I put down my wire basket and wandered out into the street. I don’t know how long it was before I found myself sitting outside Brasenose College in Radcliffe Square, contemplating the perfect dome of the Camera, an image of wholeness and harmony.

• From The Spiral Staircase: My Climb Out of Darkness (2004)

  Miss Armstrong, I’m afraid we’ve reached the end of the road.” The headmistress spoke pleasantly, and looked relaxed, but her words were ominous. It was a dark, windy summer day in 1981, and we were approaching the end of the school year. The head looked down at her hands for a moment, then turned back to me and smiled. “We’re going to have to let you go.” I stared back, feeling a cold clutch of fear. I had seen this coming. My doctor was trying new combinations of pills, and I had been off sick a great deal recently, as my brain and body struggled to adapt to the changes in medication. When my dosage had been increased by a half tablet, it had poisoned my system and become toxic, making me stagger round like a drunk, unable to walk across the room in a straight line. I had also had to ask for time off to see my consultant, and that had not gone down well at all. “Leave the school, you mean?” I asked stupidly, playing for time. Perhaps, if I could get my wits together, I could talk my way out of this—until next time. But one look at the headmistress’s face dashed these hopes before I had even begun to articulate them to myself. She was positively beaming with benevolence, her face a mask of kindly implacability. She nodded. “For a long time, it has been marvelous to have you here— worth it for all of us,” she said, leaning back in her chair and gazing reflectively into the middle distance. “You’ve given a lot to the school. You don’t need me to tell you how much we’ve appreciated your contribution and how we’ve all been enriched by your talents. And I hope we’ve given something to you too.” She waited, while I hastily forced a gesture of assent, unable as yet to smile. “And yes, we’ve accepted your illness as the price we’ve had to pay. But now the demand is becoming too heavy, you see, and it isn’t worth it to us anymore.” She leaned forward, her face suddenly grave. “We can carry a sick member of staff, but we cannot carry a sick head of department.” I was silenced. I could see the justice of her words. I probably wouldn’t have lasted nearly so long in any other school. But what in heaven’s name was I supposed to do now? I tried again: “Perhaps I could go back to being an ordinary member of staff?” I flinched at the thought of the drop in salary. With my heavy mortgage, I could scarcely manage on my far from munificent earnings as departmental head, but even a severely reduced income would be better than no income at all.