Gratitude

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 City of God

  Chapter 34. --Concerning the Kingdom of the Jews, Which Was Founded by the One and True God, and Preserved by Him as Long as They Remained in the True Religion. Therefore, that it might be known that these earthly good things, after which those pant who cannot imagine better things, remain in the power of the one God Himself, not of the many false gods whom the Romans have formerly believed worthy of worship, He multiplied His people in Egypt from being very few, and delivered them out of it by wonderful signs. Nor did their women invoke Lucina when their offspring was being incredibly multiplied; and that nation having increased incredibly, He Himself delivered, He Himself saved them from the hands of the Egyptians, who persecuted them, and wished to kill all their infants. Without the goddess Rumina they sucked; without Cunina they were cradled, without Educa and Potina they took food and drink; without all those puerile gods they were educated; without the nuptial gods they were married; without the worship of Priapus they had conjugal intercourse; without invocation of Neptune the divided sea opened up a way for them to pass over, and overwhelmed with its returning waves their enemies who pursued them. Neither did they consecrate any goddess Mannia when they received manna from heaven; nor, when the smitten rock poured forth water to them when they thirsted, did they worship Nymphs and Lymphs. Without the mad rites of Mars and Bellona they carried on war; and while, indeed, they did not conquer without victory, yet they did not hold it to be a goddess, but the gift of their God. Without Segetia they had harvests; without Bubona, oxen; honey without Mellona; apples without Pomona:and, in a word, everything for which the Romans thought they must supplicate so great a crowd of false gods, they received much more happily from the one true God. And if they had not sinned against Him with impious curiosity, which seduced them like magic arts, and drew them to strange gods and idols, and at last led them to kill Christ, their kingdom would have remained to them, and would have been, if not more spacious, yet more happy, than that of Rome. And now that they are dispersed through almost all lands and nations, it is through the providence of that one true God; that whereas the images, altars, groves, and temples of the false gods are everywhere overthrown, and their sacrifices prohibited, it may be shown from their books how this has been foretold by their prophets so long before; lest, perhaps, when they should be read in ours, they might seem to be invented by us. But now, reserving what is to follow for the following book, we must here set a bound to the prolixity of this one.

• From The City of God

  Chapter 31. --What Benefits God Gives to the Followers of the Truth to Enjoy Over and Above His General Bounty. For, besides such benefits as, according to this administration of nature of which we have made some mention, He lavishes on good and bad alike, we have from Him a great manifestation of great love, which belongs only to the good. For although we can never sufficiently give thanks to Him, that we are, that we live, that we behold heaven and earth, that we have mind and reason by which to seek after Him who made all these things, nevertheless, what hearts, what number of tongues, shall affirm that they are sufficient to render thanks to Him for this, that He hath not wholly departed from us, laden and overwhelmed with sins, averse to the contemplation of His light, and blinded by the love of darkness, that is, of iniquity, but hath sent to us His own Word, who is His only Son, that by His birth and suffering for us in the flesh, which He assumed, we might know how much God valued man, and that by that unique sacrifice we might be purified from all our sins, and that, love being shed abroad in our hearts by His Spirit, we might, having surmounted all difficulties, come into eternal rest, and the ineffable sweetness of the contemplation of Himself? Chapter 32. --That at No Time in the Past Was the Mystery of Christ's Redemption Awanting, But Was at All Times Declared, Though in Various Forms. This mystery of eternal life, even from the beginning of the human race, was, by certain signs and sacraments suitable to the times, announced through angels to those to whom it was meet. Then the Hebrew people was congregated into one republic, as it were, to perform this mystery; and in that republic was foretold, sometimes through men who understood what they spake, and sometimes through men who understood not, all that had transpired since the advent of Christ until now, and all that will transpire. This same nation, too, was afterwards dispersed through the nations, in order to testify to the scriptures in which eternal salvation in Christ had been declared. For not only the prophecies which are contained in words, nor only the precepts for the right conduct of life, which teach morals and piety, and are contained in the sacred writings,--not only these, but also the rites, priesthood, tabernacle or temple, altars, sacrifices, ceremonies, and whatever else belongs to that service which is due to God, and which in Greek is properly called latreia,--all these signified and fore-announced those things which we who believe in Jesus Christ unto eternal life believe to have been fulfilled, or behold in process of fulfillment, or confidently believe shall yet be fulfilled.

• From The City of God

  Chapter 8. --Of the Advantages and Disadvantages Which Often Indiscriminately Accrue to Good and Wicked Men. Will some one say, Why, then, was this divine compassion extended even to the ungodly and ungrateful? Why, but because it was the mercy of Him who daily "maketh His sun to rise on the evil and on the good, and sendeth rain on the just and on the unjust. " [48]For though some of these men, taking thought of this, repent of their wickedness and reform, some, as the apostle says, "despising the riches of His goodness and long-suffering, after their hardness and impenitent heart, treasure up unto themselves wrath against the day of wrath and revelation of the righteous judgment of God, who will render to every man according to his deeds:" [49] nevertheless does the patience of God still invite the wicked to repentance, even as the scourge of God educates the good to patience. And so, too, does the mercy of God embrace the good that it may cherish them, as the severity of God arrests the wicked to punish them. To the divine providence it has seemed good to prepare in the world to come for the righteous good things, which the unrighteous shall not enjoy; and for the wicked evil things, by which the good shall not be tormented. But as for the good things of this life, and its ills, God has willed that these should be common to both; that we might not too eagerly covet the things which wicked men are seen equally to enjoy, nor shrink with an unseemly fear from the ills which even good men often suffer.

• From House of Holes: A Book of Raunch (2011)

  “Stuff me full of your hot substance, oh mighty king, for I am Unique,” the girl would say, as she knelt over him on the throne, planting her hands on his enormous chest. And at the moment of their perfect union, King Bohuslav would seize his black braided beard and hold it to her mouth, whereupon she would clamp down on it to stifle her cries. Thus the memory of innumerable couplings entered his beard. This went on for almost ten years. Bohu’s beard by now had a huge double braid and looked like a loaf of pumpernickel challah. It was said by some in the court that if you held your ear to his beard, you could hear the pleasure cries of a thousand women. One night, though, a Unique of uncommon intelligence was lacing up the penis sandal. King Bohuslav groped for her breast and tried to kiss her, but suddenly she pulled out a large pair of shears and lopped off his beard with one powerful snip. King Bohuslav let out an agonized bellow and lost consciousness. The girl ran out the side door and hid carefully for a week in the hills with a friend. Meanwhile the prince had sent guardsmen and black dogs out in search of his braided beard. “How can we hide it?” asked the girl of her friend. The friend knew the arts of pharmacy, and the two young women boiled the beard until it dissolved. Then they skimmed off the purple scum and buried it, and they purified and distilled the barbaric essence, mixing it with the liqueurs of fennel and saps of wild spinach, making of this mixture an uncommonly powerful aphrodisiac. The two women fled to Paris and grew wealthy selling Prince Bohu’s beardwater, under the name Gouttelettes de Bonheur, or Droplets of Happiness. Even much diluted, the liquid had a startling effect on anyone, male or female, who tasted it. The prince, meanwhile, took the loss of his beard as a warning. He ended his dalliance with Uniques and built a large hospital so that his wife wouldn’t go away on Thursdays. Seventeen of his penis sandals are on view in the museum of the House of Holes. [image "decoration" file=image_rsrc2SW.jpg] Rhumpa Makes Her Come Video [image "decoration" file=image_rsrc2SX.jpg] Rhumpa emerged from her shower in a hotel bathrobe, with her hair in a towel turban. Daggett had arranged fourteen bras on the bed, sorted neatly by color. “These are all roughly your size, I believe,” he said primly. She looked at them with a secret smile. “They’re all very nice,” she said. “Does one in particular call out?” She shook her head no.

• From The City of God

  For if he had only said, without mentioning the cause, that his forefathers had discovered the art of making gods, it would have been our duty, if we paid any regard to what is right and pious, to consider and to see that they could never have attained to this art if they had not erred from the truth, if they had believed those things which are worthy of God, if they had attended to divine worship and service. However, if we alone should say that the causes of this art were to be found in the great error and incredulity of men, and aversion of the mind erring from and unfaithful to divine religion, the impudence of those who resist the truth were in some way to be borne with; but when he who admires in man, above all other things, this power which it has been granted him to practise, and sorrows because a time is coming when all those figments of gods invented by men shall even be commanded by the laws to be taken away,--when even this man confesses nevertheless, and explains the causes which led to the discovery of this art, saying that their ancestors, through great error and incredulity, and through not attending to the worship and service of the gods, invented this art of making gods,--what ought we to say, or rather to do, but to give to the Lord our God all the thanks we are able, because He has taken away those things by causes the contrary of those which led to their institution? For that which the prevalence of error instituted, the way of truth took away; that which incredulity instituted, faith took away; that which aversion from divine worship and service instituted, conversion to the one true and holy God took away. Nor was this the case only in Egypt, for which country alone the spirit of the demons lamented in Hermes, but in all the earth, which sings to the Lord a new song, [327] as the truly holy and truly prophetic Scriptures have predicted, in which it is written, "Sing unto the Lord a new song; sing unto the Lord, all the earth. "For the title of this psalm is, "When the house was built after the captivity. "For a house is being built to the Lord in all the earth, even the city of God, which is the holy Church, after that captivity in which demons held captive those men who, through faith in God, became living stones in the house. For although man made gods, it did not follow that he who made them was not held captive by them, when, by worshipping them, he was drawn into fellowship with them,--into the fellowship not of stolid idols, but of cunning demons; for what are idols but what they are represented to be in the same scriptures, "They have eyes, but they do not see," [328] and, though artistically fashioned, are still without life and sensation? But unclean spirits, associated through that wicked art with these same idols, have miserably taken captive the souls of their worshippers, by bringing them down into fellowship with themselves. Whence the apostle says, "We know that an idol is nothing, but those things which the Gentiles sacrifice they sacrifice to demons, and not to God; and I would not ye should have fellowship with demons. " [329] After this captivity, therefore, in which men were held by malign demons, the house of God is being built in all the earth; whence the title of that psalm in which it is said, "Sing unto the Lord a new song; sing unto the Lord, all the earth. Sing unto the Lord, bless His name; declare well His salvation from day to day. Declare His glory among the nations, among all people His wonderful things. For great is the Lord, and much to be praised:He is terrible above all gods. For all the gods of the nations are demons:but the Lord made the heavens. " [330]

• From Augustine: A New Biography (2005)

  For what am I trying to say, Master, except that I don’t know how I got here, here in this mortal life or living death? I don’t know the answer to that. The kindness of your pity comforted me, as I heard later from the parents of my flesh, the ones from whom and in whom you gave me my earthly shape. The kindness of human milk comforted me and it wasn’t my mother or my nurses who filled their breasts by themselves, but you, who through them gave me the nourishment meant for infants, according to the way you have arranged the world and set out its riches right down to the foundation of things.111 This is a very abstract and philosophical infancy narrative, continuing in a slightly more matter-of-fact tone for most of the first book. By then, the reader is conditioned to be less surprised when the life-telling narrative continues in the second book. (It’s another question how the first reader, unsuspecting, dealt with the ending of the narrative in the ninth book with, quite evidently, a mass of pages left to read.112) That the narrative is spotty and overembroidered with meditation and reflection should be a sign, often missed, that narrative isn’t the whole purpose. So what is going on? Here is one line of interpretation that can be stoutly defended and is probably the most historically grounded reading of what the text is in its complexity. It may disorient. In the beginning, god was triple: not three gods, but three somethings in one god. Small interruption: Some of us may be familiar with speaking of the divine “three persons,” but it’s worth knowing that when that word “person” was applied to the “three-ishness” of god, it had a long history that didn’t have much to do with our notion of “person.” The word originally meant “mask,” the thing you wore in a drama (probably hiding a speaking tube to help you project your voice) to represent the character you weren’t, but few now would try to represent Christian theology, as being about the three masks of god or the three stage roles he plays, although it might be a fresh approach to a difficult subject. So, three somethings constituted Augustine’s god. Father, Son, and Spirit are the commonest ways of naming the somethings, and once they are named in this way, they spawn a whole subsidiary pattern of triplets for Augustine. Each person has its own way of being: the father is, the son knows, and the spirit loves. Augustine loves to play with triplets, not least because for him humankind exists in the image and likeness of god, and whatever is three-ish about god is accordingly three-ish about humankind, with being, knowing, and loving similarly at the core of human reality.

• From Vision Quest (1979)

  When I was real young Mom would dress me in little suits with hats and short pants and take me down to show me off. Then when I got older I’d take the bus by myself. “Sorry about putting you through all that,” Dad said to Carla. “I’m sorry about the trouble I’ve caused you,” she replied. “And thanks very much for getting my money back.” “That’s all right,” Dad said. “That’s all right.” Dad ordered breakfast, which he eats any time of the day or night, and Carla ordered a burger. I drank water and sucked the ice. It was only a couple weeks before this that I’d decided to drop to 147 for my last high school wrestling season. Normally I wouldn’t have begun dieting until September to reach my usual 154, but I was trying to be as slow and gentle with my body as I could so that in December, when the time came to coax out those seven extra pounds, I’d have its loyalty. I weighed 176 then. “You can stay with us if you want,” Dad said. “Sure,” I said. “We’ve got plenty of room.” “We’ll find you a decent car,” Dad said. “Sure,” I said. “For a hundred and forty bucks we can find you a car that’ll get you anywhere you want to go.” “That’s very, very kind of you,” replied Carla. Mom told Dad Carla was dirty. Carla’s jeans were a little mungy, but she was clean. She washed her panties in the sink in the basement bathroom and hung them from the shower-curtain rod. A little spot of blood shown faintly. I figured she was having her period. She rinsed the sink after she brushed her teeth. Dad gave Carla my bedroom. I could have slept on the davenport in our other basement room, but Mom wanted me to sleep upstairs. Since she and Dad slept in the two upstairs bedrooms, I would have had to sleep on the davenport in the living room. I didn’t feel like doing that, so I moved out to the backyard. I slept in the carport when it rained. I was working mostly nights, so Mom and Dad and I didn’t see each other very often for the rest of the summer. They were usually asleep when I got home and looked in their rooms to tell them good night and turn off their TVs. And I was usually asleep when they came to tell me good-bye on their way to work in the morning. Dad would come about seven thirty. His footsteps were louder across the cement and he never came all the way to my cot. Sometimes his footsteps would wake me and sometimes it would be his voice from the corner of the garage saying, “So long, Son. Be careful on that goddamn motorcycle.” An hour later I’d wake to the tap of Mom’s high heels or to her hand messing with my hair and her voice saying, “Bye, sweetie.

• From Lit: A Memoir (2009)

  It pains me how visible my shakiness is, but it touches me also. (Such small kindnesses—so commonplace in my life now—dismantled me then.) I’ve spent so long hiding how I really feel; now that my brassy attitude’s stripped off, I feel naked as a frog. She tells Dev to put in the video we’ve just picked up. I tell her the guys in the front room are in the middle of kickboxing, and Deb says, They won’t mind. From her doorway, she announces to the two guys on the sofa that the afternoon movie is a cartoon of a Rudyard Kipling story from India about a mongoose who has to fight a cobra. Picture the blond tyke on the couch with a paper plate holding potato chips in his lap. He’s flanked by two muscled and tattooed guys named Sam and Joe. (I’ll later learn that black-haired, wasp-waisted Sam was a former Mob henchman who once trafficked in pallets of stolen government cheese.) At a nearby table, I ask Deb how she came back from the head injury. Looking at her, I figure rich parents bailed her out. Both my parents had just passed, she says, about a year apart, and I was an only child. Then my doctor husband divorced me the second I woke up. Told she’d never walk again, by month three, she wowed the once skeptical staff by using a brace and a cane to perambulate around. And when I came to this house… As a resident? You were checked in here? Yeah, she says, from a public detox, because all my insurance had run out. I got here still not quite mobile, and my counselor told me I had one day to feel sorry for myself, then I had to get to work. I started praying all the time, took a clerical job at a bookstore. Soon as I had enough money, I bought a broken-down Mustang convertible, hiring guys in the house to rebuild it in bits and pieces. The doctors had told me I’d never use my right hand again, and I knew the stick shift would loosen my arm up. I’m staring at her as if for the first time, for it would never occur to me that somebody as well turned out as Deb had suffered trials that dwarf my own. Part of me clings to the idea that I am the most disadvantaged person trying to get sober—a joke, given that I’m thin and white and employed, HIV-negative, with insurance and reasonably straight teeth. Before I judge somebody or indulge a groundless fear, Joan says I’m supposed to ask myself: What is your source of information? If the answer is—as it usually is— I thought it up , I should dismiss the idea. Deb sips her coffee as I say, A head injury and a divorce—what an excuse to drink. The head injury convinced me I had to get sober or die, she says.

• From Lit: A Memoir (2009)

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS From conception to forward, Courtney Hodell practiced her extraordinary midwifery, birthing this book from my obstreperous psyche. Without her and Jennifer Barth of HarperCollins and my agent, Amanda Urban, I’d no doubt still be writhing on the delivery table. My sister, Lecia Scaglione, and her husband, Tom, helped me through innumerable hard stretches; so did Rodney Crowell, Don DeLillo, Dan Halpern, Robert Hass, Brooks Haxton, Terrance Hayes, Brenda Hillman, Ed Hirsch, Patti Macmillan, Mark and Lili Reinisch, George Saunders, Case Scaglione, J. W. Schenck, Mark Scher, Kent Scott, and Donna Zeiser. My consigliore and champion, rabbi and homeboy, was and is Michael Meyer. Readers vetting pages to keep me honest include my ever-patient family plus Joan Alway, Mark Costello, Doonie, Deborah Greenwald, John Holohan, Deb Larson, Thomas Lux, Patti Macmillan, and Tobias Wolff. Special thanks to Elizabeth Auchincloss and Patricia Allen. Spiritual guidance came from most of the above as well as Uwen Akpan, S.J.; Father Joseph Kane; Sister Marisse May; and Matthew Roche, S.J. Writers granting the right to excerpt their lit’rary works gratis include Don DeLillo, Nick Flynn, Louise Glück, Robert Hass, Brooks Haxton, Terrance Hayes, Sebastian Matthews, Heather McHugh, George Saunders, Charles Simic, Chris Smither, Franz Wright, and Dean Young. Other permissions were valiantly rustled up by Chris Robinson and Jason Sack.

• From Jesus and the Disinherited (1949)

  To still others he is a man who found the answer to life’s riddle, and out of a profound gratitude he becomes the Man most worthy of honor and praise. For such his answer becomes humanity’s answer and his life the common claim. In him the miracle of the working paper is writ large, for what he did all men may do. Thus interpreted, he belongs to no age, no race, no creed. When men look into his face, they see etched the glory of their own possibilities, and their hearts whisper, “Thank you and thank God!” About the AuthorsHOWARD THURMAN (1899–1981) was hailed by Life magazine as one of the great preachers of the twentieth century. He was a nationally recognized theologian, distinguished religious leader, and prolific author whose radical nonviolent philosophy played a pivotal role in shaping the civil rights movement. As the first black dean of Boston University’s Marsh Chapel, he became a spiritual adviser to Martin Luther King Jr. He wrote over twenty published books, such as Meditations of the Heart, With Head and Heart: The Autobiography of Howard Thurman, and Disciplines of the Spirit. REV . DR . KELLY BROWN DOUGLAS is an African American Episcopal priest, a womanist theologian, and the inaugural dean of the Episcopal Divinity School at union Theological Seminary. She is also the Canon Theologian at the Washington National Cathedral. She is the recipient of the Anna Julia Haywood Cooper Award, given by the Union of Black Episcopalians, in honor of her leadership and development in womanist theology in African American Christian faith. She is the author of Resurrection Hope, The Black Christ, Sexuality and the Black Church, What’s Faith Got to Do with It? Black Bodies/Christian Souls, Black Bodies and the Black Church: A Blues Slant, and Stand Your Ground: Black Bodies and the Justice of God. VINCENT HARDING (1931–2014) was an African American historian and a scholar who authored There Is a River: The Black Struggle for Freedom in America and Hope and History: Why We Must Share the Story of the Movement. A social activist, he was perhaps best known for his work with and writings about Martin Luther King Jr., whom Harding knew personally. Beacon Press Boston, Massachusetts www.beacon.org Beacon Press books are published under the auspices of the Unitarian Universalist Association of Congregations. © 1976 Howard Thurman Foreword © 1996 by Beacon Press Foreword © 2022 by Kelly Brown Douglas All rights reserved Printed in the United States of America First published 1949 by Abingdon Press 25 24 23 22 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Thurman, Howard, 1900–1981, author. Title: Jesus and the disinherited / Howard Thurman; forewords by Vincent Harding and Kelly Brown Douglas. Description: Boston : Beacon Press, 2022. | Includes bibliographical references. Identifiers: LCCN 2021028794 | ISBN 9780807024034 (hardcover) Subjects: LCSH: Jesus Christ—Teachings. | Sociology, Biblical. Classification: LCC BS2417.S7 T5 2022 | DDC 261—dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021028794

• From Martin Luther (2016)

  However, Luther never saw him as a rival but treated the younger, physically more slight and frail man as someone who needed to be looked after. As he reminisced later in life, Luther cast his former confessor in a purely positive light. “I got everything from Staupitz,” he would say; “Staupitz gave me the occasionem ”—an ambivalent word that can mean chance, opportunity, or reason. 22 He seems to have both recognized that Staupitz’s patronage had given him a public platform, and acknowledged his intellectual and emotional debt to him. By that time Luther himself had become a father, and his own father had died. Perhaps the greatest—albeit indirect—tribute Luther paid to Staupitz was that although he rejected all sacraments except baptism and Communion as lacking biblical foundation, he remained hesitant about what place to accord confession and penance in Christian life, which was, after all, the issue over which the Reformation had begun. Moreover, Luther continued to make use of private confession, retaining his colleague Johannes Bugenhagen as his confessor. Regarding it as a powerful spiritual solace, Luther received public absolution from the pastor at Eisleben shortly before he died. 23 — I N the months following the Leipzig Debate, the tone of polemic became increasingly strident. It was not just the litany of hatred and bile that Luther now poured out against Eck, accusing him of vainglory and envy at every opportunity. The Catholic party began to become more organized. Alongside Eck there were attacks on Luther by the Italian Dominicans Sylvester Prierias and Ambrosius Catharinus, and the theologian and secretary to Duke Georg, Hieronymus Emser. 24 Responding now became part of Luther’s daily routine, and his letters constantly discussed which to dignify with a personal response and where a reply could be delegated. But Luther found it difficult to let anything go: Having decided that he could let his famulus, or servant-cum-secretary, Johann Lonicer reply to Augustin von Alveld, a Franciscan from Leipzig, he could not resist penning one in German when Alveld had his polemic published in the vernacular. 25 The attacks became ever more extreme and personal. Alveld sent a virtual letter of feud, refusing to dignify Luther with his title of doctor and accusing him of acting out of vanity “in a womanly manner.” 26 Luther’s opponents attacked his parentage, and Luther quipped that they would soon be saying that he had a wife and children in Bohemia—the birthplace of the Hussite heresy—only to find himself soon put on the defensive, insisting in a letter to Spalatin that his relations in Eisenach would hardly have claimed him as their “nephew,” “uncle,” or “cousin,” “had they known that my father and my mother were Bohemians or other such people, rather than those born in their midst.”

• From Martin Luther (2016)

  Luther would have spent time with his confessor both in Erfurt and Wittenberg; they would also have met on their travels across the region. Luther claimed, “I got everything from Staupitz,” 55 and, after his death, he recalled his former mentor as a good and comforting presence. In 1518, in the letter he sent with his explanations of the Ninety-five Theses to Staupitz, he reminded him of a conversation about “true repentance” that had pierced him like an arrow, in which the older man had said that it must begin “with the love of God and righteousness.” Indeed, in a letter to Elector Johann Friedrich in 1545, he wrote of his debt to his confessor, saying that he must praise him “if I don’t want to be a damned, ungrateful papist ass,” because he was “my father in this teaching who gave birth to me in Christ.” 56 Yet rather like his relationship with Johannes Braun in Eisenach, which also grew cold, Luther seems often to have projected qualities onto Staupitz that were not actually there, and while he later recalled Staupitz’s sayings in his table talk and writings, he often repeated the same remarks, as if his image of Staupitz had become ossified. Like Braun before him, Staupitz was another paternal figure whom Luther outgrew. In both theology and temperament the two men were fundamentally different. Luther came to insist on the primacy of Scripture as the source of all authority. Although Staupitz draws, like Luther, on Paul, he did not make such a radical claim and repeatedly cited St. Augustine and other Church Fathers. 57 Like Luther, he emphasized the sinful nature of human beings and argued that our works can never earn us salvation; he too criticized indulgences. But he did not have much to say about faith as a gift from God: His emphasis is more on the sinfulness of human beings than it is on God’s gift of grace or on the Bible. He focused on the emotional disposition of the believer, who has to be encouraged to leave attachments to this world behind. Luther, although highly attuned to his own religious emotions, did not believe that attaining a particular emotional state was spiritually important. Staupitz liked to talk about the “sweetness” of God, the “sweet Savior,” the “sweet bliss-maker,” the “sweet word,” and the “continuous sweetness” of the mystical union of the soul with Christ. 58 This had its darker side.

• From Martin Luther (2016)

  57 With Cajetan comprehensively defeated, or so it appeared to Luther, and with the Elector on his side, Luther seemed to be immune from attack, at least for the moment. * “Obelisks” were printers’ markers for errors; “asterisks” for things to be added. The titles were in-jokes by humanists who knew all about the new technology of print. A LL THE RESOURCES of the Saxon electoral court now turned to having Luther’s case heard by the emperor rather than the matter being referred to Rome. The emperor Charles V had in fact offered to hold a hearing in November 1520, before the end of the sixty-day deadline that was stipulated by the bull, but countermanded his order the following month when the papal representative objected. 1 In their correspondence with the imperial court, Friedrich and his advisors argued that Luther should not be condemned “unless he were heard first…so that the truth…could be brought to light.” If he were shown to err “by Holy Scripture,” Luther would “humbly allow himself to be instructed,” they assured Charles. As their formula of complaint put it, Luther was “unheard and undefeated by Holy Scripture”—and it made brilliant propaganda. 2 The Elector’s men were successful in securing a hearing: On March 6 the emperor instructed Luther to appear before him at Worms and gave him a safe conduct. 3 Luther thanked the Elector for his efforts, but he was well aware that he owed his protection largely to Spalatin and others in the Saxon court; it was his friendship with Spalatin that probably saved him. As well as being the Elector’s chaplain and librarian, Spalatin had at first acted as tutor to Friedrich’s nephew, the future Elector Johann Friedrich, and he traveled incessantly with Friedrich from one Saxon castle to another, from Altenburg, to Torgau, to Wittenberg. 4 As Friedrich’s advisor, Spalatin was in an extraordinarily powerful position, summarizing theological arguments for the Elector and suggesting what action to take. Moreover, his influence over the education of the future Elector and the progeny of other princely lines probably helped ensure that they would in time become not only personal supporters of Luther but firm advocates of the Reformation. 5 Indeed, from about 1520, the young Duke Johann Friedrich asked Luther for advice on spiritual matters while Luther, for his part, dedicated some of his most important writings to him. 6 However, Spalatin also tried to rein Luther in, commenting time and again that his printed pamphlets were too aggressive, and trying to prevent him from publishing them or at least to modify his tone. For his part, Luther teased Spalatin by calling him “the courtier,” and sent one of his trusted students, Franz Günter, to be educated by him in the affairs of the court. 7 On the face of it, the two men were unlikely friends.

• From Martin Luther (2016)

  But the vehemence with which Luther would later speak out against mendicancy may suggest how uncomfortable he found it. Around 1520 he wrote to a friend that he would rather learn a trade than support himself by begging. Condemning monasticism around the same time, he complained that the monks’ “running about the country has never done any good and never will do any good. My advice is to join together ten of these [monastic] houses or as many as need be, and make them a single institution for which adequate provision is made so that begging will not be necessary.” 25 For four years, Luther lived in his mother’s world, staying in the house of the Schalbe family, well-respected relatives of his mother. Heinrich Schalbe was a town councilor and served as mayor in 1495 and 1499. 26 The family lived a Franciscan life of modesty and good works, and were devoted to a small monastery run by the Minorites, which had originally formed part of an institution founded by St. Elisabeth herself. 27 This piety deeply influenced Luther, and the family remained so important to him that when he came to celebrate his first Mass in 1507, he wanted to invite them to come to the celebration; he was deterred only by the costs he knew it would impose on them. Little is known about Luther’s schooling in Eisenach. The school buildings were probably not very impressive, for they were demolished in 1507. 28 One story, reported by Luther’s doctor and early biographer Matthäus Ratzeberger and perhaps apocryphal, conveys the atmosphere of respect for students and learning: The rector used to doff his cap to his pupils and made all the teachers do the same, telling them that they might well be addressing a future mayor, chancellor, learned doctor, or regent. 29 This story of respect is far removed from the beatings Luther recalled from his early years, and it may be that the school allowed the young lad to blossom intellectually. Having mastered the elements of Latin in Mansfeld, he now turned his attention to literature, and his immersion in the classics hugely affected his writing style. He began to love poetry and as he later reminisced, the contemporary poet Baptista Mantuanus was the first he read. Probably at this time, if not earlier, he also read Ovid’s Metamorphoses and Aesop’s fables. 30 Luther constructed a lasting relationship with one of his teachers, Wigand Guldenäpf, and sent him a copy of one of his sermons fifteen years after he had left the school. Another older man, Johannes Braun, vicar at St. Mary’s, became a significant friend as well. Braun, who had matriculated at the University of Erfurt in 1470, had close connections with St.

• From A Greek-English Lexicon (Liddell-Scott) (1957)

  σωτήρ ἤρος, ὃ, voc. σῶτερ (v. infr. I. 2): poét. σαωτήρ Simon. 128, Call. Del. 166: a voc. σωτῆρε occurs in C. I. 1667: (cw lw). A sa- viour, deliverer, preserver, c. gen. subjecti, σ. ἀνθρώπων, νηῶν h. Hom. 21. 5., 33.6; τῆς Ἑλλάδος Hdt. 7. 139; ἑστίας πατρός Aesch. Cho. 264; but also c. gen. objecti, σ. νόσου, κακῶν, βλάβης a preserver from disease, ills, hurt, Soph. O. T. 304, Eur. Med. 360, Heracl. 640; cf. Pors. praef. Hec. p. xxxii; σ. τῇ πόλει καὶ νῷν φανείς Ar. Eq. 1493 σ. δόμοις Id. Nub. 1161. 2. esp. of Ζεὺς Σωτήρ, Pind. O. 5. 40, Fr. 6. 5, Trag., etc.; to whom persons after a safe voyage addressed their vows, Donalds. Pind. O. 8. 20 (27); to Ζεὺς Σωτήρ the third cup of wine was dedicated, τρίτον Σωτῆρι σπένδειν Pind. I. 6 (5). 11; τρίτην Διὸς Σωτῆρος εὐκταίαν λίβα Id. Fr. 52; Zed σῶτερ Ar. Thesm. 1009, Dinarch. 94. 45; ὦ Ζεῦ σῶτερ Philem. S7par. 1. 21, Menand. Incert. 3. 2:—to drink this cup became a symbol of good luck, and the third time came to mean the lucky time, Aesch. Cho. 1073; whence the proverb τὸ τρίτον τῷ σωτῆρι the third (i. e. the lucky) time, Plat. Rep. 583 B, Phileb. 66 D, Charm. 167 A; and Ζεύς was himself called τρίτος, Παλλάδος καὶ Λοξίου ἕκατι καὶ Tod πάντα κραίνοντος τρίτου Aesch. Eum. 760, cf. Supp. 26, and v. τριτόσπονδος ;—also of | other gods, as of Apollo, Id. Ag. 512, etc.; of Hermes, Id. Cho. 2; of Asclepios, C. 1. 1222, 1755, al.; of the Dioscuri, Ib. 489, 1261, al.; of Hercules, Ib. 58776; etc.;—even with fem. deities, Τύχη σωτήρ, for σώτειρα, Aesch. Ag. 664. Theb. 826 (Dind.), Soph. O. T. 81; ᾿Αφροδίτῃ .. σωτῆρι C. 1. 5954 ;—then, generally, of guardian or tutelary gods, Hdt. 8. 138, Aesch. Supp. 982, Soph. Ph. 738; τοῖς ἀποτροπαίοις καὶ σωτῆρσι Xen. Hell. 3. 3, 4. ΘΕ in) ΝΣ ΤΣ: πα Eccl., the Saviour. II. in Poets, as an Adj., σ. ναὸς πρότονος Aesch. Ag. 897, cf. Pind. Fr. 132; and with a fem. noun, γονῆς σω- τῆρος (as Herm. for γυνή) Aesch. Theb. 225; σωτῆρες τιμαΐ the office or prerogative of saving, of the Dioscuri, Eur. El. 993.

• From A Greek-English Lexicon (Liddell-Scott) (1957)

  him, Plut. Demosth. 7, N. T. :— x. ὀφείλειν to owe gratitude, be be- holden, Soph. Ant. 331, Xen. Cyr. 3. 2, 30; προσοφείλειν Dem. 37. 8 :— οὐδεμία x. ἐφαίνετο πρός τινος Hdt. 5. go :---χάριν or χάριτα κατατίθε- σθαί τινι to lay up ἃ store of gratitude in a person’s heart, i.e. earn his thanks, 1d, 6, 41., 7.178, Antipho 136. 27, Thuc. 1.33; χάριν λαμβά- νειν τινός to receive thanks from one, Soph. O. T. 1004, etc. ; ἀπολαμβά- νειν παρά twos Lys. 160. 35; τινός for a thing, Xen. Mem. 2. 2, 5, Aeschin. 28. 22 ; διπλῆν ἐξ ἐμοῦ κτήσει χάριν Soph. Ph. 1370; κἀπ᾽ ἐμοῦ κτήσει x. Id. Tr. 471; so, X. κομίσασθαι Thue. 3.58; τυχεῖν χάρ- eros Lycurg. 167. 8; x. ἀπέχειν Anth. P. 7. 458, etc. ;—though all these run into signf. 111 :—xapis [ἐστί] τινι ὅτι .. , as, χάρις τοῖς θεοῖς bre .. , thank the gods that .. , Xen. An. 3. 3, 14, Cyr. 7.5, 72; x. τινί twos Luc. Tim. 36; τινὲ ὑπέρ τινος Plut. 2. 1122 A. 3. favour, influence, as opp. to force, χάριτι πλεῖον ἢ φόβῳ Thuc. 1. 9; opp. to ἀπειλῇ, Plut. Sull. 38. III. in concrete sense, a favour whether done or returned, a grace, kindness, boon, χάριν φέρειν τινί to confer a favour on one, do something agreeable to him, to please or humour one, do a thing ¢o oblige him, like ἦρα φέρειν τινί, Il. 5. 211, 874., 9. 613, Od. 5. 307, Pind., Att.; in Att., also, χάριν θέσθαι τινί (never θεῖναι. Elmsl. Bacch. 720), Hdt. 9. 60, 107, Aesch. Pr. 782, Eur. Hec, 1211, etc. ; προσθέσθαι Soph. O. C. 767; x. ὑπουργεῖν τινι Aesch. Pr. 635 ; παρασχεῖν Soph. O. C. 1183 ; πράσσειν Eur. Ion 36, 896 ; δρᾶν Thuc. 2. 40; ἀνύεσθαι Soph. Tr. 996; νέμειν Id. Aj. 1371; x. δοῦναί τινι Aesch, Pr. 822, Soph. O. C. 1489; but x. δοῦναί τινι, also, = χαρίζεσθαι (1. 2), to indulge, humour, ὀργῇ Ib. 855 ; γαστρί Cratin. Incert. 143 ; X- χαρίζεσθαι, v. χαρίζομαι 1. I :—x. ἀνθυπουργεῖν to return a favour, Soph. Fr. 313; τίνειν Aesch. Pr. 985, Ag. 822; ἐκτίνειν Eur. Or. 453, Plat., etc.; x. ἀποδιδόναι τινός Plat. Rep. 338 B; ἀντί τινος Xen. Ages. 2, 29; ὑπέρ τινος Isocr. 52 B; also, τὰς χάριτας ἀποδ. τινός Lys. 180. 8, εἴς. ; χάριτας ἀντιδιδόναι Thuc. 3. 63; opp. to χάριν ἀπαιτεῖν to ask the repayment of a grace or boon, Eur. Hec. 276, cf. Dem. 504. 22, Lycurg. 167. 30; ἐξαιτεῖσθαι Soph. O. C. 586:—y. ἀποστερεῖν to withhold a return for what one has received, Plat. Gorg. 5200 ; also, ἀπ. τινὰ χάριτος Id. Hipp. Mi. 372 C:—rds αὑτοῦ x. εἰς τοὺς φίλους the favours one has done them, Id. Legg. 729 Ὁ :—in Trag., x. ἄχαρις a thankless favour, one which meets, or deserves no thanks, Aesch. Pr. 545, Cho. 42, cf. Eur. Phoen. 1757. 2.

• From The Things They Carried (1990)

  "Well, to be honest," he said, "when you first showed up here, I wondered about all that. The aroma, I mean. Smelled like you was awful damned fond of pork chops." The old man almost smiled. He made a snuffling sound, then sat down with a pencil and a piece of paper. "So what'd this crud job pay? Ten bucks an hour? Fifteen?" "Less." Elroy shook his head. "Let's make it fifteen. You put in twenty-five hours here, easy. That's three hundred seventy-five bucks total wages. We subtract the two hundred sixty for food and lodging, I still owe you a hundred and fifteen." He took four fifties out of his shirt pocket and laid them on the table. "Call it even," he said. "No." "Pick it up. Get yourself a haircut." The money lay on the table for the rest of the evening. It was still there when I went back to my cabin. In the morning, though, I found an envelope tacked to my door. Inside were the four fifties and a two-word note that said EMERGENCY FUND. The man knew. 3K OK ok Looking back after twenty years, I sometimes wonder if the events of that summer didn't happen in some other dimension, a place where your life exists before you've lived it, and where it goes afterward. None of it ever seemed real. During my time at the Tip Top Lodge I had the feeling that I'd slipped out of my own skin, hovering a few feet away while some poor yo- yo with my name and face tried to make his way toward a future he didn't understand and didn't want. Even now I can see myself as I was then. It's like watching an old home movie: I'm young and tan and fit. I've got hair— lots of it. I don't smoke or drink. I'm wearing faded blue jeans and a white polo shirt. I can see myself sitting on Elroy Berdahl's dock near dusk one evening, the sky a bright shimmering pink, and I'm finishing up a letter to my parents that tells what I'm about to do and why I'm doing it and how sorry I am that I'd never found the courage to talk to them about it. I ask them not to be angry. I try to explain some of my feelings, but there aren't enough words, and so I just say that it's a thing that has to be done. At the end of the letter I talk about the vacations we used to take up in this north country, at a place called Whitefish Lake, and how the scenery here reminds me of those good times. I tell them I'm fine. I tell them I'll write again from Winnipeg or Montreal or wherever I end up.

• From Lit: A Memoir (2009)

  Most of my putative friends— writers and academics and drinking buddies—not at all. Even Joe, who’s landed back in the joint on an old car-theft charge, sends me daily missives using stamps he can ill afford. Somebody has given me a copy of a prayer attributed to St. Francis, and beginning that day, I set my dull mind to memorizing it. The prayer—which Jack of the Tinfoil Helmet first said that night going home from the meeting—now rivers through, sometimes dozens of times a day: Lord, make me an instrument of your peace. Where there is hatred, let me sow love...The first time I said it, I bridled against the phrase “O Divine Master” and the last two lines about eternal life, which I thought were horseshit. O Divine Master, ask that I not so much seek to be consoled as to console; to be understood as to understand; to be loved as to love. For it is in giving that we receive. It is in pardoning that we are pardoned, and it is in dying to self that we are reborn to eternal life. As I slow down inside, the world’s metronome seems to speed up, for without keen, self-centered focus on your own inward suffering, clock hands spin. Days get windstormed off the calendar. Rather than thinking about spiritual practices, arguing them out in my head, I almost automatically try them. That, I suppose, is surrender. My final few days at the hospital whipped past, so I recount them here in rough outline. I prayed to get to go to my Radcliffe meeting, and—without being asked—Mary offered to escort me on her day off. On a steaming August day, I attended my first scholars’ sherry hour wearing a plastic wrist

• From Lit: A Memoir (2009)

  Dev comes out wrapped in an oversize bathrobe, and he’s got that crease in his forehead that comes when he sees me cry. He knows Walt’s fading, and his hand settles on my shoulder. Remember back when I was in school, I finally say into the putty-colored receiver, how you bought all those lunches and theater tickets for me, when I asked how I’d ever pay you back? Remember what you said? He’s too breathless to respond. You said, It’s not that linear. You’re gonna go on to help somebody else . Well, I got a chance to help my assistant out of a pinch. And she asked how she’d pay me back, and I told her the story. I’d never have done that without you. He’s struggling to say something, barely audible his voice is, a plume of air, the smoke trail a voice leaves behind. He says, Tell her to thank me.

• From Lit: A Memoir (2009)

  Dev wakes up blinking and crimson-cheeked in his down jacket, really hungry . Stepping out of the car, I land ankle-deep in slush and start swearing under my breath. But no sooner do I pop the hood than a vehicle pulls alongside. Joe and Sam happen to be driving a borrowed tow truck that has—another stroke of fortune—jugs of blue engine coolant. From a paper bag on the dash, Joe’s massive mitt draws out a glazed donut for Dev. He says, Here you go, tough guy. We all stand on the side of the road in the blue dusk, Dev snug in big Joe’s arm and gnawing the pastry as Sam doctors the radiator. For an instant, I can feel the gratitude seep up from my damp footsoles—one of my first pure instances of it. Back in the car, I announce it to Chris. Say thanks, then, she says. I just did. Joe wouldn’t even let me pay for the antifreeze. I meant, she says, say thanks to your higher power. I look at her round girlish face. She still has a few snowflakes in her dark lashes. Thanks, H.P., I say, but it actually shames me, for some reason, to say such a dumb thing. (A year later, Chris would flee the house to stick up a bank with a machine gun. She’d cop heroin and overdose in a park. I last saw her in a public hospital, where she was blind, HIV-positive, and pregnant with a baby who died—I believe—around the time Chris did. She didn’t make it to twenty-one. Thanks, Chris T., for hauling my ass into the light that day, and still.) A week before the Whiting ceremony, Lux and I take our kids to the park, settling them in to swing through their low-slung arcs. It’s near dusk when I ask if he has any truck with a supreme intelligence. C’mon, he says. There’s a force that fuses the greeney flower. Look at these damn kids. There’s an energy that threads through us that deserves your reverence. It’s not all serial killers and Hitlers. Of course it is, I say . Ever notice, Tom says, your mind immediately leaps to the most extreme position—like, if you turn to God, He’s gonna nail you to a tree. I’m scared I’ll drink at the Whiting ceremony. A week away. A year ago I’d have killed to get to go to double-barrel cocktail parties. Lux looks at me sideways and asks, Want me to go with you? Though I’m a champion whiner, inclined to blame people for failing to help, I almost never outright solicit a favor. The offer stuns me. I’m teaching in New York that day anyway, Lux says. I could make it to the second party—the big public one. On the appointed day, I stand before the Park Avenue hotel they booked for me, wondering why it looks so familiar.