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 Little Women (1868)

  things, but saw no sign of them. "Tucked away out of sight, I dare say," thought Jo, who could forgive her own wrongs, but hotly resented any insult offered her family. "Good evening, Miss Jo. How does Amy get on?" asked May with a conciliatory air, for she wanted to show that she also could be generous. "She has sold everything she had that was worth selling, and now she is enjoying herself. The flower table is always attractive, you know, 'especially to gentlemen'." Jo couldn't resist giving that little slap, but May took it so meekly she regretted it a minute after, and fell to praising the great vases, which still remained unsold. "Is Amy's illumination anywhere about? I took a fancy to buy that for Father," said Jo, very anxious to learn the fate of her sister's work. "Everything of Amy's sold long ago. I took care that the right people saw them, and they made a nice little sum of money for us," returned May, who had overcome sundry small temptations, as well as Amy had, that day. Much gratified, Jo rushed back to tell the good news, and Amy looked both touched and surprised by the report of May's word and manner. "Now, gentlemen, I want you to go and do your duty by the other tables as generously as you have by mine, especially the art table," she said, ordering out 'Teddy's own', as the girls called the college friends. "'Charge, Chester, charge!' is the motto for that table, but do your duty like men, and you'll get your money's worth of art in every sense of the word," said the irrepressible Jo, as the devoted phalanx prepared to take the field. "To hear is to obey, but March is fairer far than May," said little Parker, making a frantic effort to be both witty and tender, and getting promptly quenched by Laurie, who said... "Very well, my son, for a small boy!" and walked him off, with a paternal pat on the head. "Buy the vases," whispered Amy to Laurie, as a final heaping of coals of fire on her enemy's head. To May's great delight, Mr. Laurence not only bought the vases, but pervaded the hall with one under each arm. The other gentlemen speculated with

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

  Bullinger came into contact with the English Reformation from the time of Henry VIII. to the reign of Elizabeth, especially during the bloody reign of Mary, when many prominent exiles fled to Zürich, and found a fraternal reception under his hospitable roof. The correspondence of Hooper, Jewel, Sandys, Grindal, Parkhurst, Foxe, Cox, and other church dignitaries with Bullinger, Gwalter, Gessner, Simler, and Peter Martyr, is a noble monument of the spiritual harmony between the Reformed Churches of Switzerland and England in the Edwardian and Elizabethan era. Archbishop Cranmer invited Bullinger, together with Melanchthon, Calvin, and Bucer, to a conference in London, for the purpose of framing an evangelical union creed; and Calvin answered that for such a cause he would be willing to cross ten seas. Lady Jane Grey, who was beheaded in 1554, read Bullinger’s works, translated his book on marriage into Greek, consulted him about Hebrew, and addressed him with filial affection and gratitude. Her three letters to him are still preserved in Zürich. Bishop Hooper of Gloucester, who had enjoyed his hospitality in 1547, addressed him shortly before his martyrdom in 1554, as his "revered father and guide," and the best friend he ever had, and recommended his wife and two children to his care. Bishop Jewel, in a letter of May 22, 1559, calls him his "father and much esteemed master in Christ," thanks him for his "courtesy and kindness," which he and his friends experienced during the whole period of their exile, and informs him that the restoration of the Reformed religion under Elizabeth was largely due to his own "letters and recommendations;" adding that the queen refused to be addressed as the head of the Church of England, feeling that such honor belongs to Christ alone, and not to any human being. Bullinger’s death was lamented in England as a public calamity.310 Bullinger faithfully maintained the doctrine and discipline of the Reformed Church against the Roman Catholics and Lutherans with moderation and dignity. He never returned the abuse of fanatics, and when, in 1548, the Interim drove the Lutheran preachers from the Swabian cities, he received them hospitably, even those who had denounced the Reformed doctrines from the pulpit. He represents the German-Swiss type of the Reformed faith in substantial agreement with a moderate Calvinism. He gave a full exposition of his theological views in the Second Helvetic Confession.

• From The Argonauts (2015)

  A few hours later, a lactation consultant came to visit us. She talked to us for a long time, told us all about her family. She was a member of the Pima tribe from Arizona and had married into an African American family, raised her six kids in Watts. She nursed them all. One of her sons was named Eagle Feather, Eagle for short. Her mother had insisted on a ceremony at which Eagle learned to say his name in his tribal language, as Eagle was the white man’s language. I don’t know why I’m telling you guys so much about my family, she kept saying. You were probably passing, but I like to think she had an intuition that something about identity was loose and hot in our house, as, perhaps, it was in hers. At some point we told her about wanting to name Igasho Igasho. She listened, while giving me tips on how to nurse him. Let your boobs be the guide, not the clock, she said. Whenever they feel full, bam!, you pull that baby onto your chest. On her way out, she turned and said, If anyone ever gives you trouble about your baby’s name, you tell them that a full tribe member, from Tucson and Watts, gave you her blessing. Later I learn that Pima was the name given to the Othama tribe by the Spaniards. It is a corruption, or misunderstanding, of the phrase pi ‘añi mac or pi mac, meaning “I don’t know”—a phrase tribe members supposedly said often in response to the invading Europeans. A few months after your mother died, we got all her papers in the mail. One afternoon I sat on a milk crate outside our storage shed to give them a cursory look, trying to decide where to file them. Amid the mountains of medical bills and threatening collections statements, a certain set of papers stood out—papers with smiley faces and flowery mastheads, exclamation points and carefully handwritten signatures. Your adoption paperwork.

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

  "Thou through Thine operation didst make manifest the everlasting faithful of the world. Thou, Lord, didst create the earth. Thou art faithful throughout all generations, righteous in Thy judgments, marvellous in strength and excellence. Thou that art wise in creating and prudent in establishing that which Thou hast made, that art good in the things which are seen and faithful with them that trust on Thee, pitiful and compassionate, forgive us our iniquities and our unrighteousnesses and our transgressions and shortcomings. Lay not to our account every sin of Thy servants and Thine handmaids, but cleanse us with the cleansing of Thy truth, and guide our steps to walk in holiness and righteousness and singleness of heart, and to do such things as are good and well-pleasing in Thy sight and in the sight of our rulers. Yea Lord, make Thy face to shine upon us in peace for our good, that we may be sheltered by Thy mighty hand and delivered from every sin by Thine uplifted arm. And deliver up from them that hate us wrongfully. Give concord and peace to us and to all that dwell on the earth, as thou gavest to our fathers, when they called on Thee in faith and truth with holiness, that we may be saved, while we render obedience to Thine almighty and most excellent Name, and to our rulers and governors upon the earth. "Thou, Lord and Master, hast given them the power of sovereignty through Thine excellent and unspeakable might, that we knowing the glory and honor which Thou hast given them may submit ourselves unto them, in nothing resisting Thy will. Grant unto them therefore, O Lord, health, peace, concord, stability, that they may administer the government which Thou hast given them without failure. For Thou, O heavenly Master, King of the ages, givest to the sons of men glory and honor and power over all things that are upon earth. Do Thou, Lord, direct their counsel according to that which is good and well pleasing in Thy sight, that, administering in peace and gentleness with godliness the power which Thou hast given them, they may obtain Thy favor. O Thou, who alone art able to do these things and things far more exceeding good than these for us, we praise Thee through the High-priest and Guardian of our souls, Jesus Christ, through whom be, the glory and the majesty unto Thee both now and for all generations and for ever and ever. Amen." II. A literal translation of the poem of Clement of Alexandria in praise of Christ. {Umno" tou' Swth'ro" cristouv . (Stomivon pwvlwn ajdavwn). "Bridle of untamed colts, O footsteps of Christ, Wing of unwandering birds, O heavenly way, Sure Helm of babes, Perennial Word, Shepherd of royal lambs! Endless age, Assemble Thy simple children, Eternal Light, To praise holily, Fount of mercy, To hymn guilelessly Performer of virtue. With innocent mouths Noble [is the] life of those Christ, the guide of children.

• From Dante's Divine Comedy (2001)

  ©2001 The Teaching Company. 81 1. T h i s c o n t r a s t s w i t h t h e d i s a p p e a r a n c e o f V i r g i l a t t h e e n d o f Purgatorio. 2. T h e “ c o m m i s s i o n ” o f V i r g i l i n I n f e r n o 2 i s r e c a l l e d , t h u s reminding us of the beginning of the poem. B. D a n t e s a y s a m o v i n g p r a y e r of thanksgiving to Beatrice. III. I n C a n t o 3 2 , B e r n a r d o f C l a i r v a u x shows Dante the structure of the mystical rose. A. T h e r o s e c o n t a i n s a l l k i n d s o f e l a b o r a t e s y m m e t r i e s . 1. M a l e a n d f e m a l e a r e j u x t a p o s e d . 2. O l d a n d N e w T e s t a m e n t a r e j u x t a p o s e d . 3. Y o u n g a n d o l d a r e j u x t a p o s e d . 4. C i r c u l a r a n d l i n e a r a r r a n g e m e n t s a r e c o m b i n e d . B. T h e s e s y m m e t r i e s a r e t h e s o u r c e o f t h e s y m m e t r y o f t h e u n i v e r s e itself. IV. T h e f i n a l c a n t o b e g i n s w i t h B e r n a r d ’ s h y m n t o t h e V i r g i n . A. Marian piety is a big part of Ci stercian devotion to this day. B.

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

  In Beginning the World I described how I had threaded my way through the tables, flinching from the curious gaze of the other students, until I was rescued by a group who had become my friends and who had kept a kindly but tactful eye on me during the past difficult weeks. There was Rosemary, a cheerful extrovert, who was reading modern languages; Fiona, a gentler, more thoughtful girl; her constant companion, Pat, who had been a pupil at one of the boarding schools run by my order; and finally Jane, who was also reading English. All were Catholics. All had some experience of nuns. Jane retained a great fondness for the kindly semienclosed sisters at her rather exclusive school. Pat had actually known me as a nun, since I had been sent to help out at her school in Harrogate. There were other people at the table for whom Catholicism and convents were alien territory and who clearly intended to keep it that way. In Beginning the World I made them all tease me goodnaturedly about my gaffe, question me about convent life, and express shock and horror at such customs as kissing the floor, confessing faults in public, and performing elaborate penances in the refectory. Maybe there was some discussion along these lines; certainly people were curious, up to a point. But I doubt that anybody was really very interested. These young women had been quite wonderful to me. It had been Rosemary, Fiona, and Pat who had marched me down to Marks & Spencer a couple of hours after my dispensation had come through and helped me to buy my first secular clothes. Rosemary had cut and styled my hair, and all three had escorted me to dinner, my first public appearance as a defrocked nun. But they were probably wary of prying too closely into the reasons for what they could see had been a traumatic decision. I certainly had no desire to discuss the matter with them. In the convent we had been carefully trained never to tell our troubles to one another, and it would never have occurred to me to unburden myself to my peers. And these girls had their own concerns. They too had essays to write; they were falling in love, and trying to juggle the demands of concentrated academic work with those of an absorbing social life. They were making their own journeys into adulthood, and now that the drama of my exodus was over, they almost certainly assumed that I was happily reveling in my new freedom, and were content to leave well enough alone.

• From The Erotic Engine (2011)

  Reefer Madness: Sex, Drugs and Cheap Labor in the American Black Market, Eric Schlosser, First Mariner Books, 2004 From Betamax to Blockbuster: Video Stores and the Invention of Movies on Video, Joshua M. Greenberg, The MIT Press, 2008 How to Make Love Like a Porn Star: A Cautionary Tale, Jenna Jameson, HarperCollins Publishers, 2004 Black and White and Blue: Adult Cinema from the Victorian Age to the VCR, Dave Thompson, ECW Press, 2007 The Big Book of Porn: A Penetrating Look at the World of Dirty Movies, Seth Grahame-Smith, Quirk Books, 2005 Dirty Movies: An Illustrated History of the Stag Film, 1915–1970, Al Di Lauro and Greald Rabkin, Chelsea House Publishers, 1976 The Cybergypsies: A Frank Account of Love, Life and Travels on the Electronic Frontier, Indra Sinha, Scribner, 1999 My Tiny Life: Crime and Passion in a Virtual World, Julian Dibble, Henry Holt and Company, 1998 Porn&Pong: How Grand Theft Auto, Tomb Raider and Other Sexy Games Changed Our Culture, Damon Brown, Feral House, 2008 Sex in Video Games: Advances in Computer Graphics and Game Development, Brenda Brathwaite, Thomson Learning Inc., 2007 “Big Red Son” in Consider the Lobster and Other Essays, David Foster Wallace, Little, Brown and Company, 2005 One Child at a Time: The Global Fight to Rescue Children From Online Predators, Julian Sher, Random House Canada, 2007 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTSMy contributions to this book were only possible thanks to those of the dozens of people who have been so generous with their stories, ideas and analysis. I am deeply grateful to all of you who agreed to be interviewed for this project—I hope that readers will be as intrigued and entertained by your experiences as I have been. Throughout the making of this book, many people helped open doors and make introductions on my behalf. In particular, I owe a great debt to C. J. Scheiner and Reena Patel for connecting me to so many of their contacts and associates. My thanks also go to Brenda Brathwaite, Joan Irvine, Sarah Jacobs, Natalia Kim, Annalee Newitz, Sofia Ramirez, Paul Saffo and David Wills for opening their address books to me. Many thanks to my editor at Doubleday, Tim Rostron. His thoughtfulness, humour and intelligence are manifest throughout this book. Thank you also to Shaun Oakey, whose copy-editing resulted in a thousand improvements of clarity and brevity. Amanda Delong provided great research, transcription and enthusiasm. Shaena Lambert was my sounding board for all things related to writing. My agent, Anne McDermid, and her associate Martha Magor gave me invaluable encouragement, counsel and the occasional stiff drink. Andrea Addario edited many drafts of The Erotic Engine, and provided feedback that made the book smarter, more authoritative and more fun to read. Researching this subject area was often challenging, and Andrea made me think and made me laugh at all the right moments in all the right ways. Copyright © 2010 Patchen Barss

• From Talk Dirty to Me: An Intimate Philosophy of Sex (1994)

  Reich ultimately split from Freud over the theory of sublimation. He admired Freud but saw him as “bound up,” limited. Reich was opposed to laws prohibiting or restricting sexual behavior of almost any kind, including that of adolescents. He was widely denounced by his colleagues as well as several governments, and wandered from country to country, seeking haven, finally coming to a reluctant United States in 1941. Here he developed the mother of all persecution complexes, and was in turn really and truly persecuted. When he built and sold “orgone boxes” in which people could absorb the curative life energy of the cosmos—an energy he believed could be measured, collected, and applied—the FDA banned the boxes, and, almost as a reflex, his books. He was sentenced to two years in prison in 1956 for contempt of court and violating FDA orders, and died of a heart attack there eight months later. If only Reich had quit while he was ahead—but he went on and on and on, until Orgone was everything, until it was gravity, weather, and God. He went nuts, but he was on to something. When Reich died, I was a few months old. I was bottle-fed, the second of three quick children. My mother was already pregnant again, and I sucked my thumb to put myself to sleep. Reich believed that infants were damaged at birth from their mother’s armor, and that only by treating infants could he hope to raise a generation of women whose wombs weren’t as rigid as their backs and throats. I wasn’t treated that young, but I joined a Reichian therapy group of eight teenagers when I was sixteen, still flexible in a few ways, and horribly bound up in others. Even now, twenty years later, if I meet one or the other of the people with whom I did therapy, I need only say the word “group” to explain a feeling. Reichian therapy was hard, rough-edged, potent, and dangerous; it was physically painful and sometimes emotionally devastating. The powerful, almost obsessed therapists who led us through the physical and psychological exercises designed to break down our muscular and emotional armor may have done me a fair bit of harm as well as a great deal of good. But they were the first and only adults in my young life to talk to me as a sexual creature, to acknowledge not only that I was sexual but that I suffered from sexuality—that sex was important, legitimate, and real. To Reich “the body alone spoke truth.” My Reichian therapists were the first people in my life to speak truth about my body to me.

• From The Argonauts (2015)

  Special thanks as always to PJ Mark, for his shrewd intelligence and ongoing faith in me: I stand lucky and grateful. Thanks also to Ethan Nosowsky, for his profound editorial wisdom and support, and to Katie Dublinski. For their advice, assistance, and/or inspiration, I also wish to thank Ben Lerner, Eula Biss, Tara Jane ONeil, Wayne Koestenbaum, Steven Marchetti, Brian Blanchfield, Dana Ward, Jmy James Kidd, Macarena Gómez-Barris, Jack Halberstam, Janet Sarbanes, Tara Jepsen, Andrea Fontenot, Amy Sillman, Silas Howard, Peter Gadol, A. L. Steiner, Gretchen Hildebran, Suzanne Snider, Cynthia Nelson, Andrés Gonzalez, Emerson Whitney, Anna Moschovakis, Sarah Manguso, Jessica Kramer, Elena Vogel, Stacey Poston, Melody Moody, Barbara Nelson, Emily Nelson, Craig Tracy, and the Purple Team at the Children’s Hospital in Aurora, Colorado. To my Irish guys: thank you for your daily presence, support, and love. I’m so glad you found me. In loving memory of those who departed during this book’s time: Phyllis DeChant (1938–2010), Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick (1950–2009), Lhasa de Sela (1972–2010), and Maximum Dodge (1993–2012). You are missed. This book would not exist without Harry Dodge, whose intelligence, foxiness, vision, fortitude, and willingness to be represented have made this project, along with so much else, possible. Thank you for showing me what a nuptial might be—an infinite conversation, an endless becoming. Note to the Reader: In the print edition of The Argonauts, attributions for otherwise unattributed text appear in the margins in grayscale. Because of limitations in the conversion of printed books to reflowable ebook files, there is not an adequate way to reproduce those marginal citations alongside the main text in the ebook. Therefore, all quoted text that is not attributed within the body of the text is listed below, with italics indicating the quoted material. I stopped smugly repeating Everything that can be thought at all can be thought clearly and wondered anew, can everything be thought. —Ludwig Wittgenstein Nuptials are the opposite of a couple. There are no longer binary machines: question-answer, masculine-feminine, man-animal, etc. This could be what a conversation is—simply the outline of a becoming. —Gilles Deleuze/Claire Parnet (What is that triangle, anyway? My twat?) —Eileen Myles Many feminists have argued for the decline of the domestic as a separate, inherently female sphere and the vindication of domesticity as an ethic, an affect, an aesthetic, and a public. —Susan Fraiman When or how do new kinship systems mime older nuclear-family arrangements and when or how do they radically recontextualize them in a way that constitutes a rethinking of kinship? —Judith Butler If a man who thinks he is a king is mad, a king who thinks he is a king is no less so. —Jacques Lacan It’s not possible to live twenty-four hours a day soaked in the immediate awareness of one’s sex. Gendered selfconsciousness has, mercifully, a flickering nature. —Denise Riley

• From The Argonauts (2015)

  Special thanks as always to PJ Mark, for his shrewd intelligence and ongoing faith in me: I stand lucky and grateful. Thanks also to Ethan Nosowsky, for his profound editorial wisdom and support, and to Katie Dublinski. For their advice, assistance, and/or inspiration, I also wish to thank Ben Lerner, Eula Biss, Tara Jane ONeil, Wayne Koestenbaum, Steven Marchetti, Brian Blanchfield, Dana Ward, Jmy James Kidd, Macarena Gómez-Barris, Jack Halberstam, Janet Sarbanes, Tara Jepsen, Andrea Fontenot, Amy Sillman, Silas Howard, Peter Gadol, A. L. Steiner, Gretchen Hildebran, Suzanne Snider, Cynthia Nelson, Andrés Gonzalez, Emerson Whitney, Anna Moschovakis, Sarah Manguso, Jessica Kramer, Elena Vogel, Stacey Poston, Melody Moody, Barbara Nelson, Emily Nelson, Craig Tracy, and the Purple Team at the Children’s Hospital in Aurora, Colorado. To my Irish guys: thank you for your daily presence, support, and love. I’m so glad you found me. In loving memory of those who departed during this book’s time: Phyllis DeChant (1938–2010), Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick (1950–2009), Lhasa de Sela (1972–2010), and Maximum Dodge (1993–2012). You are missed. This book would not exist without Harry Dodge, whose intelligence, foxiness, vision, fortitude, and willingness to be represented have made this project, along with so much else, possible. Thank you for showing me what a nuptial might be—an infinite conversation, an endless becoming. Note to the Reader: In the print edition of The Argonauts, attributions for otherwise unattributed text appear in the margins in grayscale. Because of limitations in the conversion of printed books to reflowable ebook files, there is not an adequate way to reproduce those marginal citations alongside the main text in the ebook. Therefore, all quoted text that is not attributed within the body of the text is listed below, with italics indicating the quoted material. I stopped smugly repeating Everything that can be thought at all can be thought clearly and wondered anew, can everything be thought. —Ludwig Wittgenstein Nuptials are the opposite of a couple. There are no longer binary machines: question-answer, masculine-feminine, man-animal, etc. This could be what a conversation is—simply the outline of a becoming. —Gilles Deleuze/Claire Parnet (What is that triangle, anyway? My twat?) —Eileen Myles Many feminists have argued for the decline of the domestic as a separate, inherently female sphere and the vindication of domesticity as an ethic, an affect, an aesthetic, and a public. —Susan Fraiman When or how do new kinship systems mime older nuclear-family arrangements and when or how do they radically recontextualize them in a way that constitutes a rethinking of kinship? —Judith Butler If a man who thinks he is a king is mad, a king who thinks he is a king is no less so. —Jacques Lacan It’s not possible to live twenty-four hours a day soaked in the immediate awareness of one’s sex. Gendered selfconsciousness has, mercifully, a flickering nature. —Denise Riley

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

  One of these was Sally, whose older sister had been a lifelong sufferer. Sally had come into the English department in my second year at the school. We became friends after I had a seizure during the staff Christmas lunch. This had been so mild that it was easy to pass it off as a faint, due to end-of-term exhaustion, but Sally knew at once what had happened. It was useful to have an ally. Teachers tend to pick up all kinds of germs and fevers from the children, and high body temperature can bring on an epileptic attack. This meant that whenever I caught one of these viruses, it took me a lot longer to recover than my colleagues. I had to take a great deal of sick leave, and this did not go unnoticed. Nor did the fact that I so often looked haggard and ill. School teaching is an extremely exhausting job: it is like doing a one-woman show, in which you are onstage for about seven hours every day. By the end of term, we all looked at death’s door. At coffee time we no longer laughed and chattered, and the head had no need to complain about the noise. We all sat around silently, staring into space like zombies. Sometimes—horror of horrors—we actually forgot to record our purchases in the Biscuit Book. My particular difficulty was that my drugs were debilitating, and this increased my natural weariness. Fatigue is one of the things that trigger my seizures, as does sleep deprivation. So it all became a vicious cycle. The more tired I was, the less resistance I had and the more flu bugs I caught from the children; the more seizures I had, the more exhausted I became. During my absence from school, Sally did a splendid PR job, elaborating on the symptoms she could mention in great detail in order to allay suspicion. And for a while our system worked well. But this could not be a long-term solution. All in all, I was beginning to miss at least six weeks a year, and even though I looked far from healthy, the head began to suspect me of malingering. Finally I came clean, and she responded perfectly, with one of those leaps of sympathy that reminded us of how humane she could be when she was not trying to control every detail of our lives. “I am so relieved,” she explained. “I can quite understand why you didn’t tell me. Of course I can. But this is something physical, something that we can work with. Far more worrying is a vague neurosis that produces psychosomatic symptoms that nobody can ever get to the bottom of!” I was an asset to the school, she said, and if I had to take time off for unavoidable illness, so be it. It was worth it—for the time being.

• From Simply Jesus (2011)

  This introduces us to another theme that is closely connected with the themes of healing and celebrating. Jesus spoke frequently of people being forgiven. Forgiveness, indeed, is a sort of healing. It removes a burden that can crush and cripple you. It allows you to stand up straight without pretending. It spreads out into whole communities. Think of Desmond Tutu, chairing that harrowing Commission for Truth and Reconciliation in South Africa. “No Future Without Forgiveness” was the slogan, which became the title of Tutu’s book. Forgiveness has a claim to be the most powerful thing in the world. It transforms like nothing else. It ranges from the top of the scale, “forgiveness” of massive financial debt, all the way down deep to release from the quiet, secret horror of personal guilt and shame, which can, quite literally, paralyze you. That was the case in one of the first and best-known stories (Mark 2:1–12). “Child,” says Jesus to a man lying prone on a stretcher, unable to move, “your sins are forgiven.” All very well to say that, you might think. A bit like walking into town and declaring that we have a new emperor. “What d’you mean? How will this work? And isn’t that pushing your luck? Isn’t ‘forgiveness’ what you normally get in the Temple, under the authority of the chief priests?” Yes, that’s exactly how it normally works. But something else is going on here. A new dimension of the God-in-charge proclamation is being unveiled. “You want to know,” Jesus declares to the assembled company, “that the son of man has authority on earth to forgive sins?” He turns to the paralyzed man: “I tell you,” he says, “Get up, take your stretcher, and go home.” The man obeys. And the crowd in the house, which wouldn’t part to let the sick man in, now parts, like the Red Sea, to let the healed man out. Forgiveness and healing! The two go so closely together, personally and socially. Whole societies can be crippled by ancient grudges that turn into feuds and then into forms of civil war. Families can be torn apart by a single incident or one person’s behavior that is never faced and so never forgiven. Equally, societies and families as well as individuals can be reconciled, can find new hope and new love, through forgiveness. Jesus was tapping into something extremely deep in human life.

• From Generation Anxiety: A Millennial and Gen Z Guide to Staying Afloat in an Uncertain World (2023)

  Her gratitude practice was mindfulness embodied and I saw it restore her. It wasn’t that she was ignoring her pain—it was just that she was making more room for the good that she hadn’t been seeing before. Let’s practice our own Daily Gratitudes. Try this out for a week and see whether you notice any shift in your mood. I’ll share mine as an example. I happen to be in New York for a work trip today as I’m writing mine: 1. Listening to Taylor Swift’s “Welcome to New York”: Ever one for a good cliché, I loved the quintessential moment of riding in the taxi and just watching people walking by on a summer afternoon in Manhattan. If only I spotted Taylor herself. 2. Hotel robes: They instantly put me in a good mood and I instantly have to put one on. 3. Meeting new people at a new restaurant: After the pandemic, there’s something about seeing people face-to-face, especially for the first time. It’s almost like watching a movie and then seeing the actors in real life; 3-D has taken on a whole new dimension for me. 4. Good books and bathtubs: Bathtubs are my favorite place to get lost in a book. 5. Nostalgia: I’m on a heavy dose of it as I’m reminded of all the memories that I have from visiting my husband while he was in law school. We were long-distance for three years while he lived here. I can remember those sweet times all over again and it makes New York feel even more magical. I invite you to write your own Five Daily Gratitudes. Take five minutes to reflect on the moments when you caught yourself smiling today. Even if you are going through a painful time right now, you can use this as an opportunity to see the fireflies in your darkest of nights. Both can be there. MY FIVE DAILY GRATITUDES: HOW DO YOU FEEL AFTER GOING THROUGH THIS EXERCISE? If you want to take it to the next level, share your gratitude with your friends and family. It has a profound effect. We are so impacted by the emotional states of others and when we share our joy with others, it’s contagious. You can thank your mirror neurons in your brain for that. These brain cells respond equally when you are doing an action yourself and when you witness someone else doing an action. 66 It’s why when we see someone crying, we often begin to cry ourselves. The same goes for gratitude—when we hear about or see someone’s happiness, our brains feel those same effects internally. Your delight is my delight, and my delight can be yours.

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

  In Beginning the World I described how I had threaded my way through the tables, flinching from the curious gaze of the other students, until I was rescued by a group who had become my friends and who had kept a kindly but tactful eye on me during the past difficult weeks. There was Rosemary, a cheerful extrovert, who was reading modern languages; Fiona, a gentler, more thoughtful girl; her constant companion, Pat, who had been a pupil at one of the boarding schools run by my order; and finally Jane, who was also reading English. All were Catholics. All had some experience of nuns. Jane retained a great fondness for the kindly semienclosed sisters at her rather exclusive school. Pat had actually known me as a nun, since I had been sent to help out at her school in Harrogate. There were other people at the table for whom Catholicism and convents were alien territory and who clearly intended to keep it that way. In Beginning the World I made them all tease me goodnaturedly about my gaffe, question me about convent life, and express shock and horror at such customs as kissing the floor, confessing faults in public, and performing elaborate penances in the refectory. Maybe there was some discussion along these lines; certainly people were curious, up to a point. But I doubt that anybody was really very interested. These young women had been quite wonderful to me. It had been Rosemary, Fiona, and Pat who had marched me down to Marks & Spencer a couple of hours after my dispensation had come through and helped me to buy my first secular clothes. Rosemary had cut and styled my hair, and all three had escorted me to dinner, my first public appearance as a defrocked nun. But they were probably wary of prying too closely into the reasons for what they could see had been a traumatic decision. I certainly had no desire to discuss the matter with them. In the convent we had been carefully trained never to tell our troubles to one another, and it would never have occurred to me to unburden myself to my peers. And these girls had their own concerns. They too had essays to write; they were falling in love, and trying to juggle the demands of concentrated academic work with those of an absorbing social life. They were making their own journeys into adulthood, and now that the drama of my exodus was over, they almost certainly assumed that I was happily reveling in my new freedom, and were content to leave well enough alone.

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

  John and I decided that we would call the series The First Christian. After only a few weeks’ exposure to modern New Testament criticism, I realized that I needed an expert adviser. I was completely unschooled, and in my zeal to expose the truth as I saw it, I could easily make serious mistakes. After some inquiries, John produced Michael Goulder of Birmingham University, a charming and learned scholar who had recently resigned his Anglican orders because he no longer believed in God. John assumed that he would, therefore, be a kindred spirit, but Michael quickly joined the ranks of those who thought that I should not be writing this series, because, he said, I simply did not know enough. And of course, he was quite right. He wrote John a long and extremely scathing letter about me, which John airily cast to one side. Michael was very, very tough. As I produced my draft scripts, he ripped them apart verbally over the telephone, sentence by jejune sentence, line by naïve line, and page by uninformed page. I needed this, and I learned fast. By the end we had become friends, and one of the best moments of the whole project was when Michael viewed the final version of the film and agreed to allow his name to appear alongside mine among the credits, saying that, much to his surprise, he could find no errors of fact. It was a baptism of fire, but I shall always be grateful to Michael for showing me not only how important it was but how rewarding it could be to insist on absolute accuracy in theological matters.

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

  It was Saint Paul, not Jesus, who was the founder of Christianity, and even he would have been dismayed by some of the theological conclusions that were later drawn from his letters. I now discovered that Paul’s epistles are the earliest extant Christian documents and that the gospels, all written years after Paul’s own death, were penned by men who had adopted Paul’s version of Christianity. Far from Paul perverting the gospels, the gospels, it seemed, owed their vision to Paul. The only Jesus we knew was the Jesus bequeathed to us by Paul. Further, it appeared that not all the epistles attributed to Paul in the New Testament were actually written by him. And this radically altered my view of Paul himself. Some of the most misogynist passages, for example, were almost certainly written by Christians some sixty years after Paul’s death. Perhaps he wasn’t the monster I had imagined. John and I decided that we would call the series The First Christian. After only a few weeks’ exposure to modern New Testament criticism, I realized that I needed an expert adviser. I was completely unschooled, and in my zeal to expose the truth as I saw it, I could easily make serious mistakes. After some inquiries, John produced Michael Goulder of Birmingham University, a charming and learned scholar who had recently resigned his Anglican orders because he no longer believed in God. John assumed that he would, therefore, be a kindred spirit, but Michael quickly joined the ranks of those who thought that I should not be writing this series, because, he said, I simply did not know enough. And of course, he was quite right. He wrote John a long and extremely scathing letter about me, which John airily cast to one side. Michael was very, very tough. As I produced my draft scripts, he ripped them apart verbally over the telephone, sentence by jejune sentence, line by naïve line, and page by uninformed page. I needed this, and I learned fast. By the end we had become friends, and one of the best moments of the whole project was when Michael viewed the final version of the film and agreed to allow his name to appear alongside mine among the credits, saying that, much to his surprise, he could find no errors of fact. It was a baptism of fire, but I shall always be grateful to Michael for showing me not only how important it was but how rewarding it could be to insist on absolute accuracy in theological matters.

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

  It was a baptism of fire, but I shall always be grateful to Michael for showing me not only how important it was but how rewarding it could be to insist on absolute accuracy in theological matters. So by the time I flew out to Tel Aviv on that cold January day, I was convinced that my mission in life was to unmask the dogmatic intolerance of the churches. But there had been one slightly unsettling incident just a few weeks earlier. I had quickly become aware that if I wanted to understand Saint Paul, I needed to know a great deal more about Judaism. So far I had simply regarded it as a mere prelude to Christianity, superannuated and superseded by the later, more inspiring faith. I had accepted without question the portrait of Judaism in the New Testament, derived in large part (I now realized) from Paul’s early polemic with Jesus’ disciples, who had wanted Christianity to remain a strictly Jewish sect. From my earliest years I had been taught that Judaism had become an empty faith: wedded to external observances and with no spiritual dimension, it was a religion that had lost its heart. Jews staggered under the burdensome requirements of the Law of Moses but could no longer understand the spirit that had originally inspired these now soulless commandments. No wonder Jesus had lambasted the Pharisees, comparing them to gleaming white tombs that looked beautiful from the outside but contained only corruption and decay! The Pharisees had constantly clashed with Jesus, castigated him for breaking the Law by healing the sick on the Sabbath or eating with people who did not observe their pointless purity laws. But I was now beginning to learn that many of Jesus’ teachings about charity and loving-kindness were almost identical with those of the leading rabbis of his day. Clearly I would have to revise my childhood view of Judaism. Nick put me in touch with Hyam Maccoby, who, like me, had done a piece for Opinions. He had delivered a swingeing attack on the New Testament view of the Pharisees, pointing out not only that they were among the most liberal Jews of their time but that in all likelihood Jesus had been a Pharisee himself. Michael Goulder was slightly dismissive of Hyam’s ideas about Christianity, but I found Hyam’s depiction of Judaism compelling and we agreed to meet for lunch. He worked as the librarian at the Leo Baeck College in North London, and I warmed to him immediately as he escorted me round the library, pulling books off the shelves, recommending some authors, and warning me against others.

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

  But I was not fine and I wanted people to know this. As the pounds fell off, as people like Jenifer started to notice my growing emaciation, I felt a perverse gratification. Look, I was saying, this is what I really feel like. Please notice—and help me. “Well . . .” Jenifer trailed off. Her heart was just not in this at all. “Don’t let your egg get cold. By the way,” she added, as if in an afterthought, “I’ve been thinking that it might be nice if you could join us for Sunday lunch. It’s the only meal that we all eat together, and you are part of the household now. I really mean it,” she went on, less embarrassed now that she felt on firmer ground. “You’ve fitted in so well. It seems wrong that you should be upstairs on your own on Sundays. You should be with the rest of us.” “Thank you, Jenifer.” I felt immensely moved. This was not a casually issued invitation. The Harts fulfilled most of their social obligations by inviting people to their Cornwall house or taking them to guest nights in their respective colleges. They rarely had friends to dine in Manor Place. It didn’t matter that Jenifer was transparently trying to ensure that I ate at least one decent meal a week. It was kindly meant, and kindness was something that I had learned to value. “Thank you,” I said again. “I should like that very much indeed.” Sunday lunch, I was not surprised to learn, was neither a decorous nor an elegant occasion. “Mummy! I’m going to tip the water jug right over!” Jacob tilted the jug at a perilous angle, his eyes fixed on Jenifer. “No, Jacob, don’t do that,” she replied somewhat ineffectually, while she briskly carved slices of roast lamb and tried to continue a civilized conversation. “Where do you go to Mass, Karen?” she inquired politely. The Harts were mildly intrigued by my Catholicism. My years in the convent were so remote from anything in their experience that I might just as well have spent seven years living with a peculiarly exotic tribe in New Guinea. In fact, they would probably have found that a good deal easier to understand. Both Herbert and Jenifer were committed atheists. Herbert found the whole structure of religion utterly incomprehensible and to Jenifer any form of religion was “ludicrous.” Like many intellectuals of her generation, she had been a member of the Communist Party; there were occasional wild and inaccurate speculations in the media that she had been the “fifth man” in the Burgess-MacLean spy circle, a charge she vehemently denied. She had long been disillusioned with the party, but her disdain for religion remained intact. Both she and Herbert regarded Christianity in general and Catholicism in particular as “monstrous.”

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

  Because the mortgage gobbled up much of my meager salary, I could not afford to travel either by tube or by the overground train, which would have cut the trip in half. Instead, I had to rely on a most unreliable bus that took me to Southeast London by an extraordinarily circuitous route. In the morning, I had to leave the house shortly after 6:30, looking most peculiar in a moth-eaten fur coat, which had once belonged to my grandmother (I could not afford a new winter coat), my face glistening with baby oil to protect my skin from the elements (I could not afford to waste makeup on the other passengers of bus 172). If all went well (and all too often the journey did not go well—the bus would fail to arrive, and once even broke down), I would arrive in Herne Hill at about 8:15, and then had to walk a mile to the school. In the evening, I sometimes had to wait for over an hour for the wretched bus. But I felt that all this was worthwhile. I wanted to put myself at some distance from my new job, because I knew that it was doing me no good at all. This, I must emphasize, was not because there was anything wrong with the school. Indeed, I was very impressed with it. Most of the girls seemed to like being there, the staff was excellent, and standards were high. It was also a humane place. I had passed my own school days alternately bored and frightened, but that was clearly not the case here. I even quite enjoyed the teaching, though not extravagantly so. People expected me to like my classes with the older girls best, but to my surprise, I much preferred the little ones. It was fun to watch them encountering Dickens and Shakespeare for the first time, and to catch them before they realized that a cool teenager was supposed to find these authors boring. Occasionally I would find myself completely wrapped up in a lesson. You cannot be a good teacher to every student, any more than you can be a good friend or a satisfactory lover to just anybody. But I could see that in the main I was doing a useful job, and I was grateful to have financial security for the first time since leaving the convent. The trouble lay not in the school but in myself. It was bad for me to be in another highly authoritarian institution, and I was keenly aware that I was slipping back into old craven habits of obedience and conformity.

• From Wild (2012)

  “It’s at a club near the hostel, if that’s where you’re staying,” she told me. She was plump and pretty, her flaxen hair tied into a loose bun at the back of her head. “We’re traveling around too,” she added, gesturing to my pack. I didn’t understand who the “we” referred to until a man appeared by her side. He was her physical opposite—tall and almost painfully thin, dressed in a maroon wrap skirt that hung barely past his bony knees, his shortish hair bound into four or five pigtails scattered around his head. “Did you hitchhike here?” asked the man. He was American. I explained to them about hiking the PCT, about how I planned to lay over in Ashland for the weekend. The man was indifferent, but the woman was astounded. “My name is Susanna and I am from Switzerland,” she said, taking my hand in hers. “We call what you’re doing the pilgrim way. If you’d like, I would rub your feet.” “Oh, that’s sweet, but you don’t have to do that,” I said. “I want to. It would be my honor. It is the Swiss way. I will return.” She turned and walked into the co-op, as I called after her telling her she was too kind. When she was gone, I looked at her boyfriend. He reminded me of a Kewpie doll, with his hair like that. “She really likes to do this, so no worries,” he said, sitting down beside me. When Susanna emerged a minute later, she held her hands cupped before her, a puddle of fragrant oil in her palms. “It’s peppermint,” she said, smiling at me. “Take off your boots and socks!” “But my feet,” I hesitated. “They’re in pretty rough shape and dirty—” “This is my calling!” she yelled, so I obeyed; soon she was slathering me with peppermint oil. “Your feet, they are very strong,” said Susanna. “Like those of an animal. I can feel their strength in my palms. And also how they are battered. I see you miss the toenails.” “Yes,” I murmured, reclining on my elbows in the grass, my eyes fluttering shut. “The spirits told me to do this,” she said as she pressed her thumbs into the soles of my feet. “The spirits told you?” “Yes. When I saw you, the spirits whispered that I had something to give you, so that is why I approached with the flyer, but then I understood there was something else. In Switzerland, we have great respect for people who travel the pilgrim way.” Rolling my toes one by one between her fingers, she looked up at me and asked, “What does this mean on your necklace—that you are starved?”