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 Pleasure Activism (2017)

  Taja. I’m just so grateful to be able to do the work that I’m doing in the times that we’re in. Figuring out how to be a multidimensional human being inside of a system that wants us to choose just one aspect of ourselves. Being able to be an artist and put a lot of time into that. Cultivating such beautiful communities who are reflections of me in different ways, and I’m just so grateful that I get to be alive during this time. I remember thinking in high school when I would read about the civil rights movement and just being like, damn, I think I was born at the wrong time. amb. Yes! I totally felt that! Taja. I was like, dammit, I think I was supposed to come down here earlier, what’s going on? And then: now I look around, and I’m, like, “girlll.” amb. You were not late for your whole life. Taja. Right, not late at all. There is so much more work to do, and I’m grateful to just be alive and doing that work. 105 Julia Cameron, The Artist’s Way: A Spiritual Life to Higher Creativity (New York: TarcherPerigree, 1992).106 Collins, Black Feminist Thought.107 Carter Godwin Woodson, The Mis-education of the Negro (Trenton, NJ: Africa World Press, 1998); Malcolm X and Alex Haley, The Autobiography of Malcolm X (New York: Ballantine Publishing Group, 1965).Burlesque and LiberationMichi Osato and Una Osato [image file=image_rsrc3M5.jpg] Michi Ilona Osato and Una Aya Osato are sisters, performers, writers, and educators who use burlesque to explore their identities as queer femmes of color. They are co-founders, with Dawn Crandell (aka Miss AuroraBoobRealis), of brASS Burlesque: Brown RadicalAss Burlesque, a multidisciplinary performance troupe based in New York City. brASS uses their unique perspectives as femmes of color as a lens to the myriad issues they are faced with in society. Through celebrations of their politicized bodies, they are making politics sexy and empowering audiences to value their own stories and use their creativity toward collective action. Una, aka exHOTic other, aka Norms, is a queer femme Japanese self-loving anti-Zionist Jew. She is a performer, writer, and educator from the far, far east … of NYC. Her love for fully embodying her politics led her to burlesque. ExHOTic other has performed in dozens of venues, from New York City’s iconic Joe’s Pub to the bright lights of Vegas for the Miss Exotic World and Burlesque Hall of Fame competitions. Una is also an award-winning actor and playwright who tours her work nationally and internationally, while, duh, eating orientalism for brunch. Since graduating from Wesleyan University, she has created six award-winning shows that she performs in theaters, festivals, conferences, clubs, universities, community organizations, classrooms, and prisons.

• From Pleasure Activism (2017)

  Nenna. I have done many things, but what I am most focused on is continuing to cultivate a unique space called Feelmore Adult Gallery. The idea of opening an adult store came to me in a dream. Feelmore gives me a unique platform to stand upon in order to be a verified source when I point out opportunities in my community. No one really listens unless you have a stake in the game. Being the founder has given me compassion, understanding, and a responsibility to inform so many others in so many ways that help my community. Feelmore’s motto, “It’s More Than Just Sex,” is honest and real. There are so many issues that come up because of sex and intimacy in the world that I wanted to create a place that just lets others reset and educate themselves on their own desires. It was a challenge to have a unique sex shop, aka sacred space, in Oakland that is truly welcoming to all. Second, I am just myself. I had to work on loving all that I am in order to encourage and empower others. amb. Can you tell us how you came to be on this path? Nenna. Life is truly an adventure. The path came to me by simply looking at the industry and viewing it through a gap analysis lens. It was missing me … my ideas, my freshness. For now, this is what I have desired to put my everything into. It isn’t easy, and days are long, but I am grateful. But I want more. amb. You say the idea came to you in a dream—were you already in the practice of pleasure or adult films? When did you know this was a calling? Nenna. When I had the dream, that was day zero for me. I had never been “in the practice of pleasure or adult films.” My producing adult films came after. It isn’t a calling, per se. I am just maximizing my time and doing good things with my gifts and talents while in this industry. amb. What are some of the challenges you have run into on this path? (Family, financial, societal opinion, gentrification, homophobia?) Nenna. Most of the challenges have been financial. Given that I am Black and female, there is already a great deal that America can help you unpack given its historical policies on financial lending. Other than financial challenges, another has been zoning, as adult stores have to be in certain areas. I have always wanted Feelmore to be a part of a community, and am grateful that so many are believing in Oakland and helping to bring new customers to our area. amb. Why is it important that you are specifically creating erotic material? Nenna. Material of any kind is what people can hold onto … what they can interpret … what they can critique. If it doesn’t exist, it isn’t real.

• From Fields of Blood: Religion and the History of Violence (2014)

  The scapegoat ritual was an attempt to sever the community’s relationship with its misdeeds; it cannot be a solution for us today. Acknowledgments This book is dedicated to Jane Garrett, my friend as well as my editor at Knopf for twenty years. From the very beginning, your encouragement and enthusiasm gave me the strength to persevere with the daily jihad of writing; it was a privilege and a joy to work with you. I am also blessed with my editors George Andreou and Jorg Hensgen, whose stringent, meticulous work on the manuscript helped me to push the book into another dimension, for which I am sincerely grateful. My thanks also to all the people who have worked on the book with such skill and expertise—at The Bodley Head: Stuart Williams (editor), Beth Humphries (copy editor), Joe Pickering (publicist), James Jones (jacket designer), Mary Chamberlain (proofreader), and Katherine Ailes (assistant editor); at Knopf: Roméo Enriquez (production manager), Ellen Feldman (production editor), Kim Thornton (publicist), Oliver Munday (jacket designer), Cassandra Pappas (text designer), Janet Biehl (copy editor), and Terezia Cicelova (editorial assistant); and at Knopf Canada: Louise Dennys (editor) and Sheila Kaye (publicist). Many of you I have never met, but be assured I appreciate all you do for me. As always, I must thank my agents Felicity Bryan, Peter Ginsberg, and Andrew Nurnberg for their tireless support, loyalty, and, above all, their continued faith in me; this time, I really could not have managed without you. Thanks too to Michele Topham, Jackie Head, and Carole Robinson in Felicity Bryan’s office for helping me so cheerfully through the day-to-day crises of a writer’s life, from bookkeeping to computer meltdowns. And my sincere gratitude to Nancy Roberts, my assistant, for dealing so patiently with my correspondence and for her adamantine firmness in ensuring that I have time and space to write. A big thank-you to Sally Cockburn, whose paintings helped me to understand what my book was, in part, about. And, finally, thanks to Eve, Gary, Stacey, and Amy Mott, and Michelle Stevenson at My Ideal Dog, for looking after Poppy so devotedly during her last years and enabling me to do my work. This book is also in loving memory of Gary, who always saw to the heart of things and would, I think, have approved its contents. Notes INTRODUCTION 1. Leviticus 16:21–22. Unless otherwise stated, all biblical quotations—in both the Hebrew Bible and the New Testament—are from The Jerusalem Bible (London, 1966). 2. René Girard, Violence and the Sacred, trans. Patrick Gregory (Baltimore, 1977), p. 251. 3. Stanislav Andreski, Military Organization in Society (Berkeley, Los Angeles, and London, 1968); Robert L. O’Connell, Ride of the Second Horseman: The Birth and Death of War (New York and Oxford, 1995), pp. 6–13, 106–10, 128–29; O’Connell, Of Arms and Men: A History of War, Weapons and Aggression (New York and Oxford, 1989), pp. 22–25; John Keegan, A History of Warfare (London and New York, 1993), pp.

• From Pleasure Activism (2017)

  Write up your pleasure activism lineage! Who awakened your senses? Who politicized your experiences of body, identity, sensation, feeling good? If they are still living, have you thanked them properly? If yes, good, do it again. If not, reach out. If they are ancestors, honor them with a pleasure altar covered in sticky fruit, sweet smells, sacred water, and thick earth, centered around fire. Gratitude is part of pleasure too. 18 Yes, I said “heard”—get your life by searching for the video in which you can hear Audre Lorde read the essay while looking at her incredible face.19 See Audre Lorde, “Uses of the Erotic: The Erotic as Power,” this volume, p. 27.20 Learn more about my facilitation and training work at www.alliedmedia.org/esii.21 “An Interview with Toni Cade Bambara,” by Kay Bonetti, in Conversations with Toni Cade Bambara, ed. Thabiti Lewis, (Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2012), 35–47.Uses of the EroticThe Erotic as Power Audre Lorde There are many kinds of power, used and unused, acknowledged or otherwise.22 The erotic is a resource within each of us that lies in a deeply female and spiritual plane, firmly rooted in the power of our unexpressed or unrecognized feeling.23 In order to perpetuate itself, every oppression must corrupt or distort those various sources of power within the culture of the oppressed that can provide energy for change. For women, this has meant a suppression of the erotic as a considered source of power and information within our lives. We have been taught to suspect this resource, vilified, abused, and devalued within western society. On the one hand, the superficially erotic has been encouraged as a sign of female inferiority; on the other hand, women have been made to suffer and to feel both contemptible and suspect by virtue of its existence. It is a short step from there to the false belief that only by the suppression of the erotic within our lives and consciousness can women be truly strong. But that strength is illusory, for it is fashioned within the context of male models of power. As women, we have come to distrust that power which rises from our deepest and nonrational knowledge. We have been warned against it all our lives by the male world, which values this depth of feeling enough to keep women around in order to exercise it in the service of men, but which fears this same depth too much to examine the possibilities of it within themselves. So women are maintained at a distant/inferior position to be psychically milked, much the same way ants maintain colonies of aphids to provide a life-giving substance for their masters. But the erotic offers a well of replenishing and provocative force to the woman who does not fear its revelation, nor succumb to the belief that sensation is enough.

• From Philosophy and Religion in the West (1999)

  B. Philosophy Criticizing Religion 1. Like proofs for God, disproofs of religion have persuaded very few philosophers. 2. Much more widely accepted are arguments like Hume’s, to the effect that religion has no strong philosophical basis. 3. Probably the most challenging criticisms of the religious traditions now come from disciplines other than philosophy, such as sociology, psychology and especially history. 4. Where philosophy has been most helpful to the religious traditions (in my view) is in providing a tradition of critical inquiry which religions can adopt so as to maintain themselves in the face of such challenges as self-critical traditions rather than forms of irrational prejudice. II. Religious Traditions and the Experience of Meeting God A. An Externalist Approach to Religious Experience 1. William James tried to find aspects of religious experience that eluded psychological explanations, and thus could serve as evidence for the existence of God or “something More” beyond ordinary experience. 2. One of the great virtues of epistemological externalism, on the contrary, is that it suggests how the religious experience of ordinary people rationally supports their beliefs—even if these experiences are non-mystical and psychologically explainable. 3. Hence, instead of James’ examples of mystical perception, suppose we focus on the experiences of ordinary believers: e.g., at a church or synagogue service. 4. According to Reformed epistemology, an individual’s feelings of devotion and gratitude at such times does provide rational support for her religious beliefs. 5. For according to epistemological externalism, if religious traditions accurately point out the “places” to meet God, then an individual’s experience of meeting God in those places leads to rational beliefs, even if she can give no arguments in their support—and even if the experience was not miraculous or mystical. 6. But such experiences are unlikely to persuade people outside the particular religious tradition in which they arise: their truth is dependent on whether God actually did choose to meet people at such “places.” ©1999 The Teaching Company. 162

• From The Liars' Club: A Memoir (1995)

  At the peak of the first book’s selling cycle, when it hovered at number two on The New York Times bestseller list for months (no, it never made number one), I got four hundred to five hundred letters a week, now dwindled to between twenty and sixty per year based on Lord knows what. How many of those letters began, “I’ve never told anybody this, but…”? I didn’t count. A bunch. Okay, there were a lot of jailhouse marriage proposals—felons who would let me ghostwrite their riveting story of unjust incarceration while they held out the possible bonus of conjugal visits. But most letters came from average people pouring out tales of their kin in lengthy missives. I got other folks’ school photos and news clippings and death announcements, even (in one case) a Xeroxed order of protection. Many psychiatrists wrote to claim they’d given my book to clients and found it useful for therapy about childhood sexual abuse, alcoholism, and early trauma. Reading Liars’ Club seemed to crowbar open something in people. “Your book just dredged up so many memories…” Or, “After reading Liars’ Club , my brother and I have reconciled…” Or, “I’ve been writing down some of what we went through when my father came back from Vietnam…” Or, “I never knew how my mother’s cancer death has kept rotting inside me…” This is a writer’s dream response, what I’d hankered for as a kid setting crayon to cardboard on Mother’s Day—to plug a reader into some wall outlet deep in the personal psychic machine that might jumpstart him or her into a more feeling way of life. Last week, in a midtown deli in Manhattan, I got blindsided by what we in my family call a Liars’ Club moment. I’d just swapped names with some new acquaintances after yoga class when the subject of memoir cropped up. One woman stopped using the mustard knife mid-smear and turned to me all keyed up. “You should read The Liars’ Club by Mary Karr.” She was a big-deal Broadway actress, and her face had all the zeal of an infomercial maestro. I said, I am Mary Karr. At which point, she burst into tears, saying sorry and dabbing under her eyes with a napkin. “Your book changed my life,” she said. Maybe this sounds like a lot of bragging and big talk, but it’s a common enough phenomenon to warrant mention. So many readers have started crying when they meet me that I used to bring a box of tissues to book signings. I even cooked up a tensionbreaking joke about being such a disappointment in person. And when somebody said (as this woman did) that her psychiatrist had given her the book, I suggested she sue for malpractice as the book renders no champions of mental health. On the way out of the restaurant, the actress slipped me her card. “I have a lot of stories to tell you.” she said.

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

  Thus ended the council of Nicaea. It is the first and most venerable of the ecumenical synods, and next to the apostolic council at Jerusalem the most important and the most illustrious of all the councils of Christendom. Athanasius calls it "a true monument and token of victory against every heresy;" Leo the Great, like Constantine, attributes its decrees to the inspiration of the Holy Ghost, and ascribes even to its canons perpetual validity; the Greek church annually observes (on the Sunday before Pentecost) a special feast in memory of it. There afterwards arose a multitude of apocryphal orations and legends in glorification of it, of which Gelasius of Cyzicus in the fifth century collected a whole volume.1332 The council of Nicaea is the most important event of the fourth century, and its bloodless intellectual victory over a dangerous error is of far greater consequence to the progress of true civilization, than all the bloody victories of Constantine and his successors. It forms an epoch in the history of doctrine, summing up the results of all previous discussions on the deity of Christ and the incarnation, and at the same time regulating the further development of the Catholic orthodoxy for centuries. The Nicene creed, in the enlarged form which it received after the second ecumenical council, is the only one of all, the symbols of doctrine which, with the exception of the subsequently added filioque, is acknowledged alike by the Greek, the Latin, and the Evangelical churches, and to this, day, after a course of fifteen centuries, is prayed and sung from Sunday to Sunday in all countries of the civilized world. The Apostles’ Creed indeed, is much more generally used in the West, and by its greater simplicity and more popular form is much better adapted to catechetical and liturgical purposes; but it has taken no root in the Eastern church; still less the Athanasian Creed, which exceeds the Nicene in logical precision and completeness. Upon the bed of lava grows the sweet fruit of the vine. The wild passions and the weaknesses of men, which encompassed the Nicene council, are extinguished, but the faith in the eternal deity of Christ has remained, and so long as this faith lives, the council of Nicaea will be named with reverence and with gratitude. § 121. The Arian and Semi-Arian Reaction, A.D. 325–361.

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

  The privilege of interceding with the secular power for criminals, prisoners, and unfortunates of every kind had belonged to the heathen priests, and especially to the vestals, and now passed to the Christian ministry, above all to the bishops, and thenceforth became an essential function of their office. A church in Gaul about the year 460 opposed the ordination of a monk to the bishopric, because, being unaccustomed to intercourse with secular magistrates, though he might intercede with the Heavenly Judge for their souls, he could not with the earthly for their bodies. The bishops were regarded particularly as the guardians of widows and orphans, and the control of their property was intrusted to them. Justinian in 529 assigned to them also a supervision of the prisons, which they were to visit on Wednesdays and Fridays, the days of Christ’s passion. The exercise of this right of intercession, one may well suppose, often obstructed the course of justice; but it also, in innumerable cases, especially in times of cruel, arbitrary despotism, protected the interests of innocence, humanity, and mercy. Sometimes, by the powerful pleadings of bishops with governors and emperors, whole provinces were rescued from oppressive taxation and from the revenge of conquerors. Thus Flavian of Antioch in 387 averted the wrath of Theodosius on occasion of a rebellion, journeying under the double burden of age and sickness even to Constantinople to the emperor himself, and with complete success, as an ambassador of their common Lord, reminding him of the words: "If ye forgive men their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you."162 6. With the right of intercession was closely connected the right of asylum in churches. In former times many of the heathen temples and altars, with some exceptions, were held inviolable as places of refuge; and the Christian churches now inherited also this prerogative. The usage, with some precautions against abuse, was made law by Theodosius II. in 431, and the ill treatment of an unarmed fugitive in any part of the church edifice, or even upon the consecrated ground, was threatened with the penalty of death.163 Thus slaves found sure refuge from the rage of their masters, debtors from the persecution of inexorable creditors, women and virgins from the approaches of profligates, the conquered from the sword of their enemies, in the holy places, until the bishop by his powerful mediation could procure justice or mercy. The beneficence of this law, which had its root not in superstition alone, but in the nobler sympathies of the people, comes most impressively to view amidst the ragings of the great migration and of the frequent intestine wars.164 § 17. Legal Sanction of Sunday. 7. The civil sanction of the observance of Sunday and other festivals of the church.

• From My People (2022)

  The Urbanite was published out of the Holman basement. I used to go back to Atlanta on weekends and help with preparing the paper in any way I could, even eventually getting out into Atlanta’s streets and reporting on things that needed to change for My People. So, after I completed a few minor tweaks that Professor Holman suggested, he approved. That meant a lot to me. And, to be sure, the last paragraph of this piece was indeed prescient, for many Black students have since walked through that Georgia corridor, and while they are still in a minority on campus, and have their own challenges, none, thankfully, have had to walk through the university’s corridors facing the same ones I faced. Thanks to the kind of guidance I received from Professor Holman when I graduated from UGA with a degree labeled ABJ (bachelor of arts in journalism), I left with two degrees—one paper and the other of confidence. Also, thanks to William Shawn, the New Yorker editor who reached out to me in Georgia when he learned of my journalistic aspirations, I landed in a wonderful environment that in time helped me realize my dreams as a reporter. But that would take a little time, so with one exception—a small piece for the Comment section—I initially tried my hand at doing what many of the veteran journalists and writers were doing: writing a memoir. The magazine not only published it, it kept my title: “A Hundred-Fifteenth-Between-Lenox-and-Fifth.” It was about the time I first encountered Harlem when I was about five years old, after traveling up on the train from Atlanta, Georgia, with my grandmother to visit my great-uncle. It was an eye-opening experience in so many ways and included meeting, for the first time, children my age who spoke in accents different from what I was used to hearing, and who played in a different way from how I was used to playing in Covington, the small South Georgia town where we lived. There were a few paved streets in our segregated Black neighborhood, but, like our segregated school playground, many of the grounds in our neighborhood were filled with red clay, hence no hopscotch when it rained. Moreover, the people who lived on that street—the street I named this piece after—identified it in a rhythmic way that stuck with me and shaped my view of the people in Harlem that would follow me many years later when I returned as a professional journalist. To be sure, Harlem was different from Covington in many ways, not least how the streets were named. Our street in Covington was Brown Street and one in another Black neighborhood was Short Street. But hearing these descriptions in Harlem was like, well, music to my little Southern ears.

• From The Liars' Club: A Memoir (1995)

  We have our secrets and our needs to confess. We may remember how, in childhood, adults were able at first to look right through us, and into us, and what an accomplishment it was when we, in fear and trembling, could tell our first lie, and make, for ourselves, the discovery that we are irredeemably alone in certain respects, and know that within the territory of ourselves, there can only be our own footprints. —R. D. Laing, The Divided Self ACKNOWLEDGMENTS Amanda Urban, my agent at ICM, first urged me to write the proposal for this book. Nan Graham subsequently bought it for Viking. Her work as editor and dear friend and passionate enthusiast proved invaluable. Ditto for Courtney Hodell, also of Viking. My sister, Lecia Harmon Scaglione, confirmed the veracity of what I’d written. James Laughlin of New Directions also gave me a needed boost. As final readers, Tobias and Catherine Wolff worked quickly and incisively and without recompense. For all these, I’m grateful. Thanks also to the Mrs. Giles Whiting Foundation for a muchneeded Writers Award, and to the Mary Ingraham Bunting Institute of Radcliffe College for a fellowship. My mother didn’t read this book until it was complete. However, for two years she freely answered questions by phone and mail, and she did research for me, even when she was ill. She has been unreserved in her encouragement of this work, though much in the story pains her. Her bravery in this is laudable. Her support means everything. THE L IARS’ C LUB nothing matters but the quality of the affection— in the end—that has carved the trace in the mind dove sta memoria —Ezra Pound, Canto LXXVI A man’s at odds to know his mind cause his mind is aught he has to know it with. He can know his heart, but he dont want to. Rightly so. Best not to look in there. —Cormac McCarthy, Blood Meridian …you were saved not in order to live you have little time you must give testimony be courageous when the mind deceives you be courageous in the final account only this is important and let your helpless Anger be like the sea whenever you hear the voice of the insulted and beaten let your sister Scorn not leave you for the informers executioners cowards—they will win they will go to your funeral and with relief throw a lump of earth the woodborer will write your smoothed-over biography and do not forgive truly it is not in your power to forgive in the name of those betrayed at dawn beware however of unnecessary pride keep looking at your clown’s face in the mirror repeat: I was called—weren’t there better ones than I… —Zbigniew Herbert, from “The Envoy of Mr. Cogito” (translated by John and Bogdana Carpenter)

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

  A peculiar variety of such gifts, namely, memorials of miraculous cures,1229 appeared in the fifth century; at least they are first mentioned by Theodoret, who said of them in his eighth discourse on the martyrs: "That those who ask with the confidence of faith, receive what they ask, is plainly proved by their sacred gifts in testimony of their healing. Some offer feet, others hands, of gold or silver, and these gifts show their deliverance from those evils, as tokens of which they have been offered by the restored." With the worship of saints this custom gained strongly, and became in the middle age quite universal. Whoever recovered from a sickness, considered himself bound first to testify by a gift his gratitude to the saint whose aid he had invoked in his distress. Parents, whose children fortunately survived the teething-fever, offered to St. Apollonia (all whose teeth, according to the legend, had been broken out with pincers by a hangman’s servant) gifts of jawbones in wax. In like manner St. Julian, for happily accomplished journeys, and St. Hubert, for safe return from the perils of the chase, were very richly endowed; but the Virgin Mary more than all. Almost every church or chapel which has a miracle-working image of the mother of God, possesses even now a multitude of golden and silver acknowledgments of fortunate returns and recoveries. § 113. Church Poetry and Music. J. Rambach: Anthologie christl. Gesänge aus allen Jahrh. der christl. Kirche. Altona, 1817–’33. H. A. Daniel: Thesaurus hymnologicus. Hal. 1841–’56, 5 vols. Edélestand du Méril: Poésies populaires latines antérieures au douzième siècle. Paris, 1843. C. Fortlage: Gesänge der christl. Vorzeit. Berlin, 1844. G. A. Königsfeld u. A. W. v. Schlegel: Altchristliche Hymnen u. Gesaenge lateinisch u. Deutsch. Bonn, 1847. Second collection by Königsfeld, Bonn, 1865. E. E. Koch: Geschichte des Kirchenlieds u. Kirchengesangs der christl., insbesondere der deutschen evangel. Kirche. 2d ed. Stuttgart, 1852 f. 4 vols. (i. 10–30). F. J. Mone: Latein. Hymnen des Mittelalters (from MSS.), Freiburg, 1853–’55. (Vol. i., hymns of God and angels; ii., h. of Mary; iii., h. of saints.) Bässler: Auswahl Alt-christl. Lieder vom 2–15ten Jahrh. Berlin, 1858. R. Ch. Trench: Sacred Latin Poetry, chiefly lyrical, selected and arranged for use; with Notes and Introduction (1849), 2d ed. improved, Lond. and Cambr. 1864. The valuable hymnological works of Dr. J. M. Neale (of Sackville College, Oxford): The Ecclesiastical Latin Poetry of the Middle Ages (in Henry Thompson’s History of Roman Literature, Lond. and Glasgow., 1852, p. 213 ff.); Mediaeval Hymns and Sequences, Lond. 1851; Sequentiae ex Missalibus, 1852; Hymns of the Eastern Church, 1862, several articles in the Ecclesiologist; and a Latin dissertation, De Sequentiis, in the Essays on Liturgiology, etc., p. 359 sqq. (Comp. also J. Chandler: The Hymns of the Primitive Church, now first collected, translated, and arranged, Lond. 1837.)

• From My People (2022)

  and finally Sarah Ried, my editor at HarperCollins, whose gentle but authoritative, ever-present guidance helped me “walk on with hope in my heart,” enabling me to produce My People . About the AuthorCHARLAYNE HUNTER-GAULT is an Emmy-winning journalist who has been in the field for more than five decades. After starting her career at the New Yorker , Hunter-Gault joined the New York Times , where she established the Harlem Bureau, the first of its kind, and eventually joined PBS NewsHour as its first substitute anchor and national correspondent. The author of four previous books, Hunter-Gault lives in Florida and on Martha’s Vineyard. Discover great authors, exclusive offers, and more at hc.com . Also by Charlayne Hunter-GaultIn My Place New News Out of Africa: Uncovering Africa’s Renaissance To the Mountaintop: My Journey Through the Civil Rights Movement Corrective Rape: Discrimination, Assault, Sexual Violence, and Murder Against South Africa’s L.G.B.T. Community [image "Bookperk sign-up advertisement" file=Image00002.jpg] CopyrightMY PEOPLE . Copyright © 2022 by Charlayne Hunter-Gault. Foreword copyright © 2022 by Nikole Hannah-Jones. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books. FIRST EDITION Cover design by Robin Bilardello Cover photographs: The author with Nelson Mandela courtesy of Jacqueline Farmer. The author on assignment in Africa courtesy of Jeff Goldman. The other photographs courtesy of the author. Digital Edition OCTOBER 2022 ISBN: 978-0-06-313544-4 Version 09062022 Print ISBN: 978-0-06-313539-0 About the PublisherAustralia HarperCollins Publishers Australia Pty. Ltd. Level 13, 201 Elizabeth Street Sydney, NSW 2000, Australia www.harpercollins.com.au Canada HarperCollins Publishers Ltd Bay Adelaide Centre, East Tower 22 Adelaide Street West, 41st Floor Toronto, Ontario, M5H 4E3 www.harpercollins.ca India HarperCollins India A 75, Sector 57 Noida Uttar Pradesh 201 301 www.harpercollins.co.in New Zealand HarperCollins Publishers New Zealand Unit D1, 63 Apollo Drive Rosedale 0632 Auckland, New Zealand www.harpercollins.co.nz United Kingdom HarperCollins Publishers Ltd. 1 London Bridge Street London SE1 9GF, UK www.harpercollins.co.uk United States HarperCollins Publishers Inc. 195 Broadway New York, NY 10007 www.harpercollins.com

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

  Calvin had labored in Geneva twenty-three years after his second arrival,—that is, from September, 1541, till May 27, 1564,1252 — when he was called to his rest in the prime of manhood and usefulness, and in full possession of his mental powers; leaving behind him an able and worthy successor, a model Reformed Church based on the law of Moses and the gospel of Christ; a flourishing Academy, which was a nursery of evangelical preachers for Switzerland and France, and survives to this day; and a library of works from his pen, which after more than three centuries are still a living and moulding power.1253 He continued his labors till the last year, writing, preaching, lecturing, attending the sessions of the Consistory and the Venerable Company of pastors, entertaining and counselling strangers from all parts of the Protestant world, and corresponding in every direction. He did all this notwithstanding his accumulating physical maladies, as headaches, asthma, dyspepsia, fever, gravel, and gout, which wore out his delicate body, but could not break his mighty spirit. When he was unable to walk he had himself transported to church in a chair. On the 6th of February, 1564, he preached his last sermon. On Easter day, the 2d of April, he was for the last time carried to church and received the sacrament from the hands of Beza. On the 25th of April, he made his last will and testament. It is a characteristic document, full of humility and gratitude to God, acknowledging his own unworthiness, placing his whole confidence in the free election of grace, and the abounding merits of Christ, laying aside all controversy, and looking forward to the unity and peace in heaven.1254 Luther, defying all forms of law, begins his last will with the words:, I am well known in heaven, on earth, and in hell," and closes: "This wrote the notary of God and the witness of his gospel, Dr. Martin Luther." On the 26th of April, Calvin wished to see once more the four Syndics and all the members of the Little Council in the Council Hall, but the Senators in consideration of his health offered to come to him. They proceeded to his house on the 27th in solemn silence. As they were assembled round him he gathered all his strength and addressed them without interruption, like a patriarch, thanking them for their kindness and devotion, asking their pardon for his occasional outbreaks of violence and wrath, and exhorting them to persevere in the pure doctrine and discipline of Christ. He moved them to tears.1255 In like manner, on the 28th of April, he addressed all the ministers of Geneva whom he had invited to his house, in words of solemn exhortation and affectionate regard. He asked their pardon for any failings, and thanked them for their faithful assistance. He grasped the hands of every one. "They parted," says Beza, "with heavy hearts and tearful eyes."1256

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

  heavenly kingdom on earth, and in setting forth its history as a book if life, a storehouse of wisdom and piety, and surest test of his own promise to his people: "Lo, I am with you alway, even unto the end of the world." P. S. Theological Seminary, Mercersburg, Pennsylvania, November, 8, 1858 PREFACE TO THIRD REVISION ——————————— The continued demand for my Church History lays upon me the grateful duty of keeping it abreast of the times. I have, therefore, submitted this and the other volumes (especially the second) to another revision and brought the literature down to the latest date, as the reader will see by glancing at pages 2, 35, 45, 51–53, 193, 411, 484, 569, 570, etc. The changes have been effected by omissions and condensations, without enlarging the size. The second volume is now passing through the fifth edition, and the other volumes will follow rapidly. This is my last revision. If any further improvements should be necessary during my lifetime, I shall add them in a separate appendix. I feel under great obligation to the reading public which enables me to perfect my work. The interest in Church History is steadily increasing in our theological schools and among the rising generation of scholars, and promises good results for the advancement of our common Christianity. The Author New York, January, 1890.

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

  Benedict had no presentiment of the vast historical importance, which this rule, originally designed simply for the cloister of Monte Cassino, was destined to attain. He probably never aspired beyond the regeneration and salvation of his own soul and that of his brother monks, and all the talk of later Catholic historians about his far-reaching plans of a political and social regeneration of Europe, and the preservation and promotion of literature and art, find no support whatever in his life or in his rule. But he humbly planted a seed, which Providence blessed a hundredfold. By his rule he became, without his own will or knowledge, the founder of an order, which, until in the thirteenth century the Dominicans and Franciscans pressed it partially into the background, spread with great rapidity over the whole of Europe, maintained a clear supremacy, formed the model for all other monastic orders, and gave to the Catholic church an imposing array of missionaries, authors, artists, bishops, archbishops, cardinals, and popes, as Gregory the Great and Gregory VII. In less than a century after the death of Benedict, the conquests of the barbarians in Italy, Gaul, Spain were reconquered for civilization, and the vast territories of Great Britain, Germany, and Scandinavia incorporated into Christendom, or opened to missionary labor; and in this progress of history the monastic institution, regulated and organized by Benedict’s rule, bears an honorable share. Benedict himself established a second cloister in the vicinity of Terracina, and two of his favorite disciples, Placidus and St. Maurus,387 introduced the "holy rule," the one into Sicily, the other into France. Pope Gregory the Great, himself at one time a Benedictine monk, enhanced its prestige, and converted the Anglo-Saxons to the Roman Christian faith, by Benedictine monks. Gradually the rule found so general acceptance both in old and in new institutions, that in the time of Charlemagne it became a question, whether there were any monks at all, who were not Benedictines. The order, it is true, has degenerated from time to time, through the increase of its wealth and the decay of its discipline, but its fostering care of religion, of humane studies, and of the general civilization of Europe, from the tilling of the soil to the noblest learning, has given it an honorable place in history and won immortal praise. He who is familiar with the imposing and venerable tomes of the Benedictine editions of the Fathers, their thoroughly learned prefaces, biographies, antiquarian dissertations, and indexes, can never think of the order of the Benedictines without sincere regard and gratitude.

• From Best Erotica & Sexual Deviance Narratives Ever Written (2024)

  In short, every thing that is generally unamiable in his season of life, was, in him, repaired by so many advantages, that he existed a proof, manifest at least to me, that it is not out of the power of age to please, if it lays out to please, and if, making just allowance, those in that class do not forget, that if must cost them more pains and attention, than what youth, the natural spring-time of joy, stands in need of: as fruits out of season require proportionally more skill and cultivation, to force them. With this gentleman, who took me home soon after our acquaintance commenced, I lived near eight months in which time, my constant complaisance and docility, my attention to deserve his confidence and love, and a conduct, in general, devoid of the least art and founded on my sincere regard and esteem for him, won and attached him so firmly to me, that, after having generously trusted me with a genteel, independent settlement, proceeding to heap marks of affection on me, he appointed me, by an authentic will, his sole heiress and executrix: a disposition which he did not outlive two months, being taken from me by a violent cold that he contracted, as he unadvisedly ran to the window, on an alarm of fire at some streets distant, and stood there naked-breasted, and exposed to the fatal impressions of a damp night air. After acquitting myself of the duty towards my deceased benefactor, and paying him a tribute of un-feigned sorrow, which a little time changed into a most tender, graceful memory of him, which I shall ever retain, I grew somewhat comforted by the prospect that now opened to me, if not of happiness, at least of affluence and independence. I saw myself then in the full bloom and pride of youth (for I was not yet nineteen), actually at the head of so large a fortune, as it would have been even the height of impudence in me to have raised my wishes, much more my hopes to; and that this unexpected elevation did not turn my head, I owed to the pains my benefactor had taken to form and prepare me for it, as I owed his opinion of my management of the vast possessions he left me, to what he had observed of the prudential economy I had learned under Mrs. Cole, the reserve of which he saw I had made, was a proof and encouragement to him. But, alas! how easily in the enjoyment of the greatest sweets in life, in present possession, poisoned by the regret of an absent one! But my regret was a mighty and just one, since it had my only truly beloved Charles for its object.

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

  The worship of saints proceeded originally, without doubt, from a pure and truly Christian source, to wit: a very deep and lively sense of the communion of saints, which extends over death and the grave, and embraces even the blessed in heaven. It was closely connected with love to Christ, and with gratitude for everything great and good which he has done through his instruments for the welfare of posterity. The church fulfilled a simple and natural duty of gratitude, when, in the consciousness of unbroken fellowship with the church triumphant, she honored the memory of the martyrs and confessors, who had offered their life for their faith, and had achieved victory for it over all its enemies. She performed a duty of fidelity to her own children, when she held up for admiration and imitation the noble virtues and services of their fathers. She honored and glorified Christ Himself when she surrounded Him with an innumerable company of followers, contemplated the reflection of His glory in them, and sang to His praise in the Ambrosian Te Deum: "The glorious company of the Apostles praise thee; The goodly fellowship of the Prophets praise thee; The noble army of Martyrs praise thee; The holy church throughout all the world doth acknowledge thee; The Father, of an infinite majesty; Thine adorable, true, and only Son; Also the Holy Ghost, the Comforter. Thou art the King of glory, O Christ; Thou art the everlasting Son of the Father. When thou tookest upon thee to deliver man, thou didst not abhor the Virgin’s womb;816 When thou hadst overcome the sharpness of death, thou didst open the kingdom of heaven to all believers." In the first three centuries the veneration of the martyrs in general restricted itself to the thankful remembrance of their virtues and the celebration of the day of their death as the day of their heavenly birth.817 This celebration usually took place at their graves. So the church of Smyrna annually commemorated its bishop Polycarp, and valued his bones more than gold and gems, though with the express distinction: "Christ we worship as the Son of God; the martyrs we love and honor as disciples and successors of the Lord, on account of their insurpassable love to their King and Master, as also, we wish to be their companions and fellow disciples."818 Here we find this veneration as yet in its innocent simplicity.

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

  Our age enjoys the gifts of preceding ages, and we know more, not because we excel in talent, but because we use the products of others who have gone before."1181

• From Best Erotica & Sexual Deviance Narratives Ever Written (2024)

  But, as I propose to devote a letter entirely to the pleasure of retracing to you all the particulars of my acquaintance with this ever, to me, memorable friend, I shall, in this, transiently touch on no more than may serve, as mortar, to cement, or form the connection of my history, and to obviate your surprise that one of my blood and relish of life, should count a gallant of three score such a catch. Referring then to a more explicit narrative, to explain by what progressions our acquaintance, certainly innocent at first, insensibly changed nature, and run into unplatonic length, as might well be expected from one of my condition of life, and above all, from that principle of electricity that scarce ever fails of producing fire when the sexes meet. I shall only here acquaint you, that as age had not subdued his tenderness for our sex, neither had it robbed him of the power of pleasing, since whatever he wanted in the bewitching charms of youth, he atoned for, or supplemented with the advantages of experience, the sweetness of his manners, and above all, his flattering address in touching the heart, by an application to the understanding. From him it was I first learned, to any purpose, and not without infinite pleasure, that I had such a portion of me worth bestowing some regard on; from him I received my first essential encouragement, and instructions how to put it in that train of cultivation, which I have since pushed to the little degree of improvement you see it at; he it was, who first taught me to be sensible that the pleasures of the mind were superior to those of the body; at the same time, that they were so far from obnoxious to, or, incompatible with each other, that, besides the sweetness in the variety and transition, the one served to exalt and perfect the taste of the other, to a degree that the senses alone can never arrive at. Himself a rational pleasurist; as being much too wise to be ashamed of the pleasures of humanity, loved me indeed, but loved me with dignity; in a mean equally removed from the sourness, of forwardness, by which age is unpleasingly characterized, and from that childish silly dotage that so often disgraces it, and which he himself used to turn into ridicule, and compare to an old goat affecting the frisk of a young kid.

• From Best Erotica & Sexual Deviance Narratives Ever Written (2024)

  Ah! am I not much less so than the unlucky ones I left in that den of iniquity and vice from which God's kindness caused me to emerge as if by some sort of miracle?... And full of gratitude I threw myself upon my knees, raised my eyes, and fixing the sun, for it seemed to me the Divinity's most splendid achievement, the one which best manifests His greatness, I was drawing from that Star's sublimity new motives for prayer and good works when all of a sudden I felt myself seized by two men who, having cast something over my head to prevent me from seeing and crying out, bound me like a criminal and dragged me away without uttering a word. And thus had we walked for nearly two hours during which I knew not whither my escorts were taking me when one of them, hearing me gasp for air, proposed to his comrade that I be freed of the sack covering my head; he agreed, I drank in fresh air and observed that we were in the midst of a forest through which we were traveling along a fairly broad although little frequented road. A thousand dark ideas rushed straightway into my mind. I feared I was being led back to their odious monastery.