Grief

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.

Page 162 of 263 · 20 per page

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

  The younger, again, I admonish to conduct themselves with modesty, keeping far aloof from all haughtiness of mind. Let no one give disturbance to his neighbor, but let every one shun deceit and all that bitterness of feeling which, in the administration of the Republic, has led many away from the right path. These things you will avoid if each keeps within his own sphere, and all conduct themselves with good faith in the department which has been intrusted to them. In the decision of civil causes let there be no place for partiality, or hatred; let no one pervert justice by oblique artifices; let no one, by his recommendations, prevent the laws from having full effect; let no one depart from what is just and good. Should any one feel tempted by some sinister affection, let him firmly resist it, having respect to Him from whom he received his station, and supplicating the assistance of His Holy Spirit. " ’Finally, I again entreat you to pardon my infirmities, which I acknowledge and confess before God and His angels, and also before you, my much respected lords.’ "Having thus spoken, and prayed to Almighty God that He would crown them more and more with His gifts, and guide them by His Holy Spirit, for the safety of the whole Republic, giving his right hand to each, he left them in sorrow and tears, all feeling as if they were taking a last farewell of their common parent." Calvin’s Farewell to the Ministers of Geneva, April 28, 1564. From Beza’s Vita Calvini. The Latin text in Opera, XXI. 166 sq. Translation by Henry Beveridge for "The Calvin Translation Society," Edinburgh, 1844 (I. xciii), from the Latin text. There is another report, in French, by minister Jean Pinaut, dated May 1, which is fuller as regards Calvin’s persecutions, and the confession of his infirmities, which always displeased him and for which he asks forgiveness. It also makes grateful mention of Farel, Viret, and Beza, and an unpleasant allusion to Bern, which always more feared than loved Calvin. It is printed in Opera, vol. IX. 891, 892, and in the Letters of John Calvin by Jules Bonnet, transl. by Gilchrist, vol. IV. 372–377. "On the 28th of April, when all of us in the ministry of Geneva had gone to him at his request, he said:— " ’Brethren, after I am dead, persist in this work, and be not dispirited; for the Lord will save this Republic and Church from the threats of the enemy. Let dissension be far away from you, and embrace each other with mutual love. Think again and again what you owe to this Church in which the Lord hath placed you, and let nothing induce you to quit it. It will, indeed, be easy for some who are weary of it to slink away, but they will find, to their experience, that the Lord cannot be deceived.

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

  He fell peacefully asleep with the setting sun towards eight o’clock, and entered into the rest of his Lord. "I had just left him," says Beza, "a little before, and on receiving intimation from the servants, immediately hastened to him with one of the brethren. We found that he had already died, and so very calmly, without any convulsion of his feet or hands, that he did not even fetch a deeper sigh. He had remained perfectly sensible, and was not entirely deprived of utterance to his very last breath. Indeed, he looked much more like one sleeping than dead."1258 He had lived fifty-four years, ten months, and seventeen days. "Thus," continues Beza, his pupil and friend, "withdrew into heaven, at the same time with the setting sun, that most brilliant luminary, which was the lamp of the Church. On the following night and day there was immense grief and lamentation in the whole city; for the Republic had lost its wisest citizen, the Church its faithful shepherd, the Academy an incomparable teacher—all lamented the departure of their common father and best comforter, next to God. A multitude of citizens streamed to the death-chamber and could scarcely be separated from the corpse. Among them were several foreigners, as the distinguished Ambassador of the Queen of England to France, who had come to Geneva to make the acquaintance of the celebrated man, and now wished to see his remains. At first all were admitted; but as the curiosity became excessive and might have given occasion to calumnies of the enemies,1259 his friends deemed it best on the following morning, which was the Lord’s Day, to wrap his body in linen and to enclose it in a wooden coffin, according to custom. At two o’clock in the afternoon the remains were carried to the common cemetery on Plain Palais (Planum Palatium), followed by all the patricians, pastors, professors, and teachers, and nearly the whole city in sincere mourning."1260 Calvin had expressly forbidden all pomp at his funeral and the erection of any monument over his grave. He wished to be buried, like Moses, out of the reach of idolatry. This was consistent with his theology, which humbles man and exalts God. Beza, however, wrote a suitable epitaph in Latin and French, which he calls "Parentalia" (i.e. offering at the funeral of a father):— "Shall honored Calvin to the dust return, From whom e’en Virtue’s self might learn; Shall he—of falling Rome the greatest dread,

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

  Zwingli (1529), refused to take Beza’s hand at parting (March 29).1304 Undeterred by this churlish exhibition, Beza left Montbéliard for another round of visits at German courts to induce them once more to plead with France to restore to the Huguenots their rights of worship; for the Peace of Fleix had not lasted long, and the country was again plunged in the horrors of civil war. The Montbéliard conference had an echo in the Bern Colloquy of April 15th to 18th, 1588, in which Samuel Huber, pastor at Burgdorf, near Bern, a notorious polemic, and Beza represented the Lutheran and Calvinist parties, respectively. It was Beza’s last appearance as a public disputant, and the hero of so many wordy battles once more carried off the palm. In fact, his victory was much more decided than such contests were usually, as the Bernese Council condemned Huber for misrepresenting Beza and Calvinism generally. Beza had left Geneva with a heavy heart because his faithful and beloved wife had just died, and when he returned, found public matters in a critical condition. The magistrates had felt themselves compelled by the condition of the city treasury to economize as much as possible, and had dismissed two of the professors in the Academy, and contemplated other retrenchments. Beza knew that these extreme measures would probably greatly cripple the institution, and so, old as he was, and failing, he undertook to give a full course of instruction in theology, and persisted with it for more than two years,— until the crisis was passed,—and for these extra duties he would not take any compensation. § 174. Beza and Henry IV. In the course of his long life Beza had few joys, aside from the abiding one of his religion, and many sorrows. His heart was bound up with the fortunes of the Reformed Church in France, and they were usually bad. Still he took courage every time a little improvement was noticeable. Much hope had he cherished in consequence of the accession of Henry of Navarre (1589), because he was a Protestant. But early in the summer of 1593, the news reached Geneva that the king, upon whom religion and morality sat very lightly, in the interests of peace and national prosperity, was determined to abjure the Protestant faith. Alas for all their hopes! Beza was greatly moved, and addressed the monarch a letter in which he set forth the eternal consequences of the change the king was about to make.1305 He felt assured, however, that Henry would be delivered from the machinations of his and their enemies, and not take the fatal step. But ere Beza’s letter reached him the deed was done. In the ancient abbey church at St. Denis on the morning of Sunday, July 25, 1593, King Henry of Navarre, the son of Jeanne d’Albret, the only Huguenot who ever sat upon the throne of France, abjured his faith, and took a solemn oath to protect the Roman Catholic, and Apostolic religion.

• From Tropic of Cancer (1934)

  If I was truly a great human being, as she said, then what was the meaning of this slavering idiocy about me? I was a man with body and soul, I had a heart that was not protected by a steel vault. I had moments of ecstasy and I sang with burning sparks. I sang of the Equator, her red-feathered legs and the islands dropping out of sight. But nobody heard. A gun fired across the Pacific falls into space because the earth is round and pigeons fly upside down. I saw her looking at me across the table with eyes turned to grief; sorrow spreading inward flattened its nose against her spine; the marrow churned to pity had turned liquid. She was light as a corpse that floats in the Dead Sea. Her fingers bled with anguish and the blood turned to drool. With the wet dawn came the tolling of bells and along the fibers of my nerves the bells played ceaselessly and their tongues pounded in my heart and clanged with iron malice. Strange that the bells should toll so, but stranger still the body bursting, this woman turned to night and her maggot words gnawing through the mattress. I moved along under the Equator, heard the hideous laughter of the green-jawed hyena, saw the jackal with silken tail and the dick-dick and the spotted leopard, all left behind in the Garden of Eden. And then her sorrow widened, like the bow of a dreadnought and the weight of her sinking flooded my ears. Slime wash and sapphires slipping, sluicing through the gay neurons, and the spectrum spliced and the gunwales dipping. Soft as lion- pad I heard the gun carriages turn, saw them vomit and drool: the firmament sagged and all the stars turned black. Black ocean bleeding and the brooding stars breeding chunks of fresh-swollen flesh while overhead the birds wheeled and out of the hallucinated sky fell the balance with mortar and pestle and the bandaged eyes of justice. All that is here related moves with imaginary feet along the parallels of dead orbs; all that is seen with the empty sockets bursts like flowering grass. Out of nothingness arises the sign of infinity; beneath the ever-rising spirals slowly sinks the gaping hole. The land and the water make numbers joined, a poem written with flesh and stronger than steel or granite. Through endless night the earth whirls toward a creation unknown. ...

• From Cults Inside Out: How People Get In and Can Get Out (2014)

  But days before McPherson died, it was noted that she was “not strong enough” to stand.879 Almost three years after Lisa McPherson‘s death, after a police investigation and lengthy review by a state prosecutor, Scientology was charged with two felonies: “practicing medicine without a license and abuse of a disabled adult.”880 In its defense Scientology commissioned studies concerning the cause of McPherson’s death, challenging the coroner’s conclusions. Dr. Joan Wood, the coroner, received thousands of pages of documents and numerous subpoenas. “It became very difficult,” said Jacqueline Martino, a former chief investigator who worked with Wood for sixteen years. “I think she almost tried to stand alone against this behemoth, Scientology.”881 Ultimately under considerable pressure, Wood amended the death certificate from cause of death “undetermined” to “accident.” The coroner had first said the death was due to a blood clot brought on by “severe dehydration.”882 Because of the change Wood made concerning the cause of death, criminal charges against Scientology were dropped.883 Lisa McPherson’s family filed a wrongful death lawsuit in February 1997 against Scientology, and it was settled out of court in May 2004. The terms of that settlement remain confidential.884 In September 2003 certain Scientology release forms were made public through the Internet. These releases and/or agreements contain the statement that the signer opposes psychiatric treatment and that if the signer should become mentally ill, Scientology is authorized to “extricate” him or her from treatment or care by mental health professionals. Rather than receiving such care or treatment, he or she agrees to submit to the so-called Introspection Rundown, a Scientology practice L. Ron Hubbard had devised. It appears that Lisa McPherson was subjected to this Scientology procedure. The release form reads, “I understand that the Introspection Rundown… includes being isolated from all sources of potential spiritual upset, including, but not limited to family members, friends or others with whom I might normally interact. As part of the Introspection Rundown, I specifically consent to Church members being with me 24 hours a day at the direction of my Case Supervisor.” Moreover, “the Case Supervisor will determine the time period in which I will remain isolated” and that “such duration will be completely at the discretion of the Case Supervisor.” The release form or legal contract concludes, “I further understand that by signing below, I am forever giving up my right to sue the Church…for any injury or damage suffered in any way connected with Scientology religious services or spiritual assistance.”885 Dr. Joan Wood, who served as a medical examiner for eighteen years and performed more than fifty-six hundred autopsies, never recovered from the one she did on Lisa McPherson. That event in Wood’s life reportedly so “scarred” the coroner that she went into a “reclusive retirement.”886 “Sadly, the Scientology episode took its toll on Joan Wood, [and] that was her demise,” lawyer Denis de Vlaming said.

• From Tropic of Cancer (1934)

  I could not help but reflect also that when we had walked side by side through these mournful, dingy streets now so saturated with my dream and longing, she had observed nothing, felt nothing: they were like any other streets to her, a little more sordid perhaps, and that is all. She wouldn’t remember that at a certain corner I had stopped to pick up her hairpin, or that, when I bent down to tie her laces, I remarked the spot on which her foot had rested and that it would remain there forever, even after the cathedrals had been demolished and the whole Latin civilization wiped out forever and ever. Walking down the Rue Lhomond one night in a fit of unusual anguish and desolation, certain things were revealed to me with poignant clarity. Whether it was that I had so often walked this street in bitterness and despair or whether it was the remembrance of a phrase which she had dropped one night as we stood at the Place Lucien-Herr I do not know. “Why don’t you show me that Paris,” she said, “that you have written about?” One thing I know, that at the recollection of these words I suddenly realized the impossibility of ever revealing to her that Paris which I had gotten to know, the Paris whose arrondissements are undefined, a Paris that has never existed except by virtue of my loneliness, my hunger for her. Such a huge Paris! It would take a lifetime to explore it again. This Paris, to which I alone had the key, hardly lends itself to a tour, even with the best of intentions; it is a Paris that has to be lived, that has to be experienced each day in a thousand different forms of torture, a Paris that grows inside you like a cancer, and grows and grows until you are eaten away by it. Stumbling down the Rue Mouffetard, with these reflections stirring in my brain, I recalled another strange item out of the past, out of that guidebook whose leaves she had asked me to turn but which, because the covers were so heavy, I then found impossible to pry open. For no reason at all—because at the moment my thoughts were occupied with Salavin in whose sacred precincts I was now meandering—for no reason at all, I say, there came to mind the recollection of a day when, inspired by the plaque which I passed day in and day out, I impulsively entered the Pension Orfila and asked to see the room Strindberg had occupied. Up to that time nothing very terrible had befallen me, though I had already lost all my worldly possessions and had known what it was to walk the streets in hunger and in fear of the police.

• From Tropic of Cancer (1934)

  Up to then I had not found a single friend in Paris, a circumstance which was not so much depressing as bewildering, for wherever I have roamed in this world the easiest thing for me to discover has been a friend. But in reality, nothing very terrible had happened to me yet. One can live without friends, as one can live without love, or even without money, that supposed sine qua non . One can live in Paris—I discovered that!—on just grief and anguish. A bitter nourishment—perhaps the best there is for certain people. At any rate, I had not yet come to the end of my rope. I was only flirting with disaster. I had time and sentiment enough to spare to peep into other people’s lives, to dally with the dead stuff of romance which, however morbid it may be, when it is wrapped between the covers of a book, seems deliciously remote and anonymous. As I was leaving the place I was conscious of an ironic smile hovering over my lips, as though I were saying to myself “Not yet, the Pension Orfila!” Since then, of course, I have learned what every madman in Paris discovers sooner or later; that there are no ready-made infernos for the tormented. It seems to me I understand a little better now why she took such huge delight in reading Strindberg. I can see her looking up from her book after reading a delicious passage, and, with tears of laughter in her eyes, saying to me: “You’re just as mad as he was… you want to be punished!” What a delight that must be to the sadist when she discovers her own proper masochist! When she bites herself, as it were, to test the sharpness of her teeth. In those days, when I first knew her, she was saturated with Strindberg. That wild carnival of maggots which he reveled in, that eternal duel of the sexes, that spiderish ferocity which had endeared him to the sodden oafs of the northland, it was that which had brought us together. We came together in a dance of death and so quickly was I sucked down into the vortex that when I came to the surface again I could not recognize the world. When I found myself loose the music had ceased; the carnival was over and I had been picked clean. … After leaving the Pension Orfila that afternoon I went to the library and there, after bathing in the Ganges and pondering over the signs of the zodiac, I began to reflect on the meaning of that inferno which Strindberg had so mercilessly depicted.

• From Tropic of Cancer (1934)

  And he puts the live wire right between the legs; he hits below the belt, scorches the very gizzards. It is no use putting on rubber gloves; all that can be coolly and intellectually handled belongs to the carapace and a man who is intent on creation always dives beneath, to the open wound, to the festering obscene horror. He hitches his dynamo to the tenderest parts; if only blood and pus gush forth, it is something. The dry, fucked-out crater is obscene. More obscene than anything is inertia. More blasphemous than the bloodiest oath is paralysis. If there is only a gaping wound left then it must gush forth though it produce nothing but toads and bats and homunculi. Everything is packed into a second which is either consummated or not consummated. The earth is not an arid plateau of health and comfort, but a great sprawling female with velvet torso that swells and heaves with ocean billows; she squirms beneath a diadem of sweat and anguish. Naked and sexed she rolls among the clouds in the violet light of the stars. All of her, from her generous breasts to her gleaming thighs, blazes with furious ardor. She moves amongst the seasons and the years with a grand whoopla that seizes the torso with paroxysmal fury, that shakes the cobwebs out of the sky; she subsides on her pivotal orbits with volcanic tremors. She is like a doe at times, a doe that has fallen into a snare and lies waiting with beating heart for the cymbals to crash and the dogs to bark. Love and hate, despair, pity, rage, disgust—what are these amidst the fornications of the planets? What is war, disease, cruelty, terror, when night presents the ecstasy of myriad blazing suns? What is this chaff we chew in our sleep if it is not the remembrance of fang-whorl and star cluster. She used to say to me, Mona, in her fits of exaltation, “you’re a great human being,” and though she left me here to perish, though she put beneath my feet a great howling pit of emptiness, the words that lie at the bottom of my soul leap forth and they light the shadows below me. I am one who was lost in the crowd, whom the fizzing lights made dizzy, a zero who saw everything about him reduced to mockery. Passed me men and women ignited with sulfur, porters in calcium livery opening the jaws of hell, fame walking on crutches, dwindled by the skyscrapers, chewed to a frazzle by the spiked mouth of the machines. I walked between the tall buildings toward the cool of the river and I saw the lights shoot up between the ribs of the skeletons like rockets.

• From Cults Inside Out: How People Get In and Can Get Out (2014)

  I had no idea that something that looks so much like a church could be so cultlike.”365 Charles Meade died in 2010 at the age of ninety-three.366 Meade Ministries subsequently changed its name to Mountaintop Ministries Worldwide Inc. Rhode Island pediatrician Dr. Seth Asser published a study of the deaths of 172 children due to what he called “religion-based medical neglect.” According to that study, 140 of the children had a 90 percent chance of survival, while 18 others had a 50 percent chance of survival if they had received proper medical care. “Most were ordinary illnesses that no one dies from—appendicitis, pneumonia…And many of them died slow, horrible deaths, without the benefit of [pain-relief] medicine,” Asser said.367 Child advocate Rita Swan worked with Asser on the study project. Swan left Christian Science, a church known for its faith healing beliefs, after her youngest son died without medical attention while a Christian Science practitioner prayed over him. Swan explained, “We’re not against prayer…Parents have a right to pray for divine healing. But when parents see the situation is critical, they have a responsibility to seek medical help in addition to prayer.” CHAPTER 3 FAMILY CULTS Some small cults can largely comprise the members of a single family or blended family led by an all-powerful—usually patriarchal—figure. In the book Captive Hearts, Captive Minds , Madeleine Tobias and Janja Lalich explain, “In addition to the larger, more publicized cults, there are…’family cults,’ where the head of the family uses deceptive and coercive persuasion and control techniques.”368 The bonds within this particular type of cult are quite strong, strengthened by loyalty that is expected through family ties. Children raised within such an environment may know of no other life, and for this reason they accept without question what the outside world would regard as bizarre behavior. The following historical examples of family cults illustrate these points. Within such closely tied family groups, the so-called DDD syndrome may develop, which summarizes a cultic situation that includes “debility, dependency and dread.” A publication of the American Sociological Association first described this syndrome.369 Psychologist Michael Langone later adapted DDD for the American Family Foundation (AFF), now known as the International Cultic Studies Association ( ICSA). Langone witnessed the additional factor of deception in the recruitment practices of some cults as well, so he included deception in his adapted version of DDD.370 In family cults a combination of deception, control of the environment, and socialization may debilitate those victimized. This is enforced through stringent rules and relative isolation. That is, those held within a family cult environment are expected to express dutiful submission and commitment to parental authority. Langone described people in destructive cults as “vulnerable” and influenced by authority figures who deceptively appeared to be both “benevolent” and beneficial. This role of authority, when assumed by a parent, can be particularly deceptive and debilitating to children.

• From Austerlitz (2001)

  others served the Lithuanians and then the Russians once more as prisons. In 1941 they fell into German hands, including the notorious Fort IX where Wehrmacht command posts were set up and where more than thirty thousand people were killed over the next three years. Their remains, says Jacobson, lie under a field of oats a hundred meters outside the walls. Transports from the west kept coming to Kaunas until May 1944, when the war had long since been lost, as the last messages from those locked in the dungeons of the fortress bear witness. One of them, writes Jacobson, scratched the words Nous sommes neuf cents Francais on the cold limestone wall of the bunker. Others left only a date and place of origin with their names: Lob, Marcel, de St. Nazaire; Wechsler, Abram, de Limoges; Max Stern, Paris, 18.5.44. Sitting by the moat of the fortress of Breendonk, I read to the end of the fifteenth chapter of Heshel’s Kingdom, and then set out on my way back to Mechelen, reaching the town as evening began to fall. ~ On looking through these notes I remember that in February 1971, during a short visit to Switzerland, one of the places I visited was Lucerne. After seeing the Glacier Museum I spent some time standing on the bridge over the lake on my way back to the station, because the view of its dome and the snow-white heights of the Pilatus massif rising in the clear winter sky behind it had reminded me of my conversation with Austerlitz in Antwerp four and a half years earlier. A few hours later, on the night of 4 February, long after I was fast asleep in my hotel room in Zurich, a fire broke out in Lucerne Station, spread very rapidly and entirely destroyed the domed building. I could not get the pictures I saw next day in the newspapers and on television out of my head for several weeks, and they gave me an uneasy, anxious feeling which crystallized into the idea that I had been to blame, or at least one of those to blame, for the Lucerne fire. In my dreams, even years later, I sometimes saw the flames leaping from the dome and lighting up the entire panorama of the snow-covered Alps. ABOUT THE AUTHOR W. G. SEBALD was born in Wertach im Allgau, Germany, in 1944. He studied German language and literature in Freiburg, Switzerland, and Manchester. He taught at the University of East Anglia in Norwich, England, for thirty years, becoming professor of European literature in 1987, and from 1989 to 1994 was the first director of the British Centre for Literary Translation. His books have won a number of international awards, including the National Book Critics Circle Award, the Los Angeles Times Book Award, the Berlin Literature Prize, and the Literatur Nord Prize. He died in December 2001. 2011 Modern Library Trade Paperback Edition

• From The Well of Loneliness (1928)

  Steady on, keep more to the right—now then, gently, gently, man—lift!’ Sir Philip lay very still on the snow, and the blood oozed slowly from between his lips. He looked monstrously tall as he lay on that whiteness, very straight, with his long legs stretched out to their fullest, so that Thomas said foolishly: ‘Don’t ’e be big—I don’t know as I ever noticed before—’ And now some one came scuttling over the snow, panting, stumbling, hopping grotesquely—old Williams, hatless and in his shirt sleeves—and as he came on he kept calling out something: ‘Master, oh, Master!’ And he hopped grotesquely as he came on over the slippery snow. ‘Master, Master—oh, Master!’ They found a hurdle, and with dreadful care they placed the master of Morton upon it, and with dreadful slowness they carried the hurdle over the lawn, and in through the door that Sir Philip himself had left standing ajar. Slowly they carried him into the hall, and even more slowly his tired eyes opened, and he whispered: ‘Where’s Stephen? I want—the child.’ And old Williams muttered thickly: ‘She’s comin’, Master—she be comin’ down the stairs; she’s here, Sir Philip.’ Then Sir Philip tried to move, and he spoke quite loudly: ‘Stephen! Where are you? I want you, child—’ She went to him, saying never a word, but she thought: ‘He’s dying—my Father.’ And she took his large hand in hers and stroked it, but still without speaking, because when one loves there is nothing left in the world to say, when the best belovèd lies dying. He looked at her with the pleading eyes of a dog who is dumb, but who yet asks forgiveness. And she knew that his eyes were asking forgiveness for something beyond her poor comprehension; so she nodded, and just went on stroking his hand. Mr. Hopkins asked quietly: ‘Where shall we take him?’ And as quietly Stephen answered: ‘To the study.’ Then she herself led the way to the study, walking steadily, just as though nothing had happened, just as though when she got there she would find her father lolling back in his arm-chair, reading. But she thought all the while: ‘ He’s dying—my Father—’ Only the thought seemed unreal, preposterous. It seemed like the thinking of somebody else, a thing so unreal as to be preposterous. Yet when they had set him down in the study, her own voice it was that she heard giving orders. ‘Tell Miss Puddleton to go at once to my Mother and break the news gently—I’ll stay with Sir Philip. One of you please send a housemaid to me with a sponge and some towels and a basin of cold water. Burton’s gone for Doctor Evans, you say? That’s quite right.

• From Comrade Loves of the Samurai (1972)

  He had written a book in four volumes, called A Collection of Stories Pure as Crystal in which he had recorded in every detail everything that he knew of any of Sennojyo's actions and gestures. In it he mentioned even such a trifling matter as a black mole on the actor's back. He had loved Sennojyo with all his heart from the first day the latter had appeared upon the stage; but some time afterwards he had wearied of all earthly joys and had hidden himself away from society. Sennojyo had been greatly grieved at not being able to find this man again, and always bitterly regretted his disappearance. Someone informed him that his patron was living miserably on the bank of the Kamo, and he burst into tears, saying: 'Truly the destiny of man is variable. If he had let me know of his situation, I should not have left him in such misery. I have written him many letters to his house in Owari, but he has never answered me. I sorrowfully thought he had forgotten me, as frequently happens with us poor actors.' That night Sennojyo received his patrons in the tea-house with the greatest cordiality; but at dawn he went to the bank of the river Kamo to look for his former patron. He went alone, without a servant, along the gritty and pebbly river bank, with the river flowing at his side. At last he reached the bridge, and called: 'Samboku, my dear Owari patron! 'But no one answered him. It was the twenty-fourth of November, and not yet very light; therefore he could not distinguish the faces of the wretched men lying under the bridge. There were many beggars and vagabonds there. Then he remembered that his patron had a little scar on his neck; so he Started to examine all the sleepers closely, and after a long search found his man. 'You are cruel, 'he said. 'I have kept calling you, and you never answered.'And he wept for pity and joy at finding his old lover again, and chatted with him a little of past days and of their former love. The morning air was fresh, and to warm the two of them Sennojyo poured out the wine which he had brought, and they both drank. When the sky grew light in the East he could distinguish his old lover's features. He had lost all refinement, and Sennojyo was very sorry for this. He tenderly caressed the scurfed feet, and lay down with the old man under the bridge. Day came and people began to pass over the bridge; and the time came for the announcement of the theatre programme. Sennojyo was obliged to retire secretly, for he could not Stay there in the sight of all. He said to the old man: 'I beg you to wait for me here this evening.

• From The Letter to the Hebrews (The New Daily Study Bible) (2002)

  It is not mere rebelliousness against law; it is the wounding of love. It is possible to stand almost any physical attack; the thing that brings submission is a broken heart. It is told that, in the days of the Nazi terror, there was a man in Germany who was arrested, tried, tortured and put into a concentration camp. He faced it all with gallantry and emerged upright and unbroken. Then, by accident, he discovered who it was who had produced the information against him – it was his own son. The discovery broke him, and he died. Attack by an enemy he could bear; attack by one whom he loved killed him. When Caesar was about to be murdered, he faced his assassins with almost disdainful courage. But when he saw the hand of his friend Brutus raised to strike, he wrapped his head in his mantle and died. Once Christ had come, the awfulness of sin lay not in its breaking of the law but in its trampling of the love of Christ underfoot. (2) Sin is the failure to see the sacredness of sacred things . Nothing produces a shudder like sacrilege. The writer to the Hebrews says in effect: ‘Look at what has been done for you; look at the shed blood and the broken body of Christ; look at what your new relationship to God cost; can you treat it as if it did not matter? Don’t you see what a sacred thing it is?’ Sin is the failure to realize the sacredness of that sacrifice upon the cross. (3) Sin is the insult to the Holy Spirit . The Holy Spirit speaks within us, telling us what is right and wrong, seeking to check us when we are on the way to sin and to spur us on when we are drifting into lethargy. To disregard these voices is to insult the Spirit and to grieve the heart of God. All through this, one thing comes out. Sin is not disobedience to an impersonal law; it is the wrecking of a personal relationship and the wounding of the heart of the God whose name is Father. The writer to the Hebrews finishes his appeal with a threat. He quotes Deuteronomy 32:35–6, where the sternness of God is clearly seen. At the heart of Christianity, there is always a threat. To remove that threat is to diminish the effectiveness of the faith. Ultimately, it is not the same for the good and the bad alike. No one can evade the fact that, in the end, judgment comes. THE CHRISTIAN HOPE Hebrews 11:1–3 Faith means that we are certain of the things we hope for, convinced of the things we do not see. It was because of faith that the men of old time had their record attested.

• From The Well of Loneliness (1928)

  Then they led Raftery out and into the morning; they led him with care to the big north paddock and stood him beside the mighty hedge that had set the seal on his youthful valour. Very still he stood with the sun on his flanks, the groom, Jim, holding the bridle. Stephen said: ‘I’m going to send you away, a long way away, and I’ve never left you except for a little while since you came when I was a child and you were quite young—but I’m going to send you a long way away because of your pain. Raftery, this is death; and beyond, they say, there’s no more suffering.’ She paused, then spoke in a voice so low that the groom could not hear her: ‘Forgive me, Raftery.’ And Raftery stood there looking at Stephen, and his eyes were as soft as an Irish morning, yet as brave as the eyes that looked into his. Then it seemed to Stephen that he had spoken, that Raftery had said: ‘Since to me you are God, what have I to forgive you, Stephen?’ She took a step forward and pressed the revolver high up against Raftery’s smooth, grey forehead. She fired, and he dropped to the ground like a stone, lying perfectly still by the mighty hedge that had set the seal on his youthful valour. But now there broke out a great crying and wailing: ‘Oh, me! Oh, me! They’ve been murderin’ Raftery! Shame, shame, I says, on the ‘and what done it, and ‘im no common horse but a Christian. . . .’ Then loud sobbing as though some very young child had fallen down and hurt itself badly. And there in a small, creaky, wicker bath-chair sat Williams, being bumped along over the paddock by a youthful niece, who had come to Morton to take care of the old and now feeble couple; for Williams had had his first stroke that Christmas, in addition to which he was almost childish. God only knew who had told him this thing; the secret had been very carefully guarded by Stephen, who, knowing his love for the horse, had taken every precaution to spare him. Yet now here he was with his face all twisted by the stroke and the sobs that kept on rising. He was trying to lift his half-paralysed hand which kept dropping back on to the arm of the bath-chair; he was trying to get out of the bath-chair and run to where Raftery lay stretched out in the sunshine; he was trying to speak again, but his voice had grown thick so that no one could understand him. Stephen thought that his mind had begun to wander, for now he was surely not screaming ‘Raftery’ any more, but something that sounded like: ‘Master!’ and again, ‘Oh, Master, Master!’ She said: ‘Take him home,’ for he did not know her; ‘take him home.

• From The Well of Loneliness (1928)

  Like a very small child this large muscular creature would sit down beside him because she felt lonely, and because youth most rightly resents isolation, and because she had not yet learnt her hard lesson—she had not yet learnt that the loneliest place in this world is the no-man’s-land of sex. CHAPTER 15 1 S ir Philip’s death deprived his child of three things; of companionship of mind born of real understanding, of a stalwart barrier between her and the world, and above all of love—that faithful love that would gladly have suffered all things for her sake, in order to spare her suffering. Stephen, recovering from the merciful numbness of shock and facing her first deep sorrow, stood utterly confounded, as a child will stand who is lost in a crowd, having somehow let go of the hand that has always guided. Thinking of her father, she realized how greatly she had leant on that man of deep kindness, how sure she had felt of his constant protection, how much she had taken that protection for granted. And so together with her constant grieving, with the ache for his presence that never left her, came the knowledge of what real loneliness felt like. She would marvel, remembering how often in his lifetime she had thought herself lonely, when by stretching out a finger she could touch him, when by speaking she could hear his voice, when by raising her eyes she could see him before her. And now also she knew the desolation of small things, the power to give infinite pain that lies hidden in the little inanimate objects that persist, in a book, in a well-worn garment, in a half-finished letter, in a favourite arm-chair. She thought: ‘They go on—they mean nothing at all, and yet they go on,’ and the handling of them was anguish, and yet she must always touch them. ‘How queer, this old arm-chair has outlived him, an old chair—’ And feeling the creases in its leather, the dent in its back where her father’s head had lain, she would hate the inanimate thing for surviving, or perhaps she would love it and find herself weeping. Morton had become a place of remembering that closed round her and held her in its grip of remembrance. It was pain, yet now more than ever she adored it, every stone, every blade of grass in its meadows. She fancied that it too grieved for her father and was turning to her for comfort. Because of Morton the days must go on, all their trifling tasks must be duly accomplished.

• From The Well of Loneliness (1928)

  Stephen, recovering from the merciful numbness of shock and facing her first deep sorrow, stood utterly confounded, as a child will stand who is lost in a crowd, having somehow let go of the hand that has always guided. Thinking of her father, she realized how greatly she had leant on that man of deep kindness, how sure she had felt of his constant protection, how much she had taken that protection for granted. And so together with her constant grieving, with the ache for his presence that never left her, came the knowledge of what real loneliness felt like. She would marvel, remembering how often in his lifetime she had thought herself lonely, when by stretching out a finger she could touch him, when by speaking she could hear his voice, when by raising her eyes she could see him before her. And now also she knew the desolation of small things, the power to give infinite pain that lies hidden in the little inanimate objects that persist, in a book, in a well-worn garment, in a half-finished letter, in a favourite arm-chair. She thought: ‘They go on—they mean nothing at all, and yet they go on,’ and the handling of them was anguish, and yet she must always touch them. ‘How queer, this old arm-chair has outlived him, an old chair—’ And feeling the creases in its leather, the dent in its back where her father’s head had lain, she would hate the inanimate thing for surviving, or perhaps she would love it and find herself weeping. Morton had become a place of remembering that closed round her and held her in its grip of remembrance. It was pain, yet now more than ever she adored it, every stone, every blade of grass in its meadows. She fancied that it too grieved for her father and was turning to her for comfort. Because of Morton the days must go on, all their trifling tasks must be duly accomplished. At times she might wonder that this should be so, might be filled with a fleeting sense of resentment, but then she would think of her home as a creature dependent upon her and her mother for its needs, and the sense of resentment would vanish. Very gravely she listened to the lawyer from London. ‘The place goes to your mother for her lifetime,’ he told her; ‘on her death, of course, it becomes yours, Miss Gordon. But your father made a separate provision; when you’re twenty-one, in about two years time, you’ll inherit quite a considerable income.’ She said: ‘Will that leave enough money for Morton?’ ‘More than enough,’ he reassured her, smiling.

• From Reading Biblical Literature: Genesis to Revelation (2016)

  Reading Biblical Literature: Genesis to Revelation 72 ‹It may also be that David weeps not only for Absalom but also for himself. After all, his son is simply following in his father’s footsteps. David’s life set a pattern in motion, a pattern of violence and abuse that continued to play out in the life of Absalom. In the affair with Bathsheba and its aftermath, David ruined the lives of others to satisfy his own desires. David grieves not only as someone who has lost a child but as someone whose own moral failings set the pattern that led to the loss. Suggested Reading Birch, “The First and Second Books of Samuel.” Steussy, David: Biblical Portraits of Power. Questions to Consider 1. The lecture began by noting David’s role as a national symbol. What parts of his legacy contributed most to that role, and why? 2. The idea that David was chosen by God to be the founder of a dynasty plays a central role in 2 Samuel, and it is often mentioned in other parts of the Bible. Why, then, would 2 Samuel also tell readers about David’s moral failings and family conflicts? Do those aspects help or hurt the overall portrayal of David’s importance?

• From Cults Inside Out: How People Get In and Can Get Out (2014)

  Denton, a Department of Mental Health forensic psychologist, testified that Robidoux breast-feed Samuel every hour, twenty-four hours a day. However, the mother watched helplessly as her son deteriorated and died due to starvation.407 The defendant’s lawyer, Joseph Krowski, explained that “evil” people around her had so controlled his client that she was incapable of saving her child. But Karen Robidoux‘s “vile, deranged, evil” father-in-law, Roland Robidoux, led the group. “It was about power. It was about mind control. It was about brainwashing,” Krowski said.408 Psychologist Ronald Ebert examined Karen Robidoux through twelve meetings beginning in 2002. He testified in court that Robidoux believed that “if she wasn’t good, God would take her baby. She had to do what they told her to do.” Ebert concluded, “It’s my opinion that she was not able to leave the group.”409 Robidoux was twenty-eight at the time of her trial. She had joined the group at the age of fourteen and was wed to Jacques Robidoux, the leader’s son. Karen Robidoux was described as successfully “deprogrammed” before her trial. According to press reports she “cut off all the group members” during her confinement. It was within this period that she was “deprogrammed.” Shortly before trial she reportedly “finally emerged from the fog of the brainwashing sect that swallowed 14 years of her life.” The leader of that sect, Roland Robidoux, was a door-to-door salesman who had left the Catholic Church after listening to sermons by Herbert W. Armstrong on his car radio. Armstrong was the founder of the Worldwide Church of God (WWCOG), a controversial group that has been called a “cult.”410 After his radio conversion Robidoux attended WWCOG feasts and festivals with his wife and five children. In 1978 Robidoux left WWCOG, claiming God had called him to start his own church. His church was first named Church of God of Mansfield, later Church of God of Norton, and finally The Body, but it never had more than seventy members.411 A former associate described Robidoux as the “sole authority” of his group and someone who was “not being questioned.” Robidoux “believed that he had the truth.” His truth was hard on his family, which became socially isolated. Robidoux wanted to control everything. He exercised “absolute power over his family,” said his former son-in-law, Dennis Mingo, who eventually left the group. One year he decided the family should eat only meat. The next year he ordered everyone to become vegetarians and then later to eat only organic food. The family always obeyed Robidoux’s edicts.412 Robidoux then discovered a book by Carol Balizet, a former nurse who claimed seven impure systems in the world: education, medicine, government, banking, schools, entertainment, and commerce. Balizet said true believers should never seek medical care and should give birth only at home. Her website stated, “No matter what the result, we must do what God says. We mustn’t fall into the trap of trying to figure out which choice will work best for us: God or the medical system.

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

  Athanase cherche le triomphe, et non le martyre. Tel qu’un chef de parti, tel qu’un général experimenté qui se sent nécessaire aux siens, Athan. ne s’expose que pour le succès, ne combat que pour vaincre, se retire quelque fois pour reparaître avec l’éclat d’un triomphe populaire." (Tableau de l’éloquence chrétienne au IVe siècle, p. 92.) Page 894 line 11. Add to Lit. on St. Basil: Dörgens: Der heil. Basilius und die class. Studien. Leipz., 1857. Eug. Fialon. Étude historique et literaire sur S. Basile, suivie de l’hexaemeron. Paris, 1861. G. B. Sievers: Leben des Libanios. Berl., 1868 (p294 sqq.). Böhringer: Die drei Kappadozier oder die trinitarischen Epigonen (Basil, Gregory of Nyssa, and Gregory of Naz.), in Kirchengesch. in Biograph., new ed. Bd. vii. and viii. 1875. Weiss: Die drei grossen Kappadozier als Exegeten. Braunsberg, 1872. R. Travers Smith: St. Basil the Great. London, 1879. (Soc. for Promoting Christian Knowledge), 232 pages. Scholl: Des heil. Basil Lehre von der Gnade. Freib., 1881. W. Möller, in Herzog,2 ii. 116–121. E. Venables, in Smith and Wace, i. 282–297. Farrar: "Lives of the Fathers," 1889. vol. ii. 1–55. Page 904 line 7. Add to Lit. on Gregory of Nyssa: Böhringer: Kirchengesch. in Biogr., new ed., vol. viii. 1876. G Herrmann: Greg. Nyss. Sententiae de salute adipiscenda. Halle, 1875. . T. Bergades: De universo et de anima hominis doctrina Gregor. Nyss. Leipz., 1876. W. Möller, in Herzog,2 v. 396–404. E. Venables, in Smith and Wace, ii. 761–768. A. Paumier, in Lichtenberger, 723–725. On his doctrine of the Trinity and the Person of Christ, see especially Baur and Dorner. On his doctrine of the apokatastasis and relation to Origen, see Möller, G. Herrmann, and Bergades. l.c. Farrar: "Lives of the Fathers," (1889), ii. 56–83. Page 909, line 4. Add to Lit. on Gregory of Nazianzus: A. Grenier: La vie et les poésies de saint Grégoire de Nazianze. Paris, 1858. Böhringer: K. G. in Biogr., new ed., vol. viii. 1876. Abbé A. Benoît: Vie de saint Grégoire de Nazianze. Paris, 1877. J. R. Newman: Church of the Fathers, pp. 116–145, 551. Dabas: La femme au quatrième siècle dans les poésies de Grég. de Naz. Bordeaux, 1868. H. W. Watkins, in Smith and Wace, ii. 741–761. W. Gass, in Herzog,2 v. 392–396. A. Paumier, in Lichtenberger, v., 716– 722. On his christology, see Neander, Baur and especially Dorner. His views on future punishment have been discussed by Farrar, and Pusey (see vol. ii. 612). Farrar:: "Lives of the Fathers," i. 491–582. Page 920, line 22. Add: In one of his plaintive songs from his religious retreat, after lamenting the factions of the church, the loss of youth, health, strength, parents, and friends, and his gloomy and homeless condition, Gregory thus gives touching expression to his faith in Christ as the last and only comforter: "Thy will be done, O Lord! That day shall spring, When at thy word, this clay shall reappear.

• From The Well of Loneliness (1928)

  For now besides Anna’s carriage horses, there were only four inmates of those once fine stables; Raftery and Sir Philip’s young upstanding chestnut, a cob known as James, and the aged Collins who had taken to vice in senile decay, and persisted in eating his bedding. Anna had accepted this radical change quite calmly, as she now accepted most things. She hardly ever opposed her daughter these days in matters concerning Morton. But the burden of arranging the sale had been Stephen’s; one by one she had said good-bye to the hunters, one by one she had watched them led out of the yard, with a lump in her throat that had almost choked her, and when they were gone she had turned back to Raftery for comfort. ‘Oh, Raftery, I’m so unregenerate—I minded so terribly seeing them go! Don’t let’s look at their empty boxes—’ 2 Another year passed and Stephen was twenty-one, a rich, independent woman. At any time now she could go where she chose, could do entirely as she listed. Puddle remained at her post; she was waiting a little grimly for something to happen. But nothing much happened, beyond the fact that Stephen now dressed in tailor-made clothes to which Anna had perforce to withdraw her opposition. Yet life was gradually reasserting its claims on the girl, which was only natural, for the young may not be delivered over to the dead, nor to grief that refuses consolation. She still mourned her father, she would always mourn him, but at twenty-one with a healthful body, there came a day when she noticed the sunshine, when she smelt the good earth and was thankful for it, when she suddenly knew herself to be alive and was glad, in despite of death. On one such morning early that June, Stephen drove her car into Upton. She was meaning to cash a cheque at the bank, she was meaning to call at the local saddler’s, she was meaning to buy a new pair of gloves—in the end, however, she did none of these things. It was outside the butcher’s that the dog fight started. The butcher owned an old rip of an Airedale, and the Airedale had taken up his post in the doorway of the shop, as had long been his custom. Down the street, on trim but belligerent tiptoes, came a very small, snow-white West Highland terrier; perhaps he was looking for trouble, and if so he certainly got it in less than two minutes. His yells were so loud that Stephen stopped the car and turned round in her seat to see what was happening.