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 168 of 263 · 20 per page

• From H Is for Hawk (2014)

  I looked. Hundreds of faces. Dad’s colleagues, Dad’s friends. The fear vanished in an instant. I couldn’t be scared any more. And I started speaking. I told them about my father. I told them a little about his early life. I told them he had been a wonderful father. I reminded them, too, of his ridiculous inability to wear anything other than a suit – although he did make concessions on holiday, and occasionally removed his tie. I told them that on our trip to Cornwall to photograph the total eclipse we’d been standing on the beach before the skies darkened when a man who said he was the reincarnation of King Arthur, a man wearing a silver diadem and long white robes, came up to Dad, and said, bewildered, Why are you wearing that suit? Well, said Dad. You never know who you’re going to meet. And then I told the story I hoped they would understand. He’s a boy, standing by a fence and staring up at the sky. He’s at an aerodrome, Biggin Hill, spotting RAF planes. He is nine? Ten? He’s been photographing each aircraft that takes off or lands with the Box Brownie camera that hangs on a string around his neck, and putting their numbers down in a spiral-bound notebook. It is getting late. He ought to leave. Then he hears a sound he cannot place, an unfamiliar engine note, and yes, there, this is it, this is the moment he has dreamed of. He stares into the sky. He sees the landing lights of . . . he doesn’t know what it is. He doesn’t know what it is. It is not in any of the books. He takes its picture. He copies its registration number onto the page. It is a visitation from the future: a new American Air Force plane. To the boy plane-spotter of the 1950s, it is like seeing the Holy Grail. When I was writing the speech, still a little concussed, I reached for the phone to call my father and ask what type of plane it was, and for a moment the world went very black.

• From H Is for Hawk (2014)

  When we got up to leave the canon pressed business cards into our hands. Business cards. Absurd. The tie. The incongruity. This. All this. I looked back at the office. Striplights and pinboards, coat-hooks and fax machines. Diaries and schedules. The offices of death. I felt laughter rising inside me. I tried to stifle it. It came out as a broken cough. This had happened before; once, on the morning Mum and I had to choose my father’s coffin, sitting in wing-back armchairs in the undertaker’s office before a small vase of salmon-coloured roses. Dim light. A cramped room. A stifling hush. The undertaker handed us a laminated folder, and it fell open onto a page of coffins painted with football colours, with photorealistic spitfires, golf-courses, saxophones and trains. We’d laughed then as I laughed now. The coffins, like the tie, made the small loves of life ridiculous in death, the business card made the memorial mundane. The laughter was because there was no way of incorporating these signs of life into the fact of death. I laughed because there was nothing else I could do. On the way home I felt a great and simple sadness. I missed my dad. I missed him very much. The train curved and sunlight fell against the window, obscuring the passing fields with a mesh of silver light. I closed my eyes against the glare and remembered the spider silk. I had walked all over it and had not seen it. I had not known it was there. It struck me then that perhaps the bareness and wrongness of the world was an illusion; that things might still be real, and right, and beautiful, even if I could not see them – that if I stood in the right place, and was lucky, this might somehow be revealed to me. And the sun on the glass and the memory of the shining field, and the awful laughter, and the kindness of that morning’s meeting must have thinned the armour of silence I’d worn for months, because the anger was quite gone now, and that evening as we drove to the hill, I said in a quiet voice, ‘Stuart, I’m not dealing very well with things at the moment.’ I said, ‘I think I’m a bit depressed.’ ‘You’ve lost your father, Helen,’ he said. ‘I’m training a gos. I suppose it’s quite stressful.’ ‘You’ve lost your father. And you’re doing OK with the gos,’ he added. ‘You might not see it, but you are. She’ll be flying free, soon. She’s nearly there, Helen. Don’t be so hard on yourself.’

• From H Is for Hawk (2014)

  I sat down, dazed. Sun through windows. Things, one after another. The achingly beautiful singing of the choir. The canon’s prayers. Eulogies praising my father’s photographic skills. When Alastair Campbell walked to the lectern he read Wordsworth’s ‘Composed upon Westminster Bridge’ and prefaced it with a short speech in which he said, with decided emphasis, that my father was a Good Man. This broke me. I hadn’t expected this. Or not this much this. Everyone sang ‘Jerusalem’ and I forced my mouth to move, but nothing came out but whispered fragments. And afterwards, out in the shaded churchyard under the trees, a young guy with misted glasses and a purple knitted cardigan walked up, shying nervously, and said, ‘You don’t know me. I don’t know anyone in there. They’re all the big guns. But I wanted to say that . . . well. I’m a photographer now. I’m making a living out of it. I moved to London to try and make it, and I didn’t know what I was doing. And I met your dad out on a job once and he talked to me. He gave me lots of advice. He helped me. He didn’t have to, but he did. He saved my life. He was amazing . . .’ And he tailed off, and looked embarrassed, and I stepped forward and gave him a hug, because I didn’t know what to say. And more and more people came up and talked about Dad; and all the old guard were there, snappers from back in the 1960s, and I finally got to put names to the bylines I’d seen so many times. They told me they liked the story. They said it was nice to know that my father was a born journalist. That the boy in short trousers was already the man they’d known, the man who had always got the picture, had always pulled the story from the jaws of defeat. Down in the Press Club after the service the drinks were poured. And poured. And poured some more. Everyone became increasingly expansive, rushed up to tell me stories about my father. The stories got more slurred as the drinking went on, and the hugs and cheek-kisses increasingly off-target. ‘Another drink?’ said one pressman. ‘Just a soft drink,’ I said, and back he came with a vast glass of wine. ‘Um, is there any soft drink?’ I said, embarrassed. He frowned. ‘That’s what I brought you. This is a soft drink.’ I left with a song in my heart. I felt my family had expanded by about two hundred people, and everything was going to be fine. Bless you, Dad, I thought. I always thought you were a legend, and it turns out you really, really were.

• From H Is for Hawk (2014)

  He’d set up this meeting: the newspaper was organising a memorial service for my father, and we’d come here to discuss it with the canon of the church. And so in the vestry office we talked of hymns, of invitations, of readings and speakers and songs. I said I would make a speech. We talked some more. My mother sat very upright in a grey sweater and pink gilet, her hair carefully brushed, her face taut and pale. Oh Mum . James was even paler. He shot me a tight smile. My eyes prickled and burned. He turned to the canon. ‘I work as a designer , ’ he said. ‘I could design the Order of Service?’ The canon nodded and pushed a handful of printed booklets across the desk towards us. ‘These are from past services,’ he said, dipping his head in a gesture of unconscious, anxious tenderness. ‘They might help you with your father’s?’ I picked up the nearest. On its cover was a smiling middle-aged stranger in a piano-keyboard tie. I looked at his face for a long time, pressing the pad of one finger hard into the corner of the stiff cover to make a tiny flare of pain to cover the ache in my heart. When we got up to leave the canon pressed business cards into our hands. Business cards. Absurd . The tie. The incongruity. This. All this . I looked back at the office. Striplights and pinboards, coat-hooks and fax machines. Diaries and schedules. The offices of death. I felt laughter rising inside me. I tried to stifle it. It came out as a broken cough. This had happened before; once, on the morning Mum and I had to choose my father’s coffin, sitting in wing-back armchairs in the undertaker’s office before a small vase of salmon-coloured roses. Dim light. A cramped room. A stifling hush. The undertaker handed us a laminated folder , and it fell open onto a page of coffins painted with football colours, with photorealistic spitfires, golf-courses, saxophones and trains. We’d laughed then as I laughed now. The coffins, like the tie, made the small loves of life ridiculous in death, the business card made the memorial mundane. The laughter was because there was no way of incorporating these signs of life into the fact of death. I laughed because there was nothing else I could do. On the way home I felt a great and simple sadness. I missed my dad. I missed him very much. The train curved and sunlight fell against the window, obscuring the passing fields with a mesh of silver light. I closed my eyes against the glare and remembered the spider silk. I had walked all over it and had not seen it. I had not known it was there.

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

  There they separated, the duke going, as he said, on some private business, and accompanied by a masked man who had been much with him for a month past. The next day, Alexander waited for his son in vain. In the evening, unable to bear the suspense longer, he instituted an investigation. The man in the mask had been found mortally wounded. A charcoal-dealer deposed that, after midnight, he had seen several men coming to the brink of the river, one of them on a white horse, over the back of which was thrown a dead man. They backed the horse and pitched the body into the water. The pope was inconsolable with grief, and remained without food from Thursday to Sunday. He had recently made his son lord of the papal patrimony and of Viterbo, standard-bearer of the church and duke of Benevento. In reporting the loss to the consistory of cardinals, the father declared that

• From H Is for Hawk (2014)

  They were not like normal tears. Water coursed in sheets down my cheeks and dripped to the hospital floor. And with the water came words. So I leaned over the bed and spoke to my father who was not there. I addressed him seriously and carefully. I told him that I loved him and missed him and would miss him always. And I talked on, explaining things to him, things I cannot now remember but which at the time were of clear and burning importance. Then there was silence. And I waited. I did not know why. Until I realised it was in hope that an answer might come. And then I knew it was over. I took my father’s hand in my own for the last time, squeezed it in a brief goodbye and quietly left the room. The next day out on the hill Mabel learns, I suppose, what she is for. She chases a pheasant. It crashes into the brambles beneath a tall hedge. She lands on top of the hedge, peering down, her plumage bright against the dark earth of the further slope. I start running. I think I remember where the pheasant has gone. I convince myself it was never there at all. I know it is there. Clay sticks to my heels and slows me down. I’m in a world of slowly freezing mud, and even the air seems to be getting harder to run through. Mabel is waiting for me to flush the pheasant, if only I knew where it was. Now I am at the hedge, trying to find it, constructing what will happen next scenarios in my head, and at this point they’re narrowing fast, towards point zero, when the pheasant will fly. I cannot see Stuart and Mandy any more, though I know they must be there. I’m crashing through brambles and sticks, dimly aware of the catch and rip of thorns in my flesh. Now I cannot see the hawk because I am searching for the pheasant, so I have to work out what she is doing by putting myself in her mind – and so I become both the hawk in the branches above and the human below. The strangeness of this splitting makes me feel I am walking under myself, and sometimes away from myself. Then for a moment everything becomes dotted lines, and the hawk, the pheasant and I merely elements in a trigonometry exercise, each of us labelled with soft italic letters. And now I am so invested in the hawk and the pheasant’s relative positions that my consciousness cuts loose entirely, splits into one or the other, first the hawk looking down, second the pheasant in the brambles looking up, and I move over the ground as if I couldn’t possibly affect anything in the world. There is no way I can flush this pheasant.

• From H Is for Hawk (2014)

  And as we drove onward, I thought of White’s goshawk, of how much worse its journey had been than this: first from its nest to a German falconer; then by aeroplane to England, then by train from Croydon to a falconer called Nesbitt in Shropshire; then to a different falconer in Scotland as part of a swap that didn’t seem to come off, for the hawk was returned to Nesbitt. A few days’ reprieve in an airy loft, and it was back on a train, this time to Buckingham, a small, red-brick market town five miles from Stowe. And that is where White picked it up. How many miles? I reckon that’s about fifteen hundred or so, over many days. I’m not altogether sure how the hawk survived. Small souls, sent far from safety. In the opening pages of The Goshawk, White describes the awful journey of his fledgling hawk: torn from its nest, stuffed in a basket, and sent to a strange land to receive an education. He asks us to imagine what it was like, to put ourselves in the hawk’s bewildered, infant mind; to experience the heat and noise, confusion and terror that was its journey to his door. ‘It must have been like death,’ he wrote, ‘the thing which we can never know beforehand.’ What we see in the lives of animals are lessons we’ve learned from the world. A while ago, in a yellow tin chest in a college library, I found some photographs of White as a toddler. They’re silvered prints of a dusty Karachi landscape; a jandi tree, long shadows, a clear sky. In the first the boy sits on a donkey looking at the camera. He wears a loose shalwar kameez and a child’s sun hat, and his small round face has no interest in the donkey except for the fact that he is sitting on it. His mother stands behind him in impeccable Edwardian whites, looking beautiful and bored. In the second photograph the boy runs towards the camera over parched earth. He is running as fast as he can: his stubby arms are blurred as they swing, and the expression on his face, half- terror, half-delight, is something I’ve never seen on any other child. It is triumph that he has ridden the donkey, but relief that it is over. It is a face in desperate need of safety, with certain knowledge that there is none. There was none. His parents’ marriage was ill-starred from the first. Constance Aston had been nearly thirty when her mother’s jibes about the cost of keeping her became unbearable. ‘I’ll marry the next man who asks me,’ she snapped. The man was Garrick White, a District Commissioner of Police in Bombay. The newly-weds travelled to India, and as soon as Terence was born, Constance refused to sleep with her husband any more.

• From H Is for Hawk (2014)

  But this isn’t him, I thought, wildly, after the woman closed the door. He isn’t here. Someone had dressed a waxwork of my father in hospital pyjamas and a patterned duvet. Why would they do that? It made no sense. It was nonsense. I took a step back. Then I saw on his arm the cut that would not heal and stopped. I knew I had to speak. For ages I could not. Physically could not. Something the size of a fist was in my throat and it was catching the words and not letting them out. I started to panic. Why couldn’t I speak? I have to speak to him. Then the tears came. They were not like normal tears. Water coursed in sheets down my cheeks and dripped to the hospital floor. And with the water came words. So I leaned over the bed and spoke to my father who was not there. I addressed him seriously and carefully. I told him that I loved him and missed him and would miss him always. And I talked on, explaining things to him, things I cannot now remember but which at the time were of clear and burning importance. Then there was silence. And I waited. I did not know why. Until I realised it was in hope that an answer might come. And then I knew it was over. I took my father’s hand in my own for the last time, squeezed it in a brief goodbye and quietly left the room.

• From Tipping the Velvet (1998)

  Now, more vividly, I saw my father, in the apron that fell to his boots; I saw my mother, and my brother, and Alice. I saw the sea. My eyes began to smart, as if there was salt in them. ‘You can send me the letters,’ I said thickly: I thought, I’ll write, and tell them of Florence. And if they don’t care for it - well, at least they’ll know that I’m safe, and happy ... Now Kitty came nearer, and lowered her voice still further. ‘There’s the money, too,’ she said. ‘We have kept it all. Nan, there’s almost seven hundred pounds of yours!’ I shook my head: I had forgotten about the money. ‘I have nothing to spend it on,’ I said simply. But even as I said it, I remembered Zena, whom I had robbed; and I thought again of Florence - I imagined her dropping seven hundred pounds into the charity boxes of East London, coin by coin. Would that make her love me, more than Lilian? ‘You can send me the money, too,’ I said to Kitty at last; and I told her my address, and she nodded, and said she’d remember. We gazed at one another then. Her lips were damp and slightly parted; and she had paled, so that her freckles showed. Involuntarily I thought back to that night at the Canterbury Palace, when I had met her first and learned I loved her, and she had kissed my hand, and called me ‘Mermaid’, and thought of me as she should not have. Perhaps the same memory had occurred to her, for now she said, ‘Is this how it’s to end up, then? Won’t you let me see you again; you might come and visit -’ I shook my head. ‘Look at me,’ I said. ‘Look at my hair. What would your neighbours say, if I came visiting you? You’d be too afraid to walk upon the street with me, in case some feller called out!’ She blushed, and her lashes fluttered. ‘You have changed,’ she said again; and I answered, simply: ‘Yes, Kitty, I have.’ She raised her hands to lower her veil. ‘Good-bye,’ she said. I nodded. She turned away; and as I stood and watched her, I found that I was aching slightly, as from a thousand fading bruises ... I cannot let you go, I thought, so easily as that! While she was still quite near I took a step into the sunshine, and looked about me. Upon the grass beside the tent there was a kind of wreath or bower — part of some display that had come loose and been discarded. There were roses on it: I bent and plucked one, and called to a boy who was standing idly by, handed the flower to him and gave him a penny, and told him what I wanted.

• From The Four Vision Quests of Jesus (2015)

  The majority of these people, the Native American survivors of ethnic cleansing, were Christians. Among the first buildings to be erected in the refugee centers of Oklahoma were churches. My great-grandfather was a Presbyterian pastor who is responsible for building several of these churches in Oklahoma. For many years around small communities like Ada and Marlow, they were simply called “the Charleston church.” In the churches dotted across southeastern Oklahoma, Choctaws who survived the long walk into exile gathered to pray. They asked God to help them understand what had happened to them. They lifted up their lament to Jesus to help them in their affliction. They sang Choctaw hymns imagining a better day, a day of justice and redemption. Christians cheating and oppressing Christians is the historic subtext of most of the story between Native Americans and white people during the nineteenth century. Many of the appeals made by Native people in the courts or in the press during these decades include a call for justice in the name of God. Native American meetings called to rally efforts to hold off removal on the Trail of Tears included invocations to God for help and protection in the name of Jesus. As people were forced to walk into exile on the Trail of Tears they sang hymns and prayed for deliverance. As thousands, especially the smallest children and the elders, died from exposure on the death march they were buried in Christian services, their graves marked by crosses. The Trail of Tears, therefore, brings us full circle to the graveyard. Before the coming of Christianity, Choctaws buried their dead in communal graves. After conversion to Christianity, they buried them individually. The transition from one practice to another marks the path into the Wilderness for my people. The vision of my ancestors changed. Their quest changed. They went from an independent, prosperous, and thriving nation into a culturally shattered community of refugees. They lost the image of themselves as a chosen people of God, dwelling on sacred land in covenant with God. They saw themselves instead as survivors of a cultural genocide in desperate need of a Messiah. Their quest altered from a search for personal meaning as members of a vital society into a search for legal strategies that could save them in the eleventh hour of their history from the greed and corruption of an oppressor’s power. The spiritual aspect of their lives became a kind of vision quest because it became a lament. On the Trail of Tears, my ancestors were, quite literally, crying for a vision. They were being tested, driven out, sent into an unknown land as exiles by the waters of Babylon, longing for a sign from God in which they could hope. What does this shared experience among the Choctaw, Cherokee, Creek, and Chickasaw people have to tell us about the first vision quest of Jesus?

• From Educated (2018)

  dependent on my parents. My family was splitting down the middle—the three who had left the mountain, and the four who had stayed. The three with doctorates, and the four without high school diplomas. A chasm had appeared, and was growing. — A YEAR WOULD PASS before I would return to Idaho. A few hours before my flight from London, I wrote to my mother—as I always did, as I always will do—to ask if she would see me. Again, her response was swift. She would not, she would never, unless I would see my father. To see me without him, she said, would be to disrespect her husband. For a moment it seemed pointless, this annual pilgrimage to a home that continued to reject me, and I wondered if I should go. Then I received another message, this one from Aunt Angie. She said Grandpa had canceled his plans for the next day, and was refusing even to go to the temple, as he usually did on Wednesdays, because he wanted to be at home in case I came by. To this Angie added: I get to see you in about twelve hours! But who’s counting? * The italicized language in the description of the referenced exchange is paraphrased, not directly quoted. The meaning has been preserved. When I was a child, I waited for my mind to grow, for my experiences to accumulate and my choices to solidify, taking shape into the likeness of a person. That person, or that likeness of one, had belonged. I was of that mountain, the mountain that had made me. It was only as I grew older that I wondered if how I had started is how I would end—if the first shape a person takes is their only true shape. As I write the final words of this story, I’ve not seen my parents in years, since my grandmother’s funeral. I’m close to Tyler, Richard and Tony, and from them, as well as from other family, I hear of the ongoing drama on the mountain—the injuries, violence and shifting loyalties. But it comes to me now as distant hearsay, which is a gift. I don’t know if the separation is permanent, if one day I will find a way back, but it has brought me peace. That peace did not come easily. I spent years enumerating my father’s flaws, constantly updating the tally, as if reciting every resentment, every real and imagined act of cruelty, of neglect, would justify my decision to cut him from my life. Once justified, I thought the strangling guilt would release me and I could catch my breath. But vindication has no power over guilt. No amount of anger or rage

• From Educated (2018)

  was of a celebrity in a crowded restaurant, trying not to be recognized. My father’s desk was the size of a car. It was parked in the center of the chaos. He was on the phone, which he’d wedged between his cheek and shoulder so it wouldn’t slip through his waxy hands. “Doctors can’t help with them diabetes,” he said, much too loudly. “But the Lord can!” I looked sideways at Drew, who was smiling. Dad hung up and turned toward us. He greeted Drew with a large grin. He radiated energy, feeding off the general bedlam of the house. Drew said he was impressed with the business, and Dad seemed to grow six inches. “We’ve been blessed for doing the Lord’s work,” he said. The phone rang again. There were at least three employees tasked with answering it, but Dad leapt for the receiver as if he’d been waiting for an important call. I’d never seen him so full of life. “The power of God on earth,” he shouted into the mouthpiece. “That’s what these oils are: God’s pharmacy!” The noise in the house was disorienting, so I took Drew up the mountain. We strolled through fields of wild wheat and from there into the skirt of pines at the mountain base. The fall colors were soothing and we stayed for hours, gazing down at the quiet valley. It was late afternoon when we finally made our way back to the house and Drew left for Salt Lake City. I entered the Chapel through the French doors and was surprised by the silence. The house was empty, every phone disconnected, every workstation abandoned. Mother sat alone in the center of the room. “The hospital called,” she said. “Grandma’s gone.” — MY FATHER LOST HIS appetite for the business. He started getting out of bed later and later, and when he did, it seemed it was only to insult or accuse. He shouted at Shawn about the junkyard and lectured Mother about her management of the employees. He snapped at Audrey when she tried to make him lunch, and barked at me for typing too loudly. It was as if he wanted to fight, to punish himself for the old woman’s death. Or perhaps the punishment was for her life, for the conflict that had been between them, which had only ended now she was dead.

• From A Hebrew and English Lexicon of the Old Testament (BDB) (1907)

  usu. (by mourners) for the dead, cf. 1% ל‎ 9% mae. (Arab. parallels) (NH id. Hiph. shew, baldness; Ar. ae wound, make sores, 5 5 whiteness im face of horse (but ¢ 3 be bald, al pst); Eth. PCa: make bald (rare); Aram. MP, wis, chiefly deriv. (and der. mean- mes); cf. Sin. n.pr.m. קרחו ,קרחה‎ ; M1324 n.pr.loc. (קרחה‎ --)081 Jmpf. 3 mpl. WP MP? BUNT Ly 21°Qr(>Ktnmp; || 3723! cf. Dtr 42); .שח‎ fs. זי על‎ MP Mi 1” make a baldness . for. Niph. ay 3 ms. לְהֶם‎ Mp Je 16° men shall not make themselves bald for them. Hiph. Pf, 3 pl. consec. קְרְחָה‎ PON וְהַקְרִיחוּ‎ Ez 27°! and they shall make a baldness (cf. Qal) for thee. Hoph. Pt. > בַּלראש‎ Ez 20% ever'y head made bald (by carrying load). TOP adj. bald ;—Ly 13" (distinct fr. 033 ד‎ n.m. 2 K 2% 8 Tramp n.f. baldness, bald spot, made as sign of mourning ;—abs. ק'‎ Is 3% +; sf. JNM Mi 1” ;—bald spot, wiirrbarby Am 87%, 1s baa שד ו‎ E27"; wxa ק'‎ Ly 21° (ace. cogn.) ; ” בָּלראש‎ Je 487; ק' פּפּשֶר‎ Mir; עִינִיֶם‎ PR Dt 14%; opp. מֶקֶשָה‎ myo ו‎ ae Je 47° and (ace. cogn.) Ez 27". ' tnmp n.f. baldness of head ;—abs.’? Lv 13°"; sf. קרסת‎ Vv + ;—baldness of head (alw.* opp. גברות‎ baldness of forehead), Ly 13°. in Judah (bald one) ;—2 K‏ גוד ן קרח Kapy6, GL Kapne ;‏ 287% (baldness 1( ; --‏ תק קרת 0 Edomite name: a. Gn 36°81 0 1". b. Gn‏ Di Kau Ball‏ ל (not Sam.; prob. gloss fr.‏ "36 al.; Holz hesitates). 2. Levite, rebel ag.‏ Moses, Nu 16'+10t. 16, 17, 26° 273: in‏ ’P723‏ ;”9 בק ;675 geneal. lists Ex 6774 1 Ch‏ ו as company of‏ ְבָנִיק/ Nu 26"; esp.‏ tors (or singers), in titles: 42' 44' 45) 46"‏ a ‘son’ of‏ .3 .}88 )87 )85 )84 49° )43 47 Hebron, i.e. Judahite clan r Ch 2% Kopee, etc,‏ Je 408+ 12 t. Je, Kapne. 901 קרן alw. c. art.;‏ ;2 קרח Trp adj.gent. of‏ Ch 9”; as subst. coll. Ex 6 Nu 26%; pl.‏ 1 BPI 1 Chg” 127 (van d. H. v‘), 261; בּנִ'‎ PA ve; הְַרְחִים‎ 23 2 Ch 20”, Il. קרח‎ )/ of foll.; meaning unknown). Trp n.m.’”*” frost, ice ;—abs. ק'‎ Gn 41%+, קרת‎ Jb 6*+ sf. IMP ץ‎ 1. frost of night (opp. TN of day), Gn 31* (E), Je 36". | - ice, Ib 6 37°° 385 (|| 7BD hoar- Jrost), DYDD ק'‎ pouin y 1477 (Hup al. think of hail, but v. Bae; || "2 cold, DY, “IBD v1); probably also ’P בְּעִין‎ Ez 12 (so Tare most erystal, after @). NMP, ete. v. mp.‏ ,קרית ,קריה ,קרי vb. spread or lay something over‏ [קרם]ז

• From H Is for Hawk (2014)

  I held the cardboard and felt its scissor-cut edge. And for the first time I understood the shape of my grief. I could feel exactly how big it was. It was the strangest feeling, like holding something the size of a mountain in my arms. You have to be patient, he had said. If you want to see something very much, you just have to be patient and wait. There was no patience in my waiting, but time had passed all the same, and worked its careful magic. And now, holding the card in my hands and feeling its edges, all the grief had turned into something different. It was simply love. I tucked the card back into the bookshelf. ‘Love you too, Dad,’ I whispered. 29 Enter spring Mandy opens her door, takes one look at my face, and mirrors it with a horrified expression of her own. ‘What’s happened, Helen?’ ‘Mabel!’ I say weakly. ‘Did you lose her?’ ‘No!’ shaking my head. ‘She’s in the car.’ And then three requests: ‘Mandy, can you help? I cut my thumb. Can I use your phone? I need a cigarette.’ Bless her for ever. I collapse into a kitchen chair. My knees hurt. Brambles? I have no idea. My thumb is still bleeding. Mandy hands me iodine wash, fixes the tear with steri-strips and bandages, makes me a coffee, pushes a packet of tobacco and cigarette papers across the table. Then she waits while I call the College where I should, right now, be teaching, and stammer out apologies. Then I tell my sorry story. I’d seen signs over the last week or so. The season was turning. A bluebottle in the garden; torpid purple crocuses on the lawn. Dots of cherry blossom falling outside the walls of St John’s. And one evening last week, a host of blackbirds carrolling into the deepening sky from perches all over the city’s gable ends and Gothic spires. Spring was coming. And usually I’d rejoice at the curious bluish tint to the air and the lengthening days. But spring will mean no more Mabel. She’ll be moulting in an aviary. I shan’t see her for months. My heart hurts thinking of it. So I wasn’t thinking of it; I’d ignored the flowers and the flies. And that was part of the problem. For something was stirring in Mabel’s accipitrine heart, and perhaps it was spring. I had an hour to fly her today. I’d some freelance teaching in town that afternoon, and I knew I was cutting it fine. So I decided to head back to the old field where the rabbits are. We’ll catch a rabbit, I thought, then I’ll drop her back at the house, pick up the teaching material, and run down the road to teach it. What could possibly go wrong?

• From Educated (2018)

  downstairs. Dad followed, and for an hour their shouts rose up through the floor. I’d never heard my parents shout like that—at least, not my mother. I’d never seen her refuse to give way. The next morning I found Dad in the kitchen, dumping flour into a glue-like substance I assumed was supposed to be pancake batter. When he saw me, he dropped the flour and sat at the table. “You’re a woman, ain’tcha?” he said. “Well, this here’s a kitchen.” We stared at each other and I contemplated the distance that had sprung up between us—how natural those words sounded to his ears, how grating to mine. It wasn’t like Mother to leave Dad to make his own breakfast. I thought she might be ill and went downstairs to check on her. I’d barely made it to the landing when I heard it: deep sobs coming from the bathroom, muffled by the steady drone of a blow-dryer. I stood outside the door and listened for more than a minute, paralyzed. Would she want me to leave, to pretend I hadn’t heard? I waited for her to catch her breath, but her sobs only grew more desperate. I knocked. “It’s me,” I said. The door opened, a sliver at first, then wider, and there was my mother, her skin glistening from the shower, wrapped in a towel that was too small to cover her. I had never seen my mother this way, and instinctively I closed my eyes. The world went black. I heard a thud, the cracking of plastic, and opened my eyes. Mother had dropped the blow-dryer and it had struck the floor, its roar now doubled as it rebounded off the exposed concrete. I looked at her, and as I did she pulled me to her and held me. The wet from her body seeped into my clothes, and I felt droplets slide from her hair and onto my shoulder.

• From A Hebrew and English Lexicon of the Old Testament (BDB) (1907)

  of foll.; cf. Ar. eas soul, life,‏ /) נפש person, living being, blood, desire, 85 breath,‏ sweet odour, 5 be high in estimation, become‏ avaricious; 111. desire a thing, aspire to it,‏ vy. breathe, sigh. As. nupdsu, get breath, be‏ broad, extended ; napistu, life, less frequently‏ soul, living being, person. Vbs. appar. denom.;‏ CIS‏ ,נפש nouns in all Semitic languages: Ph.‏ the foll.=both soul, person,‏ ג.; :1650 Bth.‏ 48235 and tombstone, monument (as representing‏ merson, v. esp. Duval Bev-Smit. tase), 292) | NH‏ Nab.‏ , נפש v. Levy 279 si as),215, O Aram.‏ נפש Palm. wai, v. Lzb* Cook®; Syr. 1532, v.‏ Levy-Os 286 = 186,‏ נפס I Mace 13”; Sab.‏ =) Mordtm = G%).22 cf Lihyan., DHM Epigr. Denkm. 67 1 8008780. Chrest. 128 , Min. Hom ). א 1 31% ne *.§ (so even Gn 2% Nu‏ נפש 19’v. Albrecht74W7"'")2 SS) soul,living being,‏ life, self, person, desire, appetite, emotion, and‏ passion (Ecclus 3" 4!” 13” 14") ;—’) Gn‏ Gn 377+; sf. YB) 6 12%+;‏ נפש ;1 Ez 13°+ 13 %.; NW] Ex 124 Lv'27?;‏ נְפְשות pl.‏ נְפָשִים ;"21 estr. MWD) Gn 36"+ 4t.; NYE) Ly‏ Ez 13” (but rd. OWN, v. Co Berthol Toy) ; sf.‏ 2S 23 + ; OND) Nu 173+ :—‏ נפשותֶם 1. = that which breathes, the breathing substance or being = Wvyn, anima, the soul, the inner being of man: a. disting. fr. W3: WDD wa ‘Wi Is 10%; wad oy VEIT 612%; fr. WY Prix”; fr. }O2 body ~ 31. , b. both the inner נפש‎ and the outer בשר‎ are conceived as resting on a common substratum: 13 48 sdaxn y>y iwan axa dy Tb 14” only his flesh upon him is in pain, and his soul upon , 659 win) him mourneth; cf. ~ 42>7 131° Jb 30" La 3” [v. על‎ 1d], all poetical (cf. 6c). c. נ'‎ departs at death and returns with life: "7" MND כִּי‎ AWD] בְּצָאת‎ Gn 35" (E) and it came to pass when her soul was going forth (for she died) ; FWD) MD) Je15° she breathed out her soul, cf. 1 K17”-” Jb 11 31%. d.. oft. desired that the נפש‎ may be delivered: 1. 1 ש‎ 16” 304 49° 86% 89% Pr 23"; fr. ,שחת‎ 6 pit of She’6l, Is 38% Jb 331525,

• From Tipping the Velvet (1998)

  She wouldn’t let us in the room with her; we had to sit down here and listen to the cries, Ralph wringing his hands and weeping all the while. I thought, “Let the baby die, oh, let the baby die, so long as she is safe... !” ‘But Cyril did not die, as you see, and Lilian herself seemed well enough, only tired, and the midwife said to let her sleep. We did so - and, when I went to her a little later, I found that she’d begun to bleed. By then, of course, the midwife had gone. Ralph ran for a doctor - but she couldn’t be saved. Her dear, good, generous heart bled quite away -’ Her voice failed. I moved to her and squatted beside her, and touched my knuckles to her sleeve; and she acknowledged me kindly, with a slight, distracted smile. ‘I wish I’d known,’ I said quietly; inwardly, however, it was as if I had myself by the throat, and was banging my own head against the parlour wall. How could I have been so foolish as not to have guessed it all? There had been the business of the birthday - the anniversary, I realised now, of Lilian’s death. There had been Florence’s strange depressions; her tiredness, her crossness, her brother’s gentle forbearance, her friends’ concern. There had been her odd ambivalence towards the baby - Lilian’s son, yet also, of course, her murderer, whom Florence had once wished dead, so that the mother might be saved... I gazed at her again, and wished I knew some way to comfort her. She was so bleak, yet also somehow so remote; I had never embraced her, and felt squeamish about putting a hand upon her, even now. So I only stayed beside her, stroking gently at her sleeve... and at last she roused herself, and gave a kind of smile; and then I moved away. ‘How I have talked,’ she said. ‘I don’t know, I’m sure, what made me speak of all this, tonight.’ ‘I’m glad you did,’ I said. ‘You must - you must miss her, terribly.’ She gazed blankly at me for a moment - as if missing was rather a paltry emotion, terrible too mild a term, for her great sadness - and then she nodded and looked away. ‘It has been hard; I have been strange; sometimes I’ve wished that I might die, myself. I have, I know, been very poor company for you and Ralph!

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

  But if the emirs had forgotten the jihad, a handful of “fighting ulema” had not. Immediately after the conquest of Jerusalem, Abu Said al-Harawi, qadi of Damascus, led a deputation of Muslim refugees from Jerusalem to the caliph’s mosque in Baghdad and begged the caliph to call for a jihad against the invaders. Their terrible stories reduced the congregation to tears, but the caliph was now too weak to undertake any military action.73 In 1105 the Syrian jurist al-Sulami wrote a treatise arguing that jihad against the Franks was fard ayn, an “individual obligation” incumbent on the local emirs, who must step into the vacuum created by the caliph’s incapacity and drive the invaders out of the Dar al-Islam. He insisted that no military action would be successful unless it was preceded by the “Greater Jihad,” a reform of hearts and minds in which Muslims battled with their fear and apathy.74 Yet still there was little response. Far from being maniacally programmed for holy war by their religion, the Muslims had little appetite for jihad and were preoccupied by new forms of spirituality. In particular, some of the Sufi mystics would develop an outstanding appreciation of other faith traditions. The learned and highly influential Muid ad-Din ibn al-Arabi (1165–1240) would claim that a man of God was at home equally in a synagogue, mosque, temple, or church, since all provided a valid apprehension of God: My heart is capable of every form. A cloister for the monk, a fane for idols, A pasture for gazelles, the votary’s Kabah, The tables of the Torah, the Quran. Love is the faith I hold. Wherever turn His camels, still the one true faith is mine.75 During the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, the period of the Crusades, Sufism ceased to be a fringe movement and in many parts of the Muslim world became the dominant Islamic mood. Few were capable of achieving the higher mystical states, but Sufi disciplines of concentration, which included music and dancing, helped people to abandon simplistic and narrow notions of God and chauvinist attitudes toward other traditions.

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

  In 1217 Francis was presented to Honorius III. and the curia. At the advice of Cardinal Ugolino, later Gregory IX., he prepared himself and memorized the sermon. Arrived in the pontiff’s presence, he forgot what he had prepared and delivered an impromptu discourse, which won the assembly. Francis made evangelistic tours through Italy which were extended to Egypt and Syria 1219. Returning from the East the little Poor Man, il poverello, found a new element had been introduced into the brotherhood through the influence of the stern disciplinarian Ugolino. This violent change made the rest of the years a time of bitter, though scarcely expressed, sorrow for him. Passing through Bologna in 1220, he was pained to the depths at seeing a house being erected for the brothers. Cardinal Ugolino had determined to manipulate the society in the interest of the curia. He had offered Francis his help, and Francis had accepted the offer. Under the cardinal’s influence, a new code was adopted in 1221, and still a third in 1223 in which Francis’ distinctive wishes were set aside. The original Rule of poverty was modified, the old ideas of monastic discipline introduced, and a new element of absolute submission to the pope added. The mind of Francis was too simple and unsophisticated for the shrewd rulers of the church. The policy of the ecclesiastic henceforth had control of the order.806 Francis was set aside and a minister-general, Pietro di Catana, a doctor of laws and a member of the nobility was put at the head of the society. This was the condition of affairs Francis found on his return from Syria. He accepted it and said to his brethren, "From henceforth I am dead for you. Here is brother Peter di Catana whom you and I will obey," and prostrating himself, he promised the man who had superseded him obedience and submission.807 This forced self-subordination of Francis offers one of the most touching spectacles of mediaeval biography. Francis had withheld himself from papal privileges. He had favored freedom of movement. The skilled hand of Ugolino substituted strict monastic obedience. Organization was to take the place of spontaneous devotion. Ugolino was, no doubt, Francis’ real as well as professed friend. He laid the foundation of the cathedral in Assisi to his honor, and canonized him two years after his death. But Francis’ spirit he did not appreciate. Francis was henceforth helpless to carry out his original ideas,808 and yet, without making any outward sign of insubordination, he held tenaciously to them to the end. These ideas are reaffirmed in Francis’ famous will. This document is one of the most affecting pieces in Christian literature. Here Francis calls himself "little brother," frater parvulus. All he had to leave the brothers was his benediction, the memory of the early days of the brotherhood, and counsels to abide by the first Rule. This Rule he had received from no human teacher.

• From Get Out of Your Head: Stopping the Cycle of Anxious Thoughts (2020)

  Yes, it’s tempting to find a home in our pain, to define ourselves by the awful experiences we’ve endured. But if I’m learning one thing from my family and friends, it’s that there is an altogether better way. My friend Tara stood up at church last night and spoke of the multiple racist statements people have made to her face throughout her life and of the outright physical attacks she’s suffered and of the pain she’s known year after year. Some of this inexcusable behavior occurred at a previous house of worship, which made Tara leery of reengaging in a local church. “But I decided to make a choice,” she said with bravery. “I am choosing to trust again.” She went on to tell the story of joining our church and launching a series of racial reconciliation conversations that are bringing together women of various ethnicities to discuss how we truly come together and do better. I look at Tara’s impact on our congregation, and I think, How could someone so wronged turn back to people who hurt her and say, “I want to build a bridge to get back to you. I want to try again”? Tara would answer my question with a single word: Jesus. The way of Jesus shifts everything. In Jesus, we can acknowledge our frustration, pain, and suffering without abdicating our peace and joy. In Jesus, we can change where we fight from without changing what we fight for. By the power of Jesus, we can demonstrate to ourselves and others that, regardless of how grim the situation seems, God is in the business of redeeming all things. Out of gratitude to Jesus, we can see God’s purposes in our pain. Tara understands that while the fight she’s in is real, she is assured certain victory in the end. And from that place of grateful confidence, she can reach out, she can trust, she can love. Seeking God’s Purpose Behind the Pain Again, we can acknowledge our suffering without abdicating our joy. We can fight for justice but from a place of peace. Because we don’t find our identity in a cause, we are secure in who we are in Jesus. And then there’s this: when we make the brave shift from victimhood to gratitude, we affirm our understanding that God remains committed to redeeming all things. Paul told the Philippians he was sure that everything that had happened to him had happened for a specific purpose.