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.

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• From Chasing Beauty

  The year 1919 marked a pivot in Isabella’s long life. These are likely the last photographs of her, and, surely the last that show her standing. *** ISABELLA AND SARGENT SPENT QUITE A BIT OF TIME TOGETHER WHEN HE was at work, “night and day,” as he reported to her, on his mural project, despite lack of sleep and bouts of illness. Letters and telegrams flew back and forth between them, with arrangements for teas and dinners and drives about town. She sent him books to read, including selections of Dante, Okakura’s Book of Tea, and Fritz Kreisler’s Four Weeks in the Trenches, which Sargent “devoured.” They also shared their passion for music. He explained that afternoons were impossible for him to meet for concerts “unless it is Loeffler’s Quartet,” but he later asked: “Where and when do we meet tomorrow for Bach?” She was also buying several of his pictures, including the large oil painting of Yoho Falls in the Canadian Rockies, where he had traveled in 1916. Many contemporaries were already gone: Whistler in 1903; Frank Crawford in 1909; John La Farge in 1910; Henry James in 1916. Caroline Sinkler confided to Isabella that Sargent, who had on occasion spent time with the Dabsville group, had told her he did not want to leave Boston in part because he so enjoyed being near Isabella. Both suffered grievous losses in 1918. In April, Sargent got word that his sister’s daughter, his favorite niece, had been killed in a bombing in Paris, after which he rushed to France for the funeral and to be at his sister’s side. Isabella’s nephew Augustus Peabody Gardner had died of pneumonia while serving as an officer at Camp Wheeler in Georgia early in the year. She attended his funeral in Washington, D.C., where she visited her old friend Henry Adams, who found her “more magnificent than ever . . . and not in the least disturbed by twenty-four hours’ railway journey, which would have knocked me out merely to talk about.” The sudden death of Ella Lavin in September 1918, however, left Isabella stunned. Ella had been her maid for decades, but much more than that—she was also a devoted companion who often traveled with Isabella and helped make it possible for her accomplish all she had done in the years after Jack Gardner’s death. Isabella replied to a friend’s condolence letter that the loss had been “overwhelming.”

• From Momma and the Meaning of Life (1999)

  “One morning we were asked to meditate upon someone who had died, some beloved person from whom we really hadn’t parted. I chose to think of my brother, whom I had loved very much but who died at seventeen when I was still a child. We were asked to write a letter of farewell telling that person all the important things we had never said. Next we searched in the forest for an object symbolizing that person to us. Finally we were to bury the object together with the letter. I chose a small granite boulder and buried it in the shade of a juniper. My brother was like a rock—solid, steadfast. If he had lived, he would have supported me. He would never have passed me by.” Paula looked into my eyes as she said this, and I started to lodge a protest. But she put her finger on my lips and continued. “That night at midnight the monastery bells chimed for the person each of us had lost. There were twenty-four of us on the retreat, and the bells rang twenty-four times. Sitting in my room, hearing the first bell, I experienced, really experienced, my brother’s death, and a wave of indescribable sadness descended upon me as I thought of all the experiences he and I together had had, and also those we never had. Then a strange thing happened: as the bells continued to toll, each chime brought to mind a member of our Bridge Group who had died. When the chimes stopped, I had remembered twenty-one. And all during the tolling I cried. I cried so hard that one of the nuns heard me, came into my room, put her arms around me, and held me. “Irv, do you remember them? Do you remember Linda and Bunny—” “And Eva and Lily.” I felt my own tears come as I joined her in recalling the faces and the stories and the pain of our first group members. “And Madeline and Gabby.” “And Judy and Joan.” “And Evelyn and Robin.” “And Sal and Rob.” Holding one another and rocking gently, Paula and I continued our duet, our dirge, until we had inurned the names of twenty-one of our little family. “This is a holy moment, Irv,” she said, breaking away and looking into my eyes. “Can’t you feel the presence of their spirits?” “I remember them so clearly, and I feel your presence, Paula. That’s holy enough for me.” “Irv, I know you well. Mark my words—the day will come when you realize how religious you really are. But it’s unfair trying to convert you while you’re hungry. I’ll get lunch.” “Wait one moment, Paula. A few minutes ago, when you said your brother was one who would never have passed you by, was that statement meant for me?”

• From In Search of Paul: How Jesus's Apostle Opposed Rome's Empire with God's Kingdom (2005)

  Notice two details in contrasting Paul’s response with God’s reply in 4 Ezra. Ezra does not presume that his generation will be alive when that great moment arrives, and the answer asserts simultaneity rather than precedence. But Paul presumes that he and his generation will still be alive (“we”) at the Lord’s parousia, and he affirms that the dead will rise first and the living will go “with them” to greet Christ. What is Paul’s source for that claim? It is, quite bluntly, neither faith nor hope, neither tradition nor theology, but an absolutely magnificent act of consolation based on a brilliant use of metaphor. The Parousia of the Lord First of all, the metaphor of formal urban visitation gives Paul a powerful visual answer to the question of the Thessalonians. Any important visitor coming along the major road to an ancient city would first meet the dead before they were greeted by the living. Take for example the city of Hierapolis above the white travertine basins of Pamukkale at the eastern end of the great Meander Valley. If you walk out along the northern road, for example, you find yourself today in an absolute jumble of broken sarcophagi, shattered tombs, and wrecked mausoleums. But if you put that destroyed and quarried necropolis back in its original format, you can easily imagine an imperial visitor meeting first the elite dead before any meeting with the elite living. And, of course, says Paul, dancing fast and fancy on his theological feet, that is how things will be at the parousia of Christ. We will not all go up together, but first the dead, then the living. Second, the parousia metaphor means that Christians do not ascend to stay with Christ in heaven, but to return with him to this transformed world. Paul says nothing about an eschatological world or utopian earth here below, but simply that all believers “will be caught up in the clouds…to meet the Lord in the air; and so we will be with the Lord forever.” The metaphor of parousia as state visit would presume that those going out to greet the approaching ruler would return with him for festive rejoicing within their city. So also with Christ. Paul probably took it for granted that all together would then descend to dwell upon a purified earth. The parousia of the Lord was not about destruction of earth and relocation to heaven, but about a world in which violence and injustice are transformed into purity and holiness. And, of course, as mentioned above, a transformed world would demand not just spiritual souls, but renewed bodies.

• From Great Authors of the Western Literary Tradition (2004)

  44 Lecture 8: Homer—The Odyssey Odysseus is. While Eumaeus is present, Odysseus must not indicate that he realizes who Telemachus is. Thus, he must suppress all emotion during his fi rst sight of his son in 20 years. Finally, Telemachus sends Eumaeus to the palace; this leaves father and son alone. Athena tells Odysseus to reveal his true identity to Telemachus; she makes him younger and handsome again. Odysseus goes back into the hut and tells Telemachus who he is. At fi rst, Telemachus does not believe that this is his father. Odysseus can offer no proof; Telemachus has to decide to accept him “as is.” Telemachus does so, and the two weep in each other’s arms. A simile comparing their weeping to the cries of birds whose young have been stolen stresses what Odysseus and Telemachus have lost. This scene contrasts directly with Athena’s reaction when Odysseus fi rst arrived back on Ithaca. Odysseus asks Athena why she has not helped him during the 10 years of his absence. Athena responds that she did not want to argue with Poseidon, who hated Odysseus, and that she knew Odysseus would reach Ithaca some day. She seems utterly oblivious to the difference 10 years make in a human life. With Athena’s help, Odysseus and Telemachus kill all the suitors. Odysseus and Penelope are fi nally reunited. Penelope does not immediately greet Odysseus; instead, she sits and looks at him. Telemachus scolds her, but Penelope says that Odysseus and she have private ways of recognizing one another. Penelope tests Odysseus by implying that their marriage bed could be moved. Odysseus reacts with anger and describes the bed in terms that prove his identity. One of the bed’s posts is a still-rooted olive tree; the bed is a symbol of Odysseus’s and Penelope’s marriage, of Athena’s patronage, and of Penelope’s fi delity. Penelope rushes to Odysseus and kisses him. One of the most famous similes in the Odyssey describes their reunion. These reunions refl ect the reality of human life in all its complexity. The Odyssey’s story of a man foregoing immortality to return to human life af fi rms the importance and worthiness of being human. It is only through the sorrows of life that we can truly be human and only in contrast to those that we can know joy. ■ 45 Homer, Odyssey. Austin, Archery at the Dark of the Moon. Clay, Wrath of Athena. Nagler, “Dread Goddess Revisited.” Olson, Blood and Iron. Vernant, “Refusal of Odysseus.” 1. All three epics we have read— Gilgamesh, the Iliad, and the Odyssey— deal with human reconciliation to and acceptance of death. Which epic’s treatment do you fi nd most powerful or most moving? Why? 2. My treatment of the symbol of Odysseus’s and Penelope’s bed seems to imply conscious artistry on the part of “an author.” Is this a valid way to approach the Odyssey, given what we know about its process of composition? Questions to Consider Essential Reading Supplementary Reading

• From Chasing Beauty

  At Christmastime, the children from Saint John’s House, an orphanage in nearby Arlington affiliated with the Society of Saint John the Evangelist, came to Fenway Court and sang carols, as they had done for a number of years. Isabella was, according to the brothers, “bravely holding her own.” When Father Spence Burton came to call in March, he found Isabella “feeble” though “as charming and attractive as ever.” She seemed better that spring than she had in previous years, as if her spirit strengthened even “as her body grew more frail,” as Olga observed. To Olga’s surprise Isabella still had energy enough to visit the Museum of Fine Arts for ninety minutes, bringing her usual intense interest to everything she saw. She went out in a motorcar for her birthday and in June wrote to the Berensons: “My news is uninteresting, but very good. I am well and living the quiet summer life of Boston.” Then, on July 9, Isabella suffered a severe heart attack. Father Powell, her confessor, rushed to her side, as did Father Burton. Later, Olga sat with the two men on the roof of Fenway Court, reminiscing. The next day Father Burton found Isabella “very weak” but “courageous, merry, affectionate, and devout.” What did the two talk about? Burton didn’t say in his recollection, only that “there is no one quite like her.” Two days later she slipped into unconsciousness. On July 14, she awoke once more, another phase in the cycle of decline and recovery, from light to dark and back again. Father Burton said it seemed as if “she cannot die.” He and Father Powell continued to tend to her. She still recognized people and was able to speak in her last hours, then fell into a peaceful sleep and died at 10:40 P.M. on July 17, the same day as her father, thirty-three years before. She was eighty-four years old. Olga had stayed by her side the whole time, something Isabella knew, so that “she was not alone.” A decade before, Isabella had written out very precise directions for what was to come next. In the morning, her body was transported from her boudoir on the fourth floor to the first floor of the museum, and her casket was placed alongside the small Spanish Chapel. The purple pall from Venice, used twenty-six years before at Jack’s funeral, now covered her. For three days, she was attended by sisters from the Society of Saint Margaret and the Order of Saint Anne; private services were performed. The outdoor garden, near the Chinese Loggia, was filled with pink petunias and birdsong. Lilies, larkspur, foxgloves, and hollyhocks lined the cloister near her coffin. The courtyard was a mass of intensely fragrant trumpet lilies in large vases, with palm trees reaching to the glass roof high above.

• From While You Were Out (2023)

  Hard to imagine. That might have been the only time I heard the word gentle used to describe anything about my father. The next week, Mary Kay picked up Holmer’s ashes from the discount crematorium. As planned, she poured some in a jar for his wife and some in another jar to be buried next to our mother. Never one to abide protocol, Mary Kay saved a few teaspoons for herself, which she scooped into an I Can’t Believe It’s Not Butter! container, to be scattered later at a date and place of her choosing. Billy delivered the eulogy to a standing-room-only crowd, nailing a perfect imitation of Holmer moving some porch furniture—LOOK OUT NOW, I’M COMIN’ OUT SWINGIN!’ Billy recalled how Holmer referred to Mary Kay, Patty, Molly and me as his “semi-beautiful daughters,” and how he wanted his tombstone to read SEE, I TOLD YOU I WAS SICK . If you were walking by the church that morning, you might have thought it was open mic at a comedy club. I still get requests for copies. Holmer’s wife said she didn’t have the energy to come up to Milwaukee the following Monday for the ceremony to bury our half of his ashes. So, I arranged for an honor guard to give a twenty-one-gun salute, and they presented the flag to Mary Kay. The pomp may have been a bit disproportionate to Holmer’s valor during his brief stint in stateside duty at the tail end of World War II, but, considering how the military had screwed his parents when Uncle Jack was killed, we figured it was the least they could do. Then we all went back to my house, played a few games of Wiffle ball, and ate takeout Chinese food. After dinner, our bellies full of MSG and IPAs, we spread out on the family room floor and fought to stay awake watching Best in Show . With both of our parents now dead, my siblings and I knew that we would need to make an extra effort to stay connected. The rest of us had jobs and our own families to keep us busy, but Jake was on his own now. We worried about what might happen if he began feeling sad and lonely. It didn’t take long for us to find out. 16 Be Wounded by the Stories You Tell [image file=Image00022.jpg] Jake and me, back on the pier where Jake rescued me after I’d fallen in so many years earlier, in Land O’ Lakes, Wisconsin, 2021. (Photo credit: Shelly Weingarten) Jake’s caseworker sent me an email just after Christmas that year to let me know that my brother was struggling. “He said he’d like to live with family again until he feels better,” she wrote. “He specifically mentioned you.” My first instinct was to jump at the chance to invite Jake to move in with Larry and me. “No threepeats,” we all vowed at Danny’s funeral.

• From Reading the Bible from the Margins (2002)

  It is to the margins of society that we must go in order to find Jesus. The margins of society, in the here and now, in this time and place, are understood as encompassing the poor, Hispanics, Amerindians, Asian Americans, blacks, members of other disenfranchised groups, women, and gays. THE ECONOMICALLY MARGINALIZED CHRIST Who is this Jesus who was called Lord and Savior by those who suffered economically at the margins of society? Who is the Christ of the poor? The biblical text tells us that, although divine, he became human, assuming the condition of a slave, according to Paul's letter to the Philippians: [Jesus Christ], who subsisting in the form of God thought it not robbery to be equal with God, but emptied himself, taking the form of a slave, in the likeness of humans, and being found in the fashion of a human, he humbled himself, becoming obedient until death, even the death of the cross. (2:6–8) The radicalness of the incarnation is not so much that the Creator of the universe became a frail human but rather that God chose to become poor, to take the form of a slave. Jesus willingly assumed the role of the ultradisenfranchised. He was born into, lived, and died in poverty. Under our Christmas trees, among the multitude of conspicuous gifts, we usually have a nativity scene. The baby Jesus rests comfortably in a crib made of wood while angelic cows gaze upon the miracle. The proud parents (Mary and Joseph) survey the sanitary scene as kings and peasants come to worship. Yet, if we accept the reliability of the Gospels (particularly Matthew and Luke), then Jesus was born in a barn, full of the manure of those “angelic cows” and the flies attracted to most stables. A manger was either a wooden box or a hole on the cave wall from where horses and cattle ate. Like a barn animal, Mary was forced to give birth amidst such unsanitary conditions. Jesus physically entered this world as if he were homeless. This fact is not lost on the poor of the earth, who recognize God's solidarity with them, as articulated in the songs slaves sung: Poor little Jesus boy Made him to be born in a manger World treated him so mean Treats me mean too.3 To understand Jesus from the social location of the poor is to create a sacred space where the marginalized can grapple with their spiritual need to reconcile their God with their struggle for justice and dignity.

• From Jesus to Constantine (Great Courses) (2004)

  There is considerable debate about | Peter, whether Simon Peter actually wrote the book or not. We know about Simon Peter from the Gospels of the New Testament, where he appears as a lower-class, illiterate peasant who lived in Galilee, and whose native tongue would have been Aramaic. | Peter, as it’s called, is a letter allegedly written by Peter, written in good Greek. Evidently, whoever penned this letter was well-trained and well- educated. It doesn’t appear that it was actually composed by a lower-class, uneducated peasant whose primary language was Aramaic. Therefore, some scholars suspect that even | Peter is pseudonymous, or may actually have been a work that was written by Peter, or possibly dictated by Peter to somebody who was proficient in Greek, who then modified the style accordingly, to make it more acceptable. In any event, whoever wrote the book of | Peter was writing to Christians in the context of intense suffering. The term “suffering” occurs more frequently in this little five-chapter book than in any other book of the entire New Testament. Therefore, I wanted to look at some aspects of | Peter as an apology. The book was written near the end of the first century— whoever wrote it— to a group of Christians who were experiencing some kind of severe persecution. We can get this from the pages of the book itself. In chapter 4, verses 12 and following, the author says: Beloved, do not be surprised at the fiery ordeal that is taking place among you to test you, as though something strange were happening to you, but rejoice insofar as you are sharing Christ’s sufferings, so that you may also be glad and shout for joy when his glory is revealed. [This is somebody expecting that Jesus will soon return from heaven, in judgment on the earth.] People are suffering now, but it’s only for a short time, until he comes back. People should rejoice at the suffering, because it’s the same suffering that Christ himself experienced. [Verse 15:] But let none of you suffer as a murderer, a thief, a criminal, or even as a mischief maker. Yet 0A fe) if any of you suffers as a Christian, do not consider it a disgrace, but glorify God because you bear this name. Clearly, people are suffering some kind of Christian persecution, and the author is urging them not to suffer for doing anything wrong, but if you suffer from being a Christian then, well and good. You should bear with the suffering, because it will end soon, and by suffering, you are imitating Christ.

• From I'm Not a Mourning Person (2023)

  WELCOME YOUR GRIEF HOMELosing a parent is devastating at any age. For better or worse, our parents inform who we are and how we live and love. A parent’s death prompts a cascade of existential angst, right alongside the grief we experience. Despite the magnitude of this kind of loss, most of us never really talk about this experience. It’s as if there’s an unspoken rule that parents die first. It’s the natural order of things, so we should just keep quiet about the storms that may be brewing inside. Once the memorial is over and we’ve finished eating the shrimp casserole the neighbor dropped off, we move on. Back to the grind and the groceries. But what happens when the groceries remind us of that time we made root beer floats together and watched the Chicago Cubs win their first World Series championship since 1908? I’ll tell you, we crack wide open and don’t feel OK or normal talking about our anguish. Instead, we go radio silent. For me, there was this sense that if I talked about my grief past an acceptable period of time (whatever that is), I would seem childish and immature or, worse, tedious. Those beliefs kept me silenced. I didn’t want to be a burden or a bummer; no one does. In the wake of my dad’s passing, there’s a part of me that will never be OK. There’s a hole in my heart that will always need my care and attention. I can’t fully move on and I never will. But in embracing my grief, I can begin to imagine what moving forward might look like. While there’s no time limit on grief, we also don’t want it to dominate our lives to the point that there isn’t room for much else. The hope is to extend grief an ongoing invitation to come home whenever it needs comfort—just like a loving parent would offer their child when they needed support. Even when we’re grown-ass humans, we all still have moments of feeling like little kids on the inside. When we ache, we want to be soothed, especially by our primary caregivers. We want to know that it will be OK, and so will we. The loss of our parents is one of the most destabilizing and emotionally significant experiences we will ever go through. It kicks up deep feelings of fear and abandonment, wounds and behaviors that are passed down in our very DNA. It changes both our lives and our brains (which we’ll explore in a coming chapter). It’s OK to actually feel the immensity of this loss. It doesn’t go away, just like our love doesn’t go away. But over time, the waves get easier to surf. Especially when we remember the love as much as, if not more than, the grief. CASH-ONLY BARSometime after the jackhammer incident, when the veil kept getting thinner by the day, Dad caught me as I was walking out of his room.

• From Between Us

  My colleague Alba Jasini tells me that in her country of origin, Albania, the relatives of deceased people hire “professional mourners” to wail for (and with) the family, and thus raise the level of grief display to the right cultural standards. Outside-in emotions may involve excitation rather than suppression. Arguably, many rituals have a similar function of collectively supplying individuals with situationally appropriate options for behavior during emotional events. Among the Indonesian Minangkabau, people are expected to show malu (roughly equivalent to shame) when they violate any social norms. If necessary, educators force the display by highlighting the norm. Malu was induced in thirteen-year-old Andi who had his hair cut in front of the class. In Andi’s own words: “Two days ago, the teacher told me to get my hair cut. Today, she called me in front of the class and took a pair of scissors out of her desk. She gave me a haircut and the others [classmates] watched. I had to sweep up the hair and go home. Now I can only run around with a baseball cap on, but wearing caps is not allowed in class.” When the situation requires it, people are expected to show malu, or else helped to recognize the situation as one of malu. The direction of the emotion is outside-in. A final reflection on the terms emotional expression and emotional suppression is that they may themselves be suggestive of a MINE model of emotions. They imply that there is a deep inner feeling that wants to come out, or alternatively, has to be actively suppressed. Expression and suppression privilege a view of emotions as inside the person, and naturally wanting to come out. When emotions are conceived of as acts between people, rather than feelings within, then no “expression” is naturally privileged over another. There is no essence to be expressed. There is no reason to assume that any emotional act is more authentic, or to the contrary, less. There is also no reason to think it is unnatural to meet social expectations. If emotions live between people, then why would yelling in anger be any more natural than Hiroto and Chiemi’s accommodation to the expectations of their environments? Why would silently mourning by yourself be any more natural than wailing with the professional mourners? Why would managing your emotions to accommodate the expectations of the social environment be any more phony than asserting your frustrations? Emotions: Mine and Ours? Emotions are not solely feelings deep inside us. The way they have been portrayed in the Pixar movie Inside Out is a MINE model of emotions. Many cultures have an OURS model of emotions, which understands emotions primarily as acts happening between people: acts that are being adjusted to the situation at hand. Emotions in MINE and OURS cultures look different.

• From Saint Thomas Aquinas Collection (22 Books) (2016)

  Reply to Objection 1: Both the passages quoted should, seemingly, be referred to temporal or bodily punishments, in so far as children are the property of their parents, and posterity, of their forefathers. Else, if they be referred to spiritual punishments, they must be understood in reference to the imitation of sin, wherefore in Exodus these words are added, “Of them that hate Me,” and in the chapter quoted from Matthew (verse 32) we read: “Fill ye up then the measure of your fathers.” The sins of the fathers are said to be punished in their children, because the latter are the more prone to sin through being brought up amid their parents’ crimes, both by becoming accustomed to them, and by imitating their parents’ example, conforming to their authority as it were. Moreover they deserve heavier punishment if, seeing the punishment of their parents, they fail to mend their ways. The text adds, “to the third and fourth generation,” because men are wont to live long enough to see the third and fourth generation, so that both the children can witness their parents’ sins so as to imitate them, and the parents can see their children’s punishments so as to grieve for them. Reply to Objection 2: The punishments which human justice inflicts on one for another’s sin are bodily and temporal. They are also remedies or medicines against future sins, in order that either they who are punished, or others may be restrained from similar faults. Reply to Objection 3: Those who are near of kin are said to be punished, rather than outsiders, for the sins of others, both because the punishment of kindred redounds somewhat upon those who sinned, as stated above, in so far as the child is the father’s property, and because the examples and the punishments that occur in one’s own household are more moving. Consequently when a man is brought up amid the sins of his parents, he is more eager to imitate them, and if he is not deterred by their punishments, he would seem to be the more obstinate, and, therefore, to deserve more severe punishment. OF VENIAL AND MORTAL SIN (SIX ARTICLES)In the next place, since venial and mortal sins differ in respect of the debt of punishment, we must consider them. First, we shall consider venial sin as compared with mortal sin; secondly, we shall consider venial sin in itself. Under the first head there are six points of inquiry: (1) Whether venial sin is fittingly condivided with mortal sin? (2) Whether they differ generically? (3) Whether venial sin is a disposition to mortal sin? (4) Whether a venial sin can become mortal? (5) Whether a venial sin can become mortal by reason of an aggravating circumstance? (6) Whether a mortal sin can become venial?

• From In Search of Paul: How Jesus's Apostle Opposed Rome's Empire with God's Kingdom (2005)

  Those moral laws were, however, Augustus’s greatest political disaster. They were vociferously opposed, ignored, and eventually repealed or modified in court, and certainly Augustus’s only child, Julia, was an embarrassing poster child for his morality campaign. Augustus banished her from Rome in 2 B.C.E. for her many alleged affairs. Aptly, Augustus’s contemporary Livy described the “present time” in the preface to his History of Rome as one “when we can endure neither our vices nor their cure” (9). Augustus himself continually pleaded with the two orders of the Roman nobility to restore family values. Suetonius’s The Lives of the Caesars records in The Deified Augustus how “he even read entire volumes to the senate and called the attention of the people to them by proclamations; for example, the speeches of Quintus Metellus ‘On Increasing the Family’” (89.2). Cassius Dio’s Roman History tells how Augustus “assembled in one part of the Forum the unmarried men of their [the equestrians’] number, and in another those who were married, including those who also had children. Then, perceiving that the latter were much fewer in number than the former, he was filled with grief.” The fewer married and fertile ones are first praised because, “we were at first a mere handful, you know, but when we had recourse to marriage and begot us children, we came to surpass all mankind not only in manliness of our citizens but in the size of our population as well” (56.2.2). The more numerous unmarried ones are accused of committing murder in not begetting in the first place those who ought to be your descendants; you are committing sacrilege in putting an end to the names and honours of your ancestors; and you are guilty of impiety in that you are abolishing your families…. Moreover, you are destroying the state by disobeying its laws, and you are betraying your country by rendering her barren and childless…. What you want is complete liberty to lead an undisciplined and promiscuous life…. For it is human beings that constitute a city, we are told, not houses or porticoes or marketplaces empty of men. (56.5.1–3) Remember those speeches when later in this chapter we move to the historical Paul. He would agree against promiscuity, disagree about celibacy, and leave a tradition not exactly in continuity with idealized Romanitas. And what then?

• From What Do Women Want?: Adventures in the Science of Female Desire (2013)

  “So I just lay on that bed, holding my daughter. She truly is a gifted snuggler. It was like taking a muscle relaxant. I clung on to her and thought my morbid thoughts, She is the last physical intimacy I’m going to have before I die, she is the last physical intimacy I’m going to have before I die. And I felt those windows, even though I kept the velvet curtains closed.” 3 Sophie and Paul’s romance had begun when they were in nursing school. One night, ten years ago, a group of students had gone out to a bar and decided to play telephone. Paul sat directly to Sophie’s right. “Sophie,” she whispered to the woman on her left, “will you go out with me?” The question made it all the way around the circle, word for word. They had been married now for eight years. They had three small children, the youngest under a year old; they both worked; and whatever time was left for them as a couple was swallowed by his studying and training for an advanced degree. Yet their bedroom seemed nothing less than anointed. When she had first told her friends that she wished—wished badly—that Paul would ask her out, they looked puzzled. “Really?” they said. They thought of him as a dependable friend, not as the subject of dreams. But the man Sophie had just broken up with was a painter with a nipple ring glinting amid the muscles of his chest. He had done her portrait with dark flamboyance, depicting her as a corpse. It all seemed laughably melodramatic now, but for a long while she had been intoxicated not only by the Goth-style art, the gleam of jewelry, and the torso, but by the air of indifference—he rarely even bothered to brush his teeth—that seemed to keep women clustered around him always. He was unfaithful to her on a regular basis. Then one day at nursing school, shortly after that relationship came to a cataclysmic end, Paul traded his light blue scrubs for a navy blue suit and delivered an assigned presentation. He was supposed to discuss an ethical dilemma that a nurse might confront, and he turned his task into a game of Jeopardy!, with himself as host and his fellow students earning points for posing the right questions to analyze and address the problem. He was animated; he came alive for her. She adored his ingenuity and eagerness; there was nothing nonchalant about him. Her memories of being rendered, in luxuriant brushstrokes, as a woman ready for burial started to fade. . . .

• From Dreams from My Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance (1995)

  She had spent the previous ten years doing what she loved. She traveled the world, working in the distant villages of Asia and Africa, helping women buy a sewing machine or a milk cow or an education that might give them a foothold in the world’s economy. She gathered friends from high and low, took long walks, stared at the moon, and foraged through the local markets of Delhi or Marrakesh for some trifle, a scarf or stone carving that would make her laugh or please the eye. She wrote reports, read novels, pestered her children, and dreamed of grandchildren. We saw each other frequently, our bond unbroken. During the writing of this book, she would read the drafts, correcting stories that I had misunderstood, careful not to comment on my characterizations of her but quick to explain or defend the less flattering aspects of my father’s character. She managed her illness with grace and good humor, and she helped my sister and me push on with our lives, despite our dread, our denials, our sudden constrictions of the heart. I think sometimes that had I known she would not survive her illness, I might have written a different book—less a meditation on the absent parent, more a celebration of the one who was the single constant in my life. In my daughters I see her every day, her joy, her capacity for wonder. I won’t try to describe how deeply I mourn her passing still. I know that she was the kindest, most generous spirit I have ever known, and that what is best in me I owe to her. INTRODUCTION [image file=image_rsrc2W2.jpg] I ORIGINALLY INTENDED A VERY different book. The opportunity to write it first arose while I was still in law school, after my election as the first black president of the Harvard Law Review, a legal periodical largely unknown outside the profession. A burst of publicity followed that election, including several newspaper articles that testified less to my modest accomplishments than to Harvard Law School’s peculiar place in the American mythology, as well as America’s hunger for any optimistic sign from the racial front—a morsel of proof that, after all, some progress has been made. A few publishers called, and I, imagining myself to have something original to say about the current state of race relations, agreed to take off a year after graduation and put my thoughts to paper.

• From In Search of Paul: How Jesus's Apostle Opposed Rome's Empire with God's Kingdom (2005)

  Slaves were also bought and sold at Delos’s market, slaves acquired through Roman civil wars and imperial expansions, and the ancient geographer Strabo claimed that Delos “could both admit and send away ten thousand slaves on the same day” (14.5.2). Its commercial importance and considerable wealth made it conspicuous, however, and Mithridates IV, king of Pontus and enemy of Rome, sacked the island in 88 B.C.E. while Rome was preoccupied with social wars at home and, according to some written sources, slaughtered twenty thousand of the island’s inhabitants. The Roman general Sulla returned to the East with five legions, defeated Mithridates, pacified the area, and included a visit to restore the island of Delos. But it was subsequently raided by pirates in 69 B.C.E. and had to be recovered and again restored by the Romans, who this time walled much of the city. Delos never fully recovered its former luster, even after Augustus rid the seas of pirates, and the island’s gradual decline and eventual abandonment left it not just as one more archaeological site, but as an entire and protected archaeological island. Apollo at the Civic Center Since 1873, the École Français d’Archéologie in Athens has conducted excavations on the island, unearthing swaths of ruins and amassing a treasure of inscriptions that enable a full and vivid picture of life on this once cosmopolitan island. Along the island’s flat western shore and below the northern slope of Mt. Kynthos, archaeologists have discovered many of the city’s religious temples, civic buildings, and mercantile facilities. The sanctuary dedicated to Apollo, next to the harbor in the heart of the city, occupied a good portion of the civic center and has absorbed a great deal of the archaeological energy over the past century. As you move up from the harbor, you enter the sanctuary on a set of stairs worn down by centuries of pilgrimage, and you see three successive temples and their altars, each dedicated to Apollo: one from the sixth century B.C.E., another from the late fifth century B.C.E, and the largest constructed over two centuries and completed in the third century B.C.E. The popularity of the onetime sun god Apollo, later more known for his healing, prophetic, and musical prowess, attracted the attention of Hellenistic kings and city embassies, who competed with each other to renovate, enhance, and elaborate the sanctuary’s architecture and ornamentation. The detail and precision of written inventories document the many and varied votive gifts to the sanctuary and underscore the overlap between civic and religious operations on Delos.

• From Open (2009)

  I have to get well, get right, which means spending lots of time with Gil. Every night we buy a sack of hamburgers and drive around the city. I’m breaking training, big time, but Gil sees again that I need comfort food. He also sees that he might lose a finger if he tries to take the hamburger away from me. We drive into the mountains, up and down the Strip, listening to Gil’s special CD. He calls it Belly Cramps. Gil’s philosophy in all things is to seek the pain, woo the pain, recognize that pain is life. If you’re heartbroken, Gil says, don’t hide from it. Wallow in it. We hurt, he says, so let’s hurt. Belly Cramps is his medley of the most painful love songs ever written. We listen to them over and over until we know the lyrics by heart. After a song has played Gil will speak the lyrics. For my money, his speaking is better than anyone’s singing. He puts all recording artists to shame. I’d rather hear Gil talk a song than Sinatra croon it. With each passing year Gil’s voice grows deeper, richer, and softer, and when he speaks the chorus of a torch song he sounds as if he’s channeling Moses and Elvis. He deserves a Grammy for his rendition of Barry Manilow’s Please Don’t Be Scared: Cause feeling pain’s a hard way To know you’re still alive. But his take on Roy Clark’s version of We Can’t Build a Fire in the Rain knocks me out every time. One line in particular resonates with us both: Just going through the motions and pretending we have something left to gain. When I’m not with Gil, I’m locked in my new house, the one I bought with Brooke for those infrequent occasions when we came home to Vegas. Now I think of it as Bachelor Pad II. I like the house, it’s more my style than the French Country place where she and I lived in Pacific Palisades, but it doesn’t have a fireplace. I can’t think without a fireplace. I must have fire. So I hire a guy to build one. While it’s under construction the house is a disaster area. Huge plastic sheets hang from the walls. Tarps cover the furniture. A thick coat of dust lies everywhere. One morning, staring into the unfinished fireplace, I think about Mandela. I think about the promises I’ve made to myself and others. I reach for the phone and dial Brad. Come to Vegas. I’m ready to play. He says he’s on his way.

• From Reading the Bible from the Margins (2002)

  Fearful that her son's inheritance could be jeopardized by Abraham's firstborn, Ishmael, she connived to have him and his mother, Hagar, forced into exile. Again Hagar found herself in the desert facing death, thrown out as an old used object no longer needed by its owner, a familiar scenario for most domestic servants today. Homeless because of the unwillingness of the father of her child to shoulder his responsibility, she was abandoned, like so many women of color today. Alone in the desert, facing death, and questioning the promise God previously uttered about the multitude of her descendants, she must have wondered about the blindness of the God who sees. Yet, this time, God heard the cry of her son and rescued them. Hagar suffered from classism (a slave), racism (an Egyptian foreigner), and sexism (a woman raped by Abraham). Because of her status, Hagar becomes a lens by which the biblical text can be read, a reading that focuses on the struggle for liberation and survival with dignity. This story of the used and abused woman is a motif that resonates with many women of color. Even natural allies, women of the dominant culture like Sarah, capitalize on her body. Nevertheless, God is found in the midst of the struggle of those relegated to the margins, even when these religious patriarchs of the faith have participated in their marginalization! Because God chooses to accompany those who are disenfranchised, Hagar and her child Ishmael complicated the history of salvation by becoming part of God's promise to make a nation by using Abraham's seed. Women of color continue to “complicate” how the dominant culture interprets God's promises.4 JUSTIFYING HOMOPHOBIA The sin of Sodom is an abomination before God. It is a prevalent sin within our society and undermines Christianity. Its constant practice contributes to the downfall of civilization and leads nations toward barbarism. It is the responsibility of all who call themselves Christian to root out this sin from society and dedicate themselves to abolishing this defiled practice. Because the elimination of this sin is crucial for participating in the abundant life, it is important that we correctly define what the sin of Sodom is. Regardless of how the dominant culture interprets the Genesis story of God's wrath falling upon Sodom and Gomorrah, the Bible's definition of the sin of Sodom is vastly different from what is usually preached from most pulpits throughout the land. According to Genesis 19, two angels sent to Sodom found hospitality in the house of Lot (Abraham's nephew). Later in the evening, the men of the town went to Lot's house, demanding that the two strangers be handed over to them so that they could know them (“to know” being a euphemism for having a sexual relationship). Lot refused, but he offered his two virgin daughters, as discussed above.

• From Jesus to Constantine (Great Courses) (2004)

  The death itself was narrated by the editor. What happened was that they took her and a female slave who was a Christian, a woman named Felicitas, who had just given birth and was still lactating. They stripped them naked, put them in nets, and took them into the arena, but the people saw that there was a young matron, and a slave woman whose breasts were still lactating, and the crowd got upset about this. They wanted them to be dressed. Apparently, the crowds didn’t mind if they were fully dressed and getting mauled by the beasts; they just didn’t want to see them naked and being mauled by the beasts. They dressed them, and let a wild heifer loose onto them, thinking that it would be interesting to have a female beast destroy these females, these women, these female humans. The heifer attacked them, knocked them over, and mauled them, but didn’t kill them. The crowds thought that was enough for one day, and sent them back to jail to bring them out the next day. The next day, they sent out gladiators to kill them. One by one, the gladiators struck them with the sword and killed them, but when the gladiator came up to Perpetua, he apparently tried to stab her, but the sword hit a bone, stopped, and didn’t get to her heart. We're told that Perpetua herself took the gladiator’s hand—it isn’t quite clear whether it was a short sword or a dagger—forced it up to her own throat, and killed herself by thrusting it through her throat, showing that she was in control of her own death, even to the very end. 204 Well, it’s a disturbing account. This was a young woman who had everything ahead of her: Educated, a young mother. Why were Christians like this so willing to die? We have seen other instances: The woman Blandina in the letter of Lyons and Vienne; Polycarp, the aged bishop in Smyrna; now Perpetua in North Africa. They were so firm in refusing to recant, so stalwart in the face of death, so eager to die. What was it that was driving these people to want to escape this world? We can never know, of course, their personal reasons. Even though we have Perpetua’s diary, we don’t really know what was going on inside their minds, but we do have some indications from the writings about them by the Christians who were left behind, concerning why Christians might have preferred public torture and humiliation, and death, to a long life, why they would prefer one to the other.

• From Reading the Bible from the Margins (2002)

  Hagar, as womb, not person, was used to accomplish the goals of those who owned her body. Her body and labor existed to be exploited by those who had power over her. If a woman does not have control over her sexual organs and is forced to have sexual relationships with a man against her will, for whatever reason, the result is called rape. Hagar, as a slave, as property, was required to “perform” at the will of her owners, a familiar scenario for many black female slaves who, as possessions, had to satisfy their master's desires as well as face the dehumanizing practice of being “rented out” to other white men as concubines. As the story proceeds, the unexpected happened. Sarah's property, a surrogate mother, experienced consciousness raising and recognized her own dignity. Hagar became the first woman in the Bible to seek her own liberation, by fleeing Sarah's cruelty (as well as sexual rivalry between barrenness and fertility). She thus chose death in the desert, if necessary, to challenge the power structures that oppressed her, even though she was pregnant by Abraham. While in the wilderness, Hagar was visited by a messenger of God, a God who accompanied the outcast in the midst of her unwarranted suffering. Yet the divine message for Hagar was to return to Sarah and “suffer affliction under her hand.” Why would God require her to return to slavery? Perhaps it was crucial for the survival of her unborn son, who would then be born in the house of Abraham an heir to the promise of God. But is this liberation or a strategy for survival? Regardless, her child becomes an intruder to the covenant. It is to be noted that, breaking with biblical tradition, God's promise was made to a woman, with no reference to a man. At this point, Hagar, the lowly marginalized woman, does the unexpected: she dares to give God a name, a privilege extended to no other person throughout the Bible. Ancient custom dictated that only a superior could name those who are lower in status, yet here a slave woman is the first biblically recorded person to give God a name. She calls God El Roi , the God who sees, uniting the divine with her human experience of suffering. The second time the Bible returns to Hagar, she has been cast out by those who own her. Sarah's jealousy got the better of her.

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

  The Saudis’ experience of modernity had been very different from that of the Egyptians, Pakistanis, or Palestinians. The Arabian Peninsula had not been colonized; it was rich and had never been forced to secularize. Instead of fighting tyranny and corruption at home, therefore, Saudi Islamists focused on the suffering of Muslims worldwide, their pan-Islamism close in spirit to Azzam’s global jihad. The Quran told Muslims that they must take responsibility for one another; King Feisal had always framed his support for the Palestinians in these terms, and the Saudi-based Muslim World League and the Organization of Islamic Conferences had regularly expressed solidarity with member states in conflict with non-Muslim regimes. Now television brought images of Muslim suffering in Palestine and Lebanon into comfortable Saudi homes. They saw pictures of Israelis bulldozing Palestinian houses and in September 1982 witnessed the Christian Maronites’ massacre, with the tacit approval of the IDF, of two thousand Palestinians in the refugee camps of Sabra and Chatila. With so much suffering of this kind in the Muslim world, pan-Islamist sentiment increased during the 1980s, and the government exploited it as a way of distracting their subjects from the kingdom’s internal problems.18 It was for this reason too that the Saudis encouraged the young to go to the Afghan jihad, offering airfare discounts, while the state press celebrated their feats on the frontier. The Wahhabi clerical establishment, however, disapproved of the Afghans’ Sufi practices and insisted that jihad was not an individual duty for civilians but was still the ruler’s responsibility. Yet the Saudi king’s civil government supported Azzam’s teaching for its own temporal reasons. A study of Saudis who volunteered for Afghanistan and later fought in Bosnia and Chechnya shows that most were chiefly motivated by the desire to help their Muslim brothers and sisters.19 Nasir al-Bahri, who would become Bin Laden’s bodyguard, gave the fullest and most perceptive explanation of this concern: We were greatly affected by the tragedies we were witnessing and the events we were seeing: children crying, women widowed, and the high number of incidents of rape. When we went forward for jihad, we experienced a bitter reality. We saw things that were more awful than anything we had expected or had heard or seen in the media. It was as though we were like “a cat with closed eyes” that opened its eyes at these woes.20