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 Scandalous Liaisons (2007)

  Swallowing hard, she glanced at Gwen, whose pursed lips and narrowed eyes condemned her. She was condemning herself, knowing how difficult it must have been for Hugh to speak with Jared and reveal her negative reply to his proposal. Lord Merrick cleared his throat, and she returned her gaze to his. His handsome face was impassive, betraying none of his thoughts. “I will relate to you what I told Montrose. A great many adventurers have searched for that treasure over the years, Mrs. Riddleton. I doubt your chances of locating it are any better than theirs, even with Montrose’s substantial largesse. However, he insisted this be done, and because I consider him a friend, I have agreed to assist you.” He stood. “I have your direction, and I will contact you to make arrangements as the date of departure nears.” She grabbed his arm and blurted, “How is he?” Merrick arched a brow and studied her carefully. “As well as any man can be when he’s disheartened.” “Oh.” Her hand fell away. The tone of Merrick’s voice told her much. “You don’t like me, do you, Lord Merrick?” “I don’t like that you have wounded my friend, but I very much appreciate your rejection of his suit. I was fortunate to find true happiness in my marriage. I wish nothing less for him. He’s heartbroken now, but he’ll recover. I hope one day he will love again, as unfashionable as that is, and next time I hope the lucky woman loves him as well.” Charlotte looked away quickly, biting back a sob. The picture evoked by Merrick’s words cut her deeply, clenching a fist around her heart. “I love him,” she said, her voice wavering but clear. “Mrs. Riddleton,” he said, sighing, “I am not privy to the state of your affairs, but I can assure you, for you to remain seated here while a man who loves you suffers is not love by any means.” She looked at him. “My decision was made for his benefit as well as mine. I have reasons. I—” “I’m certain you do. But love requires a leap of faith, and often it has no reason. It simply exists.” He bowed. “Montrose has made arrangements for you to depart tomorrow. Is that acceptable to you?” She gave a jerky nod, and Merrick walked away, his departure drawing the appreciative gaze of every woman in the room. Gwen stood. “You coward,” she accused, in a sharp whisper. “You want to run back to the manse and allow the best thing that ever happened to us go without argument!” Charlotte blinked, never having witnessed Gwen saying an unkind word to anyone. “That’s not true. I’m doing what is best for all of us. We hardly know him and his history—”

• From Times Square Red, Times Square Blue (1999)

  In July of 1987, at a pre-theater dinner in Greenwich Village with two of her oldest friends, on her way to the lady’s room at Gavin’s restaurant, my mother suffered a massive stroke that kept her at St. Luke’s Hospital for ten months, then put her in the Park Shore Manor nursing home, paralyzed on her right side and unable to speak, write anything other than incoherent progressions of letters, or respond directly to verbal instructions. In this state, wheelchair-bound and incontinent, she remained for the final eight years of her life. The incident, as do such medical catastrophes—with hospital visits, medical consultations, visits with lawyers in a cluttered upstairs Harlem office, conservatorship papers, trips down with lawyer and doctor to the city courthouse for competency hearings in the courtroom off the echoing second-floor rotunda, and, yes, the resultant emotional strain—simply excised, as with a pair of sheers, a productive ten months from my sister’s life and mine. I am convinced that, in Kafka’s Die Verwandlung, Gregor Samsa’s transformation stands for just such a catastrophe, fallen on one or another family member: a stroke, a crippling accident, insanity (possibly Kafka’s own tuberculosis), an irrevocable change that does not (immediately) kill but leaves, rather, an incomprehensible creature to be dealt with one way or another by all who remain, a creature wholly alien yet somehow recognizable in fifty little ways—a hand gesture, a shake of the head, a sudden single phrase (“I know”) muttered thirty-seven times, a smile, a moue—as the subject he or she once was. A week after my mother’s transfer to the Park Shore Manor—a six-block walk beyond the last stop on the L train at the far end of Canarsie—on my way home from my second visit, I dropped in to the Capri. And found Arly. He’d come three times already (he explained), so, after forty-five minutes (in which he came three more), we fell into conversation, and I began to tell him some of the trials of the previous year. When I told him about the visit to the nursing home, he declared, “Hey, why don’t I come out and see your mom with you? When’s the next time you’re goin’?” I said, “Huh?” “No, I’m serious. I’ll go out with you, next time you have to go—and visit with your mother. It’ll be better for you, if you got company on that long subway ride, won’t it?” “. . . Huh?” He punched me in the shoulder—playfully. “I’m not kiddin’. I’d really like that. When you goin’ again?” “Huh . . . ?” I repeated. “You want to come with me—all the way to Canarsie?”

• From Saint Augustine (Penguin Lives) (1999)

  It is appropriate for Augustine to recall the story of Cain, whose inordinate grief God rebukes. Cain was guilty of mourning another’s good fortune (tristitia de alterius bonitate, CG 15.71), which Augustine calls a great sin. God orders Cain to master his sorrow, but Cain, clinging to it, murders Abel. Then God casts Cain out of his homeland, driving him into the wilderness where Cain establishes the first city—from whose foundation Augustine dates the Earthly City that is opposed to the City of God. What is unusual in Augustine’s treatment of the Cain story is his long analysis of Cain’s unmastered sorrow over God’s approval of Abel. In the same way, Augustine is “dumbfounded and disoriented” (stupefactus et turbatus) when Amicus clings to the faith from which Augustine thought he had wrenched him. He tries again to convert him, with what he calls a crazed effort (dementia mea). And just as God cast out Cain, he “cast my wretchedness far from You” (T 4.10), turning all things hateful to him. Augustine flees his hometown (fugi de patria) and returns to his heretical friends in what was for him, at this stage in life, the Earthly City par excellence. Once again, Genesis has provided a pattern for Augustine to read the deepest moral meaning of the Thagaste episode: his sorrow was world-darkening, earth-obliterating, self-annihilating because he had played the role of Cain to Amicus’ Abel. Cain’s Earthly City was founded in a state of perpetual war with itself, and Augustine says that he was his own divided kingdom after the death of Amicus: “I was restrained within my own unhappy territory, unable to live there or to get out” (T 4.12). This was the inescapable “homeland” he took with him as he left his native town. 6. Carthage: 376–383 RETURNED TO CARTHAGE, this time as teacher, not student, Augustine became a star in the galaxy of Manichean activists, winning successes in the “mad effort” that had failed with Amicus. As he says in The Manicheans’ “Two Souls” (11): “Arguing with ill-prepared Christians, I usually won a self-defeating victory [noxia victoria].” As the winner in a public poetry contest, he was crowned by the scholarly proconsul Vindician, who favored him with good advice and friendship. In 380, he published his first book (now lost), The Beautiful and the Appropriate. The argument of the volume may be reflected in a later letter to a pagan (L 138.5): The beautiful, which we gaze on and praise for its own sake, has as its opposite the foul and ugly; while the appropriate, whose opposite is the inappropriate [ineptum], depends on some other it is paired with, and cannot be assessed in itself but only in connection with that other.

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

  AUGUSTINE. (Ep. 185. 32 et 22.) But who is there of you who has any wish that a heretic should perish, nay, that he should so much as lose aught? Yet could the house of David have had peace in no other way, but by the death of Absalom in that war which he waged against his father; notwithstanding his father gave strict commands to his servants that they should save him alive and unhurt, that on his repentance there might be room for fatherly affection to pardon; what then remained for him but to mourn over him when lost, and to console his domestic affliction by the peace which it had brought to his kingdom. Thus our Catholic mother the Church, when by the loss of a few she gains many, soothes the sorrow of her motherly heart, healing it by the deliverance of so much people. Where then is that which those are accustomed to cry out, That it is free to all to believe? Whom hath Christ done violence to? Whom hath He compelled? Let them take the Apostle Paul; let them acknowledge in him Christ first compelling and afterwards teaching, first smiting and afterwards comforting. And it is wonderful to see him who entered into the Gospel by the force of a bodily infliction labouring therein more than all those who are called by word only. (1 Cor. 15:10.) Why then should not the Church constrain her lost sons to return to her, when her lost sons constrained others to perish? REMIGIUS. It follows, And in the time of harvest I will say to the reapers, Gather together first the tares, and bind them in bundles to burn them. The harvest is the season of reaping which here designates the day of judgment, in which the good are to be separated from the bad. CHRYSOSTOM. But why does He say, Gather first the tares? That the good should hare no fears lest the wheat should be rooted up with them: JEROME. In that He says that the bundles of tares are to be cast into the fire, and the wheat gathered into barns, it is clear that heretics also and hypocrites are to be consumed in the fires of hell, while the saints who are here represented by the wheat are received into the barns, that is into heavenly mansions.

• From Saint Augustine (Penguin Lives) (1999)

  This whole establishment, remember, was being subsidized by Romanian. When Augustine, at his patron’s behest, returns to Thagaste as a teacher in 375, we are first informed that Romanian is a Manichean. It has often been assumed that Augustine converted him to his new faith. But this influence could have worked the other way. Romanian, who had made business contacts in the Western Empire, no doubt knew influential people in Carthage, to whom he would have recommended his young protégé. Some of these may have been the well-placed Manicheans who would become Augustine’s patrons, in their turn, when he goes on to Rome. Manicheism had the glamour of fashion with an edge of danger (as a heresy, it was formally banned in the Christian Empire). Peter Brown (B and S 108–9) compares its appeal to that of “Bolshevism” in British universities of the 1920s. Romanian, with his cosmopolitan aspirations, may well have been a Manichean “fellow traveler” before Augustine came back to Thagaste, bubbling with a twenty-two-year-old’s enthusiasm for his new faith. Romanian was not simply an intellectual reflection of his young protégé—as he would prove later on. 5. Thagaste: 374–376 WHEN, his own studies completed, Augustine began teaching in his hometown, he strove energetically to convert a Christian catechumen to Manicheism—and he succeeded. “I wrenched him from his faith” (a fide deflexeram, T 4.7). Now Amicus (as I shall call him, to avoid periphrases) became his closest friend, a replacement for the magic circle of young intellectuals he had left behind in Carthage. But when Amicus fell seriously ill, his Christian parents, fearing he might die, had him baptized while he was unconscious. When Amicus recovered consciousness, Augustine thought he could joke him out of what had been foisted on him—and felt aggrieved when Amicus dared to defy him, holding on to the faith that Augustine was ridiculing. When Amicus did, in fact, die shortly after, Augustine plunged into a hysteria of grief. Half his own soul was gone—he would force himself to live only because half of Amicus’ soul was in him. His sorrow was like a great external force alienating him from himself: “I was made a riddle to myself, and I asked my heart why, in its anguish, it was whirling me about” (T 4.9). The last part of that sentence is a quotation from a Psalm (41.6) that echoes God’s rebuke to Cain for being angry when Abel’s sacrifice was accepted: “Why, in your anguish, is your face contorted?” ( Genesis 4.6). The echo is clear in the Latin of Augustine’s Bible: Quare tristis esset et quare conturbat me? Quare tristis factus est et quare concidet facies tuus?

• From Introduction to the Hebrew Bible and Deutero-Canonical Books (2018)

  praise him, the seas and everything that moves in them” (65:34). The communal complaints are similar in form but arise from the fate of the people rather than the experience of individuals. Examples include Psalms 44, 74, 79, 80, 83, 89 (Psalm 89 can also be considered as a royal psalm, but there is a lament over the neglected state of the kingship in vv. 38-52). Communal laments are also found in the narrative books of the Bible, for example, Ezra 9:6- 15; Neh 9:6-37; Dan 9:4-19. They mark calamities of various sorts, war, exile, pestilence, famine. A nice illustration of a ritual context can be found in Joel 1:3- 14, where the occasion is a plague of locusts: “Put on sackcloth and lament, you priests; wail you ministers of the altar . . . sanctify a fast, call a solemn assembly. Gather the elders and all the inhabitants of the land to the house of the L ORD your God, and cry out to the L ORD .” In numerous instances, people call a fast in response to some adversity (Judg 20:23; 1 Sam 7:6; et al.). A late example of a communal lament in reaction to military adversity can be found in 1 Macc 3:50- 54. There is a whole genre of laments in the ancient Near East that bewails the destruction of cities. The biblical complaints have much in common with this genre, notably in Psalm 137, where the psalmist weeps at the memory of Zion “by the rivers of Babylon.” Individual and Communal Thanksgiving The psalms of thanksgiving are integrally related to the psalms of complaint, and as we have seen, the latter often conclude by giving thanks for deliverance, whether actual or anticipated. Again, the psalms of individuals are quite common in the Psalter, while the very existence of communal psalms of thanksgiving has been disputed. Examples of individual thanksgiving are found in Psalms 18, 30, 32, 34, 40:1-11, 41, 66, 92, 116, 118, 138. These psalms would usually have been accompanied by a thanksgiving sacrifice. The same Hebrew word, todah, is used for both prayer and sacrifice of thanksgiving. The typical elements in a thanksgiving psalm are as follows:

• From Comrade Loves of the Samurai (1972)

  Her son was at first dumb with astonishment. Then he reasoned with his mother: 'Senpatji did not kill my father out of personal enmity. He bore my father no hatred. He could not ad otherwise, since the Lord commanded it. He is not really my father's enemy. If you wish to avenge him, it is the Lord Jibudayu whom I ought to kill, not my friend Senpatji. We owe him much gratitude for his kindness. Think, mother: I cannot kill him. We have no right to kill him.' But his mother was angry, and cried: 'I know that you cannot kill him; you are too cowardly and soft. If I had known that he was my husband's murderer I should never have accepted his help. I would rather have Starved to death than see you form a friendship with him. But I tell you that you are wrong to abandon your revenge because of your love, and, if you do so, you smirch the honour of a samurai. If you are such a coward I no longer know you. I will avenge him myself.' And, seizing her dagger, she rushed forth. But her son caught her by the sleeve, and said: 'If you are so firmly determined to avenge my father, there is nothing for me to do but obey you. I shall kill him with my own hands. I pray you not to do it yourself, mother. I beg you to be calm.'And he made ready his vengeance. His love with Senpatji had already lasted for more than two years, and yet he was now compelled to destroy that man to whom he had vowed both affection and assistance for ever. He could not, however, kill him without telling him his reason for doing so. So that evening he called Senpatji to his room, but he was pale and weighed down with sorrow. Senpatji at once perceived this, and said to him: 'Dear Shynosuke, you seem very sad this evening. Are you in trouble? Tell it to me, that I may share it.' Shynosuke sighed, touched by these gentle words; and Senpatji again urged him to open his heart. Then Shynosuke confessed to him: 'Oh, what a wretched business is this human life! I am the son of Shingokei Disaki. You know yourself what you did to my father. I am aware that you could not do otherwise, and that you acted at your master's command. But as the son of a samurai I cannot overlook the matter. At that time I was Still in my mother's womb. Truly I am sorry to kill you, for you have been good to my mother and myself. I am in great distress.'

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

  While they were heartbroken, they were learning how to pick up the pieces. Were they a changed person? Absolutely. But through their tragedy they also saw how much other people cared about them, in a way they had never known before. They had an opportunity to evaluate what really mattered to them moving forward in their new beginning. They never would have wished to have lived through such devastation, but alas . . . here they were—living and breathing through it one day at a time. And I have to say this because I know you’re thinking it. But what if I don’t make it? What if it is too much? What if I die of the pain? This goes against everything in our paradigm of anti-death but here goes: so be it . Death happens sometimes. It’s usually not what we want but it is a part of life. Just as we have to accept pain, we have to accept death. This is so hard to sit with. In a world where surviving is assumed to be the ideal, some of us can even force others to keep living—whether or not it’s what they want for themselves. Even when a person is ready to pass, we don’t always want to allow it because we don’t want to sit with the stillness of our own pain. Like I said, anxiety can make us selfish sometimes. Ask yourself what scares you so much about death. Is it the unknown? The permanence of it? That it is an ending before you feel ready? The injustice of it? These are all plausible fears. None of which can prevent a final outcome that may just be what it is. I don’t mean for this to sound callous. I’m just naming the reality of what our anxiety is murmuring to many of us every single day. We fear death so much that we ruin our living years worrying about what could be. I realize that you may be thinking I’m cruel at this point. Why on earth would I be bringing all this up when I know it hurts? Because even just reading about death, including your death and the death of your loved ones, or the possibility of “emotional death,” is a form of exposure therapy. It’s a form of processing and preparing. Avoiding the ultimate reality of death only enhances our fears surrounding it. This is where empowered acceptance is warranted. When we can acknowledge this universal truth about death, we can learn to live that much more fully. We no longer have to live in fear of the possibility of dying because we’ve accepted that it’s not a possibility but a reality.

• From Adam, Eve, and the Serpent (1988)

  Title : Adam, Eve, and the Serpent Author: Pagels, Elaine Also by Elaine PagelsTHE JOHANNINE GOSPEL IN GNOSTIC EXEGESIS THE GNOSTIC PAUL: GNOSTIC EXEGESIS OF THE PAULINE LETTERS THE GNOSTIC GOSPELS BEYOND BELIEF: THE SECRET GOSPEL OF THOMAS [image file=image_rsrc2FP.jpg] FIRST VINTAGE BOOKS EDITION, SEPTEMBER 1989 Copyright © 1988 by Elaine Pagels All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. Published in the United States by Vintage Books, a division of Random House, Inc., New York, and simultaneously in Canada by Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto. Originally published, in hardcover, by Random House, Inc., New York, in 1988. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Pagels, Elaine H., 1943– Adam, Eve, and the serpent / Elaine Pagels.—1st Vintage Books ed. p. cm. eISBN: 978-0-307-80735-9 1. Sex—Biblical teaching. 2. Bible. N.T.—Criticism, interpretation, etc. 3. Sex—Religious aspects—Christianity—History of doctrines—Early church, ca. 30–600. I. Title. BS2545.S36P34 1989 241′.66′09015—dc20 89-40147 Grateful acknowledgment is made to the following for permission to reprint previously published material: Harvard Theological Review: Excerpts from “Christian Apologists and the ‘Fall of the Angels’: An Attack on Roman Imperial Power?” by Elaine Pagels, which appeared in Harvard Theological Review 78, 3–4 (1985), pp. 301–325; and “The Politics of Paradise: Augustine’s Exegesis of Genesis 1–3 Versus That of john Chrysostom,” by Elaine Pagels, which appeared in Harvard Theological Review 78, 1–2 (1985), pp. 67–95. Copyright © 1985 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College. Reprinted by permission. Hendrickson Publishers, Inc.: Excerpts from “Exegesis and Exposition of the Genesis Creation Accounts in Selected Texts from Nag Hammadi,” by Elaine Pagels, in Nag Hammadi, Gnosticism, and Early Christianity, edited by C. Hedrick and R. Hodgson, pp. 257–286. Used by permission of Hendrickson Publishers, Inc., Peabody, Mass. T&T Clark Ltd.: Excerpts by Elaine Pagels from The New Testament and Gnosis Essays in Honour of R. McL. Wilson, edited by A.H.B. Logan and A.J.M. Wedderburn (Edinburgh, Scotland, 1983), pp. 146–175. National Council of the Churches of Christ in the U.S.A.: Scripture quotations are from the Revised Standard Version Bible. Copyright 1946, 1952, © 1971 by the Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the U.S.A. Used by permission. v3.1 TO OUR BELOVED SON, MARK, WHO FOR SIX AND A HALF YEARS GRACED OUR LIVES WITH HIS PRESENCE October 26, 1980–April 10, 1987

• From A History of God (1993)

  Muslims date their era not from the birth of Muhammad nor from the year of the first revelations—there was, after all, nothing new about these—but from the year of the hijra (the migration to Medina) when Muslims began to implement the divine plan in history by making Islam a political reality. We have seen that the Koran teaches that all religious people have a duty to work for a just and equal society, and Muslims have taken their political vocation very seriously indeed. Muhammad had not intended to become a political leader at the outset, but events that he could not have foreseen had pushed him toward an entirely new political solution for the Arabs. During the ten years between the hijra and his death in 632 Muhammad and his first Muslims were engaged in a desperate struggle for survival against his opponents in Medina and the Quraysh of Mecca, all of whom were ready to exterminate the ummah. In the West, Muhammad has often been presented as a warlord, who imposed Islam on a reluctant world by force of arms. The reality was quite different. Muhammad was fighting for his life, was evolving a theology of the just war in the Koran with which most Christians would agree, and never forced anybody to convert to his religion. Indeed the Koran is clear that there is to be “no compulsion in religion.” In the Koran war is held to be abhorrent; the only just war is a war of self-defense. Sometimes it is necessary to fight in order to preserve decent values, as Christians believed it necessary to fight against Hitler. Muhammad had political gifts of a very high order. By the end of his life most of the Arabian tribes had joined the ummah, even though, as Muhammad well knew, their islam was either nominal or superficial for the most part. In 630 the city of Mecca opened its gates to Muhammad, who was able to take it without bloodshed. In 632, shortly before his death, he made what has been called the Farewell Pilgrimage, in which he Islamized the old Arabian pagan rites of the hajj and made this pilgrimage, which was so dear to the Arabs, the fifth “pillar” of his religion.

• From Sex God: Exploring the Endless Connections Between Sexuality and Spirituality (2007)

  Think about some of the great country songs, the classics. There’s “She Ripped My Heart Out and Stomped That Sucker Flat,” and there’s “I Sure Do Miss Him, but My Aim Is Improving,” and then there’s my personal favorite, “Here’s a Quarter, Call Someone Who Cares.” What do they have in common? Heartbreak. Someone got their heart broken by someone else. And now they are singing about it. And we can all relate. Even if the music gives us a rash.4 Why is this? And why is it that it’s not just about lovers, it’s about parents and their children, friends who have been hurt by friends, business partners who part ways. Why is heartbreak so universal? It’s universal because we’re feeling something as old as the world. Something God feels. The Bible begins with God making people who have freedom. Freedom to love God or not to love God. And these people consistently choose not to love God. It’s written in Genesis 6:6 that God “regretted that he had made human beings on the earth, and his heart was deeply troubled.” Another translation reads, “Then YHWH [God] was sorry that he had made humankind on earth, and it pained his heart.” These ancient writers saw God as having a heart.5 That feels. That responds. That hurts. That fills with pain. God . . . grieving. And what is the source of this grieving? People. People God had made who have freedom. Freedom to love anybody they want. And freedom not to love anybody they want. God takes this giant risk in creating and loving people, and in the process God’s heart is broken. Again and again and again. Divine heartbreak. For some, this is an entirely new perspective on God. Many of the popular images of God are of a warrior, a creator, a judge, a system of theology, a set of absolute truths, a father, the writer of an owner’s manual. But a lover? A lover whose heart has been crushed, and expresses it in . . . poetry?6 This raises questions about what is at the base of the universe. What, or maybe we should say who, is behind it all? A list of rules? A set of beliefs, which you either believe or you don’t, and if you do, you’re in, if you don’t, you’re out? A harsh judge and critic, who’s making a list and checking it all the time? An impersonal energy such as fate, destiny, luck, chance, or the force that you can tap into if you know the code or the technique or the philosophy?7 The story the Bible tells is of a living being who loves and who continues to love even when that love is not returned. A God who refuses to override our freedom, who respects our power to decide whether to reciprocate, a God who lets us make the next move. Love Is . . .

• From Sex God: Exploring the Endless Connections Between Sexuality and Spirituality (2007)

  This is what I mean by the sheer poetry of the Jesus story. Jesus is God coming to us in love. Sheer unadulterated, unfiltered love. Stripped of everything that could get in the way. Naked and vulnerable, hanging on a cross, asking the question, “What will you do with me?” Me Too This is why for thousands of years Christians have found the cross to be so central to life. It speaks to us of God’s suffering, God’s pain, God’s broken heart. It’s God making the first move and then waiting for our response. If you have ever given yourself to someone and had your heart broken, you know how God feels. If you have ever given yourself to someone and found yourself waiting for their response, exposed and vulnerable, left hanging in the balance, you know how God feels. If you have ever given yourself to someone and they responded, they reciprocated with love of their own, you know how God feels. The cross is God’s way of saying, “I know what it’s like.” The execution stake is the creator of the universe saying, “I know how you feel.” Our tendency in the midst of suffering is to turn on God. To get angry and bitter and shake our fist at the sky and say, “God, you don’t know what it’s like! You don’t understand! You have no idea what I’m going through. You don’t have a clue how much this hurts.” The cross is God’s way of taking away all of our accusations, excuses, and arguments. The cross is God taking on flesh and blood and saying, “Me too.” This can transform our experience of heartbreak. Instead of being something that distances us from God, causing us to question, “Where are you?,” we can see that every poem by a lover spurned, every song sung with an ache, every movie with a gut-wrenching scene, every late-night conversation and empty box of Kleenex are glimpses into the life of God. Our first need is not for people to fix our problems. People who charge in and have all the answers and try to make things right without first joining us in our pain generally annoy us, or worse yet, they push us away. They have nothing to give us. The God that Jesus points us to is not a god who stands at a distance, wringing his hands and saying, “If only you’d listened to me.” This is the God who holds out his hands and asks, “Would you like to see the holes where the nails went? Would that help?” It’s the place we find out we’re not alone, where we find strength to go on. Not a strength that comes from within ourselves but a strength that comes from God. The God who keeps going. Who keeps offering. Who keeps loving. Who keeps risking. A God who knows what it’s like. The cross is where we present our wounds to God and say, “Here, you take them.”

• From Sex God: Exploring the Endless Connections Between Sexuality and Spirituality (2007)

  But the Ten Commandments are about something else. In a Jewish wedding ceremony, a legal document called the ketubah must be agreed upon and signed by both parties. Essentially it’s a list of what they are entering into. Both the bride and groom must be clear with each other on what they are committing to, what they both affirm it will take for this relationship to work. The Ten Commandments are the ketubah. They’re the agreement between the people and God about how they’re going to live together, which is why the first one deals with having other gods. It’s essentially an agreement that this relationship won’t work if they have other lovers. And for the rest of the Hebrew scriptures, we find God referring back to these original vows. In the book of Hosea, God says to his people, “You cheated on me!”9 The whole book is a picture of how God’s people have been unfaithful to him. In one text God laments, “You were the bride of my youth.”10 This was supposed to be a beautiful thing, but the people haven’t been faithful. They’ve broken God’s heart. From the perspective of the scriptures, then, a man and a woman coming together is a picture of God and his people coming together—the God of Exodus, the God who travels with his people in a cloud of smoke and fire. The God who is with his people. The God of the Shekinah. To symbolically represent this coming together, for thousands of years Jews have taken a prayer shawl, which in the book of Numbers God commanded the people to wear, and fastened the four corners to four poles, and then the wedding attendants hold the four poles so that the couple can exchange their vows under the canopy, the chuppah.11 A marriage takes place under the chuppah just like Israel exchanged vows with God under the Shekinah. This same God, the one who hovers over his people, hovers over a married couple, protecting them and journeying with them and blessing their union. A marriage is a sacred, holy thing. And the Shekinah glory of God rests upon it. In the ancient world, after the ketubah had been signed and the vows had been exchanged, the couple still wasn’t officially married. There was one important act that made them married. Their physical union. So the wedding party would lead them to their bridal chamber, attach the chuppah above their bed, leave them, and the couple would consummate their relationship. With all of the guests waiting outside. When the woman says in the Song of Songs, “Let the king bring me into his chambers,” this is wedding language. There’s a celebration about to start.12

• From The Myth Made Fact: Reading Greek and Roman Mythology through Christian Eyes (2020)

  {Click here to go back to N2 in text} [image file=Image00011.jpg] FIVE: Demeter and Persephone F ive [image file=Image00010.jpg] Demeter and Persephone W ho can understand the mystery of the grain? During the season of sowing, we plant the seed beneath the earth. Winter soon arrives and covers all with a blanket of snow. For many months, the seed lies hidden, asleep in its cold, dark bed. It seems the spring will never come, that perhaps the seed and the earth and the sun have died, when suddenly, overnight, spring comes. The sleeper wakes and the buried seed blossoms into life. The Greeks explained it thus: A generation before Orpheus descended into Hades in search of his beloved Eurydice, Persephone, the lovely, fair-haired daughter of Demeter (de MEE ter), goddess of the earth and the grain, was gathering flowers in a fragrant meadow. Among the flowers, she spied a marvelous, hundred-blossomed narcissus sent by the gods to lure her young fancy. As she reached down to pluck it, the earth split open, and Hades, the dread god of the underworld, rose up in his golden chariot. He seized the startled virgin and dragged her down to his sunless domain. Demeter traversed the earth in search of her lost child, weeping as she went. When she learned the truth, sorrow and anger rose up together in her breast, and she caused a blight to fall upon the land. The leaves fell, the corn withered, the grapes rotted on the vine. But still the grieving mother would not be consoled. In desperation, fearing for the earth and its mortal inhabitants, Zeus sent a messenger to Hades to demand the return of the abducted maiden. Hades agreed, but before letting Persephone go, he seduced her mind with visions of power, whispering, “Remain with me, and you shall be queen of the underworld,” and induced her to eat several seeds of a pomegranate. Shortly thereafter, the mother and maiden were reunited, and, attuned to their joy, all nature revived and flourished. But the joy was to be short-lived. Persephone had tasted of the food of the underworld, had taken its dark magic into her being, and for this there would be a harsh price to pay. For nine months, she could remain above with her mother, but when the sun began its decline, she must return to the depths of the earth, there to spend the final quarter of each year. For three long months, she would lie hidden, buried in the earth, while her mother and all nature grew cold with remorse; but the spring would come, and the child would rise to the parent, there to live in sweet abundance until the sun began again its inevitable decline. And so the cycle goes, on and on, till the end of time. —The Homeric Hymns , “The Hymn to Demeter” R eflections In addition to its entertainment value, the tale of Demeter and Persephone functioned for the Greeks as an etiological tale.

• From Etched in Sand (2013)

  At the other car, where Mrs. Brady put my and Norm’s Hefty bags, was a big pink-faced man. He opened the back door and let my sisters crawl all over Norm and me as they hugged and kissed us good-bye. Mrs. Brady got in the front seat and immediately put on her seatbelt. Her back was stiff as she stared out the front windshield. “Je t’aime, ” Gi whispered in my ear, then she and Camille got out of the car. I reached up and felt my face, wet and slippery from sisters’ tears. Just as the man was closing my door, Cookie trampled out of the house like a drunken elephant. “MY BABIES,” she wailed. The man hurriedly got into the front seat and slammed his door. A sturdy click sounded before Cookie was at the window, her fists thudding against the glass. “Don’t open the windows,” Mrs. Brady said without turning to look at us. “My babies!” Cookie cried. “Don’t worry, my babies! I’ll get you back!” I watched my mother in her spandex jumpsuit bounce around outside my window. Her insincere pleading didn’t feel real—it was like watching a play at school. Norm was as impassive as I. What struck me at that moment was not Cookie’s emotions, rather it was how tight her clothing was and how much her body jiggled in spite of being bound in fabric. I scooted up and looked out the front window as Camille and Gi got into the car parked in front of ours. Cookie didn’t put on a show for them. They knew things at the time that I sensed but couldn’t articulate until later: Cookie only wanted us for the welfare checks. It was money that benefited Cookie alone. Between mental illness and a fierce alcohol addiction, Cookie was walled into a windowless tunnel of her own desires. There wasn’t room in there for another being, even ones as pipe-cleaner scrawny as me, my sisters and Norm. Cookie ran alongside the car, screaming as we backed out of the driveway. Her giant breasts heaved up and down, almost in slow motion as she tried to keep up. We were only one house away when she stopped running, pulled a cigarette from her jumpsuit pocket, and lit up. Norm and I looked out the back window and watched the car Gi and Camille were in. We couldn’t see them, but we could see their silhouettes in the backseat. A bone-thin arm was waving at us—it was Gi’s arm, I knew. That arm, not Cookie’s hysterics, got me crying. And once I was crying, Norm cried too. We tried to keep it down, sniffling, our heads rocking as we sobbed. Mrs. Brady talked to us from the front seat. She wanted us to know that no one had room enough for four kids. And even if they did, the people who would take little kids didn’t want big kids.

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

  but improb., <Che יָע'‎ 1272 with speech the vex (me). Hiph. Jmpf. 3 mpl. sf. WIS ש‎ 78° they used to cause him [%] pain Hithp. Jmpf. 3 ms. אלבו‎ Sym" Gn 6° and. he was vexed to his heart (of י"‎ ; ||073); 3 mpl. ויַתְעַצְבוּ‎ Gu 34’ (+704, sq. clause with (פִּי‎ ipa עצב‎ n.[{m.] pain, hurt, 5011 ;-- ע'.‎ pain Gn 3" )04 travail), סז על‎ 2. hurt (0 mind), דבר"ע'‎ Pr 15! a word that hurts (opp. FAD). 3. toil Pr14*; pl. הֶעַצָבִים‎ on? 127’ bread of (gained by) tods ; sf. P'23Y Pr5™. +1. עצב‎ n.[m.] pain;—‘y x Ch 4? (of travail); “Y"]T1 y 139% hurtful: way (of any wicked habit; > Thes way of cdolatry; 1. (עצב‎ ; sf. JAYY Is 14° of the pan of exile. TLaxy, >axy | n.[m.] toiler (prop. suf- ferer; less well A¥Y toil Thes K6"* al.);— pl. sf. 133M OD A¥Y Is 58% (d. 1. dirim. Ges'**) your toilers ye drive on; Klo Che 23733 D2Y (ef. Vrss in part) money lent on pledge ye exact. = עצבת + עצבת‎ n.f. hurt, injury, pain ;- - עצבת‎ Pr "יסד‎ he that winketh with the eye causeth hurt (stirs up strife, etc.); cstr. apnasy pain of heart 15% (opp. NOY 3); pl. sf. ‘33¥ Jb oF my pains, so rd. perh. also 7* (for MT (ְעִצְמוּתִי‎ ץ עַצְבוּתֶם‎ 16* (due to idolatry; >idols + BWe al.); מחבש ט לעל‎ 147° binding up their hurts. n.{m.] pain, toil ;—’y abs. Gn 3"‏ עצבון1 of ; estr. 3’? PAY 5” (both of agriculture);‏ sf. עְצָבונָף‎ 3° (of travail; all J ). 1 מעצבה‎ n.f. place of pain (>simply pain); > paswiA 25 Isso" in (constr. praegn.) a place of pain shall ye lie down. pl. [Ay ] vb. Pi. shape, fashion (N H Pi. stretch child into shape; Buhl*™* ep. 5 cut, cut off [whence idea of carving, fashion- ing)) ; ;—Pi. Pf. עְצְבוּנִי ועשונִי‎ PTL Tb 10° thy hands shaped me, ete. Hiph. Inf. esr. לְהעצבה‎ Je 44”, but rd. 72-, to fashion her, i.e. make images of her (poss. denom. from 33). Sy n.m. vessel (as fashioned) ;—’y‏ ב ור Je22™ a vessel despised, etc. (fig. of‏ 7132 ונו" Coniah=J ehoiachin).‏ yu. [עצב]‎ n.m. idol ;—sf. עָצָבִּי‎ Is 48°. T [ayy] n.{m.] idol;—always pl. D'D3Y (Ges! $<) : Ho4” בָּסֶף וְזְהֶב)*8‎ 13°7(71B2, || 7252), 14° Ze 137 200 24%) +. (אשרים‎ ; estr..23Y ו‎ 106* 135% (201 4D2); ₪ עְצִבֶּיהָ‎ Is ro! )|| TDN), Je 50? )|| לליה‎ , Mi ;זז‎ OF BY + S3r°=1 Ch 10°", 2S 5” (but read אַלְהיהֶם‎ as || ז‎ Ch 14”, so @G We Dr al.), Is46'y 106" rr 5* (aan 13). == TS) (vof foll.; ef. Ar. ג‎ 26 lop trees with "6 3.32, a kind of 8 Eth. 06.2:, ORL: reap, 71.08: , °1L.00.&: sickle; NH מַעַצָר‎ axe (smaller than בּשִיל‎ 1 =): Tryp n.[m.] 8%6;--76 ;"סז‎ in Is 44™ prob. del. (so Du Che *"* Skinner).

• From The Elementary Forms of the Religious Life (1915)

  But they are not useful merely to individuals; the fate of the clan as a whole is bound up with theirs. Their loss is a disaster; it is the greatest misfortune which can happen to the group.[331] Sometimes they leave the ertnatulunga, for example when they are loaned to other groups.[332] Then follows a veritable public mourning. For two weeks, the people of the totem weep and lament, covering their bodies with white clay just as they do when they have lost a relative.[333] And the churinga are not left at the free disposition of everybody; the ertnatulunga where they are kept is placed under the control of the chief of the group. It is true that each individual has special rights to some of them;[334] yet, though he is their proprietor in a sense, he cannot make use of them except with the consent and under the direction of the chief. It is a collective treasury; it is the sacred ark of the clan.[335] The devotion of which they are the object shows the high price that is attached to them. The respect with which they are handled is shown by the solemnity of the movements.[336] They are taken care of, they are greased, rubbed, polished, and when they are moved from one locality to another, it is in the midst of ceremonies which bear witness to the fact that this displacement is regarded as an act of the highest importance.[337]

• From The Great Believers (2018)

  I mean, his nurses wouldn’t touch him. And here you get massages.” “Well, I used to. Before I had tubes everywhere. But yeah. He would have liked it.” She looked so tired. Her hair was limp and greasy, her face swollen. She should have been home taking care of herself, resting up before the baby came—not sleeping on her side on a cot in his room. Most people’s own families didn’t do that for them. He asked if she was okay. “My back just hurts,” she said. “You don’t have to sleep here.” “I want to.” He said, “Fiona, I hate that I’m putting you through this again. I’m worried what this is doing to you.” She rubbed her eyes, made a feeble effort to smile. “I mean, it’s bringing back memories. And it’s killing me that it’s you. You’re my favorite person. But I’m pretty tough.” “That’s what I mean, though. I keep thinking of Nora’s stories about the guys who just shut down after the war. This is a war, it is. It’s like you’ve been in the trenches for seven years. And no one’s gonna understand that. No one’s gonna give you a Purple Heart.” “You think I’m shell-shocked?” “Just promise me you’ll take care of yourself.” “I’ll find a shrink in Madison. I will.” Then she said, “Is there anyone—is there anyone you wish would come here that hasn’t? I could call your dad, if you want. If you have any relatives, any old friends—even if it were awkward. If I had a magic wand. Is there anyone?” “I don’t feel like making small talk with my cousins.” She looked upset. “If there’s anyone in the world that you’d want to see, even if you didn’t think they wanted to see you. Is there anyone at all?” “Christ, Fiona, you’re making me feel really friendless right now. Unless your magic wand can bring back the dead, no . You’re as bad as the chaplain.” The chaplain wouldn’t stop checking if Yale wanted anything, wanted to chat. “No,” Yale said every time, at least when he had air to talk, “and I’m Jewish.” Yale had once caught him composing himself before he walked into the room, making his face as sad and pious as he could, pouting down at the Bible in his hands. Not long after that, he saw Dr. Cheng do the exact opposite. Yale was in the hallway waiting to be wheeled down for his bronchoscopy; Dr. Cheng had stood outside a patient’s door reading through his notes, looking deflated. It wasn’t an expression Yale had ever seen on him before. It occurred to Yale for the first time that Dr. Cheng was only around his own age. And then he lowered the notes, drew himself erect, took a breath Yale could hear from yards away, and transformed himself into the Dr. Cheng Yale knew. Then he knocked on the door.

• From The Great Believers (2018)

  Yale was aware, as he moved his fingers as much as he could, that this was the last time he’d ever touch animal fur, the last time, in fact, he’d touch much of anything besides his own bed and people’s hands. Kurt said, “But I’d better get going.” The poor kid. Yale wanted to tell him it was okay, that he wouldn’t blame him if he ran for his life. When he was gone, Yale managed to make an F sound with his lips, and Debbie understood. “She’s in labor,” she said. “She’s going to have a beautiful, healthy baby. I’ll let you know as soon as we get the news.” —He was aware that he was dreaming, but it felt like a dream that would never end. Fiona, alone on the street. Only sometimes he was Fiona, looking down at the stroller she pushed, a stroller that was empty at first and then held twins and then again was empty. After a while there was no stroller. And sometimes he was looking at Fiona, following behind her, above, reaching out to touch her hair. Fiona alone on Broadway, walking south. A hot, thick summer night, windows lit around her, but the streets were empty. The windows were empty, the parking lots. Broadway and Roscoe. Broadway and Aldine. Broadway and Melrose. Broadway and Belmont. Airplanes crossed the sky, and far away there was traffic, but here there was no one. Fiona shouldered her way through clots of cold air. She felt the wind on her neck, and she said, “They’re breathing on me. They’re all around.” She caught a glimmer of a teenage boy sitting on a bus stop bench, writing in a journal with a blue fountain pen. She turned and he was gone, and she said “Oh , he was only—” and Yale—because he was there now, was somehow behind her—tried to say that no, she was wrong, this boy had died all the way back in the ’60s, he died in Vietnam, and there were other, older ghosts here too. But Yale could make no noise because he wasn’t really there. Fiona was on School Street now, a street Yale didn’t really know, but he’d always liked its name. Streets that carried their histories with them: He was fond of those. Was there still a school on School Street? Well, sure. There it was, abandoned and mossy. It stretched for blocks and blocks and blocks, and Fiona looked down at the stroller, at baby Nico. Because yes, it was Nico, she’d given birth to her brother and he only had to start again. He was swaddled in his orange scarf. He wore a crown of paper clips. She said, “He’s not old enough for school yet.” She said, “You have to wait until the year 2000.” But wasn’t it close? They were back on Broadway now, and the year 2000 was very close. That was why everything was ending. New Year’s Eve was the deadline.

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

  (subj. (גּחָלִים‎ = 2 5 22°(inv" text. error cf. supr.), 106" (subj. WS); fig. y 2? (subj. 188) cf. ad (subj. FIR); Ts 308 (c. 3, subj." MOV2), y 39" (subj. אש‎ fig. of grief, distress) cf. Je 20°. 2. be ו‎ burn, Ju 15% (subj. DAW, 6. WN3), Ex 37 ,הסנה)‎ 6. viN3), vs (ala id.); Dt 42 5° g' (all subj. ,הר‎ c. UN), cf. Is 34 9 בערה)‎ NB), fig. of destruction Is 1% (subj. {D7 & (פעלף‎ of torch sab 198 62%; of oven W3A Ho 7**(i.e. heated by fire within it). 3. trans. burn, consume (subj. להבה ,אש‎ ete., sq. 2) Nurz™ ( wx), Jb (גחלי אש >( 1% Ez‏ ו wx); in‏ אלהים) 1 0 83 (only here trans. 0. 800.; should תבער‎ be pointed as Pi.?); fig. (subj. wrath of "( 5 42” ef. La 2° (subj. fire = fiery trial) Is 43". 4. act. but abs., fig., subj. wrath of " Je 447 21” ץצ‎ 89" cf. Is ro! wv 79° Is307 (BS Wa...” DY) Mal 3” (היום בא)‎ ; of human anger Est 1”; subj. 10002658 180 7. Pi. Pf. בַּעֶר‎ 18 22% 223% בער‎ consec. Lv 6°, mya 2Ch 5% Ay Dt13°+ gt. in Dt; MY) cons. Ez 39°" (9# del. Co after Vrss), ete.; Impf.W2) 1 K14”; 2ms. Wan Dt 21% MY2) Ez 39%; 2 mpl. MIN Ex 35%, | mayan subord. Ju 20%%; 1%, OYA Je 7831. kindle, lit. 6. acc. אש‎ Ex 35? Je 7" cf. Ez 39) (v. supr.) vy”; fig. of “ sending destruction Ez 21% cf. of schemes Is 50"; light, obj. lamps in‏ ו temple 2Ch4” cf. 13". 2. burn, lit. c. acc.‏ dung 1 K 14"; abs. Is 44” ef.‏ ָלֶל ,6° Ly‏ עְצִים fig. consume, utterly remove,‏ .3 ."4097610 partic. of evil and guilt, 0. acc., esp. in Deutero-‏ mya 6‏ הרע nomic phrase oie eae‏ 0 ה ,247 2274 of, v9‏ 917 1989 1772 13° 3K 257% 2‏ כ ו ו ;"20 Ju‏ also of devoted (tabooed) things Dt 26%"; of‏ persons (exterminate) 2S 41; sq. NN pregn.‏ EAR v4? art se enone, devastate, greedily‏ be for‏ היה לִמָעֶר- enjoy the fruits of, Is 3"; abs>‏ destruction, be destroyed Su 24” Ts B° 6M Sek‏ “Wan Is 44. Pu. Pt. NWA Je 36”;—burn‏ (i.e. be stipplied with fire), of fire-jar, NNN.‏ Hiph. Pf W370 Na 2"; Impf. WP) Ju rg°‏ Ju 15° “ya Ez 5°; Pt. VY‏ ַַבְעָר- ,28% Ch‏ 2 Ex 22°;—1. kindle (c. ace. cogn.)‏ מַבְעָר ,16° 1K‏ caused fire‏ ויב" אש בלפידים 15° Ex 22% cf. Ju‏ בעת 129 to burn among the brands. 2. burn up, 0 acc. Ju 15° 2 Ch 285 (sacrifice of children W832) Ez 5° (N82 but ef. Co) Na 2* .(בעשן)‎ 3. consume=destroy (cf. Pi.) 1 K 16° (sq. .(אחרי‎ Toya n.f. burning, only “37 as acc. cogn. with VYIi} Ex 22°, 1 ה בְער ה‎ n.pr.loc. in the wilderness (burn- ing, cf. ‘Nu Il 9 "נזטא‎ 9”.