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 The John Dominic Crossan Essential Set (Jesus; The Birth of Christianity; The Power of Parable; The Greatest Prayer) (2004)

  The author cites a lament the mother did not make in 16:6–11 and he frames it fore and aft with that negation in 16:5, 12: Consider this also: If this woman, though a mother, had been fainthearted, she would have mourned over them and perhaps spoken as follows: O how wretched am I and many times unhappy! After bearing seven children, I am now the mother of none! O seven childbirths all in vain, seven profitless pregnancies, fruitless nurturings and wretched nursings! In vain, my sons, I endured many birth-pangs for you, and the more grievous anxieties of your upbringing. Alas for my children, some unmarried, others married and without offspring. I shall not see your children or have the happiness of being called grandmother. Alas, I who had so many and beautiful children am a widow and alone, with many sorrows. And when I die, I shall have none of my sons to bury me. Yet that holy and God-fearing mother did not wail with such a lament for any of them, nor did she dissuade any of them from dying, nor did she grieve as they were dying. That is a rather fascinating text. It is a man describing what he thinks women normally do and applauding the mother for not doing it. And it presumes that lament and grief are somehow antithetical to courage and martyrdom. But Miller’s comment is very perceptive: “Since the lament is treated with disdain by the writer, there seems some possibility that it might have been composed by women, or at least, echo the laments of real women of the eastern Mediterranean area. Second, the literary and sociological analyses of Greek laments carried out by M. Alexiou and A. Caraveli-Chaves, among others, offer parallels between this lament and other modern laments from the eastern Mediterranean area” (288). Here are examples of such parallels from those two authors. Margaret Alexiou, in her classical study of the Greek ritual lament across three thousand years from antiquity to modernity, highlights the contrast convention: “In the ancient lament, the commonest formula for this convention was to contrast one clause, introduced by before or then , with a second clause, introduced by now ” (166). She exemplifies from the Testament of Job , a text dated to either the last century B.C.E. or the first century C.E. (OTP 1.850). There is a series of six contrasts in Testament of Job 25:1–8 between the rich past life of Sitis, wife of Job, and her present desperate situation. Each past/present contrast ends with the same refrain: “Now she sells her hair for bread.” There is a similar contrast convention in 4 Maccabees 16:6–11: “After bearing seven children, I am now the mother of none,” or, “Alas, I who had so many and beautiful children am a widow and alone, with many sorrows.” Such stylized conventions indicate that laments are formal, ritual, and traditional poetry.

• From The Misunderstood Jew: The Church and the Scandal of the Jewish Jesus (2007)

  However, Jews are often unaware of the enormous diversity in practice, polity, theology, and biblical interpretation within the Christian communion between Baptist and Orthodox, Amish and Episcopalian, and the popular culture is of little help. “Baptist” too easily becomes equated with “Southern Baptist Convention” and then with the convention’s most conservative voices. Jews (and a number of Christians) are unaware of the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship, Free Will Baptists, Primitive Baptists, American Baptists, National Baptists, and so on. Nor is there much familiarity with those in the churches who sit uneasily in the pew; just as not all Jews agree with everything their rabbi says, so too disagreement with the priest or pastor or the church teaching is far from uncommon. For some Jews, the Christian default is Roman Catholicism, with the attendant erroneous views that all Catholics think alike and that Catholic teaching never changes. On Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement and the holiest day of the Jewish year, Jews remember those who died for kiddush ha-Shem, “sanctification of the Name” [of God], that is, by forfeiting their life rather than abandoning their Jewish identity and belief. Included are victims of the Crusades and of Christian states whose call was “convert or die.” We recall blood libels, the accusations—still repeated in twenty-first-century Saudi newspapers—that Jews use the blood of children to bake matzo for Passover. We recall pogroms, attacks on our communities, by Christians seeking to avenge the death of Jesus on his killers. We know that the church established the first ghetto, a section in Venice to which Jews were restricted, lest our very presence infect the pure Christian city. For every “righteous Gentile” honored by the Jewish community for saving Jewish lives during World War II, we know that hundreds of thousands of so-called good Christians stood by during, or participated in, the planned extermination of the Jewish people. Historical memory is selective, and tragedy is not forgotten. Although forced baptisms, ghettoes, and pogroms sponsored or tacitly permitted by the church are things of the past, their effects continue to impact Jewish-Christian conversation today. Some Jews adopt the role of victim and expect Christians to come to the table only with abject apologies. Guilt thereby replaces dialogue. But victimization at one period of history does not accord any group the moral high ground. If Jews come to the table with a sense of victimization and Christians come with a sense of guilt, nothing will be accomplished. Conversation cannot begin with either entitlement or apology. Christians are not in the position to apologize for the sins of the past: regret them, yes; swear not to repeat them, yes. But one group of Christians or one Christian cannot speak for all Christians or the church universal. The individual can only speak for the individual. In like manner, the Jew is not in the position to receive the forgiveness, let alone to grant absolution.4 That is the role of the victim, or of God.

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

  is allaying of anger; שַבֶך א[‎ soothe, satisfy the ear (so appar. Dalm), i.e. allow it to hear and understand, ef. Levy*®¥®(and Ar. ela benarrow, - have small ears, be deaf, Fri®); Ar. ₪ v. humble oneself, Wahrm humiliate) ;—Qal Impf. 3 mpl. 32¥*) Gn 8' the waters abated ; Inf. estr. 32 Est 2} when abated the king’s wrath, so Pf. 3 fs. 7328 7D wp. Wd ide 5° usu. like the bending, crouching, of fowlers (this meaning for שך‎ dub.; Dr שר‎ Du del.w> ישור‎ , then rds. : א' יפד‎ nna Dy .(מוּקָשִים‎ Hiph. Pf 1s. consec. by ‘navn Nu17" J will allay from upon me the murmurings (ace.), ete. vb. be bereaved‏ [%*5 1.88 שכל שכל]ו (=Ar. ASS x dian, bon; ef. Syr. M5) loss of =‏ children) ; —Qal Pf. ts. שבלְתִּי שָבַלְתִּי‎ WD Gn 43° (E) if 1 am bereaved, 77 am bereaved (of father, expr. resignation; on ד בל‎ Ges? Impf.ts. Dav 27% (EB), c. ace. pers. be bereaved of you both (of mother); 3 fs. JS Dw bain ד‎ ₪ 15° thy mother shall be ber eaved above (more than) women. Pi. Pf. 3 fs. npaw 1 515%+( sf. nada Ez 14", etc.; Impf. 3 fs. bovin Dt 327+, 2 fs. ‘Savin Ez 36" Qr (v. wD Pi.); Inf. estr. sf. א לשבָּלֶם‎ abl 2 משַבָּלָה‎ Ex 3% np3- Ez36*, nba 2 216 = make. childless, acc. of father Gn 42% (E), of mothers 18158 (subj. 13M), 61. Ez 5” (subj. famine and beasts), and 14™(id.; obj. land); ace. of people 110 ף‎ (BIN), Je15’ (+H 128), Ez 36", ef. צ‎ * (v. supra); obj. om. (subj. 27) Dt 22” La 1” Ez 21" (Co, for besn, v. DDD p- 495>; otherwise Toy Krae). 2. a. cause barrenness, or abortion, ‘3D הָאָרֶץ‎ 2 K 2", cf. לט‎ (Thes otherwise, v. מש‎ infra). b. shew barrenness, or abortion, (1) of any female Ex 23” (E; +MY), animals Gn 31° )13( Jb 21; (2) of vine Mal3". Hiph. P¢. O17) צַמָקִים)‎ Dre) מִשָבּיל‎ Ho 9 miscarrying womb. —Je 50° read מַשָבִּיל‎ successful, 69 S Heb Codd. Ew Hi Gf Gie. n.{m.] bereavement, loss of‏ שכול+ Is 478 (|| T2DD8), ef. v°;‏ לא children ;—/0 YIN‏ fig. 35”.‏ . שכול adj. childless (through bereave-‏ [שכוּל]+ Is 49” (fig. of Zion);—on‏ שָבוּלֶה ment); — fs.‏ form v. Ba*?*’.‏ +1 שכּול‎ adj. bereaved, robbed of offspring (Ba'**);— esp. דב ש'‎ 2S17° 11013' Pry” (sim. of fierceness); נְשִיהֶם שַכּלוּת‎ Je 18"; nbaw Daa PS Ct 4? (of flock, in sim.)=6°, n. pl. abstr. bereavement,‏ [שכָּלִים]1 childlessness ae 22 Is 49” 1.6. sons of‏ thee, the bereaved.‏ tndsun acc. to Thes n.f. abstr. barren- ness, 2K 2% (מוָת|)‎ if so, read > nb3- Klo Kit; but probably Pi. Pt. as v”, ef. Bur. (Vv of foll., meaning unknown; NH‏ שכם Hiph.=BH; Eth. has denom. (Yhap; carry on‏ the shoulder; Ar. [X% is take short steps, from‏ weakness (Kam Frey)).‏

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

  The stories in 1 Samuel 13–15 capture brilliantly the sense of a society in transition, where deference to custom and to religious authorities collides with a growing sense of pragmatism. The conflict of values, however, is not peculiar to any one period of history. While the Deuteronomist clearly sides with Samuel in his conflict with Saul, the great virtue of the stories is that they are not simplistic but allow us to see more than one side of the issue. Saul’s Kingdom. Second Samuel The Second Book of Samuel picks up the story of David’s rise to power, which climaxes in YHWH’s solemn promise to ensure David’s house in perpetuity. In this chapter we will explore the contours of royal ideology in Judah, as well as the interests at work in the rise of David, his conquests: the disastrous affair with Bathsheba and war with his son Absalom. We will consider finally the nature of the Psalms attributed to David. Like 1 Samuel, 2 Samuel incorporates extensive source documents that have been only lightly edited by the Deuteronomist. The key passage in the Deuteronomistic edition of the book is the account of the promise to David in 2 Samuel 7, although here, too, the editor is adapting an older source. The history of David’s rise, which dominated the second half of 1 Samuel, is continued in 2 Samuel 1–5. Second Samuel 9–2 Kings 2 is often identified as the Court History of David, or the Succession Narrative, but some scholars think that a number of distinct documents are combined in those chapters. The account of the rebellion of Absalom in 2 Samuel 13–20 is a tightly structured narrative, which may be a distinct unit. First Kings 1–2 is an apology for the accession of Solomon to the kingship. THE CONCLUSION OF DAVID’S RISE The story of David’s rise to power is completed in 2 Sam 1:1—5:10. David mourns ostentatiously for Saul, even killing the messenger who brought Saul’s crown to him. The lament (“how the mighty are fallen”) is a moving poem. David is clearly the implied speaker, even apart from the narrative context. This does not necessarily mean that it was composed by David. We have several compositions in the book of Psalms that are related to episodes in David’s life. David was regarded as the composer of psalms par excellence, as Solomon was the composer of proverbs. The lament for Saul and Jonathan could have been composed much later and placed on David’s lips. David moves quickly to consolidate his position as the heir apparent. He goes first to Hebron, where he is anointed king by his own tribe, Judah. (The supposed anointing by Samuel when he was still a boy was evidently insufficient.) Hebron is near David’s hometown of Bethlehem.

• From The John Dominic Crossan Essential Set (Jesus; The Birth of Christianity; The Power of Parable; The Greatest Prayer) (2004)

  He is speaking especially to dispossessed peasants seeking to restore their dignity and security in the name of God. In the same way, he is not speaking primarily to strong peasant families and trying to break them apart for or against himself. He is speaking especially to those whom family has failed and is substituting for that lost grouping an alternative one, the companionship of the kingdom of God. My proposal, therefore, is that Jesus and his first companions were not destroying families who were viable but replacing families who were not. One final point. There is no mention of husband versus wife in the Common Sayings Tradition, the Q Gospel , or the Gospel of Thomas , but only in the Lukan redaction of Hating One’s Family . Only opposition to parents and to siblings is specified elsewhere. Neither is there any husband-versus-wife wording in the Peace or Sword saying mentioned earlier. Only opposition between the generations is specified there. That agrees with another very strongly attested saying of Jesus: Against Divorce (Appendix 2B: #54). If one wished to break up families, setting husband against wife and wife against husband would be the fastest route. But Antipas’s urbanization struck hardest at the responsibility of parents for children and of siblings for one another. It is the debris of totally or partially dispossessed peasant families that are invited into the fictive kinship or new family of the kingdom under a Father who can withstand even Roman commercialization. Conclusion . Hating One’s Family , along with Peace or Sword , confirms my proposal that Jesus’ primary focus was on peasants dispossessed by Roman commercialization and Herodian urbanization in the late 20s in Lower Galilee. The itinerants as the just-recently-dispossessed destitute and the householders as the possibly-soon-dispossessed poor are brought together into a new family, a companionship of empowerment that is the kingdom of God. It does not break families apart but regroups those families torn apart already (or soon to be torn apart across the generations). MISSION AND MESSAGE The last of the three Common Sayings Tradition units to be considered in this section is Mission and Message (Appendix 1A: #5). It is a Type 3 saying (Appendix 1B); that is, it has been redacted both toward asceticism in the Gospel of Thomas and toward apocalypticism in the Q Gospel . I gave it pride of place in my earlier work The Historical Jesus , saying that it indicated “the heart of Jesus’ program” and adding, “If that is incorrect, this book will have to be redone” (304). It is still, for me, the most important unit for understanding the historical Jesus, the Common Sayings Tradition, and the continuity from one to the other. It is where I see the continuation from the historical Jesus to his first companions most clearly and even physically. I interpret many ambiguous sayings and open aphorisms from the Common Sayings Tradition in the light of this complex.

• From The John Dominic Crossan Essential Set (Jesus; The Birth of Christianity; The Power of Parable; The Greatest Prayer) (2004)

  But there is surely something far more subversive at work in that dialectic. It is far more subversive because, as in the epigraph to this chapter, it is a dialectic between “tears” and “ideas,” and somewhere deep down inside us we wonder if the “tears” have it right over the “ideas.” Anna Caraveli sees it not as serene syncretism but as sharp protest: “Implicitly, in terms of subject matter alone, laments comprise a ‘protest’ against the official church and the Christian doctrine of death. The very notion of death expressed in laments is contrary to the Christian views of a rewarding afterlife for the pious. The Hades of the laments is marked by darkness and despair, and it retains its pagan name. Christian attitudes toward death preach patience, acceptance, and perseverance. Laments express despair, fear, and anger toward death and the deceased” (184). They protest, in fact, not just against the injustice of death over life but the injustice of male over female. That is why Gail Holst-Warhaft calls them “dangerous voices” and why male institutions, from city to state and from nation to church, have tried to restrain and control them. And now that the “traditional women’s lament has been almost eliminated from the modern western world,” we are left, as she says, “without a language to express not only the grief but the rage of the living in the face of death” (6, 11). Where does that rage go? Multiforms of Mourning Like epic songs, another ancient oral tradition, the laments rely upon formulaic verse structure and make use of epithets, patterns of repetition, metaphoric images, and various other poetic structures, drawn from a common stock. These formal elements serve to enrich the tradition but also function as memory aides and devices to serve in the combining of familiar with new phrases and melodies that constitutes the process of improvisation. Janice Carole Jarrett, The Song of Lament , pp. 139–140 Laments, in the present context, are not inarticulate cries of mourning, no matter how powerful, magical, or evocative such may be. They are formal, ritual, and traditional compositions that may, of course, be just as powerful, magical, or evocative as that other mode of mourning. They are, in fact, the oral, female, and lyric poetry whose parallel is the oral, male, epic poetry seen earlier in this book. Both genres span thousands of years, and they can both be seen together in Homer’s Iliad . That epic starts with the anger of Achilles but ends with the burial of Hector. In the words of Peter Levi, “Andromache wails in words, briefly, eloquently and personally: Hecuba follows more briefly, then, Helen, that is first the widow, then the mother, then the sister-in-law. Hektor’s burial follows at once, and the Iliad is over…. Homer has utterly altered the narrative of war to a tragic and compassionate poetry on as vast a moral scale as War and Peace….

• From Theology: A Very Short Introduction (2013)

  Religion has many similarities to the ways in which family life grips people and becomes fundamental to who they are and how they act—for worse as well as for better. ‘The corruption of the best is the worst’—it is these things that mean so much which can go most terribly wrong. They would not have that destructive capacity if they did not touch us so deeply. Like the family, too, many of a religion’s effects can be so deep and encompassing that they are hardly conscious. So even those who think they have left their family or their faith usually go on being influenced by it, and generally need something like another family or another faith in order to have a satisfactory life. For those in a state of crisis or transition in their faith, theology in the broadest sense will be unavoidable as they wrestle with the big questions. Those who are more at home in a particular faith will also have their big questions. The world’s religions have many millions of practising members who try to apply their minds to their faith and its implications. Issues come up all the time which have no ready-made answers, or which have a range of possible answers. How is God (or Allah, or whatever comparable name one’s faith uses) involved in the world today and in our own lives? What should we teach our children? Is euthanasia wrong under all circumstances? What moral standards should be kept in a family, a school, a place of work, an army? What does modern science mean for our faith? Is there any explanation for evil? How do we understand death? What is my vocation in life? How do I interpret scripture? What authorities should I follow, and how far? What should our attitude to money be? What sort of priority should prayer and worship be? How can the truth of my belief be tested and my faith deepened? So whatever one’s personal situation with regard to a community of faith and its institutions, questions of theology are likely to arise. About this bookThis book is written for readers who want to be introduced to some of the ways those and other questions have been asked and answered over the centuries and especially in our own time. It makes sense, if we are not the first to pursue an issue, to try to learn from those who have been concerned with it before us. As soon as we dip our toe in theology we begin to discover a fascinating community of men and women over many centuries and all around the world who have wrestled with our questions or who have suggested new questions and responses that we never thought of. As students engage with the great thinkers of other periods and of our own, one common reaction is: ‘They are speaking straight to us.’ But it is also common to hear: ‘How strange! Does it make any sense?

• From The Work of Theology (2015)

  Because of Allen’s illness I was asked to teach the core course in Christian ethics that Allen had just begun. Just as I was beginning to discover what it might mean to be retired I lost any sense that I was retired. This is not a complaint but rather an acknowledgment: retirement is going to be, at least for me, a learned art that I suspect will not come easily. What does, however, come easily is to dedicate this book to Allen Verhey. Allen’s gentle graciousness, his love of his craft, and his reflections on the Christian art of dying were remarkable gifts to anyone who was fortunate enough to know him. His own life and death are but further testament to his integrity as a scholar and his commitment to being a disciple of Christ. If you ever want to know what “generous orthodoxy” means, think: Allen Verhey. He is and will be sorely missed as a Christian, a colleague, and a treasured friend. Introduction A Theologian at Work Picasso is reported to have observed that success is dangerous. It is so, according to Picasso, because success tempts one to begin to copy oneself in the hope of sustaining the success one has had. But Picasso observes that to copy oneself is more dangerous than to copy others. The danger quite simply is that when one copies oneself the result cannot help but be sterile. I confess there are few things I fear more than sterility and boredom. I have no idea what it might mean to think of myself as a “success,” though some seem intent on suggesting that adjective applies to me. I am trying very hard in this book, however, not to copy myself. Rather I am trying to force myself to think thoughts I have thought in the past, only differently. That has been hard but fun work. Karl Barth once wrote an essay titled, “Rudolph Bultmann — An Attempt to Understand Him.” The chapters that make up this book might be characterized as a series of thought experiments titled, “Stanley Hauerwas — An Attempt to Understand Him.” An odd project if you think that anyone who has written as much as I have must have some idea about what he has said or at least tried to say. But I do not believe that to be necessarily the case; that is, I do not believe I know what I have said or written. I suspect I have often said less than I thought I was saying, and at times I may have said more. I do not think that to be a problem, if it is a problem, peculiar to me because I take it to be a characteristic that is true of any language user. Let me try to explain.

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

  tempests only in late py: TWD רוח‎ 107” 148 ’D opp. דּמֶמָה‎ 107”. I, 11, סף .זוז‎ v. .ספף‎ ספא‎ (- of foll.; cf. NH NBD, פפי‎ gi to eat, X *BD 20. ; perh. Palm, ספא‎ feed, ris) Lzb® Cook®). \ TSAO ג. גג‎ ."" ** * fodder ;—alw. abs. ‘Dy Gn 24”, elsewhere obj. of (3 v* 43% (all J) 42 (E) Ju rg”. | [ [ספד]‎ vb. wail, lament (N Hide 72D, ChrPalAram. . 5ם ב‎ id., Schwally***"; 2 [sapddu], sipdu, sipittu, mourning 11" cf. Amhar. A.2&: dirge )וש ו‎ : Qal Pf. 3 fs. T75D) consec. Ze 12%, 3 pl. פד‎ consec. 1 K 14" Ze 12"; Impf. 3 fs. 130M 2 11% 2 ms. 180A Ez 24", 1s. cohort. זה‎ Mir’, 3 mpl. 77180. Je6"+, etc.; Jmv. my TIDD 2 8 3%+42t.; fpl. WD Je 49°; Inf.a ספוד‎ Ze 7°; estr. WED Ec 34, 782 מ‎ 23 13°, TBD? Je 16% Pt. act. pl. DBD Is סו"‎ Ec 12°;—2wail, lament (with loud cries, et v. Mi 1% and cf. Dr4™®”), esp. for dead, 9 ד‎ ₪ 251283 1 K 1448 Gn 237(P) Je 16° game 24”. Cl pnd ְאַלְדְתָּנר‎ sipDd ְאלתלְךּ‎ 16% 0." over 251° 11 ד‎ [4 13%", ef. 2012 (see v™ 11 6. Py) i.e, marching before (bier) 2 8 3*" (vy. Dr) 0. acc. cogn. Gn 50" (J); abs. 1 K 13” Ez 24 cf. v* Ec 3* (opp. רקד‎ ; ef. ץ‎ 30”), and pt as subst. Ec 12° wazlers; also, with idea of guilt on part of those wailing, Ze 12” (cf. "זי‎ supr.); over calamity, judgment, על".6‎ Mi 18, abs. Je 4 (both + (הַילִיל‎ 49° and (with fasting) Ze7 Jo וגו/---,1%‎ Tenby עלדשדים ספדים‎ Ts 32! is dub.; Thes Ew De Che al. upon the b ea smiting (1) for the fields, etc., but rd. prob. DY (ni-, יָם‎ = ( Ges ™™: (q.v.) Buhl **"* Skinner al: over the fields wailing, over the delightful fielc ete. | Niph. 7907 3 mpl. לא יפד‎ Je 16" they shall not be bewailed, so 25°. | BOD **י%*". גגנ. ג‎ wailing ;—abs. ‘9 Am ₪" + זז‎ ₪; cstr. 7BD) Mir™+e t.; sf. מסְפדִ'‎ ץצ‎ 30°;—wailing : “1. for dead, Gn 50"(J; 8 800. cogn.), Ze 12" )6. על-‎ ; cf, v"-" infr.). for calamity experienced Am 51°" (|| D3); Mi 18 (D'M3 "0, || P28), v" Je 48° Ez 27", cipated Je 6 Est 4%. 3. in contrition Is2 (+°23), Jo 2” ) + צוּם‎ יִכְּב(,‎ ef. Ze 12" in gen., ץצ‎ 30” (opp. מַחול‎ , cf. Ec 3%). ז - ספה

• From Theology: A Very Short Introduction (2013)

  A mother holding her dead child. Sculpture by Ilana Guy, dedicated at the Yad Vashem, the Holocaust memorial in Jerusalem, in 1974 © All rights reserved, Yad Vashem 4. Christ with the crown of thorns, 20th-century African wood carving James Cronin Collection 5. The Holy Family. Painting on silk. Japan, 20th century Society for the Renewal of Christian Art Photograph Collection. Notre Dame Archives, Notre Dame, Indiana 6. The Resurrection: Port Glasgow , 1947–50, by Sir Stanley Spencer Photo © Tate, London 2013. © The Estate of Stanley Spencer 2013. All rights reserved DACS 7. The opening page of the Koran, made in Istanbul in 1867 © Kazuyoshi Nomachi/Corbis 8. The Codex Sinaiticus of the Greek Bible. Discovered in the Monastery of St Catherine on Mount Sinai 1844–59 By permission of the British Library 9. Apples , c.1877–8, by Paul Cézanne By kind permission of the Provost and Fellows of King’s College, Cambridge. Photograph © Fitzwilliam Museum, University of Cambridge 10. People of different faiths engaged in discussion Julian Edwards © The Cambridge Inter-faith Programme The publisher and the author apologize for any errors or omission in the above list. If contacted they will be pleased to rectify these at the earliest opportunity. Part I Describing the field Chapter 1 Introduction: theology and the religions in transformationTheology at its broadest is thinking about questions raised by and about the religions. We will look at a more precise definition of academic theology in the next chapter, but that will do for now to indicate the scope of the field. It is estimated that between five and six billion of the world’s population are directly involved in the major world religions, and a great many others are affected by the religions or interested in the questions they raise. There is an enormous amount of interest in religions in the media, usually—understandably—in the bad news. There are significant religious dimensions in many (perhaps most) of the conflicts in the world’s trouble spots and in less dramatic tensions elsewhere. In more than a decade since the destruction of the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center on 11 September 2001 there has been religion-related violence in all five continents. Why is religion so controversial? The answer is that it is about the whole shape of living. Obviously it can play greater or lesser roles in the lives of various communities and individuals, but typically a religion is about shaping many levels of life together. The major world faiths have affected whole civilizations over many centuries and have lived with different cultures, economic and political systems. For individuals, religious involvement often affects how they imagine reality, what they believe and think, how they feel and behave, who they marry, and all sorts of other things important to their identity. Given all that, it is no wonder that the religions are controversial. The biggest single scene of violent crime is the family, where people’s deepest passions, closest relationships, and strongest commitments are often focused.

• From The Fixed Stars (0)

  But even in towns as conservative as ours, people were dying of AIDS, and local groups sprung up to help them. When Jerry got sick, my mother went to meetings and marches, began to volunteer. The entire family, all across the country, got involved. My aunt Tina was a “buddy” to men with AIDS, driving them to doctor’s appointments and caring for them as they died. My cousin Katie made a panel in Jerry’s memory for the NAMES Project AIDS Memorial Quilt, and my grandmother made another. Twice, in 1989 and 1992, we traveled—me, my mom, aunts, uncles, grandparents, cousins—to Washington, DC, to volunteer when the Quilt was displayed on the National Mall. I got white jeans for the occasion. We volunteers all wore white, an army of ghosts walking the tarpaulin pathways between sections of the Quilt. Each morning, we worked as Unfolders, teams of volunteers unfurling the panels over the grass. There was a beautiful ceremony to it, the way we unfolded a square of stitched-together panels, held it taut, and lowered it to the ground. During the unfolding, no one spoke. The length of the Mall was silent, from the Capitol to the Washington Monument. Every panel was the size of a grave; each day, we made and unmade a cemetery. During viewing hours, we took shifts as Monitors, walking the perimeter of a section of panels, making sure no one harmed or defaced them. I had just turned eleven, but they let me sign up for shifts like anyone else. I had a Swatch watch and a neon-pink fanny pack stocked with Kleenex and granola bars, and the only thing tethering me to my family was the marvelously thin rope of an agreed-upon meeting time. I had an important job to do: me, skinny hips and moussed bangs and too-big teeth, guarding an epidemic’s graveyard. [image file=image_rsrc2FK.jpg] Most of the other volunteers were gay men who’d lost friends and lovers. These men became some of my mother’s closest friends. Kids at my school talked about queers, called one another fags as an insult. Kids said you could get HIV from the water fountain. I had a black ACT UP sweatshirt with a pink triangle on the front and SILENCE=DEATH written beneath, and I wore it like a challenge, hoping someone would ask me about it. I liked being the know-it-all, explaining that gay people are born gay, the same way I was born with white skin and blue eyes. It’s not a choice, I told them. No one would choose that life. But back at home, my mother’s friends, these beautiful out gay men—they were like celebrities to me.

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

  The “knowledge of good and evil” that they attain does not quite make them like gods, but it does give them self-awareness, and it sets them apart from the animals. At this point, light can be shed on the story of Adam and Eve by recalling an episode from the Babylonian Epic of Gilgamesh. When Enkidu, the companion of Gilgamesh, is first introduced, he roams with the wild beasts and eats grass. He is tamed by a harlot, who waits for him at the watering place. Enkidu couples with her for six days and seven nights. When he returns to the beasts, however, they run off, and he finds that he cannot keep pace with them as before. He returns to the harlot, who tells him: “You have become [profound], Enkidu. You have become like a god! Why should you roam open country with the wild beasts?” (trans. Dalley, Myths from Mesopotamia , 56). The harlot teaches him to eat human food and drink strong drink. Then he anoints himself with oil, puts on clothes, and becomes human. He sets out for Uruk to meet Gilgamesh and undertake great adventures. On the one hand, his encounter with the harlot leads to loss of his natural strength, but on the other hand, he becomes wise like a god, or at least like a human being. The story of Enkidu takes a tragic turn. Because he and Gilgamesh kill the Bull of Heaven, it is decreed by the gods that Enkidu must die. He is forewarned of his death in dreams. Bitter, he curses the harlot who changed the course of his life. When Shamash the sun-god hears his curse, however, he reminds Enkidu of the good things that resulted from that change—the food, wine, and garments, and above all the friendship of Gilgamesh. Enkidu relents and pronounces a blessing on the harlot instead. Adam is told that his death is the direct result of eating from the tree of knowledge. Enkidu’s fate is not the direct result of his encounter with the harlot. There is an analogy between the two, nonetheless. Both characters make the transition to the kind of self-consciousness that requires them to wear clothes. Both become conscious of death. Enkidu would presumably have died anyway. This is less clear in the case of Adam, who had the opportunity to eat from the tree of life but failed to do so. Both aspire to being wise like the gods, but when their eyes are opened all they discover is that they are naked and that they will die. In the Babylonian story, Enkidu’s action and its results are mixed. Ultimately, he has to confront death, but he also gains a richness of life unknown to the animals on the steppe. The evaluation of Adam’s action in Genesis is severer.

• From A Theology for the Social Gospel (1918)

  into the monasteries and put them under monastic obedience; and that the Catholic Church, which embodies the priestly principles, suffocated the nascent prophets by its spiritual authority and the physical force it could command. In this way the death of Jesus has taken personal hold on countless religious souls. It has set them free from the fear of pain and the fear of men, and given them a certain finishing quality of strength. It has inspired courage and defiance of evil, and sent men on lost hopes. The cross of Christ put God’s approval on the sacrificial impulse in the hearts of the brave, and dignified it by connecting it with one of the central dogmas of our faith. The cross has become the motive and the method of noble personalities. It has compelled reflection on the value of the prophets for the progress of humanity. What might have been a sporadic and unaccountable religious instinct, has been lifted to the level of a law of history and religion. By the light of burning heretics Christ’s bleeding feet I track, Toiling up new Calvaries ever with the cross that turns not back. And these mounts of anguish number how each generation learned One new word of that grand Credo which in prophet-hearts hath burned Since the first man stood God-conquered with his face to heaven upturned. The death of Jesus was the clearest and most conspicuous case of prophetic suffering. It shed its own clarity across all other, less perfect cases, and interpreted their moral dignity and religious significance. His death comforted and supported all who bore prophetic suffering by the consciousness that they were “bearing the marks of the Lord Jesus” and were carrying on what he had borne. The prophet is always more or less cast out by society and profoundly lonely and homeless; consequently he reaches out for companionship, for a tribal solidarity of his own, and a chieftainship of the spirit to which he can give his loyalty and from which he can gather strength. Then it is his rightful comfort to remember that Jesus has suffered before him. Thus the cross of Christ contributes to strengthen the power of prophetic religion, and therewith the redemptive forces of the Kingdom of God. Before the Reformation the prophet had only a precarious foothold within the Church and no right to live outside of it. The rise of free religion and political democracy has given him a field and a task. The era of prophetic and democratic Christianity has just begun. This concerns the social gospel, for the social gospel is the voice of prophecy in modern life. ABOUT CROSSREACH PUBLICATIONS Thank you for choosing CrossReach Publications. Trust. Inspiration. Hope. These three words sum up the philosophy of why CrossReach Publications exist. You want solid Christian books from respected and acknowledged Christian writers from yesteryear. We want to provide them for you.

• From What My Bones Know (2022)

  CHAPTER 4 [image file=image_rsrc3E3.jpg] When I was thirteen, my mother took me out for a bowl of my favorite shrimp dumpling noodles and told me, “I’m sorry, but I can’t take it anymore. I’m divorcing your father.” This time, no amount of crying or pleading worked—she had made up her mind. “You should think hard about who you want to live with afterward,” she said. Then she took me home, packed a duffel bag, and drove away. I called her cellphone for days, trying from the moment I woke up until three in the morning. She only picked up once, a weekday at midnight. “I’m fine. Stop calling me,” she said. Her voice sounded dangerously free. It was loud in the background; I heard music. A bar? Then she hung up. I called again. No answer. After a week, I stopped calling. She returned for the first time two months later to pick up some clothes. I rushed downstairs when I heard her car pull into the garage. I wanted to hear her say, “How’ve you been holding up?” or “I missed you” or maybe even “Hello,” but instead she walked in and looked down at the cat’s litter box, which we kept near the door. “You didn’t scoop the litter while I was gone?” she yelled. “Look at this, it’s full of shit! Do I have to do everything? What’s wrong with you?” She dragged me into the kitchen, grabbed a pair of chopsticks, and hit me. As she lifted her arm again, I said, “Stop hitting me, or I won’t live with you.” She froze. For the first time, the power balance between me and my mother had shifted. I had suddenly gotten off the seesaw, slamming her down on the tanbark. She stormed off, and I knew then that I’d already made up my mind. Something inside me closed toward her that would never open again. My father was a mess, but he needed me. He swore he wouldn’t hit me again, and I believed him. Meanwhile, she was just fine without us. The choice was obvious. A couple of weeks later, she returned again and called me into the kitchen. “Stephie,” she proclaimed, “I have found a new husband. He has a big house, and if you move in with me, we can have a good life. So. Who do you want to live with? Me or your father?” My face was blank. “I want to live with my dad.” “You’ll regret this,” she replied, and those were the last words my mother said to me. —

• From The Fixed Stars (0)

  As a child and a young adult, I had watched my mother grieve many deaths. I’d felt panicked when she cried, when she had “sad attacks.” But I got to see real human feeling in grown-ups, got to practice that kind of discomfort, got to see that we would survive. When my turn came to be a grown-up with feelings, I had not forgotten. I don’t think I ever fell apart in front of June, not apart-apart, but I was grouchy, weepy, tired. When I had the energy, we talked about it, and I tried to explain what she was seeing in me, to put words to my emotions and actions. I wanted to metabolize the grief for both of us, to offer her what she needed—no more and no less—to comprehend what she might feel. I hope she’d understand, as I was coming to understand it, that things might feel groundless, but she was safe. [image file=image_rsrc2FK.jpg] The weekend of the Fourth of July we went on a camping trip to Lake Wenatchee—me, Ash, and June, with a couple of the Thursday-night dinner families. We didn’t have our own tent or sleeping bags, so we borrowed them, and when we arrived at the site, I saw that we were out of our league. The other families had fancy tents and cots, bins full of dedicated cooking equipment for camping, and comfortable, well-designed chairs that folded into stuff sacks. I knew they’d been camping multiple times a summer for years, but it didn’t help; they also had intact marriages, which was even worse. I woke up in the night, pinned between June and the nylon wall of the tent, and started to cry. I tried not to make any noise, but Ash reached over and touched my shoulder. You okay? they asked. I hate all of this, I squeaked. All their perfect lives. Shhhhhhhhhh, they whispered, rubbing my arm. We’ll get through this. We will. [image file=image_rsrc2FK.jpg] I wrote this down in a notebook. Happiness : joy :: sadness : suffering. The difference is in intensity and duration. I went around and around: Could I have done this all, all these months, differently? But really, could I? The merry-go-round was more palatable than what I’d started to suspect: that I would suffer, and that I’d probably make other people suffer too, because I couldn’t avoid it. The best-case scenario, then, might be a safe place to do the suffering, and a witness to keep me company. But Jesus, who would agree to that? Who would possibly accompany me? Because if someone agrees to be my witness, then I will have to be theirs too.

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

  Amos made no such discrimination, and neither, indeed, did the Assyrians. By the time of the Babylonian exile, however, more consideration was given to the merits of the individual, as we shall see especially in Ezekiel 18. In the postexilic period, the fate of Israel became an example not only to the people as a whole but also to individual Judeans. LAMENTATIONS The book of Lamentations has traditionally been ascribed to Jeremiah. Significantly, this attribution is not found in the Hebrew Bible, where Lamentations is separated from Jeremiah and placed among the Writings. It is, however, found in the LXX, which may depend on a lost Hebrew original. The book is ascribed to Jeremiah in the Targums and in the rabbinic literature. The consensus of modern scholarship is that Jeremiah was not the author. If he were, it would be difficult to explain why this is not claimed in the Hebrew Bible. On the other hand, if the lamentations were originally anonymous, it is easy to understand why they might have been associated with Jeremiah. The prophet was a witness to the fall of Jerusalem, uttered mournful prophecies (e.g., 9:1: “O that my head were a spring of water, and my eyes a fountain of tears, so that I might weep day and night for the slain of my people”), and was said to have written laments (2 Chron 35:25). Most scholars assume that Lamentations was composed shortly after the fall of Jerusalem when grief was still fresh. They are highly stylized poems that stand in a long tradition of laments for cities that dates back to the end of the third millennium. There are several Sumerian works in the genre, of which the most famous is probably the Lament for Ur ( ANET, 455). The Hebrew lamentations are carefully constructed. All five poems are shaped in some way by the Hebrew alphabet. Poems one, two, and four are simple acrostics of twenty-two stanzas each; that is, the first word of each stanza begins with a consecutive letter of the Hebrew alphabet (which has twenty-two letters). The third poem is more complex and stands out as the center of the book. There each stanza has three lines, and each line begins with the appropriate letter (so there are three lines with aleph, three with beth, etc.). The fifth poem is not an acrostic but has twenty-two lines corresponding to the number of letters in the alphabet.

• From While You Were Out (2023)

  They promised to do a better job of that with the new recruits. But the army assumed no responsibility for Jack’s death. As far as they were concerned, Jack’s death was his own damn fault. No one else was found to be complicit or would be made to answer any questions about the crash. They charged Jack with safety violations. He wasn’t around to face the charges, of course, but his family would pay the price. The army issued gold stars to the parents of soldiers killed in battle—including Grandma’s sister, Mame, whose son Bob was shot down in the Pacific on a mission he flew as a favor for a friend. Gold Star families were awarded death benefits. They hung banners from their living room windows and wore pins on their lapels to let the world know that their children had died valiantly fighting for freedom. Grandma and Grandpa got none of that. They were left to absorb their grief with the humiliation that their boy was dead because, well, he screwed up. Decades later, it would be revealed that Jack was one of nearly fifteen thousand American men who died in flight training during World War II, never having left American soil. Jack’s broken body arrived home in a steel casket. The part of the story my siblings and I always heard about Grandpa being too weak from his heart attack to attend Jack’s funeral was true. Grandpa stayed home while Holmer, a few days shy of his seventeenth birthday, ushered Grandma up the aisle at St. Robert Catholic Church as they followed Jack’s coffin to the altar. Nine months later, Holmer enlisted in the navy. Because he was only seventeen years old, he’d need his parents’ permission, which they gave without hesitation. Two weeks after his high school graduation, Holmer left for training, hoping to become a pilot, just like his brother. He would finally get a sailor suit that his mother could not return. MY MOTHER WAS MORTIFIED when she discovered that a baby was on the way. A baby! The year 1943 had already been a hell of a mess. World War II was raging, and even some of her well-heeled male friends were no longer able to get deferments. Watching them go off to war was awful. Then there was the damn car crash. Her sedan slid on some black ice midway through her senior year of high school after a night of heavy drinking at her family’s lake house. My mother broke her neck and had to wear a body cast for the remainder of the school year. She ate her meals standing up with a plate propped up on the living room mantel. She missed so much school that she was not allowed to graduate with her class and had to take summer classes to be able to start college on time that September. Now this. Her mother is pregnant ? But what if the neighbors think the baby is mine?

• From When Breath Becomes Air (2016)

  Paul was buried in a willow casket at the edge of a field in the Santa Cruz Mountains, overlooking the Pacific Ocean and a coastline studded with memories—brisk hikes, seafood feasts, birthday cocktails. Two months before, on a warm weekend in January, we’d dipped Cady’s chubby feet into the briny water at a beach below. He was unattached to the fate of his body after he died, and he left it to us to make decisions on his behalf. I believe we chose well. Paul’s grave looks west, over five miles of green hillcrests, to the ocean. Around him are hills covered in wild grass, coniferous trees, and yellow euphorbia. As you sit down, you hear wind, chirping birds, the scuffling of chipmunks. He made it here on his own terms, and his grave site feels appropriately full of ruggedness and honor, a place he deserves to be—a place we all deserve to be. I am reminded of a line from a blessing my grandfather liked: “We shall rise insensibly, and reach the tops of the everlasting hills, where the winds are cool and the sight is glorious.” And yet this is not always an easy place to be. The weather is unpredictable. Because Paul is buried on the windward side of the mountains, I have visited him in blazing sun, shrouding fog, and cold, stinging rain. It can be as uncomfortable as it is peaceful, both communal and lonely—like death, like grief—but there is beauty in all of it, and I think this is good and right. I visit his grave often, taking a small bottle of Madeira, the wine of our honeymoon destination. Each time, I pour some out on the grass for Paul. When Paul’s parents and brothers are with me, we talk as I rub the grass as if it were Paul’s hair. Cady visits his grave before her nap, lying on a blanket, watching the clouds pass overhead and grabbing at the flowers we’ve laid down. The evening before Paul’s memorial service, our siblings and I gathered with twenty of Paul’s oldest, closest friends, and I wondered briefly if we’d mar the grass because we poured out so much whiskey. Often I return to the grave after leaving flowers—tulips, lilies, carnations—to find the heads eaten by deer. It’s just as good a use for the flowers as any, and one Paul would have liked. The earth is quickly turned over by worms, the processes of nature marching on, reminding me of what Paul saw and what I now carry deep in my bones, too: the inextricability of life and death, and the ability to cope, to find meaning despite this, because of this. What happened to Paul was tragic, but he was not a tragedy.

• From The Spiritual Works of Leo Tolstoy (selected nonfiction) (2016)

  The accumulated incrustations which hide the truth will pass away. Much will be wiped out and forgotten. Among other things my father's will will be forgotten—that will which he himself looked upon as an "unnecessary outward means." And men will see more clearly that legacy of love and truth in which he believed deeply, and which, according to his own words, "cannot perish without a trace." In conclusion I cannot refrain from quoting the opinion of one of my kinsmen, who, after my father's death, read the diaries kept both by my father and my mother during the autumn before Lyoff Nikolaievich left Yasnaya Polyana. "What a terrible misunderstanding!" he said. "Each loved the other with such poignant affection, each was suffering all the time on the other's behalf, and then this terrible ending!... I see the hand of fate in this." FOOTNOTES:1 The name we gave to the stone annex. 2 The instinct for lime, necessary to feed their bones, drives Russian children to nibble pieces of chalk or the whitewash off the wall. In this case the boy was running to one of the grown-ups in the house, and whom he called uncle, as Russian children call everybody uncle or aunt, to get a piece of the chalk that he had for writing on the blackboard. "Us," he said to some one when the boy was gone. Which of us would have expressed himself like that? You see, he did not say to "get" or to "break off," but to "bite off," which was right, because they did literally "bite" off the chalk from the lump with their teeth, and not break it off. 3 About $3000. 4 The zala is the chief room of a house, corresponding to the English drawing-room, but on a grand scale. The gostinaya—literally guest-room, usually translated as drawing-room—is a place for more intimate receptions. At Yasnaya Polyana meals were taken in the zala, but this is not the general Russian custom, houses being provided also with a stolovaya, or dining-room. 5 Kaftan, a long coat of various cuts, including military and naval frock-coat, and the long gown worn by coachmen. 6 Afanasyi Shenshin, the poet, who adopted his mother's name, Fet, for a time, owing to official difficulties about his birth-certificate. An intimate friend of Tolstoy's. 7 "Sovremennik," or "Contemporary Review," edited by the poet Mekrasof, was the rallying-place for the "men of the forties," the new school of realists. Ostrovsky is the dramatist; Gontcharof the novelist, author of "Oblomof"; Grigorovitch wrote tales about peasant life, and was the discoverer of Tchekhof's talent as a serious writer. 8 The balks are the banks dividing the fields of different owners or crops. Hedges are not used for this purpose in Russia. 9 Pazanki, tracks of a hare, name given to the last joint of the hind legs.

• From The Spiritual Works of Leo Tolstoy (selected nonfiction) (2016)

  In 1865, before the final breach with Turgenieff, he wrote, again to Fet: "I do not like 'Enough'!" A personal subjective treatment is never good unless it is full of life and passion; but the subjectivity in this case is full of lifeless suffering. In the autumn of 1883, after Turgenieff's death, when the family had gone into Moscow for the winter, my father stayed at Yasnaya Polyana alone, with Agafya Mikhailovna, and set earnestly about reading through all Turgenieff's works. This is what he wrote to my mother at the time: I am always thinking about Turgenieff. I am intensely fond of him, and sorry for him, and do nothing but read him. I live entirely with him. I shall certainly give a lecture on him, or write it to be read; tell Yuryef. "Enough"—read it; it is perfectly charming. Unfortunately, my father's intended lecture on Turgenieff never came off. The Government forbade him to pay this last tribute to his dead friend, with whom he had quarreled all his life only because he could not be indifferent to him. REMINISCENCES OF TOLSTOY (Part III.)Table of ContentsBY HIS SON, COUNT ILYA TOLSTOYTable of ContentsAT this point I shall turn back and try to trace the influence which my father had on my upbringing, and I shall recall as well as I can the impressions that he left on my mind in my childhood, and later in the melancholy days of my early manhood, which happened to coincide with the radical change in his whole philosophy of life. In 1852, tired of life in the Caucasus and remembering his old home at Yasnaya Polyana, he wrote to his aunt, Tatyana Alexandrovna: After some years, I shall find myself, neither very young nor very old, back at Yasnaya Polyana again: my affairs will all be in order; I shall have no anxieties for the future and no troubles in the present. You also will be living at Yasnaya. You will be getting a little old, but you will be healthy and vigorous. We shall lead the life we led in the old days; I shall work in the mornings, but we shall meet and see each other almost all day. We shall dine together in the evening. I shall read you something that interests you. Then we shall talk: I shall tell you about my life in the Caucasus; you will give me reminiscences of my father and mother; you will tell me some of those "terrible stories" to which we used to listen in the old days with frightened eyes and open mouths. We shall talk about the people that we loved and who are no more. You will cry, and I, too; but our tears will be refreshing, tranquilizing tears. We shall talk about my brothers, who will visit us from time to time, and about dear Masha, who will also spend several months every year at Yasnaya, which she loves, with all her children.