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 Little Sister: A Memoir (2019)

  I shook my head and whispered back, “Nothing.” When she saw me crying the next day, she nudged me with her elbow, mouthing the words. “What’s happened? Please tell me.” I kept silent for a while, but finally replied, “I’m not allowed to tell you anything.” “What do you mean?” she asked. “Sister Catherine said I can’t tell anyone.” But Mary Catherine, now sixteen and no longer the frightened Little Sister she’d been for so many years, took matters into her own hands. The next day, she cornered me down at the barn and said, “I went to Sister Catherine and asked her why you’re always crying, and she told me that you’ll be leaving when you graduate. She said you don’t have a vocation.” She paused and then added, “I don’t want you to go.” She spoke as my younger sister, not as a postulant. She wanted me to be there for her as I had for so long. It broke my heart to realize I was abandoning her. “I don’t want to go, either,” I said, swallowing hard so as not to cry. “But I have to.” “Will you be able to come back and visit?” she asked. I shrugged my shoulders to indicate I didn’t know. That was a question I’d never dared ask Sister Catherine, too fearful of the answer. The notion of abandoning Mary Catherine, my little sister, was unbearable. I thought about the many ways she’d depended on me to help her. We’d shared so many secrets. I knew her fears, her joys, the things she couldn’t tell anyone else either because they wouldn’t listen or because they couldn’t understand. I’d eaten her meals for her when she couldn’t. She hated the color yellow, so I had secretly swapped her yellow curtains for my pink ones. I had taped a piece of black construction paper to her window to block out the light of moon, which scared her. I was the one who’d taught her to read music when she wanted to play the trombone. I did her French homework because Sister Maria Crucis, the French tutor, was so strict that Mary Catherine could learn nothing in class. The constant worry about her caused me to lose my appetite, and as my final days approached, I was barely eating at all. Although Mary Catherine had matured into a vocal and opinionated postulant, she was still frail. For several days each month, she was confined to bed, causing her to miss tutoring. On other mornings, she was allowed to sleep well past second breakfast. When I asked Sister Teresa what was wrong with her, she simply replied, “She needs her sleep.” But fifteen hours a day? I thought. I was afraid for her and felt immense guilt at leaving her. To whom will she turn when I’m gone? What will she do without me? ” [image file=Image00030.jpg] My father as Brother James Aloysius, around the time of my graduation from high school.

• From Hunger: A Memoir of (My) Body (2017)

  I am marked, in so many ways, by what I went through. I survived it, but that isn’t the whole of the story. Over the years, I have learned the importance of survival and claiming the label of “survivor,” but I don’t mind the label of “victim.” I also don’t think there’s any shame in saying that when I was raped, I became a victim, and to this day, while I am also many other things, I am still a victim. It took me a long time, but I prefer “victim” to “survivor” now. I don’t want to diminish the gravity of what happened. I don’t want to pretend I’m on some triumphant, uplifting journey. I don’t want to pretend that everything is okay. I’m living with what happened, moving forward without forgetting, moving forward without pretending I am unscarred.

• From Little Sister: A Memoir (2019)

  Through my sobs I whispered, “When did she die?” “A week ago, sweetheart, on April 12. She’s in heaven now and is looking down on you. And she still loves you.” I had been inconsolable for days, crying myself to sleep—out of sight of Sister Matilda, who I was sure would consider my emotion to be a sign of weakness. Now, one year later, I was determined not to let the anniversary pass without finding Brother James Aloysius and letting him know that I remembered. For once, the rule about not speaking to the adults would not stand in my way. I was on a mission. Kneeling in the chapel that morning during First Breakfast, I prayed to Grandma Walsh to let it be possible for me to see Brother James Aloysius that day. I plotted all the ways I might “bump into him” during the day. He wouldn’t be working in the garage, because it was Saturday. But he might be filling in for Brother Pascal on the porter’s desk, as he often did on the weekends. If so, I could catch his eye and say a quick word. But he wasn’t in any of the obvious places. I loitered in the porter’s room and took circuitous routes to St. Ann’s House—but no Brother James Aloysius. For a moment I wondered. Does he remember what day it is today? Does he know I’m looking for him? Of course he does , I reassured myself. It was late afternoon when I spied him heading toward the giant bell that rang the Angelus three times a day. My heart skipped a beat, and I rushed up the stone path by the front of St. Ann’s House, heedless of the possible consequences but reassured with the knowledge that Sister Catherine had already left to be home with her family. He saw me, stopped, and his eyes lit up. Without giving him an opportunity to say a word, I spoke as fast as I could, well aware of the danger I was courting. “This is the day Grandma died,” I said. “I remembered her at First Breakfast. I wanted you to know that.” His expression spoke to me before his words, which were soft and tender, and uttered as though he was amazed. “How wonderful of you to remember, my little princess.” I dared not stay a second longer. I blew him a kiss and then turned and ran back down the walkway in a state of euphoria. 24 Surprises, Good and Bad 1958 I t was a snowy afternoon in February, only weeks after we’d moved from Cambridge, when Sister Catherine showed up unexpectedly in the Little Sisters’ corridor. She had a surprise for us, she said, and with that she unboxed twenty life-sized baby dolls, selecting one for each of us so that they matched our own hair and eye color. They were dressed identically in a white blouse and blue jumper, the same as our own uniform.

• From Little Sister: A Memoir (2019)

  But with Sister Catherine’s demise and the subsequent internal feud, it struck me that she alone had been the glue that kept nearly one hundred highly intelligent human beings together as members of a religious order. Had it been out of their respect, their fear, or their love for her? I could only surmise, but, if their blind obedience to her had been grounded in deep spirituality, why would it fall apart so catastrophically when she was gone? I thought back to the rules Sister Catherine instituted that forced separation between men and women, boys and girls. I remembered how she had told us Little Sisters that we must never trust a man. Now as the place I had called home for so long seemed on the edge of disintegration, I wondered if it wasn’t she herself who had planted the seeds of its destruction. Within days of Sister Catherine’s burial, my brother David, who was seventeen and completing his junior year in high school, and my youngest sister, Veronica, who was about to finish middle school, informed Sister Teresa (Sister Catherine’s successor as overseer of the children) that they wished to leave and move to Cambridge with my mother and me. Over the course of the next twelve months, my father decided that if his children wanted to leave, it was his obligation to accompany them into the world. [image file=Image00033.jpg] My father with my Grandmother McKinley, on the day of my brother’s graduation from high school, just hours before he left the Center as Brother James Aloysius and became once again Jim Walsh–June 1969. I myself was becoming increasingly secure in my role as a worldly woman, provided, that is, no mention was made of my past. I had a nice Irish Catholic boyfriend, a couple of years older than I was, whose family lived on Long Island. He was in the Navy and said he was hoping to attend the police academy when he was discharged. Polite and soft spoken, he was courteous to my parents when he joined us for Sunday dinners, and he was blissfully romantic when I could be alone with him. He was my first true love out in the world. We talked of marriage, and he brought me to visit his family, but something inside me kept saying, “No—you need someone who is more intellectual. You will become bored with him.” I spoke only of going to college and of all the places in the world I wanted to visit. He’d laugh, not out of disrespect but more in disbelief, as though I was too much for him, not likely to be the kind of wife he needed. When we broke up, I was hurt but not damaged—he was almost too good for me, and I too adventurous for him.

• From Little Sister: A Memoir (2019)

  March turned into April, and I began a countdown to the twelfth of the month, the first anniversary of Grandma Walsh’s death. One year before, while we were still in Cambridge, on the morning of Good Friday, we were standing in line in the basement of St. Francis Xavier’s House preparing to cross the yard to go to chapel, when Sister Elizabeth Ann hurried down the stairs. Walking straight up to me, she gently took me by the hand and brought me to a quiet corner of the basement. Kneeling down so that she was at my eye level and holding both my hands, she said, “Darling, I have something to tell you.” She paused for a moment. “Your Grandma Walsh has died.” I was speechless. My grandma, my adored, gentle, soft-spoken grandma was gone. I’d never see her again. My dreams of our next visit were annihilated. As tears rolled down my cheeks, Sister Elizabeth Ann pulled out her handkerchief and wiped them away. Through my sobs I whispered, “When did she die?” “A week ago, sweetheart, on April 12. She’s in heaven now and is looking down on you. And she still loves you.” I had been inconsolable for days, crying myself to sleep—out of sight of Sister Matilda, who I was sure would consider my emotion to be a sign of weakness. Now, one year later, I was determined not to let the anniversary pass without finding Brother James Aloysius and letting him know that I remembered. For once, the rule about not speaking to the adults would not stand in my way. I was on a mission. Kneeling in the chapel that morning during First Breakfast, I prayed to Grandma Walsh to let it be possible for me to see Brother James Aloysius that day. I plotted all the ways I might “bump into him” during the day. He wouldn’t be working in the garage, because it was Saturday. But he might be filling in for Brother Pascal on the porter’s desk, as he often did on the weekends. If so, I could catch his eye and say a quick word. But he wasn’t in any of the obvious places. I loitered in the porter’s room and took circuitous routes to St. Ann’s House—but no Brother James Aloysius. For a moment I wondered. Does he remember what day it is today? Does he know I’m looking for him? Of course he does, I reassured myself. It was late afternoon when I spied him heading toward the giant bell that rang the Angelus three times a day. My heart skipped a beat, and I rushed up the stone

• From Hunger: A Memoir of (My) Body (2017)

  Everyone was so worried about me when I broke my ankle and it confused me. I have a huge, loving family and a solid circle of friends, but these things were something of an abstraction, something to take for granted, and then all of a sudden, they weren’t. There were people calling me every day and hovering over my hospital bed and sending me things just to cheer me up. There were lots of concerned texts and e-mails, and I had to face something I’ve long pretended wasn’t true, for reasons I don’t fully understand. If I died, I would leave people behind who would struggle with my loss. I finally recognized that I matter to the people in my life and that I have a responsibility to matter to myself and take care of myself so they don’t have to lose me before my time, so I can have more time. When I broke my ankle, love was no longer an abstraction. It became this real, frustrating, messy, necessary thing, and I had a lot of it in my life. It was an overwhelming thing to realize. I am still trying to make sense of it all even though it has always been there. It has now been more than two years. There is a throbbing in my left ankle that reminds me, “Once, these bones were shattered.” I always wonder what healing really looks like—in body, in spirit. I’m attracted to the idea that the mind, the soul, can heal as neatly as bones. That if they are properly set for a given period of time, they will regain their original strength. Healing is not that simple. It never is. Years ago, I told myself that one day I would stop feeling this quiet but abiding rage about the things I have been through at the hands of others. I would wake up and there would be no more flashbacks. I wouldn’t wake up and think about my histories of violence. I wouldn’t smell the yeasty aroma of beer and for a second, for several minutes, for hours, forget where I was. And on and on and on. That day never came, or it hasn’t come, and I am no longer waiting for it. A different day has come, though. I flinch less and less when I am touched. I don’t always see gentleness as the calm before the storm because, more often than not, I can trust that no storm is coming. I harbor less hatred toward myself. I try to forgive myself for my trespasses. In my novel, An Untamed State, after Miri, my protagonist, has been through hell, she thinks about how sometimes broken things need to be broken further before they can truly heal. She wants to find something that will break her in that necessary way so she can get back to the life she had before she was kidnapped.

• From Hunger: A Memoir of (My) Body (2017)

  When I picked up the phone again, he kept saying, “Hello, hello, hello . . .” This went on for a long time. He wouldn’t stop saying hello. It was like he knew it was me, like he had been waiting too, and then after a long time he stopped saying hello and we sat there in silence and I kept waiting for him to hang up but he didn’t and neither did I so we just listened to each other breathing. I was paralyzed. I wonder if he thinks of me, of what I gave him before he took what I did not. I wonder if he thinks of me when he makes love to his wife. Is he disgusted with himself? Does he get turned on when he thinks of what he did? Do I disgust him? I wonder if he knows I think of him every day. I say I don’t, but I do. He’s always with me. Always. There is no peace. I wonder if he knows I have sought out men who would do to me what he did or that they often found me because they knew I was looking. I wonder if he knows how I found them and how I pushed away every good thing. Does he know that for years I could not stop what he started? I wonder what he would think if he knew that unless I thought of him I felt nothing at all while having sex, I went through the motions, I was very convincing, and that when I did think of him the pleasure was so intense it was breathtaking. I wonder if he is familiar with the Sword of Damocles. He is always with me, every night, no matter whom I’m with, always. If I were to track him down, I could pretend to be a client looking for what he deals in. I know how to move in his circles. I could make an appointment to have him show me things. I can afford to be in the same room as him even though I doubt he would have ever imagined that. I have a fancy title too. I could sit across from him in what must be a corner office with a view. I have no doubt his desk is huge and imposing and compensating for something. I wonder how long we would have to sit there before he recognized me. I wonder if he would even remember me. My eyes haven’t changed. My lips haven’t changed. If he remembered me, would he admit it, or would he pretend he didn’t to try to feel me out, figure out my endgame? I wonder how long I would sit there. I wonder how long I could sit there. I wonder if I would tell him what I became, what I made of myself, what I made of myself despite him. I wonder if he would care, if it would matter.

• From Hunger: A Memoir of (My) Body (2017)

  When I got home at night, I generally went straight to my computer, where I wrote story after story, mostly about women and their hurt because it was the only way I could think of to bleed out all the hurt I was feeling. I frequented newsgroups and chat rooms for survivors of sexual assault. Though I couldn’t tell anyone in my real life what had happened, I unburdened myself to strangers on the Internet. I blogged, mostly about the minutiae of my life, hoping, I think, to be seen and heard. I loved and craved the freedom of being online and being free from my life and my body. I ate and ate and ate but rarely was any of the food I ate memorable for any reason but the quantity. I ate mindlessly, just to fill the gaping wound of me or to try to fill the gaping wound of me. No matter how much I ate, I still hurt and I was still terrified of other people and the memories I couldn’t escape. I managed to put together a collection of short stories for my thesis, entitled How Small the World, and successfully defended my thesis and then I was done with school and I had no idea what to do so I got a job working at the university as a writer for the College of Engineering. I tried to do what was expected of me. Some days, I tried really hard. 28As I spent more time working at the College of Engineering, I realized that when I had dreamed of making a living as a writer, I probably should have been more specific about what, exactly, I meant by that. And still, every day I got to write. I had my own office and a computer on which I could play solitaire and work on my own writing. I mostly wrote articles about faculty research—things that I knew nothing about and that the faculty were more than eager to explain to me—on robotic construction equipment, aerogels that could be used in space, defenses against bioterrorism, innovative uses for RFID chips. The job was fine, by far the best job I had ever had, making the most money I had ever made even though I was not making much money at all. I had a great, encouraging supervisor named Constance, who made me a much better writer. I learned how to use the Adobe Creative Suite. I worked with undergraduate engineering students as the adviser of their magazine.

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

  Lecture 18—Babylonian Conquest and Exile 121 ‹ We find this explanation in 2 Kings 17, which narrates the Assyrian victory over the northern kingdom of Israel in 722 B.C. At the time, that event seemed incomprehensible, because people believed they had been brought into that region by God. But they were forcibly uprooted, and the Assyrians brought in colonists from other nations to occupy the land. ‹ The book of 2 Kings explains that this happened because the people of the north had sinned against the God who had liberated them from slavery in Egypt. Although God had made a covenant with them, they rejected it by worshipping other gods. The writer insists that God had tried to restore the relationship by sending prophets, but the people refused to listen. And because they worshipped the gods of other nations, God allowed them to be conquered by another nation, namely, Assyria. ‹ The book uses the same perspective to explain the Babylonian triumph over the southern kingdom in 587 B.C. Here, the issues were even more complex, because people believed that God had chosen Jerusalem to be the capital. People wondered whether God had actually wanted to save the city and the temple but had failed. ‹ Chapters 23 and 24 insist that the fall of Jerusalem was God’s judgment on the unfaithfulness of the people and their rulers, not his own failure. Because they had turned away from God by their idolatry, God turned away from them and brought in the Babylonians. When the destruction of the city is finally described in the last chapter, readers are to see it as a sovereign act of divine judgment on the sins of the people. Expressing Loss: Lamentations ‹ The book of Lamentations also comes from the period after the fall of Jerusalem. But the writer challenges the attempt to make logical sense of the tragedy by allowing the voices of the victims to be heard. Lamentations consists of five poems, and one of its most distinctive aspects is the interplay of voices in the poems. These voices offer different perspectives on the experience of loss.

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

  113 LECTURE 17 Jeremiah on Anguish and Compassion I n this lecture, we turn to the book of Jeremiah, which we might characterize with the word pathos—a profound depth of feeling. Pathos occurs at a point where love and anger, grief and longing all collide. The book of Jeremiah churns with the anger the prophet feels toward the faithlessness he sees in his society, yet it conveys the poignancy of love for a people seemingly bent on their own destruction. As we’ll see, God tells Jeremiah that his message will be both critical and constructive. He will work to overthrow the illusions of entitlement and security that perpetuate unfaithfulness and injustice, yet he will also build up a vision of hope for the future. The Pathos of God ‹ Like many of the other prophets, Jeremiah was a poet, and chapters 2 to 4 of his book consist of poems about God’s turbulent love affair with his people. For modern readers, the poems are something like the verses in a popular song. They tell of romance and betrayal, of unfaithfulness and desire. What makes Jeremiah’s poetry different is that he takes the pathos from a human level to a divine level. ‹ In chapter 2, God wistfully remembers the old days, when love was young and sweet. The lyrics look back to when the people came out of Egypt at the time of the Exodus. They were like a young bride, setting out on a new life with her husband. Although life was hard, the people and God traveled through the desert together, and that made all the difference. ‹ But when God’s people settled down, things started coming apart. The people got restless and went looking for other lovers. The pathos is heightened as God grieves over what has happened. He asks what was so wrong that his people went so far away from him.

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

  Lecture 8—Violence and Kindness in the Promised Land 59 outward is now turned inward. The threat to the people of Israel’s well-being comes not from foreign oppressors but from the cycles of violence within their own society. The triumphant picture of conquest we saw in Joshua is gone. Judges could celebrate Deborah’s victory on the battlefield, but by the end, patterns of brutality are destroying Israel’s own society. Ruth ‹The story of Ruth introduces us to a man named Elkanah and his wife, Naomi. They live in the town of Bethlehem in the southern part of Israel. But because a famine is taking place, they are moving to the land of Moab. There, they are the foreigners, yet they find a place to live, and their sons marry women from Moab. ‹As time passes, Elkanah and his sons die, and Naomi and her two daughters-in- law, Ruth and Orpah, become widows. Naomi decides to return to Bethlehem in the hope of finding help from her extended family there. ‹As she prepares to leave, her daughters-in-law are grief stricken. They have a close bond with Naomi and insist that they want to come along with her. But Naomi tells them to return to their families in the hope that they might eventually marry again. The young women face the dilemma of what to do. ‹Orpah honors Naomi’s wishes and turns back to her people. But Ruth clings to Naomi and refuses to go. In the narrative, she says, “For where you go, I will go and where you stay I will stay. Your people will be my people, and your God my God. Where you die, I will die; and there I will be buried. I will stand under the judgment of God if even death separates me from you.” ‹It’s a moment in the story that taps into the human experience of grief and loss. It shows us the depth of loyalty and devotion and turns the plot in a direction of hope. Now, Naomi and Ruth journey together to Bethlehem. ‹They reach the field of a man named Boaz, a relative of Naomi’s dead husband. Boaz is impressed with Ruth’s hard work and the way she cares for Naomi, and ultimately, he and she are married.

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

  Reading Biblical Literature: Genesis to Revelation 14 assumes they’ll reach beyond the limits again and take from the tree of life, to once again seize immortality for themselves. Thus, God sends them out of the garden. ‹As literature, the Genesis story is set at the dawn of time, but it’s designed to shape perspectives on the world as it is. It shows the contrast between the harmony God intends and the disruption human beings have created. On the one hand, God intends that people care for the earth and its creatures and that women and men be partners in that work. On the other hand, the earth and relationships within it have been damaged by human action. Noah and the Flood ‹The narrative thus far has gone from harmony to disruption, but with the story of the flood (Gen. 6–9), Noah brings it to a point of renewal. As a favorite in children’s literature, the plot of this story is usually simplified into a few major elements: God’s warning to Noah, Noah’s need to build an ark and gather the animals, the 40 days and nights of rain, and ultimately, the appearance of a rainbow—a sign that God will never again send a flood. In its basic outline, it’s a wonderful story of deliverance and renewal. ‹But when we look more closely, the story becomes troubling. It seems inexplicable that God brings about this disaster. After all, Genesis introduces God as the creator. For God to send the flood means that the creator has become the destroyer. In the simplified version, all attention centers on Noah and the animals, who ride safely in the ark. But in Genesis itself, we look outside the ark, at the people and animals who drown in the deluge. When we ask how the creator could do such a thing, there is no easy answer. ‹The portrayal of God is surprisingly complex. In Genesis 6:5, the story starts with divine grief. God created the world to be good, but he sees that human beings have given in to evil. God comes to regret that he ever created humankind and decides to blot them out. ‹Yet this creates a dilemma for God. Simply blotting out all life would turn the creator into the destroyer. This is where Noah plays a role.

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

  Lecture 18—Babylonian Conquest and Exile 121 ‹We find this explanation in 2 Kings 17, which narrates the Assyrian victory over the northern kingdom of Israel in 722 B.C. At the time, that event seemed incomprehensible, because people believed they had been brought into that region by God. But they were forcibly uprooted, and the Assyrians brought in colonists from other nations to occupy the land. ‹The book of 2 Kings explains that this happened because the people of the north had sinned against the God who had liberated them from slavery in Egypt. Although God had made a covenant with them, they rejected it by worshipping other gods. The writer insists that God had tried to restore the relationship by sending prophets, but the people refused to listen. And because they worshipped the gods of other nations, God allowed them to be conquered by another nation, namely, Assyria. ‹The book uses the same perspective to explain the Babylonian triumph over the southern kingdom in 587 B.C. Here, the issues were even more complex, because people believed that God had chosen Jerusalem to be the capital. People wondered whether God had actually wanted to save the city and the temple but had failed. ‹Chapters 23 and 24 insist that the fall of Jerusalem was God’s judgment on the unfaithfulness of the people and their rulers, not his own failure. Because they had turned away from God by their idolatry, God turned away from them and brought in the Babylonians. When the destruction of the city is finally described in the last chapter, readers are to see it as a sovereign act of divine judgment on the sins of the people. Expressing Loss: Lamentations ‹The book of Lamentations also comes from the period after the fall of Jerusalem. But the writer challenges the attempt to make logical sense of the tragedy by allowing the voices of the victims to be heard. Lamentations consists of five poems, and one of its most distinctive aspects is the interplay of voices in the poems. These voices offer different perspectives on the experience of loss.

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

  Reading Biblical Literature: Genesis to Revelation 104 in verse 3, the prophet depicts an explosion of feeling. God vents the rage that comes from a sense of betrayal, threatening to put his wife into the street. ●Rather than condoning domestic violence, the text here is assuming that the intensity of divine anger matches the intensity of divine love. God is outraged because the relationship matters, and he does not want to give up on it. ‹But then, in chapter 2, beginning with verse 14, Hosea pictures God recognizing that anger can never win Israel back. If God wants the relationship to continue, he must speak tenderly to Israel’s heart. Hosea says that God wants Israel to call him her husband once again. To enable people to do that, the prophet offers a vision of reconciliation. He pictures a context in which the cycle of violence ends and life is characterized by justice, love, and mercy. Israel and Assyria ‹Hosea lived at the time when the Assyrians were expanding their empire. They initially dominated the area between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers, in what today is the country of Iraq. But beginning in 745 B.C., they embarked on a campaign of military conquest. Over the next two decades, they conquered territory from the Persian Gulf in the east to the border of Egypt in the west. By 733 B.C., the Assyrians had captured most of the land in north and central Israel. ‹Against this backdrop, Hosea 11 pictures God as the devoted parent of a rebellious child. The opening line says, “When Israel was a child, I loved him, and out of Egypt I called my son.” Yet the child took up with the wrong crowd and kept sacrificing to Baal. The more God reached out to him, the more the child rejected his parental love. ‹Hosea expresses the heartfelt anguish of God. He pictures God as a parent, teaching the child to walk or tending to him when he was sick. The tragedy is that when Israel grew up, this child of God ran away and would now suffer the destructive consequences of his actions. Hosea says that the people will return to the land of Egypt, as if going back to slavery again. He explains that he means that Assyria will be their king.

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

  Lecture 10—David and Nation Building 71 king to seize another man’s wife. And it is unconscionable to have the man killed in order to cover up the affair. This audacious confrontation of the king works. David acknowledges his wrongdoing. That is perhaps the one admirable trait David displays in this whole sordid affair: He proves capable of taking ownership for what he has done. ●Nathan forgives David, but forgiveness does not mean that David’s actions have no consequences. Nathan warns that David has set in motion a pattern of violence that will continue into the next generation. To be sure, David repents of what he has done, but he cannot control what his children will do. And the last part of 2 Samuel tells of the violent pattern that David has set in motion being followed by one of his sons, Absalom. The Story of Absalom ‹In 2 Samuel 15, we learn that Absalom, like David, has both ambition and ability and is brilliant at currying favor with the public. Eventually, Absalom has enough support to launch his bid for kingship, which he does in the city of Hebron, just as David had done years before. And just as David then captured Jerusalem to make it his capital, Absalom sets out to capture Jerusalem. He succeeds and sets out after David, in what promises to be a decisive battle. ‹Underneath this political and military maneuvering, the personal side of the story moves toward a heartbreaking conclusion. Although Absalom has rebelled, David still loves him. Thus, as the time for battle approaches, David tells his men, “Deal gently with the young man Absalom.” But that does not prove to be easy during the chaos of war, and Absalom is killed. A messenger brings the news to David. ‹At the end of chapter 18, when David gets the news of Absalom’s death, he is deeply moved. In grief, he weeps: “O my son Absalom, my son, my son, Absalom. Would that I had died instead of you, O Absalom, my son, my son.” David’s words express the willingness of a parent to sacrifice his or her own life for the sake of a child. The scene captures the heartrending sorrow of someone whose child has set out on a destructive path, from which not even the most devoted love can save him.

• From The Bible: A Biography (2007)

  Luke was the author of some portions of the Acts of the Apostles as well as the gospel. He too was anxious to show that Jesus and his followers were devout Jews but he also emphasized that the gospel was for everybody: Jews and gentiles; women as well as men; the poor; tax collectors; the good Samaritan and the prodigal son. Luke gives us a precious glimpse of the spiritual experience that their pesher exegesis gave to early Christians. He told an emblematic story of two of Jesus’s disciples, who were walking from Jerusalem to Emmaus three days after the crucifixion.90 Like many of the Christians in Luke’s own time they were distraught and despondent, but on the road they fell in with a stranger, who asked them why they were so troubled. They explained that they were followers of Jesus and had been certain that he was the messiah. But he had been crucified and, to make matters worse, the women in their company were spreading wild tales of an empty tomb and a vision of angels. The stranger gently rebuked them: had they not realized that the messiah must suffer before entering his glory? Starting with Moses, he began to expound ‘the full message’ of the prophets. When the disciples arrived at their destination that evening, they begged the stranger to lodge with them, and when he broke bread at dinner they suddenly realized that all along they had been in the presence of Jesus, but their ‘eyes had been held’ from recognizing him. As he vanished from their sight, they recalled how their hearts had ‘burned’ within them when he had ‘opened the scriptures’. Christian pesher was a spiritual discipline, rooted in grief and bewilderment, which spoke directly to the heart and set it alight. Christians would gather ‘in twos and threes’ and discuss the relationship of the Law and the prophets to Jesus. As they conversed together, the texts ‘opened’ and yielded a momentary illumination. This would pass, just as Jesus vanished as soon as he had been recognized, but afterwards apparent contradictions locked together in a numinous intimation of wholeness. The stranger played a crucial role. When they confided in somebody they had never seen before, the disciples made an act of trust (pistis). In Luke’s ekklesia, Jews and gentiles found that by reaching out to the ‘other’, they experienced the Shekhinah, which, increasingly, they identified with their christos.

• From The Bible: A Biography (2007)

  The six Orders were constructed like a temple.43 The first and last Orders – Zeraim and Tohoroth – dealt respectively with the holiness of the land and the holiness of the people. The two innermost Orders – Nashim and Niziqin – legislated for the private, domestic lives of Jews and their business relationships. But the subject of the second and the fifth Orders – Moed (‘Festivals’) and Qodeshim (‘Holy Things’) was the temple. These two Sederim, which were compiled almost entirely at Usha,44 were like two equidistant, load-bearing pillars on which the whole edifice depended. They lovingly recalled the homely details of life in the lost temple: what each room was used for and where the high priest kept his wine. How did the night-watch comport themselves? What happened if a priest fell asleep on duty? In this way, the temple would live on in the minds of Jews and would remain the centre of Jewish life. Studying the obsolete temple laws set forth in the Mishnah was equivalent to actually performing the rites.45 It had been one thing for the early Pharisees to live as priests while the temple was still standing, but quite another when all that remained were a few charred ruins. The new spirituality demanded a heroic exegetical denial. But the Mishnah did not simply look back to the past. Thousands of entirely novel rulings worked out the implications of the temple’s virtual presence. If Jews were to live like priests, how should they deal with gentiles? What was the role of women, who now had the priestly task of supervising the purity rules in the house? The rabbis would never have been able to persuade the people to observe this formidable body of law if it had not given them a satisfying spiritual experience. About fifty years after the Mishnah had been completed, a new text provided this oral tradition with a spiritual pedigree that went back to Mount Sinai.46 The author of Pirke Avoth (‘Chapters of the Fathers’) traced the line of transmission from the rabbis of Usha and Yavneh, back to R. Johanan ben Zakkai, who had learned the Torah from Hillel and Shammai. He then showed how the teaching had passed through generations of distinguished sages of the Second Temple period, ending with the men of ‘the Great Assembly’,47 who had received the Torah from the prophets; the prophets had been instructed by the ‘elders’ who had conquered the Promised Land,48 the elders by Joshua, Joshua by Moses, and Moses, the source of the tradition, had received the Torah from God himself.

• From The Bible: A Biography (2007)

  Johanan and R. Eliezer – just as it descended upon Jesus’s disciples at Pentecost – while they were engaged in horoz, linking the scriptural verses together. 36 At this stage, the rabbis had not yet committed their insights to writing. It seems that they learned the traditions they were accumulating by heart and transmitted them orally, although R. Akiba and R. Meir arranged the material in blocks that made them easier to memorize. 37 It seemed risky to write down this precious lore. A book could be burned like the temple or fall into the hands of the Christians, and would be safer in the minds and hearts of the sages. But the rabbis also valued the spoken word for its own sake. Graduates of Yavneh, who had managed to learn these oral texts by rote, were called tannaim, ‘repeaters’. They spoke the Torah aloud and developed their midrash in conversation. The House of Studies was noisy with lively discussion and clamorous debate. But by 135 the rabbis felt the need for a more permanent written record. In an attempt to drag the Jews into the modern Graeco-Roman world, the emperor Hadrian announced that he intended to plough the ruins of Jerusalem into the ground and build a modern city on the sacred site. Circumcision, the training of rabbis and the teaching of Torah were all forbidden by law. The hard-headed Jewish soldier Simeon bar Koseba led a revolt against Rome and when he managed to oust the Tenth Legion from Jerusalem, R. Akiba hailed him as the messiah. R. Akiba himself refused to stop teaching and, it is said, was executed by the Roman authorities. Eventually Bar Koseba’s rebellion was brutally quashed by Hadrian in 135. 38 Thousands of Jews had died; the new city was built, though the temple ruins remained; Jews were forbidden to reside in Judah and were confined to the north of Palestine. The academy at Yavneh was disbanded and the rabbinic cadre dispersed. But the situation improved under the emperor Antoninus Pius (158–161), who relaxed the anti- Jewish legislation, and the rabbis regrouped at Usha in Lower Galilee. The disastrous outcome of the Bar Koseba rebellion had horrified the rabbis. A few radicals, such as the mystic R. Simeon ben Yohai, continued to campaign against Rome, but most withdrew from politics. The rabbis were now wary of messianism and discouraged the practice of mysticism, preferring a disciplined life of study to dangerous flights of the spirit. At Usha they settled the canon of the Hebrew Bible, by making a final selection of the Writings (Kethuvim) of the Second Temple period.

• From The Bible: A Biography (2007)

  If, as Galileo suggested, there was life on the moon, how had these people descended from Adam? How could the revolutions of the earth be squared with Christ’s ascension to heaven? Scripture said that the heavens and the earth had been created for man’s benefit, but how could this be so if the earth was just another planet revolving round an undistinguished star? 31 The old allegorical exegesis would have made it much easier for Christians to cope with their changing world. 32 But the increasing emphasis on the literal meaning of scripture was the product of early modernity: the scientific bias of early modern thought required people to see truth as conforming to the laws of the external world. It would not be long before some Christians would conclude that unless a book was historically or scientifically demonstrable it could not be true at all. * The Jewish people had not yet succumbed to this enthusiasm for the literal: in 1492 they had suffered a disaster, which made many turn to the mystical consolations of Kabbalah. In 1492, Ferdinand and Isabella, the Catholic monarchs of Aragon and Castile, had conquered the kingdom of Granada, the last Muslim stronghold in Europe. Jews and Muslims were given the option of conversion to Christianity or deportation. Many Jews chose exile and took refuge in the new Ottoman empire where a significant number settled in Palestine, which was now an Ottoman province. In Safed in northern Galilee, the saintly mystic Isaac Luria (1534–72) developed a kabbalastic myth that bore no resemblance to the first chapter of Genesis, and yet by the mid-seventeenth century Lurianic Kabbalah had a mass following in Jewish communities from Poland to Iran. 33 Exile had been a central preoccupation for Jews since their deportation to Babylonia. For the Spanish Jews – the Sephardim – the loss of their homeland was the worst disaster to have befallen their people since the destruction of the temple. They felt that everything was in the wrong place and that their entire world had collapsed. Snatched forever from places that were saturated in memories essential to their identity, exiles can feel that their very existence is in jeopardy. When exile is also associated with human cruelty, it raises urgent problems about the nature of evil in a world supposedly created by a just and benevolent God. In Luria’s new myth, God began the creative process by going voluntarily into exile. How could the world exist if God was everywhere? Luria’s answer was the myth of zimzum (‘withdrawal’): the infinite En Sof had, as it were, to evacuate a region within itself to make room for the cosmos. This cosmology was punctuated by accidents, primal explosions and false starts, quite different from the orderly, peaceful creation described in P. But to the Sephardim, Luria’s myth seemed a more accurate appraisal of their unpredictable, fragmented world.

• From Bastard Out of Carolina (1992)

  He told me later that he had come there hours before and watched as the gravediggers finished rigging the canopy over the big hot-house sprays and ribbon-draped wreaths and pegged it down against the wind. It was cold and gray, with no sign of rain, just a steady harsh wind pushing at all the flowers. There was a big heart-shaped arrangement on a stand that read Mother in cursive script. He stood near it with his hands gripped tightly in front of him. “Bone,” he whispered when I came to stand beside him. “You better get a seat.” “I don’t want to sit.” The wind rocked the heart wreath, and we both put our hands out to steady it. “I heard you spent the summer with her.” “Yeah.” “I got back once to see her just before Thanksgiving. Only got to stay a few days. Sorry I never got a chance to see you.” His voice was low. We watched everyone come over and take their seats. Mama, Raylene, Alma, and Carr gathered around Granny. I hadn’t seen Granny in a long time. She was gray-faced, empty-eyed, and slack-jawed. “She looks like the doctor gave her something,” I whispered to Butch. “Looks bad,” Butch agreed. His back stiffened, and he turned away for a moment to look out over the open field of low gravestones. When he turned back I saw his mouth was clamped shut and his eyes red-rimmed. Nevil, Earle, and Beau remained at a distance, watching until the hearse pulled up and the men gathered to carry the casket to the grave. I saw that Dwight and D.W. were with the others, but there was no sign of Tommy Lee. The wind was bitter. As they carried the coffin, the men struggled to keep the flowers on top of it. The preacher dropped his papers, and Little Earle ran to grab them. Patsy Ruth and Mollie were sitting with Reese, Grey and Garvey behind them. Temple was sitting with her husband, right behind Mama. Most of the other seats were filled with women from Bushy Creek Baptist. When the preacher began with “Brothers and sisters,” they all nodded together. “Goddam,” I heard Butch mutter. “Goddam.” “Goddam,” I agreed. “There should have been music,” I told Butch when we were back at Aunt Ruth’s. He was sitting with me in the cane-back chairs Uncle Travis had put out in the backyard, reaching into his pocket and sipping surreptitiously from an almost empty little bottle of Ancient Age whiskey.