Hope

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 In an Unspoken Voice (2010)

  These concerns are legitimate. However, as you begin to gain mastery through practice, rather extraordinary things may begin to happen. You will be moving toward some of the root causes of these tension patterns. These stale constellations of habitual discomfort form the underlying maladaptive organization of all conflicts and unresolved traumatic residue. Through the following experiential exercises you have the opportunity to “see” for yourself, rather than believe on my word alone, the hypothesis that is spelled out in this text. Although it may take persistence and dealing with an intensification of the resistance associated with these complexes, the potential benefits range from greater relaxation and alertness and deeper sleep to more vitality and aliveness. It is also possible to eliminate, sometimes instantaneously, psychosomatic, emotional and psychological symptoms that may have plagued you for decades. One of the keys in this process is to eliminate the idea that any of these sensations are insignificant. While they may appear that way to you, labeling them as such interferes with their advancing in a manner that reveals their significance. Secondly, as you begin to notice the increasing amount and intensity of aches, pains and other disturbing sensations, you might be worried that they will interfere with your daily functioning and that you will become more symptomatic. Though this might be a fear of yours, it is highly unlikely. If you do feel overwhelmed or “stuck,” please enlist the help of a competent therapist trained in body-oriented therapy.b It is hardly my intention to just open you up to the malfunctioning of your organism and leave you stuck there without an effective course of action or without a way even to retreat. Specifically, it is the purpose of this phase of the experiment to have you explore the chronic patterns of seemingly meaningless tensions and sensations that have become all-too-familiar features. Realize that these sensations were there long before you became deliberately aware of them. Furthermore, you will find that continuing application of directed awareness is exactly what will allow for “corrective procedures”—not so much by doing anything but by standing out of the way of your own organism’s innate capacity for self-regulation. The Continuity of ExperienceThe previous explorations involved proprioception and kinesthesia as the basis for awareness of the body’s tendency toward action. In this exercise we now begin to explore the fusion of internal with external experience. This processing of the organism/environmental field is what steers our forward course.

• From Paul and Matthew Among Jews and Gentiles: Essays in Honor of Terence L. Donaldson (2021)

  17 OTP 2, trans. Wintermute, 54–5. 18 R. H. Charles, The Book of Jubilees or The Little Genesis (Jerusalem: Makor, 1972; orig. pub.: London: Black, 1902), 9. 19 Ibid. 20 Ibid., 10. 21 Ibid. 22 Ibid. 23 Ibid. New Creation Motif65 65 of the new creation will be accompanied by a renewed study of the law. We read in 23:26, “And in those days the children will begin to study the laws, and to seek the commandments, and to return to the paths of righteousness.” In the new creation human beings will be able to attain the number of years originally designed for them. Jubilees 23:27–29 states: And the days will begin to grow many and increase amongst those children of men, till their days draw nigh to one thousand years, and to a greater number of years than (before) was the number of the days. 28. And there will be no old man, nor one who is not satisfied with his days, for all will be as children and youths. 29. And all their days they will complete and live in peace and in joy, and there will be no Satan nor any evil destroyer; for all their days will be days of blessing and healing. At times we have the impression that in this new creation there is hope not only for Israel but also for the whole world. We recall that in Jub. 19:25 the seed of Abraham and Jacob will be blessed so that “they will serve to establish heaven and to strengthen the earth and to renew all of the lights which are above the firmament.” In 22:13 Abraham prays that his seed would have the same new creation blessings “with which he [God] blessed Noah and Adam,” so that they might be a blessing in and for all the earth. In this sense, there is a multiple blessing by God focused on Israel “in the earth” and “for the earth” in the eschatological age. Summary In Jubilees we find that the Hebrew Bible faith is alive and well during the second century BCE. Its themes and concerns indicate that very well. The present situation of the world is marred by corruption and sin but it is progressively being renewed. In spite of Israel’s unfaithfulness, God has remained faithful and his faithfulness would some day make a place for Jews (and Gentiles?) 24 in a renewed world as the Hebrew Bible writers had anticipated. God will bring the end of the exile and introduce the coming of a new era. Then, there will be judgment upon the Gentiles and unfaithful Israelites alike. All Israel’s enemies will be put to death and the nation will be restored to health in a renewal as wide as the creation itself. The hearts of the people will be

• From Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption (2014)

  I had promised Joe, whose name and case were constantly being discussed on television, that I would visit him after the argument in the Supreme Court. At first Joe was very excited by all the attention his case was generating, but then the guards and other prisoners started making fun of him and treating him more harshly than usual. They seemed to resent the attention he was getting. I told him that now that the argument was over, things would calm down. For weeks he’d been working on memorizing a poem he said he’d written. When I asked if he had really written it, he acknowledged that another inmate had helped him, but his excitement about the poem was undiminished. He had repeatedly promised that he would recite it for me when I visited him after the argument. When I arrived at the prison, Joe was wheeled into the visitation area without any difficulty. I talked to him about the argument in Washington, but he was much more interested in preparing me to hear his poem. I could tell he was nervous about whether he’d be able to do it. I cut short my report about his case so I could hear his poem. He closed his eyes to concentrate and then began to recite the lines: Roses are red, violets are blue. Soon I’ll come home to live with you. My life will be better, happy I’ll be, You’ll be like my Dad and my family. We’ll have fun with our friends and others will see, I’m a good person…uh…I’m a good person…I’m…a…good…person…uh… He couldn’t remember the last line. He looked up at the ceiling, then at the floor straining to remember. He squeezed his eyes, trying to force the last words to mind, but they wouldn’t come. I was tempted to supply him a line just to help him get through it—“so be happy for me” or “now people will see.” But I realized that creating a line for him wasn’t the right thing to do, so I just sat there. Finally, he seemed to accept that he wouldn’t remember the line. I thought he’d be upset, but when it was clear that he wouldn’t remember the last line, he just started laughing. I smiled at him, relieved. For some reason it became funnier and funnier to him that he couldn’t think of the last line—until he abruptly stopped laughing and looked at me. “Oh, wait. I think the last line…actually, uh, I think the last line is just what I said. The last line is just ‘I’m a good person.’ ” He paused, and I looked at him skeptically for several seconds. I said it before I thought about it. “Really?” I should have stopped, but I continued, “We’ll have fun with our friends and others will see, I’m a good person?”

• From Quit: The Power of Knowing When to Walk Away (2022)

  This isn’t just for Silicon Valley folks and iconic comedians. Trying something and having the ability to quit is vital to how we all live our lives. A simple example we all use is dating, which is a version of MVP. You need to know much less about a person you’re going to go on a date with than a person you’re going to marry because you can easily choose never to see your date again. In addition, all those dates help you reveal and refine your preferences and make your decisions about long-term relationships much better. Having the option to quit allows you to walk away when you find out that the thing that you’re doing is broken. If you’re near the top of Everest and the weather changes, you want to turn around. If your fight doctor lets you know that your kidneys are damaged, you can retire from the sport. The same is true for your major, or your job, or the direction of your career, or a relationship, or piano lessons, or even something as small as a movie you’re watching. The Siren Song of Certainty While it is true that quitting is one of your most important tools for making good decisions under uncertainty, it is also true that uncertainty is an impediment to making good decisions about quitting. That’s because quitting is, itself, a decision made under uncertainty. Just as you can’t be 100% sure how a decision is going to turn out when you enter into a course of action, you also can’t be 100% sure how it will turn out when you are considering exiting it. If you think about Hutchison, Taske, and Kasischke, when they first decided to climb Everest, they didn’t know how it would work out. They didn’t know how things would turn out when they were at Base Camp, or how summit day would go when they left Camp 4 at midnight. The same, of course, was the case when they were deciding at 11:30 a.m. whether or not to continue with the other climbers up the mountain or turn around. When you make the decision to get married, you can’t be certain of how that decision will work out. When you make the decision to get divorced, you also can’t know how that decision will work out. That’s true whether you are deciding about choosing a major or changing it, or starting a job or quitting it, or starting a project or abandoning it.

• From Paul and Matthew Among Jews and Gentiles: Essays in Honor of Terence L. Donaldson (2021)

  transformed so that never again will they desire to stray from the covenant. Annual y, they will come to Jerusalem to renew the covenant on Mt. Zion in the purified Temple, from which blessings will flow over the entire earth. Humans will live out their lives in peace and health, and when they die, they will rest in peace knowing that God has remembered his promises to Israel, driven out the enemy, vanquished the wicked angels, and established Israel in her glory. Jubilees 1:29 is well worth quoting at length: And the angel of the presence who went before the camp of Israel took the tables of the divisions of the years from the time of the creation of the law and testimony of their weeks (of years), according to the jubilees, year by year throughout the full number of jubilees, from [the day of creation until] the day of the new creation when the heaven and earth and all their creatures shall be renewed according to the powers of the heaven and according to the whole nature of earth, until the sanctuary of the LORD is created in Jerusalem upon Mount Zion. And all the lights will be renewed for healing and peace and blessing for all the elect of Israel and in order that it may be thus from that day and unto all the days of the earth.17 In this verse there is a movement from creation to new creation that is quite explicit. The heavens and the earth shall be renewed but it is a renewal that is not sudden. R. H. Charles observes that “this renewal of the creation is not to be instantaneous and catastrophic, but gradual, and its progress to be conditioned ethical y by the conduct of Israel.” 18 Because the renewal of the creation is gradual in Jubilees, there is reason to hesitate when considering a two-age type of eschatology in this work. Charles notes that according to the author of Jubilees, God is to renew His creation at three distinct periods. 19 The first occasion was the Deluge when He destroyed all that was corrupt (v.11) and “made for all His works a new and righteous nature. ”20 The next renewal, to synchronize with the foundation of the Jewish community in Jacob, which should

• From Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption (2014)

  I chuckled, since I don’t have a favorite color. But I wanted to respond to him. “Brown.” “Okay, my last question is the most important.” He looked up at me briefly with big eyes and smiled. He then became serious and read his question. “Who is your favorite cartoon character?” He was beaming when he looked at me. “Please, tell the truth. I really want to know.” I couldn’t think of anything and had to force myself to keep smiling. “Wow, Joe, I honestly don’t know. Can I think about that and get back to you? I’ll write you with my answer.” He nodded enthusiastically. — Over the next three months I received a flood of scrawled letters from Joe, one almost every day. The letters were usually short statements about what he’d eaten that day or what show he’d seen on television. Sometimes they were just two or three Bible verses he had copied. He would always ask me to write him back and let him know if his handwriting was improving. Sometimes the letters contained only a few words or a single question like, “Do you have friends?” We filed a petition to challenge Joe’s sentence as unconstitutionally cruel and unusual punishment. We knew that there would be procedural objections to filing it nearly twenty years after his sentencing, but we thought the Supreme Court’s recent decision banning the death penalty for juveniles could provide a basis for relief. In 2005, the Court recognized that differences between children and adults required that kids be shielded from the death penalty under the Eighth Amendment. My staff and I discussed how we might use the constitutional reasoning that banned the execution of children as a legal basis for challenging juvenile life-without-parole sentences. We filed similar challenges to life-without-parole sentences in several other cases involving children, including Ian Manuel’s case. Ian was still being held in solitary confinement in Florida. We filed cases in Missouri, Michigan, Iowa, Mississippi, North Carolina, Arkansas, Delaware, Wisconsin, Nebraska, and South Dakota. We filed a case in Pennsylvania to help Trina Garnett, the girl who had been convicted for arson. She was still struggling at the women’s prison but was excited about the possibility of our doing something to change her sentence. We filed a case in California for Antonio Nuñez.

• From In an Unspoken Voice (2010)

  This little exercise may seem banal. However, to actually become aware of our body without being distracted by what’s going on around us or by our thoughts and images (about the action) can be truly a Herculean task. Yet it is a task with rich rewards. Our tendency is to identify with our thoughts to such an extent that we confuse them with reality; we believe that we are our thoughts. With this exercise you can detect the fundamental difference between your visual image of your body and your actual “interoceptive” experience. Body awareness helps us get some distance from our negative emotions and belief systems as well as contacting those of goodness. In discovering that we are not just our thoughts and images, we begin a journey to fullness as living, participating, sentient, embodied creatures. In the BeginningWhat follows is a brief review of humanity’s experience with embodiment and awareness. This admittedly speculative exploration is offered in the hope that it will better illustrate how the two important concepts of embodiment and awareness have been perceived and have developed over the ages. Biologically, we have evolved powerful movement systems designed for protection, hunting and avoiding being hunted. These automatic (instinctual) action systems—things that the body does to protect itself—were designed for rapid response when we come upon a snake or tiger. Without thinking we immediately react—escaping, fighting or freezing. For our earliest ancestors, physical readiness was a basic survival requirement. They had to be in the “here and now” every single moment of every single day. They were prepared to respond instantaneously and meaningfully to a few molecules of a novel scent or to the sound of a twig snapping in the distance. Simply put, they had to react from their guts. Without these compelling sensory prompts, our hunter-gatherer forbearers would not have lived to tell the tale. The degree to which they were “self-aware” of their instinctual responses remains, however, an unanswered question. Instincts, at their archaic roots, are compelled actions. They are movements that the body does or postural adjustments that prepare us for those actions. For this reason, physical sensations that guide these actions are the vehicle for direct knowledge of our instinctual selves. The advent of tools, symbols and then a rudimentary language allowed our ancestors to communicate with each other, sharing which action patterns worked and which didn’t, thereby refining their collective behaviors. To this end, one might speculate that they embraced art, dance and storytelling—and in the process attained, cultivated and developed, over time, reflective self-awareness. Cave paintings and other archaeological evidence record the saga of the evolution of embodied human consciousness as it blossomed in self-knowledge, in abstract symbols and finally in written language.

• From Branded: Brainwashed Inside NXIVM (2020)

  509 00:24:34,873 --> 00:24:38,510 you solving their problems, you giving them answers. 510 00:24:38,610 --> 00:24:42,914 And then the next step is you lock them in. 511 00:24:43,014 --> 00:24:45,016 [Kelly] By the end of the five-day course... 512 00:24:46,852 --> 00:24:48,887 ...I have to say, I was all in. 513 00:24:49,688 --> 00:24:51,656 I was hungry for purpose, and so 514 00:24:51,756 --> 00:24:54,259 this seemed like a great opportunity. 515 00:24:54,359 --> 00:24:58,497 If you, uh, take a few tests and answer a few questions 516 00:24:58,597 --> 00:25:01,500 and sign some papers, um, you can become a coach. 517 00:25:01,600 --> 00:25:04,503 And then after that, uh, you start earning stripes. 518 00:25:04,603 --> 00:25:05,837 People can come. 519 00:25:05,937 --> 00:25:07,305 They can take classes as much as they want 520 00:25:07,405 --> 00:25:08,740 forever and ever and ever. 521 00:25:08,840 --> 00:25:10,842 They can satiate in our curriculum. 522 00:25:10,942 --> 00:25:13,812 But what Vanguard has wanted us to do for a very long time 523 00:25:13,912 --> 00:25:17,549 is have people working the stripe method. 524 00:25:17,649 --> 00:25:19,417 [Narrator] Stripes that are added to the sashes, 525 00:25:19,518 --> 00:25:21,453 all students, coaches, and instructors 526 00:25:21,553 --> 00:25:23,788 are required to earn. 527 00:25:23,889 --> 00:25:26,958 As you went up the ladder, so to speak, 528 00:25:27,058 --> 00:25:29,661 you got a different sash with a different color 529 00:25:29,761 --> 00:25:32,998 that showed that you achieved certain levels. 530 00:25:33,098 --> 00:25:36,768 It's very much just cribbing completely from the belts of 531 00:25:36,868 --> 00:25:39,004 different martial arts programs. 532 00:25:39,771 --> 00:25:41,406 You start off as a student. 533 00:25:41,506 --> 00:25:42,841 Students have a white sash. 534 00:25:42,941 --> 00:25:44,910 And you started to earn stripes after a while. 535 00:25:45,010 --> 00:25:47,279 And then you can become a coach. 536 00:25:47,379 --> 00:25:49,080 Coaches get a yellow sash. 537 00:25:49,180 --> 00:25:50,749 And then eventually, you earn enough stripes 538 00:25:50,849 --> 00:25:52,751 to become a proctor. 539 00:25:52,851 --> 00:25:56,788 Our new one-stripe full proctors. 540 00:25:56,888 --> 00:25:58,523 [Narrator] While it sounds easy, 541 00:25:58,623 --> 00:26:02,327 advancement is actually quite difficult. 542 00:26:02,427 --> 00:26:07,465 You kind of have to buy your way through the ranks up to the top. 543 00:26:07,566 --> 00:26:10,101 It's very similar to when you talk to people in Scientology 544 00:26:10,201 --> 00:26:12,737 who have had to buy their way up the Bridge. 545 00:26:12,837 --> 00:26:16,274 It's a similar structure, just not as many steps. 546 00:26:16,374 --> 00:26:19,678 [Kelly] However, the rules were constantly changing. 547 00:26:19,778 --> 00:26:21,479 You're constantly being critiqued 548 00:26:21,580 --> 00:26:22,948 and constantly being told 549 00:26:23,048 --> 00:26:25,350 you're not good enough to move up. 550 00:26:25,450 --> 00:26:29,087 You are in the way of yourself, and you're not growing enough. 551 00:26:29,187 --> 00:26:31,122 They would say, you need to take the curriculum again.

• From Reading the Bible from the Margins (2002)

  (All too often, the dominant culture assumes that it knows what is best for the marginalized; hence it creates programs and begins projects to help the poor, never stopping to ask what kind of help those who are marginalized believe they really need!) In this case, the blind man requested his sight. Jesus responded, “Your faith has saved you.” The salvation of the poor and outcast is tied to their dependence on Christ. The two rich men, who serve as bookends to this central message, were also asked to depend totally on Christ; because they had much, much was expected. It is easier for the poor, who have nothing, to imitate and follow the disenfranchised status of Jesus than for the rich to follow by disengaging from the security—even though it is false—of their wealth. The first man refused, preferring to depend on his own power and privilege, choosing to maintain a facade of religiosity by keeping the commandments. The second rejected his unethically earned status by committing himself to justice. He immediately began to dismantle the structures created to benefit him. Salvation ceases to be knowledge, recognition, or acceptance of God's incarnation in the personhood of Jesus; rather, salvation is linked to what Jesus did for the marginalized of his time and ours. Salvation is grounded in imitating the actions Jesus took toward bringing about liberation, not in the intellectual acceptance of a belief. OF SHEEP AND GOATS Matthew 25:31–46 describes the last day when the risen Christ will return to earth in all his splendor, escorted by the host of heaven, to take his seat on the throne of glory. All the nations will be assembled before him as he separates people from one another as a shepherd separates the sheep from goats. The sheep he will place on his right hand, and the goats on his left. Then the ruler of all will say to those on his right hand, “Come, you whom my Father considers blessed, take for your heritage the reign prepared for you since the foundation of the world. For I was hungry and you gave me food; I was thirsty and you gave me drink; I was an alien and you made me welcome; naked and you clothed me, sick and you visited me, in prison and you came to see me.” But to those on his left hand he will say, “Depart from me you cursed ones, to the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his demons.

• From Reading the Bible from the Margins (2002)

  Sin destroys fellowship with God and with other human beings, and thus it cannot be eradicated except by the unmerited redemptive love of God, received by faith and in communion with one another.5 Sin as alienation from God is manifested as injustice and oppression toward our fellow human beings. Scholars from the margins usually construct well-defined categories as to who are the perpetrators of injustices and who are the victims. However, there is also a tendency among some theologians on the margins to identify the sins of the dominant Euroamerican culture while overlooking the sins of their own communities, specifically their own brands of sexism, racism, and classism. Paul reminds us in his letter to the Romans “that all have sinned and come short of the glory of God” (3:23). The plight of those who live on the margins is glamorized when they are seen purely as being noble, devoid of sin. A danger exists of structuring the reality of those who are disenfranchised as only victims. If in fact, because they are marginalized, they then have nothing to confess and do not have a need to seek salvation, then we have romanticized their existence. Yet, even within marginalized groups, internal structures of oppression exist. If we define sin as injustice, caused by broken vertical and horizontal relationships, then we are indeed all sinners. The broken horizontal relationship manifests the original broken vertical relationship with the Creator. Because sin is the source of social injustice and human oppression, it rejects fellowship with God, consequently causing a rejection of fellowship with other humans.6 God's reign can be understood as community, people created to live in a positive relation with the divine and with each other. The nemesis of this order is the reduction of individuals to their economic value. This is the basis of sin; hence the writer of 1 Timothy writes, “The root of all evil is the love of money” (6:10). Likewise, Amos observes that the love of money leads the powerful to “trade the poor for a pair of sandals” (2:6). Today person-to-person relationships are often abandoned for subject-to-object relationships. Those who are privileged by society, either consciously or unconsciously, transform everything, including humans, into objects for possession, domination, and domestication. As disposable objects, humans are measured by their production value, with the profit generated going to the one who controls these objects. This “praxis of domination” causes separation from God and separation within the community created by God.7 The cross does not exist for the earth's downtrodden to figure out why it is there or why Jesus had to hang from it. Rather, the cross exists to show the marginalized how their sufferings, their rejection by the privileged of society, and their death become the suffering, rejection, and death of God. Those who are disenfranchised can have faith in a God who intimately knows their pain because God experienced their pain, creating a solidarity with those who are oppressed.

• From Paul and Matthew Among Jews and Gentiles: Essays in Honor of Terence L. Donaldson (2021)

  Paul and Matthew among Jews and Gentiles72 72 of a new world. It is not the corruptible world that is destroyed, but the corruptible aspects of the world, which are part of the old age. What is present in the passage is the renewing of this world to a world that is pleasant to the Creator. We read in Rom 8:18, “I consider that our present sufferings (τὰ παθήματα τοῦ νῦν καιροῦ) are not worth comparing with the glory that will be revealed (τὴν μέλλουσαν δόξαν ἀποκαλυφθῆναι) in us.” The phrases “present sufferings” and “glory that will be revealed” correspond to the time frame: this age and the age to come. The future is a glorious one, and one that Paul prays and hopes for. Romans 8:18–27 looks forward to the eschatological glory of creation, but it does not describe in detail the future changes in the transformed creation. 49 Creation has hope and awaits eagerly the future changes (vv. 19–20), which would be unlikely if the world was going to be destroyed and recreated anew. The present creation will be delivered from its slavery to corruption and futility and it will be set free to share in the glory of the glorified children of God (v. 21). 50 Thus creation will be able to fulfill the purposes for which it was created, but which were blocked by the damage that human sin brought to the created order. Even though the present plight of creation is due to one man’s disobedience, the redemption of creation will not involve a return to the lost paradise, but rather creation will gain more than it lost. The natural world will share in the greater glory of the resurrected and glorified children of God. The basic premise here is that the threat of chaos to the originally good creation is an ever-present opportunity for God to demonstrate his theodicy by always redeeming life from the grip of chaos. New creation to Paul is about the rejection of the old creation, with its idolatry and its standards of living and being in the world and for the world, and the remaking/reconciling the world to its creator by means of Christ. Most interpreters agree that the words “the creation was subjected to frustration, not by its own choice, but by the will of the one who subjected it” refer to Gen 3:17–19 as the cause of such a condition. In that passage, God cursed the earth because of Adam’s sin: “cursed is the ground because of you.” Sin brings to the world corruption, disease, death, decay, suffering and sorrow. In the end, for Paul, creation will share in the freedom of the glory of the children of God (Rom 8:21). In this manner, both Paul and the author of Jubilees presuppose that there is an intrinsic and genuine link between creation (the cosmos) and humanity. When humanity is redeemed, the material world, which humanity has dominion over, will also become what God intends it to be. In other words, there is a real interconnectedness between the earth and humans groaning together. For Paul, redemption includes creation. Creation will

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

  In reaction to denial, people often head to the other end of the spectrum, which is indulgence. The pendulum swings. But we were created to live in the tension. And when you lose the tension, you lose something central to what it means to be human. Living like angels can be just as destructive as living like animals. In the first-century example, the religious group understood how destructive the physical can be; in the Hugh Hefner example, Hefner saw how destructive a lack of the physical can be. We see this back and forth in individuals, in families, in cultures, and in churches. By painting sex as this horrible thing that is unclean and of the dark side, a parent or a church or a school can make kids want to do what? Of course! Go have sex. Getting It Out The impulse in our world when faced with tension is to come up with the seven steps or the formula so that if you do things in the right order the tension will go away. But that doesn’t always work. One of the marks of someone who has experienced significant growth in their soul is their ability to live in the midst of tension. Often people are told, “Just don’t have sex and you’ll be fine.” Well, yes, that’s true, to a certain extent. If you’re talking to a room full of junior high students, they will be much better off if they learn the fine art of self-control. But it’s larger than that. Because they are still full of raging hormones. Much like the rest of humanity. To simply tell them to ignore the animal and be the angel puts them in the awkward place of trying to ignore something that is very real and very new, something central to who they are. We have to talk about everything we’re experiencing. Repressing and stuffing and refusing to acknowledge never works. Whether it’s a friend or a group of peers or a priest or a pastor or a counselor, we have to get it out.14 Some friends of mine started a website where people could talk about their struggles with their sexuality, and right away it received several hundred thousand visitors.15 Several hundred thousand. You are not alone. Whatever you struggle with, whatever you have questions about, you are not alone. It doesn’t matter how dark it is or how much shame or weakness or regret it involves, you are not alone.

• From The History of World Literature (2007)

  209 Rushdie’s Haroun and the Sea of Stories Lecture 48 For us, this book can help us continue to de ¿ ne Postmodernism ʊat least to add one more element to our de¿ nitionʊand then can perhaps serve as the basis for a few generalizations about our course and perhaps about literature generally. H aroun and the Sea of Stories was written while Rushdie was in hiding, protected by the British Secret Service during the time that Iranian authorities had called for his death at the hands of faithful Muslims for writing The Satanic Verses in 1988. Haroun and the Sea of Stories, a children’s book, was dedicated to Rushdie’s son, both to ful ¿ ll a promise to the boy and to explain something of the family’s circumstances. The book also deals with the relationship between authority and a creative artist, censorship, and the question Haroun asks in the book, “What’s the use of stories that aren’t even true?” For us, it can help in our ongoing de¿ nition of Postmodernism. It also provides the basis for some generalizations about literature. In the story, a boy, Haroun, travels to the Sea of Stories to try to restore his father’s gift for storytelling (his father is a professional storyteller) after a series of family crises has rendered him mute in front of audiences. The problem turns out to be even more serious when he discovers that the Sea of Stories—the source of all stories in the world—is being deliberately polluted by the dictatorial Khattam-Shud, who is the enemy of all books and whose name in Hindustani means “completely ¿ nished” or “over and done with.” After a series of complicated and exciting adventures, all ends happily for Haroun’s family, and the Sea of Stories is cleansed. The book is in some ways an allegory of Rushdie’s own circumstances when it was written, but the allegory can be interpreted in a number of ways, and for us it probably limits the power of the book to see it too simply as an allegory. Haroun and the Sea of Stories is a Postmodernist book, as we have been de¿ ning the term in the past two lectures. Its most notable Postmodernist component is its intertextuality, meaning that it is made up of other literature

• From Branded: Brainwashed Inside NXIVM (2020)

  [Narrator] The chance meeting will change the trajectory of the trio's lives, and those of countless women to come, forever. [Robert] Keith is moving on into a new venture. And Nancy Salzman can help him with his new company. Nancy is kind of a therapist in her own right. She's involved in what some people would call pseudoscience, therapy that really revolve around reframing to process trauma. It's also something that a lot of large group awareness trainings use to convince people that they are the masters of their own destiny. It was at this point in my life, when I contemplated giving up on personal empowerment altogether, that I met a gentleman named Keith Raniere. He had the answers. [Narrator] Raniere and Salzman immediately see the potential for synergizing their individual skill sets. [Dr. Joseph] Nancy becomes enamored by his talents. And she thinks that he is a genius, and that he's a dynamic leader. Keith, on the other hand, is equally enamored by Nancy. He's thinking that with his dynamic personality, coupled with her skills to sway and manipulate others using her psychotherapy skills, that this is a match made in heaven. [Paige] If you think of most successful partnerships throughout history-- think of Lennon and McCartney. One of them's an amazing songwriter. The other one's a charismatic performer. Together, they are unstoppable. You find the same idea with Nancy and Keith. [Narrator] In 1998, the pair join forces to form ESP, the very first iteration of what will become NXIVM. [Nancy] ESP is Executive Success Programs. And it's a company that's designed to help people identify what their goals and objectives are in life and to reach those goals and objectives. [Armando] It is a program that you can take that will give you a professional and personal edge. It focuses on what Keith and Nancy called rational inquiry, which is sort of piecing out how your life is supposed to be. [Robin] He seemed to sell a message that people wanted to hear. Everybody wants their life to improve. Everybody wants to be happy. The problem is, if you listen to him, it sounded like gobblygook. [Robin] It was Nancy who did a lot of the work of taking his philosophical, if you will, discussions and boiling it down into a training manual to teach people how to run these workshops. Nancy was vital. I mean, she was, in a sense, the second in command. And I don't think he could've done it without her. I don't think he really had the smarts or the wherewithal. [Narrator] Raniere and Salzman initially market the program to business executives. [Paige] They come to your office, your store, your corporate headquarters, and they say, we can make your people more productive if you have them take our seminars. We'll offer you a discount, but you should have everyone sign up. And this is what you'll get out of it. He's selling it as a team-building scenario.

• From Reading the Bible from the Margins (2002)

  Hear this word, you cows of Bashan, who from the mountain of Samaria oppress the helpless, crush the poor, and say to their husbands, “Bring us drink.” The Lord Yahweh has sworn my God's holiness that the days are coming upon you when God will lift you up with meat hooks, and the very last of you with prongs. (4:1–2) The justice that Amos demands is usually skewed by social structures designed to protect the wealthy. This message, rooted in the historical customs and traditions of the people, is pregnant with promise of reform for their present oppressive situation. God calls for liberation and salvation at every level of human existence. No one can claim to be a follower, believer, or worshiper of God unless they too seek justice. Trouble awaits those who turn justice into wormwood, and abandon the just…. They hate the one dispensing justice at the city gate, and reprove the one who speaks up-rightly. Therefore, because you trample the poor, and steal from them their tribute of grain, the houses hewn of stones which you built you shall not dwell in, and the vineyards of desire you have planted, you shall not drink their wine. For I know your many transgressions and your numerous sins of oppressing the righteous, of taking a bribe, and of turning away the poor seeking justice at the city gates. (5:7, 10–12) Accordingly, the message is powerfully oriented toward the future, toward a completely new encounter with the God of history, an encounter that empowers those who are disenfranchised while bringing the possibility for salvation to those who benefit from oppression. Seek good and not evil, so that you may live and that Yahweh, the Lord of hosts, may really be with you as you have claimed. Hate evil and love good and establish justice at the city gates. Perhaps Yahweh the Lord of hosts will be gracious to the remnant of Joseph. (5:14–15) In the very act of unmasking the not-so-well-hidden oppressive social structures, a new movement toward salvation is initiated for those who benefit from the very structures of oppression. God siding with the oppressed means judgment for the oppressors. Even so, judgment is always accompanied by hope. In that day, I will raise up the booth of David that has fallen and wall up its breaches. And its ruin will I raise and I will rebuild it as in the days of old. (9:11) The Gospels: God the Doer The Gospel of John begins with a radical proclamation about the very essence of Christ. The first verse clearly states, “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God” (John 1:1). In English, the Greek term logos is usually translated as “word,” used in the biblical texts as a noun. Yet logos has a wide range of meanings that goes beyond this simple translation. This logos became flesh and dwelled among the people (1:14).

• From Quit: The Power of Knowing When to Walk Away (2022)

  She thought about quitting for over a year, but never acted on it. Then in 2021, a friend offered to recommend her for a job at an insurance company. Olstyn Martinez waltzed through the interview process, and it soon became clear she was going to have to make a decision, and fast. But she found herself unable to figure out whether or not to take the new position and quit her old one. That’s when I heard from Sarah. I wrote back and we soon got on a call. After listening to her story, I asked her a simple question: “Imagine it’s a year from now and you stayed in the job that you’re currently at—what’s the probability you’re going to be unhappy at the end of that year?” She said, “I know I’m going to be unhappy, one hundred percent.” I followed up by asking, “If it’s a year from now and you switched to this new job you’re considering, what’s the probability you’re going to be unhappy?” She said, “Well, I’m not sure.” “Is it one hundred percent?” She said, “Definitely not.” At that moment, she realized, “Oh, wait a minute. I’m always going to be unhappy if I stay. If I switch, sometimes I’ll be unhappy, but sometimes I won’t. Sometimes, I’m going to find real fulfillment in the job that I’m switching to, and that has to be better.” All that I had done was to reframe her quitting decision as an expected-value problem. She was considering two options: staying in her job or quitting to take the new position at the insurance company. Which one carried the greater chance of increasing her happiness and making her feel better about her relationship with her children? She realized taking the new job had the higher expected value. Dr. Olstyn Martinez’s story reminds us that expected value is not just about money. It can be measured in health, well-being, happiness, time, self-fulfillment, satisfaction in relationships, or anything else that affects you. Time Travelers from the PastI often talk about thinking in expected value as a kind of mental time travel, propelling yourself into the future to glimpse the range of possible outcomes and take some reasonable guess at how likely each of them is. This time travel, as a means to becoming a better quitter, works in both directions. Sometimes, like Stewart Butterfield or Sarah Olstyn Martinez, you are looking into the future by using the clues that the present moment offers you. But other times, you can get the benefit of listening to a message from the past . Hundreds of people had climbed high on Everest before summit day in 1996. Those past climbers had figured out the appropriate turnaround times, whether they were Rob Hall in 1995, Tenzing Norgay and Sir Edmund Hillary in 1953, or any of the climbers in between.

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

  If she says yes, then the groom goes home and begins building an addition onto his family’s home. This is where he and his bride will start their new family together. And so he works and works and works, building a place that they can call home. And here’s the interesting part: he doesn’t know when he’s going to finish. Because he doesn’t have the final say on whether it’s ready. That’s his father’s decision. And so his father periodically inspects his work, looking to see if the quality of what the son is building properly honors his future bride. The father has considerations as well. If he has many sons, and they’ve all built additions, then his house is getting quite large. There are many rooms in it. This was called an insula, a large multifamily dwelling. If the father had built his addition onto his father’s house, then by now, several generations later, this is a large dwelling with rooms for a lot of people. Back to the story. The future bride is at home, learning how to run a household. She also doesn’t know when the work will be done, so she’s preparing herself for a date that’s coming, she just doesn’t know when. And then the day comes. The father inspects and tells the son that it’s time. So the son gets his friends, and they set out for her house to get her. But how will he know what room is hers? He’ll know because she has filled her lamp with oil each night and set it in the window, so that when he comes, he’ll know which room is hers.16 And so he goes to get her, and they gather their friends and family, and there’s a giant procession back to his house, where the party starts. And so when she takes the glass of wine at their engagement party and drinks from it, the groom says to her: “My father’s house has plenty of room; if that were not so, would I have told you that I am going there to prepare a place for you? And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come back and take you to be with me that you also may be where I am. You know the way to the place where I am going.” Does his speech sound familiar? This is what Jesus says to his disciples in John 14:2–4. When Jesus wants to assure his followers that they’re going to be okay, that their future is secure, that they shouldn’t let their hearts be troubled, he uses the wedding metaphor. They would have known exactly what he was talking about. They would have heard the groom’s speech growing up, the ones who were married would have given it to their brides, and they all would have taken part in numerous wedding celebrations. To describe heaven, Jesus uses an event they had all experienced and basically says, “It’s like that.”

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

  Paul says that he doesn’t have some sort of black-and-white message from God on whether people should be married. It’s possible for destructive messages to be sent to people who are single. That they are second class, less than, that they don’t fit, that they should find someone, get married, and join the rest of us who are “normal.” If you are single, and you’ve been sent messages or it’s been hinted at or even said to your face that you are somehow missing something, that you aren’t good enough, that you don’t fit—that is not true. It’s not just that you’re fine single. The premise of the scriptures is that you are able to connect with God and serve God in ways that those who are married can’t. The tilt is for being single, not away from it. The last thing Jesus ever says, or even implies, is that people who aren’t married are somehow missing out. So according to Jesus, if you aren’t having sex, you aren’t missing out on anything. And if you aren’t missing out, and marriage, according to the scriptures, is somehow temporary, then what does this say about our future? Our future, together, after this life? What does sex now say about life forever? A good place to start is the end. The Bible ends with a book called Revelation, written by a man named John. In the last two chapters, John paints a picture of “a new heaven and a new earth,” which he says will come about at some point in the future. He looks and sees “the Holy City, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride beautifully dressed for her husband.”7 Of all of the symbols and metaphors and images he has to draw from, John describes the end of the world as we know it as a wedding celebration. For John’s Jewish audience, this made perfect sense. This goes all the way back to the Exodus and Mount Sinai. To God and God’s people, coming together at the mountain. To the Shekinah hovering over them. To the marriage of the divine and the human. To God’s desire to be with people. The text continues: “And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, ‘Look! God’s dwelling place is now among the people, and he will dwell with them.’ ”8 God with Us The vision John has is not of people leaving earth and going somewhere else. It’s a vision of God coming here and taking up residence in our midst. What would that be like? We read that this city “does not need the sun or the moon to shine on it, for the glory of God gives it light.”9 Light exposes things. Light shows how things really are. There is no hiding in the light. Light is freedom. There is nothing to fear because everything is shown to be exactly what it is. In the light, everybody is known fully.

• From The History of Christianity II: From the Reformation to the Modern Megachurch (2017)

  358The History of Christianity II õMaybe the more fundamental reason for the Pentecostal revival is that humans seem to be instinctively religious creatures. We need something to worship, and we have trouble with the idea that death could be the end of everything. õIt’s hard to predict whether globalization will eventually bring Western- style secularization to the rest of the world, or whether “reverse missionaries” from the Global South will re-Christianize the West. But whether or not humans stop going to church, we won’t lose our desire to seek order in the universe, our curiosity about what lies beyond the material world, and our hope for the cosmic comfort that someone, or something, cares about us. SUGGESTED READING Dennett, Breaking the Spell. Huntington, The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order. Tay lor, A Secular Age. QUESTIONS TO CONSIDER äWhat are the hazards and the benefits of using Samuel Huntington’s “clash of civilizations” model to understand conf lict between Muslims and Christians? äWhat challenges have the growth of global capitalism and secularization posed for Christians? äIf a time machine brought Savonarola and Pico della Mirandola to the 21 st century, is there a Christian community around the world where they would they feel at home? 359Bibliography Bibliography Aikman, David. Jesus in Beijing: How Christianity Is Transforming China and Changing the Global Balance of Power. Washington DC: Regnery, 2003. A rather breathless but reliable and lively account of Christianity’s recent spread in China, told through the author’s personal encounters with missionaries and political prisoners. Allen, John. Desmond Tutu: Rabble-Rouser for Peace. New York: Free Press, 2006. An authorized biography, and so decidedly uncritical, but rich with detail thanks to great access to sources. Arthur, Anthony. The Tailor-King: The Rise and Fall of the Anabaptist Kingdom of Munster. New York: St. Martin’s, 1999. A grisly and well- researched account of an apocalyptic experiment gone wrong. Bainton, Roland. Erasmus of Christendom. New York: Charles Scribner, 1969. A charming and insightful biography by one of the 20 th century’s best religious historians. Bellah, Robert, et al. Habits of the Heart: Individualism and Commitment in American Life. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1985. A best- selling, highly inf luential analysis of how religion shapes Americans’ attitudes toward democracy, community, and the good life. Benedict, Philip. Christ’s Churches Purely Formed: A Social History of Calvinism. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2002. A book that tells you how church and state worked—and what life was really like—in reformed communities throughout Europe. Boyer, Paul. When Time Shall Be No More: Prophecy Belief in Modern American Culture. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1992. An accessible and detailed survey of apocalyptic movements and their political inf luence in America.

• From Quit: The Power of Knowing When to Walk Away (2022)

  We need to redefine what “failed” and “wasted” mean. When we worry that quitting means we’ve failed, what exactly are we failing at ? If you quit something that’s no longer worth pursuing, that’s not a failure. That’s a success. The way we naturally think about failure is to have stopped something short of the goal, as in failing to make it to the finish line. But if you’re continuing to pursue something that’s no longer worth pursuing, isn’t that a failure? How do we start to redefine that and think about failure as failing to follow a good decision process? Success means following a good decision process, not just crossing a finish line, especially if it is the wrong one to cross. That means appropriately following kill criteria, listening to our quitting coaches, and recognizing that the progress we’ve made along the way counts for a lot. We also need to redefine what waste is. What does it mean to waste your time or money or effort? Our problem is that we tend to think about these things in a backward-looking way. We feel like if we walk away from something, that means we’ve wasted everything that we put into it. But those are resources that are already spent. You can’t get them back. We need to start thinking about waste as a forward-looking problem, not a backward-looking one. That means realizing that spending another minute or another dollar or another bit of effort on something that is no longer worthwhile is the real waste. Once you think about it that way, you realize how much time has actually been wasted in the service of the idea that if you quit, the time you’ve already spent will be for naught. Just look at the California bullet train, where they’re continuing to dump money into something for fear that they will have wasted the time and taxpayer money that they’ve already put into it. We need to redefine failure. We need to redefine waste. But ultimately, what we need to do is rehabilitate the very idea of quitting. Lots of hard things are worth pursuing and grit is good for getting you to stick with it when it’s right. But lots of hard things are not worth pursuing and the ability to walk away when it’s right is also a skill worth developing. Hopefully this book has given you the tools to do that. Ultimately, where you’re going—where we’re all going—is along whatever route will have the greatest expected value throughout our lives. That path is going to involve a lot of quitting. Contrary to popular belief, winners quit a lot. That’s how they win. Chapter 11 Summary Goals can make it possible to achieve worthwhile things, but goals can also increase the chances that we will escalate commitment when we should quit. Goals are pass-fail in nature. You either reach the finish line or you don’t, and progress along the way matters very little.