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 Unbought and Unbossed: Transgressive Black Women, Sexuality, and Representation (2014)

  While Kinsey's report was indubitably controversial because it exposed publicly an otherwise undisclosed dimension of America's sexual character, particularly as it revolves around constructions of white sexuality, it also provoked charges that it was inherently and methodologically biased. This was due, in part, to the fact that a significant portion of his subjects had formerly been incarcerated, were or had been prostitutes, and/or were self-selected and unashamed of challenging society's sexual codes. As such, his studies were critiqued as not being reflective of the general American population because of the limited demographics racially and otherwise, subject positions, and circumstances of his subject pool. While the Kinsey Institute did, at some point, conduct research on African Americans, finding disparities in the sexual conduct of the working class and the black middle class, the topics of black sexuality, the status of blacks, and the sexual revolution were receiving their own attention in the black community. Black writers, sociocultural and political activists, and black scholars and intellectuals initiated dialogues and studies on sexual diversity, same-sex desire, lesbianism, and black male homosexuality, as well as produced narratives to address these topics and rape, incest, molestation, interracial sex, and other sociosexual dynamics. In his 1970 "A Letter from Huey to the Revolutionary Brothers and Sisters about the Women's Liberation and Gay Liberation Movements," Huey Newton, while supreme commander of the Black Panther Party, not only offers support of the women's and gay liberation movements, which he recognizes as potential political allies; but, perhaps far more consequential, he articulates a politics of shared oppression from the established "norm"-humanizing the women's and gay liberation movements-while instructing his constituents to remain vigilant in not associating revolution with homophobic, heterosexist, or sexist postures. In speaking of gay liberation specifically, he posits, "We haven't said much about the homosexual at all and we must relate to the homosexual movement because it is a real movement"; and, "whatever the case is, we know that homosexuality is a fact that exists and we must understand it in its purest form; that is, a person should have the freedom to use his body whatever way he wants to."48 Moreover, he avers that, as the Black Panthers were in the process of developing a "revolutionary value system," they should eliminate from their vocabularies any offensive, pejorative language regarding gays and nongays alike. While its support of gay liberation is progressive within the context of its time, this philosophy did not engage a conspicuously racialized element regarding black sexual diversity within the Black Panther Party, nationalist movement, and society at large.

• From The Decameron (1353)

  Wherefore, after pondering many things in himself, he bethought himself thus: 'The place is far hence and none knoweth me there, an I can but make a show of being dumb, I shall for certain be received there.' Having fixed upon this device, he set out with an axe he had about his neck, without telling any whither he was bound, and betook himself, in the guise of a beggarman, to the convent, where being come, he entered in and as luck would have it, found the bailiff in the courtyard. Him he accosted with signs such as dumb folk use and made a show of asking food of him for the love of God and that in return he would, an it were needed, cleave wood for him. The bailiff willingly gave him to eat and after set before him divers logs that Nuto had not availed to cleave, but of all which Masetto, who was very strong, made a speedy despatch. By and by, the bailiff, having occasion to go to the coppice, carried him thither and put him to cutting faggots; after which, setting the ass before him, he gave him to understand by signs that he was to bring them home. This he did very well; wherefore the bailiff kept him there some days, so he might have him do certain things for which he had occasion. One day it chanced that the abbess saw him and asked the bailiff who he was. 'Madam,' answered he, 'this is a poor deaf and dumb man, who came hither the other day to ask an alms; so I took him in out of charity and have made him do sundry things of which we had need. If he knew how to till the hortyard and chose to abide with us, I believe we should get good service of him; for that we lack such an one and he is strong and we could make what we would of him; more by token that you would have no occasion to fear his playing the fool with yonder lasses of yours.' 'I' faith,' rejoined the abbess, 'thou sayst sooth. Learn if he knoweth how to till and study to keep him here; give him a pair of shoes and some old hood or other and make much of him, caress him, give him plenty to eat.' Which the bailiff promised to do.

• From Understanding the Old Testament (2019)

  leCtUre 14 | BiBli Cal short stories: rUth and esther 91 Although many of the festivals of the Jewish calendar would become impossible without the temple, it was certainly possible to keep the Sabbath. Kosher diet laws could be maintained and circumcision preserved. All of these things, in fact, became more important in exile, so the community could distinguish itself from its neighbors. The letters used for the Hebrew language for the past two millennia are Aramaic letters, adopted during the Babylonian exile. The lingua franca of the Babylonian empire, Aramaic, became the spoken language of the Jews as well. After the Exile In 539 BCE, the Persian king Cyrus conquered the Babylonian Empire. Part of Cyrus’s policy to ensure loyalty was to allow multiple peoples whom the Babylonians had exiled to return home, the Jews among them. However, the restored Jewish community in Judah was by no means independent, nor would it be for centuries. It was a province of the Persian Empire until the late 4th century BCE, when it became a province of Alexander the Great’s empire. Independence for the Jews was never an option. They were a small, powerless people. That’s important for understanding the literature we’re about to read. Postexilic Stories A new genre emerged in the postexilic period: short stories, or totally independent books that are single brief plots. Several of them are accepted as canonical scripture by Catholics and Eastern Orthodox Christians but not by Protestants or Jews. There is a predominance of women in this genre. Three of the books have women as the main character: Ruth, Esther, and Judith. They are women doubly at risk. Ruth is both a woman and a foreigner. Esther is a woman and an orphan. Judith is a woman and a widow. In the narratives of these three books, traditionally male values fail. Understanding the old testament 92 The Book of Ruth In Judaism’s ordering of the books of the Bible, the book of Ruth is placed at the very end with the other short stories. In the Christian Bible, the book of Ruth is earlier, between Judges and 1 Samuel because that’s the time setting for the narrative. Ruth 1:1 says, “In the days when the judges ruled.” That’s the narrative setting for this short story. In the story, the character Ruth is repeatedly referred to as “Ruth the Moabite.” There is no escaping her despised foreign identity. It’s not clear how other characters know she’s Moabite, but there is no way to avoid it regardless. The twists and turns of the story deliver a twofold message: On the one hand, when you are weak and traditional power is not available to you, then loyalty and your own wits can save you. The second message is about foreigners and perhaps about intermarriage. This is a book against segregation; it sees no value in purity of blood. Ruth in Boaz's Field, Julius schnorr von Carolsfeld, 1828

• From Understanding the Old Testament (2019)

  l e Ct Ure 13 | t he Boo Ks of Kings 87 The Assyrians imported foreigners into Israel, and they came to worship Yahweh while preserving some of their foreign religions. These are the people that come to be known as Samaritans. Assyria had also invaded the southern kingdom of Judah. The Assyrian leader Sennacherib campaigned against Judah’s King Hezekiah, and five different accounts in Assyrian records describe the invasion. Forty-six Judean cities were besieged, and many captives were taken. Assyrian sources say Sennacherib went home without conquering Jerusalem but that Hezekiah sent a huge tribute. Chapters 18 and 19 of 2 Kings say that God struck the besieging army dead, just as Isaiah had prophesied he would to defend Jerusalem. In fact, part of the explanation for the Assyrian retreat was the approach of an Egyptian army under the leadership of the ruling Ethiopian dynasty, a combined Egyptian-Ethiopian army that the Assyrians did not want to confront. However, Judah was left badly devastated. The Assyrian empire fell in 612, but Judah’s days were numbered. The Babylonian Empire rose in 605 under the king Nebuchadnezzar, and Judah falls under its sway in 2 Kings 24. Rebellion and Hope Judah was determined to be independent. Her last kings—the last kings of the house of David—rebelled against Babylon. In 2 Kings 24:10, 597 BCE, Jerusalem falls, and many people are taken captive to Babylon. According to 2 Kings, the king, Jehoiachin, was deported and provided for in Babylon, as Babylonian records confirm. The Babylonians put a new king in place. That king, Zedekiah, again foolishly revolts. As 2 Kings 25 recounts, the city of Jerusalem falls to Nebuchadnezzar in July of 586. The temple is demolished, and its goods are taken to Babylon. Zedekiah’s eyes are put out, and he’s taken in chains to Babylon, ending the reign of the house of David. The nobles, merchants, and officers of Judah go into exile in Babylon.

• From Unbought and Unbossed: Transgressive Black Women, Sexuality, and Representation (2014)

  During the 1970s, black general-interest periodicals like Ebony magazine featured articles on the topic of blacks and the sexual revolution. Essence magazine, for black women especially, produced a monthly column entitled "Your Sexual Health" to address questions on such topics as female orgasms, oral sex, sexual wellness, sexually transmitted diseases, libido, abortions, same-sex desire, and the questioning of sexual identity. On the academic front, the Black Scholar, one of the leading academic journals, published a special issue in 1978 entitled "Blacks and the Sexual Revolution." And, a 1971 issue of Ebony featured the comedian Dick Gregory and his large family on the cover with his story, "My Answer to Genocide," in the "Race" section. Apparently his answer was, in part, race augmentation vis-a-vis the reproductive capacities of (black) sexuality. [image file=img/img0002.jpg] FIGURE L1 Ebony, October 1971, with Dick Gregory and headliner "Blacks and the Sexual Revolution." (Courtesy of Johnson Publishing Company, LLC. All rights reserved.) Of equal or greater import, Gregory's story was paired interestingly with a feature article in a provocative special "Sex and Psychology" section, wherein Alvin Poussaint disseminated his findings on blacks and the sexual revolution. Foregrounding blacks, the sexual revolution, and liberation, Poussaint dispelled mythologies regarding black sexuality, while calling on black people to remain vigilant and "on guard against the mass media's outpouring of crude and degrading sexual stereotypes." Collapsing dichotomous constructions of black sexuality among class lines, he refuted the notion that the black middle class and bourgeoisie embraced more puritanical sexual views than their counterparts of a lower socioeconomic class. Reportedly, lesseducated black women had fewer instances of sexual relations before and during marriage than black middle-class women. "Let us keep in mind," he asserts, "our unique social heritage and be thankful that many blacks have retained a relaxed attitude toward sex," he asserts, while concomitantly expressing hope that the sexual revolution would liberate racialized sexual tension so that black people would cease to be the "scapegoats" upon which white sexual repression would be displaced 49 Poussaint's assertion might, at first, seem curious-as a directive eliciting gratitude and praise instantiated on the basis of "a unique" cultural practice and heritage. His emphasis on this racial/cultural sensibility, coupled with his notion of "relaxed" sociosexual dispositions among blacks, takes on greater magnitude-and indeed significance-when contextualized within the framework of the American cultural proclivity to pathologize black sexuality.

• From Vox (1992)

  Perhaps it’s presumptuous of me to say that we, you and I, click, but there is that possibility.” “Yes.” “In a way it’s like the radio. Do you know that I’ve never actually gone to a store and bought a record? That’s probably why I never learned to appreciate the fade-out, as you describe it, since on the radio, one song melts into the next. But it seems to me that you really need the feeling of radio luck in listening to pop music, since after all it’s about somebody meeting, out of all the zillions of people in the world, this one other nice person, or at least several adequate people. And so, if you buy the record, or the tape, then you control when you can hear it, when what you want is for it to be like luck, and like fate, and to zoom up and down the dial, looking for the song you want, hoping some station will play it—and the joy when it finally rotates around is so intense. You’re not hearing it, you’re overhearing it.” “On the other hand,” she said, “if you own the tape, you show you’ve got some self-knowledge: you know what you like, you know how to make yourself happy, you’re not just wandering in this welter of chance occurrences, passively hoping the disk jockey will come through. Maybe when you’re a little kid you find yourself out on a balcony in the sun and you think, My oh my, this feels unexpectedly nice. But later on you think, I know that I will feel a particular kind of pleasure if I walk out onto this balcony and sit in that chair, and I wish to experience that pleasure now.” “Well, right, and so the reason I called this line was that the pleasures I’d sought out weren’t doing it for me and there was this hope of luck, that I, that there would be a conversation …” “You never said what it was about the Disney Tinker Bell exactly, at the video store.” “Well, in the scene I saw, and this is the first time I’ve seen any of this particular Disney by the way, and you have to remember that I’m in an altered state there in the movie store, with my three orange movies and my men’s magazine in my briefcase, but in the scene, Tinker Bell zips around in a sprightly way, with lots of zings of the xylophone and little sparkly stars trailing her flight, and you think, right, typical fairy image, ho hum. And she’s tiny , she’s a tiny suburbanite, she’s about five inches tall. This insubstantial, magical, cutely Walt Disneyish woman. But then this thing happens. She pauses in mid-air, and she looks down at herself, and she’s got quite small breasts—” “I thought you didn’t like that word.” “You’re right, but sometimes it seems right.

• From The Decameron (1353)

  Before aught else she studied to see Bertrand and next, presenting herself before the king, she prayed him of his favour to show her his ailment. The king, seeing her a fair and engaging damsel, knew not how to deny her and showed her that which ailed him. Whenas she saw it, she was certified incontinent that she could heal it and accordingly said, 'My lord, an it please you, I hope in God to make you whole of this your infirmity in eight days' time, without annoy or fatigue on your part.' The king scoffed in himself at her words, saying, 'That which the best physicians in the world have availed not neither known to do, how shall a young woman know?' Accordingly, he thanked her for her good will and answered that he was resolved no more to follow the counsel of physicians. Whereupon quoth the damsel, 'My lord, you make light of my skill, for that I am young and a woman; but I would have you bear in mind that I medicine not of mine own science, but with the aid of God and the science of Master Gerard de Narbonne, who was my father and a famous physician whilst he lived.' The king, hearing this, said in himself, 'It may be this woman is sent me of God; why should I not make proof of her knowledge, since she saith she will, without annoy of mine, cure me in little time?' Accordingly, being resolved to essay her, he said, 'Damsel, and if you cure us not, after causing us break our resolution, what will you have ensue to you therefor?' 'My lord,' answered she, 'set a guard upon me and if I cure you not within eight days, let burn me alive; but, if I cure you, what reward shall I have?' Quoth the king, 'You seem as yet unhusbanded; if you do this, we will marry you well and worshipfully.' 'My lord,' replied the young lady, 'I am well pleased that you should marry me, but I will have a husband such as I shall ask of you, excepting always any one of your sons or of the royal house.' He readily promised her that which she sought, whereupon she began her cure and in brief, before the term limited, she brought him back to health.

• From Understanding the Old Testament (2019)

  leCtUre 16 | the ProPhet isaiah in three movements 103 The Second Movement Beginning in the 12th century CE, rabbis noted that something happens after Isaiah 39: The prophet Isaiah is no longer mentioned, and the entire context seems to have changed. Since 1775, biblical scholars have proposed that Isaiah chapters 40 to 55 are the work of an author later than Isaiah of Jerusalem, the product of the Babylonian exile in the 6th century BCE. The audience’s situation has changed because the enemy of the Jewish people is not Assyria. It is Babylon. The environment of the people has changed because they’re living in Babylon, not Jerusalem. Additionally, the vocabulary is different. The theology is different as well: The overall message of Isaiah 40 to 55 is comfort and a promise of restoration. One of the main themes of this section is that Israel’s redemption will come at the hands of Persia. The prophet is under no illusion that the Persian king Cyrus acknowledges God or believes Yahweh has granted him victory. But the Israelites are assured that behind the scenes, Cyrus’s conquest of Babylon is God’s doing. Another theme in this section of Isaiah is a literary character known as the suffering servant, who is presented in a series of so-called servant songs. The term was coined in the 1920s by the German scholar Bernhard Duhm, who identified the servant songs. In the New Testament, Christianity identified the suffering servant as Jesus. That’s because in Isaiah, God accepts the servant’s suffering and death as reparation, while, on the other hand, the frail, obedient servant of the Lord ends up elevated to an almost divine status. However, another reading is that the servant is Israel. Israel suffers. God accepts its suffering as reparation and extends God’s salvation to the Gentile nations. The Third Movement The third and final movement of the book of Isaiah is the section after chapter 55. Scholars have come to date this to a later period when the people of Israel—having returned from the exile in Babylon—resumed life as a free people in the land of their ancestors and rebuilt Jerusalem. The name Isaiah is not found in these chapters.

• From Unbought and Unbossed: Transgressive Black Women, Sexuality, and Representation (2014)

  This is, indeed, a provocative and consequential gesture, with new critical perspectives, approaches, and epistemologies, that interrogates black womanhood within intersectional, integrative, cross-cultural and other frameworks. We need more scholarship that examines, without ambiguity, ambivalence, or "fear of reprisals," the dynamics governing black womanhood and the politics of representation. We need work that transcends ideological and disciplinary boundaries and further engages race, gender, and sexuality. We need discourses that transcend silence, omission, and limitation. We need politics and practices that reflect the totality of our humanity, as well as our individual and collective experiences. We need models and paradigms that broaden our understandings of the functions and conventions governing our identities and representations of them. We need future projects, like this one and our First Lady's official White House photograph, that, simply put, transgress. [image file=img/page0217_0000.svg] Introduction 1. Chisholm, Unbought and Unbossed 19. 2. Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham coins the terminology "politics of silence" in reference to the strategic secrecy surrounding black women's sexuality-or what Darlene Clark Hine refers to as a "culture of dissemblance." For discussions, see Higginbotham, Righteous Discontent; and Hine, "Rape and the Inner Lives of Black Women in the Middle West." 3. For extensive discussions of the "cult of true womanhood," see Welter, "The Cult of True Womanhood, 1820-1860"; and Carby, Reconstructing Womanhood. Carby examines the cultural and political impact of the cult of true womanhood on representations of black women in abolitionist literature, as well as the ways in which these ideologies informed black women's display of propriety and respectability after the cult of true womanhood was no longer "the dominant ideological code." For scholarship on the gender politics of black nationalism, see Collins, "When Fighting Words Are Not Enough"; Lubiano's "Black Nationalism and Black Common Sense"; and J.H.Scott, "From Foreground to Margin." 4. Dubey, Signs and Cities 31. 5. D.Scott, Extravagant Abjection 18. 6. See Carby, Reconstructing Womanhood; Tate, Domestic Allegories of Political Desire; duCille, The Coupling Convention; Dubey, Black Women Novelists and the Nationalist Aesthetic; Jenkins, Private Lives, Proper Relations; and Thompson, Beyond the Black Lady. 7. My assertion here benefited from the intellectual insight of literary scholar and critic Cathy Schlund-Vials, who advanced my thinking regarding this interregnum period and multiculturalism. 8. While "mainstream" scholars theorizing about transgression typically ignore issues of race and the racialized dynamics, I do want to acknowledge that a great deal of work is treated by queer of color scholars, as well as theorists in race and sexuality and black queer studies, who do engage racialized blackness and transgression broadly construed. 9. Cohen, "Deviance as Resistance" 24.

• From Unbought and Unbossed: Transgressive Black Women, Sexuality, and Representation (2014)

  What black women's literature from the 1930s through 1950s illustrates is the changing ideological, political, and literary/ sociocultural milieu-the very shifting landscape of the politics and paradigms-governing "the politics of silence." While this era is distinct with its own stylistics, literary conventions, and thematic preoccupations, its engagement with and refusal to be silenced in the face of racial injustice, coupled with its acknowledgment of the gender/sexual terrain, allow it to serve as a consequential bridge-a space with larger epistemological and ontological impact-to post-196os black women's literature. The black women writers of this era gesture toward racial, gender, and sexual liberation and contest the interlocking systematic oppression of black women and the community. They anticipate, then, the post-196os and second-wave feminist doctrine that "the personal is political." Additionally, these writers make clear that the political (who is enfranchised, has access to fundamental rights and full civic, economic, and social subjectivity) is also deeply personal and inextricably bound to one's race, gender, class, ethnicity and/or nation(ality). What, then, created space for African American women writers to explore the complexities of their intersectionality and diverse experiences as black women with range, depth, and substance? What enabled them to contest limited representations and the matrix of domination, both contributing to and perpetuating black women's oppression, marginalization, and exclusion? And what allowed them to challenge and redefine the politics governing their multiple identities in strikingly new, daring, and consequential ways? Indubitably, it was the political movements ensuing and developing out of the civil rights struggles of the 195os and 196os. The civil rights movement, with its focus on renegotiating the marginalized and segregated social space to which African Americans had been consigned, centered itself around ending social segregation, as well as the political and economic disfranchisement of blacks. Challenging the American social disorder that produced and rested on oppositional constructions, the civil rights movement demanded equal rights for all people, specifically African Americans, who had long been relegated to second-class citizenship. Galvanizing individuals around sociopolitical activism and nonviolent action, it raised the racial, class, and political consciousness of Americans. This new awareness made a space for African American women to move forward in their quest for equality and liberation from American social injustice.

• From Understanding the Old Testament (2019)

  Understanding the old testament 114 Verse 2 is explicit that the Lord handed all of Judah over to Nebuchadnezzar. Later on, the royal servant Ashpenaz refers to Nebuchadnezzar as his “lord.” This story will be about which lord Daniel and his friends will serve. The Jews were not only militarily overwhelmed. They were surely culturally overwhelmed. They had gone from a cultural backwater of the hills of Judah to a society that had known literature for millennia as well as scientific, medicinal, and geographic knowledge. The narrative presents the Babylonian king setting about to remove the young men’s native culture so as to make wise men out of them. In verse 5, it is relayed that “The King allotted them a daily portion of food and wine from the royal table. After three years training, they were to enter the king service.” Then, “The Chief Chamberlain changed their names: Daniel to Belteshezzar, Hannaiah to Shadrach, Mishael to Meshach, and Azariah to Abednego.” Verse 7 states that the chief chamberlain “determined” their names. That’s not the normal phrase for naming people, but it’s exactly the word used in the next verse: “Daniel determined not to defile himself with the king’s food.” This contrasts two worldviews: that of the Babylonians and that of the Israelites. It’s not clear what the problem with the food is. It doesn’t seem to be about kosher food. It is likely that the issue is one of identity: Food is tied up with ethnicity, and part of the way to indoctrinate someone in a new culture is to force them to change their diet. Daniel proposes a test. In verse 12, he says, “Test your servants for ten days. Let us be given vegetables to eat and water to drink. Then see how we look in comparison with the young men who eat from the royal table.” We discover the result of this in verse 15: “After ten days, they looked healthier and better fed than any of the young men who ate from the royal table.” The young men go on to be the king’s chief advisers. This is a message for diaspora Jews, living under foreign domination. And the message is the same as found in the apocalyptic sections: No matter what, do not give up your faith. God will deliver you. leCtUre 18 | daniel and aPoCalyPtiC l iteratUre 115 Questions to Consider YIf apocalyptic literature gave hope to persecuted people, what was its message to people in times of prosperity? YWhat do the stories of Daniel say to persecuted people? What do they say to Jews in times of prosperity? Suggested Reading Boyarin, The Jewish Gospels. Collins, “From Prophecy to Apocalypticism.”

• From Understanding the Old Testament (2019)

  Understanding the o ld testament 100 The End of the Book of Amos Amos does offer some hope. Some think the verses at the end of the book are a late addition put in by Jews in exile in Babylon, and that Amos himself didn’t offer any hope. However, these verses are consistent with the rest of the message of Amos. For instance, chapter 9, verse 13 reads: Behold, the days are coming, declares the Lord, when the plowman shall overtake the reaper, and the treader of grapes him who sows the seed. The mountains shall drip sweet wine and the hills shall flow with it. … I will plant them on their land, and they shall never again be uprooted. This is consistent with Amos’s vision that paradise is bucolic. The blessings are the prosperity of plowing, reaping, wine, harvests and gardens. The blessings are not ivory, musical instruments, or veal. There is a distinct contrast between the values of Israel’s consumerists and God’s rural agricultural paradise that is consistent with what Amos thinks is important in life throughout the book. There is hope—although God’s hope might not be what the people expect. Questions to Consider Y Did Amos and similar prophets want to end poverty in ancient Israel? Y Does Amos place any value on sacrifice and other rituals? Suggested Reading Eidevall, Amos. Ho, Ṣedeq and Ṣedaqah in the Hebrew Bible. THE PROPHET ISAIAH IN THREE MOVEMENTS LECTURE 16 The book of Isaiah has three distinct movements. Each one has a specific historical context. The book as a whole is one piece, intentionally woven together around 520 BCE. This lecture gives an overview of the book’s contents. An Important Time and the First Movement The book of Isaiah puts the prophet in Jerusalem at an important time. He’s there when the Assyrian Empire has conquered the northern kingdom of Israel. The Assyrians also overran most of the kingdom of Judah. King Hezekiah and the city of Jerusalem survived, and Isaiah is there for that event, as the book of Kings describes. This is roughly 720 to 700 BCE. Isaiah was in a high enough position to interact regularly with the king. 16 Understanding the o ld testament 102 Early in the book, Isaiah’s denunciations are primarily about social injustice. For instance, in chapter 5, he calls out individual owners gaining more and more land. Isaiah also calls out the masses, who didn’t know the law properly, and who didn’t know who God was so that they could emulate him. Isaiah says the punishment for such crimes will be exile. The book of Isaiah is not all bad news. An important notion emerges in Israelite religion in the early part of the book: the concept of the Messiah. King h ezekiah and i saiah

• From Amplified Holy Bible (2015)

  13 “Even from eternity I am He, And there is no one who can rescue from My hand; I act, and who can revoke or reverse it?” Babylon to Be Destroyed 14 This is what the LORD your Redeemer, the Holy One of Israel says, “For your sake I have sent [one] to Babylon, And I will bring down all of them as fugitives, Even the Chaldeans [who reign in Babylon], into the ships b over which they rejoiced. 15 “I am the LORD , your Holy One, The Creator of Israel, your King.” 16 This is what the LORD says, He who makes a way through the sea And a path through the mighty waters, 17 He who brings out the chariot and the horse, The army and the mighty warrior, (They will lie down together, they will not rise again; They have been extinguished, they have been put out like a lamp’s wick): 18 “Do not remember the former things, Or ponder the things of the past. 19 “Listen carefully, I am about to do a new thing, Now it will spring forth; Will you not be aware of it? I will even put a road in the wilderness, Rivers in the desert. 20 “The beasts of the field will honor Me, Jackals and ostriches, Because I have given waters in the wilderness And rivers in the desert, To give drink to My people, My chosen. [Is 41:17 , 18 ; 48:21 ] 21 “The people whom I formed for Myself Will make known My praise. The Shortcomings of Israel 22 “Yet you have not called on Me [in prayer and worship], O Jacob; But you have grown weary of Me, O Israel. 23 “You have not brought Me your sheep or goats for your burnt offerings, Nor honored Me with your sacrifices. I have not burdened you with offerings, Nor wearied you with [demands for offerings of] incense. 24 “You have not bought Me sweet cane with money, Nor have you filled Me with the fat of your sacrifices; But you have burdened Me with your sins, You have wearied Me with your wickedness. 25 “I, only I, am He who wipes out your transgressions for My own sake, And I will not remember your sins. 26 “c Remind Me [of your merits with a thorough report], let us plead and argue our case together; State your position, that you may be proved right. 27 “Your first father [Jacob] sinned, And your spokesmen [the priests and the prophets—your mediators] have transgressed against Me. 28 “So I will d profane the officials of the sanctuary, And I will consign Jacob to destruction and [I will subject] Israel to defamation and abuse.

• From Unbought and Unbossed: Transgressive Black Women, Sexuality, and Representation (2014)

  Not only does this interrupt Meridian's thoughts of infanticide, but it introduces and eventually radicalizes her to the civil rights movement, black struggles for equality and sociopolitical subjectivity. Moreover, it helps redefine "blackness"-locating it within the sociopolitical realm of agency with regard to enfranchisement and existential freedom-and rescues black people from the mythology of a pathologized and/or criminalized past. With a newer sense of racial consciousness and political awareness, Meridian, "after the bombing" (80), volunteers at a local movement office and is later radicalized, becoming an active participant in protests, demonstrations, and freedom marches. Walker problematizes, as well as humanizes, civil rights by illuminating the human element-foregrounding the personal struggles, the faces, black people's dogged determination to attain freedom and equality-in the face of legal rhetoric. This she further achieves in her essay in the civil rights journal Perspectives, wherein she ruminates on "civil rights" as more than simply nomenclature, language, and terminology: "It has no music, it has no poetry. It makes one think of bureaucrats rather than of sweaty faces, eyes bright and big for Freedom!, marching feet." Moreover, "the term `Civil Rights' could never adequately express black people's revolutionary goals because it could never adequately describe our longings and our dreams" and "because, as a term, it is totally lacking in color. In short, although I value the civil rights movement itself, I have never liked the term" namely because it "did not evolve out of black culture but rather out of American Law. As such, it is a term of limitation. It speaks only to physical possibilities-necessary and treasured, of course-but not of the spirit."33 In her participation in racial/communal uplift and black freedom struggles, Meridian produces and "gives birth" to new opportunities for communities and generations of blacks-disenfranchised and otherwise. She helps to create for them possibilities of racial/sociopolitical equality, as well as greater senses of consciousness and knowledge of their existence in society and the world. This is not to say that the movement is an idealized liberatory experience for Meridian or that she did not confront particular politics that, at times, marginalized her. Yet, it still provides her with a space-unlike the conservative and restrictive community from which she came-in which to achieve selfhood, subjectivity, awareness of her condition, and agency in the face of systematic oppression. For, as Walker asserts, "[t]o know is to exist: to exist is to be involved, to move about, to see the world with [one's] own eyes. This, at least, the Movement has [done].""

• From Understanding the Old Testament (2019)

  leCtUre 17 | Jeremiah, PerseCUted ProPhet 107 After Jehoiakim When Jehoiakim died, he was succeeded by other anti-Babylonian kings. The first was Jehoiachin, who reigned for three months in the year 597. From that short period, we have Jeremiah’s powerful temple sermon in chapter 7, which was against empty, false worship as well as idolatry, injustice, and why empty rituals don’t make up for those sins. This occurred only a generation after a thorough reform undertaken by King Josiah, who cleaned all sorts of idolatrous installations out of the temple. It appears that Josiah’s reform produced only superficial results. The Confessions of Jeremiah This lecture now turns to what the scholar Walter Baumgartner identified as the confessions of Jeremiah. These are insights into Jeremiah that he reveals when he is alone with God. There are six of them. Each has four parts: an invocation of God, quotation of the speech of Jeremiah’s enemies, a declaration of innocence, and a request for vengeance. They’re found in chapters 11, 12, 15, 17, 18, and 20. The one in chapter 20 reveals Jeremiah is mad at God. He feels used, at first complaining about jeers from others. However, the mood later changes, and Jeremiah moves from despair to determination. The Second Theme In 597 BCE, Jerusalem was conquered, and 10,000 captives were taken to Babylon. The last king of Judah, Zedekiah, ruled from 596 to 586. Almost immediately, he rebelled against Babylon, who were soon at the gates. Jeremiah’s advice, recorded in chapter 21, is to surrender. That’s treason; Jeremiah appears to be giving solace to the enemy. There is an attempt on Jeremiah’s life in chapter 38 by the court officials, even though Zedekiah continues to meet with Jeremiah. During the long siege of 587, there is an emphasis on hope, tying in with the second theme of building and planting. Part of this hope is theological. Chapters 30–32 contain the largest concentration of the phrase “You will be my people and I will be your God” anywhere in the Old Testament. This is what scholars call the covenant formula. Understanding the old testament 108 This new covenant should not be thought of in the Christian sense that Paul writes about in the New Testament. The issue is not that the old covenant was about a law, and the new covenant lacks law. The distinction is the location of the law. In other words, it is not an external law to obey but an internal law—a moral compass. Jeremiah

• From Girls & Sex (2016)

  The girls watching the video giggled and occasionally gasped in shock. Weirdly, though, I found myself agreeing with Stenzel, if not with her conclusions or her effort to shame and terrorize her audience. Our definition of “sex” is too narrow. I realize that it’s idealistic to call for a dismantling of virginity for the sake of girls’ health, but even questioning the implications of our assumptions about it has value. It is worth asking how putting this one act into a separate category is keeping girls (and boys) safer from disease, coercion, betrayal, assault; whether it gives them more control over their sexual experience; whether it encourages mutuality and caring; how it affects their perception of other kinds of sexual interactions; what it means for gay teens, who can have multiple sex partners without heterosexual intercourse. Again, this is not because that form of intercourse is no big deal, but because it’s not the only big deal. I’d rather young people think of sex more horizontally, as Dennis Fortenberry suggested, as a way to explore intimacy and pleasure, than as this misguided vertical race to a goal. What if your first kiss were a form of virginity loss? The first time you had oral sex? What if it was first love? What if, as Jessica Valenti suggests in The Purity Myth, a girl didn’t lose her virginity until she’d had her first orgasm with a partner? Before leaving Christina and her friends, I asked how she would raise her own daughter if she had one. She pondered that for a moment. “There are huge holes in my sex education that I can’t ignore,” she finally said, “but at the risk of losing the other lessons that benefited me, I wouldn’t wish to have done it differently. Still, I really want to have a more open discussion with my children. I can’t quite imagine being at a level of saying, ‘Okay, so this is what your clitoris is,’ but then again, I’d want that for them if that would make them more comfortable in the world. “I guess I would have to tell my daughter, ‘It’s totally your decision,’” she continued. “‘It’s whatever you feel comfortable with. But you have to be safe: there are these bad things that can happen in sex, but there are also benefits.’ I would have to tell her, ‘It’s very much up to you and how you feel.’ Because I think, in the end, it is the most personal of all decisions.”

• From Amplified Holy Bible (2015)

  24 “If Your people Israel have been defeated by an enemy because they have sinned against You, and they return to You and confess Your name, and pray and make supplication before You in this house, 25 then hear from heaven and forgive the sin of Your people Israel, and bring them again to the land which You gave to them and to their fathers. 26 “When the heavens are shut up and there is no rain because Your people have sinned against You, and they pray toward this place and confess Your name, and turn from their sin when You afflict and humble them; 27 then hear in heaven and forgive the sin of Your servants and Your people Israel, indeed, teach them the good way in which they should walk. And send rain on Your land which You have given to Your people as an inheritance. 28 “If there is famine in the land, if there is pestilence, if there is blight or mildew, if there are [migratory] locusts or grasshoppers, if their enemies besiege them in the land of their cities, whatever plague or whatever sickness there is, 29 then whatever prayer or request is made by any man or all of Your people Israel, each knowing his own suffering and his own pain, and stretching out his hands toward this house, 30 then hear from heaven, Your dwelling place, and forgive, and render to each c in accordance with all his ways, whose heart You know; for You alone know the hearts of the sons of men, 31 so that they may fear You, to walk in Your ways [in obedience to You] as long as they live in the land which You have given to our fathers. 32 “Also in regard to the foreigner who is not from Your people Israel, but has come from a far country for the sake of Your great name and Your mighty power and Your outstretched arm—when they come and pray toward this house, 33 then hear from heaven, from Your dwelling place, and do according to all for which the foreigner calls to You, so that all the peoples of the earth may know Your name, and fear You [reverently and worshipfully], as do Your people Israel, and that they may know that this house which I have built is called by Your Name. 34 “When Your people go out to war against their enemies, by the way that You send them, and they pray to You facing this city [Jerusalem] which You have chosen and the house which I have built for Your Name, 35 then hear from heaven their prayer and their request, and maintain their cause and do justice.

• From Amplified Holy Bible (2015)

  9 “For this is like the waters of Noah to Me, As I swore [an oath] that the waters of Noah Would not flood the earth again; In the same way I have sworn that I will not be angry with you Nor will I rebuke you. 10 “For the mountains may be removed and the hills may shake, But My lovingkindness will not be removed from you, Nor will My covenant of peace be shaken,” Says the LORD who has compassion on you. 11 “O you afflicted [city], storm-tossed, and not comforted, Listen carefully, I will set your [precious] stones in mortar, And lay your foundations with sapphires. 12 “And I will make your battlements of rubies, And your gates of [shining] beryl stones, And all your [barrier] a walls of precious stones. [Rev 21:19–21 ] 13 “And all your [spiritual] sons will be disciples [of the LORD ], And great will be the b well-being of your sons. [John 6:45 ] 14 “You will be firmly established in righteousness: You will be far from [even the thought of] oppression, for you will not fear, And from terror, for it will not come near you. 15 “If anyone fiercely attacks you it will not be from Me. Whoever attacks you will fall because of you. 16 “Listen carefully, I have created the smith who blows on the fire of coals And who produces a weapon for its purpose; And I have created the destroyer to inflict ruin. 17 “No weapon that is formed against you will succeed; And every tongue that rises against you in judgment you will condemn. This [peace, righteousness, security, and triumph over opposition] is the heritage of the servants of the LORD , And this is their vindication from Me,” says the LORD . Isaiah 55 The Free Offer of Mercy 1 “E VERYONE WHO thirsts, come to the waters; And you who have no money come, buy grain and eat. Come, buy wine and milk Without money and without cost [simply accept it as a gift from God]. [Rev 21:6 , 7 ; 22:17 ] 2 “Why do you spend money for that which is not bread, And your earnings for what does not satisfy? Listen carefully to Me, and eat what is good, And let your soul delight in a abundance. [Jer 31:12–14 ] 3 “Incline your ear [to listen] and come to Me; Hear, so that your soul may live; And I will make an everlasting covenant with you, According to the faithful mercies [promised and] shown to David. [2 Sam 7:8–16 ; Acts 13:34 ; Heb 13:20 ] 4 “Listen carefully, I have appointed b him [David, representing the Messiah] to be a witness to the nations [regarding salvation], A leader and commander to the peoples.

• From Unbought and Unbossed: Transgressive Black Women, Sexuality, and Representation (2014)

  While the community, that is, did not violate Lorraine directly, the gestures they did attempt to make were far from comprehensive, effective, or corrective of the hostility toward same-sex desire. To this end, their efforts, much like the wall on Brewster Place, were dead-end and futile. Moreover, that wallthat physical and metaphorical impediment-becomes emblematic, as Naylor illumines, of the ways in which certain politics governing race, particularly where gender and sexuality are concerned, impede communal progress. When the women of Brewster Place bond together to tear down the wall, even if the reader later learns it transpires in a dream, it is representative of hope, transformation, and the liberatory possibilities that, with action and agency, could become a (communal) reality. [image file=img/page0207_0000.svg] Unbought and Unbossed is an integrative project-a locus in which black women's literary and cultural production, movement ideologies, and the politics of identity and representation converge, providing an interdisciplinary and broad discursive framework for analyzing these complex issues. What this study has endeavored to examine are deliberate enactments of transgressive behavior that exceed the boundaries governing race, gender, and sexuality, while challenging concomitantly the fundamental categories governing established normativity and politics of identity. The goal of this book has, in part, been twofold: to illuminate these dynamics and how they are engaged and inscribed in post-civil rights black women's literary and cultural production, wherein black women claim a right to subjectivity unencumbered by circumscriptions and other limitations placed on black womanhood. And, second, to provide a historical context for "transgressive" behavior and, in turn, racialized transgression, where black women particularly and black people generally are concerned. Instead of locating black female sexuality within particular confines, whereby it is relegated to the manacles of stereotypes, mythologies, and pathologies, Unbought and Unbossed has endeavored to illumine, instead, the ways in which these black women, be they authors, characters, or black women at large, have not fought for the right to be anomalous or aberrant. Rather, they have resisted these designations, exercising the right to not only claim their identities and the politics accompanying those choices, but also to simply exist-participating in behavior that reflects the realm and complexities of humanity, existential experiences, and sexual citizenship.

• From Amplified Holy Bible (2015)

  For as the lifetime of a tree, so will be the days of My people, And My chosen [people] will fully enjoy [and long make use of] the work of their hands. 23 “They will not labor in vain, Or bear children for disaster; For they are the descendants of those blessed by the LORD , And their offspring with them. 24 “It shall also come to pass that before they call, I will answer; and while they are still speaking, I will hear. [Is 30:19 ; 58:9 ; Matt 6:8 ] 25 “The wolf and the lamb will graze together, and the lion will eat straw like the ox [there will no longer be predator and prey]; and dust will be the serpent’s food. They will do no evil or harm in all My holy mountain (Zion),” says the LORD . Isaiah 66 Heaven Is God’s Throne 1 T HIS IS what the LORD says, “Heaven is My throne and the earth is My footstool. Where, then, is a house that you could build for Me? And where will My resting place be? [Acts 17:24 ] 2 “For all these things My hand has made, So all these things came into being [by and for Me],” declares the LORD . “But to this one I will look [graciously], To him who is humble and contrite in spirit, and who [reverently] trembles at My word and honors My commands. [John 4:24 ] Hypocrisy Rebuked 3 “He who kills an ox [for pagan sacrifice] is [as guilty] as one who kills a man; He who sacrifices a lamb, as one who breaks a dog’s neck; He who offers a grain offering, as one who offers swine’s blood; He who offers incense, as one who blesses an idol. Such people have chosen their own ways, And their soul delights in their repulsive acts; 4 So I will choose their punishments, And will bring the things they dread upon them Because I called, but no one answered; I spoke, but they did not listen or obey. But they did evil in My sight And chose that in which I did not delight.” 5 Hear the word of the LORD , you who tremble [with awe-filled reverence] at His word: “Your brothers who hate you, who exclude you for My Name’s sake, Have said, ‘Let the LORD be glorified, that we may see your joy.’ But they will be put to shame. 6 “The sound of an uproar from the city! A voice from the temple! The voice of the LORD , providing retribution to His enemies. 7 “Before she (Zion) was in labor, she gave birth; Before her labor pain came, she gave birth to a boy. 8 “Who has heard of such a thing? Who has seen such things? Can a land a be born in one day? Or can a nation be brought forth in a moment? As soon as Zion was in labor, she also brought forth her sons.