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 Lit: A Memoir (2009)

  You’re one of the big reasons I believe in God. You see the irony, he say, for his father had been a minister, and he was a rationalist to his core. You may be a godless fuck, I say, but—what was it your colleague said—You give secular humanism a good name? You give Christianity a good name, he says. Walt’s strangely pleasant about my being a Catholic, though I get a snippy postcard from a novelist I know who says, Not you on the pope’s team. Say it ain’t so. Only Jesus keeps eluding me. I can’t help noticing that all the Catholics I look up to seem very Christos-centered. But the crucifixion has started to rankle me. At first, I’d liked the cross. You could never bring suffering there and look up and say, Well, he didn’t have it bad as me.... But after baptism, it starts

• From Vision Quest (1979)

  “I wanna wait. It’s gotta stay important for a long time. Indian kids waited a long time. If it’s just a fucking Jesus trip, I don’t wanna insult the memory of the American Indian by being part of it.” I thought Kuch’s idea was a good one then, cheap drunk that I am. But I think it’s a good idea now, too. And he’s really doing it. He never talks about it, but he’s gotten very reserved and a little mystical, so I assume he’s going strong. He’s very low in his weight class, so I imagine he’s fasting most of the time. That’s one reason I cleaned up on him so bad. I don’t know exactly how Kuch plans to work his vision quest. Indian kids would get the advice of some older guy about what to do. The older guy, who had been on his vision quest already, would tell the kid to go to a hill outside the camp, or if there were no hill, to someplace far away. There the kid would fast and talk to the Everywhere Spirit until he saw a vision or until the Everywhere Spirit talked back. Then he’d return to camp and discuss what he’d felt and seen. I don’t think the word “vision” meant strictly that you saw something. Although you might talk with a coyote or ride over the earth on a white buffalo, you might not “see” anything. I take the word more in a philosophical way. Like the way you see yourself in the world. That’s the idea of it all: to discover who you are and who your people are and how you fit into the circle of birth and growth and death and rebirth. I can see how you could get pretty far inside yourself sitting naked and hungry and alone on some mountain for a couple days and nights. Storm, in that book Seven Arrows , says an Indian kid would come back from his vision quest and explain what he saw to his adviser; then the adviser would interpret the visions and tell the kid how they revealed his true character and the way the course of his life should run. One of the reasons Kuch might be waiting is to give himself time to acquire the wisdom to interpret for himself. That’s probably an okay idea. Indian men would go on a vision quest when their medicine was going sour and they needed to change their lives. After they had gotten wisdom from their first vision quest they could interpret later ones for themselves. Kuch is pretty smart about using wrestling season like a sweat lodge. You’re eating pretty well—which is to say damn little and every bit of it real food—and you’re in pretty fair shape. The wrestling room is always like a sauna bath and if you get in a good practice you can feel really cleaned out. Sometimes you can even see visions if you get beat around enough.

• From Martin Luther (2016)

  After Florence, Luther and his companion journeyed through Siena, and then, sometime at the end of December, they arrived at that certain spot on the ancient Via Cassia when their eyes at last fell upon their journey’s end: the great and fabled city of the popes, the Eternal City, the city of the Seven Hills, and, most notably for Luther, the city where untold thousands had been cruelly murdered for their Christian faith, Saints Peter and Paul most famously among them. And in a few days with his Saxon eyes he would see their ancient bones. At this moment, Luther fell to his knees, prostrated himself on the cold ground, and said, “Be greeted, thou holy Rome, truly holy because of the holy martyrs, dripping with their blood.”4 Luther would stay in Rome for a month, lodging either at the residence of the head of the papal representatives whom they had come to see or nearby in the monastery of Santa Maria del Popolo. History does not tell us which. We do know, however, that their only reason for making this round-trip journey of sixteen hundred miles on foot produced a veritable goose egg of results. Egidio of Viterbo, who was Staupitz’s superior and who had ordered that the monasteries be combined in the first place, flatly refused to hear the case. So officially speaking, Luther and his companion had walked eight hundred miles for nothing. In any case, Luther makes no mention of this crucial aspect of the journey. But the spiritual opportunities in Rome were something else altogether, and of these he would speak throughout his life. Access to such eternal riches was without parallel in this world. Inasmuch as it was the very seat of the faith, Rome presented untold opportunities for spiritual advancement, which was of course why so many made the arduous trek. Once there, one would hardly know where to begin and what to do first. Positively required for any ambitious pilgrim was a single-day marathon in which one did not imbibe a morsel of food while visiting all seven of the city’s principal churches, the final of which was of course St. Peter’s, where one would attend Mass. Luther was terribly excited at the many possibilities. Perhaps, here in Rome, God had opened the door for him at last to advance in his quest for holiness, to move past the crippling Anfechtungen that kept him perpetually mired at the place of hopelessness where he had begun.

• From Martin Luther (2016)

  The previous April the bishop had finally released Luther from his earlier promise to hold back from publishing his longer explanation of the theses—titled Resolutions—but after Luther had returned from Heidelberg, he needed time to polish this essay, so it was not until well into August that it appeared in print. Luther sent the publication to the bishop and with tremendous and obviously earnest humility said that it was entirely up to the bishop to delete whatever he wished or to destroy the whole piece of writing altogether. He was still confidently expecting that the church would know that he was a humble monk trying only to serve God’s purposes and help Mother Church. He even wrote that if what he had written was not in the spirit of Christ, it should be destroyed. Luther then mailed a copy of Resolutions to Staupitz with a long letter asking him—as the head of the Augustinian order—to forward the document to the pope in Rome. Indeed, the entirety of Resolutions was Luther’s way of trying to make the case directly to the pope, over the heads of his parochially minded—and now he saw nasty and fanged—opponents. He made clear that he in no way wished to undermine the authority of the pope and the church. On the contrary, it was because he feared that the abuses of the indulgence preachers were doing that very thing that he was acting as he was. Luther then went at least one extra mile and dedicated the work to Pope Leo X himself. He made it clear that he knew his own name had been much sullied in the pope’s hearing but said that he trusted Christ would lead the pope in understanding the vital matter before him. He also explained that it was never his wish that the Ninety-five Theses be widely distributed as they were, but because that had happened and because of all that had transpired as a result, he felt an obligation to speak out—“as a goose among swans”—and now he was doing so. So here, in the late summer of 1518, ten months after posting the Ninety-five Theses, Luther was still hopeful of a happy reception of all he had to say. He had at last made his case directly to the Holy Father, and whereas he was deeply humble, he made no concessions about what was quite clear to him. He knew that reform must happen in the church, and as far as he was concerned, he was doing his solemn duty as a doctor of the church in presenting his findings. His faith and courage to stand as he did at this juncture—somehow combining both deep humility and an almost arrogant boldness—were something to behold. On August 28, he wrote to Spalatin,

• From Martin Luther (2016)

  The End of HistoryIn the end, what Luther did was not merely to open a door in which people were free to rebel against their leaders but to open a door in which people were obliged by God to take responsibility for themselves and free to help those around them who could not help themselves. No longer could we complain that we were forced to accept the poor spiritual or governmental leadership of those in authority over us. On the contrary, we now had not only the freedom but the responsibility to take these things into our own hands, trusting only in God. So what Luther did was usher the West into its maturity. What this further did—as Luther foresaw and passionately hoped—was encourage people to depend the more on God, to deepen their relationship with him personally, and to increase their knowledge of his Scriptures; else how could they justify their dissent? This was how Luther had done it. He knew there was no substitute for this and that it was far better that someone try to understand God and truth with the possibility of getting some things wrong than to depend on others to understand these things. Freedom with God, with the possibility of growth and death, was better than the safe fetters of childhood. So here we stand. We face the serious questions history continues to ask of us and do our best to answer them, knowing the stakes are high: When does liberty become license and oppression? When does freedom bleed across the invisible border into forced ideology? When does pluralism become its own oppressive monolithic ideology? And so we go forward, sometimes still getting things wrong, and yet this great dance between truth and freedom continues as it has done and as it must and will. It may sometimes seem more a battle than a dance; nonetheless, in the end these two parts of a larger whole keep going round and round, in the process circling inexorably toward that happy day when the two will be one—and not just in the mind of God but in history too. Maranatha. [image file=image_rsrc6M2.jpg] A close-up of Lucas Cranach the Elder’s December 1521 portrait of Luther as “Junker George.” [image file=image_rsrc6M3.jpg] Cranach’s portrait of Luther’s parents, Hans (left) and Margarethe (right), painted during their visit to Wittenberg in 1527. [image file=image_rsrc6M4.jpg] The oldest known rendering of Jan Hus being burned at the stake. It is featured in an illuminated bible from 1429, only fourteen years after Hus’s death. [image file=image_rsrc6M5.jpg] The very spot at which Luther took his historic stand at Worms. The German reads: “Here stood Martin Luther before emperor and state.” [image file=image_rsrc6M6.jpg] The German reads: “In this house, Dr. Martin Luther was born the tenth of November, 1483.” [image file=image_rsrc6M7.jpg] A stone memorializing the place outside the village of Stotternheim where Martin Luther vowed to become a monk in 1505. [image file=image_rsrc6M8.jpg] A portrait of Emperor Charles V by Barend van Orley.

• From Martin Luther (2016)

  Another reason for his fearlessness in moving forward was that around 1520 Luther became convinced that God himself was compelling him to continue on this bold—and some thought reckless—path. Luther believed that as much harm as might be caused, in the end the truth nonetheless must prevail. He understood it was all a wild gamble, but Luther’s confidence that the truth would win in the end was clear. He seemed to intuit that free competition and freedom itself were not only healthy but somehow a necessary part of the nature of God’s truth. But we should ask, on what basis might someone five hundred years ago think competition should tilt in a truthward direction? One argument is that if the universe was indeed created and is now sustained by the God of truth, then perhaps if it is given a level playing field of competition, the truth will always prevail. In other words, God has stacked the deck. Perhaps if we do not risk losing, we cannot actually win. Perhaps freedom is our only chance to find truth. If so, then we must allow argument and dissent and debate. Our modern era surely believes this, and less than a century after Luther’s death one of his spiritual descendants, John Milton, eloquently argued along these lines in his landmark essay Areopagitica. Today we take this for granted, as we take so much of what Luther dared; indeed, so for granted do we take them that we certainly don’t remember with whom they originated. Problems with PluralismLuther knew that an open debate on indulgences would be a good thing for the church and society. So he pushed for it with everything he had, although of course he never got that debate, which led to all the troubles that followed. But it seems clear that Luther never thought much past this initial battle. What would happen when others rebelled against church teaching in ways Luther himself disagreed with? This was the question he had not anticipated. So he was surprised and very upset at having to deal with Karlstadt and Müntzer and then with Zwingli and all the others. He had never anticipated that his ideas would lead not merely away from falsehoods and back to truth but to pluralism, and from within his own ranks too. But this was the door he had opened. How Luther dealt with these dissents on his other flank is much of the story of this book. How should one judge among competing ideas? It was one thing to criticize those in Rome for how they dealt with his own dissent, but was Luther up to establishing a general standard by which everyone should deal with dissent? Did how one debated and battled for truth matter, or was the thing that mattered only that the right view won? Clearly Luther didn’t believe the latter. But he had been too busy to think through the details and essentially made up his responses to this as he went along.

• From Martin Luther (2016)

  The Peasants’ War and the Limits of LibertyIt only made sense that once Luther had freed liberty from its cave, the thing would fly about and cause trouble. Liberty itself did not know its own limits. It knew it did not believe it should be crushed into nonexistence in a cave, but once it was out of that cave, it did not know how far it was permitted to fly before it would kill itself. Luther was himself puzzling over this. In To the Christian Nobility, he had made clear that Christians were free, but he also made it clear that their freedom made them duty-bound to behave well toward others. Christian truth was eleven parts paradox out of ten. This was its essentially mysterious and glorious nature. So the question was, at what point did the government’s authority over people cease? Whenever the true Gospel of Christ comes into history, slaves are freed and injustices are made right. The abolitionist and civil rights movements in the United States attest to that. When people know that they are free, they begin to demand that the government treat them as such. But how far can those demands go, and in what way can people make those demands without falling back on selfishness and violent force? This is the question that in the last century captured the minds of such figures as Gandhi, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, and Martin Luther King Jr. So for some years the peasants had been making demands and expressing their grievances, but the advent of Luther’s teaching—the advent of the Gospel—gave a further and deeper and more explicit justification to their views. In 1431, at the Council of Basel, the document known as “Emperor Sigismund’s Reformation” declared, “Therefore everyone knows that he who claims his fellow Christian as property is no Christian. He is against Christ and nullifies all God’s commandments. God has freed all Christians and released them from all bonds.”20 So this coalescing revolt in February 1525 produced a document called “The Twelve Articles,” which in obviously Christian terms laid out the case of the peasant class. It grounded their requests in divine law, and the authors clearly felt free to ask their rulers to behave justly under this law, which governed them all. Peace to the Christian reader and the grace of God through Christ: There are many evil writings put forth of late which take occasion, on account of the assembling of the peasants, to cast scorn upon the gospel, saying, “Is this the fruit of the new teaching, that no one should obey but that all should everywhere rise in revolt, and rush together to reform, or perhaps destroy altogether, the authorities, both ecclesiastic and lay?” The articles below shall answer these godless and criminal fault-finders, and serve, in the first place, to remove the reproach from the word of God and, in the second place, to give a Christian excuse for the disobedience or even the revolt of the entire peasantry.

• From Martin Luther (2016)

  So the image in our collective minds of Luther audaciously pounding the truth onto that door for the world and the devil to see is a fiction. It implies that the man doing this heroically understood that it could lead to his excommunication and probable horrific death by fire and that it was the first shot in a war to upend this devilish system that was as deeply entrenched as a mountain range. But this is very far from the truth. Luther hadn’t the slightest inkling of these things when he wrote and posted his theses, nor when he wrote and sent his letter to Albrecht of Mainz. So the venerable image of Luther posting truth onto the front-page of history is one that can come into focus only retroactively. Apart from what was to happen as a result of these things in the years and decades and centuries to come, that image can make no sense. In fact, it began to make sense only decades later, when Melanchthon recalled it, although, as we have said, he was not yet in Wittenberg when it happened, and was really only recounting the recollections of others who had been there. So when he did, he was speaking in the way so many of us do when remembering things: we aren’t telling an untruth but conflating things in a way that is not perfectly and literally accurate, specifically to make a larger point, and, as good fiction does, to tell a greater truth. To be sure, in doing what he did, Luther hoped to effect change and be thanked by the powers that were. Most of all, he wanted to be recognized by God for doing what any responsible teacher of God’s truth would have done. Indeed, in the years to come, Luther often said that he was a “doctor” who was “sworn” to teach the truth, so there was no other course for him. He felt that he was doing something good, something that the pope and others would surely recognize as such. They were not his adversaries—not yet—and he was a faithful monk in the only church in Western Christendom. And he could not himself conceive of things snowballing as they would soon do. So, on the day he posted his letter and on the day he posted his theses, he had no idea what dark forces he would rouse from their slumbers.

• From Martin Luther (2016)

  Be a sinner and sin boldly, but believe and rejoice in Christ even more boldly, for he is victorious over sin, death, and the world. As long as we are here [in this world] we have to sin. This life is not the dwelling place of righteousness, but, as Peter says, we look for new heavens and a new earth in which righteousness dwells. It is enough that by the riches of God’s glory we have come to know the Lamb that takes away the sin of the world. No sin will separate us from the Lamb, even though we commit fornication and murder a thousand times a day. Do you think that the purchase price that was paid for the redemption of our sins by so great a Lamb is too small?26 Luther was hardly saying that Melanchthon should try to sin, as many have misinterpreted this quotation, but that he should forget about trying not to sin, because in the end this was not possible. He must understand that in all that we do, we will doubtless sin—because we are sinners—but if our faith is in Christ, who has already defeated sin and paid for our sins on the cross, we are redeemed. Luther hoped that Melanchthon could put away his fussy academic concerns and simply lead, even if he would not do so perfectly, but his hopes along these lines were certainly in vain. Melanchthon during these months was also heavily under the sway of Zwilling’s preaching—which by all accounts was extremely powerful and compelling, to the point that he was called a “second Luther”—so it seemed that the only thing that could help the situation was for Luther himself to come back and see for himself what was going on. Luther had tried to have Melanchthon installed as the main Wittenberg preacher back in September. He knew that if Melanchthon were not preaching, things might go wobbly at this crucial time, and of course he was quite right. Melanchthon’s skills as a preacher were superb, and any idea that someone must not preach simply because he was not ordained no longer made sense. It was theologically erroneous, and now, if ever, was the time for the non-ordained Melanchthon to take the pulpit and steady the tippy canoe through his preaching and leading. In a letter to Spalatin, Luther made the case:

• From Lit: A Memoir (2009)

  But Dev has slipped off his other dress shoe and run in stocking feet to join his noisy pals in their game. The bull’s-eye he hits is original sin. We are a hard-to-sell people—so venal and nuts that we’ll crowd into the Coliseum, jubilant to see people hacked to death or devoured by beasts. Or we’ll sit drooling before comparably horrific TV images. Only a crucifixion is awful enough to compel public imagination . Sitting there, I remember what Dev said to me after baptism: We belong to a great big family . However saccharine that sounds, it’s starting to seem true to me—on good days—not just in church, either. The way stick figures show our essential skeletons, so too each skeleton is a cross buried inside. Over time, it’ll come out to show who we’re actually kin to.

• From Come As You Are (2015)

  It’s about a cartoon panda named Po, who becomes a kung fu master through diligent effort, the support of his teacher, and the wisdom of the Dragon Scroll, which contains “the key to limitless power”—in other words, the secret ingredient. When Po first looks at the scroll, he is disappointed to find that there is nothing written on it. It’s a mirror—it reflects his own face. And then comes his epiphany: “There is no secret ingredient. It’s just you.” So. One more time, for the record: Yes, you are normal. In fact, you’re not just normal. You’re amazing. Beguiling. Courageous. Delectable. All the way down to yawping and zesty. Your body is beautiful and your desires are perfect, just as they are. The secret ingredient is you. The science says so. And now you can prove it. appendix 1: therapeutic masturbationIf you are experiencing frustration around orgasm—whether you’re learning to orgasm, learning to orgasm with a partner, or learning to have more control over your orgasms—I offer these instructions. Find your clitoris (instructions in chapter 1). Create a great context. You can use your worksheets from chapter 3 to help with this. In general, it’ll be a context where you have no concern about being interrupted for about thirty minutes, where you feel safe and private and undistracted by outside worries. Touch your body and notice how that feels. Touch your feet and legs and arms and hands and neck and scalp. At first, when you’re learning to have an orgasm, stop here. Spend your thirty minutes just doing this. Do it a few times a week for a couple weeks. Gradually incorporate your breasts, lower abdomen, inner thighs. Now stimulate your clitoris indirectly. The most indirect stimulation is simply to think about your clitoris. Just give it quiet, loving attention. Try rocking or rotating your hips, to bring your attention to your pelvis. You may or may not notice some emotions emerging as you attend to your clitoris. That’s normal. Allow any feelings and practice feeling affectionate and compassionate toward yourself, your genitals, and all those feelings. When you feel ready (and you may not feel ready for days or weeks—that’s okay), move to “distal” stimulation, which means indirect, roundabout stimulation. Try any of these, or whatever else feels right: Gently pinch your labia between your thumbs and forefingers, stretch the labia out, and tug from side to side. This will put very indirect pressure on the clitoris and move the skin over the clitoris (the clitoral hood). With your palm over your mons, press down a little and pull upward, toward your abdomen. Again, this will put gentle pressure on the clit and move the skin around it. Try different pressures, different speeds of tugging (e.g., one long slow tug, several quick tugs in a row), or rotating your palm in a circle.

• From Anxiety at Work: 8 Strategies to Help Teams Build Resilience, Handle Uncertainty, and Get Stuff Done

  The hopeful news this book offers is that leaders of teams can adopt a set of eight simple practices we’ve identified that can greatly reduce the anxiety their people are feeling. Using these practices and the lessons throughout the book will help any leader convey that they genuinely care about those they are privileged to lead—sending them home each night feeling a little more valued, listened to, and included. The examples from leaders we’ve worked with will show the results can be profound. As we all adjust to a world deeply affected by the coronavirus pandemic, with heightened sensitivity that even the most successful organizations with solid growth plans and seemingly secure markets may face sudden upheaval at any time, these methods for nurturing employee resilience are needed now more than ever. Eight StrategiesWe have spent twenty years coaching individual managers and their teams about how to improve the work experience and organizational culture. Our research partners have helped us survey more than one million employees over the last decade, and we’ve seen powerful effects can be achieved by making easily implemented adjustments in how leaders manage. To assist specifically with the pressing challenges of rising anxiety levels, we’ve taken a deep dive into the science of what provokes anxiety in order to identify the management practices that have the greatest capacity to relieve it. From Adrian: My passion for this project has been fueled by my son, Anthony, who has helped write this book, investing it with rich perspective from one who has struggled intensely with the problem. Tony has suffered from severe anxiety since he was a child, but he was nonetheless able to graduate with honors from university as a biotechnology major. He excelled in tough classes like organic chemistry, physics, and bioinformatics, all while working part-time in an NIH-funded genetics lab and as a teaching assistant. We had many conversations throughout his undergraduate years about times when he felt he had become disconnected from his job or classes, despite his passion for the subjects and the experiments being conducted. Notwithstanding many late nights of studying and a passion to work for months at a time with no weekends off, he would now and then talk about how he felt he was going nowhere. In retrospect, these conversations screamed the duck syndrome. Many of our talks became reference points that showed up all too often in the stories told to us by workers who have recounted their anxiety. As Adrian and Chester have discussed things with Anthony, seeking deeper insight into what has enabled him to consistently achieve, we realized that in working with someone with anxiety, we could look to help build resilience in a set of specific ways. That was a lightbulb moment that set the three of us on this quest.

• From Martin Luther (2016)

  That day Luther presented his “Theology of the Cross,” which stipulated the fundamental idea that we cannot reason our way to God. The passage in Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians 1:23 sums it up: “But we preach Christ crucified, to the Jews a stumbling block, and to the Greeks foolishness.”13 Luther might well have specified that the Greek he had in mind most of all was that fatiguing jackanapes Aristotle. But the point was that we can reason only so far. At some point, we come to an end and are stuck. It is at this point that we must stand and wait for God’s revelation to come to us. God must condescend to speak to us. If he does not, we have no hope. We are alone at the end of all human capability and logic, looking up. This view of course presented a challenge to the proponents of Scholasticism who were present, but what was most significant that day was that some of the younger participants seemed to understand it. Martin Bucer and Johannes Brenz were two young men who that day would become deeply enamored of Luther and his new theology and who would do their part in carrying it and its implications into their parts of the empire. Luther saw that his own colleagues and elders had a much more difficult time seeing what he was trying to communicate, deeply entrenched as they were in Scholasticism. “My theology is a pain in the neck for the Erfurters,” he said.14 He tried hard to bring his former professors Trutfetter and Usingen around to his thinking but failed. There was no invective whatever in his communications with them. He was moderate and sincere and respectful. Still, he never seemed to get anywhere in his dialogue with them. Prierias Takes the CaseMeanwhile, all of the dust that had been kicked up in Germany during these months had finally blown south to Rome, where there was much coughing, choking, and gagging. Who was this upstart German monk, and how had he dared to say such outrageous things against the pope and the church? Of course Luther hadn’t said a third of what he was purported to have said, but whatever he had said, he must in any case be called to give a full accounting of himself and his outrageous statements. Archbishop Albrecht had sent the theses to Rome about two months after he had received them, but news traveled more quickly in those days than we can suppose, and because the theses had been published in a number of cities and were making their way around Europe, we cannot know when the first copies got to the Vatican, nor just what perversions of the originals the rumor mill had been grinding.

• From Martin Luther (2016)

  Toward the end of their conversation, the archbishop asked Luther whether he himself might propose a solution; Luther almost offhandedly replied that the only thing he could think of was what Gamaliel had said in Acts 5, to “let the future decide” whether Luther and what he preached was of God or not. Luther was referring to that passage in which the Jewish religious leaders in Jerusalem had become furious that Peter and the apostles refused to stop preaching about Jesus and wanted to put them to death. But Gamaliel, who was one of the most respected of them, counseled that they be left alone. “Let them go!” he said. “For if their purpose or activity is of human origin, it will fail. But if it is from God, you will not be able to stop these men; you will only find yourselves fighting against God.”5 So Luther was comparing himself to the early apostles, who were also persecuted, and asking that he be allowed to continue doing what he was doing. In addition, he asked that the archbishop simply allow him to depart Worms gracefully. After this meeting, Luther was determined to take a well-earned powder, but Spalatin informed him he was not yet free to go. Then, on the evening of the next day, the twenty-fifth, von der Ecken and two other men visited Luther to inform him what had been decided. Von der Ecken said that because of his unrepentant attitude the emperor would indeed be taking action against him. Therefore Luther must be back at Wittenberg within twenty-one days. More important, during that time, he was forbidden to preach and even to write. They especially didn’t want Luther to write an account of what he had experienced at Worms, which would likely stir up further dissent. The emperor granted Luther safe-conduct during this time. That was all. Luther’s response was cheerful: “As it pleases the Lord; blessed be the name of the Lord!”6 He knew that he was free, that he had done what he needed to do, and that God would do the rest. What that was, was God’s business. He agreed to obey all that had been asked of him and even shook von der Ecken’s hand in parting.

• From Martin Luther (2016)

  One thing I beg of you: for Christ’s mercies, do not indiscriminately believe the accusations that are made against either Wenceslas [Linck] or me. You say that my teachings are praised by those who patronize brothels, and that my recent writings have given great offense. I am not surprised or afraid of this. Certainly we have done nothing here other than publicize the pure Word among the people without [creating] a disturbance, and this we are [still] doing. Both the good and the bad are making use of the Word; [and] as you know, it is not in our power to control [how they use it]. . . . We will do what Christ predicted when he said that his angels would gather out of his kingdom all causes of offense. My Father, I must destroy that kingdom of abomination and perdition which belongs to the pope, together with all his hangers-on. He [Christ] is doing this without us, of course, without the help of a human hand, solely through the Word. The Lord knows the end of it. The matter is beyond our power of comprehension and understanding. Therefore there is no reason why I should delay until someone is able to understand it. Because of the greatness of God, it is most fitting that there should arise proportionately great disturbance of minds, great causes of offense, and great monstrosities. Do not let all these things disturb you, my Father. I am very hopeful. You can see in these things God’s counsel and his mighty hand. Remember how from the beginning my case has always seemed to the world to be terrible and intolerable, yet it has grown stronger day by day. It will also prevail over that which you so greatly fear; just wait a little while. Satan is feeling his wound; this is why he is raging this way, and throwing everything into confusion. But Christ, who has begun this work, will tread him under foot, and all the gates of hell will strive against Christ in vain. . . . I am daily challenging Satan and his armor all the more, however, so that the Day of Christ may be hastened in which he will destroy the Antichrist. Farewell, my Father, and pray for me. Dr. [Hieronymus Schurff], Rector Amsdorf, and Philip send their greetings. . . . Yours, Martin Luther19

• From Anxiety at Work: 8 Strategies to Help Teams Build Resilience, Handle Uncertainty, and Get Stuff Done

  Six months into the job, we were heartened: Larry Culp was quoted from his appearance on Mad Money on CNBC in the CNBC article “GE Will Be Transparent about Challenges in Its Turnaround Plan, CEO Larry Culp says,” by Tyler Clifford, March 14, 2019. by 2013, executives at AT&T: The account of AT&T was chronicled from the Harvard Business Review article “AT&T’s Talent Overhaul,” by John Donovan and Cathy Benko, October 2016. Evidence on the value of frequent check-ins: The BetterWorks data was quoted from the Fast Company article “Why the Annual Performance Review Is Going Extinct,” by Kris Duggan, October 20, 2015. According to a Leadership IQ survey of thirty thousand people: The survey is quoted from the Forbes article “Fewer Than Half of Employees Know if They’re Doing a Good Job,” by Mark Murphy, September 4, 2016. When Lutz Ziob was general manager of Microsoft Learning: Lutz Ziob’s story was told to us by Liz Wiseman and confirmed by Ziob. more than half of workers say their managers become more closed-minded: That more than half of managers become more controlling during crisis is from the Harvard Business Review article “When Managers Break Down Under Pressure, So Do Their Teams,” by David Maxfield and Justin Hale, December 17, 2018. This is such an important concept that “Bias for Action”: Amazon’s principle of “Bias for Action” was found on aboutamazon.com under “Our Leadership Principles.” according to Forbes, nine out of ten managers: The statistic that managers shy away from giving feedback is from the Forbes article “Today’s Workers Are Hungry for Feedback; Here’s How to Give It to Them,” by G. Riley Mills, September 27, 2019. 65 percent of today’s workers feel shortchanged: The statistic that employees want more feedback is from the Forbes article “65% of Employees Want More Feedback (So Why Don’t They Get It?),” by Victor Lipman, August 8, 2016. A leader who was effective at this kind of upward communication: James Rogers’s story was taken from the Harvard Business Review article “Leadership Is a Conversation,” by Boris Groysberg and Michael Slind, June 2012. Chapter 3: How to Turn Less into More Brandon Webb passed the challenge: Webb is quoted, and information gleaned on the Navy SEALs, from the Observer.com article “Bulletproof Mind: 6 Secrets of Mental Toughness from the Navy SEALs,” by Charles Chu, November 25, 2016, and from interviews with Dr. Rita McGrath. global staffing firm Robert Half showed: The 91 percent statistic on burnout is from the Inc. article “In a New Study, 90 Percent of Employees Admit to Feeling Burned Out. Here Are 3 Ways to Successfully Manage It,” by Michael Schneider, September 24, 2019. As Adam Grant of the Wharton School: Dr.

• From Anxiety at Work: 8 Strategies to Help Teams Build Resilience, Handle Uncertainty, and Get Stuff Done

  They want validation, not growth. Leaders can continue to patiently try to enroll these folks in the coaching process, but at some point we have to decide if they are the right fit for their roles. In this case, our uncollaborative worker was eventually “remixed” after team member complaints grew too loud to ignore (by then we had a new CEO). Yet despite the uncoachable out there, we must persist in helping our people excel and thrive. Feedback—both positive and constructive—is necessary to developing mental toughness and resilience in team members. Constructive feedback is vital because it clarifies expectations, builds confidence that people can improve, and helps team members learn from and recover from mistakes (which we all make). It’s also worth noting that with time, these conversations become less uncomfortable. When it’s the norm in a team, people don’t take correction as personally. It’s just a part of the way the group runs, which is why these one-on-ones should be positive and genuinely constructive, not intense or awkward. Putting the Methods Together Doria Camaraza is senior vice president and general manager of the American Express Service Centers in Fort Lauderdale, Florida; Mexico City, Mexico; and Buenos Aires, Argentina. She has led a very large team of thousands of call center professionals through more than a decade of perpetual change and uncertainty. One of the best leaders we have worked with, Camaraza attempts to be transparent about situations facing the volatile credit card industry and commits to her people that she’ll inform them as soon as she knows something may be changing. A few of the formal values she encourages her leadership team to live by include: “We communicate openly, honestly, and candidly”; “We seek solutions and not blame”; and “We try to involve people in decisions that affect them.” Camaraza shares tough news, but also gives an ample amount of hope. She explains to her employees why the company maintains a proprietary operation rather than outsourcing to a third-party call center. She lets them know what they need to maintain in terms of timeliness, accuracy, and cost. Leaders often shy away from discussing hard truths. They fear that such a discussion might dishearten their workers or cause them to bolt. And yet, there’s something exhilarating for employees about facing facts head-on. Such inclusion helps people feel like they are being brought into the inner circle to brainstorm solutions to challenges. Ambiguity either prolongs inevitable bad news or widens the trust gap. Or both. We were particularly affected by a conversation we had with Ryan Westwood, CEO of business management firm Simplus, who spoke about the link between anxiety and uncertainty. “There is an inherent distrust in leaders today,” he said. That is a powerful understanding, and we wish every manager knew how true it is.

• From A History of God (1993)

  The Faylasufs reverted to the older universalist approach, even though they reached it by a different route. We have a similar opportunity today. In our scientific age, we cannot think about God in the same way as our forebears, but the challenge of science could help us to appreciate some old truths. We have seen that Albert Einstein had an appreciation of mystical religion. Despite his famous remarks about God not playing dice, he did not believe that his theory of relativity should affect the conception of God. During a visit to England in 1921, Einstein was asked by the Archbishop of Canterbury what were its implications for theology. He replied: “None. Relativity is a purely scientific matter and has nothing to do with religion.” 15 When Christians are dismayed by such scientists as Stephen Hawking, who can find no room for God in his cosmology, they are perhaps still thinking of God in anthropomorphic terms as a Being who created the world in the same way as we would. Yet creation was not originally conceived in such a literal manner. Interest in Yahweh as Creator did not enter Judaism until the exile to Babylon. It was a conception that was alien to the Greek world: creation ex nihilo was not an official doctrine of Christianity until the Council of Nicaea in 341. Creation is a central teaching of the Koran, but, like all its utterances about God, this is said to be a “parable” or a “sign” (aya) of an ineffable truth. Jewish and Muslim rationalists found it a difficult and problematic doctrine, and many rejected it. Sufis and Kabbalists all preferred the Greek metaphor of emanation. In any case, cosmology was not a scientific description of the origins of the world but was originally a symbolic expression of a spiritual and psychological truth. There is consequently little agitation about the new science in the Muslim world: as we have seen, the events of recent history have been more of a threat than has science to the traditional conception of God. In the West, however, a more literal understanding of scripture has long prevailed. When some Western Christians feel their faith in God undermined by the new science, they are probably imagining God as Newton’s great Mechanick, a personalistic notion of God which should, perhaps, be rejected on religious as well as on scientific grounds. The challenge of science might shock the churches into a fresh appreciation of the symbolic nature of scriptural narrative.

• From A History of God (1993)

  Mystics, as we shall see, also found the notion of emanation more sympathetic than the doctrine of the creation ex nihilo . Far from seeing philosophy and reason as inimical to religion, Muslim Sufis and Jewish Kabbalists often found that the insights of the Faylasufs were an inspiration to their more imaginative mode of religion. This was particularly evident in the Shiah. Although they remained a minority form of Islam, the tenth century is known as the Shii century since Shiis managed to establish themselves in leading political posts throughout the empire. The most successful of these Shii ventures was the establishment of a caliphate in Tunis in 909 in opposition to the Sunni caliphate in Baghdad. This was the achievement of the Ismaili sect, known as “Fatimids” or “Seveners” to distinguish them from the more numerous “Twelver” Shiis, who accepted the authority of twelve Imams. The Ismailis broke away from the Twelvers after the death of Jafar ibn Sadiq, the saintly Sixth Imam, in 765. Jafar had designated his son Ismail as his successor, but when Ismail died young the Twelvers accepted the authority of his brother Musa. The Ismailis, however, remained true to Ismail and believed that the line had ended with him. Their North African caliphate became extremely powerful: in 973 they moved their capital to al-Qahirah, the site of modern Cairo, where they built the great mosque of al-Azhar. The veneration of the Imams was no mere political enthusiasm, however. As we have seen, Shiis had come to believe that their Imams embodied God’s presence on earth in some mysterious way. They had evolved an esoteric piety of their own which depended upon a symbolic reading of the Koran. It was held that Muhammad had imparted a secret knowledge to his cousin and son-in-law Ali ibn Abi Talib and that this ilm had been passed down the line of designated Imams, who were his direct descendants. Each of the Imams embodied the “Light of Muhammad” ( al-nur al-Muhammad ), the prophetic spirit which had enabled Muhammad to surrender perfectly to God. Neither the Prophet nor the Imams were divine, but they had been so totally open to God that he could be said to dwell within them in a more complete way than he dwelt in more ordinary mortals. The Nestorians had held a similar view of Jesus. Like the Nestorians, Shiis saw their Imams as “temples” or “treasuries” of the divine, brimful of that enlightening divine knowledge. This ilm was not simply secret information but a means of transformation and inner conversion. Under the guidance of his da’i (spiritual director), the disciple was roused from sloth and insensitivity by a vision of dreamlike clarity.

• From Lit: A Memoir (2009)

  Come March, after I’ve been praying for a solution to our transportation woes, a professor I’ve met once or twice through mutual friends approaches me in the quad. She’s going to Italy and heard I needed a car. Maybe I could keep hers through the summer; she’d consider it a favor. And that’s how hard that was. Such unearned gifts feed the growing faith that some mystery is carrying me. The snow’s just melting when I take out the fourth credit card I can’t pay—one with a five-hundred-dollar limit and a fat percentage interest rate. That same week the university flies the creative writing profs to New York for a program fund-raiser. Once the dinner’s over, the writers cross the street to the Pierre Hotel to hang out. With its checkerboard floor and ornate armchairs, it’s like entering a Fred Astaire movie. That night Toby and his pals sing in loud harmony the old seventies hit “Helpless,” swaying side to side like a grade-school choir. I’m just finishing my Coke when who should come kneel at my seat but Toby’s agent from almost a year back. Where, she says with both charm and entitlement, is my damn memoir? I’m shocked she remembered me and even more shocked when I hear myself tell her the truth: I’m in the middle of a divorce and haven’t done that much—less than ten pages. She says, Send me a proposal. Maybe we can get you an advance. Here’s where grace comes in. Had I been drinking, I would’ve pretended to know what a proposal was, then lived in crouched fear, maybe trying to find out or not—being too afraid in my drinking form to fail at a proposal. Instead, I hear my mouth spill another truth: I don’t know the first thing about writing a proposal. She waves her hand like it’s the easiest thing in the world, saying, Maybe a hundred pages. Three or four chapters. In a poet’s mind, a hundred pages sounds like two thousand. I haven’t published a hundred pages in twenty years. How long do you think, she asks, before I can get those chapters? My head’s scrambling. I figure when Dev goes to stay with his dad mid-June, I’ll have a month to work, so I say, Mid-July. Great, she says. Then just add a letter saying what else you might put in the book. I must have a stunned look on my face. I’ll call you Monday, she says, and walk you through it. To write the stuff down is no cakewalk, since memories from that time can ravage me. But after I get home, I start getting up mornings at four or five, praying to set down words before Dev comes down. When Dev’s with Warren, I unplug the phone and apply my ass to a desk chair. Some days, I actually hear my daddy telling me stories, almost like he’s risen up to ride through the pages with Mother and our whole wacky herd. Come June, I send the agent pages on a Thursday, and she signs me the following Saturday, has an auction that week, and a few days later—while I’m chopping basil for supper—I hear the overnight envelope with payment hit my porch. In the steamy kitchen, I draw the check out and sit studying it before I even throw pasta in the bubbly water. It’s in no way a massive check, but it’s the biggest I’ve ever seen, and it’s fallen from the sky just in time to get us through the summer, plus making a down payment on a used Toyota. Saying thanks to the invisible forces that brought it, I sit looking at the check. On the table before me, there’s a giant pickle jar Dev’s filled with torn grass and crickets. The bent-legged bugs are whirring to fill the room, one or two trying to climb up the curved glass. Dev bursts in, saying, Mom, let’s set the crickets free tonight. And I tell him that’s just what I was thinking.