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 Martin Luther (2016)

  In 1500, he painted an extraordinary self-portrait. Diirer looked directly at the viewer, his beautiful locks filling the visual space. Twenty-eight years old, the age believed to be most perfect, he adopted a Christlike pose, his fur coat the only hint that this was a sixteenth- century person. This picture was redolent of a religiosity that owed everything to the ideals of the imitation of Christ, the spirituality that permeated the sermons of Staupitz and the sodality of his supporters in Nuremberg. Eleven years later, Diirer included himself in another landmark picture, the All Saints Altar for Nuremberg’s Landauer chapel. It is a painting that has eluded definitive interpretation. It shows the saints, led by St Augustine, while beneath them hovers another celestial group of representatives of all the different social orders, from emperors to peasants. Diirer included himself in the picture as a small figure on a grassy sward on the earth below, holding a cartouche to proclaim that THE CHARIOTEER OF ISRAEL 417 he was the painter. He stands alone, observing the New Jerusalem and the heavenly hosts, to whom the Christian community is joined through prayer. The altarpiece epitomised the devotional life of the old Church — the Church of indulgences, mutual prayer and works — and it was painted for‘a chapel where perpetual Masses were said for the dead. This was the piety that Luther’s Reformation would sweep away. Diirer’s painting of the four apostles, finished in 1528, the year he died, exuded a completely different spirituality. John and Mark are blocks of colour, their solidity conveying the authority of Scripture. Diirer incorporated into the painting quotations from Luther's German Bible of 1522. He also chose not to depict the customary four evangelists, replacing Matthew and Luke with Peter, who embodies the Church, and Paul, whose writings were key to Luther's thought. This was the religion of the Lutheran Bible. The painting was not displayed in church but Diirer donated it to Nuremberg’s town council, in homage to one of the first cities to have introduced the Reforma- tion, in 1524. Like the peasants, Diirer used the word ‘freedom’ to encapsulate Luther’s message. He hoped for a future where all, “Turks, heathens and Calicutts [Indians], may turn to us’. He saw Luther as a man who preached ‘clear and transparent doctrine’, and who helped people become ‘free Christians’.

• From A History of God (1993)

  In this last saying, we can sense the connection between Frank’s dark vision and the rationalist Enlightenment. The Polish Jews who had adopted his gospel had clearly found their religion unable to help them to adjust to their appalling circumstances in a world that was not safe for Jews. After Frank’s death, Frankism lost much of its anarchism, retaining only a belief in Frank as God incarnate and what Scholem calls an “intense, luminous feeling of salvation.”53 They had seen the French Revolution as a sign of God on their behalf: they abandoned their antinomianism for political action, dreaming of a revolution which would rebuild the world. Similarly, the Donmeh who had converted to Islam would often be active Young Turks in the early years of the twentieth century, and many assimilated completely in the secular Turkey of Kemal Atatürk. The hostility that all Sabbatarians had felt toward external observance was in one sense a rebellion against the conditions of the ghetto. Sabbatarianism, which had seemed such a backward, obscurantist religion, had helped them to liberate themselves from the old ways and made them susceptible to new ideas. The moderate Sabbatarians, who had remained outwardly loyal to Judaism, were often pioneers in the Jewish Enlightenment (Haskalah); they were also active in the creation of Reform Judaism during the nineteenth century. Often these reforming maskilim had ideas that were a strange amalgam of old and new. Thus Joseph Wehte of Prague, who was writing in about 1800, said that his heroes were Moses Mendelssohn, Immanuel Kant, Shabbetai Zevi and Isaac Luria. Not everybody could make his way into modernity via the difficult paths of science and philosophy: the mystical creeds of radical Christians and Jews enabled them to work toward a secularism that they would once have found abhorrent by addressing the deeper, more primitive regions of the psyche. Some adopted new and blasphemous ideas of God that would enable their children to abandon him altogether.

• From A History of God (1993)

  The Jews could end the exile of the Shekinah. By the observance of the mitzvot, they could rebuild their God again. It is interesting to compare this myth with the Protestant theology that Luther and Calvin were creating in Europe at about the same time. The Protestant reformers both preached the absolute sovereignty of God: in their theology, as we shall see, there is absolutely nothing that men and women could contribute to their own salvation. Luria, however, preached a doctrine of works: God needed human beings and would remain somehow incomplete without their prayer and good deeds. Despite the tragedy that had befallen the Jewish people in Europe, they were able to be more optimistic about humanity than the Protestants. Luria saw the mission of Tikkun in contemplative terms. Where the Christians of Europe—Catholic and Protestant alike—were formulating more and more dogmas, Luria revived the mystical techniques of Abraham Abulafia to help Jews transcend this kind of intellectual activity and to cultivate a more intuitive awareness. Rearranging the letters of the Divine Name, in Abulafia’s spirituality, had reminded the Kabbalist that the meaning of “God” could not adequately be conveyed by human language. In Luria’s mythology, it also symbolized the restructuring and re-formation of the divine. Hayyim Vital described the immensely emotional effect of Luria’s disciplines: by separating himself from his normal, everyday experience—by keeping vigil when everybody else was asleep, fasting when others were eating, withdrawing into seclusion for a while—a Kabbalist could concentrate on the strange “words” that bore no relation to ordinary speech. He felt that he was in another world, would find himself shaking and trembling as though possessed by a force outside himself.

• From A History of God (1993)

  As they sat beside the rivers of Babylon, some of the exiles inevitably felt that they could not practice their religion outside the Promised Land. Pagan gods had always been territorial, and for some it seemed impossible to sing the songs of Yahweh in a foreign country: they relished the prospect of hurling Babylonian babies against a rock and dashing their brains out.52 A new prophet, however, preached tranquillity. We know nothing about him, and this may be significant because his oracles and psalms give no sign of a personal struggle, such as those endured by his predecessors. Because his work was later added to the oracles of Isaiah, he is usually called the Second Isaiah. In exile, some of the Jews would have gone over to the worship of the ancient gods of Babylon, but others were pushed into a new religious awareness. The Temple of Yahweh was in ruins; the old cultic shrines in Beth-El and Hebron were destroyed. In Babylon they could not take part in the liturgies that had been central to their religious life at home. Yahweh was all they had. Second Isaiah took this one step further and declared that Yahweh was the only God. In his rewriting of Israelite history, the myth of the Exodus is clad in imagery that reminds us of the victory of Marduk over Tiamat, the primal sea: And Yahweh will dry up the gulf of the Sea of Egypt with the heat of his breath, and stretch out his hand over the River [Euphrates] and divide it into seven streams, for men to cross dry-shod, to make a pathway for the remnant of his people … as there was for Israel when it came out of Egypt.53 First Isaiah had made history a divine warning; after the catastrophe, in his Book of Consolation, Second Isaiah made history generate new hope for the future. If Yahweh had rescued Israel once in the past, he could do it again. He was masterminding the affairs of history; in his eyes, all the goyim were nothing more than a drop of water in a bucket. He was indeed the only God who counted. Second Isaiah imagined the old deities of Babylon being bundled onto carts and trundling off into the sunset.54 Their day was over: “Am I not Yahweh?” he asked repeatedly, “there is no other god beside me.”55 No god was formed before me, nor will be after me. I, I am Yahweh, there is no other savior but me.56

• From A History of God (1993)

  Karma bound men and women to an endless cycle of rebirth into a series of painful lives. But if they could reform their egotistic attitudes, they could change their destiny. The Buddha compared the process of rebirth to a flame which lights a lamp, from which a second lamp is lit, and so on until the flame is extinguished. If somebody is still aflame at death with a wrong attitude, he or she will simply light another lamp. But if the fire is put out, the cycle of suffering will cease and nirvana will be attained. “Nirvana” literally means “cooling off” or “going out.” It is not a merely negative state, however, but plays a role in Buddhist life that is analogous to God. As Edward Conze explains in Buddhism: its Essence and Development , Buddhists often use the same imagery as theists to describe nirvana, the ultimate reality: We are told that Nirvana is permanent, stable, imperishable, immoveable, ageless, deathless, unborn, and unbecome, that it is power, bliss and happiness, the secure refuge, the shelter and the place of unassailable security; that it is the real Truth and the supreme Reality; that it is the good , the supreme goal and the one and only consummation of our life, the eternal, hidden and incomprehensible Peace. 32 Some Buddhists might object to this comparison because they find the concept of “God” too limiting to express their conception of ultimate reality. This is largely because theists use the word “God” in a limited way to refer to a being who is not very different from us. Like the sages of the Upanishads , the Buddha insisted that nirvana could not be defined or discussed as though it were any other human reality. Attaining nirvana is not like “going to heaven” as Christians often understand it. The Buddha always refused to answer questions about nirvana or other ultimate matters because they were “improper” or “inappropriate.” We could not define nirvana because our words and concepts are tied to the world of sense and flux. Experience was the only reliable “proof.” His disciples would know that nirvana existed simply because their practice of the good life would enable them to glimpse it. There is, monks, an unborn, an unbecome, an unmade, uncompounded. If, monks, there were not there this unborn, unbecome, unmade, uncompounded, there would not here be an escape from the born, the become, the made, the compounded. But because there is an unborn, an unbecome, an unmade, an uncompounded, therefore, there is an escape from the born, the become, the made, the compounded. 33 His monks should not speculate about the nature of nirvana. All that the Buddha could do was provide them with a raft to take them across to “the farther shore.”

• From Martin Luther (2016)

  Luther had braved the threat of martyrdom, and now others wanted to put the idea of the restoration of the pure Christian Church into practice. Luther’s own increasingly apocalyptic rhetoric added urgency to reform. In May 1521, Melanch- thon and Cranach published their Passional Christi und Antichristi, a set of thirteen paired illustrations by Cranach that contrasted the pomp and grandeur of the Pope with Christ’s humility. A co-operative 210 MARTIN LUTHER venture, the texts were compiled by Melanchthon with the quotations from canon law put together by the Wittenberg jurist Johannes Schwertfeger. First a Latin and then German versions appeared, appealing as much to the unlettered as to the educated. Once seen, the visual contrasts, and the proclamation that the Pope was the Antichrist, could not be forgotten. The pamphlet concluded with a brief tongue-in-cheek explanation that the booklet was not defama- tory because everything in it was in canon law. It was being published for the benefit of Christian folk, to give a handy summary of the basis of ‘spiritual fleshly law’. Its legacy for Lutheran art was to be long- lasting. ‘Antithetical’ treatments of the church of Luther and the church of the Pope would be painted on the walls of the Torgau chapel, and in the castle chapel in Schmalkalden.” Propaganda based on denigra- tion of the Catholic Church, it added further urgency to reform with its message that the Day of Judgement was nearing. Now Gabriel Zwilling began to push for radical change’ in Witten- berg. In his attack on the celebration of private Masses he was supported by Nikolaus von Amsdorf and Justus Jonas, both members of the foundation of All Saints and Luther’s powerful allies. Luther, it seemed, also approved of this move, and in November he wrote De abroganda missa privata (On the Abrogation of the Private Mass), which rejected the idea that the Mass was a sacrifice. The Mass, Luther argued, was not a work that we undertake to please God; rather, it is a sacrament in which we receive God’s grace. This might seem a fine distinction but its effects were shattering. If Masses were not something that needed to be said perpetually to please God, there would be no need for the vast clerical proletariat of Mass-sayers at the many altars, paid to perform that duty for the souls of the departed in order to reduce their time in Purgatory.* At the same time, clergy in Wittenberg were starting to live out the consequences of Luther’s ideas. Zwilling began to encourage his Augustinian brothers to give up their vows and leave the monastery. By the end of October, twelve monks had left and by November another three had gone. They grew their hair, disguising their former tonsures, and they wore everyday clothes. They took up ordinary trades: one became a baker, another a cobbler; another, perhaps from a richer family, became a salt trader.

• From A History of God (1993)

  Yet Yahweh was not an entirely distant deity. In the final days before the destruction of Jerusalem, Ezekiel depicts him fulminating against the people of Israel in a vain attempt to catch their attention and force them to acknowledge him. Israel had only itself to blame for the impending catastrophe. Alien as Yahweh frequently seemed, he was encouraging Israelites like Ezekiel to see that the blows of history were not random and arbitrary but had a deeper logic and justice. He was trying to find a meaning in the cruel world of international politics. As they sat beside the rivers of Babylon, some of the exiles inevitably felt that they could not practice their religion outside the Promised Land. Pagan gods had always been territorial, and for some it seemed impossible to sing the songs of Yahweh in a foreign country: they relished the prospect of hurling Babylonian babies against a rock and dashing their brains out. 52 A new prophet, however, preached tranquillity. We know nothing about him, and this may be significant because his oracles and psalms give no sign of a personal struggle, such as those endured by his predecessors. Because his work was later added to the oracles of Isaiah, he is usually called the Second Isaiah. In exile, some of the Jews would have gone over to the worship of the ancient gods of Babylon, but others were pushed into a new religious awareness. The Temple of Yahweh was in ruins; the old cultic shrines in Beth-El and Hebron were destroyed. In Babylon they could not take part in the liturgies that had been central to their religious life at home. Yahweh was all they had. Second Isaiah took this one step further and declared that Yahweh was the only God. In his rewriting of Israelite history, the myth of the Exodus is clad in imagery that reminds us of the victory of Marduk over Tiamat, the primal sea: And Yahweh will dry up the gulf of the Sea of Egypt with the heat of his breath, and stretch out his hand over the River [Euphrates] and divide it into seven streams, for men to cross dry-shod, to make a pathway for the remnant of his people … as there was for Israel when it came out of Egypt. 53 First Isaiah had made history a divine warning; after the catastrophe, in his Book of Consolation, Second Isaiah made history generate new hope for the future. If Yahweh had rescued Israel once in the past, he could do it again. He was masterminding the affairs of history; in his eyes, all the goyim were nothing more than a drop of water in a bucket. He was indeed the only God who counted.

• From Lit: A Memoir (2009)

  Higher power, I say snidely. Where the fuck have you been? The silence envelops me. There’s something scary there, some blanket of dread around me that feels like God’s perennial absence, his abandonment, if he does exist. (Now I’d call it my deliberately practiced refusal of his presence.) It’s hard to sit in. A few seconds later, I say: Thanks for keeping me sober today. Then I get up. Wait, the sober mind says—that’s trying? You could’ve died last night. I flop back on my knees. And help me. Help. Me. Help me to feel better so I can believe in you, you subtle bastard. Such is my first prayer—a peevish start, tight-lipped, mean of spirit, but a prayer nonetheless. I vow to make it regular, this half-baked prayer. I won’t get on my knees usually. But I will silently say, every morning, Keep me sober . At night, it’s Thanks . That’s all I can stand. I pace around downstairs for a while with skin twisting around my flesh. Had I gotten drunk the night before in front of my students? How much would it cost to get the wheel I’d driven on fixed? Finally, I slip into bed, and Warren stirs as he rarely does. His voice comes up in the dark. Have you been at your group? I’ve been downstairs, I say. I promise, I’m not gonna drink anymore. And he rolls over in silence, which is what I’ve earned.

• From Little Birds (1979)

  I had rarely gone to New York alone. Now I walked the streets, answering all kinds of advertisements. My accomplishments were not very practical. I knew languages but not typewriting. I knew Spanish dancing but not the new ballroom dances. Everywhere I went I did not inspire confidence. I looked even younger than my age and over-delicate, oversensitive. I looked as if I could not bear any burdens put on me, yet this was only an appearance. After a week I had obtained nothing but a sense of not being useful to anyone. It was then I went to see a family friend who was very fond of me. She had disapproved of my mother’s way of protecting me. She was happy to see me, amazed at my decision and willing to help me. It was while talking to her humorously about myself, enumerating my assets, that I happened to say that a painter had come to see us the week before and had said that I had an exotic face. My friend jumped up. “I have it,” she said. “I know what you can do. It is true that you have an unusual face. Now I know an art club where the artists go for their models. I will introduce you there. It is a sort of protection for the girls, instead of having them walk about from studio to studio. The artists are registered at the club, where they are known, and they telephone when they need a model.” When we arrived at the club on Fifty-seventh Street, there was great animation and many people. It turned out that they were preparing for the annual show. Every year all the models were dressed in costumes that best suited them and exhibited to the painters. I was quickly registered for a small fee and was sent upstairs to two elderly ladies who took me into the costume room. One of them chose an eighteenth-century costume. The other fixed my hair above my ears. They taught me how to wax my eyelashes. I saw a new self in the mirrors. The rehearsal was going on. I had to walk downstairs and stroll all around the room. It was not difficult. It was like a masquerade ball. The day of the show everyone was rather nervous. Much of a model’s success depended on this event. My hand trembled as I made up my eyelashes. I was given a rose to carry, which made me feel a little ridiculous. I was received with applause. After all the girls had walked slowly around the room, the painters talked with us, took down our names, made engagements. My engagement book was filled like a dance card.

• From Martin Luther (2016)

  12. Albrecht Dürer, All Saints altarpiece, 1511 (Bridgeman Art Library). I N THE AUTUMN of 1524, the biggest social uprising in the German lands before the era of the French Revolution began. The Peasants’ War started in southwest Germany as a series of local rebellions that gradually joined together, most areas adopting the “Twelve Articles of the Peasants,” drawn up by a furrier and a Lutheran preacher in Memmingen. Each demand, whether for the abolition of serfdom or the free hunting of game, was supported with biblical quotation, and the articles opened with the bold evangelical insistence that every community should be able to call its own pastor to preach the gospel. In the Twelve Articles, the key concepts of the Reformation—“freedom,” “Christ alone,” Scripture as the only authority—were applied to the peasants’ situation, creating a forthright program that found support all over Germany. Print played a powerful role: The articles were rapidly disseminated and they enabled the diverse peasant bands to unite, even though many areas formulated their own local grievances as well. It was not just expedience that caused the peasants to appeal to evangelical ideas: Many monasteries and Church foundations owned land and were among the most rapacious landlords, while the massive monastic tithe barns that stood in so many towns were a visual reminder of their economic power in an agrarian society. Evangelical “brotherhood” and the idea of the freedom of the Christian resonated with peasant insistence on the need for relations between lords and peasants to be regulated by Christian values, not property rights. 1 As the Twelve Articles expressed it in the article on serfdom, “It has hitherto been the custom for the lords to treat us as their serfs, which is pitiable since Christ has redeemed and bought us all by the shedding of his precious blood, the shepherd just as the highest, no one excepted. Therefore it is demonstrated by Scripture that we are free and wish to be free.” 2 Many have claimed that the peasants misunderstood Luther’s ideas, and that they conflated the spiritual elements of his message with their worldly concerns, but Luther’s advocacy of Christian freedom, his robust tone toward rulers with whom he did not agree, and the model of resistance that his stance at Worms represented, were inspirational.

• From Martin Luther (2016)

  There was still room for compromise: The papal emissary Miltitz was hopeful. But Luther was determined not to compromise. As he wrote to Spalatin, if the emperor was going to summon him to Worms just to recant, he would not go; but if he were to be summoned to be condemned as an outlaw and killed, “I would offer myself to go”—the carefully chosen grammatical form ( offeram me venturum ) styling himself as a martyr. 13 In another letter, to an unknown correspondent, he wrote that he had no care for himself, but that the great adversary of Christ, “the universal author and teacher of murders,” was doing everything to destroy him, adding that “my Christ will give me the spirit so that living I shall defy those ministers of Satan and dying I shall be victorious.” In the next breath he returned to more mundane matters, reminding his correspondent that he had not yet sent the money he owed to “your brother Peter, as he told me: make sure you do.” 14 In the midst of it all Luther also found time to answer a query from the seventeen-year-old Duke Johann Friedrich about whether Christ normally slept. The Gospels did not relate absolutely everything that Christ did, Luther explained, but Christ was a natural man and “He certainly prayed, fasted, went to the toilet, preached and did miracles more times than is mentioned in the gospel.” These natural actions pleased the Father just as much as the greatest miracles, he told the young duke: Christ’s humanity was fully physical, encompassing even defecation. 15 Finally on March 26, in Easter Week, the summons arrived in Wittenberg, ordering Luther to appear at Worms to give “information about the doctrines and the books…produced by you.” 16 It did not specify that he had to recant. 17 Luther, who was not a hoarder, chose to keep this document and it would pass down through the family. He knew that this was a historic moment. 18 — L UTHER undertook the journey to Worms setting out on April 2 with a group of friends and supporters. There was the fellow Augustinian every brother was required to take with them (Johannes Petzensteiner was chosen); Peter Suave, a young Pomeranian nobleman; probably Thomas Blaurer, an enthusiastic follower of Luther who was studying at Wittenberg; Luther’s old friend Nikolaus von Amsdorf; and Caspar Sturm, the imperial herald, who had traveled to Wittenberg to summon Luther to Worms—he later became a major supporter of the Reformation. This time Luther did not attempt to walk but traveled in an open carriage, provided by the Wittenberg goldsmith Christian Döring. The Wittenberg town council contributed twenty guilders to Luther’s expenses and his old friend Johannes Lang coughed up a guilder, too, although by the time the travelers reached Gotha, the funds had mostly been spent, as Luther confided to Melanchthon.

• From Martin Luther (2016)

  51 — T HE most beautiful writing from this period is Luther’s On the Freedom of a Christian, which appeared in November 1520. Written in German, it is barely thirty pages long. With delicious irony, Luther wrote it at the same time as a letter of “apology” to Pope Leo, and presented the essay as a gift to the Pope along with the letter. Although the treatise is divided into thirty points—the numerals are usually omitted from modern editions in English—it is not so much a sermon as a comforting devotional tract. 52 There is no polemic or aggression. It is deeply musical, and one can almost hear Luther’s voice conversing with the reader. He begins by stating a paradox: “A Christian is a perfectly free lord of all, subject to none. A Christian is a perfectly dutiful servant of all, subject to all.” 53 32. Martin Luther, Von der freyheyt eynes Christenmenschen, 1520. How can this be? Luther argues that we have a spiritual and a physical nature, but he does not make this distinction in order to denigrate the flesh. Rather, he argues that the inner man should have faith in God, and we cannot arrive at faith through works of the outer man. What clothes we wear, what regulations we observe—none of it matters and it cannot make us acceptable to God. We are free from doing works. Faith concerns the inner man and—using the simile he had employed to explain the Real Presence—just as the iron becomes red hot, uniting with the flame, so our inner self becomes united with faith and with God. As he continues to describe faith, Luther makes a uniquely sixteenth-century comparison. To believe someone is to consider them to be a pious, truthful person, whose word will always be pious and truthful, “which is the greatest honor which one man can do another.” In the kind of honor society in which Luther lived, and in which one’s word was binding and contracts depended on trust, honor was a fundamental value, an economic as well as a moral quality. The biblical law teaches the outer man just how sinful he is, and this recognition is essential before we can arrive at faith. Nothing, no human act, can be free of what Luther calls sin; we cannot, for example, avoid “evil desires.” This is why good deeds cannot make us pleasing to God. As externals, they cannot enter into the realm of “faith.” Luther’s gloomy assessment of human nature actually leads to an uplifting conclusion: If everything we do is tainted with sin, then it also doesn’t matter; that is just how we are, and we cannot make ourselves godly by trying to pile up good deeds.

• From Martin Luther (2016)

  [image "15. Augsburg" file=images/Rope_9780812996203_epub3_062_r1.jpg] [image "15. Augsburg" file=images/Rope_9780812996203_epub3_062_r1.jpg] WHILE LUTHER WAS convinced that he would never convert the sacramentarians, it also became clear that the different wings of the Reformation would have to develop a united political strategy for dealing with the implacable hostility of the emperor, Charles V. Both had to find a means of engaging with the nature of political power and the question of when it could be resisted. Charles was the ruler of an enormous empire, stretching from its heartlands in Spain through Italy to the New World, of which the Holy Roman Empire was just one part. Having ended the Italian Wars, he was now free to return to the situation in Germany—and to defeating the Reformation. Luther’s political theory, formed in 1523 when he wrote Temporal Authority: To What Extent It Should Be Obeyed, propounded that there were two realms: that of God, and that of the world. In the world, Christians must obey secular authorities set over them; they must not resist them, even if they acted unjustly.1 In the realm of God, in contrast, the spiritual reigns, and consciences cannot be coerced.2 This distinction had served Luther well throughout the Peasants’ War: Revolt against established authorities could never be sanctioned despite the justice of the peasants’ grievances. It had freed him to adopt a prophetic stance, admonishing the rulers for their treatment of the peasants while condemning the peasants for rebellion. His position had lasting consequences for the nature of Lutheranism, because his willingness to make compromises with political authorities, even when they were acting in an unchristian manner, provided the theological underpinnings of the accommodation many Lutherans would reach centuries later with the Nazi regime. But now Luther’s Reformation needed protection, and this raised the question of when, if ever, a Christian might resist legitimate authority in defense of religious truth.

• From Martin Luther (2016)

  Another factor in Karlstadt’s enthusiasm for civic ideals may have been his experience of working closely with laypeople, and his conviction that a Christian community truly was being established in the town. He now signed his pamphlets as “A New Layman.” The council’s mandate of January 24, 1522, introducing the Reformation in Wittenberg and reorganizing poor relief in line with its earlier ordinance reflected some of Karlstadt’s views, and may even have been written in part by him, but it was also the result of close cooperation between evangelical preachers and the town’s elite: A group of around thirty people had been meeting daily to draw it up. In addition to supporting the poor, the monies were also to be used to provide cheap loans for newlyweds and deserving craftspeople—a significant extension of the group who stood to benefit from the common chest. Old themes of civic morality joined with new Reformation ideas, as the ordinance thundered against those living “in unmarriage” and insisted that anyone who housed such people should be punished as well. The town brothel, essential in a university town, was to be closed.38 “Masses,” it stated simply, “should not be held otherwise than as Christ instituted them at the Last Supper.” That is, laypeople should receive bread and wine, and the communicant should be allowed to “take the consecrated Host in their hand and put it in their mouth themselves.”39 Finally, three altars were to suffice for the main parish church and all images should be removed—although no date was set for this to take place. The ordinance was issued by “the princely city of Wittenberg.”40 It would not have been possible to draw up such an ordinance without the involvement of Wittenberg’s leading local politicians, both the present and the incoming mayor, Christian Beyer. Its indebtedness to long-established ideas of civic moralism, such as exiling prostitutes and those living in sin, bear the imprint of council values and expertise, and reveal a powerful faction within the council of craftspeople, middling folk, and the town’s elites backing the changes. They must have known that their plans would hardly find favor with the Elector, and yet they were willing to risk his displeasure by submitting them to him in printed form.41

• From Shunned (2018)

  As a child, I was never allowed to watch TV movies like A Charlie Brown Christmas or How the Grinch Stole Christmas ; however, I’d loved reading Dickens and was familiar with the story of Ebenezer Scrooge. Taking our seats, waiting for the show to begin, I scanned the crowd and saw all the families who’d come together. Just in front of me sat a little girl wearing black patent leather shoes, her blond hair falling in ringlets down the back of her lace collar. A sorrowful heat swirled around my heart and throat as I pictured my niece, Sheena, who would have looked much the same if she’d been there with me. I missed my family and knew this was a tradition we would never share. I wasn’t even comfortable telling them I had come. The theater lights dimmed, and the lush velvet curtain opened to reveal another world, beautifully staged. Moment by moment, wonder replaced my sadness as the actors cast their spell over the hushed crowd, carried to another place and time. I was inspired by Scrooge’s redemption, how he claimed a future for himself that was filled with happiness and generosity. I carried that feeling of hope and possibility into my dreams that night. It was as inspiring as any church service I’d ever been to. The office Christmas party was another first. Richard brought all areas of the division together, which totaled a few hundred people. We gathered in the ballroom of a suburban hotel not far from the office and had a buffet dinner, followed by a much-anticipated annual talent show, at which various groups of employees traditionally put on small skits or dressed in costume and lip-synched a pop song. People from all areas of the hierarchy participated, from Richard on down, and I marveled at the spectacle, unable to decide if these people were courageous or fools or both. I can’t say I had the time of my life, but I enjoyed being a part of the mix. I didn’t have to spend the next workday explaining away my absence or telling people why I didn’t celebrate Christmas, because I guess I sort of did now. It was nice to blend in and understand the inside jokes and stories that later became part of the group’s shared history—my history. Steve invited me to spend Christmas Day with his family, and I gladly accepted; I’d met his clan at a summer barbecue and liked them. We decided to exchange gifts in private, before making the one-hour drive to his parents’ home in the western suburbs. I’d heard Steve make a passing comment about wanting something to decorate his fireplace mantel. My gift was a rustic pair of bronze candlestick holders, and he seemed pleased with my choice. When he handed me a gift wrapped in tissue, I could tell right away that it held some sort of fabric. Tearing it open, I found a wool muffler, then gray long underwear.

• From Satyricon (1)

  Eumolpus, who had a deeper insight, turned this state of affairs over in his mind and declared that he was not displeased with a prospect of that kind. I thought the old fellow was joking in the care-free way of poets, until he complained, “If I could only put up a better front! I mean that I wish my clothing was in better taste, that my jewelry was more expensive; all this would lend color to my deception: I would not carry this scrip, by Hercules, I would not I would lead you all to great riches!” For my part, I undertook to supply whatever my companion in robbery had need of, provided he would be satisfied with the garment, and with whatever spoils the villa of Lycurgus had yielded when we robbed it; as for money against present needs, the Mother of the Gods would see to that, out of regard to her own good name! “Well, what’s to prevent our putting on an extravaganza?” demanded Eumolpus. “Make me the master if the business appeals to you.” No one ventured to condemn a scheme by which he could lose nothing, and so, that the lie would be kept safe among us all, we swore a solemn oath, the words of which were dictated by Eumolpus, to endure fire, chains, flogging, death by the sword, and whatever else Eumolpus might demand of us, just like regular gladiators! After the oath had been taken, we paid our respects to our master with pretended servility, and were informed that Eumolpus had lost a son, a young man of great eloquence and promise, and that it was for this reason the poor old man had left his native land that he might not see the companions and clients of his son, nor even his tomb, which was the cause of his daily tears. To this misfortune a recent shipwreck had been added, in which he had lost upwards of two millions of sesterces; not that he minded the loss but, destitute of a train of servants he could not keep up his proper dignity! Furthermore, he had, invested in Africa, thirty millions of sesterces in estates and bonds; such a horde of his slaves was scattered over the fields of Numidia that he could have even sacked Carthage! We demanded that Eumolpus cough frequently, to further this scheme, that he have trouble with his stomach and find fault with all the food when in company, that he keep talking of gold and silver and estates, the incomes from which were not what they should be, and of the everlasting unproductiveness of the soil; that he cast up his accounts daily, that he revise the terms of his will monthly, and, for fear any detail should be lacking to make the farce complete, he was to use the wrong names whenever he wished to summon any of us, so that it would be plain to all that the master had in mind some who were not present. When everything had been thus provided for, we offered a prayer to the gods “that the matter might turn out well and happily,” and took to the road. But Giton could not bear up under his unaccustomed load, and the hired servant Corax, a shirker of work, often put down his own load and cursed our haste, swearing that he would either throw his packs away or run away with his load. “What do you take me for, a beast of burden?” he grumbled, “or a scow for carrying stone? I hired out to do the work of a man, not that of a pack-horse, and I’m as free as you are, even if my father did leave me poor!” Not satisfied with swearing, he lifted up his leg from time to time and filled the road with an obscene noise and a filthy stench. Giton laughed at his impudence and imitated every explosion with his lips, {but Eumolpus relapsed into his usual vein, even in spite of this.}

• From Satyricon (1)

  Death is never far from those who seek him Esteeming nothing except what is rare Love or art never yet made anyone rich Man is hated when he declares himself an enemy to all vice Propensity of pouring one’s personal troubles into another’s ear Whatever we have, we despise VOLUME 4.--ENCOLPIUS, GITON AND EUMOLPUS ESCAPE BY SEA CHAPTER THE NINETY-NINTH. “I have always and everywhere lived such a life that each passing day was spent as though that light would never return; (that is, in tranquillity! Put aside those thoughts which worry you, if you wish to follow my lead. Ascyltos persecutes you here; get out of his way. I am about to start for foreign parts, you may come with me. I have taken a berth on a vessel which will probably weigh anchor this very night. I am well known on board, and we shall be well received.) Leave then thy home and seek a foreign shore Brave youth; for thee thy destiny holds more: To no misfortune yield! The Danube far Shall know thy spirit, and the polar star, And placid Nile, and they who dwell in lands Where sunrise starts, or they where sunset ends! A new Ulysses treads on foreign sands.”

• From Satyricon (1)

  Eumolpus, who had a deeper insight, turned this state of affairs over in his mind and declared that he was not displeased with a prospect of that kind. I thought the old fellow was joking in the care-free way of poets, until he complained, “If I could only put up a better front! I mean that I wish my clothing was in better taste, that my jewelry was more expensive; all this would lend color to my deception: I would not carry this scrip, by Hercules, I would not I would lead you all to great riches!” For my part, I undertook to supply whatever my companion in robbery had need of, provided he would be satisfied with the garment, and with whatever spoils the villa of Lycurgus had yielded when we robbed it; as for money against present needs, the Mother of the Gods would see to that, out of regard to her own good name! “Well, what’s to prevent our putting on an extravaganza?” demanded Eumolpus. “Make me the master if the business appeals to you.” No one ventured to condemn a scheme by which he could lose nothing, and so, that the lie would be kept safe among us all, we swore a solemn oath, the words of which were dictated by Eumolpus, to endure fire, chains, flogging, death by the sword, and whatever else Eumolpus might demand of us, just like regular gladiators! After the oath had been taken, we paid our respects to our master with pretended servility, and were informed that Eumolpus had lost a son, a young man of great eloquence and promise, and that it was for this reason the poor old man had left his native land that he might not see the companions and clients of his son, nor even his tomb, which was the cause of his daily tears. To this misfortune a recent shipwreck had been added, in which he had lost upwards of two millions of sesterces; not that he minded the loss but, destitute of a train of servants he could not keep up his proper dignity! Furthermore, he had, invested in Africa, thirty millions of sesterces in estates and bonds; such a horde of his slaves was scattered over the fields of Numidia that he could have even sacked Carthage! We demanded that Eumolpus cough frequently, to further this scheme, that he have trouble with his stomach and find fault with all the food when in company, that he keep talking of gold and silver and estates, the incomes from which were not what they should be, and of the everlasting unproductiveness of the soil; that he cast up his accounts daily, that he revise the terms of his will monthly, and, for fear any detail should be lacking to make the farce complete, he was to use the wrong names whenever he wished to summon any of us, so that it would be plain to all that the master had in mind some who were not present. When everything had been thus provided for, we offered a prayer to the gods “that the matter might turn out well and happily,” and took to the road. But Giton could not bear up under his unaccustomed load, and the hired servant Corax, a shirker of work, often put down his own load and cursed our haste, swearing that he would either throw his packs away or run away with his load. “What do you take me for, a beast of burden?” he grumbled, “or a scow for carrying stone? I hired out to do the work of a man, not that of a pack-horse, and I’m as free as you are, even if my father did leave me poor!” Not satisfied with swearing, he lifted up his leg from time to time and filled the road with an obscene noise and a filthy stench. Giton laughed at his impudence and imitated every explosion with his lips, {but Eumolpus relapsed into his usual vein, even in spite of this.}

• From Shunned (2018)

  She’d taken to calling me Linda, dear, with a gentle affection that charmed me. My friend Carol had already arrived and had saved me the seat to her right. Carol and I had met some months earlier at a meditation workshop that ran over three consecutive Saturdays. New to meditation, we were eager to share our experiences. We were each at a crossroads in our lives. We were all single and busy, with successful corporate careers. We had stories of love gone wrong but remained hopeful that true love would find us. We thought of ourselves as spiritual seekers. Carol and our other good friend in the group, Kathy, were both lapsed Catholics trying to make peace with a religion that had not kept pace with their values. When Carol and I heard about Paulette’s twelve-week workshop, using principles from The Artist’s Way: A Spiritual Path to Higher Creativity , we signed up right away. Kathy’s work schedule did not allow her to join us, but she enjoyed listening to our updates over scrambled eggs on Sunday. “My mom will be thrilled to hear I’m attending weekly services at the church,” Carol said, her eyes gleaming with mischief. “She doesn’t need to know the priests aren’t involved.” I saw it as my chance to have spiritual communion in a group without participating in organized religion. We used written and experiential exercises inside and outside class and were asked to journal every morning. As the weeks passed, I experienced a deepening sense of safety and saw new possibilities for expressing my creativity. We identified many of our outdated, negative beliefs and made a list of our “crazy-makers” and creative “monsters.” I began to see how all humans express creative flair in the smallest acts, including how we dress or arrange a bouquet of flowers, even through the innovation I brought to problems at work. That led to my thinking about my job as not just a secular endeavor but also a conduit for making a spiritual contribution, not through preaching or imposing my beliefs on others, but through the quality of my interactions and the choices I made in business. Every part of my life could be an expression of my creativity, and I started living in the question of “what do I want to create here, right now, in this moment?” That night in the church meeting room, to lay the groundwork for a class exercise, Paulette asked me to read out loud a paragraph from The Artist’s Way . I cleared my throat and started reading. Points were made about synchronicity, and how much seen and unseen support is available for artistic expression, once we accept the idea that it is natural to create. “Learn to accept the possibility that the universe is helping you with what you are doing. Become willing to see the hand of God and accept it as a friend’s offer to help with what you are doing.

• From Shunned (2018)

  I was going to tell my family that weekend and swore him to secrecy, trusting his discernment. The next day, my parents were attending a meeting at the Kingdom Hall when Todd Sterling approached and started lamenting my move to Chicago. Mom and Dad were stunned by the news and embarrassed to hear it this way. Befuddled, they left early and phoned Lory, who then phoned me in tears. They were angry with Ross and disappointed in me. They put two and two together, realizing my recent “business” trips to Chicago were part of a thoughtful exit strategy. While Mom, Dad, and Lory were all sad to see me move, I made no effort to communicate with Randy, and the others avoided mentioning him. I’d given them a lot to process in a short period of time, throwing myself wholeheartedly into life-altering choices without seeking their advice or needing their help to make anything happen. A moving crew would arrive at my door and handle everything at my new employer’s expense. This left them with only the task of preparing themselves emotionally, and I felt a heavy cloak of despair and resignation come over them. In every sense, I was moving farther away. Brian reluctantly accepted my resignation. “You’re biting off a lot of change at once,” he said. “Divorce, a new job, a new city.” His grave expression showed genuine concern for me. He didn’t know to mention the fourth change: leaving the Witness fold. “If anything changes after you move, and you want to come back, just give me a call.” I squirmed as he spoke, not wanting to think about all the extremes in my life. [image "Images" file=Image00000.jpg] As my family drove me to the airport, less than thirty-six hours before I’d report for my first day at my new job, my hope and longing were bigger than any sense of loss in leaving. While we waited together at the gate, I struggled to find a polite balance between excitement and sadness. When the time came to board the plane, I kissed and hugged everyone goodbye. Lory handed me a letter I was to read on the plane, and two homemade cassettes of all the Kingston Trio albums we’d ever listened to. “In case you get homesick,” she said, then looked down and stepped aside. I took my seat on the plane and grabbed some Kleenex in case an avalanche of emotion struck me, but the tears never came. And now here I was, just one month into my new life, when Steve got this idea for us to do the L.A.T.E. Ride. It wasn’t a competitive race, but the excitement at the starting line was palpable. Columbus Drive and Congress were blocked off from traffic and filled with “gearheads,” as Steve called them.