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 The Pisces (2018)

  When I get back home, maybe Jamie would want me again. What would I do? Maybe dye my hair auburn, start wearing lipstick again, wax my vagina into some sort of formation. I had always been more of a natural woman, and I assumed that Megan the scientist was low maintenance in the pubic realm, but how natural was too natural? I had gotten so natural that I was naturally dead. 8. There was one place on Abbot Kinney that gave me solace, and that was the Mystic Journeys bookstore. I looked in the window and saw the rows of rose quartz crystals. I knew from Googling that rose quartz was said to bring love. Actually, it seemed like most crystals brought something that you wanted. If crystals really did what they said they did, there would probably be no problems in the world. Everyone would have everything they desired, and all would be peaceful, or at least, all the people who sold crystals would be rich, famous, and well-loved. They probably wouldn’t be selling crystals anymore, because they wouldn’t have to. Still, I liked to believe that magic was real. I had to go in. I wasn’t really a hippie, per se. But having grown up with Annika as an older sister, I could get down with the New Age vibes. She followed the Grateful Dead around in college and would send me little items that she bought in the parking lot: Nag Champa incense, a malachite pendulum necklace, a blue glass talisman to keep the evil eye away. Annika had been the only maternal figure in my life since my mother died when I was eleven—totemic maternal and from a distance, but all I had—so I always found New Age culture comforting. This store with its cabinets and shelves of crystals and minerals—amethyst, rose quartz, smoky quartz, pyrite, onyx, apophyllite, rock salt, aqua aura—definitely made magic seem real. The air smelled of sandalwood and amber. You could buy enlightenment from a range of Eastern texts: the Bhagavad Gita, the Yoga Sutras of Patanjali. You could buy healing in a white jasmine pillar candle or protection in a black votive. Capitalist magic. I’d owned enough New Age tchotchkes in my lifetime to know that within a few days of purchase they just seemed like more crap. But as you were shopping, sifting through the stones and their meanings, there was hope that this was a turning point. It was the velocity of buying something that was the high, the potentiality of it. I could capitalist-believe in magic. In the store was hope, and hope was what separated me from the flat expanse of the rest of my life. It was like a line, a gateway that stopped me from being swallowed. I looked at the fliers for all of the different healers. Some did numerology, others Tarot, others Reiki and chakra cleansing.

• From Whipping Girl: A Transsexual Woman on Sexism and the Scapegoating of Femininity (2007)

  So perhaps some of these people (the ones who are less ideologically driven) will one day cast aside their anti-trans views. In the meantime, if we wish to stem the tide of these moral panics and prevent future ones, it’s crucial for us all to learn how to spot hallmarks of the stigma-contamination mindset, so that we can both recognize when others are being driven by it and catch ourselves before we fall down that same rabbit hole. Whenever minority groups are imagined or implied to be “dirty” (contaminated, corrupting, polluting) or “diseased” (contagious, cancerous, degenerate)—and especially when those descriptors are paired with accusations that the group is inherently “dangerous” or “predatory”—those are clear signs that the stigma-contamination mindset is in play. We should also be suspicious whenever members of the dominant/majority group make appeals to “purity,” “vulnerability,” and “safety,” as measures designed to “protect” them will assuredly come at the expense of marginalized outgroups’ safety and well-being. Of course, there is also an ideological component to our current situation. Here in the United States, all of the previously mentioned moral panics stem primarily from one political party that increasingly displays authoritarian or fascist tendencies, and that champions a return to an imagined “great” American past (read: white, Christian, cis-hetero-patriarchal, and “pure”). Trans people’s fates are tied up in a much larger battle that will require alliances across all marginalized groups and among all people who support social justice and democracy. Admittedly, some individuals within this coalition may be antagonistic or skeptical toward trans people, but many support us, and most strongly oppose the right-wing legislative agenda and hate campaigns targeting us. As I said at the start, I cannot say how this particular anti-trans moral panic will end. But what I do know is this: efforts to eliminate trans people will never succeed, because we are a part of natural variation, and we will persist as long as human beings exist. Anti-trans activists may strive to “disappear” us like they did during the twentieth century, but that outcome is no longer possible. Back when I was a trans kid, we were isolated from one another—quarantined, if you will—due to a lack of access to information and reliable ways to communicate with one another. But now we live in a hyperconnected world, and there are countless trans-centered books, artworks, media, and organizations that share our perspectives and trans-related resources. Anti-trans activists may attempt to ban books about us from libraries and censor discussions about us in school settings, but they cannot stop us from finding one another online or elsewhere. Now that we know how many of us there are, we will continue to seek out and learn from one another. Trans people have always been resourceful and resilient, and nobody can take that away from us.

• From History of the Christian Church: The Complete Set of Eight Volumes (1858)

  Our hearts be pure from evil, That we may see aright The Lord in rays eternal Of resurrection light:

• From History of the Christian Church: The Complete Set of Eight Volumes (1858)

  Seven of Gregory’s cardinals broke away from him, and, leaving him at Lucca, went to Pisa, where they issued a manifesto appealing from a poorly informed pope to a better informed one, from Christ’s vicar to Christ himself, and to the decision of a general council. Two more followed. Gregory further injured his cause by breaking his solemn engagement and appointing four cardinals, May, 1408, two of them his nephews, and a few months later he added ten more. Cardinals of the Avignon obedience joined the Roman cardinals at Pisa and brought the number up to thirteen. Retiring to Livorno on the beautiful Italian lake of that name, and acting as if the popes were deposed, they as rulers of the Church appointed a general council to meet at Pisa, March 25, 1409. As an offset, Gregory summoned a council of his own to meet in the territory either of Ravenna or Aquileja. Many of his closest followers had forsaken him, and even his native city of Venice withdrew from him its support. In the meantime Ladislaus had entered Rome and been hailed as king. It is, however, probable that this was with the consent of Gregory himself, who hoped thereby to gain sympathy for his cause. Benedict also exercised his sovereign power as pontiff and summoned a council to meet at Perpignan, Nov. 1, 1408. The word "council," now that the bold initiative was taken, was hailed as pregnant with the promise of sure relief from the disgrace and confusion into which Western Christendom had been thrown and of a reunion of the Church. § 15. The Council of Pisa. The three councils of Pisa, 1409, Constance, 1414, and Basel, 1431, of which the schism was the occasion, are known in history as the Reformatory councils. Of the tasks they set out to accomplish, the healing of the schism and the institution of disciplinary reforms in the Church, the first they accomplished, but with the second they made little progress. They represent the final authority of general councils in the affairs of the Church—a view, called the conciliary theory—in distinction from the supreme authority of the papacy. The Pisan synod marks an epoch in the history of Western Christendom not so much on account of what it actually accomplished as because it was the first revolt in council against the theory of papal absolutism which had been accepted for centuries. It followed the ideas of Gerson and Langenstein, namely, that the Church is the Church even without the presence of a pope, and that an oecumenical council is legitimate which meets not only in the absence of his assent but in the face of his protest. Representing intellectually the weight of the Latin world and the larger part of its constituency, the assembly was a momentous event leading in the opposite direction from the path laid out by Hildebrand, Innocent III., and their successors. It was a mighty blow at the old system of Church government. While Gregory XII.

• From Available: The unfiltered and empowering new memoir for women about sex, dating and divorce after 40 (2021)

  Marriage, three kids, and twenty-seven years after that first kiss in his Volvo, he fell in love with another woman. For several months after finding out, I did little aside from scrape myself off the floor and care for our kids, through my misery and theirs. But then that dismal winter turned into a blustery spring which evolved into a lush, fragrant summer. I had a vague memory of what it felt like when I had been wildly confident, when I had laughed with ease, when I had cared if I looked good, when I had felt content, even joyful. I wanted it back and I decided to actively figure out how to accomplish that. My ensuing dating and sexual experiences were empowering, sexy and exhilarating, but they were also full of humanity. By the time we arrive at middle age, most of us have a long, twisting story of failed relationships, shifting life goals, heartbreak, abandonment, love, hope and loneliness. I found all these things in myself and in the men I slept with over the next few months. I had sex that made me feel euphoric and sex that made me feel dirty, sex that helped me find the sensuality well hidden in me most of my life and sex that left me craving intimacy and love, sex that was fumbling and cringeworthy, and sex that made me curl my toes when I recounted it to friends later. I openly shared my dating and sexual experiences with friends – all of it, the good, the bad and the ugly – and was told over and over again that these stories were unusual and I should write them down. I didn’t want to write about dating and sex though, I just wanted to live it and I didn’t believe there was anything special to share anyway. Marriages end all the time and people move on. Mine was a story as old as time and embarrassingly clichéd. Still, friends kept insisting. They said my stories were hilarious and educational, inspiring even. They all had sisters or friends whose marriages had likewise imploded but who had turned inward, not wanting to go out, feeling reduced and undesirable. These women had not embraced their newly single status with my vigor and ferocity. Friends asked me to meet these sisters or talk to their friends and give them pep talks, explain how I was moving on, let them know that the seemingly impossible was actually completely within their ability and control. Matthew, my staunchly supportive brother, was adamant that writing about my experiences would be cathartic and made me promise that just five minutes a day I would sit at the computer, even if it meant staring at a blank screen. I would like to say that I boldly took the bull by the horns and confidently started spinning tales out of my trysts, but in truth it was more like I plopped down sulkily at my computer because Matthew wore me down.

• From The Well of Loneliness (1928)

  Then Stephen said rather abruptly: ‘All the same, we’re going to live here in Paris. We’re going to look at a house to-morrow, an old house with a garden in the Rue Jacob.’ For a moment Puddle hesitated, then she said: ‘There’s only one thing against it. Do you think you’ll ever be happy in a city? You’re so fond of the life that belongs to the country.’ Stephen shook her head: ‘That’s all past now, my dear; there’s no country for me away from Morton. But in Paris I might make some sort of a home, I could work here—and then of course there are people. . . .’ Something started to hammer in Puddle’s brain: ‘Like to like! Like to like! Like to like!’ it hammered. CHAPTER 321S tephen bought the house in the Rue Jacob, because as she walked through the dim, grey archway that led from the street to the cobbled courtyard, and saw the deserted house standing before her, she knew at once that there she would live. This will happen sometimes, we instinctively feel in sympathy with certain dwellings. The courtyard was sunny and surrounded by walls. On the right of this courtyard some iron gates led into the spacious, untidy garden, and woefully neglected though this garden had been, the trees that it still possessed were fine ones. A marble fountain long since choked with weeds, stood in the centre of what had been a lawn. In the farthest corner of the garden some hand had erected a semi-circular temple, but that had been a long time ago, and now the temple was all but ruined. The house itself would need endless repairs, but its rooms were of careful and restful proportions. A fine room with a window that opened on the garden, would be Stephen’s study; she could write there in quiet; on the other side of the stone-paved hall was a smaller but comfortable salle à manger; while past the stone staircase a little round room in a turret would be Puddle’s particular sanctum. Above there were bedrooms enough and to spare; there was also the space for a couple of bathrooms. The day after Stephen had seen this house, she had written agreeing to purchase. Valérie rang up before leaving Paris to inquire how Stephen had liked the old house, and when she heard that she had actually bought it, she expressed herself as being delighted. ‘We’ll be quite close neighbours now,’ she remarked, ‘but I’m not going to bother you until you evince, not even when I get back in the autumn. I know you’ll be literally snowed under with workmen for months, you poor dear, I feel sorry for you. But when you can, do let me come and see you—meanwhile if I can help you at all. . . .’ And she gave her address at St. Tropez.

• From Available: The unfiltered and empowering new memoir for women about sex, dating and divorce after 40 (2021)

  “Laura, look at me,” she said, after a few minutes of letting me air my grief. “I need you to look at me.” I dropped my hands from my face and raised my eyes to meet hers, taking in her serene demeanor, her silver hair, her kind eyes. She leaned forward toward me, her eyes never straying from mine. “You are still you. You have not lost the essence of yourself. I see you. I see who you are. There’s no old life and new life, there’s just you. Don’t ever give anyone the power to take you away from yourself. You will always know who you are, no one can change that.” “OK,” I said, sniffling and holding her steady gaze. “What if I’m so lost that I can’t remember who I am or find myself in here? What if I’m actually lost forever?” “No, it’s not possible. Right here, Laura,” she said, pressing her hand to her heart and leaning forward even further in her seat, “you are here. Look inside. You’re too strong to have disappeared. Find yourself, embrace yourself, that’s the part no one can ever take from you, that will always be there for you. You know who you are.” Slowly, I nodded my head, as if she had just re-introduced me to myself. I was wounded, but I wasn’t dead. I had fallen, badly, and had convinced myself that I would never be the same again, but somewhere amidst the wreckage, whatever it was that made me a mother and a daughter and a friend, that was still there. It was possible that whatever had made me a wife was gone forever, but that was only a part of who I was. Its absence would not kill me: it would hurt, it would redefine parts of me, but it would not destroy me if I didn’t allow it to. * On Mother’s Day, I took a spin class that the instructor peppered with feel-good quotes about motherhood. I took a lot of spin classes so I was accustomed to these motivational tidbits and I was apathetic to them. Yes, I showed up, yes, I was doing my best and that was good enough, blah blah blah, but really, let’s be honest, I was here to fight age and gravity. “When life deals you a tough hand, don’t ask why. Don’t bother yourself with why me? Why not you? Because you can handle it, that’s why. You’ve hit hundreds of walls in your life, but you’re powerful and you’re resilient and you’ve got this, that’s why you. Because you can.” I nodded along and by the time she was done I had to restrain myself from shouting out, “Yes, I can! Yes, I do! I’ve got this.” These last months had been tumultuous, showing me the best in friends and strangers and sometimes the worst in people who loved me the most, the weakest and the strongest parts of myself.

• From History of the Christian Church: The Complete Set of Eight Volumes (1858)

  It was a desperate measure adopted to suit an emergency, but it was also the product of a new freedom of ecclesiastical thought, and so far a good omen of a better age. The Pisan synod demonstrated that the Church remained virtually a unit in spite of the double pontifical administration. It branded by their right names the specious manoevres of Gregory and Peter de Luna. It brought together the foremost thinkers and literary interests of Europe and furnished a platform of free discussion. Not its least service was in preparing the way for the imposing council which convened in Constance five years later.

• From History of the Christian Church: The Complete Set of Eight Volumes (1858)

  Da perenne gaudium.488 Make our title clear, we pray, When we drop this mortal clay; Then,—O give us joy for aye.489 The following is a felicitous version by an American divine.490 Come, O Spirit! Fount of grace! From thy heavenly dwelling-place One bright morning beam impart: Come, O Father of the poor; Come, O Source of bounties sure; Come, O Sunshine of the heart! O! thrice blessed light divine! Come, the spirit’s inmost shrine With Thy holy presence fill; Of Thy brooding love bereft, Naught to hopeless man is left; Naught is his but evil still. Comforter of man the best! Making the sad soul thy guest; Sweet refreshing in our fears, In our labor a retreat, Cooling shadow in the heat, Solace in our falling tears. Wash away each earthly stain, Flow o’er this parched waste again, Real the wounds of conscience sore, Bind the stubborn will within, Thaw the icy chains of sin, Guide us, that we stray no more. Give to Thy believers, give, In Thy holy hope who live, All Thy sevenfold dower of love; Give the sure reward of faith, Give the love that conquers death, Give unfailing joy above. Notker, surnamed the Older, or Balbulus ("the little Stammerer, "from a slight lisp in his speech), was born about 850 of a noble family in Switzerland, educated in the convent of St. Gall, founded by Irish missionaries, and lived there as an humble monk. He died about 912, and was canonized in 1512.491 He is famous as the reputed author of the Sequences (Sequentiae), a class of hymns in rythmical prose, hence also called Proses (Prosae). They arose from the custom of prolonging the last syllable in singing the Allelu-ia of the Gradual, between the Epistle and the Gospel, while the deacon was ascending from the altar to the rood-loft (organ-loft), that he might thence sing the Gospel. This prolongation was called jubilatio or jubilus, or laudes, on account of its jubilant tone, and sometimes sequentia (Greek ajkolouqiva), because it followed the reading of the Epistle or the Alleluia. Mystical interpreters made this unmeaning prolongation of a mere sound the echo of the jubilant music of heaven. A further development was to set words to these notes in rythmical prose for chanting. The name sequence was then applied to the text and in a wider sense also to regular metrical and rhymed hymns. The book in which Sequences were collected was called Sequentiale.492 Notker marks the transition from the unmeaning musical sequence to the literary or poetic sequence. Over thirty poems bear his name. His first, attempt begins with the line "Laudes Deo concinat orbis ubique totus." More widely circulated is his Sequence of the Holy Spirit: "Sancti Spiritus adsit nobis gratia." "The grace of the Holy Spirit be present with us."493 The best of all his compositions, which is said to have been inspired by the sight of the builders of a bridge over an abyss in the Martinstobe, is a meditation on death (Antiphona de morte): "Media vita in morte sumus: Quem quaerimus adiutorem nisi te, Domine, Qui pro peccatis nostris juste irasceris? Sancte Deus, sancte fortis, Sancte et misericors Salvator: Amarae morti ne tradas nos."494 This solemn prayer is incorporated in many burial services. In the Book of Common Prayer it is thus enlarged: "In the midst of life we be in death: Of whom may we seek for succour, but of Thee, O Lord, which for our sins justly art moved? Yet, O Lord God most holy, O Lord most mighty, O holy and most merciful Saviour, Deliver us not into the bitter pains of eternal death. Thou knowest, Lord, the secrets of our hearts. Shut not up thy merciful eyes to our prayers: But spare us, Lord most holy, O God most mighty, O holy and merciful Saviour, Thou most worthy Judge eternal, Suffer us not, at our last hour,

• From History of the Christian Church: The Complete Set of Eight Volumes (1858)

  He ordered Paul Warnefrid (Paulus Diaconus) to prepare a collection of the best homilies of the Latin fathers for the use of the churches, and published it with a preface in which he admonished the clergy to a diligent study of the Scriptures. Several Synods held during his reign (813) at Rheims, Tours, Chalons, Mainz, ordered the clergy to keep a Homiliarium and to translate the Latin sermons clearly into rusticam Romanam linguam aut Theotiscam, so that all might understand them. Charles aimed at the higher education not only of the clergy, but also of the higher nobility, and state officials. His sons and daughters were well informed. He issued a circular letter to all the bishops and abbots of his empire (787), urging them to establish schools in connection with cathedrals and convents. At a later period he rose even to the grand but premature scheme of popular education, and required in a capitulary (802) that every parent should send his sons to school that they might learn to read. Theodulph of Orleans (who died 821) directed the priests of his diocese to hold school in every town and village,833 to receive the pupils with kindness, and not to ask pay, but to receive only voluntary gifts. The emperor founded the Court or Palace School (Schola Palatina) for higher education and placed it under the direction of Alcuin.834 It was an imitation of the Paedagogium ingenuorum of the Roman emperors. It followed him in his changing residence to Aix-la-Chapelle, Worms, Frankfurt, Mainz, Regensburg, Ingelheim, Paris. It was not the beginning of the Paris University, which is of much later date, but the chief nursery of educated clergymen, noblemen and statesmen of that age. It embraced in its course of study all the branches of secular and sacred learning.835 It became the model of similar schools, old and new, at Tours, Lyons, Orleans, Rheims, Chartres, Troyes, Old Corbey and New Corbey, Metz, St. Gall, Utrecht, Lüttich.836 The rich literature of the Carolingian age shows the fruits of this imperial patronage and example. It was, however, a foreign rather than a native product. It was neither French nor German, but essentially Latin, and so far artificial. Nor could it be otherwise; for the Latin classics, the Latin Bible, and the Latin fathers were the only accessible sources of learning, and the French and German languages were not yet organs of literature. This fact explains the speedy decay, as well as the subsequent revival in close connection with the Roman church. The creations of Charlemagne were threatened with utter destruction during the civil wars of his weak successors. But Charles the Bald, a son of Louis the Pious, and king of France (843–877), followed his grandfather in zeal for learning, and gave new lustre to the Palace School at Paris under the direction of John Scotus Erigena, whom he was liberal enough to protect, notwithstanding his eccentricities.

• From History of the Christian Church: The Complete Set of Eight Volumes (1858)

  This view he set forth in a famous sermon, preached in 1404 at Tarascon before Benedict XIII. and the duke of Orleans. Princes and prelates, he declared, both owe obedience to law. The end for which the Church was constituted is the peace and well-being of men. All Church authority is established to subserve the interests of peace. Peace is so great a boon that all should be ready to renounce dignities and position for it. Did not Christ suffer shame? Better for a while to be without a pope than that the Church should observe the canons and not have peace, for there can be salvation where there is no pope.385 A general council should be convened, and it was pious to believe that in the treatment of the schism it would not err—pium est credere non erraret. As Schwab has said, no one had ever preached in the same way to a pope before. The sermon caused a sensation. Gerson, though not present at the council of Pisa, contributed to its discussions by his important tracts on the Unity of the Church—De unitate ecclesiastica — and the Removal of a Pope—De auferbilitate papae ab ecclesia. The views set forth were that Christ is the head of the Church, and its monarchical constitution is unchangeable. There must be one pope, not several, and the bishops are not equal in authority with him. As the pope may separate himself from the Church, so the Church may separate itself from the pope. Such action might be required by considerations of self-defence. The papal office is of God, and yet the pope may be deposed even by a council called without his consent. All Church offices and officials exist for the good of the Church, that is, for the sake of peace which comes through the exercise of love. If a pope has a right to defend himself against, say, the charge of unchastity, why should not the Church have a like right to defend itself? A council acts under the immediate authority of Christ and His laws. The council may pronounce against a pope by virtue of the power of the keys which is given not only to one but to the body—unitati. Aristotle declared that the body has the right, if necessary, to depose its prince. So may the council, and whoso rejects a council of the Church rejects God who directs its action. A pope may be deposed for heresy and schism, as, for example, if he did not bend the knee before the sacrament, and he might be deposed when no personal guilt was chargeable against him, as in the case already referred to, when he was a captive of the Saracens and was reported dead.

• From The Pisces (2018)

  I’d owned enough New Age tchotchkes in my lifetime to know that within a few days of purchase they just seemed like more crap. But as you were shopping, sifting through the stones and their meanings, there was hope that this was a turning point. It was the velocity of buying something that was the high, the potentiality of it. I could capitalist-believe in magic. In the store was hope, and hope was what separated me from the flat expanse of the rest of my life. It was like a line, a gateway that stopped me from being swallowed. I looked at the fliers for all of the different healers. Some did numerology, others Tarot, others Reiki and chakra cleansing. I could have sat there all day and had my fortune told until someone predicted what I wanted to hear—that I was getting back together with Jamie, that he was coming back to me—so I quickly pulled away. I looked at the crystals. I would have loved to buy rose quartz, giant hunks of it, hundreds and hundreds of dollars’ worth. I wanted to make a circle around me; do some ritual shit with rose petals; burn vanilla, gardenia, and strawberry incense to attract love. Instead I bought a sparkly raw chunk of amethyst in the palest purple, which was said to bring peace and stability. There was also a table where magic candles were sold: red for love and passion, green for money. I bypassed the love candle and selected an egg-colored one for clearing and needed change. Maybe I could just burn the past year away. —At home I ate pad thai and drank white wine, fed Dominic, and gave him his medicine. I’d known nothing about dogs before him—how or where to pet them—but he was patient with me, and I’d soon discovered his favorite places to be touched. His entire head was brown with the exception of two white patches: one a white stripe down the center of his forehead, which I stroked gently with one finger and called his angel mark, and the other a diamond shape on the back of his neck, an arrow pointing as if to say, Scratch me here. This was the area that he could not reach with his paws, and, when scratched, would lull him right to sleep. We would play a game where he gazed at me lovingly, trying to keep his brown eyes open, his lids growing heavy, then popping open, then heavier and heavier until they were sealed shut: just two stitches lined with little lashes. When he rolled over onto his back and showed me his white underside, it meant that it was time for a belly rub. Sometimes I would get crazy like I was waxing a car, Dominic pawing joyfully at the air, fur flying, tongue out, and panting. Other times I would gently stroke and kiss the softness there, relishing his scent, which was somehow reminiscent of a warm roast chicken.

• From In Search of Paul: How Jesus's Apostle Opposed Rome's Empire with God's Kingdom (2005)

  ROMANS 11:1–36. Second, the theme of the remnant then jumps from that frame in 9:1–29 to this frame in 11:1–36; but now the emphasis is on the nonremnant, the vast majority who have refused the gospel. It is important to note that, even from within the exclusivity of his Christian vision, Paul never says that “those others of Israel” are lost, condemned, and abandoned by God. He proceeds with a second emotional, personal statement: “I ask, then, has God rejected his people? By no means! I myself am an Israelite, a descendant of Abraham, a member of the tribe of Benjamin. God has not rejected his people whom he foreknew” (11:1–2). “At the present time there is,” he repeats, “a remnant, chosen by grace. But if it is by grace, it is no longer on the basis of works, otherwise grace would no longer be grace” (11:5–6). That theme of grace versus works refers back to the section on human causality in 9:30–10:21, and we will return to it below. The eschatological vision of earliest Christianity was for Jews and pagans in one ultimate community or, as Paul wrote in Romans 1:16, the Jew first and only then the Greek. But now, announces Paul, God has changed that final program, not to the Greek only or even to the Greek and some Jews but to a complete reversal, to the Greek first and only then the Jew (11:11–12). Next, Paul gives a direct warning to Christian pagans about non-Christian Jews at Rome in a preview of Romans 12–16. “Now,” he says, in an unusually explicit separation, “I am speaking to you Gentiles” (11:13) and then introduces the image of the olive tree. He does not say that God has planted a new gentile olive tree, but that certain branches of the Jewish olive have been broken off to allow the ingrafting of a new, pagan, “wild olive shoot” (11:17). In other words, the rootstock of Christianity is Judaism and Rome’s Christian pagans are sternly warned not to “boast over the branches” they have replaced and “so all Israel will be saved” (11:18–25). He does not say explicitly saved in Christ, but he certainly presumes it. Still, he at least admits it is a divine mystery rather than just a human failure and today, after two thousand years and counting, it is even more mysterious than Paul could ever have imagined. He said then, “As regards the gospel they are enemies of God for your sake; but as regards election they are beloved, for the sake of their ancestors; for the gifts and the calling of God are irrevocable” (11:28–29). We now say what Paul never imagined. There are twin covenants, one Jewish and one Christian, both free gifts of divine grace, both accepted initially and lived fully by faith. That is the only way, by now, to reread what Paul called God’s plan before the face of continuing history. Human Causality

• From The Pisces (2018)

  Unlike Brianne and Chickenhorse, Claire was firmly instructed that she should not be dating until she’d done some work on herself. She called this “a load of shite.” “Lucy, I’d like to suggest the same for you,” said Dr. Jude. “No dating, no sex, no contact with Jamie for the next ninety days. You’ll likely experience a period of withdrawal, if you haven’t begun to already. But it will be worth it in the end.” “Withdrawal?” “Yes, you’re detoxing from him…from a whole way of life really. A life defined by the pursuit of others to complete you.” “What does withdrawal entail?” “People in withdrawal describe symptoms of depression, despair, insomnia, a feeling of emptiness.” “Oh, so just life,” I said. “Other symptoms can include nausea, anxiety, irrational thoughts, and even cognitive distortions.” “Great, more to look forward to.” “One more thing. You mentioned spending money on psychics, astrologers, love potions. I would urge you to abandon these pursuits, as they only prolong your inability to find intimacy with yourself. And that’s the real treasure here.” “Ah,” I said. “Can’t wait for that.” 8.There was one place on Abbot Kinney that gave me solace, and that was the Mystic Journeys bookstore. I looked in the window and saw the rows of rose quartz crystals. I knew from Googling that rose quartz was said to bring love. Actually, it seemed like most crystals brought something that you wanted. If crystals really did what they said they did, there would probably be no problems in the world. Everyone would have everything they desired, and all would be peaceful, or at least, all the people who sold crystals would be rich, famous, and well-loved. They probably wouldn’t be selling crystals anymore, because they wouldn’t have to. Still, I liked to believe that magic was real. I had to go in. I wasn’t really a hippie, per se. But having grown up with Annika as an older sister, I could get down with the New Age vibes. She followed the Grateful Dead around in college and would send me little items that she bought in the parking lot: Nag Champa incense, a malachite pendulum necklace, a blue glass talisman to keep the evil eye away. Annika had been the only maternal figure in my life since my mother died when I was eleven—totemic maternal and from a distance, but all I had—so I always found New Age culture comforting. This store with its cabinets and shelves of crystals and minerals—amethyst, rose quartz, smoky quartz, pyrite, onyx, apophyllite, rock salt, aqua aura—definitely made magic seem real. The air smelled of sandalwood and amber. You could buy enlightenment from a range of Eastern texts: the Bhagavad Gita, the Yoga Sutras of Patanjali. You could buy healing in a white jasmine pillar candle or protection in a black votive. Capitalist magic.

• From In Search of Paul: How Jesus's Apostle Opposed Rome's Empire with God's Kingdom (2005)

  This [“dissident”] attitude is and must be fundamentally hostile towards the notion of violent change—simply because it places its faith in violence…. An attitude that turns away from abstract political visions of the future towards concrete human beings and ways of defending them effectively in the here and now is quite naturally accompanied by an intensified antipathy to all forms of violence carried out in the name of “a better future” and by a profound belief that a future secured by violence might actually be worse than what exists now; in other words, the future would be fatally stigmatized by the very means used to secure it…. The “dissident movements” do not shy away from the idea of violent political overthrow because the idea seems too radical, but on the contrary, because it does not seem radical enough. (1978: 92–93) That neither advocates pure pacifism in all cases nor accepts violence as perfectly normal in all instances. It simply recognizes that violence should always be the last, not the first, option and that it is ultimately the last enemy. Third, Havel concludes that the “responsibility is ours, that we must accept it and grasp it here, now, in this place and space where the Lord has set us down…. Christianity…is a point of departure for me here and now—but only because anyone, anywhere, at any time, may avail themselves of it” (1978: 104). That might seem to imply that anyone can find that responsibility—but only within Christianity. Any ambiguity is clarified in the second essay from six years later: At the basis of this world are values which are simply there, perennially, before we ever speak of them, before we reflect upon them and inquire about them. It owes its internal coherence to something like a “pre-speculative” assumption that the world functions and is generally possible at all only because there is something beyond its horizon, something beyond or above it that might escape our understanding and our grasp but, for just that reason, firmly grounds this world, bestows upon it its order and measure, and is the hidden source of all the rules, customs, commandments, prohibitions and norms that hold within it. The natural world, in virtue of its very being, bears within it the presupposition of the absolute which grounds, delimits, animates and directs it, without which it would be unthinkable, absurd and superfluous, and which we can only quietly respect. Any attempt to spurn it, master it, or replace it with something else, appears, within the framework of the natural world, as an expression of hubris for which humans must pay a heavy price…. We must honor with the humility of the wise the bounds of that natural world and the mystery which lies beyond them, admitting that there is something in the order of being which exceeds all our competence; relating ever again to the absolute horizon of our existence which, if we but will, we shall constantly rediscover and experience. (1984: 137–38, 153).

• From History of the Christian Church: The Complete Set of Eight Volumes (1858)

  Their affinity with the Protestant idea of the universal priesthood is more apparent than real; they go on altogether different principles. 3. Another of the essential and prominent traits of Montanism was a visionary millennarianism, founded indeed on the Apocalypse and on the apostolic expectation of the speedy return of Christ, but giving it extravagant weight and a materialistic coloring. The Montanists were the warmest millennarians in the ancient church, and held fast to the speedy return of Christ in glory, all the more as this hope began to give way to the feeling of a long settlement of the church on earth, and to a corresponding zeal for a compact, solid episcopal organization. In praying, "Thy kingdom come," they prayed for the end of the world. They lived under a vivid impression of the great final catastrophe, and looked therefore with contempt upon the present order of things, and directed all their desires to the second advent of Christ. Maximilla says: "After me there is no more prophecy, but only the end of the world."770 The failure of these predictions weakened, of course, all the other pretensions of the system. But, on the other hand, the abatement of faith in the near approach of the Lord was certainly accompanied with an increase of worldliness in the Catholic church. The millennarianism of the Montanists has reappeared again and again in widely differing forms. 4. Finally, the Montanistic sect was characterized by fanatical severity in asceticism and church discipline. It raised a zealous protest against the growing looseness of the Catholic penitential discipline, which in Rome particularly, under Zephyrinus and Callistus, to the great grief of earnest minds, established a scheme of indulgence for the grossest sins, and began, long before Constantine, to obscure the line between the church and the world. Tertullian makes the restoration of a rigorous discipline the chief office of the new prophecy.771 But Montanism certainly went to the opposite extreme, and fell from evangelical freedom into Jewish legalism; while the Catholic church in rejecting the new laws and burdens defended the cause of freedom. Montanism turned with horror from all the enjoyments of life, and held even art to be incompatible with Christian soberness and humility. It forbade women all ornamental clothing, and required virgins to be veiled. It courted the blood-baptism of martyrdom, and condemned concealment or flight in persecution as a denial of Christ. It multiplied fasts and other ascetic exercises, and carried them to extreme severity, as the best preparation for the millennium. It prohibited second marriage as adultery, for laity as well as clergy, and inclined even to regard a single marriage as a mere concession on the part of God to the sensuous infirmity of man. It taught the impossibility of a second repentance, and refused to restore the lapsed to the fellowship of the church.

• From History of the Christian Church: The Complete Set of Eight Volumes (1858)

  theological statement by patristic quotations, or statements taken from Aristotle. The movement arose like a root out of a dry ground at a time of great corruption and distraction in the Church, and it arose where it might have been least expected to arise. Its field was the territory along the Rhine where the heretical sects had had representation. It was a fresh outburst of piety, an earnest seeking after God by other paths than the religious externalism fostered by sacerdotal prescriptions and scholastic dialectics. The mystics led the people back from the clangor and tinkling of ecclesiastical symbolisms to the refreshing springs of water which spring up into everlasting life. Compared with the mysticism of the earlier Middle Ages and the French quietism of the seventeenth century, represented by Madame Guyon, Fénelon and their predecessor the Spaniard Miguel de Molinos, German mysticism likewise has its own distinctive features. The religion of Bernard expressed itself in passionate and rapturous love for Jesus. Madame Guyon and Fénelon set up as the goal of religion a state of disinterested love, which was to be reached chiefly by prayer, an end which Bernard felt it scarcely possible to reach in this world. The mystics along the Rhine agreed with all genuine mystics in striving after the direct union of the soul with God. They sought, as did Eckart, the loss of our being in the ocean of the Godhead, or with Tauler the undisturbed peace of the soul, or with Ruysbroeck the impact of the divine nature upon our nature at its innermost point, kindling with divine love as fire kindles. With this aspiration after the complete apprehension of God, they combined a practical tendency. Their silent devotion and meditation were not final exercises. They were moved by warm human sympathies, and looked with almost reverential regard upon the usual pursuits and toil of men. They approached close to the idea that in the faithful devotion to daily tasks man may realize the highest type of religious experience. By preaching, by writing and circulating devotional works, and especially by their own examples, they made known the secret and the peace of the inner life. In the regions along the lower Rhine, the movement manifested itself also in the care of the sick, and notably in schools for the education of the young. These schools proved to be preparatory for the German Reformation by training a body of men of wider outlook and larger sympathies than the mediaeval convent was adapted to rear. For the understanding of the spirit and meaning of German mysticism, no help is so close at hand as the comparison between it and mediaeval scholasticism. This religious movement was the antithesis of the theology of the Schoolmen; Eckart and Tauler of Thomas Aquinas, the German Theology of the endless argumentation of Duns Scotus, the Imitation of Christ of the cumbersome exhaustiveness of Albertus Magnus.

• From In Search of Paul: How Jesus's Apostle Opposed Rome's Empire with God's Kingdom (2005)

  3The Golden Age, or As Golden as It GetsThe Augustan age is often called the Golden Age, aurea aetas or saeculum aureum…. We are dealing, once more, with a notion that was evolving during this period. It was based, as always, on previous traditions that led to new adaptations and departures…. One of the most significant changes in the Golden Age concept at Augustus’ time is that the Golden Age comes to connote a social order rather than a paradisiac state of indolence…. The Secular [i.e., Saeculum] Games of 17 B.C…. did not celebrate the advent of millennial, passive bliss but took place only after one of the cornerstones of the Augustan program, the legislation on marriage and morals, had been passed in 18 B.C…. The notion of the Golden Age or saeculum at Augustus’ time was distinctive and specific in the sense that it involved ongoing labor and moral effort rather than being a celebration of easy fulfillment…. Tranquility is made possible only through war, victory, and dominance…. No specific iconography exists that would point to a “Golden Age” of easy bliss. The reason is simple enough: there was no intention to convey such an impression. —Karl Galinsky, Augustan Culture: An Interpretive Introduction (1996) Seneca’s essay On Clemency…is the first work to articulate the Golden Age ideology systematically as a whole. The essay was written early in Nero’s reign [mid-50s C.E.], at a time of renewed interest in the Golden Age theme…. Given Seneca’s position as the emperor’s mentor, it may in some sense be taken as an expression of the “official line.”…Seneca assumes the basic sinfulness of mankind, its scelus…. Secondly, the presence of the emperor provides the only possible hope of escape…. Thirdly, however, for the emperor to succeed as saviour he must practice clemency…. Fourthly, Nero has already demonstrated his natural predisposition towards mercy by his unwillingness to execute criminals; the preconditions are thus fulfilled for the Golden Age to return…. In Pauline Christianity…it is Christ, not the emperor, who acts as the mediator between heaven and sinful mankind. It is Christ not the emperor who has the power to undo scelus, sin, by his grace or clementia, forgiveness. It is faith, allegiance, voluntary submission to Christ that will bring about or make ready for the return of Paradise, original innocence. —Andrew Wallace-Hadrill, “The Golden Age and Sin in Augustan Ideology” (1982) The Divinity of a World Conqueror Overture It is dawn in Paul’s Thessalonica, today’s Thessaloniki, then the Roman provincial capital of Macedonia, now the second-largest city in Greece, but then as now named for the sister of Alexander the Great and then as now climbing from the northeast corner of the Thermaic Gulf up the circling slopes of Mt. Khortiatis.

• From In Search of Paul: How Jesus's Apostle Opposed Rome's Empire with God's Kingdom (2005)

  FIRST QUESTION. How on earth could a fervent Christian Jew like James of Jerusalem, James the Just, James the brother of the Lord Jesus, have ever allowed such a dispensation for pagan converts? First, Jewish tradition had long announced a future day when God would end the evil, injustice, and violence that relentlessly destroyed God’s world and oppressed God’s people. There would then be, here below upon this earth, a magnificently utopian (end-of-this-place) or eschatological (end-of-this-time) world. There would be, they believed and hoped, a restored, transformed, and transfigured world. God would overcome, someday. We have already seen that fervent hope in the preceding chapter. Second, as Paula Fredriksen emphasizes, that sacred tradition imagined two utterly divergent divine solutions concerning the nations, the Gentiles, the great conquering empires who caused so much havoc and destruction. One was extermination, the Great Final War at Mt. Megiddo (Armageddon) when, according to Revelation 14:20, the blood of the slain would be “as high as a horse’s bridle, for a distance of about two hundred miles.” The other was conversion, the Great Final Banquet on Mt. Zion, when, according to Isaiah 25:6–8, The Lord of hosts will make for all peoples a feast of rich food, a feast of well-aged wines, of rich food filled with marrow, of well-aged wines strained clear. And he will destroy on this mountain the shroud that is cast over all peoples, the sheet that is spread over all nations; he will swallow up death forever. Then the Lord God will wipe away the tears from all faces, and the disgrace of his people he will take away from all the earth. Nothing is said about male circumcision before that Great Final Banquet; neither is anything said about that banquet’s menu being kosher. Those silences would, of course, allow arguments in either direction. Either those requirements are not mentioned because they are no longer operative, or they are not mentioned because they are always operative and assumed. Remember that point and counterpoint throughout this chapter. Similarly, in the magnificent vision repeated verbatim in Micah 4:1–4 and Isaiah 2:2–4,

• From In Search of Paul: How Jesus's Apostle Opposed Rome's Empire with God's Kingdom (2005)

  There is here a first irony. Recall the fierce disagreement between Paul and Peter at Antioch in Galatians 2:11–14 from Chapter 4. They were finally reconciled, at least by later tradition, as martyrs under Nero. Also, recall the disagreement between the weak and the strong from Romans 14 earlier in this chapter. We do not know if Paul’s plea for their unity was successful or not. But, once again, that discord was rendered moot by Nero’s brutality. Peter and Paul, weak Christians and strong Christians, united in martyrdom, were finally able, as Paul prayed in Romans 15:6, “together with one voice to glorify the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.” There is also a second irony. Paul did not know that the letter to the Romans would be his last will and testament. He did know that accompanying the collection to Jerusalem was personally very dangerous. But the letter and the collection were both about unity and, eventually, that search for unity would cost him his life. He accepted that possibility. You may disagree with him on pagans and Jews, on Jews and Christians, on Christian Jews and Christian pagans. You may also disagree with him on whether Christ is or is not the answer. But, of course and in any case, Christ is only the answer because he incarnates the nonviolent justice of God in his own life and death. So think not just of Christ, but of life within the transcendental imperative of global distributive justice. Read, then, Paul’s explanation of that great collection for James’s utopian community at Jerusalem in 2 Corinthians 8:13–14: I do not mean that there should be relief for others and pressure on you, but it is a question of a fair balance between your present abundance and their need, so that their abundance may be for your need, in order that there may be a fair balance. We cite that text as applying not just to the original situation of the great collection, but to the present situation of our modern world. “It is a question of a fair balance.” The ideal of human unity under divine justice grounds Paul’s theology of history in Romans. And, after two thousand years, we know it did not work out as he expected, but we also know that it must work out somehow if the earth is to have any future. What a world under justice looks like is already given in the citation from 2 Corinthians. Is it not clear by now that the safety of the world and the security of the earth demand the unity not of global victory, but of global justice? Otherwise, God will still be God, but only of the insects and the grasses.