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 How God Became King (2012)

  That may get you a little way down the road, though if all you do is affirm traditional orthodoxy in the face of the proper historical questions that must still arise, you may find the journey increasingly uncomfortable . But there is a long way to go, and, to be frank, the only way to travel the distance is to go back to the gospels themselves and to the integrated message they contain of the kingdom and the cross, or rather the incarnation, kingdom, cross, resurrection, and ascension—with all of those understood in carefully worked out relation to all of the others. And yes, that may mean that the car needs to be taken to the mechanic, and the mechanic may have to take it apart and clean or even replace its various parts. This time, however, the point will be to put it back together again and to drive away in proper style. I understand the frustration of those who are now saying we should, as it were, start with the creeds, so that we shall at least read the Bible in a “believing” way. But if we start with the creeds, granted the way our Western Christianity is now more or less bound to read them, we will never understand the gospels, and hence the whole canon itself. If, however, we start with the gospels, which form the heart and balance point of the whole Christian canon, and if we understand them to be telling the story of how God, the creator God, Israel’s God, became in and through Jesus the king of all the world, then we can return to the creeds and say them in a very different spirit. Put tradition first, and scripture will be muzzled and faded. Put scripture first, and tradition will come to new life. Better still, as Jesus himself said, put God’s kingdom first—put first the revelation that, as the gospels have been eager to tell us, this is the story of how God became king!—and all these things will be added to you. The question of how we might then read the gospels, publicly and privately, is a challenging one. I have enjoyed exploring, over many years now, different ways of undertaking this central task. Most congregations, I think, have never heard a gospel read, or “performed,” all the way through. There are plenty of people in our churches who have the dramatic talent to undertake that. Many clergy have never thought of allowing large sections of scripture to frame their liturgy, rather than the other way around; that was done as an experiment in one of the Durham churches in Lent 2010, and it worked wonderfully well. Equally—and this is really astonishing when you stop to think about it—most practicing Christians, including most clergy, have never sat down privately and read right through one or more of the gospels in a single sitting.

• From How God Became King (2012)

  This was when slaves were freed, when land sold off by the family was restored to its original owner, when things got put back as they should be. The jubilee is a fascinating social innovation within the legislation of ancient Israel, a sign that relentless buying and selling of land, goods, and even people won’t be the last word. But seventy times seven? That sounds like a jubilee of jubilees! So, though four hundred and ninety years—nearly half a millennium—is indeed a long time, the point is this: when the time finally arrives, it will be the greatest “redemption” of all. This will be the time of real, utter, and lasting freedom. That is the hope that sustained the Israelites in the long years of the centuries before the time of Jesus. It is normally assumed that the book of Daniel reached its final form during the first half of the second century BC , around the time of the Maccabean crisis, when Judas Maccabeus and his family led a successful resistance against the Syrian invasion. And so, with Daniel 9 in mind, learned scribes were calculating and recalculating, asking when the seventy sevens would be fulfilled. When will the real return from exile happen? And Matthew makes it clear beyond cavil, to anyone thinking Jewishly in that period, that the moment had come with Jesus. Instead of years, he does it with generations, the generations of Israel’s entire history from Abraham to the present. All the generations to that point were fourteen times three, that is, six sevens—with Jesus we get the seventh seven. He is the jubilee in person. He is the one who will rescue Israel from its long-continued nightmare. “He,” says the angel to Joseph, “is the one who will save his people from their sins” (1:21). That, to any first-century Jew, didn’t just mean that individuals could turn to him and find personal forgiveness, though that would obviously be true as well. Read Isaiah 40 and Lamentations 4 again and see. Exile is the payment for sin, so forgiveness of sin means the end of exile. If you have received a royal pardon, you get out of jail free. The time has come. Comfort, O comfort my people, says your God. Speak tenderly to Jerusalem, and cry to her that she has served her term, that her penalty is paid, that she has received from YHWH ’s hand double for all her sins. (Isa. 40:1–2) The punishment of your iniquity, O daughter Zion, is accomplished, he will keep you in exile no longer; but your iniquity, O daughter Edom, he will punish, he will uncover your sins.

• From How God Became King (2012)

  To be “in communion” with them is far more than simply hoping that our departed loved ones will actually still, in some sense, be in touch with us, that there will be some kind of mystical contact beyond the grave. It is to share in fellowship and solidarity with all those who have been the “kingdom people” of their day and to gain strength and courage from them for our own witness. It was highly significant, in view of the vocation he already sensed, that Dietrich Bonhoeffer chose to write his doctoral dissertation, “Communion Sanctorum,” on this clause. Within this context, the “forgiveness of sins” gains an entirely new dimension. It includes, of course, just what it says to most of us: we are all overdrawn at the moral bank, and need to know again and again that God wipes out the debt and fills the account with his own freely given treasure. But when we step back from our own personal anxieties and awareness of guilt, we recognize that the world as a whole needs, longs for, aches and yearns and cries out for forgiveness—for that collective, global sigh of relief that means that nobody need seek vengeance ever again; that nobody will bear a grudge ever again; that the million wrongs with which the world has been so horribly defaced will be put right at last; that in God’s ultimate new world there will be no moral shadow, no lingering resentment, no character warped by another’s wrong. “Forgiveness of sins” is not a purely negative term, getting rid of the moral stain and guilt that we all incur, though it is that too. It is the positive presence of God and the Lamb, the Lamb whose shed blood has wiped the record clean. ...the resurrection of the body, and the life everlasting. And so, finally, we come to the “resurrection of the body, and the life everlasting.” Here we must “festoon” around the well-known words the great New Testament hope: “the life of the age to come,” the “coming age” in which the whole creation will be transformed to share the liberty of the glory of the children of God. And, within that new creation, the coming together of heaven and earth of which Paul spoke (Eph. 1:10), God’s people are promised new bodies. I have written about this elsewhere, but it is perhaps worth reiterating it.

• From How God Became King (2012)

  But then, growing within that soil, we find all kinds of fresh plants: a continual stream of people, movements and, writings in the postbiblical period, up to and including the revolt of bar-Kochba in the 130s, that draw on and develop the same beliefs and hopes. It’s not difficult to imagine the Judaean people, all the way through this period, singing psalms like Psalm 2, where the nations rage but God installs his king on Mount Zion and summons the nations to bow down before him: Why do the nations conspire, and the peoples plot in vain? The kings of the earth set themselves, and the rulers take counsel together, against YHWH and his anointed, saying, “Let us burst their bonds asunder, and cast their cords from us.” He who sits in the heavens laughs; YHWH has them in derision. Then he will speak to them in his wrath, and terrify them in his fury, saying, “I have set my king on Zion, my holy hill.” I will tell of the decree of YHWH : He said to me, “You are my son; today I have begotten you. Ask of me, and I will make the nations your heritage, and the ends of the earth your possession. You shall break them with a rod of iron, and dash them in pieces like a potter’s vessel. ” Now therefore, O kings, be wise; be warned, O rulers of the earth. Serve YHWH with fear, with trembling kiss his feet, or he will be angry, and you will perish in the way; for his wrath is quickly kindled. Happy are all who take refuge in him. It doesn’t take a higher degree in ancient Jewish history to guess, accurately, what they would be thinking as they read Psalm 89, with its glorious vision of God’s whole world ruled over by the Davidic king and its mystified sorrow at the way in which that hope seems to have been dashed yet again: I will sing of your steadfast love, O YHWH , forever; with my mouth I will proclaim your faithfulness to all generations. I declare that your steadfast love is established forever; your faithfulness is as firm as the heavens. You said, “I have made a covenant with my chosen one, I have sworn to my servant David: ‘I will establish your descendants forever, and build your throne for all generations.’” Then you spoke in a vision to your faithful one, and said: “I have set the crown on one who is mighty, I have exalted one chosen from the people. I have found my servant David; with my holy oil I have anointed him; my hand shall always remain with him; my arm also shall strengthen him. The enemy shall not outwit him, the wicked shall not humble him . I will crush his foes before him and strike down those who hate him.

• From How God Became King (2012)

  The jubilee is a fascinating social innovation within the legislation of ancient Israel, a sign that relentless buying and selling of land, goods, and even people won’t be the last word. But seventy times seven? That sounds like a jubilee of jubilees! So, though four hundred and ninety years—nearly half a millennium—is indeed a long time, the point is this: when the time finally arrives, it will be the greatest “redemption” of all. This will be the time of real, utter, and lasting freedom. That is the hope that sustained the Israelites in the long years of the centuries before the time of Jesus. It is normally assumed that the book of Daniel reached its final form during the first half of the second century BC, around the time of the Maccabean crisis, when Judas Maccabeus and his family led a successful resistance against the Syrian invasion. And so, with Daniel 9 in mind, learned scribes were calculating and recalculating, asking when the seventy sevens would be fulfilled. When will the real return from exile happen? And Matthew makes it clear beyond cavil, to anyone thinking Jewishly in that period, that the moment had come with Jesus. Instead of years, he does it with generations, the generations of Israel’s entire history from Abraham to the present. All the generations to that point were fourteen times three, that is, six sevens—with Jesus we get the seventh seven. He is the jubilee in person. He is the one who will rescue Israel from its long-continued nightmare. “He,” says the angel to Joseph, “is the one who will save his people from their sins” (1:21). That, to any first-century Jew, didn’t just mean that individuals could turn to him and find personal forgiveness, though that would obviously be true as well. Read Isaiah 40 and Lamentations 4 again and see. Exile is the payment for sin, so forgiveness of sin means the end of exile. If you have received a royal pardon, you get out of jail free. The time has come. Comfort, O comfort my people, says your God. Speak tenderly to Jerusalem, and cry to her that she has served her term, that her penalty is paid, that she has received from YHWH’s hand double for all her sins. (Isa. 40:1–2) The punishment of your iniquity, O daughter Zion, is accomplished, he will keep you in exile no longer; but your iniquity, O daughter Edom, he will punish, he will uncover your sins. (Lam. 4:22) This is perhaps the most important point to make, because it’s one of the hardest for people today to grasp. We can just about take on board the idea, which Matthew also emphasizes, that the life of Jesus recapitulates key elements in the earlier story of Israel. For a moment, as Jesus stands on the mountain giving the famous sermon, he is Moses. For a moment, answering his critics about his actions on the sabbath, he is David.

• From How God Became King (2012)

  It’s the same story all the way through. And there is no doubt that this is the story the gospel writers intend, in their different ways, to retell in the basic story of Jesus himself. Isaiah and Daniel do indeed provide something of a climax to this much larger narrative. But then, growing within that soil, we find all kinds of fresh plants: a continual stream of people, movements and, writings in the postbiblical period, up to and including the revolt of bar-Kochba in the 130s, that draw on and develop the same beliefs and hopes. It’s not difficult to imagine the Judaean people, all the way through this period, singing psalms like Psalm 2, where the nations rage but God installs his king on Mount Zion and summons the nations to bow down before him: Why do the nations conspire, and the peoples plot in vain? The kings of the earth set themselves, and the rulers take counsel together, against YHWH and his anointed, saying, “Let us burst their bonds asunder, and cast their cords from us.” He who sits in the heavens laughs; YHWH has them in derision. Then he will speak to them in his wrath, and terrify them in his fury, saying, “I have set my king on Zion, my holy hill.” I will tell of the decree of YHWH: He said to me, “You are my son; today I have begotten you. Ask of me, and I will make the nations your heritage, and the ends of the earth your possession. You shall break them with a rod of iron, and dash them in pieces like a potter’s vessel.” Now therefore, O kings, be wise; be warned, O rulers of the earth. Serve YHWH with fear, with trembling kiss his feet, or he will be angry, and you will perish in the way; for his wrath is quickly kindled. Happy are all who take refuge in him. It doesn’t take a higher degree in ancient Jewish history to guess, accurately, what they would be thinking as they read Psalm 89, with its glorious vision of God’s whole world ruled over by the Davidic king and its mystified sorrow at the way in which that hope seems to have been dashed yet again: I will sing of your steadfast love, O YHWH, forever; with my mouth I will proclaim your faithfulness to all generations. I declare that your steadfast love is established forever; your faithfulness is as firm as the heavens.

• From How God Became King (2012)

  To put it simply, most Jews of Jesus’s day did not believe that the exile was really, properly over. Yes, they’d come back from Babylon—well, some of them, anyway. Yes, they’d rebuilt the Temple in Jerusalem. But pagan foreigners were still ruling over them. They were still slaves even in their own land, as Ezra and Nehemiah complain: “Here we are, slaves to this day—slaves in the land that you gave to our ancestors to enjoy its fruit and its good gifts” (Neh. 9:36). The great promises of Isaiah and Ezekiel hadn’t yet come true. All this is summed up graphically in a vital passage in Daniel 9, normally assumed to have been written in the early second century BC , in which Daniel in exile in Babylon asks God whether it isn’t time now for Jeremiah’s prophecy to be fulfilled, the prophecy that the Babylonian exile would last for seventy years. Back comes the answer: not seventy years, but seventy weeks of years, in other words, seventy times seven years: In the first year of Darius son of Ahasuerus, by birth a Mede, who became king over the realm of the Chaldeans—in the first year of his reign, I, Daniel, perceived in the books the number of years that, according to the word of YHWH to the prophet Jeremiah, must be fulfilled for the devastation of Jerusalem, namely, seventy years. Then I turned to the Lord God, to seek an answer by prayer and supplication with fasting and sackcloth and ashes…. While I was speaking, and was praying and confessing my sin and the sin of my people Israel, and presenting my supplication before YHWH my God on behalf of the holy mountain of my God—while I was speaking in prayer, the man Gabriel, whom I had seen before in a vision, came to me in swift flight at the time of the evening sacrifice. He came and said to me, “Daniel, I have now come out to give you wisdom and understanding. At the beginning of your supplications a word went out, and I have come to declare it, for you are greatly beloved. So consider the word and understand the vision: Seventy weeks are decreed for your people and your holy city: to finish the transgression, to put an end to sin, and to atone for iniquity, to bring in everlasting righteousness, to seal both vision and prophet, and to anoint a most holy place.” (9:1–3, 20–24) That sounds like a devastatingly depressing answer, and in a way it is. That’s a long time to wait. But the idea of “seventy times seven” has a particular ring to it, more obvious to an ancient Jew than to us today. Every seven days, they had a sabbath. Every seven years, they had a sabbatical year. And every seven-times-seven years, they had—or at least they were supposed to have had, according to Leviticus—a jubilee.

• From How God Became King (2012)

  After the Babylonian exile, Jeconiah became the father of Salathiel, Salathiel of Zerubbabel, Zerubbabel of Abioud, Abioud of Eliakim, Eliakim of Azor, Azor of Sadok, Sadok of Achim, Achim of Elioud, Elioud of Eleazar, Eleazar of Matthan, Matthan of Jacob, and Jacob of Joseph the husband of Mary, from whom was born Jesus, who is called “Messiah.” So all the generations from Abraham to David add up to fourteen; from David to the Babylonian exile, fourteen generations; and from the Babylonian exile to the Messiah, fourteen generations. (1:1–17) To get the point, we have to understand one thing in particular. To put it simply, most Jews of Jesus’s day did not believe that the exile was really, properly over. Yes, they’d come back from Babylon—well, some of them, anyway. Yes, they’d rebuilt the Temple in Jerusalem. But pagan foreigners were still ruling over them. They were still slaves even in their own land, as Ezra and Nehemiah complain: “Here we are, slaves to this day—slaves in the land that you gave to our ancestors to enjoy its fruit and its good gifts” (Neh. 9:36). The great promises of Isaiah and Ezekiel hadn’t yet come true. All this is summed up graphically in a vital passage in Daniel 9, normally assumed to have been written in the early second century BC, in which Daniel in exile in Babylon asks God whether it isn’t time now for Jeremiah’s prophecy to be fulfilled, the prophecy that the Babylonian exile would last for seventy years. Back comes the answer: not seventy years, but seventy weeks of years, in other words, seventy times seven years: In the first year of Darius son of Ahasuerus, by birth a Mede, who became king over the realm of the Chaldeans—in the first year of his reign, I, Daniel, perceived in the books the number of years that, according to the word of YHWH to the prophet Jeremiah, must be fulfilled for the devastation of Jerusalem, namely, seventy years. Then I turned to the Lord God, to seek an answer by prayer and supplication with fasting and sackcloth and ashes….

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

  presides; in the amelioration of the condition of the poor and suffering; in the faith, the brotherly love, the beneficence, and the triumphant death of its confessors. To this internal moral and spiritual testimony were added the powerful outward proof of its divine origin in the prophecies and types of the Old Testament, so strikingly fulfilled in the New; and finally, the testimony of the miracles, which, according to the express statements of Quadratus, Justin Martyr, Irenaeus, Tertullian, Origen, and others, continued in this period to accompany the preaching of missionaries from time to time, for the conversion of the heathen. Particularly favorable outward circumstances were the extent, order, and unity of the Roman empire, and the prevalence of the Greek language and culture. In addition to these positive causes, Christianity had a powerful negative advantage in the hopeless condition of the Jewish and heathen world. Since the fearful judgment of the destruction of Jerusalem, Judaism wandered restless and accursed, without national existence. Heathenism outwardly held sway, but was inwardly rotten and in process of inevitable decay. The popular religion and public morality were undermined by a sceptical and materialistic philosophy; Grecian science and art had lost their creative energy; the Roman empire rested only on the power of the sword and of temporal interests; the moral bonds of society were sundered; unbounded avarice and vice of every kind, even by the confession of a Seneca and a Tacitus, reigned in Rome and in the provinces, from the throne to the hovel. Virtuous emperors, like Antoninus Pius and Marcus Aurelius, were the exception, not the rule, and could not prevent the progress of moral decay. Nothing, that classic antiquity in its fairest days had produced, could heal the fatal wounds of the age, or even give transient relief. The only star of hope in the gathering night was the young, the fresh, the dauntless religion of Jesus, fearless of death, strong in faith, glowing with love, and destined to commend itself more and more to all reflecting minds as the only living religion of the present and the future. While the world was continually agitated by wars, and revolutions, and public calamities, while systems of philosophy, and dynasties were rising and passing away, the new religion, in spite of fearful opposition from without and danger from within, was silently and steadily progressing with the irresistible force of truth, and worked itself gradually into the very bone and blood of the race. "Christ appeared," says the great Augustin, "to the men of the decrepit, decaying world, that while all around them was withering away, they might through Him receive new, youthful life." Notes. Gibbon, in his famous fifteenth chapter, traces the rapid progress of Christianity in the Roman empire to five causes: the zeal of the early Christians, the belief in future rewards and punishment, the power of miracles, the austere (pure) morals of the Christian, and the compact church organization.

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

  I look tanned, happy, relaxed, like I’m always up for a big laugh and a good time. My curly hair, a bit wild, indicates that I’m not buttoned-up or afraid to look like the most natural version of myself. My strapless clothing shows that I’m comfortable with my body. Those things are true about me, I’m not purporting to be someone I’m not. This may be a superficial and one-sided presentation of myself, but it’s not false advertising. I’m showing my teeth – white enough and straight enough; I’m showing my body – petite, strong and healthy; I’m showing my nails – manicured and brightly colored. In other words, there shouldn’t be any surprises when a man meets me in person, nothing that I’m squirreling away and hoping he won’t notice when I’m alive in front of him. And if Michael does see my profile then it means he’s on Tinder too. I do the thing that I’ve been doing over and over again for the past few months: I take a leap of faith. I click the button to make my profile public for anyone on Tinder to see. A few hours later, lying in bed with Georgia pressing her warm feet against me as she sleeps, I stare at my phone and wonder how I survived the monotony of my life pre-Tinder. Tinder contains a vast sea of men, so many of them with such odd profile pictures that when I find the occasional one that doesn’t reek of inappropriateness, I click the heart button just to show solidarity, like hey, my normal sees your normal and thinks we might be able to make some normal magic together. It doesn’t matter if I find the person attractive, I just care that he seems like a person I could know in my current life. If it looks like a mug shot, swipe left – if you can’t smile for this one picture, I worry. Sitting in your car with your seatbelt on, swipe left – come on, live a little! There have to be more creative backdrops for a selfie. Lying in bed shirtless, swipe left, don’t be so obvious. Oh, even better, take a pic of yourself in front of a mirror with nothing but briefs on, swipe, swipe, swipe! All of your photos are ones in which you’re posing with other women, swipe left – that raises suspicion, are you hinting at an open marriage? You’re posing with your kids, swipe left – don’t drag your kids into this sordid place. You’re posing with your dog in every photo, swipe left – I’ve been down this road, I see your dog for the jealous lover she really is. You never part your lips when you smile, swipe left, what are you hiding?

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

  A brand-new afterword for the third edition (about trans children and moral panics) can be found at the end of the book. Ten years ago , I was in the throes of writing the book that would eventually become Whipping Girl: A Transsexual Woman on Sexism and the Scapegoating of Femininity . At the time, I believed that I had important and relatively novel things to say about a variety of issues that all seemed interconnected to me. My recent transition (from having others view and treat me as male, to being viewed and treated as female) provided me with numerous insights into gender and sexism that I wanted to share with the world. That experience, combined with my background as a biologist, led me to question both sides of the “nature versus nurture” debate as it applies to gender. I was also concerned by the ways in which movements that were vital to my existence—such as feminism and queer (i.e., LGBTIQ+) activism—would sometimes forward theories and policies that served to further marginalize other gender and sex ual minorities. And I wanted to examine the many under-discussed issues and obstacles faced by those of us on the transgender spectrum, and the parallels that I saw between media, psychiatric, and academic stereotypes of trans people. Finally, I wanted to challenge how trans women and feminine gender expression—individually, but especially in combination—were routinely demeaned and derided in both the straight mainstream, as well as in feminist and queer settings. I thought that the book would likely be appreciated within trans communities—especially among those on the trans female/feminine spectrum, for whom I was explicitly advocating—and with at least some non-transgender feminists and queer activists—especially those who identify as feminine or femme. But I had no idea that, in the years that would follow, it would eventually be considered to be an important book within feminism, that it would be used in gender and queer studies, sociology, psychology, and human sexuality courses in colleges across North America, that it would be translated and published in other languages, that it would reach and resonate with many people outside of feminist, queer, and trans circles, or that the book (and some of the ideas contained therein) would often be cited and discussed in mainstream publications. 1 While the major themes that I forward in Whipping Girl remain just as vital and relevant today as they were when I was first writing the book, some of the specific descriptions and details will surely seem increasingly dated as time marches on. So in this preface, I want to place the book in historical context, as it most certainly was a reaction to what was happening in society, and within activist and academic circles, during the early-to-mid aughts (or “the zeros,” as I prefer to call the first decade of this millennium).

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

  What truly unites feminists is not a shared history (as we each bring a unique set of life experiences to the table), but our shared commitment to fighting against the devaluation of femaleness and femininity in our society and the double standards that are placed onto both sexes. In this respect, cissexual female and MTF spectrum feminists do have a lot in common. It’s not just that MTF spectrum folks need feminism, but that feminism needs to embrace MTF experiences and perspectives. The fact that the lion’s share of the anti-trans sentiment specifically targets those of us on the MTF spectrum indicates that we are marked, not for failing to conform to gender norms per se but because we “choose” to be female and/or feminine. For feminism to ignore the society-wide effemimania and trans-misogyny we face is to allow one of the most pervasive forms of traditional sexism to go unchecked. Indeed, for feminists to continue to dismiss effemimania solely because it targets those who are male-bodied is particularly shortsighted. After all, as previously mentioned, much of the sexist behavior exhibited by cissexual men arises directly out of their being forced to disavow and mystify femininity from an early age. In this respect, MTF spectrum folks can provide feminism with crucial insight into the workings of effemimania and offer strategies to potentially challenge it. Additionally, those of us who transition to female can provide firsthand accounts of the very different ways that women and men are treated in the world—a perspective that is especially relevant today given how common it is for people to naively claim that we as a society have transcended sexism and moved into a “postfeminist” era. But perhaps most of all, what MTF spectrum trans people can offer feminism is a very different and far more empowering perspective on femininity. Over the years, many feminists have argued that femininity undermines women, or that it’s purposefully designed to subordinate women to men. Such a view no doubt stems from the experiences of those women who have felt that the expectation of femininity has been forced upon them against their will.

• From How God Became King (2012)

  But the whole point of the gospels is to tell the story of how God became king, on earth as in heaven. They were written to stake the very specific claim toward which the eighteenth-century movements of philosophy and culture, and particularly politics, were reacting with such hostility. Behind the attempts of Reimarus and others to suggest that the “kingdom of God” in the teaching of Jesus referred either to a violent military revolution or to the “end of the world” there lay the determination to make sure that God was kept out of real life. This was not a “result” of fresh research. It was the philosophical and theopolitical assumption that drove the research in the first place. This is, I think, the real problem with post-Enlightenment historical skepticism. It was not simply that it begged leave to doubt all kinds of elements in the gospel stories (the “miracles,” and so forth) as well as the framing dogmas of incarnation, atonement, resurrection, and so on. David Hume, the Scottish philosopher whose rejection of the miraculous still holds sway in many minds, is only one element in the picture. Alongside him are Hobbes, Rousseau, Voltaire, and, not least, Thomas Jefferson—the masterminds not only of a new “climate of opinion,” but a new political agenda. The wedge they drove between faith and public life, between religion and politics, is exactly the same wedge that Reimarus and others drove between (what came to be called) the Jesus of history and the Christ of faith. This philosophy was not new. The philosophers in question, of course, liked to present it as such, and the simultaneous advances in science and technology enabled them to suggest that this really was a wholly new era of world history. On the contrary, the mainline philosophy of the Enlightenment was simply one version of the ancient philosophy of Epicurus, who taught that the gods, if they existed at all, were a long way away from the world of humans and did not concern themselves with it. As a result, the world we know grows, changes, and develops under its own steam, as it were from within. Apply this to the scientific study of origins, and you get Darwinian evolution—again, not a new idea, but one that followed logically from the absence of divine control or intervention. Instead of “thinking God’s thoughts after him,” science was now studying the world as though God didn’t exist. Apply it to political science, and you get democracy: society ordering itself according to its own internal wishes and whims, fears and fancies. Instead of the “divine right” of rulers, politics was now ordering the world—at least in France and America—on the strict basis of a separation between church and state.

• From How God Became King (2012)

  Third, the kingdom that Jesus inaugurated, that is implemented through his cross, is emphatically for this world. The four gospels together demand a complete reappraisal of the various avoidance tactics Western Christianity has employed rather than face this challenge head-on. It simply won’t do to line up the options, as has normally been done, into either a form of “Christendom,” by which people normally mean the capitulation of the gospel to the world’s way of power, or a form of sectarian withdrawal. Life is more complex, more interesting, and more challenging than that. The gospels are there, waiting to inform a new generation for holistic mission, to embody, explain, and advocate new ways of ordering communities, nations, and the world. The church belongs at the very heart of the world, to be the place of prayer and holiness at the point where the world is in pain—not to be a somewhat “religious” version of the world, on the one hand, or a detached, heavenly minded enclave, on the other. It is a measure of our contemporary muddles that we find it very difficult to articulate, let alone to live out, a vision of church, kingdom, and world that is neither of these. What happens if we ask the question the other way around? What, in other words, do we learn about the cross when we discover that the gospels present it as the means by which God (in Jesus) becomes king of the world? Again, I see three immediate answers to this challenging question. First, the way we have normally listed options in atonement theology simply won’t do. Our questions have been wrongly put, because they haven’t been about the kingdom. They haven’t been about God’s sovereign, saving rule coming on earth as in heaven. Instead, our questions have been about a “salvation” that rescues people from the world, instead of for the world. “Going to heaven” has been the object (ever since the Middle Ages at least, in the Western church); “sin” is what stops us from getting there; so the cross must deal with sin, so that we can leave this world and go to the much better one in the sky, or in “eternity,” or wherever. But this is simply untrue to the story the gospels are telling—which, again, explains why we’ve all misread these wonderful texts. Whatever the cross achieves must be articulated, if we are to take the four gospels seriously, within the context of the kingdom-bringing victory. This is the ultimate redefinition-in-action of the messianic task, the kingdom-bringing messianic vocation. In all four gospels, not only in John, the cross is the victory that overcomes the world. I am wary of describing this simply as a “Christus Victor” interpretation, because historically that has been associated with other kinds of development and has often been set over against other atonement theologies. But the idea of messianic victory as a fresh interpretation of an ancient Jewish theme is precisely what the four gospels have in mind.

• From How God Became King (2012)

  First, it is obvious that without the resurrection of Jesus the evangelists would never have had a story to tell. Thousands of young Jews were crucified by the Romans. Very few of them are even mentioned in our historical sources, except as a grisly footnote. Even those who think the evangelists were in fact very clever inventors of large-scale fictions designed to revive a Jesus movement that might not otherwise have survived the death (and continuing deadness, so to speak) of its founder are bound to admit that even within these cleverly designed myths the resurrection plays the vital role in opening the question up again, so that what looked like defeat, like yet another failure of a kingdom dream, was in fact a victory. The resurrection, in short, is presented by the evangelists not as a “happy ending” after an increasingly sad and gloomy tale, but as the event that demonstrated that Jesus’s execution really had dealt the deathblow to the dark forces that had stood in the way of God’s new world, God’s “kingdom” of powerful creative and restorative love, arriving “on earth as in heaven.” That is why the bodily resurrection matters in a way that it never quite does, even to the devout who insist that they believe it, if all one is interested in is a kingdom “not of this world.” The resurrection is, from Mark’s point of view, the moment when God’s kingdom “comes in power.” From John’s point of view, it is the launching of the new creation, the new Genesis. From Matthew’s point of view, it brings Jesus into the position for which he was always destined, that of the world’s rightful Lord, sending out his followers (as a new Roman emperor might send out his emissaries, but with methods that match the message) to call the world to follow him and learn his way of being human. From Luke’s point of view, the resurrection is the moment when Israel’s Messiah “comes into his glory,” so that “repentance for the forgiveness of sins” can now be announced to all the world as the way of life, indeed, as they say in Acts, as The Way. Once we put kingdom and cross together in the manner we have, it is not difficult to see how the resurrection fits closely with that great combined reality. It is the resurrection that declares that the cross was a victory, not a defeat. It therefore announces that God has indeed become king on earth as in heaven.

• From How God Became King (2012)

  Having said all that, it is vital that we do not therefore miss the point that, in addition to referring back to Jesus himself, the gospels were telling his story in such a way as to say that this was indeed the moment when “our movement,” the early Christian “Way,” as it was sometimes called, was launched. Like Americans retelling the story of the brave pioneers who crossed the ocean and settled in a difficult and dangerous land, and doing so not merely for the sake of a good tale but in order to reinforce the sense of modern America as a country with a particular kind of risky, can-do attitude toward life, so the gospel writers told the story of Jesus in order to undergird and reinforce the Christian determination to follow him, to go on following him, to live as he lived and, if necessary, to die as he died, believing that God’s kingdom, established through his work, was becoming a reality in more and more of the world through their own lives, work, and costly witness. Once we adjust the volume on this speaker so that we can lose the distortion introduced by radical skepticism, on the one hand, and radical Lutheranism, on the other, we should be able to hear the more nuanced and distinctive notes of the early Christians celebrating the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus as the moment when, and the means by which, their own work took its flying instructions and got off the ground. The gospel writers were not, then, simply telling the story of Jesus in some “neutral,” “objective,” fly-on-the-wall kind of reportage. Actually, as I and others have often pointed out, there is no such thing as “neutral” reportage. All stories are told from a point of view; without that, you have no principle of selection and are left with an unsorted ragbag of information. No, the gospel writers were telling the story of Jesus, quite deliberately, in such a way as to put down markers for the life and witness of their own communities. The thing to bear in mind, though, as we adjust the volume on this third speaker, is this: just because the gospel writers were consciously telling the story of Jesus as the foundation story of the church, that doesn’t mean they weren’t telling the story of Jesus himself. Just because the sports reporter is a thoroughly biased supporter of one team rather than the other, that doesn’t mean he is allowed to get the score wrong.

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

  You should be proud of yourself for ensnaring me,” I say, laughing, but really I’m not so sure. I know the adage that age is just a number and he certainly looks younger than I would imagine a 62-year-old could look, but still, he’s only three years shy of getting senior citizen benefits. I have envisioned myself with a man my age or younger, so I file this new information away to deal with at a later point when I can figure out why it might concern me. CHAPTER 29Saturday Night, Legs UpMy kids’ pediatrician and I have always been chatty and friendly, but the last time I saw her in the spring, I struggled to keep up my side of our usual banter, tripping over my words and looking morosely out the window. When she was done writing out a prescription for Georgia’s ear infection, she sent her out of the room to give us a minute alone. “What’s going on? Something is off,” she said, watching me closely. I didn’t mince words, quickly spitting out that Michael had had an affair and we had separated, that the older kids wouldn’t talk to him. She sucked in her breath, rolling back in her stool until she could lean against the wall. “I don’t know what to do. I’m so overwhelmed. I don’t think I can take him back even if he wants to come back, which is not certain to me,” I wept. “Laura, I want to tell you something. After my first son was born, my husband and I got divorced. The man I’m married to now is my second husband. I know what you’re going through and I promise you, no matter what happens, you’re going to be OK. Here’s my advice to you: don’t stay for the money, don’t stay for the kids, don’t stay because you’re scared to be alone.” “Those are the only three reasons I can imagine staying. I’m scared of financial instability, I feel horrible about the kids and I’m terrified to be alone,” I said. She raised her eyebrows. “No one can tell you what to do, only you know what is best for you. But staying because you’re afraid not to is not a good reason to stay,” she said. Now, seven months later, sitting in the Mickey Mouse-themed patient room for Georgia’s annual check-up, she again sends her out of the room to give us a chance to catch up. Georgia reaches for the phone I’m holding outstretched to her and rolls her eyes, asking me not to take too long. As soon as Dr B closes the door behind Georgia, she tells me that she is relieved to see that I look much healthier than the last time she saw me, that my color is back and I don’t look painfully thin anymore.

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

  This is a pivotal moment for me and I hover indecisively over the “purchase ticket” option on the bar’s website as for months I’ve done little aside from force myself out of bed every morning, paste on a tentative smile for my kids and carry on with copious tears and a rage I hadn’t previously known I could even muster up. My daily theme song has been from ‘Santa Claus Is Coming To Town’ in which Frosty is learning to walk: “Put one foot in front of the other, and soon you’ll be walking across the floor. Put one foot in front of the other, and soon you’ll be walking out the door.” I’ve done nothing but walk across the floor for the past five months, but something inside of me has subtly shifted and I am suddenly aware that there is indeed a door, one that I have the power to open, even if just a crack to peek at what’s on the other side. I click the button and quickly enter my credit card details before I can change my mind. I shower, grooming long-neglected parts of my body, and in a burst of optimism douse my sun-kissed skin with fragrant rose body oil that Tina brought me back from Paris (by the way, there’s apparently not a guide available to suggest cheer-up gifts for your girlfriend whose marriage has just imploded, and I both adored and felt for my friends as they plied me with things they thought might help: fancy herbal teas with names like Calm and Serenity and healing bath salts and body scrubs, aromatherapy candles, a delicate gold bracelet that said “You can do this,” a small blue porcelain elephant that had been passed from friend to friend going through hard times, jars of freshly canned tomatoes, a case of my favorite yellow marshmallow Easter Peeps and, of course, the (requisite) vibrator. I unearth a black lace thong dormant at the back of my underwear drawer, pull on a strapless navy blue dress with a summery beaded belt and barely have time to strap on my wooden-heeled clog sandals before I’m flying out the door, hair still dripping, racing to exit before Michael and Georgia arrive home from their bike ride and ask me where I’m going. As I drive down the road, fat raindrops start splattering on the car windows. My heart sinks; I should circle the neighborhood to find Michael and Georgia on their bikes and give them a ride home, but then my escape won’t be clean. In a first for me in my 18 years as a mother, I put myself before my kids, telling myself Georgia will be soaked but fine, and I drive on down the long country road before I lose my nerve. CHAPTER 2Is This Too Much?As I pull onto the side street where the bar is, I see couples streaming down the block.

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

  Urgent, contentious, generous, and brilliant.” —Jennifer Finney Boylan, author of She’s Not There and writer in residence at Barnard College of Columbia University “Julia Serano offers a perspective sorely needed, but up until now rarely heard.” — Bitch Magazine “Serano’s collection of critical essays deconstructs socially accepted narratives on trans women in Western culture. It is also responsible for coining the term ‘transmisogyny’—the point at which transphobia and misogyny meet.” —BuzzFeed “Having only just come out as Transgender, I was taken by a friend to a bookstore and told to buy Whipping Girl immediately. As I read, the revelation dawned on me that experiencing my gender could be full of self-empowerment and liberation as opposed to the fear and shame I had already spent a lifetime living with. Not only was this book a light in the dark for someone jumping head first into transition, it also served as an essential tool to pass on to family and friends to help them to better understand what it means to be Trans. I’m forever thankful for this book and its author.” —Laura Jane Grace, musician and founder of Against Me! “Serano brings her insight as a biologist and transsexual woman to bear in a thoughtful book on gender diversity. Whipping Girl critiques media depictions of trans people, dismantles science’s longtime characterization of transsexuality as pathology, and offers a whip-smart vision of a world that celebrates sexual difference.” —AlterNet “Serano takes to task those who categorize ‘femininity’ as artificial rather than a natural gender expression. Her convincing analysis and personal revelations challenge us to recognize our own sexist notions.” — Ms. Magazine “A book that has become standard reading for trans women.