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.

Page 26 of 216 · 20 per page

• From Books That Have Made History: Books That Can Change Your Life (2005)

  151 brought despotism. The Germans, Italians, and Spanish came to understand that they had unique cultures. The fi nest minds of the day, including Fichte and Hegel, put forth the belief that every civilization was unique and that each people, having de fi ned itself as a nation, should develop its culture in its own way. This belief was strongest in Germany. With this new thinking came revulsion at some of the ideals of the Enlightenment, which had taught that men and women were creatures of reason. From the new perspective of romanticism, men and women were creatures of impulse; the irrational plays an important role in human life. People can try to suppress their emotions under a veneer of reason, but the emotions will break free. While the Enlightenment sought to control nature, romanticism celebrated nature as uncontrollable and saw it as a source of eternal renewal for humanity. The Enlightenment had celebrated classical Greece and Rome, but romanticism believed that the Middle Ages, when France and Germany had come into being, had been a time of true enlightenment. Christianity took on new meaning during the Romantic era. The life and the suffering of Jesus were idealized. Some people turned back to the Catholic Church as a repository of faith and wisdom. Goethe observed and absorbed the ideas of both the Enlightenment and romanticism. He is unique and stands in neither age. The second part of Faust opens in the wilds of nature in the spring. Faust, shattered by the death of Gretchen and his own abandonment of her, is with his comrade, the devil. At the opening of Part II of Faust, elves, the helpers of mankind, have pity on the man of sorrows, whether he is good or evil. In Part I, Faust draws back from suicide at Easter. It is no coincidence that Dante carries The Divine Comedy, his story of redemption, through Easter week. Orwell’s 1984 begins the story of Winston Smith in April. The two parts of Faust are linked by spring and the renewal of the earth. At this time of year, the man of sorrows—both Christ and Everyman, whether he is good or evil—can be pitied and helped. Faust can renew himself, take charge of his life, and become responsible again. The devil asks him what he is doing, and Faust replies that he is gaining strength from nature. The devil tells Faust that they must make a living and suggests that they go to the court of the Holy Roman Emperor. Until 1806, when Napoleon abolished

• From What Are Biblical Values? (2019)

  (The demise of the sea in Revelation 21:1 is due to its symbolic, mythological significance, not to any ecological concern.) Revelation does not suggest that the envisioned world can be brought about by human endeavor. Insofar as it is a hoped-for ideal, however, we might reasonably be expected to strive toward it. Concern for the preservation of the earth is less prominent in the New Testament than in the Old. The New Testament writers were swept up in the enthusiasm of their new revelation and believed that this world would soon pass away. The eschatological framework of the New Testament, however, must be recognized as a mythic construct, not something that can be accepted as factual from a modern perspective. Statements about the future do not convey factual information but rather express hopes and fears. The idea of new creation is important as an ideal of renewal, but its relevance to modern environmental concerns is only indirect. At no point, however, does the New Testament suggest that humanity is free to “rape the planet,” as Ann Coulter enthusiastically put it. In fact, the New Testament does not even repeat the commandment of Genesis to increase and multiply and fill the earth. Rather, the teaching of Jesus implies that human beings should not be concerned to accumulate wealth in barns but should live a carefree life like the birds and the flowers. The prospect of an imminent ending undermines the rationale for human acquisitiveness and thereby also undermines the motivation for raping the planet. CHAPTER SIX Slavery and Liberation S LAVERY , the condition where human beings are owned, bought, and sold by other people, is arguably the most degrading condition known to humanity. Much of the appeal of the story of Israel in the Bible is that it begins with slavery in Egypt and proceeds to liberation by the power of God. This is, to be sure, the story of a specific people, at a specific time in history, but already in the Hebrew Bible it was seen as paradigmatic, a story that offers hope of “a new Exodus” in other times and places.1 It has been appropriated repeatedly down through history, by Puritans and Boers, Zionists and black South Africans, and African Americans in the United States. In modern times, it has given rise to a new approach to theology, called Liberation Theology. (Liberation Theology is a movement that originated in South America but enjoyed broad sympathy in Europe and North America in the last quarter of the twentieth century.)2 Despite occasional protestations that the story applies only to Israel,3 other people have found that it resonates with their experience.4 The relevance of the Bible to the modern world depends on analogical use, and any such use presupposes that biblical stories provide paradigms that can be used in analogical situations.

• From Christianity: The First Three Thousand Years (2009)

  seen a sudden and unexpected revival, bringing new recruits and new hope, albeit sometimes accompanied by an ultra-traditional attitude to the modern world. A major element in this on Mount Athos was the restoration of full community life to most monasteries after centuries when monks had tended to live individually, not generally as hermits, but pursuing their own spiritual paths.92 What remains to be seen is how this other-worldly spirituality and emphasis on an ancient liturgy can find a constructive relationship with modernity. We have seen how the Churches of the Eastern Rite and beyond found their cultures constrained in succession by two unsympathetic powers: from the fourteenth to the nineteenth centuries, the Ottoman Empire and its outliers and the Islamic monarchy of Iran, and then, in the twentieth, the short- lived but far more hostile power of Soviet Communism. Paradoxically, these oppressions were also shelters from pressing theological problems – what, in a different context, the poet Constantine Cavafy called ‘a kind of solution’ – for the Churches were mostly too preoccupied with survival to look beyond their walls.93 The Western Church in its Protestant and Catholic forms had struggled with various degrees of success to find a way of addressing children of the Enlightenment – efforts frequently scorned by the Orthodox. Out of all Eastern Churches only the Russian Orthodox Church in the last years of the tsars had much chance to do this. Now that the Orthodox cannot escape the task, the effects on Eastern Christianity will be interesting. The stories of contemporary Russia and Serbia suggest some initial misjudgements. Some may find it depressing that after seeing the collapse of traditional European Christendom, so many Christianities are still entwined with the politics of the powerful, but it is surely inevitable that any potential source of power will fascinate fallen humanity, and that religion is as likely to bring a sword as peace. The writers of Genesis who composed the story of Cain and Abel showed wisdom in recounting the first act of worship of God as immediately followed by the first murder. While no state liberated from Soviet control decided fully to re-establish a Christian Church, the Christian Right in the United States continues to play a part in American politics which is an unmistakable bid for Christian hegemony in the nation, and there are signs of a possible new Constantinian era elsewhere. In 1991 President Frederick Chiluba of Zambia, member of a Pentecostal Church and elected freely and fairly to power on a programme of reform, became the first ruler of a post-colonial African state to declare his country ‘a Christian nation’, submitting ‘the Government and the entire nation of Zambia to the Lordship of Jesus Christ’. Although Chiluba reluctantly stepped down from further contests for the presidency in 2001, his reputation badly sullied by his conduct in office, no

• From Books That Have Made History: Books That Can Change Your Life (2005)

  57 Job teaches several lessons. Evil is a reality. In the face of evil—whether confronting oneself or someone else—we must not justify the evil but stand up to it and demand an accounting. A set of universal values exists. The comforters of Job come from a variety of far-off regions to show that these values are in demand everywhere. Indeed, these values are touchstones of absolute goodness, because if absolute evil exists, absolute good must also exist. These values include the following: • Justice: Job demands justice. He believes that the Golden Rule is important. • Courage: As in the Iliad and Gilgamesh, courage is a fundamental human value in the Book of Job. Courage is the willingness to stand up and say what is just and true. • Moderation: Despite all his suffering, Job remains moderate. Moderation consists of knowing when justice has been transformed into simple legality and when courage has been replaced by brutality. • Wisdom: Wisdom is the knowledge to recognize what justice, courage, and moderation are. The Book of Job does not seek to impart erudite learning but instead gives wisdom to apply these values to daily life. Wisdom is not necessarily a happy concept. In the Oresteia, as in the Book of Job, wisdom comes only through suffering. These values do not necessarily make a happy world, but they help make a world in which we stand forth and make a statement. How do we read the Bible? Translations always put someone between the reader and the author. The King James Version of the Bible represents an eloquent translation of the magni fi cent language and poetry of Job and the Psalms. The King James Version of the Bible is one of two great achievements that came from a committee (the other being the U.S. Constitution). King James wanted the translation to be as free of doctrinal statements as possible. The committee that created the translation knew Greek and Hebrew and was working during the age of Shakespeare, an era when the English language had reached perfection in fl exibility and eloquence. The modern obsession with 58 Lecture 10: Book of Job improvements has resulted in new and modern—but inferior—translations. These translations are inferior in their accuracy, as well as their beauty. The King James Version of the Bible is written in language that ennobles the soul. ■ Book of Job. Kallen, Book of Job as Greek Tragedy. Wright and Fuller, The Book of the Acts of God, pp. 190–205. 1. Do you fi nd the resolution of Job to be satisfactory? 2. Have the late 20th and early 21st centuries produced their own equivalents to wisdom literature? Essential Reading Supplementary Reading Questions to Consider

• From What Are Biblical Values? (2019)

  He chose a passage from the prophet Isaiah: The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor. (Luke 4:18–19; Isaiah 61:1–2) The “year of the Lord’s favor” was the jubilee year, the time of remission of debt, when all people, in theory, were supposed to return to their ancestral property (Leviticus 25:8–17). By New Testament times, the jubilee year had come to represent more generally the time of salvation.29 Jesus, on Luke’s account, was promising to bring this prophecy to fulfillment.30 Later, when John the Baptist sends messengers from prison to ask whether Jesus is “the one that is to come,” the messiah who would bring about the deliverance of Israel, Jesus tells them: Go and tell John what you have seen and heard: the blind receive their sight, the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, the poor have good news brought to them. (Luke 7:22; Matthew 11:4–5) Bringing good news to the poor is a big part of what Jesus was about. Admittedly, no other Gospel states this mission as insistently as Luke. Here, the difference between Matthew and Luke can be seen in the Beatitudes, in the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew and the corresponding Sermon on the Plain in Luke. The Lukan version is simple: “Blessed are you who are poor, for yours is the kingdom of God” (6:20). The Matthean version reads: “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven” (5:3). Again, Luke reads: “Blessed are you who are hungry now, for you will be filled” (6:21). Matthew qualifies: “Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled” (5:6). Matthew places the stress on spiritual dispositions rather than on economic conditions. The expression “poor in spirit” recalls Isaiah 66:2: “This is the one to whom I will look, to the humble and contrite in spirit, who trembles at my word.” To be sure, the “poor in spirit” are also likely to be poor in material goods and to belong to the lowly of society, but the emphasis is different. In both versions of the Beatitudes, the poor (in spirit) are assured that theirs is the kingdom of God/heaven. This again admits of different interpretations. It may mean that the lowly will be exalted when God’s kingdom comes to pass on earth. Alternatively, it may mean that they will go to heaven when they die, and this is how it has usually been taken in the Christian tradition. But it may also mean that they are pleasing to God in the present—in effect, that they have already entered the kingdom that Jesus is proclaiming.

• From Christianity: The First Three Thousand Years (2009)

  reciting a slogan from the song which remained the anthem of American protesters throughout the 1960s: ‘We shall overcome’. Three years after that, Martin Luther King was shot dead in Memphis, Tennessee, the day after a speech in which he had likened himself to Moses, afforded no more than a glimpse of the Promised Land before the entry of Israel.23 King joined a procession of modern Christian martyrs who were killed for their work for the powerless, at the hands of those defending unjustly wielded power. On the other side of the world, another situation combining rapid social change and political oppression provoked the development in the 1970s of a different variety of Protestant liberation theology: the minjung theology of South Korea. The word means ‘ordinary people’, but this simple concept changed focus with the bewilderingly fast development of the republic, from factory workers through to the flexibility of the information technology industry: eventually more what might be termed a ‘cognitariat’ of educationally skilled workers than a ‘proletariat’. Jesus was minjung and the friend of the minjung, teaching forgiveness and love of enemies, but Moses was also minjung, political leader of his people against oppression. Minjung theologians were proud of their Korean past, and saw a complex struggle not only with the authoritarian South Korean government, but with the global strategies of the United States, which maintained that regime. Those involved faced torture, imprisonment and execution from South Korea’s military dictators. Given the trauma of the Korean War, with nearly a million refugees from the Communist North in their midst, even self-consciously reformist Korean theologians had little inclination to explore the terminology of Marxism in the fashion of South American liberation theologians. Although opposed to the strange dynastic Communism of Kim Il Sung in the North, minjung theologians still sought to show proper respect for the Korean ideal of self-sufficiency which lay behind North Korea’s cruelty and inhumanity.24 As Korean democracy gradually came to maturity after three hectic decades of economic development which had taken Europe two centuries to complete, there arose a new problem for minjung theology: how to reinvent for the ‘cognitariat this movement born in political struggle. The movement contributed to the social activism of a society whose needs and problems outran the administrative capacity of government, but it found it difficult to compete with Korean Pentecostalism. Pentecostals celebrated the success of the new society, and in their vehement anti-Communism they gladly adopted a conservative evangelical style from the United States, especially the ‘prosperity message of the ‘Word of Faith’ movements, while scorning the ‘idolatry’ to be found in the Korean past. Minjung’s roots were in Presbyterianism, long accustomed to respecting and

• From Middlesex (2002)

  "The Americans let in everyone," Lefty joked. "Eunuchs included." "They should let us speak Greek if they're so accepting," Desde- mona grumbled. Summer was abandoning the ocean. One night it grew too cold in the lifeboat to crack the corset's combination. Instead they hud- dled under blankets, talking. "Is Sourmelina meeting us in New York?" Desdemona asked. "No. We have to take a train to Detroit." "Why can't she meet us?" "It's too far." "Just as well. She wouldn't be on time anyway." The ceaseless sea wind made the tarp's edges flap. Frost formed on the lifeboat's gunwales. They could see the top of the Giulia's smoke- stack, the smoke itself discernible only as a starless patch of night sky. (Though they didn't know it, that striped, canted smokestack was al- ready informing them about their new home; it was whispering about River Rouge and the Uniroyal plant, and the Seven Sisters and Two Brothers, but they didn't listen; they wrinkled up their noses and ducked down in the lifeboat away from the smoke.) And if the smell of industry didn't insist on entering my story already, if Desdemona and Lefty, who grew up on a pine-scented mountain and who could never get used to the polluted air of De- troit, hadn't ducked down in the lifeboat, then they might have de- tected a new aroma wafting in on the brisk sea air: a humid odor of mud and wet bark. Land. New York. America. "What are we going to tell Sourmelina about us?" "She'll understand." "Will she keep quiet?" "There are a few things she'd rather her husband didn't know about her." "You mean Helen?" "I didn't say a thing," said Lefty. They fell asleep after that, waking to sunlight, and a face staring down at them. 75 "Did you have a good sleep?" Captain Kontoulis said. "Maybe I could get you a blanket?" "I'm sorry" Lefty said. "We won't do it again." "You won't get the chance," said the captain and, to prove his point, pulled the lifeboat's tarp completely away. Desdemona and Lefty sat up. In the distance, lit by the rising sun, was the skyline of New York. It wasn't the right shape for a city— no domes, no minarets— and it took them a minute to process the tall geometric forms. Mist curled off the bay. A million pink windowpanes glittered. Closer, crowned with her own sunrays and dressed like a classical Greek, the Statue of Liberty welcomed them. "How do you like that?" Captain Kontoulis asked. "I've seen enough torches to last the rest of my life," said Lefty. But Desdemona, for once, was more optimistic. "At least it's a woman," she said. "Maybe here people won't be killing each other every single day." 76 BOOK Till C^D HEI1P FORD'S EJIGLISH-LM1GIIAGE IllELTIJIG POT Everyone who builds a factory builds a temple. — Calvin Coolidge

• From Middlesex (2002)

  One Sunday in March, she arrived at Assumption before the Di- vine Liturgy had started. Going into a niche, she approached the icon of St. Christopher and proposed a deal. "Please, St. Christopher," Desdemona kissed her fingertips and touched them to the saint's forehead, "if you keep Miltie safe in the war, I will make him promise to go back to Bithynios and fix the church." She looked up at St. Christopher, the martyr of Asia Minor. "If the Turks destroyed it, Miltie will build it again. If it only needs painting, he'll paint." St. Christopher was a giant. He held a staff and forded a rushing river. On his back was the Christ Child, the heaviest baby in history be- cause he had the world in his hands. What better saint to protect her own son, in peril on the sea? In the shadowy, lamplit space, Desde- mona prayed. She moved her lips, spelling out the conditions. "I would also like, if possible, St. Christopher, if Miltie he could be ex- cused from the training. He tells me it is very dangerous. He's writ- ing to me in Greek now, too, St. Christopher. Not too good but okay. I also make him promise to put in the church new pews. Also, if you like, some carpets." She lapsed into silence, closing her eyelids. She crossed herself numerous times, waiting for an answer. Then her spine suddenly straightened. She opened her eyes, nodded, smiled. She kissed her fingertips and touched them to the saint's picture, and she hurried home to write Milton the good news. "Yeah, sure," my father said when he got the letter. "St. Christopher to the rescue." He slipped the letter into his Greek-English dictionary and carried both to the incinerator behind the Quonset hut. (That was the end of my father's Greek lessons. Though he continued to speak Greek to his parents, Milton never succeeded in writing it, and as he got older he began to forget what even the simplest words meant. In the end he couldn't say much more than Chapter Eleven or me, which was almost nothing at all.) Milton's sarcasm was understandable under the circumstances. 191 Only the day before, his CO. had given Milton a new assignment in the upcoming invasion. The news, like all bad news, hadn't registered at first. It was as if the C.O.'s words, the actual syllables he addressed

• From The Greatest Controversies of Early Christian History (2013)

  © In the book of Revelation, the seven seals of the scroll are broken, each one leading to a disaster. Breaking the seventh seal leads to seven angels, each blowing a trumpet in turn and leading to a disaster. The seventh sounding of the trumpet leads to seven angels, each holding a bowl filled with God's wrath poured out on the earth and leading to a disaster. o We shouldn't think about these events in a linear fashion, along a chronological timeline. The point of describing disaster after disaster is to show that there will be many disasters. Violent repetition allows the author to make that point. Apocalypses are also designed to disclose transcendent truths, truths greater than this world. In particular, most Jewish and Christian apocalypses are designed to show that God is ultimately in control, even if that doesn’t seem to be the case. These transcendent truths are meant to explain mundane realities, such as the presence of suffering on earth. Suffering exists because we are at the end of time and the forces of evil are at the height of their power, but God will soon triumph. Finally, apocalypses always come to us in a triumphalist mode. Good will vanquish evil, and then all will be good. The book of Revelation ends with a vision of a new heaven and a new earth to appear after this horrible world and its pain and suffering pass away. It may seem that the point of ancient apocalypses is to predict what will happen in the future. But biblical scholars have long recognized that, in fact, these books are meant to comfort those who are suffering in the present with the hope that in the end, all will be well. Apocalypses were designed to assure their readers that God ts ultimately in control, even when circumstances seem otherwise, and that ultimately, good will triumph over evil, light over darkness, God over the forces of chaos. Scanned by CamScanner Two Key Visions from Revelation e The fact that the book of Revelation does not predict a distant future from its own time can be seen in at least two of its key visions. e In chapter 17, one of the seven angels carrying one of the seven bowls tells John that he wants to show him the judgment of the great whore of Babylon, with whom the kings of the earth have committed fornication. With the wine of that fornication, the inhabitants of earth have become drunk. o The angel takes John into the wilderness, where the prophet sees a woman sitting on a scarlet beast with seven heads and 10 horns. The woman ts clothed in purple and scarlet, adorned with gold and jewels. She holds in her hand a golden cup full of abominations and the impurities of her fornication. On her head is written a mystery: “Babylon the Great, mother of whores and of earth’s abominations.”

• From Books That Have Made History: Books That Can Change Your Life (2005)

  73 who has prepared for death will go to the bliss of union with God, which is cause for happiness. The students of Socrates next ask him why he did not kill himself. Socrates explains that suicide is not an option. A person is the slave of God and must prepare for the moment when God wants him to die. The students wonder how Socrates can say that the body is a prison that keeps the soul enmeshed. Socrates says that the cares and concerns of the body—such as hunger and fatigue—prevent an individual from pursuing truth and wisdom. The more a person can do to rid himself of his desires and bodily concerns, the purer his soul will become. Socrates is then asked to answer the following questions: How do you know that your soul will continue after death and that actions have consequences? How do you know whether your life, spent in the pursuit of wisdom, had meaning? Socrates replies that the immortality of the soul is the basis for everything and is attested by the existence of absolutes, such as absolute truth, justice, good, and beauty. Absolute beauty, for example, occurs in heaven, and it exists and is true even if every person on earth denies it. Socrates says that people are born understanding the concept of these absolutes; therefore, the absolutes can exist only if the soul existed before the body and if these ideas were imprinted on the mind in heaven. Thus, the soul existed before we were born and will exist after we pass away. The next question is: If the soul existed before you were born, how do you know that it will not die when you die? Socrates says that the soul is immortal because it gives one life. Absolute life must be the opposite of absolute death, and no absolute can admit its absolute opposite into it. Therefore, the soul must continue, and it must be imperishable. Socrates’s students indicate that they believe him but that they do not know whether he has persuaded them. Socrates states that he has come to understand that belief in this ultimate truth is just that—a belief. One cannot prove that the soul is immortal or that good or bad actions have consequences; one must make a leap of faith to believe it. He says, “If you do, fair is the prize and great is the hope, and it is in that hope that I can go happily to my death.” Finally, the students ask Socrates what he believes the afterlife will be like. Socrates, who had been convicted by the Athenians of blasphemy, believed

• From Books That Have Made History: Books That Can Change Your Life (2005)

  187 Lessons from the Great Books Lecture 36 That is the ultimate lesson of these great books—never give up. Live your life and realize that every day, just as Thoreau told you and just as Homer tells you, every day you can begin again. A s we approach the conclusion of this course, we must ask ourselves why we should read great books. At the beginning, this course defi ned a great book as having a great theme, being written in noble language that elevates the soul, and speaking across the ages, that is, possessing universality. Any discussion of great books must involve values. People cannot learn from great books unless they are willing to enter sympathetically into the mind of the author. This course has discussed books that made history. One example, of course, is Machiavelli’s The Prince . Lord Acton argues that the modern world began with Machiavelli’s idea that the state has no sense of moral judgment and politics has no moral dimension whatsoever. Machiavelli believed that Socrates and Cicero were wrong. A state and its leaders are judged by different criteria than those used for private individuals. There is a complete separation between public and private morals. In addition to The Prince , several other works discussed in this course reveal the soul of a tyrant. Beowulf, Gilgamesh, and the Iliad all discuss ambition and the desire to leave behind a reputation that will be remembered forever. In the epic of Gilgamesh, for example, Gilgamesh recognized that he would not live forever; however, he had built the walls of Uruk, and men would talk about them forever. The Divine Comedy is a story of redemption, but it also clarifi es ideals that led people from across Europe to take up the Cross and go to the Holy Land to wage war against the in fi del. The justifi cation for the crusades can be found in the ideals of the Divine Comedy. Although it is a story of divine love, that love must be spread by the sword and by men who believe that they are undertaking the work of God. John Stuart Mill’s On Liberty looks back at the founders of the United States. Mill represents the continuation of ideas found in the Declaration of Independence. Lord Acton

• From Middlesex (2002)

  there was a French explorer named Cadillac, and he was the one who discovered Detroit. And that seal was his family seal, from France." "What's France?" "France is a country in Europe." "What's Europe?" "It's a continent, which is like a great big piece of land, way, way big- ger than a country. But Cadillacs don't come from Europe anymore, kukla. They come from right here in the good old U.S.A." The light turned green and he drove on. But my prototype lingered. She was there at the next light and the next. So pleasant was her company that my father, a man loaded with initiative, decided to see what he could do to turn his vision into reality. Thus: for some time now, in the living room where the men dis- cussed politics, they had also been discussing the velocity of sperm. Peter Tatakis, "Uncle Pete," as we called him, was a leading member of the debating society that formed every week on our black love seats. A lifelong bachelor, he had no family in America and so had be- come attached to ours. Every Sunday he arrived in his wine-dark Buick, a tall, prune-faced, sad-seeming man with an incongruously vital head of wavy hair. He was not interested in children. A propo- nent of the Great Books series— which he had read twice— Uncle Pete was engaged with serious thought and Italian opera. He had a passion, in history, for Edward Gibbon, and, in literature, for the journals of Madame de Stael. He liked to quote that witty lady's opinion on the German language, which held that German wasn't good for conversation because you had to wait to the end of the sen- tence for the verb, and so couldn't interrupt. Uncle Pete had wanted to become a doctor, but the "catastrophe" had ended that dream. In the United States, he'd put himself through two years of chiropractic school, and now ran a small office in Birmingham with a human skeleton he was still paying for in installments. In those days, chiro- practors had a somewhat dubious reputation. People didn't come to Uncle Pete to free up their kundalini. He cracked necks, straightened spines, and made custom arch supports out of foam rubber. Still, he was the closest thing to a doctor we had in the house on those Sun- day afternoons. As a young man he'd had half his stomach surgically removed, and now after dinner always drank a Pepsi-Cola to help di- gest his meal. The soft drink had been named for the digestive enzyme pepsin, he sagely told us, and so was suited to the task. It was this kind of knowledge that led my father to trust what Un-

• From Holy Ghost Girl (2012)

  He continued going to law school but swore off atheist philosophers. I swore off pot, scoured the scriptures for obscure references to the end-time, tried to like Richard Nixon (an honest man chosen to lead the country, according to Brother Terrell), and switched the radio station in my car from rock and roll to country and western. We bought and stored extra food in our pantry to prepare for the famine. I burned my jeans and wore long, hippie-looking dresses. When my mother called, I told her of my conversion experience and she gave me her phone number. We both agreed it was best that the whereabouts of her ranch remain a secret, if only to thwart the devil. I tied a blessed handkerchief around the steering column of the car and we began making the three-hundred-and-sixty-mile round-trip between Groesbeck and Bangs on most weekends.Located at the western edge of Brown County, ten miles outside the county seat of Brownwood, Bangs is situated in a sort of borderland along which the rolling gentility of the central Texas landscape gives way to the windswept desolation that eventually becomes west Texas. Until the big tent came to town in 1972, a truck stop and a convenience store were the most visible landmarks along Highway 84 West. The wind blew all winter long, and in the summer, the sun beat the land into submission. Wind, dust, and truck-stop grease. Still, one person’s hell is another’s Promised Land, or at the very least, Blessed Area.The Terrellites descended on Bangs like a biblical plague. They came in their broken-down trucks and leaky campers and station wagons that rattled when they rolled. A few drove new cars, all that remained of the middle-class life they had abandoned. The women, in their high-necked, ankle-length dresses and bird’s-nest hair, resembled refugees from the Grand Ole Opry. The men, perpetually pale and skinny from months of fasting, had taken to shaving their heads, a look locals associated with Charlie Manson or Hare Krishna devotees, neither of whom were popular in and around Brown County. Some believers applied Old Testament admonishments to modern life and went about their daily business dressed in sackcloth and ashes. One early arrival told a reporter, “You think we look bad? Wait’ll you see the ones coming from behind.”They came from California, the Dakotas, New York, Colorado, Maryland, Pennsylvania, Kansas, Florida, and from all across the South. The influx began in 1972. Within a year, Bangs’s population of twelve hundred had almost doubled, and the Terrellites were spreading to surrounding communities. Other Blessed Areas scattered across the South experienced similar growth. The population of rural areas around Fort Payne, Alabama, increased by twenty-eight percent. No one in Bangs could figure out why these people were coming or how long they would stay. Finally they read the explanation in the paper: The Terrellites were there to wait out the apocalypse. They would be there until the end of the world. Meanwhile, they would build a tabernacle.

• From Middlesex (2002)

  Lefty stepped between the men, preventing a fight. After that, Zizmo kept his political opinions to himself. He sat morosely drink- ing coffee, reading an odd assortment of magazines or pamphlets speculating on space travel and ancient civilizations. He chewed his lemon peels and told Lefty to do so, too. Together, they settled into the random camaraderie of men on the outskirts of a birth. Like all expectant fathers, their tiioughts turned to money. My grandfather had never told Jimmy the reason for his dismissal from Ford, but Zizmo had a good idea why it might have happened. And so, a few weeks later, he made what restitution he could. "Just act like we're going for a drive." "Okay." "If we get stopped, don't say anything." "Okay." "This is a better job than the Rouge. Believe me. Five dollars a day is nothing. And here you can eat all the garlic you want." They are in the Packard, passing the amusement grounds of Elec- tric Park. It's foggy out, and late— just past 3 a.m. To be honest, the amusement grounds should be closed at this hour, but, for my own purposes, tonight Electric Park is open all night, and the fog sud- denly lifts, all so that my grandfather can look out the window and see a roller coaster streaking down the track. A moment of cheap 110 symbolism only, and then I have to bow to the strict rules of realism, which is to say: they can't see a thing. Spring fog foams over the ram- parts of the newly opened Belle Isle Bridge. The yellow globes of streetlamps glow, aureoled in the mist. "Lot of traffic for this late," Lefty marvels. "Yes," says Zizmo. "It's very popular at night." The bridge lifts them genriy above the river and sets them back down on the other side. Belle Isle, a paramecium-shaped island in the Detroit River, lies less than half a mile from the Canadian shore. By day, the park is full of picnickers and strollers. Fishermen line its muddy banks. Church groups hold tent meetings. Come dark, how- ever, the island takes on an offshore atmosphere of relaxed morals. Lovers park in secluded lookouts. Cars roll over the bridge on shad- owy missions. Zizmo drives through the gloom, past the octagonal gazebos and the monument of the Civil War Hero, and into the woods where the Ottawa once held their summer camp. Fog wipes the windshield. Birch trees shed parchment beneath an ink-black sky. Missing from most cars in the 1920s: rearview mirrors. "Steer," Zizmo keeps saying, and turns around to see if they're being fol- lowed. In this fashion, trading the wheel, they weave along Central Avenue and The Strand, circling the island three times, until Zizmo is satisfied. At the northeastern end, he pulls the car over, facing Canada.

• From The Greatest Controversies of Early Christian History (2013)

  The fourth tenet was imminence. Jewish apocalypticists believed that they were living at the end of time; God would intervene very soon to overthrow the forces of evil. This was a message of hope for people who were suffering: Hold on just a little while longer, and God’s intervention will come. Many people today continue to hold apocalyptic views to some extent. Within Christian evangelicalism and fundamentalism, it’s widely thought that Jesus will return soon in fulfillment of prophecies. Indeed, in every generation of Christians, there have been those who maintained that the end was imminent. o Christians who have held this belief have two things in common: They have all based their views on the Bible, and they have all been completely wrong. But we can trace the expectation that we are living at the end of the world to the beginning of Christianity and the apocalyptic Jews. o The reason for this ts that the Dead Sea Scrolls were especially influential among early Christians. Even though Jesus ts never mentioned in the scrolls, the views found in the scrolls—the Jewish apocalyptic idea—in many ways influenced later Christians who arose out of Judaism. o Many authors of the New Testament subscribed to apocalyptic views, just as the authors of the Dead Sea Scrolls did, expecting that the end of the age was to come soon with the judgment of God against his enemies. 29 Scanned by CamScanner Lecture 4: Is Jesus in the Dead Sea Scrolls? Suggested Reading Fitzmyer, Responses to 101 Questions on the Dead Sea Scrolls. Flint and Vanderkam, The Meaning of the Dead Sea Scrolls. Vanderkam, The Dead Sea Scrolls Today. Vermes, ed. and trans., The Complete Dead Sea Scrolls in English. Questions to Consider 1. What strikes you as the most important features of the Dead Sea Scrolls? 2. Why might the apocalyptic views of the Dead Sea Scrolls be significant for understanding the historical Jesus? 30 Scanned by CamScanner Did Jesus Expect to See the Worid’s End? Lecture 5 in the history of Western civilization. The Christian church, which in some sense started with his life and teachings, his death and the belief in his resurrection, has been the single most important religious, cultural, social, political, and economic institution over the two millennia since his death. Without Jesus, our world would be enormously different than it is today. Nonetheless, it has proved inordinately difficult to know what Jesus himself actually did and said, including what he said about the end of time. In this lecture, we'll explore what a critical reading of the gospels tells us about Jesus's apocalyptic beliefs. Tin can be little doubt that Jesus has been the most influential person

• From Middlesex (2002)

  Luce believed that a patient of my age was capable of understanding the essentials. And so, that afternoon, he did not mince words. In his mellow, pleasing, educated voice, looking directiy into my eyes, Luce declared that I was a girl whose clitoris was merely larger than those of other girls. He drew the same charts for me as he had for my par- ents. When I pressed him on the details of my surgery, he said only this: "We're going to do an operation to finish your genitalia. They're not quite finished yet and we want to finish them." He never mentioned anything about hypospadias, and I began to hope that the word didn't apply to me. Maybe I had taken it out of context. Dr. Luce may have been referring to another patient. Web- ster's had said that hypospadias was an abnormality of the penis. But Dr. Luce was telling me that I had a clitoris. I understood that both these things grew out of the same fetal gonad, but that didn't matter. 433 If I had a clitoris— and a specialist was telling me that I did— what could I be but a girl? The adolescent ego is a hazy thing, amorphous, cloudlike. It wasn't difficult to pour my identity into different vessels. In a sense, I was able to take whatever form was demanded of me. I only wanted to know the dimensions. Luce was providing them. My parents sup- ported him. The prospect of having everything solved was wildly at- tractive to me, too, and while I lay on the chaise I didn't ask myself where my feelings for the Object fit in. I only wanted it all to be over. I wanted to go home and forget it had ever happened. So I listened to Luce quietiy and made no objections. He explained the estrogen injections would induce my breasts to grow. "You won't be Raquel Welch, but you won't be Twiggy either." My facial hair would diminish. My voice would rise from tenor to alto. But when I asked if I would finally get my period, Dr. Luce was frank. "No. You won't. Ever. You won't be able to have a baby your- self, Callie. If you want to have a family, you'll have to adopt." I received this news calmly. Having children wasn't something I thought much about at fourteen. There was a knock on the door, and the receptionist stuck her head in. "Sorry, Dr. Luce. But could I bother you a minute?" "That depends on Callie." He smiled at me. "You mind taking a little break? I'll be right back." "I don't mind." "Sit there a few minutes and see if any other questions occur to you." He left the room.

• From Middlesex (2002)

  "I just got a postcard from a former patient," Luce said consol- ingly. "She had a condition similar to your daughter's. She's married now. She and her husband adopted two kids and they're as happy as can be. She plays in the Cleveland Orchestra. Bassoon." There was a silence, until Milton asked, "Is that it, Doctor? You do this one surgery and we can take her home?" "We may have to do additional surgery at a later date. But the im- mediate answer to your question is yes. After the procedure, she can go home." "How long will she be in the hospital?" "Only overnight." It was not a difficult decision, especially as Luce had framed it. A single surgery and some injections would end the nightmare and give my parents back their daughter, their Calliope, intact. The same en- ticement that had led my grandparents to do the unthinkable now of- fered itself to Milton and Tessie. No one would know. No one would ever know. While my parents were being given a crash course in gonadogenesis, I— still officially Calliope— was doing some homework myself. In the Reading Room of the New York Public Library I was looking up something in the dictionary. Dr. Luce was correct in thinking that his conversations with colleagues and medical students were over my head. I didn't know what "5-alpha-reductase" meant, or "gynecomas- tia," or "inguinal canal." But Luce had underestimated my abilities, too. He didn't take into consideration the rigorous curriculum at my prep school. He didn't allow for my excellent research and study skills. Most of all, he didn't factor in the power of my Latin teachers, Miss Barrie and Miss Silber. So now, as my Wallabees made squish- ing sounds between the reading tables, as a few men looked up from their books to see what was coming and then looked down (the world was no longer full of eyes), I heard Miss Barrie's voice in my ear. "Infants, define this word for me: hypospadias. Use your Greek or Latin roots." 429 The little schoolgirl in my head wriggled in her desk, hand raised " high. "Yes, Calliope?" Miss Barrie called on me. "Hypo. Below or beneath. Like 'hypodermic.' "Brilliant. And spadiasV* "Urn urn ..." "Can anyone come to our poor muse's aid?" But, in the classroom of my brain, no one could. So that was why I was here. Because I knew that I had something below or beneath but I didn't know what that something was. I had never seen such a big dictionary before. The Webster's at the New York Public Library stood in the same relation to other dictio- naries of my acquaintance as the Empire State Building did to other buildings. It was an ancient, medieval-looking thing, bound in brown leather that brought to mind a falconer's gaundet. The pages were gilded like the Bible's. Flipping pages through the alphabet, past cantabile to eryngo, past

• From Middlesex (2002)

  "A daughter you'll fight with." "A daughter I can talk to." "A son you will love." The spoon's arc increased. "It's ... it's . . ." "What?" "Start saving money." "Yes?" "Lock the windows." 118 "Is it? Is it really?" "Get ready to fight." "You mean it's a . "Yes. A girl. Definitely." "Oh, thank God." ." . . . . And a walk-in closet being cleaned out. And the walls being painted white to serve as a nursery. Two identical cribs arrive from Hudson's. My grandmother sets them up in the nursery, then hangs a blanket between them in case her child is a boy. Out in the hall, she stops before the vigil light to pray to the All-Holy: "Please don't let my baby be this thing a hemophiliac. Lefty and I didn't know what we were doing. Please, I swear I will never have another baby. Just this one." Thirty-three weeks. Thirty-four. In uterine swimming pools, babies perform half-gainers, flipping over headfirst. But Sourmelina and Desdemona, so synchronized in their pregnancies, diverged at the end. On December 17, while listening to a radio play, Sourmelina re- moved her earphones and announced that she was having pains. Three hours later, Dr. Philobosian delivered a girl, as Desdemona predicted. The baby weighed only four pounds three ounces and had to be kept in an incubator for a week. "See?" Lina said to Desde- mona, gazing at the baby through the glass. "Dr. Phil was wrong. Look. Her hair's black. Not red." Jimmy Zizmo approached the incubator next. He removed his hat and bent very close to squint. And did he wince? Did the baby's pale complexion confirm his doubts? Or provide answers? As to why a wife might complain of aches and pains? Or why she might be con- venientiy cured, in order to prove his paternity? (Whatever his doubts, the child was his. Sourmelina's complexion had merely stolen the show. Genetics, a crapshoot, entirely.) All I know is this: shortly after Zizmo saw his daughter, he came up with his final scheme. A week later, he told Lefty, "Get ready. We have business tonight." And now the mansions along the lake are lit with Christmas lights. The great snow-covered lawn of Rose Terrace, the Dodge mansion, boasts a forty-foot Christmas tree trucked in from the Upper Penin- 119 sula. Elves race around the pine in miniature Dodge sedans. Santa is chauffeured by a reindeer in a cap. (Rudolph hasn't been created yet, so the reindeer's nose is black.) Outside the mansion's gates, a black- and-tan Packard passes by. The driver looks straight ahead. The pas- senger gazes out at the enormous house.

• From Middlesex (2002)

  Milton and Tessie nodded. "Due to her 5 -alpha- reductase deficiency, Callie's body does not produce dihydrotestosterone. What this means is that, in utero, she followed a primarily female line of development. Especially in terms of the external genitalia. That, coupled with her being brought up as a girl, resulted in her thinking, acting, and looking like a girl. The problem came when she started to go through puberty. At puberty, the other androgen— testosterone— started to exert a strong effect. 427 The simplest way to put it is like this: Callie is a girl who has a little too much male hormone. We want to correct that." Neither Milton nor Tessie said a word. They weren't following everything the doctor was saying but, as people do with doctors, they were attentive to his manner, trying to see how serious things were. Luce seemed optimistic, confident, and Tessie and Milton began to be filled with hope. "That's the biology. It's a very rare genetic condition, by the way. The only other populations where we know of this mutation express- ing itself are in the Dominican Republic, Papua New Guinea, and southeastern Turkey. Not that far from the village your parents came from. About three hundred miles, in fact." Luce removed his silver glasses. "Do you know of any family member who may have had a similar genital appearance to your daughter's?" "Not that we know of," said Milton. "When did your parents immigrate?" "Nineteen twenty-two." "Do you have any relatives still living in Turkey?" "Not anymore." Luce looked disappointed. He had one arm of his glasses in his mouth, and was chewing on it. Possibly he was imagining what it would be like to discover a whole new population of carriers of the 5 -alpha- reductase mutation. He had to content himself with discov- ering me. He put his glasses back on. "The treatment I'd recommend for your daughter is twofold. First, hormone injections. Second, cos- metic surgery. The hormone treatments will initiate breast develop- ment and enhance her female secondary sex characteristics. The surgery will make Callie look exactly like the girl she feels herself to be. In fact, she will be that girl. Her outside and inside will conform. She will look like a normal girl. Nobody will be able to tell a thing. And then Callie can go on and enjoy her life." Milton's brow was still furrowed with concentration but from his eyes there was light appearing, rays of relief. He turned toward Tessie and patted her leg. But in a timid, breaking voice Tessie asked, "Will she be able to have children?" Luce paused only a second. "I'm afraid not, Mrs. Stephanides. Callie will never menstruate." 428 "But she's been menstruating for a few months now," Tessie ob- jected. "I'm afraid that's impossible. Possibly there was some bleeding from another source." Tessie's eyes filled with tears. She looked away.

• From Middlesex (2002)

  John the Baptist crying in the wilderness. Writ large, that wilderness was America, even the globe itself, but more specifically it was the redwood bungalow Zora lived in in Noe Valley and where I was now living, too. After Bob Presto had satisfied himself on the details of my manufacture, he had called Zora and arranged for me to stay with her. Zora took in strays like me. It was part of her calling. The fog of San Francisco provided cover for hermaphrodites, too. It's no sur- prise that ISNA was founded in San Francisco and not somewhere else. Zora was part of all this at a very disorganized time. Before movements emerge there are centers of energy, and Zora was one of these. Mainly, her politics consisted of studying and writing. And, during the months I lived with her, in educating me, in bringing me out of what she saw as my great midwestern darkness. "You don't have to work for Bob if you don't want," she told me. "I'm going to quit soon anyway. This is just temporary." "I need the money. They stole all my money." "What about your parents?" "I don't want to ask them," I said. I looked down and admitted, "I can't call them." "What happened, Cal? If you don't mind me asking. What are you doing here?" "They took me to this doctor in New York. He wanted me to have an operation." "So you ran away." I nodded. "Consider yourself lucky. I didn't know until I was twenty." All this happened on my first day in Zora's house. I hadn't started working at the club yet. My bruises had to heal first. I wasn't sur- prised to be where I was. When you travel like I did, vague about destination and with an open-ended itinerary, a holy-seeming open- ness takes over your character. It's the reason the first philosophers 488 were peripatetic. Christ, too. I see myself that first day, sitting cross- legged on a batik floor pillow, drinking green tea out of a fired raku cup, and looking up at Zora with my big, hopeful, curious, attentive eyes. With my hair short, my eyes looked even bigger now, more than ever the eyes of someone in a Byzantine icon, one of those fig- ures ascending the ladder to heaven, upward-gazing, while his fel- lows fall to the fiery demons below. After all my troubles, wasn't it my right to expect some reward in the form of knowledge or revela- tion? In Zora's rice-paper house, with misty light coming in at the windows, I was like a blank canvas waiting to be filled with what she told me. "There have been hermaphrodites around forever, Cal. Forever. Plato said that the original human being was a hermaphrodite. Did you know that? The original person was two halves, one male, one female. Then these got separated. That's why everybody's always searching for their other half. Except for us. We've got both halves al- ready."