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 Escape (2007)

  Out of the darkness came troops from the Arizona National Guard along with police and other local officials. They moved into Short Creek (which is now Colorado City) and began arresting men and women who practiced polygamy. Uncle Roy was urged to flee but decided to stand firm. “My feet are tired of running and I intend to turn to God for protection.” Grandpa Jessop, Grandma Jenny’s father-in-law, went out to meet the authorities and said, “What is it that you want? What have you come for? If it is blood you want, take mine, I’m ready.” He was an elderly man with a long white beard. Photographers snapped his picture as he stood up to the authorities. Grandma described the harrowing scene as the troops tried to take babies out of their mothers’ arms. The children were wailing, the mothers were screaming, and newspaper photos the next morning captured the terrible images that turned public opinion in favor of the polygamists. By the time the raid was over, 122 men and women had been arrested and 263 children had been identified to be seized from their polygamist families the next day. Everyone except the children was to be transported to Kingman, Arizona, which was four hundred miles away. The men went the first day, and buses came to take the children to Phoenix the next. The women were escorted from their homes, leaving behind bread baking in the oven and laundry hanging on the line. They were ordered to the schoolhouse and not allowed to bring even diapers for their babies. When the buses arrived, they were told they’d be separated from their children. The women revolted. The plan was to not only take the children but make them wards of the state and adopt them out to nonpolygamist families. Ultimately, the state of Arizona relented. It feared the negative publicity, and it had also underestimated the number of children in the community. They did not have enough adults to care for that many children on the long bus ride to Phoenix, so in the end mothers were allowed to accompany their children. Grandma had a brother in Phoenix who pressured the authorities into releasing her and her three children into his care. She told me that she stayed strong by remembering her dream. She had faith that Uncle Roy would find a way to save them, and he did.

• From My Life on the Road (2015)

  I hope the quiet T-shirt group might be realizing that this protects their choice, too—that government with the power to forbid birth control or abortion could also enforce one or the other—but no such luck. Suddenly they stand up in unison, chant “Abortion! Murder! Abortion! Murder!” and walk out en masse. In the silence that follows, I can feel people trying to figure out what went wrong. I too wonder what I could have said or done. I express my regret at their walkout, which seems to break the spell. A young white man in jeans—slender, shy, perhaps in his late twenties—raises his hand and begins a story that seems unrelated. He has invented a new kind of bit for oil rigs. He just sold the patent and received an unexpected amount of money. He would like to donate $90,000, about half of his windfall, to the cause of reproductive freedom as a basic human right—like freedom of speech. There is silence, then laughter, and then cheers. Never in my four decades of traveling and fund-raising will anything like this happen again. If people pledge money, it’s usually after an appeal and in requested sums. Also they tend to give according to what others are giving. To me and to everyone in that room, this young man has shown how to give without being asked and according to ability—more than ability, since he is sharing a rare windfall. He has given us all the gift of spontaneity—and hope. We stay in touch. He comes to New York and stops to say hello. When I’m on another trip, a young woman introduces herself to me as his sister. When he and I cross paths in Denver, we have breakfast. Every few years, the road seems to bring us together. That day in Oklahoma became a landmark in all our lives. II.For me, talking and organizing after a campus or any other lecture is the big reward—because then I am learning. We often continue in a restaurant or campus hangout or just sit on the nearest available floor. With a shared lecture to respond to—plus my request to overcome the hierarchical setting and pretend we’re all sitting in a circle, even if there are five hundred or five thousand of us—people get up and say things they might not say to friends or family. It’s as if the audience creates its own magnetic field that draws out stories and ideas. I also read aloud from notes handed to me by the audience—about, say, cuts of hard-won new courses that aren’t yet in the core curriculum, but plenty of money allocated for a new football stadium—because I can do this without punishment. Often a kind of alchemy takes place. When someone on one side of the hall asks a question, and someone on the other side answers it, I know this magic has happened. The group has acquired a life of its own. There are rock-bottom subjects for men as well as women.

• From Escape (2007)

  I believed in plural marriage then, too. At nine, I believed what everyone else did—that a man learned to love his wives more with each new wife he was given. My mother and Rosie minimized the deep conflicts that arose between them. We saw little signs of the underlying tension, so I had no reason to believe that plural marriage was anything other than something great. My friends talked about how their mothers had screaming fights with each other and threw things. I never saw that at my home. One day I heard my mother say how much better my father was treating her since he married Rosie. This made me feel good, even though I could tell my father was happier with Rosie than he ever was with Mom. Being so in love with Rosie made it easier for him to be nicer to my mother. Maybe he did even love my mother more now. I didn’t know, but it certainly fit in nicely with what I wanted to believe. The power struggle in my own family paled in comparison to what was happening within the FLDS. A power struggle that had been brewing for several years broke out into the open in 1978, when I was in the fifth grade. By the time I was in the seventh grade, families were choosing sides and the community was so deeply polarized that we were not allowed to play with our friends if their parents were on the opposing side. “Are you on the side of Uncle Roy or are you on the side of the brethren?” That was the question, and what was at stake was who would rule the community when Uncle Roy died. It was a power struggle, pure and simple. My father was on the side that believed that only the prophet should have ultimate power in the FLDS. In a nutshell, it was called the “one-man rule.” Uncle Roy had several stepsons who were the children of the former prophet, John Y. Barlow. Their power was underscored by the fact that they were the nephews of Uncle Fred Jessop, who, as bishop, was in charge of daily life in the community. Because of their ties to the two men at the top, the stepsons had usurped some of the power and authority of the apostles in the FLDS. Apostles were men chosen by God and ordained by the prophet. At one time in the FLDS apostles as well as the prophet had the power to arrange marriages. They were deeply involved in formulating community policy and were seen as worthy to receive revelations from God, just as the prophet did. The prophet was more powerful—he was the de facto god over the community—but he shared some of his power with the apostles.

• From Filthy Animals (2021)

  “Then my sister died, and I thought, I can keep doing this or I can try to fucking live. Really live. Dance is awful, don’t get me wrong—if your foot is too big or your shoulder doesn’t bend a certain way. There are fewer than zero jobs. And everyone is on coke or a serial rapist. But when I’m dancing, sometimes, I feel that little ping. I know where I am in the world. I can feel myself. And, like, yeah, my technique is not classical. Come on. I learned to dance in Arkansas. But as long as I can dance, I’ll be okay. I don’t need ABT. Or Royal Ballet or anything. I just want to dance for as long as I can.” “It’s your something,” Lionel said. “Everybody deserves a something, right?” Lionel nodded, and Sophie blotted the corners of her eyes with a sleeve. “Okay, so. Don’t think you can distract me with all this blubbering. Tell me more about you and Charlie last night.” Lionel put his hands over his face. He could smell Sophie’s lotion. The coffee. His own breath. “You’re relentless,” he said. “I just like to know things. I hate secrets.” Lionel felt exhausted by the prospect of telling her more of the seedy details from last night. But also by the prospect of convincing her that he’d already told her all there was to know. There was nothing interesting left except the petty details of how their bodies had been arranged and what it had felt like. But she seemed keen to know exactly that, and Lionel shook his head. “You don’t want to know,” he said. “I absolutely do,” was her reply, but then there was a solid bang at the window between their heads, and they looked out into the dim, late-afternoon sun. A snowball had exploded against the glass. Sophie leaned back and squinted. The world had attained a patina of blue light. The blue hour was upon them. “It’s Charlie,” she said. “Oh no.” The door opened and admitted a wave of cold, dense air. Lionel did not turn but instead watched Sophie’s eyes course over his head toward the front of the café. “White Christmas” was playing, the version Lionel recognized from childhood, by the Drifters. Charles came strolling through the café, and Lionel could almost feel his body heat. “Look what the cat dragged in,” Sophie said. Charles braced himself on the table. He was soaked. The tips of his curls were beaded with something chalky: sweat or shampoo that he hadn’t washed out entirely, melting snow. Charles hung his head, his expression hidden from Lionel, which was just as well, because Lionel felt at that moment that he probably should leave. He pulled his scarf free from the back of the chair and turned to take up his coat. “I’ll let you guys be,” he said.

• From My Life on the Road (2015)

  We had met when I wrote about her community child care center for New York magazine. 7 As we sat on child-size chairs, sharing lunch on paper plates, her one assistant, a young Italian radical, told us he was sad: the girl he loved wouldn’t marry him because he wouldn’t allow her to work after marriage. Dorothy and I didn’t know each other, but we went to work pointing out parallels between equality for women and the rest of his radical politics. It actually worked. Since we had been successful one on one, Dorothy suggested we speak to audiences as a team. Then we could each talk about our different but parallel experiences, and she could take over if I froze or flagged. Right away we discovered that a white woman and a black woman speaking together attracted far more diverse audiences than either one of us would have done on our own. I also found that if I confessed my fear of public speaking, audiences were not only tolerant but sympathetic. Public opinion polls showed that many people fear public speaking even more than death. I had company. We started in school basements with a few people on folding chairs, and progressed to community centers, union halls, suburban theaters, welfare rights groups, high school gyms, YWCAs, and even a football stadium or two. Soon we discovered the intensity of interest in the simple idea that each person’s shared humanity and individual uniqueness far outweighed any label by group of birth, whether sex, race, class, sexuality, ethnicity, religious heritage, or anything else. That’s why my first decade or so on the road wasn’t spent going to meetings of the Business and Professional Women or the American Association of University Women or even the National Organization for Women. I was traveling to campuses, meetings of the National Welfare Rights Organization, the United Farm Workers, 9-to-5, which was a new group of and for clerical workers, lesbian groups sometimes excluded both by mainstream feminists and by gay men, and the political campaigns of anti–Vietnam War and new feminist candidates. We came to see our job as creating a context in which audiences themselves could become one big talking circle, and discover they were neither crazy nor alone in their experiences of unfairness or efforts to be both their unique selves and to find a community. As in India all those years earlier, they told their own stories. Often, these talking circles went on twice as long as our talks. When we first started speaking at the very end of the 1960s, the war in Vietnam was the main cause of activism. Buildings were being occupied and draft cards burned. At the same time, the gay and lesbian movement was moving out of the underground and into a public arena, and the Native American movement was trying to stop the purposeful obliterating of their languages, culture, and history. As always, the idea of freedom was contagious.

• From My Life on the Road (2015)

  For millennia, we have passed down knowledge through story and song. If you tell me a statistic, I’ll make up a story to explain why it’s true. Our brains are organized by narrative and image. After I joined the ranks of traveling organizers—which just means being an entrepreneur of social change—I discovered the magic of people telling their own stories to groups of strangers. It’s as if attentive people create a magnetic force field for stories the tellers themselves didn’t know they had within them. Also, one of the simplest paths to deep change is for the less powerful to speak as much as they listen, and for the more powerful to listen as much as they speak. Perhaps because women are seen as good listeners, I find that a traveling woman—perhaps especially a traveling feminist—becomes a kind of celestial bartender. People say things they wouldn’t share with a therapist. As I became more recognizable as part of a movement that gives birth to hope in many people’s lives, I became the recipient of even more stories from both women and men. I remember such serendipity as waiting out a storm in a roadhouse that just happened to have a jukebox and a stranded tango teacher who explained the street history of this dance; hearing Mohawk children as they relearned language and spiritual rituals that had been forbidden for generations; sitting with a group of Fundamentalists Anonymous as they talked about kicking the drug of certainty; being interviewed by a nine-year-old girl who was the best player on an otherwise all-boy football team; and meeting a Latina college student, the daughter of undocumented immigrants, who handed me her card: CANDIDATE FOR THE U .S . PRESIDENCY , 2032. There are also natural gifts of an on-the-road life. For instance, witnessing the northern lights in Colorado, or walking under a New Mexico moon bright enough to reveal the lines in my palm, or hearing the story of a solitary elephant in a Los Angeles zoo reunited with an elephant friend of many years before, or finding myself snowed into Chicago with a fireplace, a friend, and a reason to cancel everything. More reliably than anything else on earth, the road will force you to live in the present. —MY LAST HOPE IS to open up the road—literally. So far it’s been overwhelmingly masculine turf. Men embody adventure, women embody hearth and home, and that has been pretty much it. Even as a child, I noticed that Dorothy in The Wizard of Oz spent her entire time trying to get back home to Kansas, and Alice in Wonderland dreamed her long adventure, then woke up just in time for tea. From Joseph Campbell and his Hero’s Journey to Eugene O’Neill’s heroes who were kept from the sea by clinging women, I had little reason to think the road was open to me. In high school, I saw Viva Zapata!, the Hollywood version of that great Mexican revolutionary.

• From My Life on the Road (2015)

  It seems more hopeful to talk about what came before patriarchy—and could show us a way beyond it. So I talk about original cultures that saw the presence of god in all living things—including women. Only in the last five hundred to five thousand years—depending on where we live in the world—has godliness been withdrawn from nature, withdrawn from females, and withdrawn from particular races of men, all in order to allow the conquering of nature, females, and certain races of men. Though patriarchal cultures and religions have made hierarchy seem inevitable, humans for 95 percent of history have been more likely to see the circle as our natural paradigm. Indeed, millions still do, from traditional Native Americans here to original cultures around the world. The simple right to reproductive freedom—to sexuality as an expression that is separable from reproduction—is basic to restoring women’s power, the balance between women and men, and a balance between humans and nature. So when Father Egan prays to a female as well as a male god—and invites women as well as men to speak from the church pulpit—he is taking a step toward restoring an original balance. My homily seems to go over just fine. People nod at the idea that when God is depicted only as a white man, only white men seem godly. They laugh at the idea that priests dressed in skirts try to trump women’s birth-giving power by baptizing with imitation birth fluid, calling us reborn, and going women one better by promising everlasting life. Indeed, elaborate concepts of Heaven and Hell didn’t seem to exist before patriarchy; you just joined your elders or kept being reincarnated until you learned enough. There is the laughter of recognition. Altogether I sense curiosity and openness, not hostility or opposition. As people leave, there is a long line to shake hands, to share comments, and to thank—even to bless—Father Egan and me. He asks me to call him Harvey. I think we both feel bonded by this experience of both opposition and support. Outside, the cars with pictures of fetuses are still circling, and bullhorns are still blaring. Minnesota is home to the Human Life Center, a think tank headed by the delightfully named Father Marx, who often warns that “the white Western world is committing suicide through abortion and contraception.” His use of “white Western” is a big clue to the reasons for preserving patriarchy and controlling reproduction. But still, the parishioners streaming out of St. Joan of Arc don’t seem alarmed. This isn’t their first brush with local extremists. Harvey and I feel we have dodged a bullet. In New York a few days later, I hear the news that Archbishop John Roach, Harvey’s superior in the Catholic hierarchy, has reprimanded Father Egan and apologized in public for him. This is a big deal. It’s all over the media, from the front pages of newspapers in Minnesota to national television.

• From The Divine Comedy (1950)

  After saying this to me, she turned away her bright eyes weeping; by which she made me hasten more to come; and thus I came to thee, as she desired; took thee from before that savage beast, which bereft thee of the short way to the beautiful mountain. What is it then? why, why haltest thou? why lodgest in thy heart such coward fear? why art thou not bold and free, when three such blessed Ladies care for thee in the court of Heaven, and my words promise thee so much good?” As flowerets, by the nightly chillness bended down and closed, erect themselves all open on their stems when the sun whitens them: thus I did, with my fainting courage; and so much good daring ran into my heart, that I began as one set free: “O compassionate she, who succoured me! and courteous thou, who quickly didst obey the true words that she gave thee! Thou hast disposed my heart with such desire to go, by what thou sayest, that I have returned to my first purpose. Now go, for both have one will; thou guide, thou lord and master.” Thus I spake to him; and he moving, I entered on the arduous and savage way. 1. Virgil relates the descent of Æneas (Sylvius’ father) to Hell in a passage that served Dante as a model in many respects (Æneid vi). 2. Æneas regarded as the ancestor of the founder of Rome, which became the seat of the Empire. 3. The intimate relations between the Empire and Papacy, which, according to Dante’s view (see De Mon.), supplemented each other, are well brought out in these lines. 4. Æneas learns from Anchises the greatness of the stock that is to spring from him (c. Æn. vi), 5. The reference is obviously not to 2 Cor. xii. 2, but to the medieval Vision of St. Paul in which is described the saint’s descent to Hell. St. Paul is called “chosen vessel” in Acts ix. 15. 6. The souls in Limbo that “without hope live in desire (Quito iv). 7. Divine Wisdom (Beatrice) raises mankind higher than aught else on earth. The sphere of the moon is the one nearest to the earth, and has, therefore, the smallest circumference. 8. The Virgin Mary: Divine Grace. 9. Lucia: Illuminating Grace. She is probably identical with the Syracusan saint (3rd century) who became the special patroness of those afflicted with weak sight. This would explain her symbolical position, and the expression thy faithful one: for Dante suffered with his eyes (cf. Vita Nuova, § 40; Conv. iii. 9). For Lucy, see Purg. ix, and Par. xxxii. 10. Illuminating Grace affects only gentle souls. 11. Rachel stands for the Contemplative Life. For Beatrice and Rachel see Par. xxxii. 12. Spiritual death is identical with the dark wood of Canto i, and the stormy river of life with the three beasts. The second verse appears to mean that life can be as tempestuous as the sea itself. Section of the Earth, showing Hell, Purgatory, and the passage by which the poets ascend

• From Not That Bad: Dispatches from Rape Culture (2018)

  THERE IS THIS IMPOSSIBLE PARADOX WHEN YOU ARE VICTIMIZED by sexual assault. You want to—you have to—convince yourself that it wasn’t “that bad” in order to have any hope of healing. If it really is as bad as you feel like it is, how will you ever get out from under it? How will you ever get “better”? On the other hand, you need to convince others it was “bad enough” to get the help and support you need to do that healing. To get out from under it. To get an appointment at the clinic. To get friends to come over with Styrofoam food containers when you can’t feed yourself. You tell yourself how bad it is and then you numb yourself to how bad it is. You repeat as needed, for so many years. Does saying no sixteen times make me worthy of pity? Does it make me worthy of help? UNLIKE MOST HEALTH PROFESSIONALS, MY RAPE COUNSELOR always arrives on time to collect me from the waiting room. She also always seems genuinely happy to see me. And today, like she always does, she politely asks if I’m ready, or if I need a few more minutes. There is something about her predictable question that buoys me, feels empowering, as if she is affirming that it is my choice to be there to tell my story every time I arrive. I look up from my phone and smile at her, tell her yes, I’m ready as I slip it into my bag, and we leave the waiting room, engaging in small talk and pleasantries before we go into her office and do the necessary work. The smallest gestures make this therapeutic process different from what I’ve experienced before; a previous series of strictly scheduled $175-an-hour cognitive behavioral therapy appointments, or a desperate fifteen-minute window with a doctor to refill a much-needed Ativan prescription. None of my previous therapy has actually stuck, and my hope is that this difference will bring some sort of finality. The promise of an end to the way I feel is the only reason for momentum. My rape counselor seems noticeably younger than me—her hair shaved to the skin on one side of her head, her clothes fashionable in a youthful way that I am increasingly confused by as I grow older. I will discover later that we’re actually very close in age—early thirties—but anxiety and depression both have a nasty habit of aging you, or at least the way you perceive yourself. She seems full of an optimism and energy, with a love of life that I have long since lost. It would be easy to resent her if she hadn’t done so much work to help me.

• From My Life on the Road (2015)

  I asked Wilma if she would let me stay with her in Boston, instead of going on a scheduled trip to Australia that I could easily do another time—hoping but not believing that she, always the strong one, would say yes—but she actually did. Of all the gifts she had given me, that was the greatest. Wilma and I stayed in a big old-fashioned house that friends of hers had left for the summer. Every morning we went to the hospital, where chemicals were dripped slowly into her veins, then we came home to watch movies we had rented, including every episode of Helen Mirren’s Prime Suspect, a depiction of female strength and complexity that Wilma loved. For me, those weeks in Boston, with Wilma, became a lesson in her ability to be “of good mind,” in her phrase, which also meant a people’s ability to survive. Her hope was to preserve what she called The Way, to keep it alive, for that future moment when the current obsession with excess and hierarchy imploded. Wilma said many Native people believed that the earth as a living organism would just one day shrug off the human species that was destroying it—and start over. In a less cataclysmic vision, humans would realize that we are killing our home and each other, and seek out The Way. That’s why Native people were guarding it. This seemed impossibly generous. It also seemed just plain impossible. Too many Native people have themselves forgotten or forsaken The Way, with too few chances to relearn it. This worldview has more layers than I know, but it seems to start with a circle in which all living things are related, and with a goal of balance, not dominance, which upsets balance. In our weeks of talk, movies, and friendship, I watched as Wilma turned a medical ordeal into one more event in her life, but not its definition. I believe she was teaching me an intimate form of The Way. In her words, “Every day is a good day—because we are part of everything alive.” That wasn’t Wilma’s only gift to me. Often over the last dozen years, I’ve joined her in Oklahoma at the end of the summer for the Cherokee National Holiday: days filled with ceremonial dances, feasting on traditional and not-so- traditional foods, buying creations of artists and craftspeople in booths that ring the campground, and meeting members of other nations who come as dancers and guests. It was there that I finally fulfilled the dancing prophecy of the women who gave me that ceremonial red shawl in Houston so many years before. — ON A HUGE GRASSY FIELD surrounded by low bleachers and tall klieg lights, dozens of traditional dancers were circling slowly in the summer night. Each participant or group was dressed and dancing in a traditional style of a tribe and a part of the country, but each person was unique, too.

• From The Golden Ass (Metamorphoses) (2)

  in modern Greek ord téocepa. t : í 2 Dirce was killed by being tied by her hair to a wild bull in revenge for her similar cruelty to her rival Antiope. T 289 LUCIUS APULEIUS Tunc illa suspirans altius, caelumque sollicito vultu petens “Vos,” inquit * Superi, tandem meis su- premis periculis opem facite, et tu, Fortuna durior; iam saevire desiste: sat tibi miseris istis cruciatibus meis litatum est. Tuque, praesidium meae libertatis meaeque salutis, si me domum pervexeris incolumem parentibusque et formoso proco reddideris, quas tibi gratias perhibebo, quos honores habebo, quos cibos exhibebo? Iam primum iubam istam tuam probe pectinatam meis virginalibus monilibus adornabo, frontem vero crispatam prius decoriter discriminabo caudaeque setas incuria lavacri congestas et horridas, comptas diligenter mollibo,! bullisque te multis aureis inoculatum, velut stellis sidereis relucentem, et gaudiis popularium pomparum ovantem, sinu serico progestans nucleos et edulia mitiora, te meum sospita- 29 torem cotidie saginabo. Sed nec inter cibos delicatos et otium profundum vitaeque totius beatitudinem deerit tibi dignitas gloriosa: nam memoriam praesentis fortunae meae divinaeque providentiae perpetua testa- tione signabo, et depictam in tabula fugae praesentis imaginem meae domus atrio dedicabo. Visetur et in fabulis audietur doctorumque. stilis rudis perpetua- bitur historia * Asino vectore virgo regia fugiens captivitatem." Accedes antiquis et ipse miraculis et 1 The MSS are here very uncertain and have been altered and erased. Mollibois Leo's suggestion, which I combine with the comptas (MSS compta) of Kronenberg. 290 THE GOLDEN ASS, BOOK VI

• From Escape (2007)

  There are currently no government programs in place to help the “lost boys” who have been kicked out of the cult. Dan Fisher still does what he can, but these boys need massive support, education, and training. One of the lawsuits against Jeffs has been filed on behalf of the “lost boys.” The hope is that a financial settlement against Jeffs can be used to set up a foundation to provide them the continual help and support they need to successfully adjust to their new lives. There’s now a federally funded Safe Passage program in place to help women trying to extricate themselves from polygamy. But it meets only a few of their needs, and much more comprehensive assistance is needed. Its funding runs out sometime in 2007, and if its grant is not renewed, it will cease to exist. Utah and Arizona officials have talked about trying to make a determined effort to put law enforcement officers in Colorado City and Hildale who have no ties to the FLDS. The problem is that the police there don’t want to leave and will claim they are being discriminated against because of their religion. But I believe there is proof that some of the officers were funneling money to Warren when he was a fugitive, and that might cast their claims of discrimination in a different light. Until this situation is resolved, it’s still frightening and risky for a woman who wants to leave because she cannot trust local law enforcement officials to help. I often get updates on Merril’s family. Ruth had a nervous breakdown in Texas and was sent back to Colorado City to repent. Tammy also made it out of Texas thanks to her son, Parley. The child Tammy had been so desperate to conceive was sent to work on construction crews as a twelve-year-old and forbidden to see his mother once she went to Texas to live. He was not allowed to go to school and had no money to live. He started to steal from his older half-brothers and got into trouble with the law. Here the system worked. Once he was arrested as a juvenile, counseling sessions indicated that his problem was simple: Parley missed his mother. A judge told Tammy she could leave Texas and take care of her son or lose custody of him. Tammy decided to be a mother and last I heard she and Parley were doing well.

• From The Swimming-Pool Library (1988)

  But at the same time it was not like it at all; it could have been a mask of pagan joy. The second young man, following closely behind, leaning forward as if he might indeed be wading through water, was in profile, and expressed nothing but attention to his fellow. What did he see there, I wondered—a mundane greeting or the ecstasy which I read into it? That it was merely a fragment compounded and rarefied its enigma. Charles rested his hand on my shoulder as I bent over it. ‘Jolly fellows, aren’t they?’ ‘I was thinking they were rather tragic.’ ‘My dear, what I want to ask you is this.’ Feeling the physical weight of him on me, I was sure for a moment that he had some physical demand in mind. Would I let him take my clothes off, or kiss me. A don at Winchester had asked a friend of mine to masturbate in front of him, and though he didn’t, such things can harmlessly be done. I stood up straight and looked away over his shoulder. ‘Will you write about me?’ I caught his eye. ‘Well—how do you mean?’ He looked down, quite bashfully, at the bathers. ‘About my life, you know. The memoirs I’ve never written, as it were. I assume you can write?’ I felt touched, and relieved; I also felt that it was quite impossible. ‘I did once write two thousand words on Coade Stone garden ornaments.’ ‘Oh, it would be much more than that.’ ‘But I don’t know anything about you,’ was a second reservation. He smiled. ‘I thought you might be interested to find out, as you say you haven’t anything else to do. I could pay you, of course,’ he added. ‘It’s not that, Charles,’ I said, resting my hand in turn on his shoulder. He looked almost tearful at having brought his idea to a head and facing possible disappointment. ‘Before you say anything else I want to ask you, take time to consider it. Because, though I say it myself, I think it would prove to interest you a very great deal. It wouldn’t be an immense amount of work, in a sense. I’ve got masses of papers. All my diaries and what-have-you since I was a child—you could have it all to read.’ It seemed at first a monstrous request, although I could see it was quite reasonable in a way. If he had had an interesting life, which it appeared he had, he could not possibly hope to write it up himself now. If I didn’t do it, nothing might come of it.

• From The Golden Ass (Metamorphoses) (2)

  11 Tum medicus: “Non patiar" inquit “Hercule, _ non patiar vel contra fas de innocente isto iuvene supplieium vos sumere, vel hunc ludificato nostro iudicio poenam noxii facinoris evadere. Dabo enim rei praesentis evidens argumentum : nam cum vene- num peremptorium comparare pessimus iste gestiret, nec meae sectae crederem convenire causas ulli praebere mortis, nec exitio sed saluti hominum medicinam quaesitam esse didicissem, verens ne si daturum me negassem, intempestiva repulsa viam sceleri subministrarem et ab alio quopiam exitiabilem mercatus hie potionem vel postremum gladio vel quovis telo nefas inchoatum perficeret, dedi venenum, sed somniferum ; mandragoram illum gravedinis compertae famosum et morti simillimi soporis effica- cem. Nec mirum desperatissimum istum latronem, certum extremae poenae, quae more maiorum in eum competit, cruciatus istos ut leviores facile tolerare. Sed si vere puer meis temperatam manibus sumpsit potionem, vivit et quiescit et dormit et protinus marcido sopore discusso remeabit ad diem lucidam : quod si vere peremptus est, si morte praeventus est, quaeratis licet causas mortis eius alias." 12 Ad istum modum seniore adorante placuit, et itur confestim magna cum festinatione ad illud sepul- 1 Adlington's marginal note is worth transcribing : * The office of a physician is to cure and not to kill, as I have heard 492 THE GOLDEN ASS, BOOK X

• From The Golden Ass (Metamorphoses) (2)

  On a night the great priest appeared unto me, presenting his lap full of treasure, and when I demanded what it signified, he answered, that it was sent me from the countrey of Thessaly, and that a servant of mine named Candidus was arived likewise: when I was awake, I mused in my selfe what this vision should pretend, considering I had never any servant called by that name: but what soever it did signifie, this I verely thought, that it was a foreshew of gaine and prosperous chance: while I was thus astonied I went to the temple, and taried there till the opening of the gates, then I went in and began to pray before the face of the goddesse, the Priest prepared and set the divine things of every Altar, and pulled out the fountaine and holy vessell with solempne supplication. Then they began to sing the mattens of the morning, testifying thereby the houre of the prime. By and by behold arived my servant which I had left in the country, when Fotis by errour made me an Asse, bringing with him my horse, recovered by her through certaine signes and tokens which I had upon my backe. Then I perceived the interpretation of my dreame, by reason that beside the promise of gaine, my white horse was restored to me, which was signified by the argument of my servant Candidus.

• From Paul and Matthew Among Jews and Gentiles: Essays in Honor of Terence L. Donaldson (2021)

  out from exile, like conveying the idea of the exodus and baptism, is the perfect image for the whole argument in Rom 5. This is clear in light of the parallel between the old creation and the new humanity in Christ. Israel was in bondage in Egypt under the tyranny of Pharaoh; so are those redeemed in the last days. Moses was chosen by God to lead Israel out of Egypt to the promised land. Likewise, Jesus is the one who is sent to lead his people through a second exodus. Moses and the people had to go through the water to the wilderness. Jesus and the new people of God go through the event of baptism by water before they experience the hardships of the wilderness of this life. 43 The symbolism of water as cleansing and judgment speaks of eschatological realities in new creation/new exodus language. The exile came to an end as Jesus came to play the role that was ascribed to Adam and then to Israel in a way to undo what they did. Christ inaugurated the new era, but the fulfillment of the kingdom of God is yet to experience its glorious consummation. In chapter 6, law, sin, and death characterize the old creation, whereas the new creation is grace, righteousness, and life. In Rom 6:17–18, Paul says: “Thanks be to God that you who once were slaves of sin have become obedient from the heart to the pattern of teaching to which you were committed, and, being set free from sin, become enslaved to righteousness.” The overlapping of the two worlds (Rom 7) creates struggles and temptations for the believer; it is a life lived between two creations. Those in Christ live in the new creation while still surrounded by the sin and effects of the old creation. Those in Christ certainly and already live in a new reality by virtue of being in him, but they eagerly await the redemption of their bodies (Rom 8:23). It is because of this wait and hope that there is now—always taken eschatological y in Paul—no condemnation for those in Christ Jesus (Rom 8:1). They groan within themselves while awaiting the redemption of their bodies (8:23). They are in Christ, but they still need the help of the Spirit to intercede for them with inexpressible groanings (8:26). It is with this narrative substructure of Rom 1–8 that one may understand the whole creation motif developed in Rom 8:18–27 in light of a Jewish work such as Jubilees. 44

• From The Divine Comedy (1950)

  C A N T O X I X The just Kings, who compose the eagle of Jupiter, speak as one person, just as many brands give out one warmth, so indicating that the work of all righteous governors is one and the same, the voice of all of them being the one voice of justice. In the heaven of justice, there rises in Dante’s mind a passion of hope that he may find the solution of the problem, which so long has tortured him, as to the exclusion of the virtuous heathen from heaven, so contrary in seeming to God’s justice. The divine eagle first responds with a burst of triumphant joy, then tells how God’s wisdom is in excess of all that the whole creation expresses; and since Lucifer himself, the highest of created things, could not see all (and fell because he would not wait for the full measure of light God would have given him), it follows far more that lesser minds cannot so see but that God sees unutterably deeper. Wherefore our sight must needs be lost in the depths of divine justice, which God’s eye alone can pierce. But our very idea of justice is from God, and this thought must quiet Dante’s protest as to the exclusion of the virtuous heathen. Who is he that he thould judge? There were matter enough for the human mind to boggle at, had we not the authority of Scripture for our guidance and did we not know that the Will of God is itself the perfect standard of goodness and of justice, not to be called to account by any other standard. As the little stork (the symbol of obedient docility) looks up, when fed, to the parent bird that wheels over the nest, so Dante gazes on the eagle; which sings a hymn as far above our understanding as God’s judgments are; and then, while reasserting without qualification that belief in Christ is the sole means of access to heaven, yet declares that many heathen will be far nearer Christ on the judgment day than many who call upon his name; whereon follows a long denunciation, in detail, of contemporary Christian monarchs. WITH OUTSTRETCHED wings appeared before me the fair image which those enwoven souls, rejoicing in their sweet fruition, made. Each one appeared as a ruby whereon the sun’s ray should burn, enkindled so as to re-cast it on mine eyes. And that which I must now retrace, nor ever voice conveyed, nor ink did write, nor ere by fantasy was comprehended; for I saw and eke I heard the beak discourse and utter in its voice both I and Mine, when in conception it was We and Our.

• From The Golden Ass (Metamorphoses) (2)

  religionis observatione famosus, clementer ac comiter et ut solent parentes immaturis liberorum desideriis modificari, meam differens instantiam, spei melioris solaciis alioquin anxium mihi permulcebat animum. Nam et diem quo quisque possit initiari deae nutu demonstrari, et sacerdotem qui sacra debeat mini- strare eiusdem providentia deligi, sumptus etiam caerimoniis necessarios simili praecepto destinari: quae cuncta nos quoque observabili patientia :sus- tinere censebat, quippe cum aviditati contumaciaeque summe cavere, et utramque culpam vitare, ac neque vocatus morari nec non iussus festinare deberem. Nec tamen esse quemquam de suo numero tam perditae mentis vel immo destinatae mortis, qui non sibi quoque seorsum iubente domina, temerarium atque sacrilegum audeat ministerium subire noxam- que letalem contrahere. Nam et inferum claustra €t salutis tutelam in deae manu posita, ipsamque tra&itionem ad instar voluntariae mortis et precariae salutis celebrari, quippe cum transactis vitae tem- poribus iam in ipso finitae lucis limine constitutos, quis tamen tuto possint magna religionis committi silentia, numen deae soleat elicere et sua providentia quodam modo renatos ad novae reponere rursus salutis curricula Ergo igitur me quoque oportere caeleste sustinere praeceptum, quamquam praecipua evidentique magni numinis dignatione iamdudum felici ministerio nuncupatum destinatumque, nec secus quam cultores ceteri cibis profanis ac nefariis 574 THE GOLDEN ASS, BOOK XI

• From A Boy's Own Story (1982)

  He told me that if I’d bring him forty dollars on Monday evening he’d buy me my ticket. He asked me where I lived and I told him; his willingness to help me made me trust him. Without ever explicitly being taught such things, I’d learned by studying my father that at certain crucial moments—an emergency, an opportunity—one must act first and think later. One must suppress minor inner objections and put off feelings of cowardice or confusion and turn oneself into a simple instrument of action. I’d seen my father become calm when he’d taken Blanche’s daughter to the hospital. I’d also watched him feel his way blindly with nods, smiles and monosyllables toward the shadowy opening of a hugely promising but still vague business deal. And with women he was ever alert to adventure: the gauzy transit of a laugh across his path, a minor whirlpool in the sluggish flow of talk, the faintest whiff of seduction.… I, too, wanted to be a man of the world and dared not question my new friend too closely. For instance, I knew a train ticket could be bought at the last moment, even on board, but I was willing to assume either that a bus ticket had to be secured in advance or that at least he thought it did. We arranged a time to meet on Monday when I could hand over the money (I had it at home squirreled away in the secret compartment of a wood tray I’d made the previous year in shop). Then on Tuesday morning at 6 A.M. he’d meet me at the corner near but not in sight of my house. He’d have his brother’s car and we’d proceed quickly to the 6:45 bus bound East—a long haul to New Yawk, he said, oh, say twenty hours, no, make that twenty-one. “And in New York?” I asked timidly, not wanting to seem helpless and scare him off but worried about my future. Would I be able to find work? I was only sixteen, I said, adding two years to my age. Could a sixteen-year-old work legally in New York? If so, doing what? “Waiter,” he said. “A whole hog heaven of resty-runts in New Yawk City.” Sunday it rained a hot drizzle all day and in the west the sky lit up a bright yellow that seemed more the smell of sulfur than a color. I played the piano with the silencer on lest I awaken my father. I was bidding the instrument farewell. If only I’d practiced I might have supported myself as a cocktail pianist; I improvised my impression of sophisticated tinkling—with disappointing results.

• From A Boy's Own Story (1982)

  After dinner I found myself alone with Father Burke. Tim was taking his nap and the Scotts had rather stagily gone out for a walk. The priest was by no means the dour figure I had pictured him to be. He was small, clubby, wore a gold seal ring, swilled his brandy in a snifter and inhaled its fumes with his eyes closed and eyebrows raised as though he were hearing a tenor float a high note. When he spoke he did so with a faint Tidewater accent. Like other upper-class Southerners he had an interest in history and acted as though he were on an intimate footing with the famous dead. The Roman Republic had been discussed over the pumpkin pie and Father Burke had winked at me and said, “You know that Julius Caesar was a terribly attractive man. He made conquests wherever he went, and not just among the ladies.” I dared to hope he meant Caesar had loved men as well, although possibly ladies were being contrasted to sluts. Assuming Burke had meant men, was his wink a way of showing me the Scotts had told him about my homosexual problem and that he was too worldly to be appalled by it? I’d never known this particular shade of Christianity before. I’d met know-nothing Fundamentalists, or at least heard them rave over the radio. Higher up the social ladder came the suburban Presbyterians and Unitarians and Congregationalists who joined a vanilla-pudding sort of earnestness to a complete lack of charity. Fortunately, they had no urge to proselytize, since they maintained their faith as a closed club, a Rotary lodge for well-heeled businessmen. Then I had had my brush with Marilyn’s Catholicism, but it was all rapture and votive candles and tears, something I filed in my imagination next to Puccini arias and the names of expensive perfumes (Poème d’Extase). The Scotts, however, were serious people. They cared about the poor. They liked their pleasures. They were well read. And they were spiritually on the make; they wanted me to convert. Father Burke himself was both cerebral and sensuous, unshockable. He had small dark eyes that he would let deliberately cloud over only so that they could suddenly clarify. As I spoke he’d tap his fingertips together and wear a wan smile that said, “I’ve heard this all a hundred times before. Please continue.” At the moment I was spelling out for him my objection to God, an argument I’d worked out previously but that the wine was muddling: “But if God is all-knowing He must have foreseen from the beginning how people would suffer, and if He foresaw it, then we didn’t really ever have a choice, and if He was all good, then why did He let us suffer, wait a minute, wait a minute …”