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 Quit: The Power of Knowing When to Walk Away (2022)

  Flipping Coins In 2013, economist Steven Levitt, coauthor of the wildly popular book Freakonomics, put up a website inviting people who visited to flip a virtual coin to help them make a close decision about whether to quit or stick. Participants would register what they were struggling with, among a variety of types of decisions. Many of these were big life decisions, like “Should I quit my job or stay?” or “Should I leave my relationship or continue on?” or “Should I stay in college or drop out?” In other words, these were the normal types of choices you can imagine people would have trouble making. The site would assign one side of the decision, like stay in your job, to heads, and the other side of the decision, like quit your job, to tails. When users clicked on the image of the coin, they were shown the randomized outcome of the virtual coin flip. You might be skeptical that people would go to a website to flip a coin to help them make a life-changing quitting decision. But twenty thousand people over the course of a year actually did this. Obviously, these people must have felt that the choice of whether to quit or to persevere was so close, so 50-50, that flipping a coin to help them decide seemed like a reasonable option. It stands to reason that if these decisions were, in reality, as close as the coin flippers felt they were, they would be equally likely to be happier if the coin landed heads or if it landed tails, whether they ended up sticking or quitting. That is, after all, the definition of a close call. But this isn’t what Levitt found. When he followed up with the coin flippers two and six months later, he discovered that for the big life decisions, people who quit were happier on average than people who stuck, whether they quit on their own or after the coin flipped in favor of quitting. While the decisions may have felt close to the people making them, they were not actually close at all. As judged by the participants’ happiness, quitting was the clear winner. Because people were much happier when they quit what they considered a close decision, that shows that people are generally quitting too late. That’s exactly what was happening with Sarah Olstyn Martinez. She thought it was a

• From This Boy's Life: A Memoir (1989)

  He had found the school a cold place. Then, in his last year, something changed. The members of his class grew close in ways that he had never thought possible, until they were more like brothers than friends. It came, he said, from the simple fact of sharing the same life for a period of years. It made them a family. That was how he thought of the school now—as his second family. But he’d had a rough time getting to that point, and some of the boys never got to it at all. They lived unhappily at the edge of things. These same boys might have done well if they’d stayed at home. A prep school was a world unto itself, and not the right world for everyone. If any of this was supposed to put me off, it didn’t. Of course the boys were concerned with money and social position. Of course a prep school wasn’t for everyone—otherwise, what would be the point? But I put on a thoughtful expression and said that I was aware of these problems. My father and my brother had given me similar warnings, I explained, and I was willing to endure whatever was necessary to get a good education. Mr. Howard seemed amused by this answer, and asked me on what experience my father and brother had based their warnings. I told him that they had both gone to prep schools. “Is that right? Where?” “Deerfield and Choate.” “I see.” He looked at me with a different quality of interest than before, as I had hoped he would. Though Mr. Howard was not a snob, I could see he was worried that I might not fit in at his school. “My brother’s at Princeton now,” I added. He asked me about my father. When I told him that my father was an aeronautical engineer, Mr. Howard perked up. It turned out he had been a pilot during the war, and was familiar with a plane my father had helped design—the P-51 Mustang. He hadn’t flown it himself but he knew men who had. This led him to memories of his time in uniform, the pilots he had served with and the nutty things they used to do. “We were just a bunch of kids,” he said. He spoke to me as if I were not a kid myself but someone who could understand him, someone of his world, family even. His hands were folded on the tabletop, his head bent slightly. I leaned forward to hear him better. We were really getting along. And then Huff showed up. Huff had a peculiar voice, high and nasal. I had my back to the door but I heard him come in and settle into the booth behind ours with another boy, whose voice I did not recognize. The two of them were discussing a fight they’d seen the previous weekend. A guy from Concrete had broken a guy from Sedro Woolley’s nose. Mr.

• From The History of World Literature (2007)

  22 Lecture 5: Homer’s Odyssey The differences between the heroic world of the Iliad and the peacetime world of the Odyssey are illustrated in Odysseus’s meeting with Aias in Hades. Aias, a hero from the heroic world of the Trojan War, turns his back on Odysseus and walks away, refusing to acknowledge someone who has survived by compromising the heroic code. The distance from the heroic world is also re À ected in Odysseus’s frequent disguises and the sometimes deÀ ating epic similes applied to him by the poet. Women characters play a far more important part in this poem than they do in the Iliad; they are not depicted as slave women. In the Odyssey, we have Helen, Circe, Calypso, and Penelope, formidable women who easily control men and whose power is challenged only by Odysseus (who sometimes needs divine help to do so). Helen in Sparta, visited by Telemachus, is marvelously in charge of her household; Circe changes men into swine; and Calypso captures Odysseus and keeps him with her until forced to release him by Zeus. Penelope’s beauty, wit, and intelligence have turned 108 suitors into metaphorical swine; in the poem’s penultimate scene, she tricks the great trickster Odysseus into losing his temper, making her the only character in the poem ever able to do so. We hope that Odysseus and Penelope will spend the rest of their lives as equals—a hope that this peacetime poem makes possible in a way the Iliad cannot. The impact of the Odyssey and the Iliad on the subsequent history of literature is incalculable. Both Achilles and Odysseus bequeathed an idea of personal heroism that never disappears. We will encounter Achilles again in Greek tragedy and the works of Shakespeare, Goethe, Faulkner, and Achebe. We will meet Odysseus again in the Chinese novel Monkey and many of the tales from Chaucer and the 1001 Nights. Ŷ Homer, Odyssey. Essential Reading 23 Finley, The World of Odysseus. Grif¿ n, Homer (Past Masters). 1. Odysseus’s name translates roughly as “trouble.” If his goal throughout the poem is to win a name, or to deserve the name he has already won at Troy, what is the signi ¿ cance of his given name? Does he earn or deserve it by the poem’s end and, if so, in how many ways? 2. The most fantastic adventures in the poem are narrated by Odysseus himself at the Phaiakian banquet when he ¿ nally reveals his identity. It has been suggested that he is making up these adventures—or at least elaborating and heightening them—in order to impress the highly domesticated Phaiakians, to convince them to take him home, and to get them to load him up with gifts. What do you think about that thesis? Is it plausible? Is there any corroborating evidence, supplied by the poet, to con¿ rm any of Odysseus’s tales? Questions to Consider Supplementary Reading

• From Momma and the Meaning of Life (1999)

  Rosa turned to Martin. “I like you. I don’t know why.” She turned back to face me: “He’s been here for a week, but today, in this group, is the first time I’ve spoken to him. It’s like we have a lot in common, but I know we don’t.” “Do you feel understood?” “Understood? I don’t know. Well, yeah, in a funny sort of way I do. Maybe that’s it.” “That’s what I saw. I saw Martin trying his best to understand you. And he wasn’t trying to do anything else—I didn’t hear him try to manage you or tell you what to do, or even tell you that you ought to eat.” “It’s a good thing he didn’t try. It wouldn’t have done any good.” Here Rosa turned to Carol, and they exchanged bony grins of complicity. I hated their grisly conspiracy. I wanted to shake them so hard their bones rattled. I wanted to shout, “Stop drinking those Diet Cokes! Stay off those goddamn stationary bikes! This is no joke; you two are five or six pounds away from death, and when each of you is finished dying, your entire life will be described in a three-word epitaph: ‘I died thin.’” But of course I kept these sentiments to myself. It would have done nothing but rupture whatever slender strands of a relationship I had established with them. Instead I said to Rosa, “Are you aware that through your discussion with Martin, you’ve already filled part of your agenda today? You said you wanted to have the experience of being understood by someone, and Martin seems to have done exactly that.” I then turned to Martin. “How do you feel about that?” Martin just stared at me. This, I thought, may be the liveliest interaction he has had for years. “Remember,” I reminded him, “you started this meeting by saying you could no longer be of use to anyone. I heard Rosa say you were of use to her. Did you hear that too?” Martin nodded. I saw that his eyes were glistening and that he was too moved to speak further. Still, it was enough. With only the tiniest of openings, I had done good work with Martin and Rosa. At least we wouldn’t walk away empty-handed (and I confess I was thinking of the residents as much as of the patients). I turned back to Rosa. “How do you feel about what Magnolia is saying to you today? I’m not sure it’s possible to leave California to eat, but what I did see was Magnolia stretching out to help you.” “Stretch? I’m surprised to hear you say that,” said Rosa. “I don’t think of Magnolia stretching. Giving is natural to her, like breathing. She is a pure soul. I wish I could take her home with me or go home with her.”

• From This Boy's Life: A Memoir (1989)

  “What the Scout Is determines his progress in whatever line of business he may seek success—and Scout Ideals mean progress in business.” Suggested good turns were enumerated on a ledger, so the Scout could check them off as he performed them: Assisted a foreign boy with some English grammar. Helped put out a burning field. Gave water to crippled dog . Here, even the murky enterprise of self-examination could be expressed as a problem in accounting. “On a scale of 100, what all-around rating would I be justified in giving myself?” I liked all these numbers and lists, because they offered the clear possibility of mastery. But what I liked best about the Handbook was its voice, the bluff hail-fellow language by which it tried to make being a good boy seem adventurous, even romantic. The Scout Spirit was traced to King Arthur’s Round Table, and from there to the explorers and pioneers and warriors whose conquests had been achieved through fair play and clean living. “No man given over to dissipation can stand the gaff. He quickly tires. He is the type who usually lacks courage at the crucial moment. He cannot take punishment and come back smiling.” I yielded easily to this comradely tone, forgetting while I did so that I was not the boy it supposed I was. Boy’s Life , the official Scout magazine, worked on me in the same way. I read it in a trance, accepting without question its narcotic invitation to believe that I was really no different from the boys whose hustle and pluck it celebrated. Boys who raised treasure from Spanish galleons, and put empty barns to use by building operational airplanes in them. Boys who skied to the North Pole. Boys who sailed around the Horn, solo. Boys who saved lives, and were accepted into savage tribes, and sent themselves to college by running traplines in the wilderness. Reading about these boys made me restless, feverish with schemes. My mother had allowed me to bring the Winchester to Chinook. When I was alone in the house I sometimes dressed up in my Scout uniform, slung the rifle across my back, and practiced Indian sign language in front of the mirror. Hungry . Brother . Food . Want . Great Mystery . MY MOTHER FINALLY gave Dwight a date in March. Once he knew she was coming he began to talk about his plans for renovating the house, but he drank at night and didn’t get anything done. A couple of weeks before she quit her job he brought home a trunkful of paint in five-gallon cans. All of it was white. Dwight spread out his tarps and for several nights running we stayed up late painting the ceilings and walls. When we had finished those, Dwight looked around, saw that it was good, and kept going. He painted the coffee table white. He painted all the beds white, and the chests of drawers, and the dining-room table.

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

  Plague came upon plague, and wound upon wound, and affliction upon affliction, and evil report upon evil report, and sickness upon sickness, and every evil judgment of this sort one upon another: sickness, and downfal , and sleet, and hail, and frost, and fever, and chil s, and stupor, and famine, and death … And all of this will come in the evil generation which sins in the land. In spite of the corruption of the present moment one may live with the hope that restoration will happen in the new age and the new creation. 16 The New Age and the New Creation The new age is seen as the true return from exile. Only those who confess their guilt will enjoy that return. The end of the exile and the coming of a new creation involve judgment upon the Gentiles and unfaithful Israelites alike, as well as blessings to those who are faithful and obedient. Then, they will be restored to health and live long and extraordinary ages in a new creation that brings the world back to its lost paradise status. In the victory of Judah, the destiny of Israel is realized. The Levites will rule over a nation whose true happiness is centered in the Temple on Mt. Zion, in keeping Torah, and in celebrating the festivals of the restored calendar. The hearts of the people will be 14 Charlesworth, The Old Testament Pseudepigrapha, Vol. 2, 47. 15 OTP 2, trans. Wintermute, 60. The Greek text is from the Online Critical Pseudepigrapha. 16 In spite of the bleak description of the present age, the author seems to entertain the possibility that the new age has already begun; that he was living in the early period of the eschaton. In chapter 23 he seems to be describing some events of his own time. For more on this, see T. Hanneken, The Subversion of the Apocalypses in the book of Jubilees (Atlanta: SBL, 2012). 64 64 Paul and Matthew among Jews and Gentiles

• From Cleanness (2020)

  My phone buzzed with a text from D., telling me to meet him at the fountain in front of the Presidency. He was one of the first friends I had made in Bulgaria, a journalist and a poet, an alumnus of the school where I taught. We had met at some function where he was held up as an example, since after college and graduate school in the States he had decided to come back, as almost none of our students ever did; if you came back it meant you had failed, our students thought, but D. hadn’t failed, it was an important example. The boulevard was blocked off after the intersection with Rakovski and we spilled out into the street, which was already full of people, as was the square in front of the Presidency. This had yellow police barricades in front of it but was otherwise protected only by the usual ornamental guard, two men in nineteenth-century uniforms staring blankly and unfazed, bayonets held stiffly at their sides. The police were gathered across the boulevard, in front of the former Communist Party headquarters, which served as Parliament offices now and where there was a much larger space kept free from protesters, the distance a bottle could be thrown, I thought—but they were relaxed, most of them held their helmets under their arms. Their riot shields were stacked in piles leaning against the bus they had traveled in on, the size of an American schoolbus, painted blue and white. They were smiling and talking with one another, with the protesters, toward whom they had expressed a benevolent neutrality, claiming in public statements that they were keeping the protests safe, that so long as they remained peaceful they had no intention of putting a stop to them; and the protesters reciprocated, one man stood now in front of them with a sign that read WE THANK OUR FRIENDS THE POLICE. The hope was that by saying it one could make it so, I thought, and so far the hope had held. Interspersed among the crowd were large white vans, teams of newscasters; cameramen stood on their roofs, next to the satellite dishes, scanning the crowd. People were milling about, many of them holding their signs above their heads to block the sun; it could have been a fair, almost, the crowd was bright with balloons, with spinning pinwheels children waved, with the sounds of whistles and handheld drums. Near the fountain, in the shade of a tree, a man had set out a table with these trinkets, most of all with the little Bulgarian flags that he held out to passersby, calling out po levche sa, one lev each. There were other street vendors, too; the air was sweet with roasted walnuts, and people were carrying little plastic bags of sunflower seeds, bottles of water still sweating with condensation.

• From Cleanness (2020)

  Outside, I wanted to tell R. why I had needed to leave so suddenly, but as I began to speak what I had felt seemed ridiculous, out of scale, and I let it drop. It was already late afternoon, and we angled our way back to the busier part of town. We didn’t have any plans for the evening, and as we walked I kept an eye on the walls of the buildings beside the road, which were crowded with posters for concerts and exhibitions and plays, a surprising number for such a small town, I thought, posters mounted over other posters, bulging like plaster from the walls. Most of them were for small venues, clubs and cafés, but there was a series of performances held within the walls of the ruined fortress, too; the stage of ages, they called it, symphony and opera and ballet. We had been saving Tsarevets for the evening anyway; it would be brutal in the day, exposed to the sun and with almost no shade to be found. I saw that there was a concert that night, members of the Sofia Opera and Ballet performing Lakmé, the opera by Delibes. I had never seen it live, I told R., but it was the first opera I owned on CD, two discs I had played again and again. It was like a door opening onto my adolescence, I felt, a chance to share it with him, and suddenly it seemed important that we go, Please, I said, can we go, please, surprising us both with my insistence. He had never been to an opera before, but he was willing; it would be a new experience, he said, he was eager for new experiences.

• From This Boy's Life: A Memoir (1989)

  When I told her I’d spoken to Geoffrey, her eyes filled with tears. This was unusual for her. We were sitting at the kitchen table, where we liked to talk when we were alone in the house. Geoffrey had recently been sending my mother letters, too, but they hadn’t spoken since we left Utah. She wanted to know what he sounded like, how he was, and all manner of things I had not thought to ask him. My mother grew somber, as she often did when we talked about Geoffrey. She was afraid she’d done the wrong thing in letting him go with my father, afraid he held it against her, that and the divorce, and taking up with Roy. I mentioned Geoffrey’s idea about Choate, about the possibility of my getting a scholarship there or maybe at some other school. I was afraid of her reaction. I thought she would be hurt by my wish to go, but she liked the idea. “He actually thinks you have a chance?” she said. “He said they’ll be eating out of my hand, quote un-quote.” “I don’t know why he thinks that.” “My grades are good,” I said. “That’s true. Your grades are good. What other schools did he mention?” “St. Paul’s.” “He’s got big plans for you.” “Deerfield.” She laughed. “They’ll recognize your name, anyway. I think your father was the only boy they ever expelled.” Then she said, “Don’t get your hopes too high.” “Geoffrey said he’d talk to Dad about it. He said maybe Dad would have some ideas.” “I’m sure he will,” she said. GEOFFREY SENT THE names and addresses of the schools he had first mentioned, and also three others—Hill, Andover, and Exeter. I went to the library at school and looked them up in Vance Packard’s The Status Seekers . This book explained how the upper class perpetuates itself. Its motive was supposedly democratic, to attack snobbery and subvert the upper class by giving away its secrets. But I didn’t read it as social criticism. To seek status seemed the most natural thing in the world to me. Everyone did it. The people who bought the book were certainly doing it. They consulted it with the same purpose I had, not to deplore the class problem but to solve it by changing classes. Whatever he meant it to be, Packard’s book was the perfect guide for social climbers. He listed the places you should live and the colleges you should go to and the clubs you should join and the faith you should confess. He named the tailors and stores you should patronize, and described with filigree exactitude the ways you could betray your origins. Wearing a blue serge suit to a yacht-club party. Saying davenport for sofa, ill for sick, wealthy for rich. Painting the walls of your house in bright colors. Mixing ginger ale with whiskey. Being too good a dancer. He showed boxes within boxes, circles within circles.

• From This Boy's Life: A Memoir (1989)

  I should also apply to Deerfield, where our father had gone for a time, and to St. Paul’s. Maybe some others. They liked jocks, he said. Was I a jock? I told him I was a swimmer. “Good, they love swimmers. You swim for your school?” “The school doesn’t have a team. I swim for my Scout troop.” “You’re a Scout? Great! Better and better. What rank?” “Eagle.” He laughed. “Christ, Toby, they’ll be eating out of your hand. Anything else? Chess? Music?” “I play in the school band.” “Terrific. What instrument?” “Snare drum.” “Yes, well, let’s stick with the grades and swimming and the Scouts.” Geoffrey told me he would send a list of schools to apply to, along with addresses and deadlines. I would have to be patient, this wasn’t going to happen overnight. “I don’t like the idea of that guy hitting you,” Geoffrey said. “Think you can hang on out there?” I said I could. “I’m going to call the old man about this. He might have some ideas. We’ll get you out of there, one way or the other.” He told me to give his love to our mother, and to keep writing. He said he really liked the wolf story. THIS WAS A low time for my mother. During the campaign she had traveled up and down the valley, and gone to conventions, and spent her time with people she admired. She had met John F. Kennedy. Now that the election was over she’d gone back to waiting tables at the cookhouse. She missed the excitement, but her sadness went beyond that, beyond boredom and fatigue. She had told a man who’d worked with her on the campaign that she wanted to get out of Chinook, and he offered to pull some strings to find her a job back East. Dwight somehow got wind of it. While they were driving up from Marblemount one night, he turned off on a logging road and took her to a lonely place. She asked him to go back but he refused to say anything. He just sat there, drinking from a bottle of whiskey. When it was empty he pulled his hunting knife out from under the seat and held it to her throat. He kept her there for hours like that, making her beg for her life, making her promise that she would never leave him. If she left him, he said, he would find her and kill her. It didn’t matter where she went or how long it took him, he would kill her. She believed him. I knew something had happened, but I didn’t know what. My mother wouldn’t tell me. She was afraid I would make things worse if I knew, stir Dwight up all over again. The fact was, she had no money and no place to go. Alone, she might have bolted anyway. With me to take care of she thought she couldn’t.

• From Momma and the Meaning of Life (1999)

  And the opportunities had been legion: early in her bereavement there had been a long queue of attractive and appropriate suitors. She had rejected each man quickly for one or more of what seemed an endless list of reasons. “I don’t dare love again because I can’t endure another loss” (that attitude, always at the top of the list, resulted in her rejecting out of hand any man even slightly older than herself or any man not in the best possible physical condition). “I don’t want to doom any man by loving him.” “I refuse to betray Jack.” She compared every man unfavorably to Jack, who was the perfect and predestined mate for her (he had known her family; had been hand-chosen by her brother; and represented a last link with her dead brother, her father, and her dying mother). Furthermore, Irene was convinced that there was no man who could ever understand her, no man who would not, like Frost’s farmer, bring the shovel into the kitchen. Except, possibly, a member of the society of the recently bereaved, someone who had an acute awareness of his or her ultimate destination and the preciousness of life. Picky. Picky. Picky. Perfect health. Athletic. Slim. Younger than she. Recent bereavement. Extraordinary sensibility to art, literature, and existential concerns. I grew impatient with Irene and the impossible standards she set. I thought of all the other widows I had worked with, who would have given anything for any attention whatsoever paid by any of the men Irene had summarily rejected. I did my best to keep these sentiments to myself, but she missed nothing, not even my unexpressed thoughts, and grew angry at my wish that she become involved with a man. “You’re trying to force me to compromise!” she accused. Perhaps too she was sensing my growing alarm that she would never let me go. I believed that her attachment to me was a major factor in her refusing to engage a man. God, would I be burdened with her forever? Perhaps that was my penalty for having succeeded in becoming so important to her. And then Kevin entered her life. From the beginning she knew he was the man she had been seeking. I marveled at her certainty—her prescience. I thought of all those impossible, ridiculous standards she had set. Well, he met every single one of them, and then some. Youth, perfect health, sensitivity— he was even a member of the society of the secretly bereaved. His wife had died a year previously, and he and Irene fully understood and empathized with each other’s mourning. Everything clicked immediately, and I was overjoyed for Irene—and for my own liberation. Before she met Kevin, she had entirely regained her high level of functioning in the outside world, but there had remained a deep and almost inexpressible inner sadness and resignation. Now that too had rapidly resolved. Had she improved as a result of meeting Kevin?

• From This Boy's Life: A Memoir (1989)

  Her father, Daddy as she called him, had been a navy officer and a paper millionaire. They’d lived in a big house with a turret. Just before Daddy lost all his money and all his shanty-Irish relatives’ money and got himself transferred overseas, my mother was one of four girls chosen to ride on the Beverly Hills float in the Tournament of Roses. The float’s theme was “The End of the Rainbow” and it won that year’s prize by acclamation. She met Jackie Coogan. She had her picture taken with Harold Lloyd and Marion Davies, whose movie The Sailor Man was filmed on Daddy’s ship. When Daddy was at sea she and her mother lived a dream life in which, for days at a time, they played the part of sisters. And the cars my mother told me about as we waited for the Rambler to cool—I should have seen the cars! Daddy drove a Franklin touring car. She’d been courted by a boy who had his own Chrysler convertible with a musical horn. And of course there was the Hernandez family, neighbors who’d moved up from Mexico after finding oil under their cactus ranch. The family was large. When they were expected to appear somewhere together they drove singly in a caravan of identical Pierce-Arrows. Something like that was supposed to happen to us. People in Utah were getting up poor in the morning and going to bed rich at night. You didn’t need to be a mining engineer or a mineralogist. All you needed was a Geiger counter. We were on our way to the uranium fields, where my mother would get a job and keep her eyes open. Once she learned the ropes she’d start prospecting for a claim of her own. And when she found it she planned to do some serious compensating: for the years of hard work, first as a soda jerk and then as a novice secretary, that had gotten her no farther than flat broke and sometimes not that far. For the breakup of our family five years earlier. For the misery of her long affair with a violent man. She was going to make up for lost time, and I was going to help her. WE GOT TO Utah the day after the truck went down. We were too late—months too late. Moab and the other mining towns had been overrun. All the motels were full. The locals had rented out their bedrooms and living rooms and garages and were now offering trailer space in their front yards for a hundred dollars a week, which was what my mother could make in a month if she had a job. But there were no jobs, and people were getting ornery. There’d been murders. Prostitutes walked the streets in broad daylight, drunk and bellicose. Geiger counters cost a fortune. Everyone told us to keep going. My mother thought things over.

• From The History of Christianity II: From the Reformation to the Modern Megachurch (2017)

  223Lecture 23—Fundamentalism and Pentecostalism õA few years later, Parham had his own healing mission and Bible college in Topeka. In 1901, he laid hands on one of his students, a woman named Agnes Ozman, and prayed for her—and she spoke in tongues. Witnesses later claimed she was speaking Chinese, which she had never studied. õThey took this to be a sign that God had restored to earth the miraculous spiritual gifts of New Testament times because Christ was about to return. God had blessed true believers with special powers like tongues and healing in order to give them one last chance to win converts for Christ. Many scholars trace the origins of the modern Pentecostal movement to this event. õParham and his students traveled far and wide to spread their message. While Parham was preaching in Houston, a black hotel waiter named William Seymour sat in on one of his classes. The class was segregated, so Seymour had to sit outside the door and crane his neck to listen. õBut Seymour was persuaded anyhow, and carried this Pentecostal idea that Christians need to experience the baptism of the Holy Spirit to Los Angeles when he moved there in 1906. There, Seymour would become a world-class evangelist. INTERNATIONAL REVIVAL õWithin just fifteen years, this Pentecostal revival had spread to every inhabited continent. Seymour’s Azusa Street Revival, which ran for three years and had a diverse crowd of participants, planted many seeds of that global explosion. 224The History of Christianity II õThere were revivals in the late 19 th and early 20 th centuries in Sweden, Ireland, Australia, Wales, and other places which primed Christians there to be receptive when travelers returned from California with their message of the Baptism of the Holy Spirit. õDespite its diverse beginnings, not long after this revival began it divided along racial lines, especially in the United States. Today, there are Pentecostal denominations that are overwhelmingly white, like the Assemblies of God, and largely black, like the Church of God in Christ.

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

  The nationalistic covenant presented in Jubilees, in Paul’s understanding, is being replaced by a new covenant in Jesus, the Christ. The knowledge of God is the experience of the new creation and is the act of God causing his word to abide in his people formed of both Jews and non-Jews. The author of Jubilees has an eschatology that is more a renewal of the old creation than a sharp two-age one. The present creation is corrupt and is progressively being renewed from the old. God, in his faithfulness, will make a place for all (albeit mostly Jews) in this renewed world as the prophetic writers anticipated. This new creation comes with a renewed interest in the study of the Torah and people will at last be able to attain the number of years original y designed for them. The future hope offered in Jubilees is for the repentant and the obedient person to usher in a new creation where sin and corruption will be no more. Romans 8:18–27 shares the eschatological standpoint of the book of Jubilees. One fundamental difference is that Rom 8:18–27 refers to what will happen at a basic level without being much interested in the details of what the new creation will be like. For Paul, what is of utmost importance is that there will be an end to the state of affairs of this present evil world and to the futility that creation is now experiencing (8:20). Creation will be set free from its slavery to corruption, and the natural world will be transformed through the freedom of the glory of the children of God (v. 21). At last, creation will be able to function according to the purpose for which it was created, but which was thwarted by sin. Christ’s death marked the defeat of sin that is the ruler of this age. The Christ-event (death and resurrection) effected the shift of the two ages. However, for Paul, the realities of the earth are not yet done with and this is well captured in Rom 8:19 when he says that creation is “waiting in eager expectation for the sons of God to be revealed (ἡ γὰρ ἀποκαραδοκία τῆς κτίσεως τὴν ἀποκάλυψιν τῶν υἱῶν τοῦ θεοῦ ἀπεκδέχεται).” There is an eschatological tension that is experienced by the new creation community because they are, in fact, living in two creations at the same time. The logical development of this thought from Paul is that those in Christ are to walk by the Spirit and not according to the patterns of this evil world. Paul believes that the 51 Fredriksen, Paul: The Pagans’ Apostle, 234 n. 64. This statement from Paula comes as a response to the arguments advanced by the proponents of the Sonderweg position (e.g., Lloyd Gaston, John Gager). See also, Terence L. Donaldson, “Jewish Christianity, Israel’s Stumbling and the Sonderweg Reading of Paul,” JSNT 29.1 (2006): 27–54. 74 74 Paul and Matthew among Jews and Gentiles

• From On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous (2019)

  I run thinking I will outpace it all, my will to change being stronger than my fear of living. My chest wet and leaf-raked, the day smoldering up at its edges, I push through so fast I feel like I’ve finally broken out of my body, left it behind. But when I turn around to see the panting boy, to forgive him, at last, for trying and failing to be good, there’s no one there—only the full elms windless at the field’s edge. Then, for no reason, I keep going. I think of the buffaloes somewhere, maybe in North Dakota or Montana, their shoulders rippling in slow motion as they race for the cliff, their brown bodies bottlenecked at the narrow precipice. Their eyes oil-black, the velvet bones of their horns covered with dust, they run, headfirst, together—until they become moose, huge and antlered, wet nostrils braying, then dogs, with paws clawing toward the edge, their tongues lapping in the light until, finally, they become macaques, a whole troop of them. The crowns of their heads cut open, their brains hollowed out, they float, the hair on their limbs fine and soft as feathers. And just as the first one steps off the cliff, onto air, the forever nothing below, they ignite into the ochre-red sparks of monarchs. Thousands of monarchs pour over the edge, fan into the white air, like a bloodjet hitting water. I race through the field as if my cliff was never written into this story, as if I was no heavier than the words in my name. And like a word, I hold no weight in this world yet still carry my own life. And I throw it ahead of me until what I left behind becomes exactly what I’m running toward—like I’m part of a family. “Why didn’t they get you then?” I place the Marlboro back in your mouth. You hold my hand there for a while, breathe, then take it between your fingers. “Oh, Little Dog,” you sigh. “Little Dog, Little Dog.” Monkeys, moose, cows, dogs, butterflies, buffaloes. What we would give to have the ruined lives of animals tell a human story—when our lives are in themselves the story of animals. “Why didn’t they get me? Well, ’cause I was fast, baby. Some monkeys are so fast, they’re more like ghosts, you know? They just—poof,” you open your palm in a gesture of a small explosion, “disappear.” Without moving your head, you look at me, the way a mother looks at anything—for too long. Then, for no reason, you start to laugh. The past tense of sing is not singed. —Hoa Nguyen Acknowledgments On this page, the line “Freedom . . . is nothing but the distance between the hunter and its prey” is from Bei Dao’s poem “Accomplices” (The August Sleepwalker). On this page, the line “Two languages . . . beckoning a third” is paraphrased from Roland Barthes by Roland Barthes.

• From This Boy's Life: A Memoir (1989)

  After lunch I walked around the campus. The regular students had not yet returned from their Christmas vacation, and the quiet was profound. I found a bench overlooking the lake. The surface was misty and gray. Until they rang the bell for the math test I sat with crossed legs and made believe I belonged here, that these handsome old buildings, webbed with vines of actual ivy to which a few brown leaves still clung, were my home. ARTHUR HATED SHOP , which was a required course for boys at Concrete High. After making his eighth or ninth cedar box he revolted. He was able to negotiate his way out by agreeing to work in the school office during that period. I thought he would help me, but he refused angrily. His anger made no sense to me. I did not understand that he wanted out, too. I backed off and didn’t ask again. But a few days later he came up to me in the cafeteria, dropped a manila folder on the table, and walked away without a word. I got up and took the folder to the bathroom and locked myself in a stall. It was all there, everything I had asked for. Fifty sheets of school stationary, several blank transcript forms, and a stack of official envelopes. I slipped them into the folder again and went back to the cafeteria. Over the next couple of nights I filled out the transcripts and the application forms. Now the application forms came easy; I could afford to be terse and modest in my self-descriptions, knowing how detailed my recommenders were going to be. When these were done I began writing the letters of support. I wrote out rough copies in longhand, then typed up the final versions on official stationary, using different machines in the typing lab at school. I wrote the first drafts deliberately, with much crossing out and penciling in, but with none of the hesitance I’d felt before. Now the words came as easily as if someone were breathing them into my ear. I felt full of things that had to be said, full of stifled truth. That was what I thought I was writing—the truth. It was truth known only to me, but I believed in it more than I believed in the facts arrayed against it. I believed that in some sense not factually verifiable I was a straight-A student. In the same way, I believed that I was an Eagle Scout, and a powerful swimmer, and a boy of integrity. These were ideas about myself that I had held on to for dear life. Now I gave them voice. I made no claims that seemed false to me. I did not say that I was a star quarterback or even a varsity football player, because even though I went out for football every year I never quickened to the lumpen spirit of the sport. The same was true of basketball.

• From Cleanness (2020)

  The writer had already been saying his goodbyes when I arrived. He wouldn’t march tonight, he said, he had come to watch the crowd gather but he had to get home to his daughter, it was her bedtime already. She would be getting cross, he said to me; he spoke the English of the British Institute, of the Cambridge exam. He was devoted to this girl, who was four or five; his Facebook page was full of pictures of her, of the two of them, he was a convert to fatherhood, having come to it late. She came the first couple of days, he said, but after that she refused, she wanted to stay home with her mother and read—she loves to read, he said, you’ve never seen a child who loves so much to read—she says the protests are boring. Smart girl, D. said, they are boring, every night is the same, it’s not really a protest, it’s just a boring party. He spoke as if he were picking up a conversation I had interrupted. They don’t have any ideas, he said, throwing up his hands, what’s the good of a movement without any ideas. No no, the writer said, please, you can’t write that—D. was reporting on the protests for a newspaper in Britain, almost the first international coverage they would receive—please, that can’t be your story. You have to say what the feeling is, the energy, but D. cut him off. The energy, he said, not sounding happy now, what the fuck is that? Look, if it’s just energy, we should hope it stops, right away, energy without a plan can’t build anything, it’s more likely to make things worse. No, the writer said again, but he was already withdrawing, he put his hand on D.’s shoulder but it was a way of ending the conversation, not of drawing him near. I don’t think you’re right, he said, it’s the future they want, you should do what you can to help them. He smiled then, he put his hand on D.’s face, cupping his cheek like a grandfather, a much older man. If you had children you’d see it differently, he said, switching to Bulgarian, you’d support them then. D. scoffed but the writer had already moved on, he reached his hand to D.’s mother, who took him by the arm instead. I’m going too, she said, I’ll walk with you. D. kissed her cheek, and she thanked me again for the flower, which she held with her free hand as she and the writer set off for the metro stop a few blocks away, leaving D. and me alone. He looked at me and smiled, shrugging a little. He’s a great writer, he said, but he’s wrong about this. I didn’t say anything; I wanted to take up the writer’s side of things, but I knew I would lose the argument—I didn’t have any arguments, really, just feelings, he would have laughed at them. And anyway the drums started beating then, and air horns blared, and there was a shift in the crowd, which grew still and then very slowly began to move. D. sighed. Okay, he said, I guess it’s time, and he swung his backpack off his shoulder to take out a large camera, which he hung around his neck. It was his first time at the protests, too, he had followed them in the news but hadn’t come out until tonight, to play the role of journalist, not citizen—he would wander around talking to people, he said, gathering material. There was another blast of horns, and D. invited me to join him. But I would have been in the way, and I wanted to be on my own for a bit, I told him I would find him later. The crowd was moving more decisively now, I stood for a while at the fountain and watched it pass. People held their signs at attention, not using them for shade anymore, and everywhere I saw the word OSTAVKA, resignation, the protesters’ primary demand. A golden retriever twisted among the crowd, unleashed, his tail crazily wagging, until he paused in front of a young girl with Bulgarian flags painted on her cheeks, who patted him once or twice before he rushed off again.

• From Mating in Captivity: Unlocking Erotic Intelligence (2006)

  Though I doubt that they ever used this word, they embodied its mystical meaning as a quality of aliveness, a pathway to freedom—not just the narrow definition of sex that modernity has assigned to it. It is this expanded understanding that I bring to bear on my discussion of eroticism in this book. There is yet another powerful influence that has helped shape this project. My husband is the director of the International Trauma Studies Program at Columbia University. His work is devoted to assisting refugees, children of war, and victims of torture as they seek to overcome the massive trauma they’ve experienced. By restoring their sense of creativity and their capacity for play and pleasure, these survivors are ultimately helped to reconnect with life and the hope that fuels it. My husband deals with pain; I deal with pleasure. They are intimately acquainted. The individuals I write about do not appear in the acknowledgments, though I owe them a great deal. Their stories are authentic and almost verbatim, but their identities are masked. Throughout this project, I’ve shared excerpts with them in the spirit of collaboration. Many of my ideas were developed through my work, and not the other way around. My ideas also draw on the wealth of careful considerations made by many professionals and authors who have previously tackled the ambiguities of love and desire. Every day in my work I am confronted with the detailed realities that hide behind statistics. I see people who are such good friends that they cannot sustain being lovers. I see lovers who hold so tenaciously to the idea that sex must be spontaneous that they never have it at all. I see couples who view seduction as too much work, something they shouldn’t have to do now that they’re committed. I see others who believe that intimacy means knowing everything about each other. They abdicate any sense of separateness, then are left wondering where the mystery has gone. I see wives who would rather carry the label “low sexual desire” for the rest of their lives than suffer explaining to their husbands that foreplay needs to be more than a prelude to the real thing. I see people so desperate to beat back a feeling of deadness in their partnerships that they’re willing to risk everything for a few moments of forbidden excitement with someone else. I see couples whose sex lives are rekindled by an affair, and others for whom an affair effectively ends what little connection remained. I see older men who feel betrayed by their newly unresponsive penises, who rush for Viagra to soften the anxiety of the hard facts; I see their wives made uncomfortable by the sudden challenge to their own passivity. I see new parents whose erotic energy has been sapped by caring for an infant—so consumed by their child that they don’t remember to close the bedroom door once in a while.

• From Cleanness (2020)

  The sun had fully set now, and between the streetlamps in the park at NDK there was utter darkness. We passed the entrance to the underground passageway, where there was a metro stop now, still new, and also the toilets where men went for sex, where I had spent so many weekend evenings; walking with my student I felt the weird dissonance of my private and public lives. M. had been walking quietly, listening to the sound of the drums that drifted back to us from the front of the march. People weren’t shouting as we walked through the park at NDK, the mood was restrained, contemplative, a little respite from the noise. Some people had let their signs drop in the dark, tucking them under their arms, but others still held them aloft, and I saw that several people were wearing glow bracelets, little rings of light that hovered over their heads. I asked M. if she usually came with friends, if there were many students marching from the school. Not so many, she said, and not my friends, usually I come alone. Lots of parents are scared, she said, and anyway we have so much work for school, it’s hard to have time for anything else. But this is important, she went on, it’s important for my country, it’s important that the young people are here. I don’t know, she said, some of my friends say it’s stupid to come because we’re leaving so soon, but I don’t feel like that, it’s still my country, she said, even if I’m leaving. Maybe I’ll come back if things get better, I would like to come back. That’s the real problem, I said, agreeing with her, so many people leave, so many of the best people, it’s hard for things to get better when so many people leave. We had crossed onto Vitosha now, where there was more light, I could see her face when she turned to look at me. Do you think we’re wrong to leave, she asked me, do you think we should stay? I hesitated before answering. It wasn’t my place to answer, of course, and I told her this, and also I had left my own country, where there were so many problems, where I had done so little, really, to stand against them. But no, I said finally, I don’t think you’re wrong. You only have one life, I said, and I want you to be happy, I want you to go where you can live most fully, and even as I spoke I could hear the argument against each of my phrases canceling out what I said, I didn’t know what I thought. But you’re going back, M. said, you must be excited about that, to be going home. I’m not going home, I said, what would that even mean, I’m going back to America but I’m not going home. And maybe I won’t stay, I said, I don’t know, I like living abroad. And then I threw up my hands, I don’t know anything, I said, don’t listen to anything I say.

• From This Boy's Life: A Memoir (1989)

  I thought it might be my brother, or even my father, but the caller turned out to be a Hill School alumnus who lived in Seattle. His name was Mr. Howard. He told me the school was “interested” in my application, and had asked him to meet with me and have a talk. Just an informal chat, he said. He said he’d always wanted to see our part of the state, and this would give him a good excuse. We arranged to meet outside Concrete High after classes let out the next day. Mr. Howard said he’d be driving a blue Thunderbird. He didn’t say anything about wanting to meet my teachers, thank God. “Whatever you do, just don’t try to impress him,” my mother said when I told her about the call. “Just be yourself.” WHEN MR. HOWARD asked me where we might go to talk, I suggested the Concrete drugstore. I knew there would be kids from school there. I wanted them to see me pull up in the Thunderbird and get out with this man, who was just old enough to be my father, and different from other men you might see in the Concrete drugstore. Without affecting boyishness, Mr. Howard still had the boy in him. He bounced a little as he walked. His narrow face was lively, foxlike. He looked around with a certain expectancy, as if he were ready to be interested in what he saw, and when he was interested he allowed himself to show it. He wore a suit and tie. The men who taught at the high school also wore suits and ties, but less easily. They were always pulling at their cuffs and running their fingers between their collars and their necks. To watch them was to suffocate. Mr. Howard wore his suit and tie as if he didn’t know he had them on. We sat at a booth in the back. Mr. Howard bought us milkshakes, and while we drank them he asked me about Concrete High. I told him I enjoyed my classes, especially the more demanding ones, but that I was feeling a little restless lately. It was hard to explain. “Oh, come on,” he said. “It’s easy to explain. You’re bored.” I shrugged. I wasn’t going to speak badly of the teachers who had written so well of me. “You wouldn’t be bored at Hill,” Mr. Howard said. “I can promise you that. But you might find it difficult in other ways.” He told me about his own time there in the years just before World War II. He had grown up in Seattle, where he’d done well in school. He expected that he would fall easily into life at Hill, but he hadn’t. The academic work was much harder. He missed his family and hated the snowy Pennsylvania winters. And the boys at Hill were different from his friends back home, more reserved, more concerned with money and social position.