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 Stripped: Las Vegas (2021)

  And so I know that your money is, it comes on the track, it comes fast and it's in the bank. So, what they can do is statements based loans. So they're able to look at your bank statements and determine what you make every day or monthly. - I'm just trying to live my dream. I'm trying to raise the best human that I possibly can and make sure that my brothers and sisters have somebody to look up to. I'm just trying to do what I believe everybody should be doing, and that's just living my best life. I just want to live the rest of my life to the fullest and embrace all my flaws, and all my struggles, and everything that I went through because that's who I am. [dramatic music] - Everything was a choice for me. It wasn't forced upon me and I happen to like being sexy, and that's a choice. So, not every girl wants to be a teacher. Some women like to fucking take their clothes off and make money, it's okay [laughs]. ♪ Fucking must be out your mind, don't do it ♪ - I really enjoy dancing. I really enjoy being able to turn someone on so much. And at the same time, I'm not into it at all. [placid music] Me, myself, I'm queer, I'm pretty asexual. The intimacy that I have with my friends is enough for me. I don't need romantic relationships. I don't need sex in my life to be a complete person. It's not something that I crave. And so, I don't feel the sexual attraction that they're feeling regardless. And so, it keeps me focused. And at the same time, it's kind of ironic. It's kind of funny. There's so many stigmas around dancing and around being slutty that are hard to conceptualize when you don't have sex, I guess. - It's the world looks down on us like crazy. We need just more places where we could be ourselves unapologetically and just be able to strive and be successful. - Don't really match my house though, gaso, gaso. [nails clicking] - [Salesperson] Thank you so much, congratulations on your new place. - [Galaxciii] Thank you, I appreciate it. What it's like having my first place is amazing. I feel so much more stable. I feel so much more happy. I feel so much more responsible. [paper rustling] [placid music] I have only started doing this, it's been what, two, three months in the process of changing my diet, changing my life, being sober, being clear headed, and not partying. It's all a work in progress. [lid thumping] - I've never really been the type to think too far into the future. I don't even know what I'm going to do tomorrow. So, I just kinda take it day by day. And I really try to live in the moment. Always remember to keep yourself first. Decision-making isn't easy, but it's necessary.

• From Cleanness (2020)

  I do tell them that, I said, I believe it. I took a breath. He has a talent, I said, I think he’s lucky to have found it, and yes, I think he should follow what he loves and build his life around it. I paused. I had been wringing my hands beneath the table, knitting and unknitting my fingers, and now I laid them flat on top of it. I worry about N. in law school, I said, I worry that he will keep doing badly. I think, and here I tried to make my voice lighter somehow, I think he should do what he feels called to do, I think he should study what he wants. She sat very still as I spoke, her tight smile unchanging. Yes, she said again, it’s very beautiful what you say, very inspiring. And what does he do then, she said, after he studies what he wants, what does he do when he has to get a job? Things are different here, Gospodine, maybe in America what you say is true; you try something there and if you fail it is no problem, you try something else, Americans love starting over, you say it’s never too late. But for us it is always too late, she said. When N. gets his diploma he has to find a job, right away, a good job in England, if he doesn’t he has to come back here, and if he comes back here it will be very hard for him to leave again, do you understand, if he comes back here he will be trapped. I know you care about him, she said, settling back in her chair, I know your heart, and she hesitated, groping for the phrase, your heart is in the right place, but what you say isn’t true for us, please, you must help him see that. N. groaned when I repeated this to him the next morning at school. You see, he said, she won’t listen, it’s impossible to talk to her. It’s because she loves you, I said, it’s a way of loving you, and he sighed and looked away. Well, N. said at the restaurant table, lowering his hands before Z. interrupted him—Listen up, Gospodine, he said, you’re going to like this. N. smiled at me. No more law school, he said, I’m transferring, in the fall I’ll be doing literature. There was a cheer around the table, as several students said Chestito, congratulations, and all of us raised our glasses. But what about your mother, I asked after we drank, how did you convince her? N.’s smile widened. It was easy, he said, I just failed all my classes, and everyone laughed. I don’t approve of your methods, I said, though I was laughing too, and Z. raised his glass and said To whatever works, and we toasted again.

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

  Of course, when Adele describes the state of her marriage she isn’t thinking about contemporary angst. But I believe that the perils of love are heightened by the particular modern pangs we bring to it. We live miles away from our families, no longer know our childhood friends, and are regularly uprooted and transplanted. All this discontinuity has a cumulative effect. We bring to our romantic relationships an almost unbearable existential vulnerability—as if love itself weren’t dangerous enough. A Modern Love Story: The Short Version You meet someone through a potent alchemy of attraction. It is a sweet reaction and it’s always a surprise. You’re filled with a sense of possibility, of hope, of being lifted out of the mundane and into a world of emotion and enthrallment. Love grabs you, and you feel powerful. You cherish the rush, and you want to hold on to the feeling. You’re also scared. The more you become attached, the more you have to lose. So you set out to make love more secure. You seek to fix it, to make it dependable. You make your first commitments, and happily give up a little bit of freedom in exchange for a little bit of stability. You create comfort through devices—habit, ritual, pet names—that bring reassurance. But the excitement was bound to a certain measure of insecurity. Your high resulted from the uncertainty, and now, by seeking to harness it, you wind up draining the vitality out of the relationship. You enjoy the comfort, but complain that you feel constrained. You miss the spontaneity. In your attempt to control the risks of passion, you have tamed it out of existence. Marital boredom is born. While love promises us relief from aloneness, it also heightens our dependence on one person. It is inherently vulnerable. We tend to assuage our anxieties through control. We feel safer if we can contract the distance between us, maximize the certainty, minimize the threats, and contain the unknown. Yet some of us defend against the uncertainties of love with such zeal that we cut ourselves off from its richness. There’s a powerful tendency in long-term relationships to favor the predictable over the unpredictable. Yet eroticism thrives on the unpredictable. Desire butts heads with habit and repetition. It is unruly, and it defies our attempts at control. So where does that leave us? We don’t want to throw away the security, because our relationship depends on it. A sense of physical and emotional safety is basic to healthy pleasure and connection. Yet without an element of uncertainty there is no longing, no anticipation, no frisson. The motivational expert Anthony Robbins put it succinctly when he explained that passion in a relationship is commensurate with the amount of uncertainty you can tolerate. Having New Eyes

• From Saint Thomas Aquinas Collection (22 Books) (2016)

  Whether hope abounds in young men and drunkards?Objection 1: It would seem that youth and drunkenness are not causes of hope. Because hope implies certainty and steadiness; so much so that it is compared to an anchor (Heb. 6:19). But young men and drunkards are wanting in steadiness; since their minds are easily changed. Therefore youth and drunkenness are not causes of hope. Objection 2: Further, as stated above [1356](A[5]), the cause of hope is chiefly whatever increases one’s power. But youth and drunkenness are united to weakness. Therefore they are not causes of hope. Objection 3: Further, experience is a cause of hope, as stated above [1357](A[5]). But youth lacks experience. Therefore it is not a cause of hope. On the contrary, The Philosopher says (Ethic. iii, 8) that “drunken men are hopeful”: and (Rhet. ii, 12) that “the young are full of hope.” I answer that, Youth is a cause of hope for three reasons, as the Philosopher states in Rhet. ii, 12: and these three reasons may be gathered from the three conditions of the good which is the object of hope—namely, that it is future, arduous and possible, as stated above [1358](A[1]). For youth has much of the future before it, and little of the past: and therefore since memory is of the past, and hope of the future, it has little to remember and lives very much in hope. Again, youths, on account of the heat of their nature, are full of spirit; so that their heart expands: and it is owing to the heart being expanded that one tends to that which is arduous; wherefore youths are spirited and hopeful. Likewise they who have not suffered defeat, nor had experience of obstacles to their efforts, are prone to count a thing possible to them. Wherefore youths, through inexperience of obstacles and of their own shortcomings, easily count a thing possible; and consequently are of good hope. Two of these causes are also in those who are in drink—viz. heat and high spirits, on account of wine, and heedlessness of dangers and shortcomings. For the same reason all foolish and thoughtless persons attempt everything and are full of hope. Reply to Objection 1: Although youths and men in drink lack steadiness in reality, yet they are steady in their own estimation, for they think that they will steadily obtain that which they hope for. In like manner, in reply to the Second Objection, we must observe that young people and men in drink are indeed unsteady in reality: but, in their own estimation, they are capable, for they know not their shortcomings. Reply to Objection 3: Not only experience, but also lack of experience, is, in some way, a cause of hope, as explained above (A[5], ad 3).

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

  273 LECTURE 28 VATICAN II AND GLOBAL RENEWAL O n January 25, 1959, Pope John XXIII announced a gathering of Catholic Church leaders. It had been almost a century since a pope last summoned a council of the entire Catholic Church, calling all the bishops, heads of religious orders, and other leaders to gather in Rome and make some big decisions. That last council, the First Vatican Council (or Vatican I) in 1870, was Rome’s major defensive maneuver against a modern world that the pope and his allies did not like too much. That council declared the pope infallible and squelched the hopes of Catholic progressives who wanted the church to embrace democratic liberalism and make room for Catholics to learn from the latest biblical scholarship. But by the 1960s, it was clear that this defensive strategy wasn’t entirely working. Pope John XXIII declared that the leaders of the church were not to be “museum keepers, but to cultivate a f lourishing garden of life.” This lecture explores the big debates and the drama of the council itself. Then, it turns to the question of how the church reforms that came out of it had immense consequences for Catholics around the world and even for international politics. EARLY FACTIONS AND DEBATES õIn October 1962, 2,700 bishops gathered at St. Peter’s Basilica in Rome to convene the Second Vatican Council, or Vatican II. This made it the largest gathering of bishops in church history, and it would last more than three years, with the bishops meeting in four 10-week sessions. 274The History of Christianity II õThe proceedings of the council were all in Latin, a language that some of the bishops could understand pretty well but others found difficult. The real debate happened in off hours, in the monasteries, hostels, and hotels where the bishops were staying. õThe pope also took an unprecedented step and invited non-Catholic observers, mainly prominent Jews and Protestants, to attend the council. John XXIII learned he was dying of stomach cancer not long after Vatican II began. In April of 1963, he issued his last encyclical before he died, Pacem in Terris. He said he was working together with nonbelievers to defend human rights and seek the “universal common good.”

• From The History of World Literature (2007)

  92 Lecture 22: Cervantes’s Don Quixote reminds us that what Quixote takes for a giant is really a windmill or that an army is really a À ock of sheep. It is important to remember, however, that Don Quixote is not pretending; he is a true psychotic, which means that he experiences reality in a different way from the narrator, the reader, and everyone else in his world. After Don Quixote’s ¿ rst adventure, Cervantes gives him a squire—Sancho Panza—who is an exact opposite of Quixote in almost every way. Where Quixote is tall and skinny, Panza is short and fat. Where Quixote is well read, Panza is illiterate. Whereas Quixote is an idealist, Panza is practical. Once Sancho has become Quixote’s companion, the novelistic and romance perspectives are built into the narrative itself. This is seen in the adventure involving the giant. Don Quixote insists on his vision of reality—that giants are before him, and that he should slay them—while Sancho protests that the giants are really windmills. When Don Quixote charges one of the windmills and is knocked to the ground by its blade, he explains to Sancho that an evil sorcerer changed the giant into a windmill at the last moment to deprive him of the glory that should have been his. Cervantes published the ¿ rst part of Don Quixote in 1605. Part I is more comic than Part II, and scenes from this part have been mined by other authors ever since. Part I works by having Don Quixote lose touch with reality because of his reading, getting beaten up by the world around him and dragging his squire with him in the process (e.g., the misadventure at the inn). A spurious sequel by an unknown author was published in 1614, prompting Cervantes to write his own sequel in 1615 , in which he kills off Don Quixote. Part II has proven to be the more interesting part for readers and critics. The second part of the novel raises a series of interesting questions. The ¿ rst is the question of the values of sanity and insanity. Don Quixote is clearly mad, but he is also by far the best, noblest, and most charitable character in the book, which spurs readers to question sanity and insanity and the degree to which each drives good behavior in the world. This question is intensi¿ ed as we watch the hard-headed, practical Sancho Panza begin to absorb some of the values of his addled master—and become a better person

• From Reading the Bible from the Margins (2002)

  Christ stands against oppression and compels his followers to do likewise. Christ resides among those who are suffering oppression, who live in want, who have misery as a companion. These are the “the least of my people,” Jesus in the here and now. The poor, the oppressed, and people of color provide an essential salvific perspective to world history. God chooses those who are oppressed within history and makes them the principal means of salvation for the rest of society, just as God chose the “suffering servant,” the crucified Christ, to bring salvation to the world. For now, suffice to say that God has historically chosen those from the margins of society to be agents of God's new creation. As Matthew 21:42 reminds us, it is the stone rejected by the builders that becomes the keystone of God's handiwork. God did not reveal the divine will to the court of Pharaoh; instead, God chose their slaves, the Hebrews, to reveal God's movement in history. It was not Rome, the most powerful city of the known world, where God chose to perform the miracle of the incarnation, nor was it Jerusalem, the center of Yahweh worship; rather it was impoverished Galilee. This theme of solidarity between the crucified Christ and the victims of oppression makes the people of the margins salvific agents for the recipients of society's power and privilege. Christ is informed by the historical identification of Jesus with those who suffer under oppression. Christ's nonwhiteness is not due to an attempt to be “politically correct,” nor to some psychological need of marginalized communities. Jesus is nonwhite because the biblical witness of God is of one who takes sides with those who are oppressed against their oppressors. In our present racist society, people of color are the ones being oppressed, the ones who suffer hunger, thirst, nakedness, alienation, affliction, and incarceration. In a new world order, for those who are the wretched of the land, Christ ceases to be a religious icon, located somewhere far away in the heavens, who simply listens to prayers begging for blessings or to unanswerable questions about the injustices that accompany humanity. To be an imitator of Christ is to learn how to share each other's pains, to share each other's sufferings, and together share those pains and sufferings with the one who reminds us of the trials and tribulations of this world yet encourages us to be of good cheer, for the world has been overcome through the power of love, manifested in physical deeds of solidarity with “the least of my people.” A Christ who does not call us to build God's reign of justice or to seek liberation from all forms of sins, regardless of the cost to our personhood, is a false Christ. Christians are called upon to show their love for one another, a love rooted in a willingness to lay down their lives for the very least who presently suffer under race, class, and gender oppression.

• From Post Office (1971)

  “No.” “Then what is the reason for your resignation?” “To pursue a career.” “To pursue a career?” He looked at me. I was less than eight months from my 50th birthday. I knew what he was thinking. “May I ask you what your ‘career’ will be?” “Well, sir, I’ll tell you. The trapping season in the bayou only lasts from December through February. I’ve already lost a month.” “A month? But you’ve been here 11 years.” “All right, then, I’ve wasted 11 years. I can pick up 10 to 20 grand for three months trapping at Bayou La Fourche.” “What do you do?” “Trap! Muskrats, nutria, mink, otter ... coon. All I need is a pirogue. I give 20 percent of my take for use of the land. I get paid a buck and a quarter for muskrat skins, three bucks for mink, four bucks for ‘bo mink,’ a buck and a half for nutria and twenty-five bucks for otter. I sell the muskrat carcass, which is about a foot long, for five cents to a cat food factory. I get twenty-five cents for the skinned body of the nutria. I raise pigs, chickens and ducks. I catch catfish. There’s nothing to it. I—” “Never mind, Mr. Chinaski, that will be sufficient.” He put some papers in his typewriter and typed away. Then I looked up and there was Parker Anderson my union man, good old gas-station shaving and shitting Parker, giving me his politician’s grin. “You resigning, Hank? I know you been threatenin’ to for eleven years ...” “Yeah, I’m going to Southern Louisiana and catch myself a batch of goodies.” “They got a racetrack down there?” “You kidding? The Fair Grounds is one of the oldest tracks in the country!” Parker had a young white boy with him—one of the neurotic tribe of the lost —and the kid’s eyes were filmed with wet layers of tears. One big tear in each eye. They did not drop out. It was fascinating. I had seen women sit and look at me with those same eyes before they got mad and started screaming about what a son of a bitch I was. Evidently the boy had fallen into one of the many traps, and he had gone running for Parker. Parker would save his job. The man gave me one more paper to sign and then I got out of there. Parker said, “Luck, old man,” as I walked by. “Thanks, baby,” I answered. I didn’t feel any different. But I knew that soon, like a man lifted quickly out of the deep sea, I would be afflicted—with a particular type of bends. I was like Joyce’s damned parakeets. After living in the cage I had taken the opening and flown out—like a shot into the heavens. Heavens?

• From Reading the Bible from the Margins (2002)

  Yet the homosexual model prevalent during Paul's time was one in which preadolescent boys were exploited by adult males for the purpose of the adult's sexual gratification. Could these two passages be referring not to same-sex relationships between two adult males but to a form of pederasty, generally disapproved of in Greco-Roman and Jewish literature?7 Homophobia from the Margins Many gay and lesbian Christians question if companionship is limited only to heterosexual relationships. At the very least, we must consider that claims of biblical condemnation of same-sex mutual affection and love are questionable. Many Christians are not totally convinced that biblical verses that mention homosexuality are referring to its modern practice. In fact, gay and lesbian Christians have begun reading the Scriptures to reconcile the sexual orientation of their birth with their faith in Christ Jesus. For example, at first glance it appears that Jesus makes no reference to homosexuality. But several gay biblical scholars have pointed to Matthew 19:12: “For there are eunuchs who are born thus from their mother's womb, and there are eunuchs who are made eunuchs by men, and there are eunuchs who make themselves eunuchs for the sake of the reign of heaven.” Those who are made eunuchs, like Nehemiah the cupbearer, are those who were castrated in order to work for the king. This process insured their ability to serve in the royal household without jeopardizing the “honor” of the king through dishonoring his possessions, specifically his queen or harem. Those who chose to be eunuchs for the sake of God's reign are those who chose celibacy as a religious calling. But how do we interpret what it means to be a eunuch from birth? Some gay scholars believe that this verse refers to them as modern-day sexual outcasts or to transgendered persons. According to these scholars, the eunuchs from birth may represent men who have not had sexual relationships with women because of their orientation from birth. Eunuchs were considered spiritual outcasts, unable to participate in the cultic practices of the faith community: “He shall not enter the assembly of Yahweh if his male member is wounded, crushed, or cut” (Deut. 23:1).8 By referring to himself as a eunuch, it could be said that Jesus seeks solidarity with the sexually oppressed of his times while fulfilling the promise stated in Isaiah: Do not let the eunuch say, “Behold, I am a dried up tree,” for thus says Yahweh to the eunuchs who keep my Sabbaths, and choose things with which I am pleased, and take hold of my covenant. I will even give them in my house and in my walls a hand and a name better than sons and daughters; I will give them an everlasting name which shall not be cut off. (56:3–5) Jesus’ inclusion of the sexual outcast served as a model for welcoming and affirming everyone into the early Christian church. Love for all people, including the outcasts, becomes the acceptable norm established by Jesus.

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

  My ignorance was so profound that entire class periods would pass without my understanding anything that was said. The masters thought I was lazy, except for my English master, who saw that I loved books but had no way of talking about them beyond what I’d begun to learn from my brother. This man befriended me. He tutored me, cast me in some of the plays he directed, and tolerated the presumption his kindness sometimes gave rise to. But most of my teachers were clearly disappointed. It scared me to do so poorly when so much was expected, and to cover my fear I became one of the school wildmen—a drinker, a smoker, a make-out artist at the mixers we had with Baldwin and Shipley and Miss Fine’s. But that’s another story. If I worked hard I could just stay afloat; as soon as I relaxed I went under. When I felt myself going under I panicked and did wildman things that got me in trouble. My demerit count was almost always the highest in the class. While the boys around me nodded off during Chapel I prayed like a Moslem, prayed that I would somehow pull myself up again so I could stay in this place that I secretly and deeply loved. The school was patient, but not inexhaustibly patient. In my last year I broke the bank and was asked to leave. My mother met my train and took me to a piano bar full of men in Nehru jackets where she let me drink myself under the table. She wanted me to know that she wasn’t mad about anything, that I’d lasted longer than she ever thought I would. She was in a mood to celebrate, having just landed a good job in the church across the street from the White House. “I’ve got a better view than Kennedy,” she told me. My best friend got kicked out of school a few weeks after me, and the two of us proceeded to rage. I wore myself out with raging. Then I went into the army. I did so with a sense of relief and homecoming. It was good to find myself back in the clear life of uniforms and ranks and weapons. It seemed to me when I got there that this was where I had been going all along, and where I might still redeem myself. All I needed was a war. Careful what you pray for. WHEN WE ARE green, still half-created, we believe that our dreams are rights, that the world is disposed to act in our best interests, and that falling and dying are for quitters. We live on the innocent and monstrous assurance that we alone, of all the people ever born, have a special arrangement whereby we will be allowed to stay green forever. That assurance burns very bright at certain moments. It was burning bright for me when Chuck and I left Seattle and started the long drive home.

• From Reading the Bible from the Margins (2002)

  For Christianity to survive in Asia, it has to coexist with other religious traditions. This social location has also led the Asian American faith community to understand the Bible through a hermeneutic in which all sacred books from different religious traditions are allowed to participate in the religious dialogue and contribute from the wisdom literature of their different Asian cultures. Until now, biblical truth was created from the social location of Western scholars, missionaries, and clerics who reserved for themselves the sole authority for determining how the Bible was to be interpreted. This right of the West to claim a preferential option in interpreting Scripture has been generally rejected by those who have been colonialized. To the Asian or Asian American Christian, Western Christianity is seen as a captive of Greek philosophy, Roman structures, and the Latin language. How then can Western Christians rediscover and richly enhance their faith? Some Asian Christians have suggested using a “third-eye” theology. To open a “third eye,” according to Japanese Zen master Daisetz Suzuki, is a Buddhist call to become open to that which is unnoticed due to one's own ignorance. As ignorance dissipates, the infinity of heaven is manifested as we learn to see ourselves with this new eye. To read with a third eye allows Christianity to turn to the abundant indigenous stories, legends, and folklore of the people. To the missionaries, these stories were pagan, if not satanic, and so they were suppressed and banned. Nevertheless, Asian Christians are reclaiming them, stories from the underside of world history, to serve as the most authentic symbols by which they can understand the Bible. Through storytelling, Asian communities are able to liberate themselves from the restrictive interpretations of the missionaries, who represented the Eurocentric understanding of the Bible and inhibited the flourishing of Asian humanity. Asians are enhancing their theological understanding of how God saves inside and outside Western Christian history and discovering, through ancient Asian wisdom, deeper truths about God and humanity's sufferings and hardships. Through such indigenous stories, transmitted from generation to generation, consciousness is raised about the power of love, humanity, justice, and morality. These stories lead to communion within the human community and with God. Furthermore, these stories illustrate spiritual dimensions found within the Bible, making biblical texts accessible to cultures that view Westerners suspiciously. In the tradition of Jesus, who also spoke in stories about the divine (parables), Asian communities reach deep into their rich heritage to provide the lens by which the Bible can be understood and interpreted.9 To read the Bible from an Asian perspective is to also read from a postcolonialist context, cognizant of how Western imperialist powers used the Scriptures to impose a Western dominance over other lands and people. Instrumental in the conquest of the two-thirds world by the European center was a biblical reading that cloaked its true intentions with religious sensibilities.

• From Saint Thomas Aquinas Collection (22 Books) (2016)

  HILARY. It had been enough to have cut off this opinion of the Sadducees of sensual enjoyment, that where the function ceased, the empty pleasure of the body accompanying it ceased also; but He adds, But are as the Angels of God in heaven. CHRYSOSTOM. Which is an apt reply to their question. For their reason for judging that there would be no resurrection, was that they supposed that their condition when risen would be the same; this reason then He removes by shewing that their condition would be altered. PSEUDO-CHRYSOSTOM. It should be noted, that when He spoke of fasting, alms, and other spiritual virtues, He did not bring in the comparison of Angels, but only here where He speaks of the ceasing of marriage. For as all acts of the flesh are animal acts, but this of lust especially so; so all the virtues are angelic acts, but especially chastity, by which our nature is bound to the other virtues. JEROME. This that is added, But areas the Angels of God in heaven, is an assurance that our conversation in heaven shall be spiritual. PSEUDO-DIONYSIUS. (de Divin. Nom. i.) For then when we shall be incorruptible and immortal, by the visible presence of God Himself we shall be filled with most chaste contemplations, and shall share the gift of light to the understanding in our impassible and immaterial soul after the fashion of the exalted souls in heaven; on which account it is said that we shall be equal to the Angels. HILARY. The same cavil that the Sadducees here offer respecting marriage is renewed by many who ask in what form the female sex shall rise again. But what the authority of Scripture leads us to think concerning the Angels, so must we suppose that it will be with women in the resurrection of our species. AUGUSTINE. (de Civ. Dei, xxii. 17.) To me they seem to think most justly, who doubt not that both sexes shall rise again. For there shall be no desire which is the cause of confusion, for before they had sinned they were naked; and that nature which they then had shall be preserved, which was quit both of conception and of child-birth. Also the members of the woman shall not be adapted to their former use, but framed for a new beauty, one by which the beholder is not allured to lust, which shall not then be, but God’s wisdom and mercy shall be praised, which made that to be which was not, and delivered from corruption that which was made. JEROME. For none could say of a stone and a tree or inanimate things, that they shall not marry nor be given in marriage, but of such things only as having capacity for marriage, shall yet in a sort not marry.

• From Cleanness (2020)

  It was the same assholes, he said—the word he used was neshtastnitsi , the literal meaning is something like unhappy or unlucky, the unfortunate ones—it was the same assholes who took over. It was still hot though it was the end of the afternoon, people were heading home from work, heading home or to the center, as we were, where already protesters were gathering as they had all week, in the hundreds and thousands. I had been watching them on the news but wanted to be among them in person, it felt like something remarkable was happening or about to happen in this country where so little happens, really, which is usually so quiescent. I wanted to see it for myself though it had nothing to do with me, of course, it wasn’t my country, would never be my country, I was leaving at the end of the term. But it had been my home, as close to home as anywhere else, and I wanted the demonstrations to be more than a momentary spasm, I felt the hope that some of my students felt, my colleagues, I wanted it to be real. What does it matter which party takes over, he went on, vse edno , they’re all the same, they’re all thieves, look what they’ve done to my country. The traffic moved a little finally, he gripped the steering wheel again, the cigarette burned almost to the filter between the first and second fingers of his left hand. I could have gone away but I didn’t, he said, prostak , idiot, I’ve fucked my life. He was still a young man, I thought, or at least he wasn’t old, maybe a few years older than I was, too young to talk the way he was talking. Too young by American time, I mean, different times pertain in different places. He was dressed like a young man, too, in jeans and a worn T-shirt, his face rough with two or three days’ stubble and glistening just slightly with sweat, as mine was, even with the windows open it was hot in the car. He glanced at me every now and again, his eyes not holding mine. Vizh , he said then, look, I understand them, it’s impossible to live a normal life in Bulgaria, I mean if you want to follow the laws, pay your taxes, you can’t survive here and be honest, only criminals survive. I don’t mean you don’t go to expensive restaurants or bars, you don’t have a good time, I mean you can’t put food on the table, you can’t have a normal life. I want to live like that, do you understand, I want to live in a normal country. We had gotten past the Pliska Hotel finally, where all the buses stop, the traffic was heavy still but moving.

• From Cleanness (2020)

  It was familiar to me, that intensity, a story from my own adolescence, as was the basking ambivalence with which the other boy received it, how he both invited it and held it off. I had some idea, then, what we would talk about, and why school didn’t offer enough secrecy for us to talk about it there, but I was still curious: he wasn’t a student I was particularly close to, he didn’t stop by my room outside of class, he had never confided in me or sought me out, and I wondered what crisis was bringing him to me now. I was getting annoyed with the booksellers who, sensing my foreignness, kept directing me to their piles of battered American paperbacks, and as G. continued not to appear I wondered if my sacrificed afternoon would go to waste. But then he did appear, standing beside me suddenly, and my annoyance dissolved at the sight of him. He stood out here, with his slightly formal clothes, his feathered hair, though in the States he would have been generic enough, an East Coast aspirant prep school kid, maybe not quite the real thing, especially if he smiled too broadly (as he was careful almost never to do) and revealed a lower set of teeth in un-American disarray. He was friendly enough in greeting me, but as always there was something reserved about him, as if he were deciding whether or not to pronounce a judgment he was on the point of making. He asked me where we should go only to dismiss all my proposals, saying he would take me to a favorite place of his own, and then he set off, walking not beside but in front of me, preventing conversation and as if he were ready to deny any association with me at all. I was hardly a newcomer, I had lived in Sofia for two years, but I had remained a kind of dilettante of the city, and soon—though the center is small and we hadn’t gone far from Slaveykov and Graf Ignatiev, the part of it I knew best—I had no idea where we were.

• From In an Unspoken Voice (2010)

  These sensory experiences include vibration, tingling, and waves of heat and cold (I described both of these phenomena in Chapter 1 and in my report on Nancy in Chapter 2 ). When one is able to ride the sometimes bucking bronco of one’s arousal sensations through, and begin to befriend them in a slow and steady way, one is gradually able to discharge the energy that had been channeled into hyperarousal symptoms. This initial stage and foundational piece of the self-regulation pie, and the basic ingredient for restoring equilibrium, is what brought both Nancy and me out of limbo and back to life. Only after this point of intervention does the social engagement system, the third evolutionary subsystem, begin to come back online. An individual who has been able to move out of immobility, and then through sympathetic arousal, begins to experience a restorative and deepening calm. Along with these sensations of OK-ness and goodness, an urge, even a hunger, for face-to-face contact emerges. f Because that yearning may have been painfully unmet during critical periods of infancy, childhood and adolescence (or may have been associated with shame, invasion and abuse), many traumatized individuals also need particular guidance to negotiate this intimacy barrier. This therapeutic guidance can occur only when it becomes physiologically possible to access the social engagement system—that is, when the nervous system is no longer hijacked by the immobilization and the hyperarousal systems. The intentional use of a mental or physical health practitioner’s own intact heartfelt human expression can be profoundly therapeutic. In spite of the raw dominance of the vagal immobilization and sympathetic arousal systems in suppressing social engagement, the power of human contact to help change another’s internal physiological state (through face-to-face engagement and appropriate touch) should not be underestimated. Thus, as I discussed in Chapter 1 , the pediatrician with the kindly face who sat by my side after my auto accident gave me the glimmer of hope I needed at that exact moment in order to go on. The gentle power of the human face to soothe the “savage beast” is portrayed in a film with the revealing title Cast Away . Tom Hanks plays the lead character, Chuck Noland, who is marooned on a remote, uninhabited island as the sole survivor of an airplane crash.

• From Saint Thomas Aquinas Collection (22 Books) (2016)

  CHRYSOSTOM. How should the disciples carry Him away by stealth, men poor, and of no station, and who scarcely dared to shew themselves? They fled when afterwards they saw Christ alive, how, when He was dead, would they not have feared so great a multitude of soldiers? How were they to remove the door of the sepulchre? One might have done it unperceived by the guard. But a large stone was rolled to the mouth requiring many hands. And was not the seal thereon? And why did they not attempt it the first night, when there was none at the sepulchre? For it was on the Sabbath that they begged the body of Jesus. Moreover, what mean these napkins which Peter sees laid here? Had the disciples stolen the Body, they would never have stripped it, both because it might so receive hurt, and cause unnecessary delay to themselves, and so expose them to be taken by the watch; especially since the Body and clothes were covered with myrrh, a glutinous spice, which would cause them to adhere. The allegation of the theft then is improbable. So that their endeavours to conceal the Resurrection do but make it more manifest. For when they say, His disciples stole the body, they confess that it is not in the sepulchre. And as they thus confess that they had not the Body, and as the watch, the sealing, and the fears of the disciples, make the theft improbable, there is seen evidence of the Resurrection not to be gainsaid. REMIGIUS. But if the guards slept, how saw they the theft? And if they saw it not, how could they witness thereto? So that what they desire to shew, they cannot shew. GLOSS. (non occ.) That the fear of the Governor might not restrain them from this lie, they promise them impunity. CHRYSOSTOM. See how all are corrupted; Pilate persuaded; the people stirred up; the soldiers bribed; as it follows, And they look the money, and did as they were instructed. If money prevailed with a disciple so far as to make him become the betrayer of his Master, what wonder that the soldiers are overcome by it. HILARY. The concealment of the Resurrection, and the false allegation of theft, is purchased by money; because by the honour of this world, which consists in money and desire, Christ’s glory is denied. RABANUS. But as the guilt of His blood, which they imprecated upon themselves and their children, presses them down with a heavy weight of sin, so the purchase of the lie, by which they deny the truth of the Resurrection, charges this guilt upon them for ever; as it follows, And this saying is commonly reported among the Jews until this day. CHRYSOLOGUS. (ubi sup.) Among the Jews, not among the Christians; what in Judæa the Jew concealed by his gold, is by faith blazed abroad throughout the world.

• From Reading the Bible from the Margins (2002)

  If the image of a white Christ symbolizes the religious sanction of oppressive societal structures, how should people on the margins perceive Jesus? Inevitably, every semester one of my students will ask me how I would physically describe Jesus. They really want me to comment on the color of his skin. Is it white? Black? Olive tone? I always respond in the same fashion: when I attempt to picture the incarnation, I envision Jesus as an old black Latina woman with AIDS. Why? The most disdained by society is the form the Deity takes. Because of racism, sexism, agism, and society's fear of AIDS, such a person is normatively avoided, ignored, and shunned. Yet in Matthew Jesus says that he is just that person: “Truly I say to you, inasmuch as you did it to one of these, the least of my people, you did it to me” (25:40). Jesus can be found among those whom society marginalizes. That homeless person you passed by this morning, avoiding eye contact, he is Jesus. The woman from the margins you refused to hire, the man of color cited by the police for driving under the influence of being nonwhite, the family from the margins who is charged higher interest and insurance rates—these are all Jesus. The person with AIDS whom we condemn, equating his or her infirmity with God's punishment, this person is also Jesus. All those people who make us uncomfortable because they do not belong to our race, ethnic group, or economic class embody Jesus. Jesus is reincarnated in the lives of those who are crucified today, a sacrifice so that those in power can continue to enjoy their privilege. Jesus ties his being with those who are hungry, thirsty, naked, alien, imprisoned, and ill. Whatever Jesus may look like, he can be found in the struggle of the disenfranchised, not because they are holier but because they must struggle for the abundant life. If we want to describe Jesus’ appearance, we need to describe the appearance of those who reside in the margins of society. If we want to commune with Christ, if we want to look into the eyes of the one we call Lord, then we can access him when we walk in solidarity, when we accompany the outcasts of society. For whatever is done or not done to one of these is done or not done to Jesus. This may be why the writer of Hebrews reminds us to show hospitality toward strangers, for “through this some may have unknowingly entertained angels” (13:2). Because all people depict ultimate reality in a form native to their own culture, a Eurocentric Christ, although appropriate for the dominant culture, can seem powerless for people residing on the underside of that society. Because a Eurocentric Christ is incongruent with the reality that the disenfranchised are forced to occupy, salvation for them will be achieved when the white Christ of the dominant culture is rejected.

• From Reading the Bible from the Margins (2002)

  Is it any wonder that those who worked all day grumbled against the vineyard owner? Shouldn't workers be paid according to the amount of time they invested in the job? In order to reconcile how fairness is defined on the basis of our present capitalist economic system and how the biblical passage defines fairness, the Bible must be read metaphorically. Then the parable is understood as God providing the gift of salvation (the denarius) without regard to how much work is done by the individual or how long one has labored for God. All who come to God are given the same portion of grace regardless of when in their life journey they turned to God. While such a spiritual reading may provide additional insight, to read the text solely metaphorically and avoid a material reading allows the reader to justify the injustices of the present economic system and ignore the radical call of being a disciple of Jesus. For those who are undocumented and accustomed to stand at designated street corners throughout major cities of this country, waiting and hoping for a patron to stop and offer a job (off the books to avoid employment taxes), the fairness of this parable resonates. For those who are relegated to the ghettos and barrios , unemployed or limited to minimum-wage service jobs, the fairness of this parable provides a vision for a just society based on the rule of God. How many of these migrant workers end up working all day, only to be paid a fraction of their worth because they are undocumented? How many times has the employer contacted the INS to show up at the end of the workday to arrest the “illegals” and get out of paying them for their work? Or how many of these workers injure themselves at the job, only to be dropped off at the closest hospital and left to fend for themselves? To read this parable from the margins, from the perspective of the poor, is to recognize that the vineyard owner, that is, the employer, has a responsibility toward the laborers, a responsibility that goes beyond what traditional capitalist thinking defines as just. To read the text materially is to realize Jesus’ awareness of the laborer's plight. Poverty is usually defined as a lack of resources, specifically money. Yet poverty's dysfunctions encompass a higher likelihood of failed marriages; a higher susceptibility to illness, disease, and sickness; a greater likelihood of having children who will not complete high school; a higher probability of having children who will have difficulties with law enforcement agencies; a greater chance of being a victim of a crime; and a shorter life expectancy. Poverty can never be defined simply as a lack of money; it is a debilitating lifestyle that robs its victim of dignity and personhood. Jesus fully understood that poverty prevented those who were created in the image of God from participating in the abundant life he came to give.

• From Cleanness (2020)

  I’ve come here every day, M. said, walking beside me, it makes me so happy to be here. Some people walking nearby began shouting Ostavka , picking up a chant that had migrated from the front of the march, and M. joined them for a few rounds, looking at me a little sheepishly. I didn’t join in, I hadn’t joined in any of the chants, even though I felt moved to; it wasn’t my country, I kept saying to myself, it wasn’t my place, but I was sorry when M. fell silent too. We walked a little faster, moving back into the middle of the boulevard, headed toward NDK, the Palace of Culture. One side of the street was lined with apartment buildings, the gray of their façades broken by large flags draped from the balconies, on almost all of which people stood watching, elderly men and women, many of them waving, as if to say they would be with us if they could. On the other side of us the trees lining the canal were catching the last of the light, the new leaves incandescent, Sofia was more beautiful to me then than I had ever seen it. There’s never been anything like this, M. said then, I mean maybe in 1989 but nothing I’ve ever seen. Something’s really happening, I feel like I’m part of something, not just here but something bigger. It’s the same as what’s happening in Taksim Square, in Brazil, the Arab Spring, something is happening, something real, I think there’s a chance for things really to change. I felt this too, it wasn’t to challenge her that I asked what she thought that change would be. She shrugged. I’m not sure, she said, but I feel like we’ll figure it out. She paused. I feel powerful in a way I never have before, she said, and then she glanced at me and laughed, I feel like one of the opalchentsi on Shipka. These were Bulgarian volunteers who fought with the Russians against the Ottomans, there was a poem about them by Ivan Vazov that every Bulgarian knew; I had heard a poet declaim it once, drunk at a dinner party, the room quiet with reverence. I feel the power of the people, she said gingerly, cringing at the cliché.

• From Cleanness (2020)

  I remembered every note of the music, though I hadn’t heard it for years. I must have been fourteen when I bought the CD, a London double set I picked out because of a single name, a soprano I knew my teacher adored, already I wanted to imitate him in everything. I remember falling asleep to the soldier’s arias as sung by a tenor whose voice, which I’ve never found on another recording, was beautiful and light-bodied and pure, embodying my every ambition; as I listened to him I imagined the life my own voice would lead me to, scrubbed of shame. It didn’t matter that the performance in Veliko Turnovo was poor; as I sat beside R. I felt that hope again. I was overcome by feeling for him, and it was painful not to touch him, even to reach my hand to his. Caution had become an instinct, and even here, if there wasn’t actual danger I could imagine the discomfort any display of affection would cause. But we had our repertoire of covert gestures, the brushed elbow or knee, the slight pressure of a foot, and we made use of them as the night deepened and the air chilled and the ruins stood out more eerily in the lights. Looking at them I felt, with a force beyond the figures of my children’s history, beyond any history at all, how ancient the place was; it was a battlefield we sat on, every inch of the ground had been steeped in blood, it must still be in the chemistry of the soil.