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 The Selected Works of Audre Lorde

  A. will lend us the money to go to Switzerland, and Frances will come with me. I think they will be able to find out what is really wrong with me at the Lukas Klinik, and if they say these growths in my liver are malignant, then I will accept that I have cancer of the liver. At least there they will be able to adjust my Iscador dosage upward to the maximum effect, because that is the way I have decided to go and I’m not going to change now. Obviously, I still don’t accept these tumors in my liver as cancer, although I know that could just be denial on my part, which is certainly one mechanism for coping with cancer. I have to consider denial as a possibility in all of my planning, but I also feel that there is absolutely nothing they can do for me at Sloane [sic] Kettering except cut me open and then sew me back up with their condemnations inside me. December 7, 1985 New York City My stomach x-rays are clear, and the problems in my GI series are all circumstantial. Now that the doctors here have decided I have liver cancer, they insist on reading all their findings as if that were a fait accompli. They refuse to look for any other reason for the irregularities in the x-rays, and they’re treating my resistance to their diagnosis as a personal affront. But it’s my body and my life and the goddess knows I’m paying enough for all this, I ought to have a say. The flame is very dim these days. It’s all I can do to teach my classes at Hunter and crawl home. Frances and I will leave for Switzerland as soon as school is over next week. The Women’s Poetry Center will be dedicated at Hunter the night before I leave. No matter how sick I feel, I’m still afire with a need to do something for my living. How will I be allowed to live my own life, the rest of my life? December 9, 1985 New York City A better question is—how do I want to live the rest of my life and what am I going to do to ensure that I get to do it exactly or as close as possible to how I want that living to be? I want to live the rest of my life, however long or short, with as much sweetness as I can decently manage, loving all the people I love, and doing as much as I can of the work I still have to do. I am going to write fire until it comes out my ears, my eyes, my noseholes—everywhere. Until it’s every breath I breathe. I’m going to go out like a fucking meteor! December 13, 1985 New York City

• From The Selected Works of Audre Lorde

  5.​Openness (receptivity) Perceive even what is unpleasant in an unfettered, nonprejudiced way. 6.​Harmony (perseverance) Work toward balancing the other five. As a living creature I am part of two kinds of forces—growth and decay, sprouting and withering, living and dying—and at any given moment of our lives, each one of us is actively located somewhere along a continuum between these two forces. December 16, 1985 Arlesheim I brought some of my books with me, and reading The Cancer Journals in this place is like excavating words out of the earth, like turning up a crystal that has been buried at the bottom of a mine for a thousand years, waiting. Even Our Dead Behind Us—now that it has gone to the printer—seems prophetic. Like always, it feels like I plant what I will need to harvest, without consciousness. This is why the work is so important. Its power doesn’t lie in the me that lives in the words so much as in the heart’s blood pumping behind the eye that is reading, the muscle behind the desire that is sparked by the word—hope as a living state that propels us, open-eyed and fearful, into all [of] the battles of our lives. And some of those battles we do not win. But some of them we do. December 17, 1985 Arlesheim When I read in Basel last June, I never imagined I would be here again, four miles away, in a hospital. I remember the women in the bookstore that night, and their questions about survival rates that I could not answer then. And certainly not now. Even in the bleak Swiss winter, the grounds of the Lukas Klinik are very beautiful. Much care has been given by the builders to the different shades of winter scenery, so there is a play of light and dark that hits the eye from the room’s windows as well as from the beds. My private room is good-sized, spacious by american hospital standards. It is one of the few single rooms with a private bath, and they are usually for very sick or very rich people. I think the administration was not sure which category I fit into when I called from New York. Even when it is not sunny, the room is light because everything in it is light. Not white, except for the bedsheets, but very light. Even the furniture is solid hand-hewn blond wood, made in one of the sheltered workshops run in conjunction with an anthroposophic school for developmentally handicapped people. The Rudolf Steiner schools have had great success in the area of special education.

• From The Selected Works of Audre Lorde

  I hope for an International Conference of Black Feminists, asking some of these questions of definition of women from Amsterdam, Melbourne, the South Pacific, Kentucky, New York, and London, all of whom call ourselves Black feminists and all of whom have different strengths. To paraphrase June Jordan, we are the women we want to become. August 1, 1984 New York City Saints be praised! The new CAT scan is unchanged. The tumor has not grown, which means either Iscador is working or the tumor is not malignant! I feel relieved, vindicated, and hopeful. The pain in my middle is gone, as long as I don’t eat very much and stick to fruits and veggies. That’s livable. I feel like a second chance, for true! I’m making myself a new office upstairs in Jonathan’s old room. It’s going to be a good year. October 10, 1984 New York City I’ve been thinking about my time in Germany again, unencumbered by artificial shades of terror and self-concern. I don’t want my involvement with health matters to obscure the revelation of differences I encountered. The Afro-European women. What I learned about the differences when one teaches about feeling and poetry in a language that is not the original language of the people learning, even when they speak that language fluently. (Of course, all poets learn about feeling as children in our native tongue, and the psychosocial strictures and emotional biases of that language pass over into how we think about feeling for the rest of our lives.) I will never forget the emotional impact of Raja’s poetry, and how what she is doing with the German language is so close to what Black poets here are doing with English. It was another example of how our Africanness impacts upon the world’s consciousness in intersecting ways. As an African-American woman, I feel the tragedy of being an oppressed hyphenated person in america, of having no land to be our primary teacher. And this distorts us in so many ways. Yet there is a vital part that we play as Black people in the liberation consciousness of every freedom-seeking people upon this globe, no matter what they say they think about us as Black americans. And whatever our differences are that make for difficulty in communication between us and other oppressed peoples, as Afro-Americans we must recognize the promise we represent for some new social synthesis that the world has not yet experienced. I think of the Afro-Dutch, Afro-German, Afro-French women I met this spring in europe, and how they are beginning to recognize each other and come together openly in terms of their identities, and I see that they are also beginning to cut a distinct shape across the cultural face of every country where they are at home.

• From The Selected Works of Audre Lorde

  December 14, 1986 New York City It is exactly one year since I went to Switzerland and found the air cold and still. Yet what I found at the Lukas Klinik has helped me save my life. [Its manifestation is not only therapeutic. It is vital. Underlining what is joyful and life-affirming in my living becomes crucial. What have I had to leave behind? Old life habits, outgrown defenses put aside lest they siphon off energies to no useful purpose? One of the hardest things to accept is learning to live within uncertainty and neither deny it nor hide behind it. Most of all, to listen to the messages of uncertainty without allowing them to immobilize me, nor keep me from the certainties of those truths in which I believe. I turn away from any need to justify the future—to live in what has not yet been. Believing, working for what has not yet been while living fully in the present now. This is my life. Each hour is a possibility not to be banked. These days are not a preparation for living, some necessary but essentially extraneous divergence from the main course of my living. They are my life. The feeling of the bedsheet against my heels as I wake to the sound of crickets and bananaquits in Judith’s Fancy. I am living my life every particular day no matter where I am, nor in what pursuit. It is the consciousness of this that gives a marvelous breadth to everything I do consciously. My most deeply held convictions and beliefs can be equally expressed in how I deal with chemotherapy as well as in how I scrutinize a poem. It’s about trying to know who I am wherever I am. It’s not as if I’m in struggle over here while someplace else, over there, real life is waiting for me to begin living it again. I visualize daily winning the battles going on inside my body, and this is an important part of fighting for my life. In those visualizations, the cancer at times takes on the face and shape of my most implacable enemies, those I fight and resist most fiercely. Sometimes the wanton cells in my liver become Bull Connor and his police dogs completely smothered, rendered impotent in Birmingham, Alabama, by a mighty avalanche of young, determined Black marchers moving across him toward their future. P. W. Botha’s bloated face of apartheid squashed into the earth beneath an onslaught of the slow rhythmic advance of furious Blackness. Black South African women moving through my blood destroying passbooks. Fireburn Mary sweeping over the Cruzan countryside, axe and torch in hand. Images from a Calypso singer: The big black boot of freedom Is mashing down your doorstep.

• From Barclay's Guide to the New Testament (2008)

  Hostile as the world is, it is doomed. The world and all its desires are passing away (2:17). That, indeed, is why it is folly to give one's heart to the world; the world is coming to an end. Although Christians live in a hostile world which is passing away, there is no need for despair and fear. The darkness is past; the true light now shines (2:8). God in Christ has broken into time; the new age has come. It is not yet fully brought to fruition, but the consummation is sure. Christians live in an evil and a hostile world, but they possess the means to overcome it; and, when the destined end of the world comes, they will be safe, because they already possess that which makes them members of the new community in the new age. The Fellowship of the Church John does more than move in the high realms of theology; he has certain most practical things to say about the Christian Church and the Christian life. No New Testament writer stresses more consistently or more strenuously the necessity of Christian fellowship. Christians, John was convinced, are not only bound to God; they are also bound to each other. When we walk in the light, we have fellowship with each other (1:7). Those who claim to walk in the light but who hate their brothers and sisters are in reality walking in darkness; those who love their brothers and sisters are the ones who are in the light (2:9-II). The proof that people have passed from darkness to light is the fact that they love one another. To hate a fellow human being is in essence to be a murderer, as Cain was. If we are able out of our own wealth to help another's poverty and do not do so, it is ridiculous for us to claim that the love of God dwells in us. The essence of religion is to believe in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and to love one another (3:11-17, 3:23). God is love; and, therefore, those who love are kin to God. God has loved us, and that is the best reason for loving each other (4:7-12). If we say that we love God and at the same time hate another person, we are liars. The command is that all who love God must love others too (4:20-I). It was John's conviction that the only way in which anyone can prove love for God is by loving other people, and that that love must be not only a sentimental emotion but also a dynamic towards practical help. Christian Righteousness

• From White Trash: The 400-Year Untold History of Class in America (2016)

  One columnist praised him for “digging down deeply into the basic urges of ordinary people.” Country-boy traits treated as liabilities before 1963 suddenly became an asset as the nation grieved the loss of its young president. 79 In 1963, LBJ’s tour in Kentucky included photographs of the president conversing with poor Appalachian families. #215-23-64, Inez Kentucky, LBJ Library Photograph by Cecil Stoughton, Lyndon Baines Johnson Library, Austin, Texas Johnson’s signature set of programs known as the Great Society attached to a different, and positive, variant of his southern identity. Upon passage of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act in 1965, the president flew to Stonewall, Texas, to sign the bill at the one-room schoolhouse where he had taught during the Great Depression. While there, he referred to himself as the “son of a sharecropper.” His willingness to tackle poverty could be traced to his embrace of a modern South. In 1960, when he first ran for president, he echoed Howard Odum’s creed: his goal was to prevent a “waste of resources, waste of lives, or waste of opportunity.” By the time he launched the Great Society, the legislation he promoted focused on two distinct classes: the poor urban black population and the mountain folk of Appalachia. Seeing the Great Society as the new New Deal, Johnson connected his reform to the work of Eleanor Roosevelt, invoking her sentimental appeal to hillbillies. Lady Bird Johnson went to the Kentucky hills, where she distributed lunches and dedicated a new school gym; her husband sat himself down and talked with families. 80 As they followed him on his five-state tour, cameramen captured images of the president on the porches of run-down shacks, affectionately listening to the mountain people—it was nothing if not a James Agee/Walker Evans flashback to the thirties. The problems facing Appalachia were acute: a high rate of joblessness compared to the rest of the country (in some places three or four times the national average); deteriorating housing; an uneducated workforce; and a ravaged environment wrought by strip mining. Mountain farm families had been stripped of the legal right to their property when coal-mining companies, aided by state courts, were given the prerogative to ruin fields, destroy forests, build roads wherever they chose, and pollute the water supply. In the end, the Johnson administration secured passage of the Appalachian Regional Development Act, providing infrastructure, schools, and hospitals. The president subsequently stated that seeing the poverty there firsthand had convinced him of the necessity of the Medicare amendment. And so fighting rural poverty remained a central plank in Johnson’s overall “War on Poverty.” But even these bold policies proved inadequate to manage the massive devastation that the blighted regional economy had already experienced. 81 Lyndon Johnson was aware of every detail as he went about fashioning his public image. The hat he wore was not a ten-gallon cowboy, but a modified five- gallon version with a narrower brim. This was LBJ: a modified, modernized southerner.

• From Barclay's Guide to the New Testament (2008)

  Let us look at this question, for it is of considerable interest. First, it is clear that, when Paul was in prison in Rome, he did not regard release as impossible; in fact, it looks as if he expected it. When he wrote to the Philippians, he said that he was sending Timothy to them, and goes on: `And I trust in the Lord that I will also come soon' (Philippians 2:24). When he wrote to Philemon, sending back the runaway Onesimus, he says: `One thing more - prepare a guest room for me, for I am hoping through your prayers to be restored to you' (Philemon 22). Clearly he was prepared for release, whether or not it ever came. Second, let us remember a plan that was very dear to Paul's heart. Before he went to Jerusalem on that journey on which he was arrested, he wrote to the church at Rome, and in that letter he is planning a visit to Spain. `When I go to Spain ... I do hope to see you on my journey', he writes. `I will set out by way of you', he writes, `to Spain' (Romans 15:24, 15:28). Was that visit ever paid? The letter known as i Clement, which was sent from the Roman church to the Christians at Corinth in about AD 90, said of Paul that he preached the gospel in the east and in the west, that he instructed the whole world (that is, the Roman Empire) in righteousness, and that he went to the extremity (terma, the terminus) of the west before his martyrdom. What did Clement mean by the extremity of the west? There are many who argue that he meant nothing more than Rome. Now, it is true that someone writing some distance away in the east in Asia Minor would probably think of Rome as the extremity of the west. But Clement was writing from Rome, and it is difficult to see that for anyone in Rome the extremity of the west could be anything other than Spain. It certainly seems that Clement believed that Paul reached Spain. The greatest of all the early Church historians was Eusebius, who was writing early in the fourth century. In his account of Paul's life, he writes: `Luke, who wrote the Acts of the Apostles, brought his history to a close at this point, after stating that Paul had spent two whole years at Rome as a prisoner at large, and preached the word of God without constraint. Thus, after he had made his defence, it is said that the Apostle was sent again on the ministry of preaching, and that on coming to the same city a second time he suffered martyrdom' (Ecclesiastical History, 2:22:2). Eusebius has nothing to say about Spain, but he did know the story that Paul had been released from his first Roman imprisonment.

• From My Life and Loves, Vol. 1 (of 4) (1922)

  Besides, he proposed we should occupy the cabin alternate afternoons; for example, he’d take it next day and I mustn’t come near it, and if at any time one of us found the door locked, he was to respect his chum’s privacy. I agreed to it all with enthusiasm and went to sleep in a fever of hope. Would Jessie risk her father’s anger and come to me? Perhaps she would: at any rate I’d write and ask her and I did. In one hour the same sailor came back with her reply. It ran like this: “Dear love, father is mad, we shall have to take great care for two or three days: as soon as it’s safe, I’ll come—your loving Jess”, with a dozen crosses for kisses. That afternoon, without thinking of my compact with Ponsonby, I went to our cabin and found the door locked: at once our compact came into my head and I went quietly away. Had he succeeded so quickly? and was she with him in bed? The half certainty made my heart beat. That evening Ponsonby could not conceal his success but as he used it partly to praise his mistress. I forgave him. “She has the prettiest figure you ever saw”, he declared, “and is really a dear. We had just finished when you came to the door. I said it was some mistake and she believed me. She wants me to marry her but I can’t marry. If I were rich I’d marry quick enough. It’s better than risking some foul disease”, and he went on to tell about one of his colleagues, John Lawrence, who got Black Pox, as he called syphilis, caught from a negress. “He didn’t notice it for three months”, Ponsonby went on, “and it got into his system; his nose got bad and he was invalided home, poor devil. Those black girls are foul”, he continued, “they give everyone the clap and that’s bad enough, I can tell you; they’re dirty devils.” His ruttish sorrows didn’t interest me much, for I had made up my mind never at any time to go with any prostitute. I came to several such uncommon resolutions on board that ship, and I may set down the chief of them here very briefly. First of all, I resolved that I would do every piece of work given to me as well as I could, so that no one coming after me could do it better. I had found out at school in the last term that if you gave your whole mind and heart to anything, you learned it very quickly and thoroughly. I was sure even before the trial that my first job would lead me straight to fortune. I had seen men at work and knew it would be easy to beat any of them. I was only eager for the trial.

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

  The next contention, viz. that men should not be bribed to enter religion, is answered by the very chapter quoted in support of it. For it declares that “unless someone has the intention of feeding the poor, no one of any profession whatsoever is to be refused maintenance.” Hence it appears that the practice of burses for poor scholars, and of supporting them during their studies in order that they may be more fit to enter religion, is by no means to be condemned. Neither is it unlawful to bestow some material benefit upon a man, in order that he may be encouraged, by such a favour, to do better; but it would be unlawful to enter into a compact or agreement with him. Hence in the same chapter, it is laid down that all compacts and agreements must be avoided. Were it unlawful to encourage persons to spiritual good by means of material assistance, the custom, prevalent in certain churches, of giving a largesse to those who assist at the divine office, would be unjustifiable. The eighth argument, viz. that it leads to unfaithfulness to persuade young persons to adopt such painful practices as fasting, watching, and the like, contains a fallacy which may easily be detected. For those who are received to the religious life, or who are bound by vow to enter it, are, from the very outset, shown its hardships. It does not lead men to unfaithfulness if, in order to persuade them to embrace a life whose sufferings are manifest, we, after the example of Christ, hold out to them the prospect of spiritual consolations. “Take my yoke upon you,” said our Lord, “and learn of Me, for I am meek and humble of heart, and you shall find rest for your soul” (Mt 11:29). In these words, physical labour is symbolised by the “yoke,” and spiritual consolation by the “rest” promised to those that bear it. Hence St. Augustine, in De verbis Domini, says, “They who bravely submit to the yoke of the Lord, undergo such dangers and difficulties that they appear to be called, not from labour to rest, but from rest to labour. But the Holy Spirit who is with them by the abundance of heavenly delights and the hope of future blessedness, sweetens all present bitterness and lightens all present loads.” Therefore, they who judge that men deceive themselves by undertaking hardships for Christ’s sake, merely show that they have had no experience of heavenly delights. The ninth argument is quite irrelevant to the matter in hand. The statute of Pope Innocent, which is quoted, refers to solemn vows made at professions, not to simple vows whereby people bind themselves out of devotion to go intoreligion.

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

  Reply to Objection 2: As Augustine says (Enchiridion viii), “faith is about things, bad or good, past, present, or future, one’s own or another’s; whereas hope is only about good things, future and concerning oneself.” Hence it is possible for lifeless faith to be in the damned, but not hope, since the Divine goods are not for them future possible things, but far removed from them. Reply to Objection 3: Lack of hope in the damned does not change their demerit, as neither does the voiding of hope in the blessed increase their merit: but both these things are due to the change in their respective states. Whether there is certainty in the hope of a wayfarer?Objection 1: It would seem that there is no certainty in the hope of a wayfarer. For hope resides in the will. But certainty pertains not to the will but to the intellect. Therefore there is no certainty in hope. Objection 2: Further, hope is based on grace and merits, as stated above (Q[17], A[1]). Now it is impossible in this life to know for certain that we are in a state of grace, as stated above ([2456]FS, Q[112], A[5]). Therefore there is no certainty in the hope of a wayfarer. Objection 3: Further, there can be no certainty about that which may fail. Now many a hopeful wayfarer fails to obtain happiness. Therefore wayfarer’s hope has no certainty. On the contrary, “Hope is the certain expectation of future happiness,” as the Master states (Sent. iii, D, 26): and this may be gathered from 2 Tim. 1:12, “I know Whom I have believed, and I am certain that He is able to keep that which I have committed to Him.” I answer that, Certainty is found in a thing in two ways, essentially and by participation. It is found essentially in the cognitive power; by participation in whatever is moved infallibly to its end by the cognitive power. In this way we say that nature works with certainty, since it is moved by the Divine intellect which moves everything with certainty to its end. In this way too, the moral virtues are said to work with greater certainty than art, in as much as, like a second nature, they are moved to their acts by the reason: and thus too, hope tends to its end with certainty, as though sharing in the certainty of faith which is in the cognitive faculty. This suffices for the Reply to the First Objection. Reply to Objection 2: Hope does not trust chiefly in grace already received, but on God’s omnipotence and mercy, whereby even he that has not grace, can obtain it, so as to come to eternal life. Now whoever has faith is certain of God’s omnipotence and mercy.

• From The Principles of Psychology (Volume 1 of 2) (1890)

  But the moment you bring a consciousness into the midst, survival ceases to be a mere hypothesis. No longer is it, "if survival is to occur, then so and so must brain and other organs work." It has now become an imperative decree: "Survival shall occur, and therefore organs must so work!" Real ends appear for the first time now upon the world's stage. The conception of consciousness as a purely cognitive form of being, which is the pet way of regarding it in many idealistic-modern as well as ancient schools, is thoroughly anti- psychological, as the remainder of this book will show. Every actually existing consciousness seems to itself at any rate to be a fighter for ends, of which many, but for its presence, would not be ends at all. Its powers of cognition are mainly subservient to these ends, discerning which facts further them and which do not. Now let consciousness only be what it seems to itself, and it will help an instable brain to compass its proper ends. The movements of the brain per se yield the means of attaining these ends mechanically, but only out of a lot of other ends, if so they may be called, which are not the proper ones of the animal, but often quite opposed. The brain is an instrument of possibilities, but of no certainties. But the consciousness, with its own ends present to it, and knowing also well which possibilities lead thereto and which away, will, if endowed with causal efficacy, reinforce the favorable possibilities and repress the unfavorable or indifferent ones. The nerve-currents, coursing through the cells and fibres, must in this case be supposed strengthened by the fact of their awaking one consciousness and dampening by awakening another. How such reaction of the consciousness upon the currents may occur must remain at present unsolved: it is enough for my purpose to have shown that it may not uselessly exist, and that the matter is less simple than the brain-automatists hold. All the facts of the natural history of consciousness lend color to this view. Consciousness, for example, is only intense when nerve-processes are hesitant. In rapid, automatic, habitual action it sinks to a minimum. Nothing could be more fitting than this, if consciousness have the teleological function we suppose; nothing more meaningless, if not. Habitual actions are certain, and being in no danger of going astray from their end, need no extraneous help. In hesitant action, there seem many alternative possibilities of final nervous discharge. The feeling awakened by the nascent excitement of each alternative nerve-tract seems by its attractive or repulsive quality to determine whether the excitement shall abort or shall become complete.

• From Barclay's Guide to the New Testament (2008)

  Here is the background of Revelation. All over the Empire, men and women had to call Domitian god - or die. Caesarworship was the deliberate policy; all must say: `Caesar is Lord.' There was no escape. What were the Christians to do? What hope did they have? Not many of them were wise, and not many of them were powerful. They had no influence or status. Against them had risen the might of Rome, which no nation had ever resisted. They were confronted with the choice - Caesar or Christ. It was to encourage men and women in such times that Revelation was written. John did not shut his eyes to the terrors; he saw dreadful things, and he saw still more dreadful things on the way; but beyond them he saw glory for those who defied Caesar for the love of Christ. Revelation comes from one of the most heroic ages in all the history of the Christian Church. It is true that Domitian's successor Nerva (AD 96-8) repealed the savage laws; but the damage was done, the Christians were outlaws, and Revelation is a clarion call to be faithful to death in order to win the crown of life. The Book Worth Studying We cannot shut our eyes to the difficulty of Revelation. It is the most difficult book in the Bible; but its study brings infinite rewards, for it contains the blazing faith of the Christian Church in the days when life was an agony and people expected the end of the heavens and the earth as they knew them but still believed that beyond the terror was the glory and above human raging was the power of God. Scripture Index [image file=img/page0531_0000.svg] [image file=img/page0531_0001.svg] [image file=img/page0531_0002.svg] [image file=img/page0532_0000.svg] [image file=img/page0532_0001.svg] [image file=img/page0532_0002.svg] [image file=img/page0533_0000.svg] [image file=img/page0533_0001.svg] [image file=img/page0533_0002.svg] [image file=img/page0534_0000.svg] [image file=img/page0534_0001.svg] [image file=img/page0534_0002.svg] [image file=img/page0535_0000.svg] [image file=img/page0535_0001.svg] [image file=img/page0535_0002.svg] [image file=img/page0536_0000.svg] [image file=img/page0536_0001.svg] [image file=img/page0536_0002.svg] [image file=img/page0537_0000.svg] [image file=img/page0537_0001.svg] [image file=img/page0537_0002.svg] [image file=img/page0538_0000.svg] [image file=img/page0538_0001.svg] [image file=img/page0538_0002.svg] [image file=img/page0539_0000.svg] [image file=img/page0539_0001.svg] [image file=img/page0539_0002.svg] [image file=img/page0540_0000.svg] [image file=img/page0540_0001.svg] [image file=img/page0540_0002.svg] Subject Index [image file=img/page0541_0000.svg] [image file=img/page0541_0001.svg] [image file=img/page0542_0000.svg] [image file=img/page0542_0001.svg] [image file=img/page0543_0000.svg] [image file=img/page0543_0001.svg] [image file=img/page0544_0000.svg] [image file=img/page0544_0001.svg] [image file=img/page0545_0000.svg] [image file=img/page0545_0001.svg] [image file=img/page0546_0000.svg] [image file=img/page0546_0001.svg] [image file=img/page0547_0000.svg] [image file=img/page0547_0001.svg] [image file=img/page0548_0000.svg] [image file=img/page0548_0001.svg] [image file=img/page0549_0000.svg] [image file=img/page0549_0001.svg] [image file=img/page0550_0000.svg] [image file=img/page0550_0001.svg] [image file=img/page0551_0000.svg] [image file=img/page0551_0001.svg] [image file=img/page0552_0000.svg] [image file=img/page0552_0001.svg] [image file=img/page0553_0000.svg] [image file=img/page0553_0001.svg] [image file=img/page0554_0000.svg] [image file=img/page0554_0001.svg] [image file=img/page0555_0000.svg] [image file=img/page0555_0001.svg] [image file=img/page0556_0000.svg] [image file=img/page0556_0001.svg] [image file=img/page0557_0000.svg] [image file=img/page0557_0001.svg] [image file=img/page0558_0000.svg] [image file=img/page0558_0001.svg] [image file=img/page0559_0000.svg] [image file=img/page0559_0001.svg] [image file=img/page0560_0000.svg] [image file=img/page0560_0001.svg] [image file=img/page0561_0000.svg] [image file=img/page0561_0001.svg] [image file=img/img0001.jpg] [image file=img/img0002.jpg]

• From White Trash: The 400-Year Untold History of Class in America (2016)

  94–95; Wilson, “Problem of Poverty in Agriculture,” 17. Though he was the drama critic for the New York Times, Corbin spent four years studying history, which led to his biography of George Washington, Washington: Biographic Origins of the Republic (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1930); also see David M. Clark, “John Corbin: Dramatic Critic (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1976). For the importance of the word “readjustment,” see “President’s Address to the Farmers,” New York Times, May 15, 1935. 27. Wallace, “Chapter VIII: Soil and the General Welfare,” in Whose Constitution, 109, 115–17. 28. Wallace, “Chapter IX: Population and the General Welfare,” in Whose Constitution, 122–24, 126. The full quote from the film is, “Rich fellas come up an’ they die, an’ their kids ain’t no good and they die out, but we keep a-comin’. We’re the people that live. They can’t wipe us out, they can’t lick us. We’ll go on forever, Pa, cos we’re the people.” Steinbeck wrote, “We ain’t gonna die out. People is goin’ on— changin’ a little, maybe, but goin’ right on.” See The Grapes of Wrath (New York: Penguin, 2014), 423. 29. Conkin, Tomorrow a New World, 128–30, 142–45; Richard S. Kirkendall, Social Scientists and Farm Politics in the Age of Roosevelt (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1966); Kennedy, The American People in the Great Depression, 208–10; Fred C. Frey and T. Lynn Smith, “The Influence of the AAA Cotton Program upon the Tenant, Cropper, and Laborer,” Rural Sociology 1, no. 4 (December 1936): 483–505, esp. 489, 500–501, 505; Warren C. Whatley, “Labor for the Picking: The New Deal in the South,” Journal of Economic History 43, no. 4 (December 1983): 905–29, esp. 909, 913–14, 924, 926– 29; Jack T. Kirby, Rural Worlds Lost: The American South, 1920–1960 (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1987), 65–74; George Brown Tindall, The Emergence of the New South, 1913–1945 (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1967), 409. 30. Kirkendall, Social Scientists and Farm Politics, 109–11; Sidney Baldwin, Poverty and Politics: The Rise and Decline of the Farm Security Administration (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1968), 92–96, 117–19. On migratory workers, see Paul Taylor, “What Shall We Do with Them? Address Before the Commonwealth Club of California” (April 15, 1938); and “Migratory Agricultural Workers on the Pacific Coast” (April 1938), reprinted in Taylor, On the Ground in the Thirties, 203–20. 31. R. G. Tugwell, “Resettling America: A Fourfold Plan,” New York Times, July 28, 1935. For Tugwell’s criticism of Jefferson, see “‘Through Our Fault’ Is the Waste of Land,” Science New Letter 30, no. 800 (August 8, 1936), 85–86; Tugwell, “Behind the Farm Problem: Rural Poverty, Not the Tenancy System, but the Low Scale of Life, Says Tugwell, Is the Fundamental Question,” New York Times Magazine, January 10, 1937, 4–5, 22; and Rexford G. Tugwell, “The Resettlement Idea,” Agricultural History 33, no. 4 (October 1959): 159–64, esp. 160–61. On the unromantic portrait of farming, see Rexford G.

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

  If your sins be as scarlet they shall be made as white as snow, and if they be red as crimson they shall be as wool. Is. 1:18. Grace be unto you, and peace, … from Jesus Christ, the faithful witness, the first-begotten of the dead, and the Prince of the kings of the earth, who hath loved us and washed us from our sins in His own Blood. Apoc. 1:4, 5. God is light, and in Him is no darkness; … and the Blood of Jesus Christ, His Son, cleanseth us from all sin.… If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all iniquity. 1 John 1:5, 7, 9. I am He that blot out thy iniquities for My own sake, and I will not remember thy sins. Is. 43:25. 2. Lessening the sting of the flesh; In the morning a dew lay round about the camp … like unto the hoar-frost on the ground. Ex. 16:13, 14. Thou rulest the strength of the sea, and dost appease the motion of the waves thereof. Ps. 88:10. 3. Giving strength against bad thoughts; A bundle of myrrh is my Beloved to me. Cantic. 1:12. (2) Giving or increasing spiritual gifts; He that is good shall draw grace from the Lord. Prov. 12:2. He giveth greater grace; wherefore He saith, God … giveth grace to the humble. St. James 4:6. 1. The beauty of chastity; After ten days their faces appeared fairer. Dan. 1:15. How beautiful art Thou, and how comely, my Dearest, in Thy delights. Cantic. 7:6. Thou didst eat fine flour and honey and oil, and wast made exceedingly beautiful, and wast advanced to be a queen.… My bread which I give thee, and the fine flour and oil and honey with which I feed thee, thou hast set before them for a sweet odour; and thus was it done, saith the Lord God. Ezech. 16:13, 19. 2. The fervour of charity; (Our Lord) is a carbuncle set in gold, and as a signet of an emerald in a work of gold. Ecclus. 32:7, 8. A fire flamed from His face; coals were kindled by it. He bowed the heavens and came down.… At the brightness that was before Him the clouds passed. Ps. 17:9, 10, 13. 3. The taste of spiritual sweetness; The bread of Aser shall be fat, and he shall yield dainties to kings. Gen. 49:20. Thou didst feed Thy people with the food of Angels, and gavest them bread from Heaven, prepared without labour, having in it all that is delicious and the sweetness of every taste. For Thy sustenance showed Thy sweetness to Thy children. Wisd. 16:20, 21.

• From The Principles of Psychology (Volume 1 of 2) (1890)

  This is the theoretically best career of mental progress." The need of securing success at the outset is imperative. Failure at first is apt to dampen the energy of all future attempts, whereas past experience of success nerves one to future vigor. Goethe says to a man who consulted him about an enterprise but mistrusted his own powers: "Ach! you need only blow on your hands!" And the remark illustrates the effect on Goethe's spirits of his own habitually successful career. Prof. Baumann, from whom I borrow the anecdote, [151] says that the collapse of barbarian nations when Europeans come among them is due to their despair of ever succeeding as the new-comers do in the larger tasks of life. Old ways are broken and new ones not formed. The question of 'tapering-off,' in abandoning such habits as drink and opium-indulgence, comes in here, and is a question about which experts differ within certain limits, and in regard to what may be best for an individual case. In the main, however, all expert opinion would agree that abrupt acquisition of the new habit is the best way, if there be a real possibility of carrying it out. We must be careful not to give the will so stiff a task as to insure its defeat at the very outset; but, provided one can stand it, a sharp period of suffering, and then a free time, is the best thing to aim at, whether in giving up a habit like that of opium, or in simply changing one's hours of rising or of work. It is surprising how soon a desire will die of inanition if it be never fed. "One must first learn, unmoved, looking neither to the right nor left, to walk firmly on the straight and narrow path, before one can begin 'to make one's self over again.' He who every day makes a fresh resolve is like one who, arriving at the edge of the ditch he is to leap, forever stops and returns for a fresh run. Without unbroken advance there is no such thing as accumulation of the ethical forces possible, and to make this possible, and to exercise us and habituate us in it, is the sovereign blessing of regular work." [152] A third maxim may be added to the preceding pair: Seize the very first possible opportunity to act on every resolution you make, and on every emotional prompting you may experience in the direction of the habits you aspire to gain. It is not in the moment of their forming, but in the moment of their producing motor effects, that resolves and aspirations communicate the new 'set' to the brain.

• From My Life and Loves, Vol. 1 (of 4) (1922)

  Bob got off his horse in a clump of cottonwood trees which he said was a good place to camp without being seen. I asked him where the cattle were and he told me “across the river.” Within two or three miles, it appeared, there was a famous hacienda with great herds. As soon as it got dark he proposed to go across and find out all about it and bring us the news. We were to be careful not to be seen and he hoped that we would not even make a fire but lie close till he returned. We were more than willing, and when we got tired of talking Bent produced an old deck of cards and we would play draw poker or euchre or casino for two or three hours. The first night passed quickly enough. We had been in the saddle for ten hours a day for four or five days and slept a dreamless sleep. Bob did not return that day or the next and on the third day Bent began to curse him, but I felt sure he had good reason for the delay and so waited with what patience I could muster. On the third night he was suddenly with us just as if he had come out of the earth. “Welcome back”, I cried. “Everything right?” “Everything”, he said: “It was no good coming sooner; they have brought some cattle within four miles of the river; the orders are to keep ’em away seven or eight miles, so that they could not be driven across without rousing the whole country; but Don José is very rich and carefree and there is a herd of fifteen hundred that will suit us not three miles from the river in a fold of the prairie guarded only by two men whom I’ll make so very drunk that they’ll hear nothing till next morning. A couple of bottles of aguardiente will do the bizness, and I’ll come back for you tomorrow night by eight or nine o’clock.” It all turned out as Bob had arranged. The next night he came to us as soon as it was dark. We rode some two miles down the river to a ford, splashed through the rivulets of water and came out on the Mexican side. In single file and complete silence we followed Bob at a lope for perhaps twenty minutes when he put up his hand and we drew down to a walk. There below us between two waves of prairie were the cattle. In a few words Bob told Bent and Charlie what they were to do. Bent was to stay behind and shoot in case we were followed—unlikely but always possible. Charlie and I were to move the cattle towards the ford, quietly all the way if we could, but if we were pursued, then as hard as we could drive them.

• From White Trash: The 400-Year Untold History of Class in America (2016)

  27 Wallace had positive things to say about rural Americans, who produced more children than their urban counterparts, and played a crucial role in building up society. “The land produces the life-stream of the nation,” he explained, referring to “young people bred on the farms.” In unmistakable language, Wallace urged the whole country to be “concerned that its breeding stock is taken care of, that the nation does not deteriorate at the source of its life-blood.” This was the warning sign John Ford sought to get across in the film version of The Grapes of Wrath, when Ma Joad says, “Rich fellas . . . their kids ain’t no good and die out, but we keep a-comin’. . . . We’ll go on forever, Pa, cos we’re the people.” The city folk needed “the people,” needed their fecundity. It was as though Jefferson and Franklin were talking to Wallace, Steinbeck, and Ford, still promoting the old English idea that national strength was bound up with demographic growth. 28 • • • Unfortunately, the Subsistence Homesteads Division ran into serious difficulties. First, the funding it received was meager; second, it took time for bureaucracy to approve and build communities. On top of everything else, the Homesteads Division faced a legal challenge that threatened the entire program with termination. President Roosevelt, as a result, issued an executive order creating an entirely new agency, the Resettlement Administration (RA), in 1935. Rexford G. Tugwell, a former economics professor at Columbia, was chosen to head the new agency. A charismatic figure with a sharp mind, he had a profound influence on the New Deal’s overall approach to poverty. 29 Unlike previous programs, the RA had a clear mandate to help the rural poor. It purchased submarginal land, resettled tenants, extended relief to drought victims, arranged with local doctors cooperative medical care for farmers, restored ruined lands, and supervised camps for migrant workers, especially in California. One of its central goals was to provide loans for farm improvements, and to help tenants obtain better living conditions and learn how to become farm owners—services that greatly expanded the ongoing program that was building experimental communities. The Resettlement Administration, and its replacement, the Farm Security Administration (1937), established regional headquarters; by 1941, it had project managers in every state. What Tugwell began in 1935 carried over to his successor, Will Alexander, who as the son of an Ozark farmer was the first southerner to be put in charge of a New Deal rural poverty agency. Both the RA and FSA were politically savvy agencies, consciously orchestrating publicity campaigns. At the forefront of their effort was Roy Stryker’s photographic unit, which distributed optimal images to major news outlets.

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

  This perfect mode of love is not possible to those who are on the way to Heaven, but only to those who have reached their goal. Hence, St. Paul writing to the Philippians says (chap. iii. 12), “Not as though I had already attained, or were already perfect; but I follow after, if I may by any means apprehend.” He writes as if he were hoping for perfection when he should have reached his goal, and when he should have received the palm of the blessed. But St. Paul does not use the word “attaining” in the sense of entire possession or perfect comprehension, for God in this sense is incomprehensible to every creature. By “attaining” he means reaching the end which he has been following and seeking. In Heaven, the understanding and the will of every rational creature is turned to God; since it is in the fruition of the Godhead that the beatitude of Heaven consists. For beatitude exists not in habit, but in act. And, since the rational creature will in Heaven cleave to God, the Supreme Truth, as to its last End, all its activities will, by intention, likewise be directed to that Last End, and will all be disposed towards the attainment of that End. Consequently, in that perfection of happiness, the rational creature will love God with its whole heart; since its whole intention in all its thoughts, deeds, and affections, will be wholly directed to Him. It will love God with its whole mind, for its mind will be ever actually fixed on Him, beholding Him, and seeing all things in Him, and judging of all things according to His truth. It will love God with its whole soul, for all its affection will be uninterruptedly fixed on Him, and for His sake it will love all things. It will love God with all its strength, since His love will be the motive governing all its exterior acts. This, then, is the second mode of perfect love, and this love is the portion only of the blessed. CHAPTER V The Perfection of Divine Love Which is Necessary to SalvationTHERE is another way in which we love God with our whole heart and soul and strength. We so love Him, if there be nothing in us which is wanting to divine love, that is to say, if there is nothing which we do not, actually or habitually, refer to God. We are given a precept concerning this form of Divine love.

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

  Objection 3: Further, after death there accrues to man no merit or demerit that he had not before, according to Eccles. 11:3, “If the tree fall to the south, or to the north, in what place soever it shall fall, there shall it be.” Now many who are damned, in this life hoped and never despaired. Therefore they will hope in the future life also. On the contrary, Hope causes joy, according to Rom. 12:12, “Rejoicing in hope.” Now the damned have no joy, but sorrow and grief, according to Is. 65:14, “My servants shall praise for joyfulness of heart, and you shall cry for sorrow of heart, and shall howl for grief of spirit.” Therefore no hope is in the damned. I answer that, Just as it is a condition of happiness that the will should find rest therein, so is it a condition of punishment, that what is inflicted in punishment, should go against the will. Now that which is not known can neither be restful nor repugnant to the will: wherefore Augustine says (Gen. ad lit. xi, 17) that the angels could not be perfectly happy in their first state before their confirmation, or unhappy before their fall, since they had no foreknowledge of what would happen to them. For perfect and true happiness requires that one should be certain of being happy for ever, else the will would not rest. In like manner, since the everlastingness of damnation is a necessary condition of the punishment of the damned, it would not be truly penal unless it went against the will; and this would be impossible if they were ignorant of the everlastingness of their damnation. Hence it belongs to the unhappy state of the damned, that they should know that they cannot by any means escape from damnation and obtain happiness. Wherefore it is written (Job 15:22): “He believeth not that he may return from darkness to light.” It is, therefore, evident that they cannot apprehend happiness as a possible good, as neither can the blessed apprehend it as a future good. Consequently there is no hope either in the blessed or in the damned. On the other hand, hope can be in wayfarers, whether of this life or in purgatory, because in either case they apprehend happiness as a future possible thing. Reply to Objection 1: As Gregory says (Moral. xxxiii, 20) this is said of the devil as regards his members, whose hope will fail utterly: or, if it be understood of the devil himself, it may refer to the hope whereby he expects to vanquish the saints, in which sense we read just before (Job 40:18): “He trusteth that the Jordan may run into his mouth”: this is not, however, the hope of which we are speaking.

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

  Reply to Objection 2: The presumption whereby a man presumes inordinately on God, includes self-love, whereby he loves his own good inordinately. For when we desire a thing very much, we think we can easily procure it through others, even though we cannot. Reply to Objection 3: Presumption on God’s mercy implies both conversion to a mutable good, in so far as it arises from an inordinate desire of one’s own good, and aversion from the immutable good, in as much as it ascribes to the Divine power that which is unbecoming to it, for thus man turns away from God’s power. Whether presumption is a sin?Objection 1: It would seem that presumption is not a sin. For no sin is a reason why man should be heard by God. Yet, through presumption some are heard by God, for it is written (Judith 9:17): “Hear me a poor wretch making supplication to Thee, and presuming of Thy mercy.” Therefore presumption on God’s mercy is not a sin. Objection 2: Further, presumption denotes excessive hope. But there cannot be excess of that hope which is in God, since His power and mercy are infinite. Therefore it seems that presumption is not a sin. Objection 3: Further, that which is a sin does not excuse from sin: for the Master says (Sent. ii, D, 22) that “Adam sinned less, because he sinned in the hope of pardon,” which seems to indicate presumption. Therefore presumption is not a sin. On the contrary, It is reckoned a species of sin against the Holy Ghost. I answer that, As stated above ([2489]Q[20], A[1]) with regard to despair, every appetitive movement that is conformed to a false intellect, is evil in itself and sinful. Now presumption is an appetitive movement, since it denotes an inordinate hope. Moreover it is conformed to a false intellect, just as despair is: for just as it is false that God does not pardon the repentant, or that He does not turn sinners to repentance, so is it false that He grants forgiveness to those who persevere in their sins, and that He gives glory to those who cease from good works: and it is to this estimate that the movement of presumption is conformed. Consequently presumption is a sin, but less grave than despair, since, on account of His infinite goodness, it is more proper to God to have mercy and to spare, than to punish: for the former becomes God in Himself, the latter becomes Him by reason of our sins. Reply to Objection 1: Presumption sometimes stands for hope, because even the right hope which we have in God seems to be presumption, if it be measured according to man’s estate: yet it is not, if we look at the immensity of the goodness of God.