Joy

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 History of the Christian Church: The Complete Set of Eight Volumes (1858)

  It represents the origin and progress of Christianity from the capital of Judaism to the capital of heathenism. It is a history of the planting of the church among the Jews by Peter, and among the Gentiles by Paul. Its theme is expressed in the promise of the risen Christ to his disciples (Acts 1:8): "Ye shall receive power, when the Holy Spirit is come upon you (Acts 2): and ye shall be my witnesses both in Jerusalem (Acts 3–7), and in all Judaea and Samaria (Acts 8–12), and unto the uttermost part of the earth" (Acts 13–28). The Gospel of Luke, which is the Pauline Gospel, laid the foundation by showing how salvation, coming from the Jews and opposed by the Jews, was intended for all men, Samaritans and Gentiles. The Acts exhibits the progress of the church from and among the Jews to the Gentiles by the ministry of Peter, then of Stephen, then of Philip in Samaria, then of Peter again in the conversion of Cornelius, and at last by the labors of Paul and his companions.1098 The Acts begins with the ascension of Christ, or his accession to his throne, and the founding of his kingdom by the outpouring of the Holy Spirit; it closes with the joyful preaching of the Apostle of the Gentiles in the capital of the then known world. The objective representation of the progress of the church is the chief aim of the work, and the subjective and biographical features are altogether subordinate. Before Peter, the hero of the first or Jewish-Christian division, and Paul, the hero of the second or Gentile-Christian part, the other apostles retire and are only once named, except John, the elder James, Stephen, and James, the brother of the Lord. Even the lives of the pillar-apostles appear in the history only so far as they are connected with the missionary work. In this view the long-received title of the book, added by some other hand than the author’s, is not altogether correct, though in keeping with ancient usage (as in the apocryphal literature, which includes "Acts of Pilate," "Acts of Peter and Paul," "Acts of Philip," etc.). More than three-fifths of it are devoted to Paul, and especially to his later labors and journeys, in which the author could speak from personal knowledge. The book is simply a selection of biographical memoirs of Peter and Paul connected with the planting of Christianity or the beginnings of the church (Origines Ecclesiae). Sources.

• From Shunned (2018)

  The two men shared a fascination with history and love of a well- told story. For the sheer joy and mental stimulation of it, they purchased a four- foot roll of white butcher-block paper and over many months mapped out a timeline of man’s history on Earth. At the far end of the paper was a line for Year Zero, to mark the first of the seven “creative days” described in Genesis. Using a scale of one inch per hundred years, they unfurled all the major stories of the Bible, marked with notches across the advancing timeline, like seams on a football. Job came to life as the affluent Oriental, and once his era was on the page, it was clear that he had lived at the same time as Moses, though it was unknown whether the two ever met. Dad was captivated by the political intrigue and forces of nature that divided the nation of Israel throughout millennia. They traced Jesus’s maternal and paternal lineage back to Abraham, validating his arrival as the “promised seed.” King Solomon and Cleopatra got up and walked right across the page in all their regal splendor. Phil and my father made their way through the Psalms and the Gospels, watching water turn to wine, then traveled with the Apostle Paul to ancient Corinth. Each time I went to visit my parents, Dad unrolled the time-line like a scroll to show me his latest discovery. The project had become the talk of the Bible study group and then the congregation. Whether he could admit it or not, Dad had become a student of the Bible and was enthralled with what he was learning. Jehovah had become as real to him as Caesar or the Pharaohs. Then he started attending Sunday services with Mom. His language and demeanor softened. Sunday meetings led to Tuesday-night Bible study, which led to Thursday night’s Theocratic Ministry School. He enrolled as a student and started giving five-minute talks from the podium. Despite his shyness at approaching strangers, he even started knocking on doors. Over the span of five years, Dad embraced all the Witness activities except the ultimate one: symbolizing his dedication through baptism. A few months after Dad started preaching, I was rinsing lettuce at my kitchen sink in preparation for dinner when he phoned with an announcement. “I’ve got a secret, but you must promise not to tell your mother.” “What are you talking about?” I nestled the phone between my ear and shoulder and began to dry the lettuce. “I plan to get baptized at the next assembly, and I want it to be a surprise for your mom.” I dropped the towel to the floor and grabbed the phone with my right hand. Unnamed stars in faraway galaxies seemed to pause in their orbits. I stared out the window, allowing his words to sink in. “Hello?

• From Vision Quest (1979)

  Every chance I get I stuff his mouthpiece down my jock. He’s usually more careful with it. He must be worried about his match. He left it on the windowsill. Coach is demonstrating to Jean-Pierre Baldosier, our number-one man at 185, how his L.C. man likes to stack people up with a double chicken wing. We call him “Balldozer” half out of fun and respect for the way he munches people and about half because we can’t pronounce his name right. Coach’s arms are hooked deeply under Jean-Pierre’s armpits, and Coach has driven him forward on the mat so that his neck has bent underneath him and he is now “stacked up” on his shoulders, his feet waving in the air. Coach asks if Balldozer understands the move. Balldozer can’t breathe, let alone speak, and he tries to communicate that idea with gasps and grunts. Coach thinks he’s requesting further demonstration, so he reefs some more on the double chicken wing. Balldozer is pinned. His scapulae rest on the mat. His nose is buried in his hairy chest. Coach cinches up good on his chicken wing, scrunching Jean-Pierre even further into the shape of an upside-down question mark, and asks again if he understands. Taking advantage of Coach’s inattention, Otto flops down on Sausage, who is mashed from lump to patty. He squeals unintelligibly. Otto watches attentively as Balldozer’s head turns purple and blue, while I reach under the blankets and pull off Sausage’s shoes and socks. Coach is finished with Balldozer, who gasps and nods that he understands about the double-chicken-wing-stackup series. Coach waives comment on Otto’s L.C. man in favor of some brief predictions about the damage the Montana heavyweights are likely to do him when we travel there next Friday. Coach isn’t kidding. Those cowpokers really can be mean. “Cowboys and miners!” Otto giggles, trembling in mock fear. Behind him I stuff two sweat socks in Thuringer’s mouth, being careful not to damage his lip. Then I begin to tie his head between his knees with his shoelaces. I finish just as Coach does, and we all jump up to begin exercises. All except the Sausage Man. We quickly heave him deep in his favorite corner and cover him up good. We’re in our warm-up lines and Coach opens his mouth to scream the first exercise at us when a light but persistent knocking sounds at the door. Coach screams at the knocking and the door opens hesitantly, revealing red curls. It’s Carla. Coach points at me and points at the door. Coach knows of my semimarital state. Carla babysits Coach’s kids sometimes. I trot over. Behind me Coach screams, “On your backs! Neck drill!” I hear the flops and grunts and straining as the guys bridge on their necks, navels ceilingward, hands pounding bellies. The chanting starts, a steady “ahhhhhhhhhhhhhh” in time with the pounding hands. A simple tribal song, the sound of clean lungs.

• From Vision Quest (1979)

  “What you doin’ around here?” “Dad read the river was comin’ down, so we came up to take a look. Thought you might like to drive down to the falls with us. This is Carla,” I said. “Carla, this is my grandfather Harry Swain.” “Pleased to meet your acquaintance,” Grandpa Harry said. Carla leaned over me and stuck her good arm out the window and shook with Harry. “My pleasure,” she said. Harry thought that was funny as hell. You could see him laughing all the way as he backed up into his yard. I don’t know if it’s possible, but it seemed as though he was shorter than when we went fishing together at the start of summer. When my dad was a kid, Harry was supposed to have been a little over six feet. But walking behind him to the cabin, I was a good two fingers taller, and I’m only five-eleven. Carla was searching through the junked cars by the creek, where we saw a couple cats go running. Harry unlocked the padlock on his door and we went in. He just has a hole in the wall and a hole in his door and a chain to go through them. I sat on the floor and leaned against the stove and studied the guns and fish poles in the gun rack, as I always do. Harry took a Medihaler out of his shirt pocket and gave himself a couple good blasts down the throat. He breathed deep through his mouth and smiled. “They give me those down ’t the Vets,” he said. “I can fish, hunt, hike these goddman mountains—anything I want. I just carry a couple of these along. I might even feel like doin’ some rasslin’,” he said, and laughed until the crap in his lungs crackled and snapped like a wood fire. He moved his hands like he was milking a cow and rose about two inches off the bed, as though he were going to come for me. “Go find yourself some Indian woman to wrestle with,” I said. “You’d just hurt me, and this is my year to be a hero.” “A hero . . . !” He laughed and coughed up a few cubic centimeters of trench warfare and spit it in his spit can alongside the bed. It’s a good thing he got his emphysema in the war and not just from his homeland air. This way he’s got the Veterans’ Hospital anytime he needs it and he’s got his pension. The State of Washington lets him hunt and fish for free now that he’s over seventy-five, and Dad finds him a cheap old jeep or a pickup when the one he’s got goes too bad for any of us to fix. “How ’bout it?” I asked. “Comin’ down to the falls with us?” “Naw,” Harry said.

• From Shunned (2018)

  Lindy, did you hear what I said?” “You said you plan to get baptized,” I stammered. These were the words I’d yearned to hear since childhood, the black hooded riders awaiting dispatch to wage their righteous war. I cracked a joke to deflect the intensity of the moment. “Who are you, and what have you done with my dad?” “Thought you’d never see the day, right?” he said. “But I figured, why not? I’m doing everything anyway. It’s about time.” I never asked him directly, but I knew there was more to it. He’d always been deeply in love with my mother. Despite their arguments and bickering, the early passion of their teens had ripened to a symbiotic partnership. I think he grew weary of pushing against her and resisting The Truth. He discovered that letting go made him happy, and that everything in his life got a little easier and made more sense when he surrendered to Mom’s program. “Why don’t you want Mom to know? She’ll pee her pants when she finds out.” “She’s been nagging me to do this for a while, and I told her months ago to drop it. After thirty-plus years of marriage, you’d think she’d know that doesn’t work with me, but she can’t help herself, so we’ve been avoiding the subject ever since. I just want to see her face when they call for the baptism candidates to come forward and I step on up. Won’t that be fun?” I pulled a chair from the kitchen table and sat down. “Amazing. Do you think you’ll actually be able to pull it off? Mom has ways of finding things out, you know.” “I will if people like you keep quiet. I’ve already discussed this with Phil. He’s arranged for me to begin the review process with the rest of the elders.” A coterie of three elders meets one-on-one with all baptismal candidates to ensure the purity of their hearts and clarity of mind on church doctrine, using a review of eighty questions and answers. “Who else have you told?” I was wiping tears from my cheeks. Dad wouldn’t be investing this much time in details if he weren’t fully committed. “Randy and Marlene know. They’ll come that morning with the kids but will stay in the back so your mother doesn’t see them. I’ll talk to Lory later today.” His voice danced across the phone line. I found a pen and jotted down the date on our calendar, two months away. “Dad, I’m thrilled. I’ll tell Ross the minute he walks in the door. And don’t worry—your secret is safe with us.”

• From Shunned (2018)

  The kids they were playing with had invited them along to Mass. This would prove to be a turning point in our family’s destiny. Mother cringed at even a whisper of her children entering a Catholic church—or any church—and through that aversion, a spiritual commitment awakened in her. “That evening,” I said, “my parents had a heart-to-heart conversation. Mom declared her intention to dedicate her life to Jehovah and formalize it through baptism, and her wish that their children be raised as Witnesses. Dad agreed, on two conditions. The first was that each be free as adults to choose the religion anew. The second was that none of his children ever peddle religion on any street corner.” Ross and I both burst out laughing. He grabbed a paper towel to cover his mouth. We were both shaking our heads, completely at ease with each other. I was giggling at him as much as I was the irony of this story. My siblings and I all grew up and pioneered; every one of us had “peddled religion.” I took a minute to catch my breath. “I didn’t learn of this agreement until just a few years ago.” “From what I hear, your dad is a really great guy, very supportive, even though he isn’t a Witness,” Ross said. “That’s true. And I don’t think he has regrets about making that agreement. He’s proud of the way we’ve all turned out. He knows we’re happy. The Truth keeps us safe from so many evils in the world.” By this time, everyone else had gradually gone into the living room, leaving us alone in the kitchen. I took a seat at the table. I was enjoying the conversation and decided to lob a challenge. “So, Ross, what else has Bill told you about me?” He looked down and started gathering used paper plates and crumpled napkins and tossing them into the trash. Next he turned on the faucet and washed his hands. Picking up the towel to dry his hands, he answered, “He said you’re an official member of the Triple A Club.” A smile came to me immediately. In Witness parlance, “Triple A” stood for “Available After Armageddon.” Claiming membership in the Triple A Club was a lighthearted way of saying you intended to remain single until after Armageddon. We continued to believe in the imminent arrival of the Great Battle, when the faceless hooded riders would come to cleanse the earth of all nonbelievers, evil people, governments, and structures that did not hail Jehovah. We were not clear exactly how all of that would shake out—whether there would be literal fire and brimstone–like destruction—but the Scriptures were clear in predicting it. Ask any god-fearing Witness—it was right there in the book of Revelation. Every war, earthquake, and political scandal was evidence of how far we were into the Last Days. It was an axiom from my childhood. As I was growing up, I remember Mom’s heavy sighs with each passing year.

• From Vision Quest (1979)

  “I don’t really think there should be any limits to the fun people can have with it.” Then she says, “And I think your friend Tanneran is after mine.” “Your what?” I ask. I’m a little tired and slow-witted after a hard practice. “My body,” Carla says. “What makes you think that?” “He asked me to come to his house.” Gene’s my friend, so I have my doubts about the sexual nature of his invitation. Maybe Carla’s flattering herself. It could be true, though. Gene’s a very horny stud and he’s got what they call a “penchant” for high school girls. He’s also got good taste and Carla is dynamite subdued. Maybe Gene just doesn’t know Carla and I are together now. “Do you want him?” I ask. “No.” “Would you like me to talk to him about it, then?” “Yes,” Carla says. “But not because I can’t. It would just make me feel better about us. Okay?” “Sure,” I reply. Now I’ll have to talk to Tanneran. Shit. But it’s good of Carla to let me know what she expects of me. Having a serious girlfriend is not all fun and games. There’s responsibility in it. * * * Carla is related to the reason I’m working during wrestling season. It was partially because of Carla that Dad lost his job and is being sued for fifteen thousand smackers. He decided he didn’t want to work for anybody else again, so he sold our cabin at Loon Lake and our boat and pickup, borrowed a bunch of money, and opened Spokane’s first Honda car store. Shortly after Dad lost his job he and Mom broke up. He lost our poodle in that deal, and I lost part of my mother. I felt like I should help Dad, so I sold my 450cc Honda motorcycle and vowed to work as steady as I could through the school year to earn money for college. This was one of the big reasons I decided to graduate early. Chances are I’ll get a wrestling scholarship, but they don’t pay for everything. I had other reasons, too. Carla walked into the store one afternoon last July with three hundred bucks. She’d been hitching since Chicago and was fed up with it and wanted to buy a car that would get her to the Pacific Ocean. The store was a big Buick dealership downtown near the freeway and Dad was sales manager. Dad was out when Carla came looking for a car. Ray Lucas, one of the used-car salesmen, showed Carla the back row, where all car dealers keep their clunks. In the back row last July sat a ’62 Rambler wagon, a ’65 Imperial, a ’49 Chevy pickup, a ’66 Buick, and a ’53 Ford coupe. I remember because Dad and I were looking for a cheap car to run as a claimer in the stock car races. I was all set to buy that Ford if it was any good at all.

• From A Greek-English Lexicon (Liddell-Scott) (1957)

  Pind. O. 3. το, cf. Anth. P. ο. 78; ἐν φύλλοισι θαλλούσης βῖον ξανθῆς ἐλαίας (where Dind. icov), Aesch. Pers. 6106 :—cf. θαλέθω. b. of other natural objects, τεθαλυζά τ᾽ ἐέρση the fresh or copious dew, Od. 13. 245: of a fat beast, ῥάχιν τεθαλυῖαν ἀλοιφῇ rich with fat, Il. 9. 208, cf. Od. 13. 410; εἰλαπίνῃ τεθαλυίῃ at a sumptuous feast, II. 414. 2. of men, to bloom, 0. χρόα Archil. 91: to flourish, to be happy or pros- perous, εἰρήνη τεθαλυΐα Hes. Th. 902; θάλλοισα εὐδαιμονία, ἀρετά Pind. P. 7. 21, I. 5 (4). 213 πατρὸς θάλλοντος Soph. Ant. 703, cf. Ph. 420, etc.; (qv καὶ θ. to be alive and prosperous, Id. Tr. 235, cf. Plat. Symp. 203 E; θάλλει καὶ εὐδαιμονεῖ Id. Legg. 945 D:—c. dat. modi, θάλλουσιν δ᾽ ἀγαθοῖσι Hes. Op. 234; ἀγλαΐῃ Id. Sc. 276; τοῖσι (sc. ἀνδράσι) τέθηλε πόλις Id. Op. 225; θ. ἀρεταῖς Pind. O. 9. 26; evyevet τέκνων σπορᾷ Soph. Ant. 1164; παρρησίᾳ Eur. Hipp. 422; 6. ἐπὶ yup- νάδος ἔργοις C. 1. 2240. 3. of disease and the like, in bad sense, to be fresh and active, νόσος ἀεὶ τέθηλε Soph. Ph. 259; πήματα... ἀεὶ θάλλοντα Id. El. 260; ἔρις θάλλει Eur. Phoen. 813; cf. ἀνθέω. θάλος [ἃ]. eos, τό, like θαλλός, but only used in nom. and acc., and in metaph. sense of young persons, like ἔρνος (4. ν.), φίλον θάλος dear child of mine, Il, 22.87; λευσσόντων τοίονδε Οάλος so fair a scion of their house, Od. 6.157; so, νέον 6. ἢ. Hom. Cer. 66, 187, cf. Pind. O. 2. 8I.. 6. 115, Eur. El. 15, etc.—For the pl., v. θάλεα, τά. θαλπεινός, 7, dv, =Oadnves, E. M. 479. 22. θαλπείω, Ep. for θάλπω, E. M. 620. 46. θάλπημι, rare poét. form for θάλπω, only in 3 sing., γλυκεῖ᾽ ἀνάγκα κυλίκων θάλπησι θυμόν Bacchyl. 27. 2. θαλπιάω, (PaAmw) to be or become warm, εὖ θαλπιόων right warm and comfortable, Od. 10. 319, cf. Arat. 1073. θαλπνός, 7, dv, warming, fostering, θαλπνότερον ἄστρον Pind. O. 1.8. θάλπος, εος, τό, warmth, heat, esp. summer-heat, opp. to χειμών, Aesch. Ag. 565, 969; ἐν μεσημβρίας 6. Id. Supp. 747; θ. θεοῦ the sun’s heat, Soph. Tr. 145, etc.; μεσημβρινοῖσι θάλπεσιν with the meridian rays (cf. Lat. soles), Aesch. Theb. 431, 446; and in Prose, θάλπος καὶ ψῦχος, ῥίγη καὶ θάλπη, Hipp. Aph. 1246, Xen. Oec. 7, 23, Cyr. 1. 2, 10. 2. metaph. a sting, smart, τοξευμάτων Soph, Ant. 1086 ; of love, Anth. P. 6. 207. θαλπτέον, verb. Adj. of θάλπω, Alex. Trall. 1. p. 28. θαλπτήριος, ov, warming, σάνδαλα .. ποδῶν θ. Anth. P. 6. 206.

• From Lit: A Memoir (2009)

  This was our final offer. I was calling the next candidate if you said no again. How can I tell him that had I been negotiating, I’d have taken the first offer? Right before decamping, I go with a few women from my group plus Dev for a weekend on Cape Cod. He splashes in the waves with the ladies, and at night we boil lobsters and stuff ourselves with mounds of herb-sticky pasta. At dusk on Sunday, we all pat together an ornate sand castle with moats and levees and bridges. We mold bucket-shaped turrets. The courtyard’s tiled with seashells. The scene blows back to me now with a high, clear oboe note of joy, a feeling then so unfamiliar, it no doubt accounts for my vivid recollections of that day—the sound of Dev’s yellow shovel going shush, shush in wet sand. Behind us, winds in long grasses hiss . The sky is fading to purple with a fat sun red as a cough lozenge about to sink into the sea. I lounge in a low deck chair, a glass of lemonade jammed in the sand beside me. Dev’s hunched over, moving down our ranks, packing sand over each set of feet. Deb adds her own pebble toenails. Why didn’t I ever go on vacation before? I wonder. You and Warren never went? Liz asks. Just to his folks’ houses. We were always so broke, trying to find time to write. Deb says, Didn’t you go to the Vineyard once? That’s right, I say. See, I still fail to remember the good stuff very much. (In my head, I can hear Joan—who wasn’t there—say, Work on that .) Warren and I fought on the ferry going over, I remember, because he didn’t want our friends to come for the weekend. He wanted to write the whole time. So I pouted most of the week. You figured he was being stubborn, Deb says. But I was being—(I flounder for a word and hear Joan say stubborn )—stubborn. You could’ve taken other holidays, though, Deb says. Liz comes around with more lemonade and tops me off. That’s what our therapist says. Maybe we can swap houses with somebody in another city. Dev, done with patting sand on my feet, informs me it’s his garage; my feet are cars; I need to reverse them easy so the structure doesn’t collapse. I gingerly slide them out, and he whoops, then runs down to get a bucket of water. The sandpipers clear him a path. We watch him lug his bucket sloshing back and set it next to me . What’s this for? I say. To wash your feet off, he says. He dumps the cold water over my callused dogs. Deb says, This is how he’s gonna think women are—just lined up in front of him, cooing approval. Now bury my feet, he says. Soon as he slides down in the deck chair, though, his body folds in on itself. His head drops.

• From Martin Luther (2016)

  This was the passage that had been central to Luther while he was caught in the deepest of his Anfechtungen over his hatred of the “justice of God.” Reflecting on his life in 1545, he wrote about these words: “Here I felt that I was altogether born again and had entered paradise itself through open gates.” The King James Bible would not add Luther’s emphasis, but translates the passage as: “For therein is the righteousness of God revealed from faith to faith: as it is written, The just shall live by faith.” 35 When it came to translating Romans 3:28, Luther wrote, “So we now maintain, that man becomes justified without the work of the Law, through faith alone.” Luther added the word “alone,” which is not in the original text, and which places emphasis on the exclusivity of faith—indeed, Luther argued that the allein, which is idiomatic in German, conveyed the sense of the passage. Because Luther himself never went in for biblical literalism, he tried to get to the heart of what the text was saying, and was not afraid to bring out what he thought were its emphases. By contrast, the King James Bible has “Therefore we conclude that a man is justified by faith without the deeds of the law.” He also included a short didactic preface to the Gospels and to each of the Epistles, so that the reader encountered the text through Luther’s eyes. Introducing Romans, he wrote, “This Epistle is the true main piece of the New Testament…which every Christian should not only know word for word by heart, but should treat as a daily bread for the soul,” making his own encounter with Scripture the touchstone for all Christians. 36 The literary style and typeface were indistinguishable from the rest of the text, so that Luther’s exegetical prefaces exuded almost scriptural authority. For Luther, the intellectual process of meditating on Scripture and its essential meaning was fundamental to his faith, and he would practice it throughout his life. This was how he had arrived at his Reformation insight, and it was how he would approach both his office as a professor of Holy Scripture at the university, and his task as translator. The period of isolation in the Wartburg, without his library and largely without the advice of his friends, enabled him to encounter the New Testament with a rare directness and intimacy. The result was a deeply personal translation that seems to have been written in a single breath. 38. Melanchthon and Cranach’s Passional Christi vnd Antichristi, 1521.

• From Lit: A Memoir (2009)

  Which cracks me up, and he laughs till the coughs start exploding through him again, by which point I’ve cleaved him to me, both of us sweating. His diaper’s sagging from the vaporizer’s work, but fresh steam is his lifeline. Carrying him to the bathroom, I crank on the shower. But before I change him, before I squirt the syrupy acetaminophen into his mouth, I haul him whooping down the stairs to the kitchen. I open the stove where a near empty bottle of Jack Daniels squats like the proverbial troll under the bridge. Needing neither glass nor ice, I press my lips to the cool mouth, and it blows into my lungs so I can keep on.

• From Shunned (2018)

  The elder facilitating the program took the podium and set the stage for the main event of the day. “Brothers and sisters, the special part of our program has come, one many have spent years or months preparing for. Please stand and sing song number twenty-nine, “Jehovah’s Happy People.” While we sing, we invite all fourteen of the baptismal candidates to come to the front and take your seats in the area reserved for you. Please bring everything you need to go straight to the pool at the conclusion of the talk that Brother Anderson has prepared just for you.” With that, everyone stood to sing. Dad grabbed his Bible and songbook and stepped away from Mom, into the aisle. A few other men and women were passing him, headed to the special area. He walked several feet up to the area and joined his voice with the crowd’s. Great God, we’ve vowed to do your will; In wisdom your work we’ll fulfill. For then we know we’ll have a part In making glad your loving heart. Lory, Ove, Ross, and I all turned to observe my mother. Earlier, she had looked ravishing in her crimson dress, radiating vitality. Now she looked pale and confused, staring at my father, who looked straight ahead as he sang. Her gaze then turned to us and saw eight eyes filled with tears looking back at her, all of us smiling to reassure her. Mom dropped down to her seat, blinking and baffled. We all sat down with her, and I leaned my arm over the chair back, resting it on her lap. “Dad wanted to surprise you,” I said. The music was still swirling around us. Grace, seated to the right, put her arm around Mom as her eyes filled with tears, not saying a word. “Oh, that rascal,” she said, reaching for Kleenex in her purse, smiling, unable to see through the tears. Lory handed her several tissues, and Mom dabbed her eyes until she could see us clearly. “You all knew about this?” she asked, her disbelief compounding as she gradually understood all that had been hidden from her. “What about reviewing the eighty questions with the elders?” she asked. “All done,” Grace said. “Phil handled that quietly, per Frank’s wishes.” Her mouth curled into a smile, and then we were giggling with her, nodding to assure her this was real. Suddenly, a grave look struck her. “Randy,” she said. “Randy shouldn’t miss this.” “He’s here,” I said, squeezing her knee. “He, Marlene, and the kids are in the back. Dad’s been working on this for months. He thought of everything.” She collapsed into the back of the chair, her defenses down, surrendering to the moment, looking at my dad, shaking her head, blowing her nose.

• From Vision Quest (1979)

  I throw an outside switch and lean back hard for leverage on the arm Kuch is trying to hold me with. I’m levering hard and have almost worked behind him to gain control when he lets me go and pulls his arm away. I fall flat on my back. He’s on me in half a breath and I’m pinned. Renewed, he whoops and dances and kicks me in the ass a few times, smiling. We go back to the referee’s position and wait for Coach’s whistle. IIICarla picks me up from practice. Whenever she can she drives me downtown, where I work part-time as a room-service boy at the Spokane Hotel. When she’s working herself or when she has something to do, I take the bus or just hitch. There’re always plenty of people driving downtown. “Well?” Carla asks. “I kicked ass,” I reply. “How badly?” “Twenty-three to five.” “You got pinned again!” Carla knows how to keep score. I get pinned fairly often in practice, but I’ve never been pinned in a match. “Fucking rubber-arm.” I sigh, shaking my head. “What can you do?” “A guy rubber-arms you when you lean back too hard and hesitate on the switch. You’re leaning on his arm for leverage, and if you hesitate at all, he can pull his arm away. You fall right on your back. I’ve got to stop hesitating. Either that or go to a sitout or a standup all the time.” “Is Shute a good rubber-armer?” Carla asks. I squinch my face. “I know,” she says. “Is a pig’s pussy pork?” I have to laugh. That’s one of our local clichés from which Carla usually refrains. She must have been keeping it in reserve for just such an appropriate moment. “Gotcha.” She smiles smugly. We stop at Strick’s bakery. Carla likes to buy day-old doughnuts and maple bars for Dad’s breakfast. Carla eats granola and Dad has eggs, meat, and a doughnut or a maple bar. I drink a can of Nutrament, and if my weight’s down enough I might eat a slice of liver or a wheat-germ burger, too. Having breakfast together like that is a good way to start the day. “Is the exhibitionist still in the hotel?” Carla asks. Part of the fun of working in a hotel is all the people you meet. I try to keep Carla informed about them. “He was naked again, toweling off after a shower like he always is. But this time he drops the towel, flashes me a shot at his root, and gets an immediate hard-on. His cock jerked up in stages like a drawbridge. I just stood there. I told him to give me a call when he was through. I meant so I could pick up the tray. He just smiled and scratched his nuts.” “The human body well kept is a beautiful thing,” Carla says.

• From A Greek-English Lexicon (Liddell-Scott) (1957)

  ἐπ-οιωνίζομαι, Dep. to forebode, Schol. Aesch. and Ar.; cf. ἐπιφημίζω. ἐπ-οκέλλω, = ἐπικέλλω, to run ashore, νέας, τὴν νέα Hat, 6. 16., 7. 182; πλοῖα Thuc. 4. 26. 2. of the ship, to run aground, be wrecked, Id. 8.102: to put in, Arr. An. 2. 23, 3; of fish, Arist. Mirab. 136. ἐπ-οκλάζω, to cower with bent knees upon, τῇ γῇ Heliod. 4. 17. ἐπ-οκριάω, to be rough in or upon, τινι Nic. Th. 790. €M-OKpLoels, εσσα, εν, uneven, projecting, Anth. P. 7. 401. ἐπ-ολβίζω, fut. tow, to call happy, τινά Nonn. Ὁ. 46. 325. ἐπόλιοϑ, ὁ, a night-bird, perhaps -- αἰγωλιός, ap. Suid. ἐπ-ολισθάνω, fut. -ολισθήσω, fo slip or glide upon, κυλίνδροις és βυθόν Anth, P. Io. 15; metaph., ἐπ. ἀμπλακίαις Ib. 5. 278. ἐπ-ολολύζω, to shout for joy, triumph at, absol., Aesch. Ag. 1236 (in Med.), Ar. Eq. 616; τινί at or to one, Aesch. Theb. 825; τι over or at a thing, Id. Cho. 942: cf. ἐπαλαλάζω, ὀλολύζω. ἐπ-ολοφύρομαι, Dep. to lament over, tut Joseph. B. J. prooem. 4. ἕπομαι, to follow, Dep.: v. sub ἕπω. ém-opBpéw, to pour rain upon, cf. émividw:—Pass., Anth. P. 11. 365. 2. to pour like rain upon, τί τινι Philo 1. 48 and 296. 11. intr. to gush out over, abound as rain, Eccl. ἔπόμβρησις, ews, 7, a watering with rain, Suid. ἐπομβρία, ἡ, heavy rain, abundance of rain, Hipp. Aph. 1 247: generally, abundance of wet, wet weather, Aesch. Fr. 304: opp. to αὐχμός, Hipp. | Aér. 294, At. Nub. 1120; Δευκαλίωνος ἐπ. Clem. Al. 380; in pl., Arist. | Meteor. 2. 4, 9, al. :—metaph. a shower, χερμάδων Lyc. 333. ἐπ-ομβρίζω, fut. iow, to water with rain, Heliod. 9. 9. down as rain, Clem. Al. 337. ἐπ-όμβριος, ov, =sq., Theophr. C. P. 3. 11, 5. ἔπ-ομβρος, ov, very rainy, ἔαρ, ἔτος Hipp. Aph. 1247, Epid. 3. 1081; θέρος, φθινόπωρον, χειμών Arist. H. A. 8.19, 4, al.; χώρα Theophr. H. P. 8.7, 6. ἑπομένως, Ady. part. pres. of ἕπομαι, next, opp. to πρώτως, Arist. Me- taph. 6. 4, 13. II. in accordance with, τινί Plat. Legg. 844 EB, cf. Arist. de An. 1. 2, 14.

• From Vision Quest (1979)

  The windows wouldn’t roll up and the heater had a leak, so we were cold till the sun got up a little. I would laugh a little to myself, then shut up, then just go to pieces and laugh till tears ran down, thinking of Dwight flying through the storm of newspapers. Carla asked me to explain what was so funny. I tried, but couldn’t stop laughing. Then she began to laugh, too. She wished she could hear some music and cursed the old truck’s lack of a radio. I pulled the tape player out of my wrestling bag and clipped in a special traveling-music tape. She liked that. Then I took out my tea thermos and poured us some. Carla drinks a lot of tea. “You come prepared,” she said. “I’m just waiting for the day some millionaire will get a flat or run out of gas. I’ll change his tire, drive him to a gas station, pour him some tea and honey—and he’ll pay my way through college.” “What he’ll do is hit you on the head and you’ll wake up with an asshole the size of the Chicago Loop.” She giggled as I squirmed a bit in fun. “I’m very interested in that bag,” she said, looking down at my big old wrestling road bag. “What else do you have in there?” She was bent over a little and through her second button I could see a nipple register its protest against the cold morning. Her hair was blowing out the window and back against the broken gun rack. God, she looked good driving the old yellow Ford. Among other things it made her freckles redder. “Oh, I’ve got a couple pairs of socks and some shorts and towels, some soap and a thermos full of Gatorade,” I said. I didn’t mention Dad’s old 9mm Luger. Carla flipped out when “John Wesley Harding” came on the tape. I knew she liked Bob Dylan because that’s what she played all the time on the stereo at the New Pioneer while she drank tea like an addict. I had the tape loaded heavily with Dylan tunes I recorded at Kuch’s house. I had some Merle Haggard, some Leon Russell, some New Riders and Grateful Dead, and a couple obscure Jim Croce and John Stewart truck-driving songs. It was definitely a tape for the old Ford on 395 North and for Carla. We talked about music and books and kids at Lake Shore, Carla’s old school in Chicago, and kids at David Thompson. We were laughing so much and having such a good time we forgot to watch the gas gauge. We ran out on the Colville side of Addy and I had to walk back and get some. More than anything else, I was fascinated with Carla’s independence. There are lots of really beautiful girls around and lots of soft ones who are smiley and bright-eyed and in shape and smell good and don’t smoke cigarettes.

• From The Battle for God (2000)

  The new revivalists were not learned men, like Jonathan Edwards and George Whitefield, who had studied at Yale and Oxford. They hated academia and insisted that all Christians had the right to interpret the Bible for themselves, without submitting to the theological experts. These prophets were not cultivated men; in their preaching they spoke in a way that ordinary people could understand, often using wild gestures along with earthy humor and slang. Their services were not polite and decorous, but noisy, rowdy, and highly emotional. They were recasting Christianity in a popular style that was light-years from the refined ethos of the Age of Reason. They held torchlight processions and mass rallies, and pitched huge tents outside the towns, so that the revivals took on the appearance of a vast campsite. The new genre of the Gospel Song transported the audience to ecstasy, so that they wept, rocked violently backward and forward, and shouted for joy.70 Instead of making their religion rational, the prophets relied on dreams and visions, signs and wonders—all the things that were deplored by the scientists and philosophers of the Enlightenment. And yet, like the Jeffersonians, they refused to see the past as the repository of wisdom, conservative-wise. They were moderns. People should not be bound by learned traditions. They had the freedom of the sons of God, and, with common sense, relying on the plain facts of scripture, they could figure out the truth for themselves.71 These new preachers railed against the aristocracy, the establishment, and the learned clergy. They emphasized the egalitarian tendencies of the New Testament, which stated that in the Christian commonwealth the first should be last and the last first. God sent his insights to the poor and unlettered: Jesus and the Apostles had not had college degrees.

• From Martin Luther (2016)

  As Spalatin recalled, Luther returned to his quarters comforted and happy in the Lord, saying that “if he had a thousand heads, he would rather they were all chopped off than that he should recant.” As he passed through the crowds he noticed the humanist Conrad Peutinger from Augsburg. “Dr. Peutinger, are you here too?” he said, and inquired after his family. Peutinger was evidently astonished by Luther’s cheerful calm in such a situation. Back in his quarters, Friedrich the Wise told Spalatin: “The father, Dr. Martinus, spoke well….But he is too bold for me.” 54 Even for those who were not interested in the intricacies of his theology, Luther’s resistance at Worms was inspiring because it showed that it was possible for a simple monk to argue with the greatest powers of the day. By refusing to debate with him openly, the Catholic side had handed him a huge moral and intellectual victory, a fact that Luther was not slow to underline. 55 It was a deeply shocking lesson for a deferential society. It truly seemed as if the Word would sweep all before it, overturning the old order. Soon there would be more than enough of the “excitement and dissension” Luther had welcomed in his speech at the Diet. Ulrich von Hutten, the German knight and humanist, identified so closely with the event that he wrote two letters to his “amico sancto,” exhorting Luther to stand firm but warning of the “dogs,” his opponents, and talking of the need for swords, bows, and arrows. Both letters were soon printed, joining a flood of pamphlets Hutten had authored that bemoaned the burning of Luther’s books and called for “manly” resistance against the “effeminate” bishops. 56 Luther also had the enthusiastic support of the knight Franz von Sickingen, who made his living as a mercenary and by levying “protection” money from the rich towns along the Rhine. Opportunistic attacks on merchants by armed knights and bandits were a frequent occurrence—in fact, one such raid had occurred not far from Worms itself earlier on during the Diet. 57 By a fine irony Sickingen had undertaken a feud against the city of Worms almost a decade before. Hutten had convinced Sickingen of the rightness of Luther’s cause, and Sickingen now offered the monk sanctuary at Ebernburg, one of his castles. Luther, however, was careful to keep his distance. These knights not only offered armed protection but were willing to take up arms in support of the gospel. In the autumn of 1522, they would take on the archbishop of Trier, who had been prominent in attempts to reach a negotiated settlement with Luther in the wake of the Diet, expecting the peasants to flock to their support.

• From Martin Luther (2016)

  As he saw it, the reality of the comfort offered by the receipt of the body of Christ was far more important than worrying about whether digestion dishonored Christ. Although at one level he seemed unable to break with medieval tradition, at another his thought was more radical than that of the sacramentarians, since by refusing to separate the physical and the spiritual, he also rejected the powerful ascetic strain in Christian tradition. By this point in his life, as we have noted, Luther was no longer the thin, intense-looking monk, and his fabled love of German beer and wine, his enjoyment of food and his sedentary life had all taken their toll. Moreover, his marriage had opened him to the joys of sexuality and of seeing his children grow. And here too he took pleasure in the physical aspects of life. He wrote to Jonas of his delight when his son “Little Hans” learned to defecate with bent knees; he learned so well, Luther said, that he “crapped in every corner of the room.” 40 Unlike most Christian thinkers, Luther’s theology was profoundly embodied . He did not take what would in the next century become the Cartesian path: the insistence that mind and body are separate, and that our physical existence is inferior. He did of course distinguish between flesh and spirit—every theologian at the time did—but his emphasis was always on integration, not on splitting the two. He was well aware that by rejecting the Aristotelian explanation of transubstantiation in terms of “accidents” and “essences” he had put no philosophical or rational alternative in its place; instead, it was a matter of faith, exceeding reason. The logic of Luther’s denial of free will and his insistence on grace meant that God must have decided who is saved. But to those who worried about whether they were among the elect or not, Luther—unlike the more systematic John Calvin—responded that we should just not think about something that is beyond our grasp. A similar approach colored his views of the afterlife, and inflected the way the Church he established dealt with death. Rejecting the sacrament of extreme unction, he developed a more pastoral approach that derived from his own honesty; when comforting the dying, he preferred to emphasize Christ’s saving love. 41 Heaven should not be thought about; it certainly had no geographical location. When he lightheartedly talked about it at dinner with friends, he imagined that “[t]here will be such joy that we will completely forget eating and drinking, sleeping and so forth.

• From Lit: A Memoir (2009)

  Wait, I say. Why so late ? The elevator door’s black rubber bumper stops midbounce against Warren’s hand. He says, Visiting hours are five to seven. Not for dads, I say. But the silver doors have shut him away. And I know Warren will come religiously from five till seven—never a minute longer. (To be fair to Warren, not yet thirty, he must’ve been shocked, as men often are—and the younger, the more shocked—by the dreamy looks their previously income-generating wives get when staring at some dumb hunks of baby.) With Dev, my every practical impulse has snapped off like a spigot turned tight. So what if I’m invisible to Warren or he to me? My rent’s paid. I have my boy. In six weeks, I’ll start to teach three days per week, three or four classes per day. No other fact sinks in. Sitting in my room the next night, after Warren’s brief, distracted visit, I feed the baby out of some gleaming core inside. It’s you and me, Dev, I say, which solitude is—in some ways—familiar. At least now I have a small sack of infant to cuddle with, a boy molded from silk and cream whose howling cares vanish soon as I take him in my arms. For seven days, I stay catheterized in the hospital. In seven days, the Bible tells us, God made the world, but I fail to release my pent-up urine. Eventually, the insurance company starts to squawk, and while the doctor doesn’t like sending me home with a bag strapped to my leg, they figure I can get up every morning after breastfeeding all night, load the baby into the car seat with diapers and changes of clothes and miscellaneous crap. I can drive to the clinic, get on the table, have the catheter taken out, then wait, breastfeeding in the hall, till four to see if I can relieve myself of urine before then getting re-catheterized—a length of flaming skewer slid into my body’s rawest corridor. Warren seems hardly to register any of this, sleeping every night unperturbed downstairs. Every hour and a half or two, Dev squawks, and I stagger to his crib, change his diaper, latch him to one breast then another, burp him, swaddle him. Then back in my solitary bed, steal an hour or two of sleep before Dev eats again. Born three weeks early it’s as if he’s trying to catch up, he just needs to be bigger than my scrawny body could tote. (He grew at twice the normal rate, and I’d have been smarter nursing him in the bed, but I’d been warned—ironically—that it’d ruin my marriage.) Maybe I don’t resent Warren more because he’s the only author of relief for me. He walks in the door like clockwork every day at six, the hour Dev inexplicably begins to holler as if being bullwhipped. And only Warren loves him enough to advance toward that flaming shriek. What’s wrong with him?

• From A Greek-English Lexicon (Liddell-Scott) (1957)

  ynyeverys, ov, 6,=sq., Timoth. Fr. το Bgk., Eur. Phoen, 128. γη-γενής, ἐς, earth-born, βολβός Xenarch. Βουταλ. 1; of a potter’s ves- sel, Antiph. Παρασ. 1. 2. like αὐτόχθων, earthborn, of the primeval men, Hdt. 8.55, Aesch. Supp. 250; τοὺς ἔμπροσθεν φύεσθαι γηγενεῖς καὶ μὴ ἐὲ ἀλλήλων γεννᾶσθαι Plat. Polit. 269 B, cf. Lege. 727 E, Arist. G. A. 3.11, 25; of the Thebans, Trag. ap. Arist. Poét. 16, 2. II. born of Gaia or Tellus, of the Titans and Giants, Aesch. Pr. 351, 6773; 6 γ. στρατὸς Τιγάντων Soph. Tr. 1058 :—in Com., like Lat. terrae jilius, in contempt, with an insinuation of impiety, Ar. Nub. 853, Alex. Kpatev. 2; —-so also of things, portentous, furious, γηγενεῖ φυσήματι Ar. Ran. 825. γήδιον, τό, Dim. of γῆ, a little farm, a piece of land, Ar. Pax 570, Fr. 344. 2, Arist. Pol. 6. 5, 8 ; μικρὸν γ. Xen. Cyr. 8. 3, 38. γηθαλέος, a, ov, (γηθέων joyous, Androm. ap. Galen, 13. 876. γῆθεν, Adv. out of or from the earth, Aesch. Theb, 247, Eum. go4, Soph. O.C. 1591: from beneath, Id. El. 453. γηθέω, γηθεῖ ev? (contr.) Il. 14. 140 (al. γηθέει ἐν. .), Dor. γᾶθεῖ Theocr. 1.54; (but the pf. is always used for pres. in Att., unless γηθούσῃ φρενί be retained in Aesch. Cho. 772, and impf. ἐπ-εγήθει (v. infr.) in Id. Pr. 157): impf. ἐγήθεον Il. 7.127, 214: fut. γηθήσω Il., Hes.: aor. ἐγήθησα, Ep. γήθησα, Hom., Hes.: pf. γέγηθα, Dor. γέγᾶθα (in pres. sense, v. supr.), Hom., Att.: plqpf. ἔγεγήθειν restored by Elmsl. in Aesch. Pr. 157, Ep. γεγήθειν 1]. 11. 682., 13. 494, Dor. γεγάθειν Epich. 75 Ahr. A collat. form γήθω, Dor. γάθω, mentioned by Gramm., is found in Aesch. l.c., C. 1. 3632; but Med. γήθομαι in Q. Sm. 14.92, Anth. P. 6. 261, etc. (V. sub γαίω.) To rejoice, Hom.; c. acc. rei, Tis av τάδε γηθήσειεν Il. 9. 773 γ. κατὰ θυμόν 13. 416; γηθήσει mpopaveica (dual) will rejoice at our appearing, 8. 378 :—often c. part., fo rejoice in doing .., γέγηθας ζῶν Soph. Ph. 1021; πίνων Eur. Cycl. τ68 :--- γέγηθε φρένα Il. 11. 683, etc.; θυμῷ γηθήσας Hes. Sc. 116; ἂν περὶ ψυχὰν γάθησεν Pind, P. 4. 218:—also, παλαιαῖσιν ἐν ἀρεταῖς y. Id. N. 3.56; and in Att., γεγηθέναι ἐπί τινι Soph. El. 1231, Dem. 332. 8:—in part. γεγηθώς, like χαίρων, Lat. impune, ἢ καὶ yey. λέξειν δοκεῖς ; Soph. O. T. 368. γῆθος, cos, 76, =sq., Chron. Par. in C. I. 2374.27, Plut. Ages. 29, etc. γηθοσύνη, 77, joy, delight, Il. 13. 29., 21. 390; in pl., ἢ. Hom. Cer. 437, Ap. Rh. 2. 878. γηθόσυνος, ἡ, ov, also os, ov, Anth. P. 6. 235 :—joyful, glad, 1]. 7. 122; τινι αἴ ἃ thing, 13.82. Adv. -νως, Hipp. Ep. 1285. 46, Suid. γηθυλλίς, (Sos, ἡ, Dim. of γήθυον, (acc. to Moer. 115, the Attic equi- valent for ἀμπελόπρασονγ; Epich. (in Dor. form ya@vAdis) 89 Ahr., Eubul. Πορν. 2, Nic. Al. 431.