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 Wild (2012)

  I went into the whole PCT shebang, explaining about the trail and the record snowpack and the complicated way I had to hitchhike to get to Old Station. They listened with respectful, distant curiosity, all three of them lighting up cigarettes as I spoke. After I was done talking, Spider said, “I’ve got a story for you, Cheryl. I think it’s along the lines of what you’re talking about. I was reading about animals a while back and there was this motherfucking scientist in France back in the thirties or forties or whenever the motherfuck it was and he was trying to get apes to draw these pictures, to make art pictures like the kinds of pictures in serious motherfucking paintings that you see in museums and shit. So the scientist keeps showing the apes these paintings and giving them charcoal pencils to draw with and then one day one of the apes finally draws something but it’s not the art pictures that it draws. What it draws is the bars of its own motherfucking cage. Its own motherfucking cage! Man, that’s the truth, ain’t it? I can relate to that and I bet you can too, sister.” “I can,” I said earnestly. “We can all relate to that, man,” said Dave, and he turned in his seat so he and Spider could do a series of motorcycle blood brother hand jives in the air between them. “You know something about this dog?” Spider asked me when they were done. “I got him the day Stevie Ray Vaughan died. That’s how he got his motherfucking name.” “I love Stevie Ray,” I said. “You like Texas Flood?” Dave asked me. “Yeah,” I said, swooning at the thought of it. “I got it right here,” he said, and pulled out a CD and placed it into the boom box that was propped between him and Lou. A moment later, the heaven of Vaughan’s electric guitar filled the car. The music felt like sustenance to me, like food, like all the things I’d once taken for granted that had now become sources of ecstasy for me because I’d been denied them. I watched the trees stream past, lost in the song “Love Struck Baby.” When it ended, Lou said, “We’re love struck too, me and Dave. We’re getting married next week.” “Congrats,” I said. “You wanna marry me, sweetheart?” Spider asked me, momentarily grazing my bare thigh with the back of his hand, his turquoise ring hard against me. “Just ignore him,” said Lou. “He’s nothing but a horny old bastard.” She laughed and caught my eye in the rearview mirror.

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

  When he professed the Nicene faith, the Arians deposed him in council, sent him into exile, and transferred his bishopric to Euzoius, who had formerly been banished with Arius.684 The Catholics disowned Euzoius, but split among themselves; the majority adhered to the exiled Meletius, while the old and more strictly orthodox party, who had hitherto been known as the Eustathians, and with whom Athanasius communicated, would not recognize a bishop of Arian consecration, though Catholic in belief, and elected Paulinus, a presbyter of high character, who was ordained counter-bishop by Lucifer of Calaris.685 The doctrinal difference between the Meletians and the old Nicenes consisted chiefly in this: that the latter acknowledged three hypostases in the divine trinity, the former only three prosopa; the one laying the stress on the triplicity of the divine essence, the other on its unity. The orthodox orientals declared for Meletius, the occidentals and Egyptians for Paulinus, as legitimate bishop of Antioch. Meletius, on returning from exile under the protection of Gratian, proposed to Paulinus that they should unite their flocks, and that the survivor of them should superintend the church alone; but Paulinus declined, since the canons forbade him to take as a colleague one who had been ordained by Arians.686 Then the military authorities put Meletius in possession of the cathedral, which had been in the hands of Euzoius. Meletius presided, as senior bishop, in the second ecumenical council (381), but died a few days after the opening of it—a saint outside the communion of Rome. His funeral was imposing: lights were borne before the embalmed corpse, and psalms sung in divers languages, and these honors were repeated in all the cities through which it passed on its transportation to Antioch, beside the grave of St. Babylas.687 The Antiochians engraved his likeness on their rings, their cups, and the walls of their bedrooms. So St. Chrysostom informs us in his eloquent eulogy on Meletius.688 Flavian was elected his successor, although Paulinus was still alive. This gave rise to fresh troubles, and excited the indignation of the bishop of Rome. Chrysostom labored for the reconciliation of Rome and Alexandria to Flavian. But the party of Paulinus, after his death in 389, elected Evarius as successor († 392), and the schism continued down to the year 413 or 415, when the bishop Alexander succeeded in reconciling the old orthodox remnant with the successor of Meletius. The two parties celebrated their union by a splendid festival, and proceeded together in one majestic stream to the church.689 Thus a long and tedious schism was brought to a close, and the church of Antioch was permitted at last to enjoy that peace which the Athanasian synod of Alexandria in 362 had desired for it in vain.690

• From Bold Move

  Name Your ValuesNaming your values is the first step in living a life where values are aligned with your daily actions. Although a simple list is an easy way to identify your values, there is an even more powerful and scientifically valid way: writing about what matters the most to you .11 The two value identification exercises that follow are the most typical exercises used in ACT.12 They’re often referred to as “the sweet and sour” exercises, and I have adapted them based on my clinical expertise to ensure you are able to work through them in this chapter.13 One is designed to help you identify your core values through an exercise that allows you to examine a moment of joy (i.e., the sweet exercise), while the other is designed to look behind a painful moment (i.e., the sour exercise) to identify why that hurt occurred. They both help us get to the values that we care most deeply about. Because these exercises are two sides of the same coin, you don’t necessarily need to do both to figure out your core values. To decide which one you want to work on, just see if one seems to call your attention more. If in doubt, start with the sweet moment first and see where that leaves you. How Sweet It Is to Live by Your ValuesBecause the delicious moments of life often have our values hidden within them, let’s start by focusing on a specific situation that has been going well for you in the past two months (see reflection below). If life has been particularly challenging and nothing comes to mind, skip to the reflection that focuses on identifying values in the pain points of life. Reflection Experiencing Sweetness Think about one specific moment where you felt sweetness within the past two months. It might have been fleeting, or it might have lasted an entire day. It doesn’t matter. Visualize this moment as if this is a movie playing out in front of you, and try to capture its essence. Don’t censor your brain or try to interpret this moment with needless concepts. Just try to throw yourself back to that moment as much as possible, using all of your senses to land there. Once that movie is created in your mind, I want you to take a piece of paper and write about that moment for ten minutes. To make sure you keep yourself accountable, set a timer. Just free-form journaling here, nothing fancy. Write whatever comes to mind about this awesome time in your life. If you find yourself stuck, here are some questions to help you write about this moment: What were you doing? Who were you with? What were you feeling? How did it feel afterward? How would you describe that moment to friends? I encourage you to really spend time writing out this narrative as we will use it to help you identify some of your core values in the next exercise.

• From A Theology for the Social Gospel (1918)

  both present and future. Like God it is in all tenses, eternal in the midst of time. It is the energy of God realizing itself in human life. Its future lies among the mysteries of God. It invites and justifies prophecy, but all prophecy is fallible ; it is valuable in so far as it grows out of action for the Kingdom and impels action. No theories about the future of the Kingdom of God are likely to be valuable or true which paralyze or post- pone redemptive action on our part. To those who post- pone, it is a theory and not a reality. It is for us to see the Kingdom of God as always coming, always pressing in on the present, always big with possibility, and always inviting immediate action. We walk by faith. Every human life is so placed that it can share with God in the creation of the Kingdom, or can resist and retard its progress. The Kingdom is for each of us the supreme task and the supreme gift of God. By accepting it as a task, we experience it as a gift. By labouring for it we enter into the joy and peace of the Kingdom as our divine fatherland and habitation. 4. Even before Christ, men of God saw the Kingdom of God as the great end to which all divine leadings were pointing. Every idealistic interpretation of the world, religious or philosophical, needs some such conception. Within the Christian religion the idea of the Kingdom gets its distinctive interpretation from Christ, (a) Je- sus emancipated the idea of the Kingdom from previous nationalistic limitations and from the debasement of lower religious tendencies, and made it world-wide and spiritual, (b) He made the purpose of salvation essen- tial in it. (c) He imposed his own mind, his personality. 142 A THEOLOGY FOR THE SOCIAL GOSPEL his love and holy will on the idea of the Kingdom, (d) He not only foretold it but initiated it by his life and work. As humanity more and more develops a racial consciousness in modern life, idealistic interpretations of the destiny of humanity will become more influential and important. Unless theology has a solidaristic vision higher and fuller than any other, it can not maintain the spiritual leadership of mankind, but will be outdistanced. Its business is to infuse the distinctive qualities of Jesus Christ into its teachings about the Kingdom, and this will be a fresh competitive test of his continued headship of humanity.

• From Wild (2012)

  “Oh, baby,” he whispered, his mouth so soft against the roughest part of me. “You don’t have to worry about a thing.” It was fun. It was more than fun. It was like a festival in that tent. We fell asleep at six and woke two hours later, exhausted, but awake, our bodies too out of whack to sleep any more. “It’s my day off,” said Jonathan, sitting up. “You wanna go to the beach?” I consented without knowing where exactly the beach might be. It was my day off too, my last one. Tomorrow I’d be back on the trail, headed for Crater Lake. We dressed and drove on a long arcing road that took us a couple of hours through the forest and up over the coastal mountains. We drank coffee and ate scones and listened to music as we drove, sticking to the same narrow conversation we’d had the night before: music, it seemed, was the one thing we had to discuss. By the time we pulled into the coastal town of Brookings, I half regretted agreeing to come and not only because my interest in Jonathan was waning, but because we’d been driving three hours. It seemed odd to be so far from the PCT, as if I were betraying it in a way. The magnificence of the beach muted that feeling. As I walked along the ocean beside Jonathan, I realized that I’d been at this very beach before, with Paul. We’d camped in the nearby state park campground when we’d been on our long post-NYC road trip—the one on which we’d gone to the Grand Canyon and Vegas, Big Sur and San Francisco, and that had ultimately taken us to Portland. We’d stopped to camp at this beach along the way. We’d made a fire, cooked dinner, and played cards at a picnic table, then crawled into the back of my truck to make love on the futon that was there. I could feel the memory of it like a cloak on my skin. Who I’d been when I’d been here with Paul and what I’d thought would happen and what did and who I was now and how everything had changed. Jonathan didn’t ask what I was thinking about, though I’d gone quiet. We only walked silently together, passing few people, though it was a Sunday afternoon, walking and walking until there was no one but us. “How about here?” Jonathan asked when we came to a spot that was backed by a cove of dark boulders. I watched as he laid out a blanket, set the bag of lunch things he’d bought at Safeway on top of it, and sat down.

• From Worried about Everything Because I Pray about Nothing (2022)

  You might intercede alone or with other people, maybe for a few minutes or maybe much longer than that. Through intercessory prayer, you can help people and influence situations by going to God and asking for His grace and intervention on behalf of others.More than likely, you have used at least one or two of these approaches to prayer. I encourage you to try a few others, even the ones you think are outside your comfort zone. Or maybe especially those. Many of us are good at finding what works for us and turning that into a ritual or routine. The problem is that this habitual approach, this tendency toward spiritual routine, eventually undermines real relationship. It takes deliberate effort to stay out of ruts and to maintain a freshness of communion with God. Think about the relationship you have with your closest friend—it is probably spontaneous and varied, right? You might see each other regularly and have certain traditions or routines, but you also have the freedom and closeness to relate in many other ways. You don’t go into every conversation with a plan or a list of requests. You just hang out. You have fun together. You laugh, you cry, you rant, you vent, you listen, you learn, you grow. The same principle—that relationships need to be fresh, creative, exciting—is seen in healthy marriages. If you are married, you have probably discovered how valuable it is to explore new ways to connect and grow close. That can be a challenge, especially if there are small children running around everywhere. I speak from experience. But keeping things vibrant and exciting is absolutely vital to the health of your marriage. If spontaneity and creativity bring life to friendship, marriage, and other human relationships, how much more will they enrich our walk with God? Don’t let yourself fall into empty rituals or spiritual boredom. Don’t order the same thing off the menu every time, whether we’re talking about cheesecake or prayer. Experiment. Pick something new. Try something you’ve never done. It might become your new favorite thing. EIGHTEEN The lost art of listeningWe’ve covered a lot of territory in this book. I hope you are more excited about prayer than ever, and more confident that prayer is a skill you can excel at. In this final chapter, we are going to look at one of the topics of prayer that causes the most confusion and frustration: Learning to hear the voice of God. Talking to God is easy, but listening to Him? Hearing His voice? Understanding His leading? That’s a lot harder. Speaking of talking, I do a lot of it.

• From Wild (2012)

  Down, down, down I went on that last full day of hiking, descending four thousand feet in just over sixteen miles, the creeks and streams and trailside seeps I crossed and paralleled going down and down too. I could feel the river pulling me like a great magnet below and to the north. I could feel myself coming to the end of things. I stopped to spend the night on the banks of Eagle Creek. It was five o’clock and I was only six miles away from Cascade Locks. I could have been in town by dark, but I didn’t want to finish my trip that way. I wanted to take my time, to see the river and the Bridge of the Gods in the bright light of day. That evening I sat next to Eagle Creek watching the water rush over the rocks. My feet were killing me from the long descent. Even after all this way, with my body now stronger than it had ever been and would likely ever be, hiking on the PCT still hurt. New blisters had formed on my toes in places that had gone soft from the relatively few extreme descents throughout Oregon. I put my fingers delicately to them, soothing them with my touch. Another toenail looked like it was finally going to come off. I gave it a gentle tug and it was in my hand, my sixth. I had only four intact toenails left. The PCT and I weren’t tied anymore. The score was 4–6, advantage trail. I slept on my tarp, not wanting to shelter myself on that last night, and woke before dawn to watch the sun rise over Mount Hood. It was really over, I thought. There was no way to go back, to make it stay. There was never that. I sat for a long while, letting the light fill the sky, letting it expand and reach down into the trees. I closed my eyes and listened hard to Eagle Creek. It was running to the Columbia River, like me. I seemed to float the four miles to the little parking area near the head of the Eagle Creek Trail, buoyed by a pure, unadulterated emotion that can only be described as joy. I strolled through the mostly empty parking lot and passed the restrooms, then followed another trail that would take me the two miles into Cascade Locks. The trail turned sharply to the right, and before me was the Columbia River, visible through the chain-link fence that bordered the trail to set it off from Interstate 84 just below. I stopped and grasped the fence and stared. It seemed like a miracle that I finally had the river in my sights, as if a newborn baby had just slipped finally into my palms after a long labor. That glimmering dark water was more beautiful than anything I’d imagined during all those miles I’d hiked to reach it.

• From The Spiral Staircase: My Climb Out of Darkness (2004)

  I had never enjoyed anything so much. Before my neurologist had found the right medication for me, I would have found the tough schedule almost impossible, but now I felt wholly well— better, indeed, than I had felt for years. It was all such fun: hurtling along in the front seat of the van through glorious scenery, eating lunch beside the Sea of Galilee, free to think my own thoughts while the crew chatted with one another in Hebrew, or having the whole Acropolis to ourselves in Athens so that we could film the sun going down behind the Parthenon. To Joel’s surprise, I bonded with the crew, who treated me with huge affection, almost like a mascot. And increasingly there was a mounting excitement: against all the odds, we were creating a good product. “It is a religious program in only one respect,” Joel said at the very end of the production. “It is a miracle!”

• From A Theology for the Social Gospel (1918)

  The worth of personality, freedom, growth, love, solidarity, service, — these are marks of the Kingdom of God. In Christ’s thought the Kingdom of God was to come from heaven to earth, so that God’s will would be done on earth as it is in heaven. So then it exists in heaven; it is to be created on earth. All true joys on earth come from partial realizations of the Kingdom of ESCHATOLOGY 239 God ; the joy that awaits us will consist in living within the full realization of the Kingdom. Our labour for the Kingdom here will be our preparation for our par- ticipation hereafter. The degree in which we have absorbed the laws of the Kingdom into our character will determine our qualification for the life of heaven. If in any respect we have not been saved from the King- dom of Evil, we shall be aliens and beginners in the Kingdom of God. Thus heaven and earth are to be parts of the same realm. Spiritual influences come to us; spiritual personalities go out from us. When our life is in God it has continuity. CHAPTER XIX THE SOCIAL GOSPEL AND THE ATONEMENT To countless Christian minds the doctrine of the atone- ment has been the marrow of theology. We have re- served it for the close of our discussion. Does the social gospel contain anything which would verify, interpret, quicken, or expand that doctrine? And what form of the doctrine would best express and support the social gospel ? The theological interpretation of the death of Christ has a long and varied history. It will aid us in estimat- ing our modem needs if we pass it briefly in review. To the first disciples the death of their Lord was an astonishing catastrophe, an unexpected, terrible, and ap- parently impossible outcome of the work of the Messiah. For that very reason they craved an explanation of the event which would interpret it as a fundamental part of God’s plan. Their method was to prove that it had been foretold throughout the Scripture and foreshadowed by typology. Paul was the first to give the death of our Lord a really central position in a theological system. But the early Church never appropriated or utilized more than a few leading ideas of Paul. The most popu- lar and elaborate theological explanation was the theory that Christ’s death was a ransom paid to Satan. By the fall the human race became subject to Satan, and he had 240 THE SOCIAL GOSPEL AND THE ATONEMENT 24I

• From Bold Move

  The road back is going to be long and arduous! How can I possibly have anything that is joyful in this domain? So I asked myself, What would my best friend say in this case? (Shifting in practice!), and arrived at: “Just because you are out of shape now , it doesn’t mean that you have never, ever experienced joy when you focused on your health.” Saying that to myself eased my discomfort and allowed me to finally complete this exercise. Here is an excerpt: It is an early morning in April, Diego rushes into my bedroom after waking up, demanding that we go do the Peloton (not to worry: he doesn’t have a Peloton—he has a little stationary bike next to mine). I look at him puzzled. Exercise at 7 a.m., just like that? But he tells me that he and David had been exercising daily while I was in Los Angeles for a business trip, and he wanted me to exercise too. “But wait, I want coffee,” I protest, but it is clear that I am losing this battle. So Peloton it is! We walk to the basement where the Peloton is, and he is elated. He goes on to lift weights (he has some toy weights we had given him for Christmas). Looking in the mirror, Diego smiles at himself, saying how he was going to get stronger. His smile brings me joy, I feel alive, like I could just hug him forever in that moment. But he quickly persists, demanding that I exercise with him. So I slowly jump on the Peloton (at first dreading it), but Diego’s genuine love for exercise in that moment carries me forward. I put on my favorite Latin ride, the music is loud and alive, and the ride quickly gets to “La Bamba” . . . Diego is now dancing, I am smiling and riding, but actually focused on how the music and my son make me feel . . . alive, present, connected. Diego loves the music, and the songs in this ride often make him dance. Twenty minutes go by, almost in a blink of an eye. I am sweaty, happy, and feeling amazing. As I reflected about health, and that morning in particular, I realized that what I really care about in the domain of health is connection with myself and my family, a sense of well-being, and also responsibility as a parent. I realized that by exercising often and demonstrating care for my health, I am also modeling a healthy life for Diego, about whom I obviously care a great deal. It cemented in me that I want to have a life where health is a priority.

• From Bold Move

  One of these joyful experiences was recording a course on managing anxiety with Dan Harris. I had met Dan when I was on his podcast in March 2020. The topic for that episode was anxiety, and if you were to look back at the date of the podcast, you’ll recognize it as the beginning of the pandemic in the US. Neither one of us knew that day that the world would effectively shut down mere days after our recording. Dan was lovely to work with, and about a year later he invited me to record a course with him for his app Ten Percent Happier . The process of developing the course with his team was great, but I especially enjoyed working with Dan. Anyone familiar with his interviews would know that he is an incredible interviewer, and the process of creating the course for him was thoroughly enjoyable. Above all, I noticed how happy I felt throughout this process. It felt as though I was hardly exerting myself, and yet the work was excellent (if I do say so myself). The experience of flow state can be a major indicator in helping you find your true values, because that is when you are acting in line with something that really matters to you, and that is why you may experience less stress during such periods. In fact, next time you come out of a flow state, ask yourself: Forget about stress. Was I even aware of myself during that time? When I looked behind the pain at my job versus the contentment I felt when working with Dan, I realized that I needed to do something like that again, and that something became the book you now hold in your hands. Writing this book has been the most transformational piece of my working life, as it allowed me to massively realign my daily actions with my values. While I am not sure how the world will receive it, I am proud to have put down in these pages my own bold journey from poverty to Harvard to striking out on my own to become an author. As you Align your life with your values, fear will almost certainly show up. But being bold is not the same as being fearless. Being bold is living a life that is driven by what matters to you the most, no matter what, and doing so becomes one of the most beautiful rewards imaginable. To bring it all together, I want to close this book with another piece of my grandmother’s wisdom, as I think she had the perfect recipe for living a bold life. In one of our many afternoon coffee chats, we were discussing change and how most people go to extreme lengths to avoid it.

• From Bestiary (2020)

  A tree and a girl were summoned the same way. In this language, Mrs. Kersaint said, trees are assigned to different countries, bodies to different ways of being buried. We got in trouble with the other teacher for never using plurals. When I said that Chinese words have no plural forms, she said, Then how do you know if it’s one thing or many? I said, One thing is always many. Ben got in trouble for not capitalizing the names of countries and people. When the teacher asked her why she’d chosen a boy name, she said, I liked Ben because it’s already short for something. This way, none of you can abbreviate me further. In class, she asked questions like, How long ago was the sea salted? I was the only one who answered: So long ago, Nuwa was the one who did it. Because otherwise the sea would go bad like milk. Salt is what preserves it. She misremembered idioms: I’ve got butterflies in my bladder. Or: A bird in the hand is worth more in the soup. We misspelled all the words in our essays on purpose, baiting our teachers so we’d get a time-out together. We wrote: Baba’s a good sky and mama’s a good kook We be leave in rein carnation We were born hear so you cant depart us. All our essays were returned red: IMPROVE YOUR GRAMMAR. IMPROVE YOUR SPELLING. IMPLORE YOUR GODS. WE’LL SHOW YOU A SENTENCE. I mimicked the way all of Ben’s sentences ended with -er, a purr that made me feel feline, foreign to myself. Her accent was an axe: mother abbreviated to moth, country to cunt. There was a game where the teacher pointed at pictures of objects on a projector screen and asked us for their names—apple, bus, cat, doctor—but Ben had her own vocabulary, made mostly of the sounds different bird flocks produced when they passed over the parking lot. The sound they make, Ben told me, depended on the density of the flock and whether or not they were native to the weather here. She could hear any sound once and continue the strand of it, threading the sound through her left ear and pulling it out of her mouth. At noon, she walked up to me and stole my reduced-lunch hot dog bun, ripping it into confetti-sized pieces and feeding it to the crows. They walked up to the bench and pecked at her ankles, opening their beaks as if to name her.

• From Best Erotica & Sexual Deviance Narratives Ever Written (2024)

  "Thereupon he began to ride a Priapean race with masterly skill; from an amble he went on to a trot, then to a gallop, lifting himself on the tips of his toes, and coming down again quicker and ever quicker. At every movement he writhed and wriggled, so that I felt myself pulled, gripped, pumped, and sucked at the same time. "A rigid tension of the nerves took place. My heart was beating in such a way that I could hardly breathe. All the arteries seemed ready to burst. My skin was parched with a glowing heat; a subtle fire coursed through my veins instead of blood. "Still he went on quicker and quicker. I writhed in a delightful torture. I was melting away, but he never stopped till he had quite drained me of the last drop of life-giving fluid there was in me. My eyes were swimming in their sockets. I felt my heavy lids half close themselves; an unbearable voluptuousness of mingled pain and pleasure, shattered my body and blasted my very soul; then everything waned in me. He clasped me in his arms, and I swooned away whilst he was kissing my cold and languid lips. CHAPTER VII"ON the morrow the events of the night before seemed like a rapturous dream." "Still you must have felt rather seedy, after the many——" "Seedy? No, not at all. Nay, I felt the 'clear keen joyance' of the lark that loves, but 'ne'er knew love's sad satiety.' Hitherto, the pleasure that women had given me had always jarred upon my nerves. It was, in fact, 'a thing wherein we feel there is a hidden want.' Lust was now the overflowing of the heart and of the mind—the pleasurable harmony of all the senses. "The world that had hitherto seemed to me so bleak, so cold, so desolate, was now a perfect paradise; the air, although the barometer had fallen considerably, was crisp, light, and balmy; the sun—a round, furbished, copper disc, and more like a red Indian's backside than fair Apollo's effulgent face—was shining gloriously for me; the murky fog itself, that brought on dark night at three o'clock in the afternoon, was only a hazy mist that veiled all that was ungainly, and rendered Nature fantastic, and home so snug and cosy. Such is the power of imagination. "You laugh! Alas! Don Quixote was not the only man who took windmills for giants, or barmaids for princesses. If your sluggish-brained, thick-pated costermonger never falls into such a trance as to mistake apples for potatoes; if your grocer never turns hell into heaven, or heaven into hell—well, they are sane people who weigh everything in the well-poised scale of reason. Try and shut them up in nutshells, and you will see if they would deem themselves monarchs of the world. They, unlike Hamlet, always see things as they really are. I never did. But then, you know, my father died mad.

• From The Liars' Club: A Memoir (1995)

  Dillard and Fay were in the truck cab with their black mantillas on like they were heading to six A.M. mass. Even Junior and Joe had been stuck into white shirts with clip-on bow ties. They squatted on the flatbed’s built-in toolbox. Their two blond heads were slicked flat with Butch Rose Wax. I could hear their laughing over the truck’s rumbling muffler. When Mother heard Lecia tease me about it in the kitchen, she decided to get out of bed. She threw the bedcovers off her legs, a gesture we’d all but deleted from our memory banks, and said it was a lot of horseshit caring if people saw you naked because we were all naked under our clothes anyway, but goddamn if she’d listen to me caterwaul about those boneheaded Dillards anymore. She was gonna seal over the windows so God Herself (she made a point of the female pronoun) couldn’t see in. Her method for this was wacky. First, she took a cheese grater and made crayon shavings in all different colors. She sprinkled these between sheets of wax paper and ironed the paper together till the crayon melted. With sable brushes and Elmer’s glue, Lecia and I set to work pasting these squares of paper and color over all extant windows, an effect Mother likened to stained glass. It was Mother’s first enthusiasm in a long time, and we pounced on it. Lecia started racing with herself right off. She timed the process to see how fast she could paste over a whole window, then tried to beat that time. Not long after we blanked out the windows, I came home from school and found the front door open and the screen ajar. That was weird, not only given our fierce need for privacy, but on account of all the roaches and june bugs, lizards and mosquitos down there. The semitropical climate could also send a spotty green-black mildew climbing your whitewashed walls if the full damp of the outdoors somehow got inside. You couldn’t stop it entirely, but nobody left the door wide to it. In my head, I go back to that open door. My penny loafers outside it are the color of oxblood and scuffed and run down on the inside from how pigeon-toed I am. I can almost feel the thump of my plaid book satchel on my right hip. It was hot that day, the air thick as gauze. I bounded up the front steps after school having just gotten 100 on my spelling test. That grade barely beat out my class rival for the best grade, Peggy Fontenot, who’d lost two points for misspelling “said.” I’d personally graded her paper, and my heart leapt up like a roe when I saw it spelled “sed.” I had the winning test in my hand with the gold star that said my grade was highest.

• From Bold Move

  While I think this book provides many of the skills necessary to live that bold life, I also know that at times we need to see a mental health professional, and I often think of them as coaches. So just as a world-class athlete might need a coach from time to time to help refine a skill, you may find yourself looking for a nudge in the right direction as well. Never forget that to be bold when it comes to Approaching is to welcome a life that is always “comfortably uncomfortable.” In my life, I’ve found that it is within this tension that the real pleasures of life are to be found. Finally, we can’t forget about our values. When I first started writing this book, I honestly had no idea the extent to which I had been avoiding living a values-driven life. I had totally ignored my own internal compass and was following the path that I felt the world at large had dictated for me. No one in particular was to blame for my blind approach, and no one was forcing me to live a certain way. But when you are consumed by your profession, your culture, and your bubble, it can often feel like there is only one path to success (however you’re defining it), and for me, success meant pushing myself harder and harder to follow some vague sense of ambition. For many years, this definition of success worked out for me, but at a certain point it stopped working and I responded by avoiding this new reality. I often share with my clients that facing reality does not mean you have to like reality. But no matter how painful it is to face, ignoring reality is just another form of avoidance. In a strange way, I am thankful for some challenges I faced at work in the past two years, because it was these conflicts that became the wake-up call for me to deeply revisit my own values. If you look behind the pain and interrogate it by asking yourself, What would I have to not care about for this not to hurt? you might be able to see the value that is being violated. As I shared with you, trust is something I need if I am to work with someone, and this ended up being the value that was being compromised in my professional life. That was the kiss of death. As I searched for a more values-driven life, I started paying closer attention to my moments of joy. What was I doing when I felt the best? Who was I with? What brought me to that flow state?

• From The Spiral Staircase: My Climb Out of Darkness (2004)

  By the time I left, my Israeli colleagues had decided that I was worth talking to after all, and were astonished when I had to refuse their invitations to dinner or drinks because I was already engaged in East Jerusalem. Some of them, I gathered, had never been into the Arab neighborhoods. But there was a new cordiality and respect. We had acquired one of the richest types of friendship, which comes from a submerging of self in a common project. I went home for a month to produce a final draft of the scripts, and when I returned I was greeted with enormous enthusiasm. Danny picked me up at the airport, this time talking volubly throughout the journey and telling me all the office gossip. “Wake up, everyone!” he yelled as we tore down the hill into Jerusalem. “Karen’s back in town!” It was just as well that I had never filmed a television series before, because I did not realize how unorthodox the shooting schedule was. We had no money. Channel 4 had given the film company a hundred thousand dollars, which sounded a lot to me, but which I now know was a laughably inadequate sum for a six-part series. The Israelis had agreed to this absurd contract because they saw it as their passport to British television. We could not afford to shoot new footage, and we had to cobble film together from the company’s archives. There was no TelePrompTer, only the most rudimentary lighting, and when we went to film in Italy and Greece, the crew provided their services gratis and treated it as a vacation. The inadequate budget affected my contribution in two ways. First, there was simply not enough money to do more than a couple of takes for any one of my presentations. Usually Joel and Yossi, the cameraman (also known as “One-Take Jo”), had to be satisfied with the first attempt. That meant that I had to be word perfect, and make as few fluffs as possible. Secondly, because we had so little footage, my own pieces to camera had to be much longer than is customary in a documentary, so that we could use up more time. And the schedule was tight. We rushed helterskelter from one location to another to shoot as much as possible before the light failed.

• From Worried about Everything Because I Pray about Nothing (2022)

  over six hundred. It was the power behind the church in Bogotá and other churches around the world. I heard God say simply, “Chad, this year, add prayer to the church.” Our church has great people, great leaders, great ministries. We were doing many good things for people in our community. Now, though, it was time to grow in prayer. Both as a church and as individuals, God was asking us to meet Him and to know Him better through prayer. The next week, I taught our staff meeting on the topic of prayer. A couple months later, I started a sermon series about prayer. We also created a prayer card to hand out to our church (it’s included in the back of this book). We ramped up our regular, focused prayer times like never before. Now I’m writing a book about prayer. Unexpectedly, yes—but enthusiastically. My focus in these pages will be how prayer can help you navigate the stress, uncertainty, and blind curves in all areas of life. We will look at how prayer involves God in every facet of our day-to-day existence, including our emotions, finances, faith, ministry, and more. I’m a pastor, but first, I’m a husband and father and neighbor and friend and boss and Lakers fan and overall normal human being. I’ve found that prayer has a place in all the spheres of my life. Especially the Lakers sphere. (Come on, if you don’t pray for your team, are you even a real fan?) The same goes for you. Regardless of your age, gender, financial picture, marital status, career aspirations, favorite sports team, or any other variable, you need prayer. You will come to love prayer (if you don’t already!). Prayer connects you to God, and being connected to Him changes everything. As you read, keep in mind that terms like anxiety and fear are used across a wide spectrum of behavior, emotion, and mental health. The last thing I want to do is imply that I have easy answers for problems that are beyond my knowledge or training.

• From Worried about Everything Because I Pray about Nothing (2022)

  TWELVE The cycle of prayer When I was a child, we couldn’t afford a VCR. If you didn’t grow up in the eighties, you can’t know the full emotional impact of that statement. Today you can stream episodes of your favorite series on your watch while you’re in the bathroom. Back then, though, options were far more limited, and a VCR was the gateway to childhood happiness. You could record things for later, watch the same movies over and over, or rent movies to watch with your friends—it was technological heaven. One day, at a farmers’ market, there was a raffle to win a VCR. I begged my mom to purchase a ticket because I knew that was my only shot at getting one. Honestly, there was very little chance of getting her to buy a raffle ticket either, but at least I could try. I don’t know if my mom secretly wanted a VCR or if she just couldn’t resist my pleas, but she bought a ticket. The drawing wasn’t for a few days, so every morning at breakfast, she would pull the ticket out and we would ask God for a VCR. My mom used the opportunity to teach me to pray and to have faith. She would quote Scriptures about prayer and encourage me to trust God. I’ll never forget the evening our home phone rang. I waited anxiously while my mom answered it. She started freaking out on the phone, and in that moment, I knew we had won the raffle. Praying a few days for a VCR might seem like a short time to wait and a small thing to pray for. But for a kid, it was everything. That experience marked me, and it led me to believe God for crazy requests in prayer. It also taught me the value of persevering in prayer. Not just praying once, but persisting. Not giving up, but pressing in and pressing through.

• From Bold Move

  Believe it or not, it’s actually quite hard to formulate a rational plan when you’re seconds away from tearing someone’s head off. It also depends on how triggered the client is feeling. For Oliver, waiting even three minutes to address a subordinate’s error could feel like a lifetime, but when it came to anger he felt toward his own family, waiting three times as long felt easier. Finally, DBT also suggests that you can choose the most extreme opposite action, which in this case would be to go out of your way to be kind or to try to understand the person you’re angry with. Oliver looked at me like I had three heads when I suggested this. “You want me to be kind when I am angry?” “Yes!” “How would that even work? It’s impossible!” “Well, let’s take your wife. I know you love her very much even when you’re angry at her, so what is one kind thing you could say or do toward her in those moments?” Oliver looked at me skeptically. “Oliver, don’t strain yourself here. I’m just asking you to say something kind about your wife.” “Well, she’s an excellent cook, for one.” “Okay, then perhaps if you’re feeling upset about eating later than usual, maybe instead of raising your voice and getting sarcastic, you could say something nice to her about her cooking.” “But isn’t that fake?” “Not if you mean it. What do you like about her food?” He went on to describe in great detail all the amazing meals she prepares, and as he did, he relaxed. I pointed this out to him and explained that when we engage in new behaviors, they activate other emotions. When we smile at someone, or praise someone, our physiology actually changes.12 When we engage with kindness, we feel happier.13 When we engage in violent acts, we feel angry.14 When you consider that anger is really just a pattern of thoughts that hook us into acting on them, it’s easy to see how if we just bring mindfulness to our anger and take control away from our emotions, the actual feeling of anger is rather short-lived. The only way to stay angry is by thinking about how angry you are and then responding to it with angry and unhinged behavior. It’s fine to live that way if that is your choice, but I doubt that anyone reading this wants to go around being yanked in whatever direction their thoughts and feelings dictate. It’s one thing for a dog to go wild barking at a squirrel or a passing dog, but quite another for any of us to spend years of our lives making our loved ones miserable.

• From Worried about Everything Because I Pray about Nothing (2022)

  NINE Get in the car Prayer and power When we first moved to LA to start Zoe Church, we were a one-car family. And by that, I mean Julia and the kids had one car, and I had my Uber app. That was fine at first, but after a few months, I really started turning to God. My prayers usually came from the back seat of those Ubers, partly because some of them drove like they were in a hurry not to get to my destination but to meet Jesus face-to-face right then, and partly because I simply prefer to drive myself. It’s more efficient, more comfortable, and more economical. We couldn’t afford another vehicle, so I would tell God, “I need you to buy me a car.” Those were my exact words. I wasn’t demanding. I was informing. Obviously, I wasn’t telling God something He didn’t already know, but the Bible tells us to ask, seek, and knock. It reminds us that God knows our desires and responds to our petitions. The more I rode in Ubers, the greater my desire grew, and the more frequent those petitions became. This went on for months, but I didn’t give up. I knew we were supposed to have another vehicle, and somehow God was going to make a way. One day, out of the blue, a friend texted me. He was a pastor in Rancho Cucamonga. He told me his father had just called him and asked him to give me a message: He had been praying that morning, and the Holy Spirit told him to buy me a car! He said, “Choose any car you’d like, and we will buy it for you.”