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 The Swimming-Pool Library (1988)

  This evening, as he was much brighter, I sat with Taha in close & utterly irregular comradeship & had him tell me about his family. I even told him a bit about mine, until he said that being British I must know Mr Mills, a missionary apparently, who comes from New York, & I recognised that our understandings were a trifle out of kilter. Finally I told him the story of Prince Ahmed; it was the one I had learnt most recently to tell after dinner, & a strange amusement & entrancement came over his features to hear me recite to him in my painfully correct Arabic, as if he had been some dignitary. But then the story too held him like a revelation. I made use of various props for the three magical gifts of the princes: for the flying carpet the old rush mat on the floor, for the spying-tube which showed whatever one desired my field-glasses, & for the apple which cured all ills the lime on the tray with my drink. He laughed with that delight which children show at certain well-worn jokes whose very repetition is a guarantee of pleasure & security, & I capered around, squatting on the mat, peering out of the window through the binoculars—though I saw not the Princess Nural-Nihar but birds coming down into the nim-trees, a stupendous sunset above the rocks, a girl loping home with a dog at her heels—& then wafting the lime under my nose & rolling my eyes as if it smelt divine. But all the gifts were of equal wondrousness, I explained, sitting solemnly down on the edge of the bed: and then, as I went on about the shooting of the arrows, & how the Princess wd be given to him who shot the furthest, the most exquisite thing happened. Taha slid his hand shyly across the blanket & clasped my own. I scarcely faltered as I spoke of Ahmed’s arrow, which going so far was assumed to have vanished so that he lost the Princess to his brother Ali, but I felt a squeezing in my chest & throat & hardly dared look at him as, all unconsciously, I made our two hands more comfortable together, interweaving his long fingers with my own. By a simple gesture I wd never have dared to make & without words which neither of us cd have said, he conveyed his trust in me, & holding my hand held on to a simple faith that all wd be well with Ahmed, wretched though his current state now was. And when the others had all turned home, I went on, saying that the arrow wd never be found & that they must make haste for the wedding-feast of Prince Ali & the Princess Nur-al-Nihar, Ahmed went on alone & lo he encountered the radiant fairy Peri-Banou & fell in love with her & married her & lived in happiness with her all the days of his life. Then Hassan was scuffling & waiting at the door, & Taha with less than innocence drew his hand away—

• From Four Days to Glory: Wrestling with the Soul of the American Heartland (2005)

  He grinds out the most difficult 3–2 victory imaginable, basically riding out Ressler after gaining the lead in the third period, hanging on, denying the Cascade kid a chance to get an escape or late reversal that might swing the balance of the match. It is a good and tenuous victory, almost the film negative of his brother’s pummeling of Moorman. Alex Ressler fights to the final seconds, desperately trying to keep his win streak intact. In the end, Nick is just a little tougher, a little more technically sound. He never does allow himself to be driven into the mat. He takes that 3–2 lead and carries it home, the North-Linn fans roaring their approval as the final, seemingly endless half-minute of wrestling time winds the match to a close. In the end, Nick gets his victory, and Tyler Burkle wraps up a typically smashing day with a pin in the finals at 152, and North-Linn advances eight wrestlers to the district tournament at Midland-Wyoming. The Lynx are announced as the team winners of the sectional meet. Bridgewater stands off to one side, watching his individual champions take the podium to receive their medals, and he is informed that by virtue of winning here, the North-Linn team will host a dual against Belle-Plain on the following Tuesday, with the right to advance to the March state dual tournament on the line. Someone mentions that the basketball team is supposed to play a home game Tuesday night in the gym. For the first time in forever, that team will have to give way to the wrestlers. “Tough,” Bridgewater says with a broad smile. “It had to happen sometime.” It happens out here, on a Saturday that goes from nearly balmy to spitting snow in the span of the six or seven hours that it has taken for North-Linn to work this magic inside the Starmont gym. And some of the day does have a magical feel. Nick’s match, in fact, is the one that produces for him the strangest sensation of the season; even after giving up a reversal to Ressler in the second period, “I never even felt in trouble for one minute,” Nick says, shaking his head at the thought. “It was weird. I felt the whole time like I was going to win, even though I knew how close the score was.” And it is close, as close as the score would make it seem. It is exactly close enough to temper Doug’s praise, though it’s obvious that the father has just experienced something like a state of grace while watching both his sons perform to their capabilities in critical moments. “It’s too early to celebrate—three-two for Nick is too close,” Doug says, watching his sons accept their congratulations. “But he’s got it in his head now that he can do it.” It might just be enough. CHAPTER 13Moving DayThe district tournament format in Iowa is as stark and unforgiving as the landscape itself in February.

• From Four Days to Glory: Wrestling with the Soul of the American Heartland (2005)

  Telgenhoff may stand as the most frustrating wrestler in the room to his teammates and coaches; they see the huge potential but not yet the results. But it’s clear that Bryan is going to have to want success maybe 50 percent more than he did this season. He tells Jay that he is pondering entering some summer tournaments. Jay says, “That would be so huge for him. It would help a lot.” So there are all these kids to root for, kids like Colin Wolf, the 215-pounder who could return next year and form a core of solid seniors alongside Jon Obst and Alex Gansen and Casey Dunning and John Monroe. It’s a new set of names, you see? There are stories next year for Linn-Mar yet to be told. Jim and Carol know every kid, every family. They know where all the stories are going. The thing is, Jay Borschel’s story is almost played out. What is a parent to do about that? Carol takes her rose and walks back up into the stands. She is too lovely and too aware of the moment to do anything but smile radiantly, and then she commences cheering and gyrating and punching the air with her fists, almost wrestling an entire match herself as she goes through her usual motions and emotions of watching the Lions down there on the mat. She does this because it is what she does, after all, and when it comes Jay’s time to wrestle, even though it is obvious to everyone in the room that he will win easily, Carol wrenches herself into impossible positions in the bleachers all the same, and shouts instructions and encouragements that don’t quite make it all the way down out of the air and onto the floor of the gym, and screams with wild happiness when Jay inevitably concludes the Home portion of his high school life by pinning his opponent from Cedar Rapids Washington, a kid named Alex Grafft who wrestles his tail off and still winds up whipped. It is an appropriate ending to a career spent mostly beating people up in front of cozy crowds of devoted onlookers, people who really get it. Carol videotapes the match so that it will last forever, which is really the final line of defense for the parent who is fighting that losing battle against time and childhood. She videotapes her son the magnificent wrestler for one last time inside Linn-Mar High School, because she can take that one with her, and hold it, in the moments when other people go away and there is no one left inside the gymnasium but other people’s children, and other people’s stories. Save it for a rainy day. It will be worth gold then. At times, it appears that wrestling runs in a direction counter to the rest of sport. In other endeavors—football, distance running, swim competitions—coaches often shy away from full-throated work outs as they approach the big finish or the championship game.

• From What Belongs to You (2016)

  Mitko had told me that the hotel was close to the sea, and as I turned from our street into the main plaza, I gasped at the horizon of water framed grandly by the pillars at the entrance of the Sea Garden. I quickly got lost in this large park, wandering paths that seemed to lead toward the water only to veer away. I loved the silence of the morning, and also the solitude that seemed part of the design of the place, or rather the rhythm it established of solitude and conviviality, the narrow, wooded paths giving out suddenly onto plazas with benches gathered at observatory points over the sea, which was endless and gray and pierced ceaselessly by gulls. After the desolation of the landscape I had seen the day before, I was moved to be in a place designed so clearly with beauty in mind. The very layout of the paths, with their apparent aimlessness, seemed to rebuke the bare utility of the buildings we had passed on the bus. The park was built shortly after liberation, and as I wandered I came upon statues of revolutionaries and writers placed here and there along the paths. Some of their names were familiar to me, but not many of their stories, so that it was like walking a peculiarly lyrical account of the past, free of the usual narratives of triumph and loss. There were signs, too, in the darkest and most overgrown eddies, of the park’s other life, secret and ludic: cigarette butts and bottles and the occasional distended dry husk of a condom. They must have been left there the previous summer, when these paths would have been a carnival, filled with vacationers from across Europe, the beautiful young fueled by night and heat and the ever-present sea. It was the sea I longed for now, after so much misdirection and delay. Again and again the staircases I encountered leading down from the garden’s observatories to the beach were cordoned off, in such crumbling disrepair as to prevent safe passage. I was aware of time passing and knew I should get back to the hotel, to Mitko who might be waking to find me gone.

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

  GREGORY. (super Ezech. lib. i. Hom. i. 8.) She was touched with the spirit of prophecy at once, both as to the past, present, and future. She knew that Mary had believed the promises of the Angel; she perceived when she gave her the name of mother, that Many was carrying in her womb the Redeemer of mankind; and when she foretold that all things would be accomplished, she saw also what was to follow in the future. 1:4646. And Mary said, My soul doth magnify the Lord. AMBROSE. As evil came into the world by a woman, so also is good introduced by women; and so it seems not without meaning, that both Elisabeth prophesies before John, and Mary before the birth of the Lord. But it follows, that as Mary was the greater person, so she uttered the fuller prophecy. BASIL. (in Psalm 33) For the Virgin, with lofty thoughts and deep penetration, contemplates the boundless mystery, the further she advances, magnifying God; And Mary said, My soul doth magnify the Lord. GREEK EXPOSITOR. (Athanasius.) As if she said, Marvellous things hath the Lord declared that He will accomplish in my body, but neither shall my soul be unfruitful before God. It becomes me to offer Him the fruit also of my will, for inasmuch as I am obedient to a mighty miracle, am I bound to glorify Him who performs His mighty works in me. ORIGEN. Now if the Lord could neither receive increase or decrease, what is this that Mary speaks of, My soul doth magnify (magnificat) the Lord? But if I consider that the Lord our Saviour is the image of the invisible God, and that the soul is created according to His image, so as to be an image of an image, then I shall see plainly, that as after the manner of those who are accustomed to paint images, each one of us forming his soul after the image of Christ, makes it great or little, base or noble, after the likeness of the original; so when I have made my soul great in thought, word, and deed, the image of God is made great, and the Lord Himself, whose image it is, is magnified in my soul. 1:4747. And my spirit hath rejoiced in God my Saviour. BASIL. (ubi sup.) The first-fruit of the Spirit is peace and joy. Because then the holy Virgin had drunk in all the graces of the Spirit, she rightly adds, And my spirit hath leaped for joy. (exultavit.) She means the same thing, soul and spirit. But the frequent mention of leaping for joy in the Scriptures implies a certain bright and cheerful state of mind in those who are worthy. Hence the Virgin exults in the Lord with an unspeakable springing (and bounding) of the heart for joy, and in the breaking forth into utterance of a noble affection. It follows, in God my Saviour.

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

  AUGUSTINE. (Tr. xiii) But wherefore doth he stand? Because he falleth not, by reason of his humility. A sure ground this to stand upon, Whose shoe’s latchet I am not worthy to unloose. Again; He standeth, and heareth Him. So then if he falleth, he heareth Him not. Therefore the friend of the Bridegroom ought to stand and hear, i. e. to abide in the grace which he hath received, and to hear the voice in which he rejoiceth. I rejoice not, he saith, because of my own voice, but because of the Bridegroom’s voice. I rejoice; I in hearing, He in speaking; I am the ear, He the Word. For he who guards the bride or wife of his friend, takes care that she love none else; if he wish to be loved himself in the stead of his friend, and to enjoy her who was entrusted to him, how detestable doth he appear to the whole world? Yet many are the adulterers I see, who would fain possess themselves of the spouse who was bought at so great a price, and who aim by their words at being loved themselves instead of the Bridegroom. CHRYSOSTOM. (Hom. xxix. 3) Or thus; The expression, which standeth, is not without meaning, but indicates that his part is now over, and that for the future he must stand and listen. This is a transition from the parable to the real subject. For having introduced the figure of a bride and bridegroom, he shews how the marriage is consummated, viz. by word and doctrine. Faith cometh by hearing, and hearing by the word of God. (Rom. 10:17) And since the things he had hoped for had come to pass, he adds, This my joy therefore is fulfilled; i. e. The work which I had to do is finished, and nothing more is left, that I can do. THEOPHYLACT. For which cause I rejoice now, that all men follow Him. For had the bride, i. e. the people, not come forth to meet the Bridegroom, then I, as the friend of the Bridegroom, should have grieved, AUGUSTINE. (Tr. xiv. c. 3) Or thus; This my Joy is fulfilled, i. e. my joy at hearing the Bridegroom’s voice. I have my gift; I claim no more, lest I lose that which I have received. He who would rejoice in himself, hath sorrow; but he who would rejoice in the Lord, shall ever rejoice, because God is everlasting. BEDE. He rejoiceth at hearing the Bridegroom’s voice, who knows that he should not rejoice in his own wisdom, but in the wisdom which God giveth him. Whoever in his good works seeketh not his own glory, or praise, or earthly gain, but hath his affections set on heavenly things; this man is the friend of the Bridegroom.

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

  37. And herein is that saving true, One soweth, and another reapeth. 38. I sent you to reap that whereon ye bestowed no labour: other men laboured, and ye are entered into their labours. CHRYSOSTOM. (Hom. xxxiv. 1) What is the will of the Father He now proceeds to explain: Say ye not, There are yet four months, and then cometh harvest? THEOPHYLACT. Now ye are expecting a material harvest. But I say unto you, that a spiritual harvest is at hand: Lift up your eyes, and look on the fields; for they are white already to harvest. He alludes to the Samaritans who are approaching. CHRYSOSTOM. (Hom. xxxiv. 2) He leads them, as his custom is, from low things to high. Fields and harvest here express the great number of souls, which are ready to receive the word. The eyes are both spiritual, and bodily ones, for they saw a great multitude of Samaritans now approaching. This expectant crowd he calls very suitably white fields. For as the corn, when it grows white, is ready for the harvest; so were these ready for salvation. But why does He not say this in direct language? Because by making use in this way of the objects around them, he gave greater vividness and power to His words, and brought the truth home to them; and also that His discourse might be more pleasant, and might sink deeper into their memories. AUGUSTINE. (Tr. xv. c. 32) He was intent now on beginning the work, and hastened to send labourers: And he that reapeth receiveth wages, and gathereth fruit unto life eternal, that both he that soweth and he that reapeth may rejoice together. CHRYSOSTOM. (Hom. xxxiv. 2) Again, He distinguishes earthly from heavenly things, for as above He said of the water, that he who drank of it should never thirst, so here He says, He that reapeth gathereth fruit unto life eternal; adding, that both he that soweth and he that reapeth may rejoice together. The Prophets sowed, the Apostles reaped, yet are not the former deprived of their reward. For here a new thing is promised; viz. that both sowers and reapers shall rejoice together. How different this from what we see here. Now he that soweth grieveth because he soweth for others, and he only that reapeth rejoiceth. But in the new state, the sower and reaper share the same wages. AUGUSTINE. (Tr. xv. c. 32) The Apostles and Prophets had different labours, corresponding to the difference of times; but both will attain to like joy, and receive together their wages, even eternal life.

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

  CHRYSOSTOM. (Hom. xxix. 2) And see; the very argument by which they thought to have overthrown Christ, To whom, thou barest witness, he turns against them; Ye yourselves bear me witness, that I said, I am not the Christ; as if he said, If ye think my witness true, ye must acknowledge Him more worthy of honour than myself. He adds, But that I was sent before Him; that is to say, I am a servant, and perform the commission of the Father which sent me; my witness is not from favour or partiality; I say that which was given me to say. BEDE. Who art thou then, since thou art not the Christ, and who is He to Whom thou bearest witness? John replies, He is the Bridegroom; I am the friend of the Bridegroom, sent to prepare the Bride for His approach: He that hath the Bride, is the Bridegroom. By the Bride he means the Church, gathered from amongst all nations; a Virgin in purity of heart, in perfection of love, in the bond of peace, in chastity of mind and body; in the unity of the Catholic faith; for in vain is she a virgin in body, who continueth not a virgin in mind. This Bride hath Christ joined unto Himself in marriage, and redeemed with the price of His own Blood. THEOPHYLACT. Christ is the spouse of every soul; the wedlock, wherein they are joined, is baptism; the place of that wedlock is the Church; the pledge of it, remission of sins, and the fellowship of the Holy Ghost; the consummation, eternal life; which those who are worthy shall receive. Christ alone is the Bridegroom: all other teachers are but the friends of the Bridegroom, as was the forerunner. The Lord is the giver of good; the rest are the despisers of His gifts. BEDE. His Bride therefore our Lord committed to His friend, i. e. the order of preachers, who should be jealous of her, not for themselves, but for Christ; The friend of the Bridegroom which standeth and heareth Him, rejoiceth greatly because of the Bridegroom’s voice. AUGUSTINE. (Tr. xiii. c. 12) As if He said, She is not My spouse. But dost thou therefore not rejoice in the marriage? Yea, I rejoice, he saith, because I am the friend of the Bridegroom. CHRYSOSTOM. (Hom. xxviii. 2) But how doth he who said above, Whose shoe’s latchet I am not worthy to unloose, call himself a friend? As an expression not of equality, but of excess of joy: (for the friend of the Bridegroom is always more rejoiced than the servant,) and also, as a condescension to the weakness of his disciples, who thought that he was pained at Christ’s ascendancy. For he hereby assures them, that so far from being pained, he was right glad that the Bride recognised her Spouse.

• From Four Days to Glory: Wrestling with the Soul of the American Heartland (2005)

  It was Jay who had witnessed that scene and said to himself, “That’s me,” and so it was. And in this moment, right in this place, you suddenly realize there is no friction, no antagonists or doubters. They cannot be found inside the Barn. There is only the state of Iowa and its abiding love of the sport—and its true champions. The one thing Jay probably never counted on was the idea that these people might appreciate the moment as much as he would. Go figure. And later, after the ceremonies and the love, after Dan Gable stops by for photographs, and the TV cameras and reporters’ notebooks go away, the Borschels’ extended family, twenty or so in all, heads out to a Bennigan’s near the Linn-Mar team hotel to celebrate. Jay is presented with a poster signed by Cael Sanderson congratulating him on the four titles. Food and drinks are ordered all around. And then Jay, the center of all of this, stands up and says, “Thank you,” and very quietly excuses himself, and hugs all the folks at the table; and he takes his ravaged body back to the hotel and passes out, leaving Jim and Carol and the coaches and their wives and girlfriends to carry on the party by themselves. They sit in the hotel hallway drinking Curt Hynek’s homemade Swisher moonshine; and inside, Jay sleeps, just as happy not to be part of it. Nobody has to tell him it’s a great thing he did, after all. Nobody has to tell him anything, unless perhaps they want to say that they wonder how he’ll do at the next level, with the next challenge. If they want to say that, Jay will listen. CHAPTER 15Making Things GrowThe day always starts at the same location. “We’ll meet at the gas station in Walker,” Brad Bridgewater had said the night before, by way of imparting the complete and total set of directions. Sure enough, all that is needed is to spot the sign that says WALKER while heading north on Troy Mills Road, and then to take that left turn. After a few miles of gently undulating corn fields and cattle pastures, there begin to pop up a few homes and then a few more; and finally, over there on the left-hand side of the road, there appears a little station with a couple of gas pumps and plenty of parking and hanging-around room. There’s a place inside where you can buy chips and soda, fast food, mostly. It is called Hocken’s, after Shannon Hocken’s grandfather, who has owned the place for a long while—decades, really. In one of those signs of the times out in the country, the Hockens have run out of people who want to keep the family business going, and they’re selling. The store and station will be called something else pretty soon, for the first time in most of these kids’ lives.

• From Another Country (1962)

  But Rufus was also a little afraid of him; there was that about him, in spite of his charm, which did not encourage intimacy. He was a great success with women, whom he treated with a large, affectionate contempt, and he was now on his fourth wife. He took Leona and Rufus by the arm and walked them to the edge of the party. “We might have us some real doings if these squares ever get out of here,” he said. “Stick around.” “How does it feel to be respectable?” Rufus grinned. “Shit. I been respectable all my life. It’s these respectable motherfuckers been doing all the dirt. They been stealing the colored folks blind, man. And niggers helping them do it.” He laughed. “You know, every time they give me one of them great big checks I think to myself, they just giving me back a little bit of what they been stealing all these years, you know what I mean?” He clapped Rufus on the back. “See that Little Eva has a good time.” The crowd was already thinning, most of the squares were beginning to drift away. Once they were gone, the party would change character and become very pleasant and quiet and private. The lights would go down, the music become softer, the talk more sporadic and more sincere. Somebody might sing or play the piano. They might swap stories of the laughs they’d had, gigs they’d played, riffs they remembered, or the trouble they’d seen. Somebody might break out with some pot and pass it slowly around, like the pipe of peace. Somebody, curled on a rug in a far corner of the room, would begin to snore. Whoever danced would dance more languorously, holding tight. The shadows of the room would be alive. Toward the very end, as morning and the brutal sounds of the city began their invasion through the wide French doors, somebody would go into the kitchen and break out with some coffee. Then they would raid the icebox and go home. The host and hostess would finally make it between their sheets and stay in bed all day. From time to time Rufus found himself glancing upward at the silver ball in the ceiling, always just failing to find himself and Leona reflected there. “Let’s go out to the balcony,” he said to her. She held out her glass. “Freshen my drink first?” Her eyes were now very bright and mischievous and she looked like a little girl. He walked to the table and poured two very powerful drinks. He went back to her. “Ready?” She took her glass and they stepped through the French doors. “Don’t let Little Eva catch cold!” the host called.

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

  Yet again, in the spirit of Ash-Wednesday, I found that relinquishing hope had released something within me. My love for reading came back in full. Even though I had started to respond to literature again, there had still been something rather dutiful and anxious in my approach. I would read a new novel desperately casting around for a clever thing to say about it that would impress my colleagues. But now that I had been ejected from academia so publicly, I no longer needed to impress anybody. It didn’t matter whether I came up with any brilliant insights or not. When I read a novel or a poem now, I no longer had an ulterior motive; I was no longer trying to use literature to promote myself, but was simply immersing myself in the text for its own sake—as, of course, I should have been doing all along. As a result, I found myself inundated with ideas and with the words to express them. The mind that I had bludgeoned into stupor had been given back to me. Again, I did not reflect upon this much at the time. I simply noted it as an irony. And yet my renewed delight in the written word was a gift and a grace. This too planted a seed of perception. Insight does not always come to order, and there will certainly be no renaissance if you are merely trying to “get” something for yourself. As soon as I stopped trying to exploit my literary skills to advance my career or enhance my reputation, I found that I was opening myself to the text, could lose myself in the beauty of the words and in the wisdom of the writer. It was a kind of ekstasis, an ecstasy that was not an exotic, tranced state of consciousness but, in the literal sense of the word, a going beyond the self. Then, in February 1976, just over a year since the viva that, I thought, had wrecked my life, I received the greatest gift of all, though at first it seemed like another setback.

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

  BEDE. (ubi sup.) Fitly too is this woman, who was the first to announce the joy of our Lord’s resurrection, said to have been cured of seven devils, lest any one worthily repenting of his sins should despair of pardon for what he had done, and that it might be shewn that where sin abounded, grace did much more abound. (Rom. 5:20) SEVERIANUS. (Chrysologus ubi sup.) Mary brings the news, not now as a woman, but in the person of the Church, so that, as above woman was silent, here as the Church she might bring tidings and speak. There follows, And they when they heard that he was alive and had been seen by her, believed not. GREGORY. (Hom. in Evan. xxix.) That the disciples were slow in believing our Lord’s resurrection was not so much a weakness of theirs as it is our strength. For the resurrection itself through their doubts was manifested by many proofs; and whilst we read and acknowledge them, what do we but become firmer through their doubting? There follows, After this he appeared in another form unto two of them as they walked and went to a farm house. AUGUSTINE. (ubi sup.) Luke relates the whole story respecting these two, one of whom was Cleophas, but Mark here touches but slightly upon it. That village of which Luke speaks may without absurdity be supposed to be what is here called a farm house, and indeed in some Greek manuscripts it is called the country. But by this name are understood not only villages, but also boroughs and country towns, because they are without the city, which is the head and mother of all the rest. That which Mark expresses by the Lord’s appearance in another form, is what Luke means by saying that their eyes were holden that they could not know him. For something was upon their eyes, which was allowed to remain there, until the breaking of bread. SEVERIANUS. (Chrysologus ubi sup.) But let no one suppose that Christ changed the form of His face by His resurrection, but the form is changed when of mortal it becomes immortal, so that this means that He gained a glorious countenance, not that He lost the substance of His countenance. But He was seen of two; because faith in the resurrection is to be preached and shewn to two people, that is, the Gentiles and the Jews. There follows, And they went and told it unto the residue, neither believed they them. How are we to understand the words of Mark compared with the account of Luke, that they then said, The Lord hath risen indeed, and hath appeared unto Simon, (Luke 24:34) if we do not suppose that there were some there who would not believe? THEOPHYLACT. For he does not say this of the eleven, but of some others, whom He calls the residue.

• From The Swimming-Pool Library (1988)

  It was wonderful though, additionally hot from weights, to plunge into the sombre coldness of the pool. No discipline made me feel more free, or contained me and delighted me within its own element so much as swimming. Even so, when Phil came down the spiral stairs—displaying (some well-judged vanity of his own) new trunks cut high on the hips, black behind and gold in front—I was happy to do things I normally deplore, getting in people’s way, doing handstands or swimming between his splayed and sturdy legs. For a while we gloomed Cousteau-like in the depths of the deep end, swivelling our goggled heads from side to side, searching for our locker keys which we had thrown in and left to settle, buffeted and wandering in the choppy water. Where the end wall met the floor of the bath Phil pointed out to me with slowed, speechless gestures the melancholy aperture where the water escaped, and, gathered round it, dozens of sticking-plasters, bleached clean by their long immersion and waving over the filter like albino, submarine plants. Then I saw him give out his breath, the bubbles crowding from his mouth, flooding around his head and up towards the light with baroque exuberance. He himself shot up then and I followed a second or two later. We hung on our elbows to regain our breath. The plan was to go later to the Shaft and dance and get drunk and have a wonderful time. Phil had never been there with me: our funny routine isolated us from the normal gay world, and what with one thing and another I had not been there myself for a couple of months—though for a year or more before that I was impelled towards it, without any power to resist, every Monday and Friday night. I had been an addict of the Shaft. If I was out to dinner I would grow restless towards eleven o’clock, particularly if I was away in the western districts and had several miles to travel. I would go to the opera very inappropriately got up, and had more than once exploited the privacy of the Covent Garden box to slip off during the last act as the anticipation of sex welled up inside me, rapidly distancing and denaturing the carry-on on stage into irksome nonsense. The Shaft itself I hardly ever left alone, and I had made countless taxi-journeys down the glaring, garbage-stacked wasteland of Oxford Street and along the great still darkness of the Park, a black kid, drunk, chilled in his sweat, lying against me, or secretly touching me. I took home boys from far out—from Leyton, Leytonstone, Dagenham, New Cross—who like me made their pilgrimage to this airless, electrifying cellar in the West End, but had no way, if they failed to score, at three or four a.m., of getting home.

• From Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption (2014)

  She put her arm around me and smiled back. “No, you done good today. I was so happy when that judge said that man was going home. It gave me goose bumps. Fifty years in prison, he can’t even see no more. No, I was grateful to God when I heard that. You don’t have anything to cry about. I’m just gonna let you lean on me a bit, because I know a few things about stonecatching.” She squeezed me a bit and then said, “Now, you keep this up and you’re gonna end up like me, singing some sad songs. Ain’t no way to do what we do and not learn how to appreciate a good sorrow song. “I’ve been singing sad songs my whole life. Had to. When you catch stones, even happy songs can make you sad.” She paused and grew silent. I heard her chuckle before she continued. “But you keep singing. Your songs will make you strong. They might even make you happy.” People buzzed down the busy corridors of the courthouse while we sat silently. “Well, you’re very good at what you do,” I finally said. “I feel much better.” She slapped my arm playfully. “Oh, don’t you try to charm me, young man. You felt just fine before you saw me. Them men are going home and you were fine walking around here. I just do what I do, nothing more.” When I finally excused myself, giving her a kiss on the cheek and telling her I needed to sign the prisoners’ release papers, she stopped me. “Oh, wait.” She dug around in her purse until she found a piece of wrapped peppermint candy. “Here, take this.” The gesture made me happy in a way that I can’t fully explain. “Well, thank you.” I smiled and leaned down to give her another kiss on the cheek. She waved at me, smiling. “Go on, go on.” Epilogue [image file=image_rsrc332.jpg] Walter died on September 11, 2013. He remained kind and charming until the very end, despite his increasing confusion from the advancing dementia. He lived with his sister Katie, but in the last two years of his life he couldn’t enjoy the outdoors or get around much without help. One morning he fell and fractured his hip. Doctors felt it was inadvisable to operate, so he was sent home with little hope of recovery. The hospital social worker told me that they would arrange home health and hospice care, which was sad but dramatically better than what he feared when he was on Alabama’s death row. He lost a lot of weight and became less and less responsive to visitors after returning home from the hospital. He passed away quietly in the night a short time later.

• From Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption (2014)

  “Six years, six years gone.” He looked away with a pained expression. “These six years feel like fifty. Six years, just gone. I’ve been so worried they were going to kill me, I haven’t even thought about the time I’ve lost.” His troubled look sobered me, too. “I know, Walter, and we’re not clear yet,” I said. “The ruling only gives you a new trial. Given what the ABI has said, I can’t believe they would try to prosecute you again, but with this crowd reasonable conduct is never guaranteed. I’m going to try and get you home as soon as humanly possible.” With thoughts of home, his mood lightened and we started talking about things we’d been too afraid to discuss since we’d met. He said, “I want to meet everybody who has helped me in Montgomery. And I want to go around with you and tell the world what they did to me. There are other people here who are as innocent as I am.” He paused and started smiling again. “Man, I want some good food, too. I ain’t had no real good food in so long that I can’t even remember what it tastes like.” “Whatever you want, it will be my treat,” I said proudly. “From what I hear, you might not be able to afford the kind of meal I want,” he teased. “I want steak, chicken, pork, maybe some good cooked coon.” “Coon?” “Oh, don’t pretend. You know you like grilled raccoon. Please don’t sit there and tell me you ain’t never had no good coon when I know you grew up in the country just like I did. There has been many a time when me and my cousin would be driving, and a coon would run cross the road and he’d say, ‘Stop the car, stop the car!’ And I’d stop the car and he’d jump out and go running into the woods and come back minutes later with a raccoon he done caught. We would take it home, skin it, and fry or barbecue that meat. Maaaan…what you talking about? That would be some good eatin’.” “You’ve got to be joking. I grew up in the country, but I never chased any kind of wild animal into the woods to take home and eat.” We relaxed and laughed a lot. We had laughed before today—Walter’s sense of humor hadn’t failed him despite his six years on death row. And this case had given him lots of fodder. We would often talk about situations and people connected to the case that, for all the damage they had caused, had still made us laugh at their absurdity. But the laughter today felt very different. It was the laughter of liberation.

• From What Belongs to You (2016)

  The fourth or fifth time she did this, she leaned out even farther than before, so that the man had to extend his arm away from his body, almost as far as it would reach. This time she didn’t laugh, as if surprised and maybe unnerved by her own audacity, the risk she took in leaning out so far, which of course wasn’t a risk at all with her father’s arm around her; instead, she threw herself back against her father’s body and, reaching her arms up to clasp his neck, pulled his head down (or maybe she didn’t have to pull it down), embracing it close to her own. Only then did she laugh, with her father’s body folded around her; she laughed with a joy it was difficult for me to recognize, so certain it seemed of a home among the things of the world. They embraced for a long time, a kind of physical contact seldom seen in public, maybe seen only between parents and their very young children, an intimacy confident of absolute possession. Perhaps here, I thought, was a wholly untheatrical embrace. I wasn’t the only one moved, I could see others watching them too, smiling and wistful, maybe a little melancholy, as I was, with the sense both of my own exclusion and of how quickly those embraces would pass. They would take on different meanings as the child grew older, they would become impermissible; the same touch that here warmed our hearts would in just a few years elicit our disapproval, our concern, finally our scorn. And so it is, I thought then, as the man and his child released each other and moved away from the water, so it is that at the very moment we come into full consciousness of ourselves what we experience is leave-taking and a loss we seek the rest of our lives to restore. The man and his child returned to their table, the girl running ahead to a woman who bent to lift her into her lap, tickling her a little so that I heard her laugh over the sound of the water. For a moment at least it seemed plausible, the story I told about the sense of dislocation I so often feel, which was eased for the few hours I slept embraced by Mitko, the embrace I returned to in my thoughts as I watched the child and her father by the river in Blagoevgrad. That morning I spent grading papers was almost two months after my final meeting with Mitko in Varna, a meeting that was itself preceded by three months of silence. In the days and weeks that followed the night we spent together in Mladost, one of only two nights, as it turned out, we would spend together in all the months we knew each other, Mitko appeared at my apartment every few days, always friendly and eager, and always with some request.

• From The Swimming-Pool Library (1988)

  It was wonderful though, additionally hot from weights, to plunge into the sombre coldness of the pool. No discipline made me feel more free, or contained me and delighted me within its own element so much as swimming. Even so, when Phil came down the spiral stairs—displaying (some well-judged vanity of his own) new trunks cut high on the hips, black behind and gold in front—I was happy to do things I normally deplore, getting in people’s way, doing handstands or swimming between his splayed and sturdy legs. For a while we gloomed Cousteau-like in the depths of the deep end, swivelling our goggled heads from side to side, searching for our locker keys which we had thrown in and left to settle, buffeted and wandering in the choppy water. Where the end wall met the floor of the bath Phil pointed out to me with slowed, speechless gestures the melancholy aperture where the water escaped, and, gathered round it, dozens of sticking-plasters, bleached clean by their long immersion and waving over the filter like albino, submarine plants. Then I saw him give out his breath, the bubbles crowding from his mouth, flooding around his head and up towards the light with baroque exuberance. He himself shot up then and I followed a second or two later. We hung on our elbows to regain our breath. The plan was to go later to the Shaft and dance and get drunk and have a wonderful time. Phil had never been there with me: our funny routine isolated us from the normal gay world, and what with one thing and another I had not been there myself for a couple of months—though for a year or more before that I was impelled towards it, without any power to resist, every Monday and Friday night. I had been an addict of the Shaft. If I was out to dinner I would grow restless towards eleven o’clock, particularly if I was away in the western districts and had several miles to travel. I would go to the opera very inappropriately got up, and had more than once exploited the privacy of the Covent Garden box to slip off during the last act as the anticipation of sex welled up inside me, rapidly distancing and denaturing the carry-on on stage into irksome nonsense. The Shaft itself I hardly ever left alone, and I had made countless taxi-journeys down the glaring, garbage-stacked wasteland of Oxford Street and along the great still darkness of the Park, a black kid, drunk, chilled in his sweat, lying against me, or secretly touching me. I took home boys from far out—from Leyton, Leytonstone, Dagenham, New Cross—who like me made their pilgrimage to this airless, electrifying cellar in the West End, but had no way, if they failed to score, at three or four a.m., of getting home.

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

  CHRYSOSTOM. (Hom. xxix. 2) Meaning, He, Whom thou baptizedst, baptizeth. They did not say expressly, Whom thou baptizedst, for they did not wish to be reminded of the voice from heaven, but, He Who was with thee, i. e. Who was in the situation of a disciple, who was nothing more than any of us, He now separateth Himself from thee, and baptizeth. They add, To Whom thou barest witness; as if to say, Whom thou shewedst to the world, Whom thou madest renowned, He now dares to do as thou dost. Behold, the Same baptizeth. And in addition to this, they urge the probability that John’s doctrines would fall into discredit. All men come to Him. ALCUIN. Meaning, Passing by thee, all men run to the baptism of Him Whom thou baptizedst. 3:27–3027. John answered and said, A man can receive nothing, except it be given him from heaven. 28. Ye yourselves bear me witness, that I said, I am not the Christ, but that I am sent before him. 29. He that hath the bride is the bridegroom; but the friend of the bridegroom, which standeth and heareth him, rejoiceth greatly because of the bridegroom’s voice: this my joy therefore is fulfilled. 30. He must increase, but I must decrease. CHRYSOSTOM. (Hom. xxix. 2) John, on this question being raised, does not rebuke his disciples, for fear they might separate, and turn to some other school, but replies gently, John answered and said, A man can receive nothing, except it be given him from heaven; as if he said, No wonder that Christ does such excellent works, and that all men come to Him; when He Who doeth it all is God. Human efforts are easily seen through, are feeble, and short-lived. These are not such: they are not therefore of human, but of divine originating. He seems however to speak somewhat humblyk of Christ, which will not surprise us, when we consider that it was not fitting to tell the whole truth, to minds prepossessed with such a passion as envy. He only tries for the present to alarm them, by shewing that they are attempting impossible things, and fighting against God. AUGUSTINE. (Tr. xiii. c. 9) Or perhaps John is speaking here of himself: I am a mere man, and have received all from heaven, and therefore think not that, because it has been given me to be somewhat, I am so foolish as to speak against the truth.

• From What Belongs to You (2016)

  It was tawdry and crass and all of it an invitation to mischief. We imagined stealing decorations from one yard and placing them in another, we thought up obscene arrangements—but we left all of it undone, the joy was in the planning of it, in our own inventiveness, and we bent over choking on our hushed laughter, having brought each other to tears. But there were other decorations, too, more strident ones: it was an election year and there were campaign signs among the ghosts and cauldrons, an odd juxtaposition of playfulness and belligerence. For months the news had been full of debate and raised voices, and my house was full of them, too; my father loved to hold forth and for the first time I had begun to challenge him, wanting an opinion of my own. It was as though every word I said was a provocation, every discussion became a quarrel; though he gave me a wide berth we still collided and our collisions were a kind of theater, like animals locking horns. It was a Republican state and my father held the expected views, like everyone else he knew, or so it seemed to me; but K. and I agreed, we hated my father’s party, and we were both angered by the signs in the yards, nearly all of them echoing the same names. K. approached one of these signs and kicked it, bending its wire legs a bit, and then he pulled it from the ground and ripped it and threw the torn halves back on the grass. I was shocked at first, but then I was delighted, and I grabbed a sign of my own. We took turns for a while and then enthusiasm or impatience took over; K. chose one side of the street and I the other, and we went methodically house by house, wrecking all of the signs in sight, pretending perhaps it was something else we wrecked. As we walked away, laughing again, K. hung his arm around my neck. It was a casual gesture but one I wasn’t used to, and I was almost frightened by the happiness that overtook me, that filled me up and charged me and at the same time carried a threat; it was too unrestrained, there was nothing to keep it in check. I felt solid again as I walked with him, more certain of myself than I had been for years, with his arm around my neck and my own slung at his waist.

• From What Belongs to You (2016)

  Mitko, who had his back to me, turned and smiled, offering me his hand and at the same time directing me out of the room and away from his friends (if they were his friends), leading me toward the plaza above. As we climbed the long staircase, moving away from those rooms that had always seemed too small for him, his frame and voice and friendliness all hemmed in by the damp tile of the walls, I felt, along with the excitement I had anticipated, an entirely unexpected happiness. Kak si , I asked as we walked through the park at NDK, how are you, and he showed me the knuckles of his right hand, which were skinned and raw, the wounds still fresh. He said that he had gotten into a fight with another man down below, though the reasons for it remained unclear to me. I took his hand in mine for a moment, looking at the little wounds that made him at once fierce and damaged, and I imagined how I would salve them, rubbing them with ointment and then pressing them to my lips. But this was a kind of tenderness that had never been part of our encounters and that was especially out of place now, as he reenacted his fight with quick jabs in the air. We walked down Vasil Levski Boulevard, Mitko’s long legs devouring the pavement as I struggled to keep up, and he talked the whole way, only bits of what he said comprehensible to me. For the first time I asked him where he lived and he answered S priyateli , with friends, a term that he used often and that I was never sure how to interpret, since in addition to its usual meanings Mitko used it to refer to his clients. It became clear to me, as I struggled to understand his stream of talk (frequently punctuated with razbirash li , do you understand?), that Mitko shuttled between places, sometimes sleeping with these friends, sometimes walking the streets until morning. When the weather was bad, he could go to a small garret room to which a friend had given him a key ( Edna mansarda , he said, making the shape of a roof with his hands), where there was a mattress but no heat or running water. Speaking of these things seemed to make Mitko uneasy, and he changed the subject by saying that, though I had found him at NDK, where he had spent much of the day, he had nevertheless been saving himself for our evening together. He looked at me sidelong as he said this ( Razbirash li? ) and I felt myself flush with excitement.