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.

Page 241 of 299 · 20 per page

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

  4. Song. The Church inherited the psalter from the synagogue, and has used it in all ages as an inexhaustible treasury of devotion. The psalter is truly catholic in its spirit and aim; it springs from the deep fountains of the human heart in its secret communion with God, and gives classic expression to the religious experience of all men in every age and tongue. This is the best proof of its inspiration. Nothing like it can be found in all the poetry of heathendom. The psalter was first enriched by the inspired hymns which saluted the birth of the Saviour of the world, the Magnificat of Mary, the Benedictus of Zacharias, the Gloria in Excelsis of the heavenly host, and the Nunc Dimittis of the aged Simeon. These hymns passed at once into the service of the Church, to resound through all successive centuries, as things of beauty which are "a joy forever." Traces of primitive Christian poems can be found throughout the Epistles and the Apocalypse. The angelic anthem (Luke 2:14) was expanded into the Gloria in Excelsis, first in the Greek church, in the third, if not the second, century, and afterwards in the Latin, and was used as the morning hymn.387 It is one of the classical forms of devotion, like the Latin Te Deum of later date. The evening hymn of the Greek church is less familiar and of inferior merit. The following is a free translation: "Hail! cheerful Light, of His pure glory poured, Who is th’ Immortal Father, Heavenly, Blest, Holiest of Holies—Jesus Christ our Lord! Now are we come to the Sun’s hour of rest, The lights of Evening round us shine, We sing the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost Divine! Worthiest art Thou at all times, to be sung With undefiled tongue, Son of our God, Giver of Life alone! Therefore, in all the world, Thy glories, Lord, we own."388 An author towards the close of the second century389 could appeal against the Artemonites, to a multitude of hymns in proof of the faith of the church in the divinity of Christ: "How many psalms and odes of the Christians are there not, which have been written from the beginning by believers, and which, in their theology, praise Christ as the Logos of God?" Tradition says, that the antiphonies, or responsive songs; were introduced by Ignatius of Antioch. The Gnostics, Valentine and Bardesanes also composed religious songs; and the church surely learned the practice not from them, but from the Old Testament psalms. The oldest Christian poem preserved to us which can be traced to an individual author is from the pen of the profound Christian philosopher, Clement of Alexandria, who taught theology ill that city before A.D. 202. It is a sublime but somewhat turgid song of praise to the Logos, as the divine educator and leader of the human race, and though not intended and adapted for public worship, is remarkable for its spirit and antiquity.390 Notes.

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

  “No!” Jacob flapped his hands about, as if to dismiss his father’s irrelevant questioning. He shuffled over and stood directly in front of me, looked at me carefully, and nodded, as though making a careful assessment. He then said, quietly and deliberately: “It’s the Royal Arms.” “Oh!” I suddenly understood. “It’s my name. Armstrong.” Jacob beamed again, entranced with his pun, and looked at me with his head bent enquiringly to one side. “It’s the Royal—” He waited. “Arms!” I capped, and we laughed together. We had established a connection and his parents visibly relaxed. “That’s a good joke, Jacob,” Jenifer said happily, and in order to capitalize on this unexpected harmony, added: “What about helping Karen and me to carry that little bookcase up to her room?” “Yes!” Jacob roared with enthusiasm, bounding into Jenifer’s study, grabbing books from shelves, and hurling them around the room with joyous abandon, ignoring his mother’s timid requests to proceed more quietly. I recovered the books as they fell and started to pile them up by the door. “Karen.” Jacob was now on his knees, peering intently into the crevice between the bookcase and the wall. “Karen,” he said again (like his father, he could not pronounce his Rs), “come and have a look at this.” To humor him, Jenifer and I went to look, only to have our superior smiles wiped from our faces. “How ludicrous,” Jenifer breathed. “It’s fantastic. Herbert, come and see.” A small rosebush had somehow forced its way up from the foundations, broken through the floorboards, and grown, thin and spindly, to a height of eighteen inches. “It’s a tree!” Jacob danced ecstatically. “Growing in the drawing room!” “Nature reasserts itself against the thin veneer of human civilization. If you can call this civilized,” Herbert mused. “Isn’t there a poem about that?” He looked at me interrogatively. “Something about ‘laughing Ceres’?” “Pope. The ‘Epistle to Burlington,’ ” I replied. “He’s making fun of that awful country house. ‘Deep harvests bury all his pride has planned.’ ” “ ‘And laughing Ceres reassume the land.’ ” Rose tree and all else forgotten, Herbert went back to the drawing room and started rummaging in a bookcase for a copy of Pope’s collected works. “You should keep that rose tree,” I said to Jenifer, as we maneuvered the bookcase out of the room with some difficulty. Herbert glanced up benignly from the sofa, spectacles askew, clutching the book in a somewhat awkward grasp. “Marvelous poem!” he beamed, watching our efforts absently. And so, yet again, a new life began.

• From Wild (2012)

  “We’re headed up there to do some fishing. We’d give you a ride, but we’re packed,” he said, pointing to the back of the truck, which was covered by a camper. “That’s okay. I like to walk.” “Well, we’re having Hawaiian screwdrivers tonight, so stop on by.” “Thanks,” I said, and watched them drive off. I hiked the rest of the afternoon thinking about Hawaiian screwdrivers. I didn’t know exactly what they were but they didn’t sound all that different from Snapple lemonade to me. When I reached the top of the road, the red pickup and the men’s camp came into view, perched above the westernmost of the Three Lakes. The PCT was just beyond it. I followed a scant trail east along the lake’s shore, finding a secluded spot among the boulders that were scattered around the lake. I set up my tent and ducked into the woods to squeeze out my sponge and put it in again. I walked down to the lake to filter water and wash my hands and face. I thought about diving in to bathe, but the water was ice-cold and I was already chilled in the mountain air. Before coming on the PCT, I’d imagined countless baths in lakes and rivers and streams, but in reality, only rarely did I plunge in. By the end of the day, I often ached with fatigue and shook with what felt like a fever but was only exhaustion and the chill of my drying sweat. The best I could do most days was splash my face and strip off my sweat-drenched T-shirt and shorts before swaddling myself in my fleece anorak and leggings for the night. I removed my boots and pulled the duct tape and 2nd Skin off my feet and soaked them in the icy water. When I rubbed them, another blackened toenail came off in my hand, the second I’d lost so far. The lake was calm and clear, rimmed by towering trees and leafy bushes among the boulders. I saw a bright green lizard in the mud; it froze in place for a moment before scampering away at lightning speed. The men’s camp was not far beyond me along the lakeshore, but they hadn’t yet detected my presence. Before going to see them, I brushed my teeth, put on lip balm, and pulled a comb through my hair. “There she is,” shouted the man who’d been in the passenger seat when I ambled up. “And just in time too.” He handed me a red plastic cup full of a yellow liquid that I could only assume was a Hawaiian screwdriver. It had ice cubes. It had vodka. It had pineapple juice. When I sipped it I thought I would faint. Not from the alcohol hitting me, but from the sheer fabulousness of the combination of liquid sugar and booze.

• From A Hebrew and English Lexicon of the Old Testament (BDB) (1907)

  ib bey vb. rejoice )10 0 27% 1*% 7; cf. Ar, es go round or about, beexcited to levity, etc.) 1 Pf HP 165%; גיל סחי‎ OM yer? + 4t. (p27 Kt x, Qr ba with retracted tone); גל‎ on 139+ 1% אָנִילֶה 6% ד גל‎ הָליִנְנ‎ vo + 5 t, ON 13° + 8%. MN 89%, MPD שי‎ 8% 2 6. יָנוּל‎ Pr'23™; 10 לי 4% +27 ילו‎ Is 49%+ > 2%.;---1. rejoice, a. abs. ~13° 51° 269%; || שמח‎ ae! 96" 9 Pr aa I Ch‏ 4 הס 16° זא ד ש b.c. 2149"‏ .1535168 שיש,שוש || Hb1”;‏ 167 בישועתך ;66% "65 Is‏ בירושלם ;?9 Pr 2% 247 Ts‏ באלהים ;010% 41° Is‏ 35° ש ביהוה ;217 13° Wo‏ Is‏ בקדוש ישראל ; "סָ8 ש בשם * ;3% Is 61 Hb‏ Ctx! Is 259 Jo 2%‏ 118% 31° ץ גיל ושמח “a‏ ;29% Zp 3”. Besides‏ על with‏ .0 .2% 10 גילי ושמחי כי נפש ;20107 247 persons the subj. is a> 13° Pr‏ Ch 16”‏ 1 ארץ ,16° ץ (נפש==) כבוד ,61% 18 35° ¥ Is 3. 2. tremble‏ ערבה 49% 19 '97 96% ש (Thes Ew Hi Che,‏ עבד || 27 + (cf. Ar. Jes)‏ אבל || but 69 Hu De Pe AV RV rejoice), Horo?‏ (Thes and most mod., but AV RV that rejoiced‏ Ew Gr Che.‏ חיל over it), possibly error for‏ Th. ביל‎ n.[m. | rejoicing —Jb3” + 6t., גול‎ Pr es a לי‎ W43*;—rejotcing 76 5 Pr23”; || שמחה‎ ו ץ‎ Is 6 Je 205 Jo ae 193 nny ש‎ 4% שמח אל גיל‎ glad unto rejotcing Ho g* Jb 3”. pee [גיל]‎ n.[m. | circle, age, מן הילדים אשר‎ p3>22 ofthe youths which are of your age Dn1™ (cf. Ar. Jus, Sam. גיל‎ = Heb. WI=yevea, Talm. נילו‎ j2 one born atthe same time, a contemporary). try, n.f. rejoicing Is 65%, {21) nd%3 Is 35° (nom. verbal. for Inf. abs. cf. De Di; estr. before 1 Ges §%-?; but rd. prob. (גִּילָה‎ : aby vead Is 9? for לא‎ ‘a7 by Krochm Che RS Di. taba n.pr.loc. city in mountains of Judah Jos לש‎ Sirgas (on V cf. Dr 28 15”.) adj.gent. 2 5 15%, 23%=1Chri™,‏ גילני1 (for MT 3980),‏ הג' where also rd.‏ v. sub 73.‏ גינת mea | (boil, boil up? cf. Aram. ג"ר‎ wave, NH id. foam; Ar. = quicklime, also heat in 162 mba chest from rage or hunger (Lane) ; admodum aestuans acc. to 111 כ /\11 א‎ *** ; but cf. infr.) : 1 בר‎ n.[m.] chalk, lime (perh. Aram. loan- word cf. Frii?; Aram. (also B Aram.) 4, ]- AY. p> is loan-wd.Fri'*)—3 ‘23ND Ny Is 27°. 1 [גיר]‎ n.m. 2 Ch 2% .צ‎ 13 sub .גור.1‎ Tuba 29 7° Kt, v. Wa. Tywra n.pr.m. a descendant of Judah through Caleb 1 Ch 2”. 4 ל גל גל‎ bbs. (=shear, shave, As. [galabu] 116%;‏ ב לב Aram. ads id., a3 razor; cf. JaNS 2 820° v.PS).‏ [ada] n.[m. ] barber (Ph.39]CIS*#”*)—‏ ך

• From Cult: A Love Story: Ten Years Inside a Canadian Cult and the Subsequent Long Road of Recovery (2013)

  After making love I would lie with my head on Michael’s chest listening to the song of his heart. With our open balcony door letting tropical air waft over us, we’d hear the ripened grapefruit-sized avocados fall from their trees to the ground with the softest, most earthly and comforting thud. We did not tire of one another even though we were together around the clock. And we were asked every day, usually several times, if we were on our honeymoon. “No,” we’d answer, “we’re just very happy to be together.” It was a moment out of time. No Limori to interfere with us, no fellow group members requiring Michael’s spiritual guidance or support. No energy dramas going on. For an all-too-brief moment our relationship existed outside the prison yard it had grown in, and flourished in this glimpse of freedom. I still look back on that vacation as one of the highlights of my life thus far. It was, quite simply, heaven. A week after we returned to Vancouver from Hawaii, Michael mentioned that Limori was passing through town on her way to Arizona. She and her travelling entourage, Alice, Susan and Rosemarie, would be staying for one night at a hotel in Richmond and Limori had invited Michael and me to have lunch with her. During this visit, my eyes would be opened to Michael’s relationship with Limori more than ever before. When I look back, if there ever was a moment that was the beginning of the end for me in Limori’s cult, this was it. We met the four women in the restaurant of the hotel at our appointed time. The six of us sat at a long table and chatted; early on in the conversation Michael mentioned that he and I had just returned from Hawaii but Limori barely acknowledged that he’d spoken. She held court, as ever, and spoke only about the things that mattered to her: energetic changes that were taking place and the challenging work she’d been doing for God lately. This trip she was taking to Arizona was of paramount importance and they were on a tight time schedule to get to Tucson by a certain date because God had said they should. If they didn’t arrive by that date there would be disastrous consequences for the universe. After an hour or so of chatting over coffee we had lunch, and it was during this meal that I woke up to a glimpse of Michael that I was not comfortable with. Limori had a habit of staying at the same hotels over time, and using the same restaurants. Because of her charisma and attention-getting appearance and manner, she usually became well known at these favoured places and was very often treated like royalty. At this particular hotel, she was fond of the Rueben sandwich. When our waiter brought us lunch menus, Limori noticed that the Reuben was not listed, but, being Limori, she ordered it anyway.

• From Another Country (1962)

  They had just come up from the subway and it was perhaps this ascent from darkness to day which made the streets so dazzling. They were on Broadway at Seventy-second Street, walking uptown—for Cass and Richard had moved, they were climbing that well-known ladder, Cass said. The light seemed to fall with an increased hardness, examining and inciting the city with an unsparing violence, like the violence of love, and striking from the city’s grays and blacks a splendor as of steel on steel. In the windows of tall buildings flame wavered, alive, in ice. There was a high, driving wind which brightened the eyes and the faces of the people and forced their lips slightly apart, so that they all seemed to be carrying, to some immense encounter, the bright, fragile bubble of a lifetime of expectation. Bright boys in windbreakers, some of them with girls whose hair, whose fingertips, caught the light, looked into polished delicatessen windows, the windows of shops, paused at the entrances of movie theatres to look at the gleaming stills; and their voices, which shared the harsh quality of the light which covered them, seemed breaking on the air like glass splinters. Children, in great gangs and clouds, erupted out of side streets with the sound of roller skates and came roaring down on their elders like vengeance long prepared, or the arrow released from the bow. “I’ve never seen such a day,” he said to Ida, and it was true. Everything seemed to be swollen, thrusting and shifting and changing, about to burst into music or into flame or revelation. Ida said nothing. He felt, rather then saw her smile, and he was delighted all over again by her beauty. It was as though she were wearing it especially for him. She was more friendly with him today than she had ever been. He did not feel today, as he had felt for so long, that she was evading him, locking herself away from him, forcing him to remain a stranger in her life. Today she was gayer and more natural, as though she had at last decided to come out of mourning. There was in her aspect the flavor of something won, the atmosphere of hard decisions past. She had come up from the valley.

• From Wild (2012)

  I stopped to gaze at it. It was a miserable-looking mucky pond about the size of a tennis court, but there was water in it. I was laughing with joy as I staggered down the slope toward the little dirt beach that surrounded the reservoir. I’d hiked my first twenty-mile day. I unbuckled Monster and set it onto the ground and went to the muddy shore and squatted to put my hands in the water. It was gray and warm as blood. When I moved my hands, the muck from the bottom rose in weedy tendrils and streaked the water black. I got my purifier and pumped the questionable liquid into my bottle. My purifier had remained as difficult to use as it had been that first time I used it at Golden Oak Springs, but it was especially difficult in this water, so dense with sludge that it half jammed my filter. By the time I was done filling one bottle, my arms shook with fatigue. I went to my first aid kit and took out my iodine pills and dropped a couple into the water. I’d brought the pills for just this reason, reinforcement should I ever be compelled to drink water that was likely contaminated. Even Albert had thought the iodine pills a good idea back in Kennedy Meadows, when he’d been ruthlessly tossing things into the get-rid-of pile. Albert, who’d been felled by a waterborne illness the very next day. I had to wait thirty minutes for the iodine to do its work before it was safe to drink. I was desperately thirsty, but I distracted myself by filling my other bottle with water. When I was done, I laid out my tarp on the dirt beach, stood on top of it, and took off my clothes. The wind had mellowed with the fading light. In gentle wafts, it cooled the hot patches on my naked hips. It didn’t occur to me that anyone might come along the trail. I hadn’t seen a soul all day, and even if someone did come along, I was too catatonic with dehydration and exhaustion to care. I looked at my watch. Twenty-seven minutes had passed since I’d plopped the iodine pills into my water. Usually I was starving by evening, but the idea of eating was nothing to me now. Water was my only desire. I sat on my blue tarp and drank one bottle down and then the other. The warm water tasted like iron and mud and yet seldom have I ever consumed anything so amazing. I could feel it moving into me, though even once I’d had two 32-ounce bottles, I wasn’t entirely restored. I still wasn’t hungry. I felt like I had in those first days on the trail, when I’d been so astoundingly exhausted that all my body wanted was sleep. Now all my body wanted was water. I filled my bottles again, let the iodine purify them, and drank them both.

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

  “All right. You can plug in the record player. That’s right. Look at the cover, and all those people playing in the country. Now. Listen. You’ll hear the thunder very quietly at first, building up and up and up. Then you’ll hear it go away, as it always does . . .” “Karen says the thunder always goes gradually away,” Jacob informed the gas fire sotto voce, as we listened to the first chords of the storm sequence in the Pastoral Symphony. At first, I acted as the commentator. “Here are the raindrops. Now—the first rumble of the thunder.” “Rumble!” Jacob echoed, but after a few moments he indicated imperiously that he wanted me to be quiet, and for once I did not insist on a “please.” He began to sway thoughtfully to the music, keeping perfect time. “Whoosh! There goes the lightning! Brroom! That’s the thunder!” and as the storm died out, he sank back with a histrionic sigh of relief. As the final notes of the symphony died away, Jacob demanded that we play the other side. “All right. This time you’ll hear a cuckoo and some people dancing.” By the end of the evening, I was as enthusiastic as Jacob. We had also got through the whole of the Elgar cello concerto, which was another hit. He immediately called the cello the “deep violin,” and when I introduced him later to the Dvorak concerto, he dubbed it the “new deep violin record.” His comments showed astonishing sensitivity. “Listen, Karen, the violins are asking a question,” or, “Oh dear, this is so sad. Somebody’s crying!” But mostly he just listened quietly. A little after nine, as we got up to go to his bedroom, he stood at the door and bowed solemnly. “Thank you, Karen,” he said formally, obviously imitating one of his parents’ dinner guests. “I enjoyed this evening very much indeed.” He almost clicked his bare heels together. “In fact, it was our best evening yet, don’t you agree?” I nodded. “So can we listen to your records next time I come to your room? Please?” “Of course. Next time we’ll hear something different.” “Something different and the thunderstorm again. Please.” He grinned and became a child again. “And now—o f to the lavatory!” he yelled, and then, forestalling me, “And don’t forget to pull the chain!” Is that all you are having for dinner? It’s quite ludicrous! You must eat more than that.” Jenifer was standing at the top of the stairs, poised as if for flight and clearly uneasy. It was against her principles to proffer unwanted advice to the young. We looked at my supper tray: a boiled egg, two slices of crispbread, and a tub of plain yogurt. It seemed more than enough to me.

• From The Fermata (1994)

  Over a period of ten minutes I laboriously paid out the thread through my callus so that I could walk upstairs and out to the yard. A bird was out there, a robin, paused in the air, about three feet off the lawn—I touched its spread wings, though not hard enough to dislodge it from its pausal locus. I continued to unspool my callus-thread until I had reached the street. A woman was in a station wagon with her elbow on the door. I touched her shoulder with my hand, then reached into her blouse and went under her bra and felt her hot heavy ostrich egg of a breast. Her nipple was amazingly soft. Her hair was motionlessly wind-fluffed; the speedometer said thirty miles an hour. That soft unselfconscious nipple I touched (my very first after infancy, recall) was driving down the street at thirty miles an hour while I, caressing it at leisure, stood in place! When I had learned enough about the weight and highly advanced mobility of her entire Jamaica in my coarse and threaded hand (joggling it reminded me, to my surprise, of the variable heft of a Slinky toy as you let its arched length recoil back and forth from palm to palm), I went back to the sidewalk so that I wouldn’t be run over, and I yanked on the thread until it broke. I pulled it from the hole in my callus. The station wagon sighed promptly by—I saw a flash of the woman in profile, then the back of her car, her meaninglessly specific license plate, then her turn-signal light blinking, then she turned down Southland Street, gone. In the basement, my clothes took up with their spinning as if I were still standing at the washing machine looking in. Nobody in the cars that followed seemed to notice that I had just appeared next to a bushy spray of elm-stump suckers, out of nowhere. My second successful drop-phase ended there, circa August 1969: it, like the time-transformer experiment that helped me into Miss Dobzhansky’s shirt, was apparently induplicable, depending on exactly those particular clothes and towels,those calluses, and that specific new packet of needles from the Needle Man. Tethering oneself to a clothes-washer was in any case a somewhat awkward way of forcing time into remission; although as I thought that period over on the beach towel in the yard I remembered none of the awkwardness—only how leapingly happy I had been for the rest of the day because I knew then, after all my false starts and failed attempts, that there really was more than one way to trip the universal clutch.

• From The Fermata (1994)

  I closed my eye and opened it again, and this time I looked only at my glasses, and it seemed to me then that the very best thing about sunbathing was that you could open your eyes at any time and see your own companionable glasses waiting for you there so close to your face, casting their sharp shadow: I could see with extreme clarity the thick opaque ground perimeter of the rimless lenses, and the side-pieces crossed at their kneelike earward ends, and the eyelash hair, whose curve enhanced my appreciation of the curvature of the prescription, and the dust that built up so gradually that I hadn’t noticed it, and the nose-pods that were filthy but whose filth was irrelevant because nobody else could see it, and the paired reflection of some branchy blueness in the faintly scratched surface—all this nineteenth-century precision that I wore on my face every day, and never had the opportunity to study because all I did was take the glasses off at night and fold them automatically and put them by my bed and put them on again in the morning. No matter how often I closed my eyes, my corrective lenses would be there in the sun when I opened them again, waiting to be praised and seen, and seen more exactly and clearly than if I were wearing another pair of glasses to look at them, because my nearsightedness shortened the minimum focal length, making things even two inches away fully contemplable. I saw my own glasses better than anyone who didn’t need glasses could ever see them. The word clarity struck me as very fine. My happiness had a clarity to it. My happiness was optical. My happiness was the direct result of my glasses. Should I do ten pushups to celebrate the innocent clarity of my happiness? Should I do ten pushups naked? I took off my bathing suit and did ten pushups naked, and each time I lowered myself trembling down to earth, and my down-hanging soft-serve nosed unprotestingly into the towel, I turned my head so that I could see my glasses waiting there for me to appreciate them. Possibly they seemed beautiful to me in part because they were hybrids, existing halfway between knower and known, between what I saw and how I saw. I felt as if I were looking at my own sense of sight, even at myself, when I looked at them.

• From The Argonauts (2015)

  When Iggy had the toxin and we lay with him in his hospital crib, I knew—in a flood of fear and panic—what I know now, in our blessed return to the land of health, which is that my time with him has been the happiest time of my life. Its happiness has been of a more palpable and undeniable and unmitigated quality than any I’ve ever known. For it isn’t just moments of happiness, which is all I thought we got. It’s a happiness that spreads. For this reason I am tempted to call it a lasting happiness, but I know I won’t take it with me when I go. At best, I hope to impart it to Iggy, to allow him to feel that he created it, which, in many ways, he has. Babies do not remember being held well—what they remember is the traumatic experience of not being held well enough. Some might read in this a recipe for the classic ungratefulness of children—after everything I’ve done for you, and so on. To me, at the moment anyway, it is a tremendous relief, an incitement to give Iggy no memory, save the sense, likely unconscious, of having once been gathered together, made to feel real. That is what my mother did for me. I’d almost forgotten. And now, I think I can say— I want you to know, you were thought of as possible—never as certain, but always as possible—not in any single moment, but over many months, even years, of trying, of waiting, of calling—when, in a love sometimes sure of itself, sometimes shaken by bewilderment and change, but always committed to the charge of ever-deepening understanding—two human animals, one of whom is blessedly neither male nor female, the other of whom is female (more or less), deeply, doggedly, wildly wanted you to be.

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

  I had come to hate the long dull road which led to my house but which always seemed to be heading nowhere. Yet it was while I was toiling up this hill one day, weighed down with plastic bags of uninspiring groceries, that an idea came to me, and (again without realizing it) I turned another corner. I needed to cheer myself up, start a new project, and this time I should do something more positive. For three years I had steeped myself in the deadly hostility that had separated Jews, Christians, and Muslims. Why not study something that they held in common? The Abrahamic faiths worshiped the same God, for instance. Why not study the way they had all seen this God over the centuries? Why not write a history of God? 8. To Turn Again The decision to write A History of God seemed to come out of the blue, and it changed my life so radically that, if I were a traditional believer, I might be tempted to call it an inspiration. In Coleridge’s poem the ancient mariner, adrift on a desolate ocean and apparently eaten up with bitterness and despair, found himself watching the water snakes coiling, writhing, and gleaming around his becalmed ship. O happy living things! no tongue Their beauty might declare: A spring of love gusht from my heart, And I bless’d them unaware! Sure my kind Saint took pity on me, And I bless’d them unaware. Redeemed by a spontaneous ecstasy that took him out of himself and toward his fellow creatures, the mariner discovered that he could actually pray again. And immediately the albatross hanging around his neck like a millstone, the cause of all his misery, “fell off, and sank / Like lead into the sea.” The mariner attributes this impulse of love to the prompting of his patron saint, but Coleridge, who was, I believe, the first person to use the word “unconscious” in its modern, psychological sense, stresses that it came upon him “unaware.” The mariner did not know what he was doing but was saved by the hidden workings of his psyche, which knew instinctively what was best for him. My own experience was similar, but while the mariner was redeemed in an instant, as tends to happen in myths and fairy tales, it took me much longer to go through the process. I too was “unaware” of what was happening to me. There was no sudden road-to-Damascus illumination, and it was only in retrospect that I realized that the decision to write about God had been a defining moment. With no clear understanding of what I was about, I had taken the first step down a path that would lead me in a wholly unexpected direction.

• From Another Country (1962)

  He shook her, laughing. “Come on. Tell me.” She kissed him on the tip of his nose. “It never happened to me before—not like this, never.” “Never?” “Never. Almost—but no, never.” Then, “Was I good for you?” “Yes. Yes. Don’t ever leave me. ” “Let me get up.” He rolled over on his back and she got out of bed and walked into the bathroom. He watched the tall, dusty body, which now belonged to him, disappear. He heard water running in the bathroom, then he heard the shower. He fell asleep. He woke up in the early afternoon. Ida was standing before the stove, singing. If you can’t give me a dollar , Give me a lousy dime — She had washed the dishes, cleaned up the kitchen, and hung up his clothes. Now she was making coffee. Just want to feed This hungry man of mine . 1 Vivaldo dreamed that he was running, running, running, through a country he had always known, but could not now remember, a rocky country. He was blinded by the rain beating down, the tough, wet vines dragged at his legs and feet, and thorns and nettles tormented his hands and arms and face. He was both fleeing and seeking, and, in his dream, the time was running out. There was a high wall ahead of him, a high, stone wall. Broken glass glittered on top of the wall, sharp points standing straight up, like spears. He was reminded of music, though he heard none: the music was created by the sight of the rain which fell in long, cruel, gleaming shafts, and by the bright glass which reared itself bitterly against it. And he felt an answering rearing in his own body, a pull fugitive and powerful and dimly troubling, such as he might have felt for a moment had there been the movement and power of a horse beneath him. And, at the same time, in his dream, as he ran or as he was propelled, he was weighed down and made sick by the certainty that he had forgotten—forgotten—what? some secret, some duty, that would save him. His breath was a terrible captive weight in his chest. He reached the wall. He grasped the stone with his bleeding hands, but the stone was slippery, he could not hold it, could not lift himself up. He tried with his feet; his feet slipped; the rain poured down . And now he knew that his enemy was upon him. Salt burned his eyes. He dared not turn; in terror he pressed himself against the rough, wet wall, as though a wall could melt or could be entered. He had forgotten—what? how to escape or how to defeat his enemy.

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

  My life changed after the publication of A History of God. The book was a success, especially in the United States and the Netherlands, and I began to travel widely. But my work continued to revolve around the same issues, particularly around the centrality of compassion. When I wrote an essay about Genesis in In the Beginning, I found that the struggle to achieve harmonious relations with our fellows brings human beings into God’s presence; that when Abraham entertained three strangers, making room for them in his home and giving them all the refreshment he could on their journey, this act of practical compassion led directly to a divine encounter. In my history of Jerusalem, I learned that the practice of compassion and social justice had been central to the cult of the holy city from the earliest times, and was especially evident in Judaism and Islam. I discovered that in all three of the religions of Abraham, fundamentalist movements distort the tradition they are trying to defend by emphasizing the belligerent elements in their tradition and overlooking the insistent and crucial demand for compassion. The theme of compassion kept surfacing in my work, because it is pivotal to all the great religious traditions—at their best. But it was my short biography of the Buddha that showed me why this was so. I knew that I could never be a yoga practitioner. The classical yoga, which brought the Buddha to enlightenment, is immeasurably more rigorous than most of the yoga practiced in the West today. I still quailed at the thought of any formal meditation, let alone this fearsome discipline designed to cancel profane consciousness by a ruthless onslaught on the egotism that pervades our lives. But all was not lost, because the practice of compassion, the Buddha had taught, could also effect ceto-vimutti, the “release of the mind” from the toils of self-seeking that is synonymous in the Buddhist scriptures with the supreme enlightenment of Nirvana. In monotheistic terms, this compassion could bring us directly into the presence of God. It was a startling moment of clarity for me. Compassion has been advocated by all the great faiths because it has been found to be the safest and surest means of attaining enlightenment. It dethrones the ego from the center of our lives and puts others there, breaking down the carapace of selfishness that holds us back from an experience of the sacred. And it gives us ecstasy, broadening our perspectives and giving us a larger, enhanced vision. As a very early Buddhist poem puts it: “May our loving thoughts fill the whole world; above, below, across—without limit; a boundless goodwill toward the whole world, unrestricted, free of hatred and enmity.”6 We are liberated from personal likes and dislikes that limit our vision, and are able to go beyond ourselves.

• From Dante's Divine Comedy (2001)

  Outline I. I n C a n t o 2 1 o f P u r g a t o r i o , D a n t e a n d V i r g i l e n c o u n t e r t h e R o m a n p o e t Statius. A. T h e e n c o u n t e r e v o k e s t h e r i s e n C h r i s t ’ s m e e t i n g w i t h h i s uncomprehending disciples on the road to Emmaus. Statius identifies himself by listing his works. The whole mountain of purgatory is quaking with joy at Statius’s progress toward heaven. B. H e p a y s h o m a g e t o V i r g i l a s h i s p o e t i c i n s p i r a t i o n . C. H e d o e s t h i s n o t k n o w i n g t h a t h e i s i n t h e p r e s e n c e o f V i r g i l , t h u s initiating a series of ironic encounters. D. D a n t e ’ s s m i l e g i v e s t h e “ s e c r e t ” a w a y — a n o t h e r p u r g a t o r i a l surprise in this canto full of them. E. H e t r i e s t o e m b r a c e V i r g i l , b u t V i r g i l r e b u k e s h i m a n d r e m i n d s him that both of them are but shades. II. C a n t o 2 1 o p e n s w i t h t w o v e r y p o w e r f u l b i b l i c a l r e f e r e n c e s .

• From Wild (2012)

  “It was just a casserole and salad.” They all three looked at me like I’d injured them. “But that’s why I brought you the cake!” I cried from beneath my rain hood. “Plus, I have something else that might be of interest. A different sort of treat. The ranger here invited me to his place for a drink and I told him I’d come only if you guys came too. I should warn you that he’s a little bit odd—he had mouth surgery today or something, so I think he’s on painkillers and a bit drunk already, but he has a fireplace with a fire in it and he has drinks and it’s inside. Do you guys want to go?” The Three Young Bucks gave me their barbarians-loose-upon-the-land look and about two minutes later we were knocking on the ranger’s door. “There you are,” he slurred as he let us in. “I was beginning to think you were going to stand me up.” “These are my friends Rick, Richie, and Josh,” I said, though the ranger only looked at them with open disdain, his dish towel still pressed to his lips. It wasn’t true he’d been entirely agreeable about my bringing them along. He’d only barely consented when I’d said it was all of us or none. The Three Young Bucks filed in and sat in a row on the couch in front of the blazing fire, propping their wet boots up on the stone hearth. “You want a drink, good-looking?” the ranger asked me as I followed him into the kitchen. “My name’s Guy, by the way. Don’t know if I told you that before or not.” “Nice to meet you, Guy,” I said, trying to stand in a way that suggested I wasn’t really with him in the kitchen so much as I was bridging the space between us and the men by the fire and that we were all one big happy party. “I’m making something special for you.” “For me? Thanks,” I said. “Do you guys want a drink?” I called to the Three Young Bucks. They answered in the affirmative as I watched Guy fill one gigantic plastic tumbler with ice and then pour various kinds of liquor into it and top it off with fruit punch from a can he took from the fridge. “It’s like a suicide,” I said when he handed it to me. “That’s what we used to call this kind of drink when I was in college, where you put all different kinds of liquor in it.” “Try it and see if you think it’s good,” said Guy. I took a sip. It tasted like hell, but in a nice way. It tasted better than sitting out in the cold rain. “Yum!” I said too cheerfully. “And these guys—Rick and Richie and Josh—they’d like one too, I think. Would you guys like one?” I asked again as I bolted to the couch.

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

  This is not always comfortable; in fact, it has become something of a social liability, because I find myself more and more distressed by the disdain that so often peppers social conversation. I know how this puts a splinter of ice into the heart of the disdained. I tremble for our world, where, in the smallest ways, we find it impossible, as Marshall Hodgson enjoined, to find room for the other in our minds. If we cannot accommodate a viewpoint in a friend without resorting to unkindness, how can we hope to heal the terrible problems of our planet? I no longer think that any principle or opinion is worth anything if it makes you unkind or intolerant. Of course, toleration has its limits. We should cry out against injustice and cruelty wherever we find it, as the prophets did, especially when it occurs in our own society or on “our” side. It may be politically expedient to ignore the beam in our own eye while decrying the splinter in the eye of our enemy, but I do not see how it can be a religious option. But this pain is a small price to pay for the spirituality of empathy. Paradoxically, what I have gained from this identification with suffering is joy. This was something that I did not expect. And this habit of looking outside myself into the heart of another has put me outside the prism of myself. This ecstasy may not last for long, but while it lasts I experience an astonishing freedom. Self, after all, is our basic problem. When I wake up at three in the morning and ask myself, Why does this have to happen to me? Why cannot I have what X has? Why am I so unloved and unappreciated?—and I still have plenty of moments like this—I learn that ego is at the heart of all pain. When I get beyond this for a few moments, I feel enlarged and enhanced—just as the Buddha promised. It is important for me to do this, because my solitary lifestyle could imprison me forever in selfishness. In a relationship, you constantly have to go beyond yourself. Each day you have to forgive something, each day you have to put yourself to one side to accommodate your partner. Looking after somebody else means that you have to give yourself away. But I never have to do this. Because I travel such a lot, I cannot even have an animal to look after. So my science of compassion does for me what a husband, lover, child, or even a dog might have done in a different life.

• From The Fermata (1994)

  Kevin’s ears were changing color. He was readjusting his notion of his employer. Sylvie just looked friendly and sly and curious. Marian said, “No, I’m not burying them. I just thought it would be exciting to try out a few of them outdoors, and I wasn’t sure which ones I would want. It seemed like such a nice setting, my own back yard, with the new parrot tulips.” “Can I look at one?” said Sylvie. Marian passed her the most decorous dildo—a medium-sized clear Lucite thick-veined figurine that the catalog called the Ice Princess. Sylvie handled it carefully, using her fingertips, not, it seemed, out of repugnance, but out of politeness for another’s treasures. “Sylvie,” said Kevin in an undertone. “I think she probably wants us to go.” “She’s welcome to take a look if she wants,” said Marian casually. The Klockhammer deep in her ane was now beginning to reassert itself; it was silencing any objections she might otherwise have had to showing two teenagers wearing matching striped shirts her fuckable toys. “Can I see that really long one, with the two ends?” said Sylvie. “Ah yes—this is my Royal Welsh Fusilier. Here.” “Wowsers!” Sylvie held the two dick-ends together, jerking on them so that the movable foreskins wrinkled and stretched in tandem. She offered one end to Kevin, who inspected it with fascination in spite of himself. “I don’t exactly get why you would need something this long with two ends,” he said. Marian hesitated. “Any number of reasons.” “One of which is,” said Sylvie to Kevin, “if you misbehave with Karen in any way ever again, I’ll put one end right up your fanny and make you jump in your next meet with it in.” “Karen is over,” said Kevin. Deferentially he thanked Marian, handing his end directly back to her. “Where did you purchase all these things?” he asked, with an air of serious inquiry. “Oh, from a place in San Francisco,” said Marian. She was using every ounce of willpower she had to keep from announcing to the two of them that she had a massive dildungs-roman installed in her butt. “Maybe sometime you could give us the address,” said Kevin, still very serious, very grown up. “We might want to order something or other. Right, Syl?” “You never know,” said Sylvie. Marian looked at them both and laughed happily. “God it’s nice to see young love,” she said. “Are you two lovers, then?” They both nodded. “We’ve made love thirty-two times in two months,” said Sylvie proudly. “In fact,” she continued, putting a fond arm around Kevin’s waist, “we were just going out for a little ‘drive,’ because Kevin’s mother doesn’t like us going up to his room anymore—which I can understand.” “Ah, a little ‘drive,’ ” said Marian. She looked at Kevin with amused surprise—the employer surprised at the precocity of the employee. “Yeah,” Kevin agreed, gesturing vaguely in the direction of the road. “We’ll probably go on over to the fish hatchery.”

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

  Now I found myself in a position where I had no agenda. There was no point in thinking up barbed remarks about a Jewish mystical idea or revealing the hopeless irrationality of a Greek Orthodox doctrine, because there was nobody to hear it. In the past, my literary agent and publishers had wanted me to be ceaselessly entertaining and topical in order to make the seriously uncool subject of religion accessible. But my new agents and publishers seemed content to let me to be an egghead, and nobody wanted to talk about God at a London dinner party. I could immerse myself in the silence, allow it to open up wide spaces in my head, and listen to the undercurrent of these new ideas. This, I am now convinced, is the only way to study religion. I think that I was lucky not to have studied theology or comparative religion at university, where I would have had to write clever papers and sit examinations, get high marks, and aim for a good degree. The rhythm of study would have been wrong—at least for me. In theology, I am entirely self-taught, and if this makes me an amateur, that need not necessarily be all bad. After all, an amateur is, literally, “one who loves,” and I was, day by solitary day, hour by silent hour, falling in love with my subject. I discovered that I could scarcely wait to get to my desk each morning, open my books, and pick up my pen. I anticipated this moment as eagerly as a tryst with a lover. I would lie in bed at night waiting for sleep, delightedly reviewing what I had learned that day. Occasionally, while sitting at my desk or poring over a dusty tome in the British Library, I would experience miniseconds of transcendence, awe, and wonder that gave me some sense of what had been going on in the mind of the theologian or mystic I was studying. At such a time I would feel stirred deeply within, and taken beyond myself, in much the same way as I was in a concert hall or a theater. I was finding in study the ecstasy that I had hoped to find in those long hours of prayer as a young nun. When I shared this with my students at the Leo Baeck College, Rabbi Lionel Blue, my boss in the comparative religion department, told me with amusement that this was very Jewish. It was what Jews experienced when they studied Torah or Talmud. I also learned that Saint Benedict had instructed his monks to spend part of the day in lectio divina (divine study), during which they would experience moments of oratio, or prayer.

• 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.