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 Shoe Dog: A Memoir by the Creator of Nike (2016)

  The picnic was on Awaji, a tiny island off Kobe. We took a small boat to get there, and when we arrived we saw long tables set up along the beach, each one covered with platters of seafood and bowls of noodles and rice. Beside the tables were tubs filled with cold bottles of soda and beer. Everyone was wearing bathing suits and sunglasses and laughing. People I’d only known in a reserved, corporate setting were being silly and carefree. Late in the day there were competitions. Team-building exercises like potato sack relays and foot races along the surf. I showed off my speed, and everyone bowed to me as I crossed the finish line first. Everyone agreed that Skinny Gaijin was very fast. I was picking up the language, slowly. I knew the Japanese word for shoe: gutzu. I knew the Japanese word for revenue: shunyu. I knew how to ask the time, and directions, and I learned a phrase I used often: Watakushi domo no kaisha ni tsuite no joh hou des. Here is some information about my company. Toward the end of the picnic I sat on the sand and looked out across the Pacific Ocean. I was living two separate lives, both wonderful, both merging. Back home I was part of a team, me and Woodell and Johnson—and now Penny. Here in Japan I was part of a team, me and Kitami and all the good people of Onitsuka. By nature I was a loner, but since childhood I’d thrived in team sports. My psyche was in true harmony when I had a mix of alone time and team time. Exactly what I had now. Also, I was doing business with a country I’d come to love. Gone was the initial fear. I connected with the shyness of the Japanese people, with the simplicity of their culture and products and arts. I liked that they tried to add beauty to every part of life, from the tea ceremony to the commode. I liked that the radio announced each day exactly which cherry trees, on which corner, were blossoming, and how much. My reverie was interrupted when a man named Fujimoto sat beside me. Fiftyish, slouch-shouldered, he had a gloomy air that seemed more than middle-age melancholy. Like a Japanese Charlie Brown. And yet I could see that he was making a concerted effort to extend himself, to be cheerful toward me. He forced a big smile and told me that he loved America, that he longed to live there. I told him that I’d just been thinking how much I loved Japan. “Maybe we should trade places,” I said. He smiled ruefully. “Any time.” I complimented his English. He said he’d learned it from the American GIs. “Funny,” I said, “the first things I learned about Japanese culture, I learned from two ex-GIs.” The first words his GIs taught him, he said, were, “Kiss my ass!” We had a good laugh about that.

• From Shoe Dog: A Memoir by the Creator of Nike (2016)

  The howling grew louder. So Strasser picked up his binder and threw it against the wall. “Fuck all you guys,” he said. The binder burst open, pages flew everywhere, and the laughter was deafening. Even Strasser couldn’t help himself. He had to join in. Little wonder that Strasser’s nickname was Rolling Thunder. Hayes, meanwhile, was Doomsday. Woodell was Weight. (As in Dead Weight.) Johnson was Four Factor, because he tended to exaggerate and therefore everything he said needed to be divided by four. No one took it personally. The only thing truly not tolerated at a Buttface was a thin skin. And sobriety. At day’s end, when everybody had a scratchy throat from all the abusing and laughing and problem-solving, when our yellow legal pads were filled with ideas, solutions, quotations, and lists upon lists, we’d shift ground to the bar at the lodge and continue the meeting over drinks. Many drinks. The bar was called the Owl’s Nest. I love to close my eyes and remember us storming through the entrance, scattering all other patrons. Or making friends of them. We’d buy drinks for the house, then commandeer a corner and continue laying into each other about some problem or idea or harebrained scheme. Say the problem was midsoles not getting from Point A to Point B. Round and round we’d go, everyone speaking at once, a chorale of name-calling and finger-pointing, all made louder, and funnier, and somehow clearer, by the booze. To anyone in the Owl’s Nest, to anyone in the corporate world, it would have looked inefficient, inappropriate. Even scandalous. But before the bartender gave last call, we’d know full well why those midsoles weren’t getting from Point A to Point B, and the person responsible would be contrite, and put on notice, and we’d have ourselves a creative solution. The only person who didn’t join us in these late-night revels was Johnson. He’d typically go for a head-clearing run, then retreat to his room and read in bed. I don’t think he ever set foot in the Owl’s Nest. Or knew where it was. We’d always have to spend the first part of the next morning updating him on what we’d decided in his absence.

• From Notes of a Native Son (1955)

  I went to Washington, where I met the late, great E. Franklin Frazier and the great Sterling Brown. Howard was the first college campus I had ever seen, and, without these men, I do not know what would have become of my morale. The play, thank God, was a tremendous seven-or ten-day wonder, playing to standing room only on the last night, in spite of a reluctant, not yet Black faculty (“This play will set back the Speech Department by thirty years!”), a bewildered Variety (“What do you think Negroes in the North will think of this play?”), and the fact that it was not to be seen again for nearly ten years. And I had fallen in love. I was happy—the world had never before been so beautiful a place. There was only one small hitch. I—we—didn’t have a dime, no pot, nor no window. Sol Stein returned to the attack. We had agreed on nine essays, he wanted a tenth, and I wrote the title essay between Owen’s house and the Dunbar Hotel. Returned to New York, where I finished Giovanni’s Room. Publisher’s Row, that hotbed of perception, looked on the book with horror and loathing, refused to touch it, saying that I was a young Negro writer, who, if he published this book, would alienate his audience and ruin his career. They would not, in short, publish it, as a favor to me. I conveyed my gratitude, perhaps a shade too sharply, borrowed money from a friend, and myself and my lover took the boat to France. I had never thought of myself as an essayist: the idea had never entered my mind. Even—or, perhaps, especially now—I find it hard to re-create the journey. It has something to do, certainly, with what I was trying to discover and, also, trying to avoid. If I was trying to discover myself—on the whole, when examined, a somewhat dubious notion, since I was also trying to avoid myself—there was, certainly, between that self and me, the accumulated rock of ages. This rock scarred the hand, and all tools broke against it. Yet, there was a me, somewhere: I could feel it, stirring within and against captivity. The hope of salvation—identity—depended on whether or not one would be able to decipher and describe the rock. One song cries, “lead me to the rock that is higher than I,” and another cries, “hide me in the rock!” and yet another proclaims, “I got a home in that rock.” Or, “I ran to the rock to hide my face: the rock cried out, no hiding place!” The accumulated rock of ages deciphered itself as a part of my inheritance—a part, mind you, not the totality—but, in order to claim my birthright, of which my inheritance was but a shadow, it was necessary to challenge and claim the rock.

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

  No viva, therefore no first. For the umpteenth time I mentally reviewed my papers. A viva, I knew, could last for hours. But when I looked again at the examiners, I felt my hopes plummet. I cannot do this, I thought bleakly. All my written answers had been carefully contrived. During the long weeks of revision, I had prepared essays that could be adapted to meet almost any contingency. They were my usual Gothic cathedral creations, intricate edifices of other people’s thoughts. But now I knew that there was no chance that I would be able to think on my feet in the way that would be expected of me. I still sat tongue-tied in class, marveling at the way the others could play confidently with ideas, get fresh insights in the course of a discussion, and produce arguments to support their case at a moment’s notice. I was especially impressed by the ease with which other people could say, “I think.” I had no notion what “I” thought. When I scoured my brain, I still encountered the old blank. There was no way that I could talk freely and impressively to the board. Miserably I listened for my name as the chairman of the examiners read out the list of our names, telling each of us (all of whose names began with the letter A ) what time we should present ourselves. He didn’t mention me, and for a moment, compounded of both disappointment and wild relief, I thought it had all been a mistake. I had got a safe second and wouldn’t have to face the examiners after all. Then the chairman nodded at me with the same courteous little smile that he had given to the others. “And Miss Armstrong, would you stay here now, please?” I stood up slowly, adjusting my gown, while the others filed out of the room. “Come over here.” The chairman gestured toward the chair and I began the interminable journey across the carpet. It took a while before I recognized the sudden explosion of sound that stopped me in my tracks. It was clapping. I looked up to find that the examiners had risen to their feet and were applauding. The men had doffed their mortarboards. All were smiling broadly. And I remembered the old tradition. “Miss Armstrong,” the chairman said when the decorous clapping had petered out, “we wish to congratulate you on your papers, which were all quite excellent.” I felt a huge smile break my face in two and a wave of pure delight. I had done it. I had somehow managed to achieve what they called a “congratulatory first.” If I could do that, with all the distractions that I had had, I could do anything. I would survive. For a moment the path ahead seemed clear and secure.

• From Go Tell It on the Mountain (1953)

  The distant gramophone stuck now, suddenly, on a grinding, wailing, sardonic trumpet-note; this blind, ugly crying swelled the moment and filled the room. She looked down at John. A hand somewhere struck the gramophone arm and sent the silver needle on its way through the whirling, black grooves, like something bobbing, anchorless, in the middle of the sea. ‘Johnny’s done fell asleep,’ she said. She, who had descended with such joy and pain, had begun her upward climb—upward, with her baby, on the steep, steep side of the mountain. She felt a great commotion in the air around her—a great excitement, muted, waiting on the Lord. And the air seemed to tremble, as before a storm. A light seemed to hang—just above, and all around them—about to burst into revelation. In the great crying, the great singing all around her, in the wind that gathered to fill the church, she did not hear her husband; and she thought of John as sitting, silent now and sleepy, far in the back of the church—watching, with that wonder and that terror in his eyes. She did not raise her head. She wished to tarry yet a little longer, that God might speak to her. It had been before this very altar that she had come to kneel, so many years ago, to be forgiven. When the autumn came, and the air was dry and sharp, and the wind high, she was always with Gabriel. Florence did not approve of this, and Florence said so often; but she never said more than this, for the reason, Elizabeth decided, that she had no evil to report—it was only that she was not fond of her brother. But even had Florence been able to find a language unmistakable in which to convey her prophecies, Elizabeth could not have heeded her because Gabriel had become her strength. He watched over her and her baby as though it had become his calling; he was very good to John, and played with him, and bought him things, as though John were his own. She knew that his wife had died childless, and that he had always wanted a son—he was praying still, he told her, that God would bless him with a son. She thought sometimes, lying on her bed alone, and thinking of all his kindness, that perhaps John was that son, and that he would grow one day to comfort and bless them both. Then she thought how, now, she would embrace again the faith she had abandoned, and walk again in the light from which, with Richard, she had so far fled. Sometimes, thinking of Gabriel, she remembered Richard—his voice, his breath, his arms—with a terrible pain; and then she felt herself shrinking from Gabriel’s anticipated touch. But this shrinking she would not countenance.

• From Go Tell It on the Mountain (1953)

  How many here to-night had fallen where Isaiah fell? How many had cried—as Isaiah cried? How many could testify, as Isaiah testified, ‘Mine eyes have seen the King, the Lord of hosts’? Ah, whosoever failed to have this testimony should never see His face, but should be told, on that great day: ‘Depart from me, ye that work iniquity,’ and be hurled for ever into the lake of fire prepared for Satan and all his angels. Oh, would the sinner rise to-night, and walk the little mile to his salvation, here to the mercy seat? And he waited. Deborah watched him with a calm, strong smile. He looked out over their faces, their faces all upturned to him. He saw joy in those faces, and holy excitement, and belief—and they all looked up to him. Then, far in the back, a boy rose, a tall, dark boy, his white shirt open at the neck and torn, his trousers dusty and shabby and held up with an old necktie, and he looked across the immeasurable, dreadful, breathing distance up to Gabriel, and began to walk down the long, bright aisle. Someone cried: ‘Oh, bless the Lord!’ and tears filled Gabriel’s eyes. The boy knelt, sobbing, at the mercy seat, and the church began to sing. Then Gabriel turned away, knowing that this night he had run well, and that God had used him. The elders all were smiling, and one of them took him by the hand, and said: ‘That was mighty fine, boy. Mighty fine.’ Then came the Sunday of the spectacular dinner that was to end the revival—for which dinner, Deborah and all the other women, had baked, roasted, fried, and boiled for many days beforehand. He jokingly suggested, to repay her a little for her contention that he was the best preacher of the revival, that she was the best cook among the women. She timidly suggested that he was here at a flattering disadvantage, for she had heard all of the preachers, but he had not, for a very long time, eaten another woman’s cooking. When the Sunday came, and he found himself once more among the elders, about to go to the table, Gabriel felt a drop in his happy, proud anticipation. He was not comfortable with these men—that was it—it was difficult for him to accept them as his elders and betters in the faith. They seemed to him so lax, so nearly worldly; they were not like those holy prophets of old who grew thin and naked in the service of the Lord. These, God’s ministers, had indeed grown fat, and their dress was rich and various. They had been in the field so long that they did not tremble before God any more. They took God’s power as their due, as something that made the more exciting their own assured, special atmosphere.

• From The Surrender: An Erotic Memoir (2004)

  And he’ll usually make these shifts without pulling his dick from my ass. Totally fantastic. But whatever the angle I can feel his cock growing inside me, stronger, harder, deeper, pressing into my anxieties, my pettiness, my pride, my vanity. Like a vacuum to dust, he sucks out my lesser selves, removes my sins. One by one they are suctioned away and underneath he finds my goodness, my innocence, my four-year-old before she was hit by The Hand and got mad. This is what he was looking for. This is what he finds. This is what he gives me. Fucked off my feet, my shoes fall to the floor with a thud, one by one. He smiles and says affectionately, “Now we’re having fun.” Now I’m traveling on the fast train to paradise. Unschooled as I am in the process, tears often fall out of my eyes. Like a true gentleman, he will shield my eyes with his broad hand, giving me privacy, while he fucks me harder and harder, faster and faster, squeezing out the tears. When I finally release everything, not one centimeter of my being holding on to anything at all, when my ego is annihilated, then the laughing begins. It can begin while I’m still crying, the energies are the same, though the tears are more familiar. But somewhere, somehow, along the way, my unconscious bursts open and I laugh and laugh and laugh. The harder I laugh the harder he fucks my ass until the whole thing makes no sense at all. Now we are really having fun. He looks at me laughing, and then, content that I’m on the road with him, he fucks me some more, ever vigilant, ever present. My laugh sometimes deepens and I laugh like I never laughed before. I recognized it immediately the first time it happened—the cackle of the crone. It is the sound of a woman who is caught inside the mystery of the universe, in the irony of the angst, in the place that ego abhors. Bliss. At first the pleasure was unbearable and I’d try to pull away, try to know what was happening. But he doesn’t let me, fucking me so relentlessly that any attempt to backtrack to control is useless. It is here that his domination is complete. I am his slave and he forces harmony upon me, against my ferocious fear. With repetition I have come to accept it, and now I don’t only visit but have learned how to stay there. Meanwhile he is looking at me, all tears, giggles, and gut-laughs, and says, “You are CRAZY, girl.” He looks a little dazed himself, but unlike me, he maintains total control, total awareness. I look up as he kneels above me, deep inside me, and I see the most beautiful thing I ever saw. Like Michelangelo’s David, his chest is broad, his skin is smooth, his hands are huge, his face beatific.

• From The Surrender: An Erotic Memoir (2004)

  This is the act now, and the only one; it is not a warm-up, it is the main event in that moment. I took these few pointers and practiced, and practiced, and practiced. It’s all practice, like ballet, nothing but practice. The more I practiced, the more I discovered, the more I adored his cock, the more I adored myself, the more I adored him, the more I loved sucking his cock, the happier he got. Now he gets so happy that his eyes travel from mine and roll up into his head and his breathing changes and his cheeks flush and I fill with joy like an empty tank at a gas station. It was while preparing to suck his cock one sunny afternoon that another pillow besides Pink Square found its place. I had been given a tiny, decorative heart-shaped pillow one year for Valentine’s Day. It measured only nine inches across, was firmly stuffed, and boasted pink, black, and gold satin stripes on its cover with pink tassels around the circumference. The first time A-Man saw this rather silly little example of female frivolity, he grabbed it in his palm like a football, asked with amused bewilderment, “What’s this?,” and promptly tossed it off the bed. He had never seen anything so completely useless being called a pillow; a pillow was for support and comfort, and this particular item promised neither. Until that inspired afternoon when the ostracized little pillow suddenly came into its own. As A-Man sat up at the end of the bed, I grabbed the heart pillow out of his way and, angling the pointed tip toward his ass, placed his balls on it. And there they sat, supported, cock on top, like a royal offering surrounded by shimmering gold threads and dangling pink tassels. We both looked down at the scene in silence. After a brief pause, he announced triumphantly, “It’s the Ball Pillow!” We both laughed so hard that his imminent cocksucking was delayed for quite some time. And after that day, he always asked, along with Pink Square, for the Ball Pillow. He never, ever comes in my mouth. I can suck his cock for forty minutes and he’ll hold his power throughout, allowing me to give more, allowing me to love him. Receiving as he does really is a gift to me.

• From The Surrender: An Erotic Memoir (2004)

  Speaking of Utah, I can’t help wondering how Mormons feel about anal sex—with humans, that is—what with all those extra wives and orifices around the house. Does one prohibited penchant for multiple options lead to another? One had to be very careful, however, in adjacent Idaho, where the same act could get you life in the slammer with all the other newly converted sodomites. This huge variable of penalty in such close geographic proximity suggests that the hundred-and-fifty-mile border between Utah and Idaho might be packed with cheap motels—Buggery Row—filled with Idahoans enjoying some bargain borderline behavior. Despite its new legal status, sodomy remains the last taboo, sexually and socially. Oprah Winfrey talks about everything—rape, child molestation, incest, adultery, murder, drugs, homosexuality, bisexuality, even threesomes—but never, ever, about sodomy except in the guise of abuse and criminal behavior. Always a scandal, never an advertisement. “Odd how nineteeth-century literature is sealed off at both ends by an anal scandal,” the theater critic Kenneth Tynan observed. “Wilde up Bosie’s bum, Byron up Annabella’s. ” All this evidence leads me to believe that entering the exit will never become mainstream. Even the spell-checker on my computer that recognizes more than 135,000 words does not recognize sodomize . But that’s okay. I know how to spell it. #145 and #146 We just completed both 145 and 146 consecutively in the course of an hour and a half. He never went down. I grabbed the base of his cock shortly after he had pulled out and shot vertically up my arched back, arcing over my face. His jizz landed squarely on a black velvet pillow with a satisfying splat . That look was still in his eye, that crazy fucking look, and I asked, “May I lick your cock?” “Yes,” he said gently, generously. And we did the whole thing all over again. Double bliss, double cum, exponential fun. PUBLIC INTEREST There is, however, a growing underground movement of heterosexual backdoor behavior, according to the largest and most authoritative national survey of sexual behavior ever published in the United States. “Our data shows that anal sex was much more prevalent than might have been expected,” begins the dry admission from the unsuspecting researchers. Overall, 25 percent of men and women try it in their lifetimes, and 10 percent have done so in the last year. Only 2 percent, however, on their “most recent” encounter—I just love statistics. Nevertheless, between the ages of thirty and fifty, the likelihood of male heterosexual sodomy rises to a respectable one third of all men. One out of three. Think about it next time you’re at a party and looking around the room. A curious footnote points out that all these percentages are only based on men’s and women’s two primary sex partners. Meaning: if someone is having anal sex with their #3 lover, then it is not reflected in these figures.

• From The Surrender: An Erotic Memoir (2004)

  Soon after, the redhead announced that she was tired and was going to bed. She showed us a futon that rolled out over the Persian carpet, kissed us both on the forehead, placed two condoms and a bottle of water beside the futon, and disappeared to her own bedroom. She was our fairy godmother, she had felt it between us, she had seen it, and she sanctioned it, even engineered it—despite the fact that she had wanted him. I’d never had a woman do that for me before. I loved the redhead and her house of Freudian mirrors. And then the blessings really began. Thus far, there had been no fucking that night. Now love poured out of this guy’s body like oil. When he entered me, I knew. I just knew. He fucked in love, not frenzy; in tenderness, not anger; in ease, not desperation. What his cock could do for me seemed to be the question he was answering. It did plenty for both of us. Finally, a fuck I liked. A new year, a new world. I saw him once more, alone, before he went to Europe for two weeks, but I simply didn’t have the courage to love him, so I got myself one of those temporary boyfriends—monogamy, weekends away, dinner parties, friends, plans. When the Young Man returned, he called, and I told him I had a boyfriend, I couldn’t see him. He was too good to be real, I told myself, so I chose instead a small, jealous man who didn’t even like to eat pussy. Why? Self-hatred, lack of faith, and a fear of what is beautiful: divorce can make you nuts. But after the boyfriend snooped in my diary one morning six weeks later and confronted me with questionable evidence—I had kissed the Young Man at the gym and had written it down—I fired him on the spot, my outrage being greater than his. I never saw him again. So I continued to date some men (dinner) while fucking others (no dinner). I was learning a lot—well, two things anyway. I preferred sex on an empty stomach, and to eat alone with a good book. THE MASSEUR This bed thy centre is, these walls thy sphere. —JOHN DONNE My first affair began a week after the end of my marriage. Amazing what two phone calls can precipitate: one ended a ten-year relationship, and the other booked a one-hour massage that began the rest of my life. The adorable masseur. I had already had two massages from him for my wounded hip, and I’d held my breath to conceal my desire: I was still married. But by the next massage I wasn’t, and I took my first bold step. I could tell that he was too professional to make an overture, so I decided it was up to me. I planned beforehand that if (ha!) I was aroused again, I would say something by the end of the session—but what?

• From The Surrender: An Erotic Memoir (2004)

  Breast to breast, mouth to mouth, we lined up our pussies, redhead and brunette, hers mine, mine hers. Over her, he entered me, six legs atop one another. I looked up at their two faces beaming down on me as he fucked me. I held them both and knew that this was one of the great moments of my life—of being overwhelmed, ensconced in love. He is me is she is he and we are rolling, fucking, oozing, laughing, being. This layered, fucking sex sandwich became the image for my final theory of us three. He and I deeply connected, with her as our midwife, our buffer, our catalyst, our crazy glue. As Colette observed, “Certain women need women in order to preserve their taste for men.” She lightened us, separated us, and spread around the shattering intensity between us. She diminished the terrible anxiety of love . Several months later, he announced he was leaving town for a job—for months and months, maybe forever. We hastily arranged a rendezvous. After he arrived, she called to suggest we begin without her, she would be late. She knocked just as we finished fucking. We greeted her naked, but she was in red velvet and green silk with freshly cut white baby roses strewn in her hair, like Ophelia. They told me to just lie there, and relax, as they connected over their prey. He had fingers on my clit, up my pussy, and inside my ass, while she leaned over me, soft, with red, silky hair everywhere, whispering “I love you, I love you, I love you, I love you . . .” The waves started coming and still he continued, still she whispered, caressing my face, “I love you, I love you, I love you . . .” The waves continued, on and on, with orgasms so sweet building to ones less sweet but more intense. And then it happened. A wave began in my feet and legs, traveled up my belly, my chest, my throat, and my soul burst out the crown of my head. It was the deepest experience of pleasure-love I had ever known—or witnessed. She later explained the technical name was a “Kamikazi-Mega-Hiawatha.” That sounded precisely right. Then he left town. Gone. Gone. She and I met one sunny afternoon holding each other in her bed, with wandering fingers—but I missed him. Sweet sisters without a cock between us. MAN OF GOD The loss felt devastating. Would such joy never be more than momentary? Probably not. My inability to tolerate this knowledge led me into yet another flirtation with God. This time I met him at Home Depot. I was in a back aisle with a tape measure and a saw trying to cut a seven-foot wood pole in half to use as a curtain rod. The pole kept rolling off the cutting bench, and things were not going well.

• From The Surrender: An Erotic Memoir (2004)

  We convened at the redhead’s house at 10:30. Now, this woman knew ambiance like she was born in a harem: red velvet curtains not only on every window but dividing every room; gold fixtures galore; no electric lighting, just candles and incense burning like in a Catholic church; sexy music emanating from unseen speakers; potted palms; naked images of herself in various theatrical guises on the walls; and mirrors, mirrors everywhere—a narcissist’s nirvana. I was learning from this woman already, learning about myself, learning what I liked. After a glass of champagne in crystal flutes at midnight, we ended up on her Persian carpet on some lush pillows watching Fred Astaire in Top Hat. The Young Man had never seen it before. He didn’t see it that night, either. He and I were the first to touch, relinking from earlier that day. As we grasped hand to hand, she watched like a Cheshire cat, and slowly linked herself, too, to me, hands to legs. Before long, they had conspired to remove my clothes, mesmerizing my body with touch. Four hands, two faces, male and female, urgent, loving, sexual, groping, they swept me up in waves of love. Gently, they fought over my pussy; he got there first, but she edged him out. The pleasure was illegal. What’s wrong with girls with girls? Absolutely nothing. But I wanted to come in his mouth, and in my only move, I pulled his face into me. As I gave him all I had and then some, Fred was still twirling in his top hat on the muted black-and-white screen. Then the redhead and I stripped him. He allowed it, willing and erect. She and I gathered like good girlfriends around his cock, which was hard, big, and beautiful. Four hands, two mouths. Every few minutes the Young Man raised his head to look down at the scene of angels praying together over his vertical altar. His eyes rolled back in his head, and with a smile and a groan he fell back into his pleasure. But he never came. She commented on his endurance. He said he’d always been that way. She seemed to know a whole lot about cocks and pussies, and I just sucked it all in. He was one of the blessed, she said, a man who can really take a woman on a ride. I found out later for myself just what kind of ride this could be.

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

  True, I had never known “the blessèd face,” but (I had now concluded) that was because there was nothing to know. When I had embarked upon the religious life, I had been certain that if only I tried hard enough, I would see the world transfigured by the presence of God and that I would, as the Bible promised, soar like an eagle. But now the world had shrunk, and I found that such wings as I had hoped to possess were “merely vans to beat the air,” which had become “small and dry.” My hope of discovering eternity had died, and instead I knew that all we have is now; that “time is always time” and place “is always and only place.” What Wordsworth had called “the glory and the dream” had faded, and the only joy to which I could aspire lay “in what remains behind.” But what thrilled me most about Eliot’s poem were the words “because” and “consequently.” There was nothing depressing about this deliberate acceptance of reduced possibilities. It was precisely “because” the poet had learned the limitations of the “actual” that he could say: “I rejoice that things are as they are.” Because I cannot hope to turn again Consequently I rejoice, having to construct something Upon which to rejoice The sudden clumsiness of the syntax and language showed that this was no easy solution. It was not something that came naturally. The new joy demanded effort. It would have to be constructed as laboriously and carefully as I put together a chapter of my thesis or as engineers and aeronautical experts built an airplane. It would be a lifelong task, requiring alert attention to the smallest detail, dedication, and unremitting effort; but as I listened to Dame Helen that day, I knew that it could be done. My confidence sprang from the fact that the process had already started. I had resolved to stop fighting my malady, to accept what my life had become, and—“consequently”—for the first time in years I had responded spontaneously and with my whole being to a poem, just as I had before I had incurred this damage. It was a sign of life, a shoot that had suddenly broken through the frozen earth. This must be the way that human life worked. He who loves his life shall lose it; he who loses his life shall save it. This was not an arbitrary command of God, but simply a law of the human condition. If you cast your bread upon the waters and were prepared to give it up for good, it would somehow come back to you—albeit in another form. I experienced that poem as a gift. In the convent I might have said that it was a moment of grace. But I did not believe that it was the work of a God. I noticed that Eliot had not abandoned the deity, and that he still prayed.

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

  I had never been so glad to see anyone in my life. “Do you mean—?” I asked, scarcely daring to hope for so swift a reprieve. Jenifer had already pushed open the door, nodded grimly to the nurse, and was striding resolutely out. “Come on!” she called back to me impatiently, and I followed her down a flight of stairs, through the cavernous entrance hall, and out into the fresh air. I took a deep, luxuriant sniff, reminding myself of Jacob greedily snuffing up the incense at Blackfriars. “What an extraordinary thing to have done!” Jenifer exclaimed. “I telephoned the hospital to ask when they were going to let you out and they told me that you had come here!” “Dr. Piet—” I began as we hurried across the car park toward the Harts’ Morris Minor. The late autumn leaves looked more golden than I had ever seen them, and the air smelled fragrant after the thick, heavy despair in the ward. I felt a thrill of pure exhilaration. Suddenly everything seemed possible. The battered, dusty car looked a chariot fit for the gods. “Yes, I’ve spoken to him.” Jenifer flung my case onto the backseat. “He told me that you didn’t feel able to come back to us and that you had wanted to stay in the convent. My dear! I’ve never heard of such an insane scheme! You must be mad!” “Yes.” I smiled to myself. “I sometimes think I must be.” “Here.” Jenifer scrabbled in the glove compartment and pulled out an already opened packet of after-dinner chocolate mints, threw them into my lap, and turned the ignition key. “These were left over from the guest night we had in college yesterday. There are quite a lot left. I thought they might cheer you up.” As we drove back to Oxford, I felt a surge of returning life. There was excitement in the bustle of the streets, and the graceful curve of the High Street had never looked more beautiful. I smiled with real affection at the mints. It was so typical of Jenifer, whose frugality was almost miserly, to have pinched a box from college. A brand-new box would have been so uncharacteristic, a sign that something had irrevocably changed. “Does Jacob know what happened?” I asked as we turned into Manor Place. She shook her head. “He knows that you haven’t been well and that you went away for a rest. He’s a bit suspicious—knows that there is something up, but that’s all.” It was almost dark by the time we drove the car into the garage and let ourselves in by the kitchen door. As I carried my bag through the hall, I passed Herbert, who was standing at the entrance to his study.

• From Go Tell It on the Mountain (1953)

  It came to him that he must testify: his tongue only could bear witness to the wonders he had seen. And he remembered, suddenly, the text of a sermon he had once heard his father preach. And he opened his mouth, feeling, as he watched his father, the darkness roar behind him, and the very earth beneath him seem to shake; yet he gave to his father their common testimony. ‘I’m saved,’ he said, ‘and I know I’m saved.’ And then, as his father did not speak, he repeated his father’s text: ‘My witness is in Heaven and my record is on high.’ ‘It come from your mouth,’ said his father then. ‘I want to see you live it. It’s more than a notion.’ ‘I’m going to pray God,’ said John—and his voice shook, whether with joy or grief he could not say—'to keep me, and make me strong… to stand… to stand against the enemy… and against everything and everybody… that wants to cut down my soul.’ Then his tears came down again, like a wall between him and his father. His Aunt Florence came and took him in her arms. Her eyes were dry, and her face was old in the savage, morning light. But her voice, when she spoke, was gentler than he had ever known it to be before. ‘You fight the good fight,’ she said, ‘you hear? Don’t you get weary, and don’t you get scared. Because I know the Lord’s done laid His hands on you.’ ‘Yes,’ he said, weeping, ‘yes. I’m going to serve the Lord.’ ‘Amen!’ cried Elisha. ‘Bless our God!’ The filthy streets rang with the early-morning light as they came out of the temple. They were all there, save young Ella Mae, who had departed while John was still on the floor—she had a bad cold, said Praying Mother Washington, and needed to have her rest. Now, in three groups, they walked the long, grey, silent avenue: Praying Mother Washington with Elizabeth and Sister McCandless and Sister Price, and before them Gabriel and Florence, and Elisha and John ahead. ‘You know, the Lord is a wonder,’ said the praying mother. ‘Don’t you know, all this week He just burdened my soul, and kept me a-praying and a-weeping before Him? Look like I just couldn’t get no ease nohow—and I know He had me a-tarrying for that boy’s soul.’ ‘Well, amen,’ said Sister Price. ‘Look like the Lord just wanted this church to rock.

• From Go Tell It on the Mountain (1953)

  Out of joy strength came, strength that was fashioned to bear sorrow: sorrow brought forth joy. For ever? This was Ezekiel’s wheel, in the middle of the burning air for ever—and the little wheel ran by faith, and the big wheel ran by the grace of God. ‘Elisha?’ he said. ‘If you ask Him to bear you up,’ said Elisha, as though he had read his thoughts, ‘He won’t never let you fall.’ ‘It was you,’ he said, ‘wasn’t it, who prayed me through?’ ‘We was all praying, little brother,’ said Elisha, with a smile, ‘but yes, I was right over you the whole time. Look like the Lord had put you like a burden on my soul.’ ‘Was I praying long?’ he asked. Elisha laughed. ‘Well, you started praying when it was night and you ain’t stopped praying till it was morning. That’s a right smart time, it seems to me.’ John smiled, too, observing with some wonder that a saint of God could laugh. ‘Was you glad,’ he asked, ‘to see me at the altar?’ Then he wondered why he had asked this, and hoped Elisha would not think him foolish. ‘I was mighty glad,’ said Elisha soberly, ‘to see little Johnny lay his sins on the altar, lay his life on the altar and rise up, praising God.’ Something shivered in him as the word sin was spoken. Tears sprang to his eyes again. ‘Oh,’ he said, ‘I pray God, I pray the Lord… to make me strong… to sanctify me wholly… and keep me saved!’ ‘Yes,’ said Elisha, ‘you keep that spirit, and I know the Lord’s going to see to it that you get home all right.’ ‘It’s a long way,’ John said slowly, ‘ain’t it? It’s a hard way. It’s uphill all the way.’ ‘You remember Jesus,’ Elisha said. ‘You keep your mind on Jesus. He went that way—up the steep side of the mountain—and He was carrying the cross, and didn’t nobody help Him. He went that way for us. He carried that cross for us.’ ‘But He was the Son of God,’ said John, ‘and He knew it.’ ‘He knew it,’ said Elisha, ‘because He was willing to pay the price. Don’t you know it, Johnny? Ain’t you willing to pay the price?’ ‘That song they sing,’ said John, finally, ‘if it costs my life —is that the price?’ ‘Yes,’ said Elisha, ‘that’s the price.’ Then John was silent, wanting to put the question another way. And the silence was cracked, suddenly, by an ambulance siren, and a crying bell. And they both looked up as the ambulance raced past them on the avenue on which no creature moved, save for the saints of God behind them. ‘But that’s the Devil’s price, too,’ said Elisha, as silence came again. ‘The Devil, he don’t ask for nothing less than your life.

• From Go Tell It on the Mountain (1953)

  Ezekiel had prophesied upon them, these scattered bones, these slain, and, in the fullness of time, the prophet, John, had come out of the wilderness, crying that the promise was for them. They were encompassed with a very cloud of witnesses: Judas, who had betrayed the Lord; Thomas, who had doubted Him; Peter, who had trembled at the crowing of a cock; Stephen, who had been stoned; Paul, who had been bound; the blind man crying in the dusty road, the dead man rising from the grave. And they looked unto Jesus, the author and the finisher of their faith, running with patience the race He had set before them; they endured the cross, and they despised the shame, and waited to join Him, one day, in glory, at the right hand of the Father. My soul! don’t you be uneasy! Jesus going to make up my dying bed! ‘Rise up, rise up, Brother Johnny, and talk about the Lord’s deliverance.’ It was Elisha who had spoken; he stood just above John, smiling; and behind him were the saints—Praying Mother Washington, and Sister McCandless, and Sister Price. Behind these, he saw his mother, and his aunt; his father, for the moment, was hidden from his view. ‘Amen!’ cried Sister McCandless, ‘rise up, and praise the Lord!’ He tried to speak, and could not, for the joy that rang in him this morning. He smiled up at Elisha, and his tears ran down; and Sister McCandless began to sing: ‘Lord, I ain’t No stranger now! ’ ‘Rise up, Johnny,’ said Elisha, again. ‘Are you saved, boy?’ ‘Yes,’ said John, ‘oh, yes!’ And the words came upward, it seemed, of themselves, in the new voice God had given him. Elisha stretched out his hand, and John took the hand, and stood—so suddenly, and so strangely, and with such wonder!—once more on his feet. ‘Lord, I ain’t No stranger now! ’ Yes, the night had passed, the powers of darkness had been beaten back. He moved among the saints, he, John, who had come home, who was one of their company now; weeping, he yet could find no words to speak of his great gladness; and he scarcely knew how he moved, for his hands were new, and his feet were new, and he moved in a new and Heaven-bright air.

• From The First Paul: Reclaiming the Radical Visionary Behind the Church's Conservative Icon (2009)

  Both those letters came from the proconsular jail at Ephesus, capital of the Roman province of Asia Minor. When, for instance, Paul mentions “the whole imperial guard” in Philippians 1:13, the Greek is simply “in the whole praetorium,” that is, throughout the governor’s entire jail. Later, in 1 Corinthians, he writes that he “fought with wild animals at Ephesus” (15:32). That should be taken metaphorically, as one did not live to write about literally fighting in the arena with wild beasts. That exact same metaphor was used over a half century later by Ignatius of Antioch in his Epistle to the Romans —and possibly used in imitation of Paul. “From Syria to Rome I am fighting with wild beasts, by land and sea, by night and day bound to ten ‘leopards’ [that is, a company of soldiers], and they become worse for kind treatment” (5:1). As he traveled to martyrdom in Rome, Ignatius was—like Paul—free to receive support and assistance from fellow Christians, free to write seven letters to churches along his route, but always chained to one or another of that military squad known as the “Leopards.” And so, after that explanatory detour, we return to Paul’s letter to Philemon. After the names of sender and recipient, the protocols of an ancient letter required a greeting: Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. (3) In this greeting, the “you” is plural. But that phrase “grace and peace” appears as in the greeting of every single one of Paul’s seven authentic letters. We will, therefore, leave it for now, but return to consider it in much greater detail in Chapter 4. After the greeting Paul continues with his usual thanksgiving element: When I remember you in my prayers, I always thank my God because I hear of your love for all the saints and your faith toward the Lord Jesus. I pray that the sharing of your faith may become effective when you perceive all the good that we may do for Christ. I have indeed received much joy and encouragement from your love, because the hearts of the saints have been refreshed through you, my brother. (4–7) Paul’s thanksgiving verses usually interweave recipient, God, and Christ. Read, for example, what he says in 1 Thessalonians 1:2–3 and 1 Corinthians 1:4–9. And when Paul writes, for example, to the Philippians from the Ephesian prison, he says, “I thank my God every time I remember you, constantly praying with joy in every one of my prayers for all of you, because of your sharing in the gospel from the first day until now” (1:3–5). At a first glance, therefore, this thanksgiving element in Philemon is not at all unusual. The “you” in the greeting is plural, but in this thanksgiving the “you” is singular, focusing on Philemon himself. Although the letter involves a personal matter, it is not a private one.

• From Go Tell It on the Mountain (1953)

  But that don’t make no difference. I’m a mighty strong man yet. I done been down the line, Sister Elizabeth, and maybe I can keep you from making… some of my mistakes, bless the Lord… maybe I can help keep your foot from stumbling… again…. girl… for as long as we’s in this world.’ Still she waited. ‘And I’ll love you,’ he said, ‘and I’ll honour you… until the day God calls me home.’ Slow tears rose to her eyes; of joy, for what she had come to; of anguish, for the road that had brought her here. ‘And I’ll love your son, your little boy,’ he said at last, ‘just like he was my own. He won’t never have to fret or worry about nothing; he won’t never be cold or hungry as long as I’m alive and I got my two hands to work with. I swear this before my God,’ he said, ‘because He done give me back something I thought was lost.’ Yes, she thought, a sign—a sign that He is mighty to save. Then she moved and stood on the short step, next to him, before the doors. ‘Sister Elizabeth,’ he said—and she would carry to the grave the memory of his grace and humility at that moment, ‘will you pray?’ ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘I been praying. I’m going to pray.’ They had entered this church, these doors; and when the pastor made the altar call, she rose, while she heard them praising God, and walked down the long church aisle; down this aisle, to this altar, before this golden cross; to these tears, into this battle—would the battle end one day? When she rose, and as they walked once more through the streets, he had called her God’s daughter, handmaiden to God’s minister. He had kissed her on the brow, with tears, and said that God had brought them together to be each other’s deliverance. And she had wept, in her great joy that the hand of God had changed her life, had lifted her up and set her on the solid rock, alone. She thought of that far-off day when John had come into the world—that moment, the beginning of her life and death. Down she had gone that day, alone, a heaviness intolerable at her waist, a secret in her loins, down into the darkness, weeping and groaning and cursing God.

• From Go Tell It on the Mountain (1953)

  Bless our God!’ And he kissed John on the forehead, a holy kiss. ‘Run on, little brother,’ Elisha said. ‘Don’t you get weary. God won’t forget you. You won’t forget.’ Then he turned away, down the long avenue, home. John stood still, watching him walk away. The sun had come full awake. It was waking the streets, and the houses, and crying at the windows. It fell over Elisha like a golden robe, and struck John’s forehead, where Elisha had kissed him, like a seal ineffaceable for ever. And he felt his father behind him. And he felt the March wind rise, striking through his damp clothes, against his salty body. He turned to face his father—he found himself smiling, but his father did not smile. They looked at each other a moment. His mother stood in the doorway, in the long shadows of the hall. ‘I’m ready,’ John said, ‘I’m coming. I’m on my way.’ THE END