Joy

Passages

Every passage tagged with this emotion in the Vela corpus. Search the body text, narrow by source or register, click through to a book’s profile to see how the passage sits with the rest of the work.

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• From The Canterbury Tales (2009)

  It was the beginning of May - 3 May, to be exact. Chanticleer was strutting up and down the yard, with his seven wives by his side. He glanced up at the sky, and saw that the sun had entered the sign of the bull; by instinct, and nothing else, he realized that it was coming up to nine o’clock. So he crowed his heart out. ‘The sun,’ he said to Pertelote, ‘has climbed forty degrees by my reckoning. No. I tell a lie. Forty-one degrees. My dear chick, listen to the singing of your sister birds. Just look at the bright flowers bursting into bloom. My heart is full!’ Yet in a moment ill fortune would befall him. The end of joy is always woe. God knows that happiness in this world is fleeting. If there was a proper poet to hand, he could write all this down in a book as a sovereign truth. But you must listen to me and learn. I swear to you that this story is as true as the adventures of Sir Lancelot, fervently believed by all good women. I will continue.

• From Birthday Girl (2018)

  Paso mi pulgar sobre la enorme piedra. Es real. Todo esto es real. —He estado planeando esto por un largo tiempo —dice—. Creerías que sabría qué quería hacer o decir, pero no puedo pensar en nada ahora mismo. —Su aliento cae por mi cabello mientras susurra—: Supongo que debí haberme puesto sobre una rodilla, ¿eh? —No, no me sueltes. —Mi voz tiembla. Trago el bulto en mi garganta y saco el anillo, bajando la caja y probándomelo. La fría banda se desliza perfectamente y tomo su mano, poniéndola sobre el manillar de nuevo con la mía encima. Su dedo todavía no tiene un anillo cuando entrelazo nuestras manos. Pero lo hará. Mi corazón se hincha como si fuera demasiado para que mi pecho lo contuviera, y estoy sin palabras. Ciertamente me sorprendió. No puedo creer que hiciera esto sin darme ni una pista de lo que había preparado. Miro nuestras manos unidas, recostándome contra él e incluso más excitada ahora por todo lo que está por venir. Creo que parte de mí —una pequeña parte—, todavía estaba esperando por él. Siempre estaba en lo profundo de mi mente, ese miedo a que todavía pudiera verme demasiado joven o no preparada para esto o él, pero tiene que saber… Soy feliz cada día. No hay nada que se sienta mejor que él. Una pocas gotas de lluvia golpean mis brazos, las nubes por encima oscureciéndose, y finalmente encuentro mi aliento, inhalando profundamente. —Entonces, vas a decir “sí” o… —Su voz se desvanece. Sonrío ante la pizca de miedo que oigo en su voz ante mi silencio. —Sí. —Me vuelvo y lo beso—. Me haces tan feliz. Te amo. Presiona su frente contra la mía. —Te amo tanto que duele, nena. Su boca se hunde en la mía de nuevo y toma mi rostro en sus manos, besándome y provocando a mi lengua a donde lo siento en todas partes. Mi aliento se vuelve irregular y estoy a punto de sugerir que llevemos esto a la camioneta, ya que estamos completamente solos aquí, pero la lluvia aumenta, golpeando mi cuerpo mucho más rápido ahora. Rompo el beso y alzo la mirada, entrecerrando los ojos contra la lluvia para ver las nubes de tormenta por encima. Las tormentas de verano están empezando temprano este año. Desmonta, ayudándome, y ambos trotamos hacia el lado del pasajero de la camioneta, abre mi puerta para mí. —¿Podemos hacerlo hoy? —pregunto, apartando mi nuevo casco sin usar de mi asiento y dejándolo en el suelo. —¿Casarnos? —pregunta—. Realmente no te importa la boda, ¿cierto? Echo un vistazo para verlo sonriéndome mientras se quita su camiseta embarrada y la arroja a la cama de la camioneta.

• From Birthday Girl (2018)

  Dándome la vuelta, me levanta, y coloco mis piernas alrededor de su cintura mientras me lleva a la cama. Dejándome caer, se saca su camisa y me mira fijamente mientras se desabrocha el cinturón. Sin embargo, de repente, un muy fuerte y rápido golpeteo, llega contra la pared detrás de nuestra cama, y estridentes gemidos y chillidos atraviesan las paredes. Ambos nos detenemos, y escuchamos mientras Peter y su princesa están en ello en la habitación de al lado, golpeando su cabecera contra la nuestra y empujándola hacia delante y hacia atrás. Sus ojos se amplían. —Oh, son ruidosos. Síp. Luego me mira, con un aire travieso en sus ojos. —Podemos acabar con ellos. —Y luego me toma de los tobillos, jalándome al final de la cama, y chillo mientras se coloca sobre mí. Un año después —¡Aprenderé por mi cuenta si dejas de revisar hasta el último detalle! —regaño a Pike, intentando apartar sus manos de mis manillares. Está sentado detrás de mí en mi nuevo cuadriciclo y pisa el acelerador, impulsándonos fuera del desfiladero y el barro. Jadeo, recostándome contra él y mi estómago cae a mis pies mientras aferro sus antebrazos para estabilizarme. Me rio. —Bueno, si llevaras el casco… —dice. —Pero no puedo ver con el casco. Estamos enlodándonos. No es como si estuviéramos yendo a una velocidad de cincuenta y seis kilómetros por hora ahí fuera. No necesito un casco para esto. Y además, sólo estoy aprendiendo a usar el cuadriciclo hoy. Tendrá suerte si subo a diecinueve kilómetros por hora. Pero si no llevo el casco, entonces no me dejará conducirlo sola hasta que haya recibido una instrucción apropiada. De ahí la lección de conducción. Aceleramos a través de la ladera, el barro salpica por todo mi nuevo cuadriciclo rojo, mis botas y jeans. También siento unas gotas de algo frío aterrizar periódicamente en mi cabello, apartado de mi rostro con una gorra de baseball, y en mi camiseta. Mis exámenes finales han terminado esta semana, y he tenido dolores de cabeza por falta de sueño sin parar, pero me siento mucho mejor hoy. Me alegra que me sorprendiera con esto. Un día de él, diversión y aire fresco es todo lo que necesitaba. Ha sido tan bueno a través de mi malhumor durante el último par de semanas mientras estudiaba, haciéndome aperitivos y siendo bueno al no distraerme mientras terminaba el trabajo. Aunque vino a la biblioteca —mi viejo dormitorio— y me tentó con un rapidito aquí y allá bajo la pretensión que necesitaba un descanso del estudio. Sí, de acuerdo. Sonrío, recordándolo entrar mientras tenía la nariz enterrada en un libro, quitarse su camiseta y decirme que va a tomar una ducha, pero sé lo que realmente quiere, porque sabe que la vista de él con solo sus jeans es mi jodido porno. No puse pelea. Nunca lo hago. Lo deseo tanto como él a mí.

• From The Glass Castle: A Memoir (2005)

  Mom nodded at all our preparations; she’d always appreciated self-sufficiency. She admired the wisteria that wrapped around the potting shed, the trumpet vine on the arbor, and the big grove of bamboo in the back. When she saw the pool, an impulse seized her, and she ran out onto the green elastic cover to test its strength, Charlie the dog loping after her. The cover sagged beneath them, and she fell down, shrieking with laughter. John and Brian had to help pull her off as Brian’s daughter, Veronica —who hadn’t seen Mom since she was a toddler—stared wide-eyed. “Grandma Walls is different from your other grandma,” I told her. “Way different,” Veronica said. John’s daughter, Jessica, turned to me and said, “But she laughs just like you do.” • • • I showed Mom and Lori the house. I still went into the office in the city once a week, but this was where John and I lived and worked, our home—the first house I’d ever owned. Mom and Lori admired the wideplanked floorboards, the big fireplaces, and the ceiling beams made from locust posts, with gouge marks from the ax that had felled them. Mom’s eye settled on an Egyptian couch we’d bought at a flea market. It had carved legs and a wooden backrest inlaid with mother-of-pearl triangles. She nodded in approval. “Every household,” she said, “needs one piece of furniture in really bad taste.” The kitchen was filled with the smell of the roasting turkey John had prepared, with a stuffing of sausage, mushrooms, walnuts, apples, and spiced bread crumbs. He’d also made creamed onions, wild rice, cranberry sauce, and squash casserole. I’d baked three pies with apples from a nearby orchard. “Bonanza!” Brian shouted. “Feast time!” I said to him. He looked at the dishes. I knew what he was thinking, what he thought every time he saw a spread like this one. He shook his head and said, “You know, it’s really not that hard to put food on the table if that’s what you decide to do.” “Now, no recriminations,” Lori told him. After we sat down for dinner, Mom told us her good news. She had been a squatter for almost fifteen years, and the city had finally decided to sell the apartments to her and the other squatters for one dollar apiece. She couldn’t accept our invitation to stay awhile, she said, because she had to get back for a board meeting

• From The Canterbury Tales (2009)

  And there was one other consequence of this miracle. Through the intercession of the innocent young woman, Aella and many of his courtiers were converted to the true faith. The king made sure that the false knight was executed immediately, even as Constance lamented his death out of pity for him. By the guidance of our Saviour, too, Aella took her to be his bride in solemn ceremony. So at last this holy maid, this jewel of virtue, became a queen. Christ be praised. There was one who did not join in the general chorus of adulation. This was the mother of the king, named Donegild, whose heart was full of malice and treachery. She thought her cursed heart would break in two. She considered it dishonourable for her son to take a foreign wife. I will now remove the chaff and the straw from this story, and leave you with the shining corn. Why should I describe to you all the pageants and festivities that surrounded the marriage? Why should I sing to you the songs and melodies of the players? Enough is enough. They ate and they drank; they danced and they sang. There is nothing to add. That night they were escorted to their royal bed, as was right and proper. Even the holiest virgin must do her duty in the darkness. I hope that Constance did hers patiently. There are certain necessary things to be done between man and wife. Saintliness must be put to one side on a solemn occasion such as this. On that very night Aella begat a son. But soon he had other hot work to do. He had to fight the Scottish enemy, massing on the border, and so he left Constance in the care of a bishop and of the governor while he took his army to the north. Constance was so far gone with child that she kept to her chamber, as meek and as mild as ever. She lay very still, placing herself and her baby in the hands of Christ. In due time she gave birth to her son, who was baptized with the name of Maurice. The governor of the castle called for a messenger and delivered to him a letter that he had written to Aella in which he gave the king the good news of the birth as well as other timely matters of state. So the messenger took the letter, bowed and went on his way. This messenger thought that he would do himself a favour by visiting the king’s mother. So he visited her quarters and paid her homage. ‘Ma dame,’ he said, ‘I have some wonderful news. You will be so happy. My Lady Constance has given birth to a male child. There is no doubt about it. The whole realm will be delighted. ‘Look. Here is the letter written by the governor. I have to take it to the king at once.

• From The Canterbury Tales (2009)

  So he rose quietly, and went up to the baby’s cradle. He lifted it very carefully, and put it at the end of his own bed. Then he waited. After a couple of minutes the miller’s wife stopped snoring and got up to take a piss. When she returned to the bedroom she groped her way around and, just before she got back into bed, she realized that there was no cradle at its foot. ‘God,’ she said to herself, ‘that would have been a joke. I almost went into the students’ bed. Anything could have happened.’ So she felt around until she found the cradle; then she got hold of the bed, and thought that it must be the right one. The cradle was there, wasn’t it? It was dark, of course, and she was still a little fuddled. So she gets into bed next to the clerk, and lays herself down to sleep. But John was not about to let that happen. He got himself ready, wriggled on top of her, and then shafted her. He went for it, hard and deep. He was like a madman. She had not enjoyed herself so much for years. The two northern boys had the time of their lives, too, until they heard the crow of the cock. Dawn would not be far behind. Alan was, to say the least of it, fatigued. He had fucked all night. So he whispered to the miller’s daughter, ‘Goodbye, sweet chuck. The sun is risin’. I can’t stay any longer. But I’ll tell you this much. Wherever I go, whatever I do, I swear to God that you will be me lass.’ ‘Well, lover,’ she replied, ‘I wish you well. But before you go I must tell you one thing. When you go past the mill, look in the right-hand corner behind the door. There you’ll find a half-bushel loaf. Mum and I baked it together, with the meal Dad stole from you. I swear to God, too, that I am sorry.’ She almost broke down in tears.

• From The Canterbury Tales (2009)

  ‘I will say one thing, however, if I may. I would beg you not to test and torment this poor girl, as you once tested me. She has been brought up more tenderly. She is more delicate than me, I believe. She could not endure adversity in the same way as a girl born and brought up in poverty. You know who I mean.’ When Walter looked upon her cheerful face, when he saw that there was no malice in her heart towards him, he recalled the number of times he had grievously offended her. She was still as steady and as constant as a stone wall. So he began to take pity on her - yes, pity for her loyalty to him. ‘Enough,’ he said. ‘You have suffered enough, Griselda. Fear no more. All things shall be well. I have tested your faith and kindness to the utmost. I have tested you in wealth and in poverty. No other woman in the world could have endured so much. Now I know, dear wife, the full measure of your truth and constancy.’ With that he took her in his arms and kissed her. She was so amazed that she did not know what was happening to her. She did not understand a word he said to her. It was as if she were walking in her sleep. Then suddenly she was wide awake. ‘Griselda,’ he said, ‘I swear to God you have always been my true and faithful wife. I will have no other, as long as I live. ‘This is your daughter. You believed her to be my new bride. But you yourself gave birth to her. This young man is your son. One day he will be my heir. They have been brought up secretly in Bologna, by my orders. Take them back again. You will never be able to say that you have lost your children. ‘I know that the people think the worst of me. But I swear that I did not test you out of anger or out of cruelty. I merely wished to assay your patience and your womanly fidelity. I did not kill my children. God forbid! I merely wanted to keep them out of the way while I watched over you.’ When Griselda heard this, she almost fainted for joy. Then she called her two young children to her, and embraced them. She wept as she kissed them, her tears falling upon their cheeks and upon their hair. All those around her were crying, too, as she spoke softly to her son and daughter. ‘I give thanks to God,’ she said, ‘for saving my dear children. I give thanks to my lord and master, too. If I were to die now, I would know at least that I have found favour in your eyes. Now that I am restored to grace, I do not fear death. I do not fear anything.

• From The Case for God (2009)

  A myth was never intended as an accurate account of a historical event; it was something that had in some sense happened once but that also happens all the time. But a myth would not be effective if people simply “believed” in it. It was essentially a program of action. It could put you in the correct spiritual or psychological posture, but it was up to you to take the next step and make the “truth” of the myth a reality in your own life. The only way to assess the value and truth of any myth was to act upon it. The myth of the hero, for example, which takes the same form in nearly all cultural traditions, taught people how to unlock their own heroic potential. 4 Later the stories of historical figures such as the Buddha, Jesus, or Muhammad were made to conform to this paradigm so that their followers could imitate them in the same way. Put into practice, a myth could tell us something profoundly true about our humanity. It showed us how to live more richly and intensely, how to cope with our mortality, and how creatively to endure the suffering that flesh is heir to. But if we failed to apply it to our situation, a myth would remain abstract and incredible. From a very early date, people reenacted their myths in stylized ceremonies that worked aesthetically upon participants and, like any work of art, introduced them to a deeper dimension of existence. Myth and ritual were thus inseparable, so much so that it is often a matter of scholarly debate which came first: the mythical story or the rites attached to it. 5 Without ritual, myths made no sense and would remain as opaque as a musical score, which is impenetrable to most of us until interpreted instrumentally. Religion, therefore, was not primarily something that people thought but something they did. Its truth was acquired by practical action. It is no use imagining that you will be able to drive a car if you simply read the manual or study the rules of the road. You cannot learn to dance, paint, or cook by perusing texts or recipes. The rules of a board game sound obscure, unnecessarily complicated, and dull until you start to play, when everything falls into place. There are some things that can be learned only by constant, dedicated practice, but if you persevere, you find that you achieve something that seemed initially impossible. Instead of sinking to the bottom of the pool, you can float. You may learn to jump higher and with more grace than seems humanly possible or sing with unearthly beauty. You do not always understand how you achieve these feats, because your mind directs your body in a way that bypasses conscious, logical deliberation. But somehow you learn to transcend your original capabilities. Some of these activities bring indescribable joy.

• From The Canterbury Tales (2009)

  This merchant was as careful as he was astute. He raised the money and handed the two thousand sovereigns to some Lombard bankers, who gave him a bond in recognition of full payment. Then he rode back as cheerful as a chaffinch. He knew that he had made a profit of a thousand francs on the deal. No wonder he sang and whistled as he returned home. His wife met him at the gate, as was her custom, and all that night they celebrated their good fortune with some amorous turns in bed. The merchant was out of debt. The merchant was rich. At break of day he embraced her, and began kissing her again. At the same time he fucked her hard. ‘No more,’ she pleaded with him. ‘Haven’t you had enough?’ Still she played with him for a little longer. The merchant turned on his side after she had pleased him, and whispered to her. ‘Well, wife,’ he said, ‘I am a bit annoyed with you. I don’t want to be, but I am. Do you know why? You have come between myself and my dear cousin. You have sown a little seed of division between me and John.’ ‘How? Tell me.’ ‘You never mentioned to me that he had paid back the money I lent to him. He gave you cash in hand, I believe. But he feels aggrieved that I did not know about it. As soon as I started talking about loans and repayments, I realized that there was something wrong. Yet I swear to God that I wasn’t referring to him. Do me a favour, dear wife. Always tell me, in future, if I have been repaid in my absence. Otherwise I might start asking debtors for money that they have already given me. Do not be remiss in this.’

• From The Case for God (2009)

  Aristotle’s writings are often inconsistent and contradictory, but his aim was not to devise a coherent philosophical system, rather to establish a scientific method of inquiry. His writings were simply lecture notes, and a treatise was not meant to be definitive but was always adapted to the needs of a particular group of students, some of whom would be more advanced than others and would need different material. In the Greek world, dogma (“teaching”) was not cast in stone once it was committed to writing but usually varied according to the understanding and expertise of the people to whom it was addressed. Like Plato, Aristotle was chiefly concerned not with imparting information but with promoting the philosophical way of life.68 His scientific research was not an end in itself, therefore, but a method of conducting the bios theoretikos, the “contemplative life” that introduced human beings to the supreme happiness. What distinguished men—Aristotle had little time for the female—from other animals was their ability to think rationally. This was their “form,” the end for which they were designed, so in order to achieve eudaimonia (“well-being”) they must strive to think clearly, calculate, study, and work things out. This would also affect a man’s moral health, since qualities such as courage or generosity had to be regulated by reason. “The life according to reason is best and pleasantest,” he wrote in one of his later treatises, “since reason, more than anything else, is man.”69 Like Plato, Aristotle believed that human intelligence was divine and immortal. It linked human beings to the gods and gave them the ability to grasp ultimate truth. Unlike sensual pleasure or purely practical activity, the pleasures of theoria (the “contemplation” of truth for its own sake) did not wax and wane but were a continuous joy, giving the thinker that self-sufficiency that characterized the highest life of all. “We must, therefore, in so far as we can, strain every nerve to live in accordance with the best thing in us,” Aristotle insisted. Theoria was a divine activity, so a man could practice it only “in so far as something divine is present in him.”70 His biological research was a spiritual exercise: people who were “inclined to philosophy” and could “trace the links of causation” would find that it brought them “immense pleasure”71 because, by exercising his reason, a scientist was participating in the hidden life of God.

• From The Canterbury Tales (2009)

  Palamon and Arcite humbly and gratefully assented to his terms. They asked him in turn to become their lord and protector, to which he graciously agreed. ‘In terms of royal lineage and wealth,’ he said, ‘either one of you is worthy to marry a princess or even a queen. That is obvious. If I may speak for my sister, Emily, over whom you have suffered so much strife and jealousy - well, you yourselves know well enough that she cannot marry both of you at once. You can fight for eternity but, like it or not, only one of you can be betrothed to her. The other can go whistle in the wind. Be as jealous, or as angry, as you may. That is the truth. So listen while I explain to you my plan, to find whose destiny is shaped for Emily and whose is turned the other way. This is what I have devised. It is my will, and you must make the best of it. I will listen to no argument or objection. I stipulate that both of you should go your separate ways, without ransom or hindrance, and in a year’s time that both of you should return with a company of one hundred knights fully armed and equipped for a tournament. Your men should be ready to decide the hand of Emily by dint of battle. Upon my honour, as a knight, I promise you this. I will reward whichever of you has the most strength. Whether you slay your adversary, or with your hundred companions drive him from the joust, I will give you the hand of fair Emily. Thus fortune will favour the brave. The tournament will take place here and, as God have mercy on my soul, I will be a fair and true judge of the contest. And I will allow only one conclusion. One of you will be killed or made captive. If both of you agree, then assent now and hold yourselves well served.’ Who could be more cheerful now than Palamon? Who could be more joyful than Arcite? I cannot begin to describe the rejoicing of the whole company at the decision of Theseus. He had behaved so graciously that all of them went down on their knees and thanked him. The two Thebans, in particular, expressed their gratefulness. So with heads high, and hope in their hearts, Palamon and Arcite made their way back to the ancient city of Thebes. They had a year to prepare themselves for battle. PART THREE

• From The Canterbury Tales (2009)

  Once upon a time a merchant dwelled in Saint-Denis, a town just north of Paris; he was rich enough to pass as a wise man, in the world’s eyes. He had a beautiful wife, too, who liked good company. She was gay and carefree. That sort of woman costs her husband a great deal of money. He had to spend more than she earned in compliments and admiring glances. She went to every feast and every dance, enjoying those pleasures that pass as swiftly as shadows on the wall. I feel sorry for the man who had to pay for them all. The poor husband has to clothe his wife, wrap her in furs and festoon her with jewels - and all for the sake of his own reputation! Meanwhile, she dances to her own tune. If he decides that he is not going to foot the bill, considering it to be a foolish waste of money, then the wife will just get someone else to pay. Or else she will borrow the money. And that is dangerous. This good merchant, Peter by name, had a splendid house and welcomed more guests and visitors than he could count. He was generous, and she was beautiful. Do I need to say any more? I will get on with my story. Among these guests, of all types and degrees, there was a monk. He was about thirty years old, at a guess. He was good-looking, fresh-faced and virile. He was always under the merchant’s roof. He had been invited there in the first days of their friendship, and was now treated as a familiar companion. I will tell you the reason. This young monk and this merchant had both been born in the same village. Each one claimed the other as a cousin. They proclaimed their common bond all the time, and swore eternal friendship. They said that they were brothers as much as cousins. They were as happy in each other’s company as larks on the wing. This monk, John, was generous to a fault and never failed to reward all of the servants in the house. He was agreeable to everyone, from the meanest serving-boy upwards, and spared no expense. He gave gifts all around. So of course he was always welcomed; the members of the household were as happy to see him as birds welcoming the rising of the sun. I am sure you get the idea. It so happened one day that the merchant was preparing himself for a journey to Bruges, where he had some business to arrange. He was going to purchase some fine lace, I think. So he sent a message to John, who lived in Paris, inviting him to spend a day or two with him and his wife before he set out for Bruges. ‘Come to Saint-Denis,’ he said, ‘and be entertained.’

• From The Case for God (2009)

  The German philosopher Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770— 1831) remained fully committed to the Enlightenment ideal of objective knowledge but would have agreed with Blake that the externalized God must lose its lonely isolation and immerse itself in mundane reality. Human beings had thoughts and aspirations that exceeded their rational grasp, and they had traditionally expressed these in the mythos of religion. But it was now possible to reformulate these philosophically. In The Phenomenology of Mind (1807), Hegel argued that the ultimate reality, which he called Geist (“Spirit” or “Mind”), was not a being but “the inner being of the world, that which essentially is.” 84 It was, therefore, being itself. Hegel developed a philosophical vision that recalled Jewish Kabbalah. It was a mistake to imagine that God was outside our world, an addition to our experience. Spirit was inextricably involved with the natural and human worlds and could achieve fulfillment only in finite reality. This, Hegel believed, was the real meaning of the Christian doctrine of incarnation. Conversely, it was only when human beings denied the alienating idea of a separate, externalized God that they would discover the divinity inherent in their very nature, because the universal Spirit was most fully realized in the human mind. Hegel’s vision articulated the optimistic, forward-thrusting spirit of modernity. There could be no harking back to the past. Human beings were engaged in a dialectical process in which they ceaselessly cast aside ideas that had once been sacred and incontrovertible. Every state of being brings forth its opposite; these opposites clash, are integrated, and create a new synthesis. Then the whole process begins again. The world was thus continuously re-creating itself. The structures of knowledge were not fixed but were simply stages in the unfolding of a final, absolute truth. Hegel’s dialectic expressed the modern compulsion to discard recent orthodoxy. Religion, he believed, was one of those phases that human beings would leave behind as they progressed toward their ultimate fulfillment. In what with hindsight we can see to be a sinister move, Hegel identified the alienating religion that we had to reject with Judaism. Apparently unaware of the similarity of his philosophy to the Kabbalah, he blamed the Jewish people for transforming the immanent Spirit into a tyrannical external God that had estranged men and women from their own nature. In a way that would become habitual in the modern critique of faith, he had presented a distorted picture of “religion” as a foil for his own ideas, selecting one strand of a complex tradition and arguing that it represented the whole. Even though Hegel stressed the relentlessly progressive movement of reality, he, like the Romantic poets, had actually recast older ideas in a modern form. As modernization proceeded, Western people were about to enter a world that was at once enthralling and disturbing.

• From Tipping the Velvet (1998)

  Chapter 6 T he months, that year, seemed to slide by very swiftly; for, of course, we were busier now than ever. We continued to work our hit - the song about the sovereigns and the winks - all through the spring and summer, but there were always new songs, new routines to labour over and perfect, new orchestras to grow familiar with, new theatres, and new costumes. Of the latter, we acquired so many that we found we couldn’t manage them without help, and took on a girl to do my old job - to mend the suits and to help us dress in them, at the side of the stage. We grew rich - or rich, at least, as far as I was concerned. At the Star, in Bermondsey, Kitty had started on a couple of pounds a week, and I had thought my own, small dresser’s share of that quite grand enough. Now I earned ten, twenty, thirty times that figure, on my own account, and sometimes more. The sums seemed unimaginable to me: I preferred, perhaps foolishly, not to think of them at all, but let Walter worry over our wages. He, in response to our great successes, had found new agents for his other artistes and was now our manager full-time. He negotiated our contracts, our publicity, and held our money for us; he paid Kitty and she, as before, gave me whatever little cash I needed, when I asked her for it. It was rather strange with Walter, now that Kitty and I had grown so close. We saw him quite as often as we had before; we still went driving with him; we still spent long hours with him at Mrs Dendy’s piano (though the piano itself had been changed, to a more expensive one). He was as kind and as foolish as ever - but a little dimmed, somehow, a little shadowy, now that the blaze of Kitty’s charms was more decidedly turned my way. Perhaps it only seemed so to me; but I was sorry for him, and could not help but wonder what he thought. I was sure he hadn’t guessed that Kitty and I were sweethearts - for, of course, we were rather cool ourselves, in public, now. As rich as we became that year, we were never quite rich enough to be so very choosy about the kind of halls we sang in. For the whole of September we played at the Trocadero - a very smart theatre, and one of the ones that Walter had pointed out to us on our first, giddy tour of the West End, more than a year before.

• From The Case for God (2009)

  Religion, therefore, was not primarily something that people thought but something they did. Its truth was acquired by practical action. It is no use imagining that you will be able to drive a car if you simply read the manual or study the rules of the road. You cannot learn to dance, paint, or cook by perusing texts or recipes. The rules of a board game sound obscure, unnecessarily complicated, and dull until you start to play, when everything falls into place. There are some things that can be learned only by constant, dedicated practice, but if you persevere, you find that you achieve something that seemed initially impossible. Instead of sinking to the bottom of the pool, you can float. You may learn to jump higher and with more grace than seems humanly possible or sing with unearthly beauty. You do not always understand how you achieve these feats, because your mind directs your body in a way that bypasses conscious, logical deliberation. But somehow you learn to transcend your original capabilities. Some of these activities bring indescribable joy. A musician can lose herself in her music, a dancer becomes inseparable from the dance, and a skier feels entirely at one with himself and the external world as he speeds down the slope. It is a satisfaction that goes deeper than merely “feeling good.” It is what the Greeks called ekstasis, a “stepping outside” the norm. Religion is a practical discipline that teaches us to discover new capacities of mind and heart. This will be one of the major themes of this book. It is no use magisterially weighing up the teachings of religion to judge their truth or falsehood before embarking on a religious way of life. You will discover their truth—or lack of it—only if you translate these doctrines into ritual or ethical action. Like any skill, religion requires perseverance, hard work, and discipline. Some people will be better at it than others, some appallingly inept, and some will miss the point entirely. But those who do not apply themselves will get nowhere at all. Religious people find it hard to explain how their rituals and practices work, just as a skater may not be fully conscious of the physical laws that enable her to glide over the ice on a thin blade.

• From The Case for God (2009)

  He was then ripe for enlightenment: “His greed fades away, and once his cravings disappear, he experiences the release of the mind.” 67 The texts indicate that when the Buddha’s first disciples heard about anatta, their hearts were filled with joy and they immediately experienced Nirvana. To live beyond the reach of hatred, greed, and anxieties about our status proved to be a profound relief. By far the best way of achieving anatta was compassion, the ability to feel with the other, which required that one dethrone the self from the center of one’s world and put another there. Compassion would become the central practice of the religious quest. One of the first people to make it crystal clear that holiness was inseparable from altruism was the Chinese sage Confucius (551–479 BCE). He preferred not to speak about the divine, because it lay beyond the competence of language, and theological chatter was a distraction from the real business of religion. 68 He used to say: “My Way has one thread that runs right through it.” There were no abstruse metaphysics; everything always came back to the importance of treating others with absolute respect. 69 It was epitomized in the Golden Rule, which, he said, his disciples should practice “all day and every day”: 70 “Never do to others what you would not like them to do to you.” 71 They should look into their own hearts, discover what gave them pain, and then refuse under any circumstance whatsoever to inflict that pain on anybody else. Religion was a matter of doing rather than thinking. The traditional rituals of China enabled an individual to burnish and refine his humanity so that he became a junzi, a “mature person.” A junzi was not born but crafted; he had to work on himself as a sculptor shaped a rough stone and made it a thing of beauty. “How can I achieve this?” asked Yan Hui, Confucius’s most talented disciple. It was simple, Confucius replied: “Curb your ego and surrender to ritual (li).” 72 A junzi must submit every detail of his life to the ancient rites of consideration and respect for others. This was the answer to China’s political problems: “If a ruler could curb his ego and submit to li for a single day, everyone under Heaven would respond to his goodness.” 73 The practice of the Golden Rule “all day and every day” would bring human beings into the state that Confucius called ren, a word that would later be described as “benevolence” but that Confucius himself refused to define because it could be understood only by somebody who had acquired it. He preferred to remain silent about what lay at the end of the religious journey. The practice of ren was an end in itself; it was itself the transcendence you sought.

• From Love 2.0: Finding Happiness and Health in Moments of Connection (2013)

  By the flip of a coin, some couples got the same silly crawling assignment they did, whereas other couples were assigned to a far more mundane and slow-paced crawling task: Never bound by Velcro, each member of these couples took turns crawling very slowly across the mat, while rolling a ball ahead of them. Their snail’s pace was enforced by a metronome, no less! What the researchers hypothesized—and would find here and in their other experiments—is that couples who were at random assigned to the fun-filled task that required both touch and behavioral synchrony actually came to love each other more deeply; they reported greater relationship quality on the follow-up surveys and showed more accepting and fewer hostile behaviors in their follow-on discussions. Engaging in this silly, childlike activity together actually deepened loving feelings and strengthened bonds, even in long-standing intimate relationships. Experiments like these explain the observation I made back in chapter 2, that couples who regularly do new and exciting (or even silly) things together have better- quality marriages. At times, the impetus for sharing a positive emotion with a loved one might be some external activity, like a trip, or the silly assignment Art and Elaine were given in that laboratory study. Perhaps more frequently, however, there isn’t any jointly experienced external trigger at all. Instead, one or the other of you starts the ball rolling by bringing your own positive emotion to your partner. Suppose your partner comes home after a long day at the office with good news to share about a breakthrough at work, or some recognition he or she received for a recent accomplishment. Through the well-worn lenses of self- absorption, you might take such disclosures as simply your partner’s way of explaining his or her own good mood. Or more cynically, you might take it as bragging. Yet through the lenses of connection, you’re more likely to recognize disclosures like these as opportunities for positivity resonance, or new chances to stoke love and its benefits. Whether or not the feeling of love ensues, studies of couples show, hinges a lot on how you respond to your partner’s positive expressions. Do you lean in toward them? Or do you shy away? Do you meet them in kind, expressing your own genuine positive emotions in turn? Or do you shrug them off as irrelevant or point out the potential downsides? Researchers who have carefully coded couples’ responsiveness to each other in situations like these find that those who capitalize on each other’s good fortunes, by responding to their partner’s good news with their own enthusiasm and outward encouragement, have higher-quality relationships. They enjoy more intimacy, commitment, and passion with each other, and find their relationship to be more satisfying overall. In other words, when one partner’s good news and enthusiasm ignites to become the other partner’s good news and enthusiasm as well, a micro- moment of positivity resonance is born.

• From The Case for God (2009)

  During the last year, it has been a great delight and privilege to work with TED Conferences on the Charter for Compassion, an attempt to implement practically the thesis of this book. Thanks especially to Chris Anderson and Amy Novogratz, and to all the TED-sters who have contributed to this project with such extraordinary generosity, creativity, and awe-inspiring commitment. It has been an inspiration. Finally, a big thank-you to Eve, Gary, Stacey, and Amy Mott and to Michelle Stevenson, who make it possible for me to do my work by looking after Poppy so devotedly during my many absences. I could not have managed without any of you.

• From The Case for God (2009)

  70 Since reaching adulthood, both Wordsworth and Shelley had felt estranged from this living presence; the receptive, listening attitude had been educated out of them. But by assiduously cultivating this “wise passiveness,” Wordsworth had recovered an insight that was not dissimilar to that achieved by yogins and mystics. It was a blessed mood , In which the burthen of the mystery , In which the heavy and the weary weight Of all this unintelligible world , Is lightened:—that serene and blessed mood , In which the affections gently lead us on,— Until, the breath of this corporeal frame And even the motion of our human blood Almost suspended, we are laid asleep In body, and become a living soul: While with an eye made quiet by the power Of harmony and the deep power of joy , We see into the life of things . 71 Like some of the philosophes, Wordsworth was fascinated by the workings of the human mind; he understood that the mind deeply affected our perception of the external world but was convinced that this was a two-way process. The external world silently informed our mental processes; the human psyche was receptive as well as creative, “working but in alliance with the works which it beholds.” 72 Wordsworth’s younger contemporary John Keats (1795–1821) used the term “Negative Capability” to describe the ekstatic attitude that was essential to poetic insight. It occurred “when a man is capable of being in uncertainties, Mysteries, doubts, without any irritable reaching after fact & reason.” 73 Instead of seeking to control the world by aggressive reasoning, Keats was ready to plunge into the dark night of unknowing: “I am however young writing at random— straining at particles of light in the midst of a great darkness— without knowing the bearing of any one assertion, of any one opinion.” 74 He claimed gleefully that he had no opinions at all, because he had no self. A poet, he believed, was “the most unpoetical of any thing in existence; because he has no Identity.” 75 True poetry had no time for “the egotistical sublime,” 76 which forced itself on the reader: We hate poetry that has a palpable design upon us—and if we do not agree, seems to put its hands in its breeches pocket. Poetry should be great & unobtrusive, a thing which enters into one’s soul, and does not startle it or amaze it with itself but with its subject.—How beautiful are the retired flowers! how they would lose their beauty were they to throng into the highway crying out “admire me I am a violet! dote on me I am a primrose!”

• From Ulysses (Kindle edition — verify full work) (1922)

  Renay and Terry's sexual intimacy disrupts heterosexist sensibilities surrounding sexuality and the privileging of male desire and pleasure in heterosexual intercourse. Their sexual intimacy is marked by a delicateness and sensuality that creates in Renay intense feelings of passion, erotic desire, and orgasmic ecstasy, which differ significantly from her experiences with Jerome, as she and the narrator contend: "I didn't know it could be like that-" It had never been with [Jerome]. The hurried mounting of her, the jabbing inside her with the acrid whiskey odor heavy in her nostrils. It had always been over in seconds; then he would turn over and go to sleep. (28, original emphasis) Invested solely in his own gratification, Jerome exerts dominance and power during sex with Renay, as evidenced by his "mounting" and "jabbing inside" her, which resembles and alludes to her earlier rape (and accounts, in part, for why in their nearly seven years of marriage, Renay never experiences an orgasm with Jerome). Unlike Jerome, Terry is invested in pleasing Renay, who, during their very first sexual experience, reaches unprecedented sexual climax. In fact, when Renay assumes, during their postintercourse dialogue, that Terry had gotten "nothing out of [sex]," Terry contends instead, "Yes, yes I did. Pleasing you. In time, as we begin to know each other, we'll grow together" (28). Terry's remarks reveal not only the mutually constitutive (sexual) nature of their relationship, but also the space that exists in their blossoming romantic friendship for reciprocity in terms of sexual pleasure, accompanied by both sexual/relational growth and longevity. Juxtaposing Renay and Terry's relationship with Renay and Jerome's, Shockley privileges female desire and sexual subjectivity, while excoriating the ways in which female sexuality is confined, regulated, and/or compromised as the object of male longing and desire. She also transgresses the false notion that women's bodies are for the exclusive sexual pleasure and gratification of men.