Longing

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 Dreams from My Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance (1995)

  There was a letter waiting for her in my mailbox when we got home; it was from a German law student she said she’d been seeing. The letter was voluminous, at least seven pages long, and as I prepared dinner, she sat at the kitchen table and laughed and sighed and clicked her tongue, her face suddenly soft and wistful. “I thought you didn’t like Germans,” I said. She rubbed her eyes and laughed. “Yah—Otto is different. He’s so sweet! And sometimes I treat him so badly! I don’t know, Barack. Sometimes I think it’s just impossible for me to trust anybody completely. I think of what the Old Man made of his life, and the idea of marriage gives me, how do you say … the shivers. Also, with Otto and his career, we would have to live in Germany, you see. I start imagining what it would be like for me, living my entire life as a foreigner, and I don’t think I could take it.” She folded her letter and put it back in the envelope. “What about you, Barack?” she asked. “Do you have these problems, or is it just your sister who’s so confused?” “I think I know what you’re feeling.” “Tell me.” I went to the refrigerator and pulled out two green peppers, setting them on the cutting board. “Well … there was a woman in New York that I loved. She was white. She had dark hair, and specks of green in her eyes. Her voice sounded like a wind chime. We saw each other for almost a year. On the weekends, mostly. Sometimes in her apartment, sometimes in mine. You know how you can fall into your own private world? Just two people, hidden and warm. Your own language. Your own customs. That’s how it was.

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

  Tif mW n.f. darkness Aue עשה שחַר‎ Am 45; MMBY PIN Tb 10” )66'" ; || M23). tu. MEY npr. 1. gent. ‘son’ of Midian Gn 5 ‘(J\= 1 Ch 1% ef. Is60°, G ragep, Lepan, Yacpa(p). 2. m. name in Judah 1 Ch 2% ,G Tada. 38. £. concubine of Caleb 1 Ch 2, G Tacpana, A Tada 7, GL Tada. n.[{m.] gloom ;—Is 8%‏ מוּעף1 Is‏ מעוף צוּקה id.;—cstr.‏ [.מנ). [מַעוּף]1 . מוּעף Che ** rds.‏ ; (ְהַשבָה ||( 8% Tropa n.f. id.;—so rd. prob, for navn Jb ae (opp. p23). Qr n.pr.m. a Netophathite,‏ עיפי Kt,‏ עופי1 Je 40% 6( lade, 02006 Oder.‏ TL WY] vb. counsel, plan (Aram. id. ; || form of (יעץ‎ ;—only Qal Imv. ‘mpl. ay Ju 19% (GFM rds. T¥Y, but v. Bu), Is 8" ace. cogn. ל‎ nyy, Sta: sitet oe ae der. Wy fr. re) n.pr. 1. m. a. (eldest) ‘son’ of‏ עוץך 01% ז Aram Gn 10% (P), = ‘son’ of Shem‏ b. eldest ‘son’ of Nahor‏ _ .6טס Qs, GLCh‏ 60 Gn 227 (J), AXE, GL 00. | 6. Edomite name‏ 1Ch 1”, G Qs, GL Ovs. 2. loc.‏ ו Gun‏ "2 16 מבי b, poss. also c), WYO PIS‏ ,8 .1=( (home of Job), 6‏ יז Jb‏ בַּטָרֶץ-עוּץ (G vas‏ G cf. Bu and reff.) ;‏ עלץ Avowns; La 4” (del.‏ on Uz as vague name for E. country v. esp.‏ im Hanran, ori Ne‏ בסנ Bu"; (Dp P+ 2 2k8‏ (NE.) therefrom, = As. Ussu, but dub. With‏ name 13 RS*™ cp. Ar. n.pr. div. (252, 0‏ We Belt: 26" seainst this NO 29 C182) butiy,‏ reply RS 8",‏ Tyay n.pr.m. Benjamite name 1 Ch 8%‏ G Ides, A leous, GL Teas.‏ t[pw ] vb. dub. (if correct, Aram. 0 (cf. ns ax) for צלק‎ press, so Thes al.);—only Hiph. Jmpf. 3 fs. OYA Am 2'% Pt. PYDv™*; but read prob. מפיק , תֶּפוּק‎ totter, cause tottering Hi We Now Dr. n.f. pressure (si vera 1., Aram.‏ [עקה]1 מִפָנִי 2 word, YNAPY, Syr. JXas); —only‏ ga! because of the pressure of the‏ ץ עקת רְשָע 734 | Mass. (v. Baer”’*’), so Ginsb™* van d. H.; עור wicked ; ae צעקת‎ (|| dip ; Ol al.), which mean ery for he ral n.f. compression, distress vera l., Aram. word, = מ' בְּמְתְנִינו--; (מִצוּקָה‎ ADI ץצ‎ 661%, 6( rivers, B tribulationes ; but word dit + [VV] vb. Pi. make blind, blind (orig

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

  משכת 2 קר (E) when the ram(’s horn) sounds,‏ 19 bain Jos 6° (JE). 5. draw out, prolong,‏ continue, PYTP TIO TW + 36" prolong, cor‏ tinue thy kindness to them that know thee:‏ ) ו בְתִּיךְ (so poss. Ton‏ א אַלִיְהִי yw sb‏ חֶסָר I have prolonged kindness to "thee,‏ 1615 Ryle Ne 9"; 81. as 1 supr.); ef. DY py om‏ FBS “Bh‏ לדר ור Ne 9” (7M omitted);‏ רבות Tb 8‏ מ" אבּירִים bid); inda‏ פָּאָנף 92;[( 85° 1.e. he (God) prolongeth the life of the migh‏ (Du draggeth them off, as y 28° 1 supr..—‏ for “AN, with G Bi); cf.‏ אבְדִים reading also‏ Niph. 6. trail seed (draw along in sowing)‏ J) infr.) ;‏ .61 ; דרף עְנָבִים Am 9" (opp.‏ מ" 3[ (late) cheer 0 attract, gratify)‏ ‘vans Ec 2%---80 De (who cites NH, Chag™*)‏ JD Ho 7? is diffier‏ יָדוּ Now Wild. _oyyd-ny‏ AV RV he stretcheth out his hand pith,‏ 6 maketh common cause with, is hardly poi‏ text prob. corrupt We Now. Niph. J;‏ mpl. 3309 ND Is 13” they shall not be p‏ 3 Eau‏ לא תש longed (days of Babylon);‏ it shall not be postponed. Pu. Pt. k‏ drawn out: 7 Is 18?" of persons, = tall;‏ nonin Pr 13” hope postponed, deferrec‏ מִמַשָכָה מע n.[m.] a drawing,‏ [ משף] .1+ Wwe Jb2‏ חַכָמָה מִפָּנִינִים up, a trail ;—1. estr.‏ the drawing up (fishing up, i.e. securing aff‏ effort) of wisdom is beyond corals. 2. 68‏ a trail (of seed), Y129 2) 126° bearing fi‏ trail of seed ; cf. YD 6.‏ Bia) n.pr.gent. the Moschi )6[‏ .צנ : *[כ1 Mocyo, v. infr.; As. Musku, Muski,‏ q‏ ןגד משך Schr COT Gn 10, 2; 0 cf. Sab.‏ הל ‘son’ of Japheth Gn 10? (P), between‏ "ץ prob. err.‏ ,משך and DYA, = 1 Ch 1°; also,‏ 77P; here without 22M);‏ ||( 120° ו משף ; (מש (v.‏ Ez 247% 61. 32” 38? (both + 22h); so alse‏ תבל “os‏ Is 66% (Lo Sta*™"° Du Che**; vy. sup.‏ 60 aw aia Ez 38° 3‏ ראש מ' yw 2); 2am)‏ —On identif.‏ .מוש(י )ך Mogox (Meoox), Sam.‏ (6 cf. Boch.; in Assyr. times they dwelt in W.‏ (or NW.) Armenia (cf. Schr’); in Pers. time‏ appar. farther NE. (SE. of Euxine Sea), ef Mooyxot kat TiBapnvo. Herod™ 7: also Di Gn 2 and Che E2°v¢l- Bib. Art, Geogr. Biblical), T[n2w] n.f. cord ;—only pl. estr. . ba Tb 38% the cords of Orion, i.e. prob. those by which (acc. to some legend) he is dragged along in the sky (cf. Di). ? משכב שב v.‏ מִשַכָּן | .שכב Bawa v.‏ |: ben n.pr.loc. +. NWP.

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

  vb. long (for) (Ar. 3‏ [כסף]+ colourless, obscure, be eclipsed (of sun or moon) ;‏ also be depressed in appearance 128 757%: mod.‏ Ar. disappoint; refl. conjj. be disappointed,‏ Hiph. shew‏ כסף ashamed, v. Spiro ¥°*-; NH‏ pallor, be pale, white; Qal be ashamed, long‏ for, cf. Aram. 1D3)—Qal Impf. 2 ms. MyDS‏ PT Jb14” for the work of thy hands‏ תִּכְכְף MS‏ יכְסוף קטרף thow wouldest long; 3 ms.‏ כסף house; Pf, 3 fs. לְחַצְרות‎ WEI... BOD y 84! my . 107087. . . for the courts of ; Pf.3 ms. ADD) לא‎ sing Zp 2! very dub.; but patton (Ges Ew Hi Ke al.), O nation 0 turning = 206, = not ashamed, cf. etym. supr.; We thinks whole Vis ו‎

• From Dreams from My Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance (1995)

  I switched off the overhead light and closed my eyes, letting my mind drift back to an African I’d met while traveling through Spain, another man on the run. I had been waiting for a night bus in a roadside tavern about halfway between Madrid and Barcelona. A few old men sat at tables and drank wine from short, cloudy glasses. There was a pool table off to one side, and for some reason I had racked up the balls and started to play, remembering those late evenings with Gramps in the bars on Hotel Street, with their streetwalkers and pimps and Gramps the only white man in the joint. As I was finishing up the table, a man in a thin wool sweater had appeared out of nowhere and asked if he could buy me some coffee. He spoke no English, and his Spanish wasn’t much better than mine, but he had a winning smile and the urgency of someone in need of company. Standing at the bar, he told me he was from Senegal, and was crisscrossing Spain for seasonal work. He showed me a battered photograph he kept in his wallet of a young girl with round, smooth cheeks. His wife, he said; he had had to leave her behind. They would be reunited as soon as he saved the money. He would write and send for her. We ended up riding to Barcelona together, neither of us talking much, him turning to me every so often to try to explain the jokes on the Spanish program being shown on a TV-video contraption hooked up above the driver’s seat. Shortly before dawn, we were deposited in front of an old bus depot, and my friend gestured me over to a short, thick palm that grew beside the road. From his knapsack he pulled out a toothbrush, a comb, and a bottle of water that he handed to me with great ceremony. And together we washed ourselves under the morning mist, before hoisting our bags over our shoulders and heading toward town.

• From Tipping the Velvet (1998)

  They sent me letters in return, and little parcels - and, of course, barrels of oysters, which I passed on to my landlady to let her dish to us all at supper. And yet, somehow, my letters home grew more and more infrequent, my replies to their cards and presents increasingly tardy and brief. ‘When are you coming to see us?’ they would write at the end of their letters. ‘When are you coming home to Whitstable?’ And I would answer, ‘Soon, soon ...’ or, ‘When Kitty can spare me ...’But Kitty never could spare me. The weeks passed, the season changed; the nights grew longer and darker and cold. Whitstable became - not dimmer, in my mind, but overshadowed. It was not that I didn’t think of Father and Mother, of Alice and Davy and my cousins - just that I thought of Kitty, and my new life, more...For there was so very much to think about. I was Kitty’s dresser, but I was also her friend, her adviser, her companion in all things. When she learned a song I held the sheet, to prompt her if she faltered. When tailors fitted her I watched and nodded, or shook my head if the cut was wrong. When she let herself be guided by the clever Mr Bliss - or ‘Walter’ I should call him, for so, by now, he had become to us, just as we were ‘Kitty’ and ’Nan’ to him - when she let herself be guided by Walter, and spent hours as he had advised in shops and market squares and stations studying the men, I went with her; and we learned together the constable’s amble, the coster’s weary swagger, the smart clip of the off-duty soldier.And as we did so we seemed to learn the ways and manners of the whole unruly city; and I grew as easy, at last, with London, as with Kitty herself - as easy, and as endlessly fascinated and charmed. We visited the parks - those great, handsome parks and gardens, that are so queer and verdant in the midst of so much dust, yet have a little of the pavements’ quickness in them, too. We strolled the West End; we sat and gazed at all the marvellous sights - not just the grand, celebrated sights of London, the palaces and monuments and picture galleries, but also the smaller, swifter dramas: the overturning of a carriage; the escape of an eel from an eel-man’s barrow; the picking of a pocket; the snatching of a purse.We visited the river - stood on London Bridge, and Battersea Bridge, and all the bridges in between, just so that we might look, and marvel, at the great, stinking breadth of it.

• From The History of Christian Theology (2008)

  he early Christians lived in a kind of expectation that is called “eschatological.” “Eschatology” means doctrine of the end (Greek eschaton). New Testament eschatology is about life in the time between the already and the not yet, between what Christ has already done (cross and resurrection) and what he is yet to do (parousia and establishing his kingdom on earth). Eschatology is the fundamental framework of early Christian theology, as can be seen in the earliest New Testament writer, the Apostle Paul. Paul is the first Christian theologian whose writings we have. He is a missionary and founder of churches in the northeastern part of the Mediterranean. In addition, he is author of most of the letters in the New Testament, which were written earlier than the Gospels. There is some disagreement among scholars about whether he wrote all of the letters ascribed to him by the New Testament, but all of them can be taken to illustrate Pauline theology, in the sense of the theology derived from Paul. Pauline eschatology is about life in Christ between his exaltation and his < THE APOSTLE OF THF ;. Ls par ick 1E Gry, Bsawt. = ; LT, 7, St. Paul’s letters—not the Synoptic Gospels—gave us one of our first glimpses of Christian practices. © Photos.com/Thinkstock. Lecture 3: Pauline Eschatology return. The key expectation (that is, what is yet to be) is the resurrection of all the dead in Christ. When Christ returns, the dead are raised, for Christ’s own resurrection makes him “the first fruits” of the resurrection (1 Cor. 15). The picture is not of us going to heaven after we die, but of Christ coming from heaven to earth, bringing life for the dead. Likewise, the picture is not of our souls leaving our bodies behind, but of our mortal bodies “putting on” immortality. Paul calls this a “spiritual body” and speaks of a heavenly dwelling which will clothe us. “Heaven” in Pauline eschatology does not mean the place to which we go but the place where Christ is, hidden from our sight but having the power of eternal life, with which we long to be clothed. —————s Pauline eschatology is about life in Christ between his exaltation The life of believers (that is, what is already) is in Christ, which is to say in his Body, the Church, by the power of the Holy Spirit. As at Pentecost, the Holy Spirit is the source of | and his return. prophecy, teaching, and all sacred spec) including “psalms and hymns and spiritual

• From Tipping the Velvet (1998)

  A little fair-haired girl had appeared on the balcony beside him, and now gripped the rail and put her feet upon the bars. I said, ‘Where does the lady live - the sister they’ve gone to?’ and he pulled at his ear and looked thoughtful.‘Now, I did know, but have forgotten it ... I believe it was Bristol; or it may have been Bath...’‘Not London, then?’‘Oh no, certainly not London. Now, was it Brighton ... ?’I turned away from him, to gaze back up at Mrs Milne’s house - at the window of my old room, and at the balcony where I had liked, in summer-time, to sit. When I looked at the man again, he had his little girl in his arms, and the wind had caught her golden hair and made it flap about his cheeks: and I remembered them both, then, as the father and daughter that I had seen clapping their hands to the sound of a mandolin, on that balmy June evening, in the week I met Diana. They had lost their home and been given a new one. They had been visited by that charity-visitor with the romantic-sounding name.Florence! I did not know that I had remembered her. I had not thought of her at all, for a year and more.If only I might meet her, now! She found houses for the poor; she might find a house for me. She had been kind to me once - wouldn’t she be kind, if I appealed to her, a second time? I thought of her comely face, and her curling hair. I had lost Diana, I had lost Zena; and now I had lost Mrs Milne and Grace. In all of London she was the closest thing I had, at that moment, to a friend - and it was a friend just then that, above all else, I longed for.On the balcony above me, the man had turned away. Now I called him back: ‘Hey, mister!’ I walked closer to the wall of the tenement, and gazed up at him: he and his daughter leaned from the balcony rail - she looked like an angel on the ceiling of a church. I said, ‘You won’t know me; but I lived here once, with Mrs Milne. I am looking for a girl, who called on you when you moved in. She worked for the people that found you your flat.’He frowned. ‘A girl, you say?’‘A girl with curly hair. A plain-faced girl called Florence. Don’t you know who I mean? Don’t you have the name of the charity she worked for? It was run by a lady - a very clever-looking lady. The lady played the mandolin.’He had continued to frown, and to scratch at his head; but at this last detail he brightened. ‘That one,’ he said; ‘yes, I remember her.

• From Tipping the Velvet (1998)

  Very gently - but quite matter-of-factly - she moved her hand to my wrist, pulled my arm above the bedclothes, and ducked her head beneath it to place her temple against my collar-bone, my arm about her neck. The hand that dangled before her throat she squeezed, and held. Her cheek, against my shallow breast, felt hotter than a flat-iron.‘How your heart beats!’ she said - and at that, of course, it beat faster. She sighed again - this time her mouth was at the opening of my nightgown, and I felt her breath upon the naked skin beneath - she sighed and said, ‘So many times I lay in that dull room at Mrs Pugh’s and thought of you and Alice in your little bed beside the sea. Was it just like this, being with her?’I didn’t answer her. I, too, was thinking back to that little bed. How hard it had been, having to lie next to slumbering Alice, my heart and my head all filled with Kitty. How much harder would it be to have Kitty herself beside me, so close and so unknowing! It would be a torture. I thought: I shall pack my trunk tomorrow. I shall get up very early and catch the first train back ...Kitty spoke on, not minding my silence. ‘You and Alice,’ she was saying again. ‘Do you know, Nan, how jealous I was ... ?’I swallowed. ‘Jealous?’ The word sounded terrible in the darkness.‘Yes, I -’ She seemed to hesitate; then, ‘You see,’ she went on, ‘I never had a sister like other girls did...’ She let go of my hand, and placed her arm over my middle, curling her fingers around the hollow of my waist. ‘But we’re like sisters now, aren’t we Nan? You’ll be a sister to me - won’t you?’I patted her shoulder stiffly. Then I turned my face away - quite dazed, with mixed relief and disappointment. I said, ‘Oh yes, Kitty,’ and she squeezed me tighter.Then she slept, and her head and arm grew slack and heavy.I, however, lay awake - just as I had used to lie at Alice’s side. But now I did not dream; I only spoke to myself rather sternly.I knew that I would not, after all, pack my bags in the morning and bid Kitty farewell; I knew that, having come so far, I could not. But if I were to stay with her, then it must be as she said; I must learn to swallow my queer and inconvenient lusts, and call her ‘sister’. For to be Kitty’s sister was better than to be Kitty’s nothing, Kitty’s no one. And if my head and my heart - and the hot, squirming centre of me - cried out at the shame of it, then I must stifle them.

• From Tipping the Velvet (1998)

  The dinner-table was all covered with the paraphernalia of the woman’s trade - with folded garments and tissue wrappers, with pins and cotton reels and needles. The needles, she said, were always dropping on the floor, and the children were always stepping on them; her baby had recently put a pin in his mouth, and the pin had stuck in his palate and almost choked him.I listened to her story, and then watched while Florence spoke to her about the Women’s Guild, and about the seamstresses’ union it had established. Would she come to a meeting? Florence asked. The woman shook her head, and said she didn’t have the time; that she had no one to mind the children; that she was frightened that the masters at the outfitters for whom she worked would hear about it, and stop her shillings.‘Besides that, miss,’ she said at last, ‘my husband wouldn’t care for me to go. Not but what he ain’t a union man himself; but he don’t think much of women having a say in all that stuff. He says there ain’t the need for it.’‘But what do you think, Mrs Fryer? Don’t you think the women’s union a good thing? Wouldn’t you like to see things changed - see the masters made to pay you more, and work you kinder?’ Mrs Fryer rubbed her eyes.‘They would drop me, miss, that’s all, and find a gal to do it cheaper. There are plenty of ’em - plenty gals what envy me even my poor few shillings...’The discussion went on, until at last the woman grew fidgety, and said she thanked us, but couldn’t spare the time to hear us any longer. Florence shrugged. ‘Think on it a bit, won’t you? I’ve told you when the meeting is. Bring your babies if you like - we’ll find someone to take care of ’em for an hour or two.’ We rose; I looked again at the table, at the pile of reels and garments. There was a waistcoat, a set of handkerchiefs, some gentlemen’s linen — I found myself drifting towards it all, with fingers that itched to pick the garments up and stroke them. I caught the woman’s eye, and nodded at the table-top.I said, ‘What is it you do exactly, Mrs Fryer? Some of these look very fine.’‘I’m an embroid’rer, miss,’ she answered. ‘I does the fancy letters.’ She lifted a shirt, and showed me its pocket: there was a flowery monogram upon it, sewn very neatly in ivory silk. ‘It looks a bit queer, don’t it,’ she went on sadly, ‘seeing all these scraps of handsomeness in this poor room...’‘It does,’ I said - but I could hardly get the words out. The pretty monogram had reminded me suddenly of Felicity Place, and all the lovely suits that I had worn there.

• From Tipping the Velvet (1998)

  I was only tidy, and clean.Well, I think I was never quite so tidy, after that night. I certainly never beat the dirt from Lilian’s gaudy rug again - but smiled when people stepped on it, and took a dreadful pleasure in watching its colours grow dim.But then I would imagine Lilian in paradise, weaving more carpets so that Florence might one day come and sit on them and rest her head against her knee. I imagined her stocking up the bookshelves with essays and poems, so that she and Florence might walk, side by side, reading together. I saw her preparing a stove in some small back kitchen in heaven, so that I should have somewhere to stew the oysters while she and Flo held hands.I began to look at Florence’s hands — I had never done such a thing before - and imagine all the occupations I would have set them to, had I been in Lilian’s place...Again, I couldn’t help it. I had persuaded myself that Florence was a kind of saint, with a saint’s dimmed, unguessable limbs and warmths and wantings; but now, in telling me the story of her own great love, it was as if she had suddenly shown herself to me, robeless. And I could not tear my eyes from what I saw.One night, for example - one dark night, quite late, when Ralph was out with his union friends and Cyril was quiet upstairs - she bathed and washed her hair, then sat in the parlour with her dressing-gown about her, and fell asleep. I had helped her tip her tub of soapy water down the privy, then gone to warm some milk for us to drink; and when I returned with the mugs, I found her slumbering there, before the fire. She was sitting, slightly twisted, and her head had fallen back, and her arms were slack and heavy, and her hands were loose and vaguely folded in her lap. Her breaths were deep, and almost snores.I stood before her, holding the steaming mugs. She had taken the towel from her head, and her hair was spread out over the bit of lace on the back of her chair, like the halo on a Flemish madonna. I did not think that I had ever seen her hair so full and loose before, and I studied it now for a long time. I remembered when I had thought it was a dreary auburn; but it was not auburn, there were a thousand tints of gold and brown and copper in it.

• From Tipping the Velvet (1998)

  He pulled a face. ‘Pooh, Nancy, the real thing not good enough for you any more?’Father leaned towards him. ‘Well, we are told it is Kitty Butler,’ he said. ‘If you ask me’ - and here he winked and rubbed his nose - ‘I think there’s a young chap in the orchestra pit what she’s got her eye on ...’‘Ah,’ said Joe, significantly. ‘Let’s hope poor Frederick don’t catch on to it, then ...’At that, everybody looked my way, and I blushed - and so seemed, I suppose, to prove my father’s words. Davy snorted; Mother, who had frowned before, now smiled. I let her - I let them all think just what they liked - and said nothing; and soon, as before, the talk turned to other matters.I could deceive my parents and my brother with my silences; from my sister Alice, however, I could keep nothing.‘Is there a feller you’ve got your eye on, at the Palace?’ she asked me later, when the rest of the house lay hushed and sleeping.‘Of course not,’ I said quietly.‘It’s just Miss Butler, then, that you go to see?’‘Yes.’There was a silence, broken only by the distant rumble of wheels and faint thud of hooves, from the High Street, and the even fainter sucking whoosh of sea against shingle from the bay. We had put out our candle but left the window wide and unshuttered. I saw in the gleam of starlight that Alice’s eyes were open. She was gazing at me with an ambiguous expression that seemed half amusement, half distaste.‘You’re rather keen on her, ain’t you?’ she said then.I looked away, and didn’t answer her at once. When I spoke at last it was not to her at all, but to the darkness.‘When I see her,’ I said, ‘it’s like - I don’t know what it’s like. It’s like I never saw anything at all before. It’s like I am filling up, like a wine-glass when it’s filled with wine. I watch the acts before her and they are like nothing - they’re like dust. Then she walks on the stage and - she is so pretty; and her suit is so nice; and her voice is so sweet ... She makes me want to smile and weep, at once. She makes me sore, here.’ I placed a hand upon my chest, upon the breast-bone. ‘I never saw a girl like her before. I never knew that there were girls like her ...’ My voice became a trembling whisper then, and I found that I could say no more.There was another silence.

• From Tipping the Velvet (1998)

  But the theatre had had to be evacuated, and there had been problems with the exits; afterwards an inspector came, looked at the building, and said a new escape door must be added. He closed the theatre while the work was done: tickets were returned, apologies pasted up; and for a whole half-week we found ourselves on holiday.Urged on by Kitty - for she had grown suddenly gallant about letting me go - I took my chance. I wrote to Mother and told her that, if I was still welcome, I should be home the following day - that was Sunday - and would stay till Wednesday night. Then I went shopping, to buy presents for the family: there was something thrilling after all, I found, about the idea of returning to Whitstable after so long, with a parcel of gifts from London ...Even so, it was hard to part from Kitty.‘You will be all right?’ I said to her. ‘You won’t be lonely here?’‘I shall be horribly lonely. I expect you will come back and find me dead from loneliness!’‘Why don’t you come with me? We might catch a later train -’‘No, Nan; you should see your family without me.’‘I shall think about you every minute.’‘And I shall think of you ...’‘Oh, Kitty ...’She had been tapping at her tooth with the pearl of her necklace; when I put my mouth upon hers I felt it, cold and smooth and hard, between our lips. She let me kiss her, then moved her head so that our cheeks touched; then she put her arms about my waist and held me to her rather fiercely - quite as if she loved me more than anything. Whitstable, when I drew into it later that morning, seemed very changed - very small and grey, and with a sea that was wider, and a sky that was lower and less blue, than I remembered. I leaned from the carriage window to gaze at it all, and so saw Father and Davy, at the station, a moment or two before they saw me. Even they looked different - I felt a rush of aching love and strange regret, to think it - Father a little older, a little shrunken, somehow; Davy slightly stouter, and redder in the face.When they saw me, stepping from the train on to the platform, they came running.‘Nance! My dearest girl ... !’ This was Father. We embraced - awkwardly, for I had all my parcels with me, and a hat upon my head with a veil around it. One of the parcels fell to the ground and he bent to retrieve it, then hurried to help me with the others. Davy, meanwhile, took my hand, then kissed my cheek through the mesh of my veil.‘Just look at you,’ he said. ‘All dressed up to the ninety-nines !

• From The Four Vision Quests of Jesus (2015)

  Did you recognize it as a vision right away or did you have to grow into it? What images helped you? What words did you hear in a holy voice? What colors were there? What living creatures shared in your experience? How did you carry the vision with you? There are a thousand questions I would like to ask you. And there are a thousand ways you can answer as you tell me about your vision, about what it has meant, about how it has changed your life. And I believe, although the world may have always known you by a single name, the truth is you have been given many names. You have changed, been changed, and emerged from the dreamtime of vision to discover yourself anew. I want to be spiritually bold enough in this book to claim this territory of integrity for all of us who have received a vision in our lives. I want to do so to stake out our space, our story, in the realm of the religious. I do not do this only for any group of us, but for all of us, whether we are Christian or not, whether we are Native or not, whether we are religious or not. I believe there are no fences we can build around the vision of God to contain it or explain it. Instead, I think vision is a wild truth. It appears as it will to whomever it will. It arises in many different forms to many different people of many different walks of life. It has come to you, to me, and to countless others through the centuries. Vision is not a private club for the initiated few, but a wide spiritual sea on which any person may sail. You and I discovered that fact, and we are not alone. Many others were alongside us, even if we could not see them, or hear their story, or understand their experience. Like ships passing in the night, we may have missed many chances to realize just how full of mystery our lives are. We may have felt hindered by our own cultural and religious training from sending out signals into that night, openly sharing our own visions with others for fear of rejection. Therefore, we have sailed alone and we have sailed in silence. That is something we must change. Vine Deloria was right when he said that a story like Black Elk Speaks would be like water in a desert. He described our historical period very accurately. We do live in a time when vision is few and far between, not because vision has disappeared from our lives, but because we have been conditioned not to embrace it or speak of it. We have entered the silence of the cultural void that Vine describes, an age where celebrity passes for the heroic and the constant sensations flashed before us on screens fail to reach any deeper in us than entertainment.

• From The History of Christian Theology (2008)

  45 used of God, such as Supreme Good, Being, Life, Wisdom, Power, Justice, etc. Using language that goes back to Plato, Dionysius says that God is not only beyond intelligibility but beyond being, literally “above essence” (hyper-ousios) or “super-essential.” Particularly inÀ uential is his description of God as “the Good that diffuses itself.” In contrast to Dionysius, Augustine, the great Christian neo Platonist of the West, conceived God as intelligible. For Augustine, the human mind is like an eye made to see the light of divine Truth. God is the Truth that contains all that is immutably true, the Mind containing Plato’s Ideas. Therefore every time the intellect sees the truth, it catches a partial and transitory glimpse of God. God is to be understood by the intellect, just as bodies are to be seen by the eyes. To use later terminology, for Augustine, it is natural for the human mind to see God. When Augustine says God is incomprehensible, he means something much less than Dionysius. Like Dionysius, Augustine frequently uses the metaphor of dazzled eyes to describe how God surpasses our understanding. But for Augustine, this dazzlement is due not to the incapacity of our nature to understand the incomprehensible God, but to the sinfulness of our hearts which corrupts our minds. It is as if our eyes are unhealthy and half blind. Grace, for Augustine, serves to heal, purify, and strengthen our minds so that we may see God. The sense in which God remains incomprehensible even to healthy eyes is parallel to the sense in which bodies cannot be seen from all sides at once. The concept of the supernatural arose when Western theologians in the Middle Ages had to reconcile Augustine and Dionysius. Their problem was to explain how there can be a beati ¿ c vision of an incomprehensible God. For Augustine, the ultimate goal of life is the ful¿ llment of the mind’s desire to see God, ¿ nding rest in God and “joy in the Truth.” Dionysius’s doctrine of incomprehensibility, on the other hand, means that the essence of God is beyond the capacity of any created being to see or understand. The concept of the supernatural arose when Western theologians in the Middle Ages had to reconcile Augustine and Dionysius.

• From The History of Christian Theology (2008)

  form and vocabulary for mystical theology. In Teresa’s mystical theology, the consciousness of God comes to us by grace, not through our own effort. For Teresa, the inward finding of God is not an act of understanding or intellectual vision but a prayer of love. Teresa combines mystical theology with an Augustinian inward turn. Like Augustine, she describes the soul as an inner space, an interior castle, a sort of inner building of the soul, which one must enter to find God. For both Augustine and Teresa, the essence of prayer is desire for God. 123 Lecture 34: Catholic Mystical Theology The lower stages of the spiritual life consist of mental prayer. The soul begins with meditation, which involves the work of the intellect and its many thoughts. Through recollection, withdrawing its faculties within itself, the soul comes to the prayer of quiet, the first stage of supernatural or infused contemplation. The soul proceeds through a sleep of the faculties to a suspended state of the faculties as it enters the prayer of union. Beyond these levels of prayer, Teresa describes extraordinary raptures or ecstasies. A key feature of these experiences is that they center around Christ in his humanity. In her most famous experience, called the “transverberation,” an angel pierces her heart with a golden spear that sets her afire with love for God. The most famous concept of John of the Cross is the dark night of the soul. Like Teresa, John finds God in the inmost being of the soul. The dark night is the soul’s loss of all that is not God, which is necessary for it to find God. The highest level of mystical theology is the spiritual marriage, for both Teresa and John. It is a permanent union in love, the closest This statue of Saint Teresa is inside thing to beatific vision that is St. Peter’s Basilica. possible in this life. The union is of two who remain distinct, not an absorption like a drop into the ocean. As with Teresa, the soul’s ultimate finding of God is a spiritual marriage, which John depicts as a mutual self-giving. Both in Spain and in France mystics went further than the church could approve. Quietism, condemned in 1687, made the passivity of infused contemplation into the whole of Christian life. Quietism contended that the perfect spiritual life involved eliminating all activity of the soul. Once the 124 © Hemera/Thinkstock. pure passivity of inner contemplation was achieved, lower forms of prayer and meditation, as well as the pursuit of virtue, were useless. Quietism picked up on Spanish themes, especially the concept of dejamiento, abandonment, or letting go, which may have entered the Keswick movement from Madame Guyon, a semi-Quietist writer admired by Wesley and other evangelicals.

• From The History of Christian Theology (2008)

  10 Lecture 3: Pauline Eschatology return. The key expectation (that is, what is yet to be) is the resurrection of all the dead in Christ. When Christ returns, the dead are raised, for Christ’s own resurrection makes him “the ¿ rst fruits” of the resurrection (1 Cor. 15). The picture is not of us going to heaven after we die, but of Christ coming from heaven to earth, bringing life for the dead. Likewise, the picture is not of our souls leaving our bodies behind, but of our mortal bodies “putting on” immortality. Paul calls this a “spiritual body” and speaks of a heavenly dwelling which will clothe us. “Heaven” in Pauline eschatology does not mean the place to which we go but the place where Christ is, hidden from our sight but having the power of eternal life, with which we long to be clothed. The life of believers (that is, what is already) is in Christ, which is to say in his Body, the Church, by the power of the Holy Spirit. As at Pentecost, the Holy Spirit is the source of prophecy, teaching, and all sacred speech, including “psalms and hymns and spiritual songs” (Eph. 5:19). It is also the source of holy or righteous living, “walking by the Spirit” and “the fruit of the Spirit” (Gal. 5:16, 22). Paul writes that the Spirit of God dwells in the plural you, be you all, meaning ¿ rst of all the community of believers, which he calls the Church (Rom. 8:9). Paul describes the Church as the Body of Christ, one body made up of many members. As head of the Body, Christ is “the beginning, ¿ rstborn from the dead” (Col. 1:18) and “head of all things for the Church” (Eph. 1:22). Baptism marks the inauguration of this new life, as well as the death of the old self. For Paul, both Gentiles and Jews are justi¿ ed by faith in Christ. The early Christian movement was Jewish. They did not immediately know what to do when Gentiles started believing in Jesus. Who was the Messiah after all? King of the Jews! The crucial question was: Do Gentiles need to be circumcised and become Jews to join the Body of Christ? Paul’s answer, which came to be accepted by the whole church, was no: Gentiles were justi¿ ed, set right with God, simply by believing in Jesus, without converting to Judaism. Thus, Paul conceived of the Body of Christ as a place of reconciliation between Jews and Gentiles. Paul’s famous doctrine Pauline eschatology is about life in Christ between his exaltation and his return.

• From The History of Christian Theology (2008)

  Semi-Quietism is the label given to the Francois Fénelon’s theology of pure love, condemned by Rome. Fénelon picked up the notion of not willing salvation from the writing of Saint Francis de Sales. Francis’s focus is on love rather than intellect. He develops an Augustinian psychology of love as the desire for union with God. He raises new and un-Augustinian questions, however, when he suggests that the higher forms of love involve a holy indifference to anything but God’s will. “Pure love,” for Fénelon, meant loving God without the selfish desire to find happiness in God. To condemn the aspiration for such pure love is to insist, with Augustine and Aquinas, that the desire to find happiness in God as one’s ultimate goal is not only necessary but morally right and essential. The appeal of pure love theology is a symptom of a key challenge posed to Catholic theology by modernity, with its denial of inherent teleology in nature—so that pursuing the goal of ultimate fulfillment, which is the essence of medieval Christian ethics, comes to seem selfish. m Suggested Reading de Sales, Treatise on the Love of God. John of the Cross, The Spiritual Canticle. Teresa of Avila, The Interior Castle. , [he Life of Teresa of Jesus. PDF created by Rajesh Arya - Gujarat 125 From Vatican | to Vatican Il Lecture 35 Sa The First Vatican Council is famous as the council which defined the pope as infallible. The Second Vatican Council is famous as the council in which the church opened itself in a new to the modern world. Council (1870), grew out of a new exercise of the pope’s responsibility to determine Catholic teaching. In the papal bull /neffabilis Deus in 1854, Pope Pius IX defined the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception of the Blessed Virgin Mary. The doctrine teaches that from the very beginning of her existence Mary was free from the guilt of original sin. The view of Thomas Aquinas, that she was cleansed in the womb after being conceived in sin like the rest of us, was thereby rejected. ik doctrine of papal infallibility, as defined by the First Vatican The Immaculate Conception was not a new doctrine but it was newly defined as doctrine. The pope has no authority to make new doctrines. In fact Pius insisted that there is no such thing as new doctrines of the Catholic church. To define a doctrine is to declare that it is henceforth a doctrine to be held by all the faithful. What is new about Ineffabilis Deus is that a doctrine was defined by the pope rather than by an ecumenical council. Pius’s pronouncement includes an account of how he consulted other bishops and consulting the faithful, and defined the doctrine in response to their joyous request that he do so.

• From Tipping the Velvet (1998)

  The shilling was nothing compared to the pleasure of having you here among us all.’‘Shall we see you here again, Nan?’ her friend with the tattoo called then. I nodded: ‘I hope so.’‘But you must sing us a proper song next time, on your own, in all your gentleman’s toggery.’‘Oh yes, you must!’I made no answer, only smiled, and took a step away from them; then I thought of something, and beckoned to Jenny again.‘That picture,’ I said quietly when she was close. ‘Do you think - would Mrs Swindles mind - do you think that I might have it, for myself?’ She put her hand to her pocket at once, and drew out the creased and faded photograph, and passed it to me.‘You take it,’ she said; then she could not help but ask, a little wonderingly, ‘But have you none of your own? I should’ve thought...’‘Between you and me,’ I said, ‘I left the business rather fast. I lost a lot of stuff, and never cared to think of it till now. This, however — ’ I gazed down at the photo. ‘Well, it won’t hurt me, will it, to have this little reminder?’‘I hope it won’t, indeed,’ she answered kindly. Then she looked past me, to Florence and the others. ‘Your girl is awaiting for you,’ she said with a smile. I put the picture in the pocket of my coat.‘So she is,’ I said absently. ‘So she is.’I joined my friends; we picked our way across the crowded room, and hauled ourselves up the treacherous staircase into the aching cold of the February night. Outside The Frigate the road was dark and quiet; from Cable Street, however, came a distant row. Like us, the customers of all the other publics and gin palaces of the East End were beginning to make their tipsy journeys home.‘Is there never trouble,’ I said as we started to walk, ‘between women at the Boy and local people, or roughs?’Annie turned her collar up against the cold, then took Miss Raymond’s arm. ‘Sometimes,’ she said. ‘Sometimes. Once some boys dressed a pig in a bonnet, and tipped it down the cellar stairs...’‘No!’‘Yes,’ said Nora. ‘And once a woman got her head broken, in a fight.’‘But this was over a girl,’ said Florence, yawning, ‘and it was the girl’s husband who hit her...’‘The truth is,’ Annie went on, ‘there is such a mix round these parts, what with Jews and Lascars, Germans and Poles, socialists, anarchists, salvationists... The people are surprised at nothing.’Even as she spoke, however, two fellows came out of a house at the end of the street and, seeing us - seeing Annie and Miss Raymond arm-in-arm, and Ruth with her hand in Nora’s pocket, and Florence and I bumping shoulders - gave a mutter, and a sneer.

• From Pleasure Activism (2017)

  As you approach eight years old, you play with the girls too. It’s no longer acceptable to play with boys all the time, your mother tells you. Or maybe you just understand by watching everyone else. You hate Barbie, but My Little Pony is alright. House is better. You like the sensuality of playing with girls. The way it feels to brush and braid each other’s hair. To giggle nonstop. The way it feels to make friendship bracelets and beaded jewelry. The way you can feel each strand, each bead against your tiny fingers. You can feel. You love the precision and concentration girls can engage in, creating entire role-play worlds together with nothing but some stuffed animals and the great outdoors. Your best friend and you dig a huge, deep hole just east of the kickball field. You work on it every day at recess, for weeks. You two have decided you are digging to Australia, not China, because it seems more accurately on the other side of the world. The hole gets filled up by the custodians one weekend, but you don’t care. You have found a friend who shares your secret desire: escape. You write love notes to your friends, give them cards and chocolates on Valentine’s Day. You love playing hand games at recess, relish the feeling of lungs full of song, punctuated by hand slapping. In your own way, you try to tell. Wonder if it’s happening to them too. Look sideways at everyone’s father during slumber parties. When you play house, you are the husband. You tell Leah you could make her pregnant so she can give birth to a Cabbage Patch doll, and she says okay. You tell her to lie down. You lie down too, with the soles of your feet touching the soles of Leah’s, heads pointing in opposite directions. You place your foot on top of her vagina and rub her through her clothes, just once or twice. “That’s where babies come from,” you say. She nods like she already knows. It doesn’t feel good or bad. Just factual. A reenactment. She passes the Cabbage Patch doll between her legs. You always understand exactly what is happening to you, even when you don’t know the words to tell. It’s hard to talk about pleasure when most of your life before leaving home at seventeen is a careful balancing act: hide the trauma, hide the truth, learn how to pass in the world as a “normal” kid, a kid who isn’t being tortured at home. Make your escape plan. Aim your compass at a distant destination: something called “college.” Act accordingly. Believe your father’s shame is your own. Act accordingly. Survive. Survive. Survive.