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 H Is for Hawk (2014)

  From here, the city is mild and small, and looks all of a piece with the landscape around it. The beauty of a vantage like this is that it obscures the roads and walls with trees, makes Cambridge a miniature playset of forest-set blocks and spires. These days, when I go into town, I’m increasingly finding excuses to park my car in the multi-storey car park, because from the open-air fourth floor I can stare at these fields. They run like a backbone across the horizon, scratched with copse-lines and damped with cloud-shadow. A strange complication arises when I look at them. Something of a doubling. Leaning out over the car-park rail, I feel myself standing on the distant hill. There’s a terrible strength to this intuition. It’s almost as if my soul really is up there, several miles away, standing on thistly clay watching my soul-less self standing in the car park, with diesel and concrete in her nose and anti-skid asphalt under her feet. With the car-park self thinking if she looked very, very hard, perhaps through binoculars, she might see herself up there. I feel I might be up there, because now the hill is home. I know it intimately. Every hedgerow, every track through dry grass where the hares cut across field-boundaries, each discarded piece of rusted machinery, every earth and warren and tree. By the road, half an acre of fenced-off mud, scaled with tyre-tracks and water reflecting pieces of sky. Wagtails, pallets, tractors, a broken silo on its side like a fallen rocket stage. Here is the sheep-field, there is the clover ley, now mown and turned to earth. Further up the track are tracts of mugwort: dead now from frost, seeds clinging to stems and branches like a billion musty beads on ragged Christmas trees. Piles of bricks and rubble run along the left-hand side of the track, and the earth between them is soft and full of rabbits. Further up the hill the hedges are higher, and by the time I get to the top the track has narrowed into grass. Cow parsley. Knapweed. Wild burdock. The argillaceous shimmer of tinder-fine clay. Drifts of chalk beneath. Yellowhammers chipping in the hedges. Cumulus rubble. The maritime light of this island, set as it is under a sky mirrored and uplit by sea.

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

  Here lies the real reason why the classical literature is to this day made the basis of liberal education throughout the Christian world. Youth are introduced to the elementary forms of science and art, to models of clear, tasteful style, and to self-made humanity at the summit of intellectual and artistic culture, and thus they are at the same time trained to the scientific apprehension of the Christian religion, which appeared when the development of Greek and Roman civilization had reached its culmination and began already to decay. The Greek and Latin languages, as the Sanskrit and Hebrew, died in their youth and were embalmed and preserved from decay in the immortal works of the classics. They still furnish the best scientific terms for every branch of learning and art and every new invention. The primitive records of Christianity have been protected against the uncertainties of interpretation incident upon the constant changes of a living language. But aside from the permanent value of the Grecian literature, the glory of its native land had, at the birth of Christ, already irrecoverably departed. Civil liberty and independence had been destroyed by internal discord and corruption. Philosophy had run down into skepticism and refined materialism. Art had been degraded to the service of levity and sensuality. Infidelity or superstition had supplanted sound religious sentiment. Dishonesty and licentiousness reigned among high and low. This hopeless state of things could not but impress the more earnest and noble souls with the emptiness of all science and art, and the utter insufficiency of this natural culture to meet the deeper wants of the heart. It must fill them with longings for a new religion.

• From The Four Vision Quests of Jesus (2015)

  And it was not only a few unusual spiritual communities that have tried to evade mystery; I believe there is a thread of that desire that runs through most human religions. The shaman consuming an hallucinogen to fly to an alternate reality believes that he or she can transcend the bonds of human reality; but, to be fair, so do many of us who invest ourselves in a particular religious truth claim. There is at least some notion of overcoming mystery implicit in our faith. Whether we follow Jesus or Muhammad or the Buddha, we believe we have found the answer, the path that leads out of the finite terrain of our everyday existence. Like the shaman, we seek transcendence, that mystical step over the threshold of the finite into the hidden dimension of the infinite. We may not think that this transition will occur instantly, we may not imagine that we can control its happening in any way at all, but we still place some part of our faith in the hope of knowing. We believe we have found in this dimension a hint of the dimension to come. Not only will what we believe permit us a small taste of the next reality, eventually it may allow us to pass beyond the mystery to see the truth face to face. And yet, while we may have a deep longing to finally know and understand what we hold sacred, the vision quest has nothing to do with fulfilling that longing because it has nothing to do with transcendence. Despite what Arthurian legend may have suggested, despite what mystery cults may have promised, and even despite our own personal level of longing to peek behind the curtain of meaning, the quest is not an answer. It is a deeper question. I realize that my opinion about the nature and role of the vision quest is a little counter-intuitive for many people, including many Native Americans. After all, if the quest is not going to give us some answers, then what good is it? That’s a fair question. My reply is that the quest is not about transcendence, but transformation. And transformation is not necessarily transcendence. In fact, it can be just the opposite. Transformation can mean a grounding into reality, a deepening into the finite. Transformation is a process of forming a human life from the substance of that life itself. Seen in this context, the quest is not an escape from reality, but a passage into an even deeper reality. It is not designed to reveal something hidden, but to alert us to something in plain sight. It does not give us a secret wisdom, but makes us reconsider what we have always known. The quest is an invitation to go deeper. When I first went out on my rooftop I was looking for answers. I wanted the bigger picture of my life, some experience that would show me what I thought I could not see.

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

  “In those first years, the Old Man was doing really well, you see. He was working for an American oil company—Shell, I think. It was only a few years after independence, and the Old Man was well connected with all the top government people. He had gone to school with many of them. The vice-president, ministers, they would all come to the house sometimes and drink with him and talk about politics. He had a big house and a big car, and everybody was impressed with him because he was so young but he already had so much education from abroad. And he had an American wife, which was still rare—although later, when he was still married to Ruth, he would go out sometimes with my real mum. As if he had to show people, you see. That he could also have this beautiful African woman whenever he chose. Our four other brothers were born at this time. Mark and David, they were Ruth’s children, born in our big house in Westlands. Abo and Bernard, they were my mum’s children, and lived with her and her family upcountry. Roy and I didn’t know Abo and Bernard then. They never came to the house to see us, and when the Old Man visited them, he would always go alone, without telling Ruth. “I didn’t think about this much until later, the way our lives were divided in two, because I was so young. I think it was harder on Roy, because he was old enough to remember what it had been like in Alego, living in the village with our mum and our people. For me, things were okay. Ruth, our new mother, was nice enough to us then. She treated us almost like her own children. Her parents were rich, I think, and they would send us beautiful presents from the States. I’d get really excited whenever a package came from them. But I remember sometimes Roy would refuse to take their gifts, even when they sent us sweets. I remember once he refused some chocolates they had sent, but later in the night, when he thought I was asleep, I saw him taking some of the chocolates that I had left on our dresser. But I didn’t say anything, because I think I knew that he was unhappy.

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

  What was his name? I couldn’t remember now; just another hungry man far away from home, one of the many children of former colonies—Algerians, West Indians, Pakistanis—now breaching the barricades of their former masters, mounting their own ragged, haphazard invasion. And yet, as we walked toward the Ramblas, I had felt as if I knew him as well as any man; that, coming from opposite ends of the earth, we were somehow making the same journey. When we finally parted company, I had remained in the street for a long, long time, watching his slender, bandy-legged image shrink into the distance, one part of me wishing then that I could go with him into a life of open roads and other blue mornings; another part realizing that such a wish was also a romance, an idea, as partial as my image of the Old Man or my image of Africa. Until I settled on the fact that this man from Senegal had bought me coffee and offered me water, and that was real, and maybe that was all any of us had a right to expect: the chance encounter, a shared story, the act of small kindness …. The airplane shook with some turbulence; the flight crew came to serve us dinner. I woke up the young Brit, who ate with impressive precision, describing, between bites, what it had been like to grow up in Manchester. Eventually I dozed off into a fitful sleep. When I awoke, the stewardess was passing out customs forms in preparation for landing. Outside it was still dark, but, pressing my face against the glass, I began to see scattered lights, soft and hazy like fireflies, gradually swarming into the shape of a city below. A few minutes later, a slope of rounded hills appeared, black against a long strand of light on the eastern horizon. As we touched down on an African dawn I saw high thin clouds streak the sky, their underbellies glowing with a reddish hue. Kenyatta International Airport was almost empty. Officials sipped at their morning tea as they checked over passports; in the baggage area, a creaky conveyor belt slowly disgorged luggage. Auma was nowhere in sight, so I took a seat on my carry-on bag and lit a cigarette. After a few minutes, a security guard with a wooden club started to walk toward me. I looked around for an ashtray, thinking I must be in a no-smoking area, but instead of scolding me, the guard smiled and asked if I had another cigarette to spare. “This is your first trip to Kenya, yes?” he asked as I gave him a light. “That’s right.” “I see.” He squatted down beside me. “You are from America. You know my brother’s son, perhaps. Samson Otieno. He is studying engineering in Texas.”

• From The Four Vision Quests of Jesus (2015)

  He is left in obscurity by his European detractors, but for those of us who honor the traditions of our people he is a clear sign that vision is what makes a people whole, even if they are oppressed—perhaps, especially if they are oppressed. To put Wovoka into context, imagine the Roman occupation of Israel at the time of Jesus. Then make it ten times worse. Rome occupied Jewish territory with a military presence, but it allowed the puppet government of Herod to remain in place. Jewish religious customs and worship were still permitted. While taxation was outrageous, Jews were still allowed to make their living in ways usual for the time. Their lands and livelihood were not laid waste. Jews were not forced to live in restricted camps as refugees. Their language was not prohibited. Their children were not taken away from them and forced to become Latin speaking copies of Roman citizens. At the time of Wovoka, the United States occupied Native lands with its military and permitted no form of self-government for Native people. Native religious traditions were outlawed as devil worship and prohibited as forms of sedition. The historic way of life for the people was totally destroyed as the herds of buffalo were intentionally exterminated in their thousands. Native people were placed in the equivalent of concentration camps. Their children were taken away from them and forced into boarding schools where they were only allowed to speak in English. If the conditions in which people lived during the time of Jesus brought them to long for a Messiah, imagine how deep the longing was for Native Americans at the close of the nineteenth century. In 1889 the Native communities still surviving from Oklahoma to the Dakotas and along the outlands of mountains and deserts from Colorado, Nevada, Utah, Montana, and Wyoming were desperate. The total war and cultural genocide practiced by the white Americans against them had brought them to believe that they would soon follow the buffalo into extinction. And yet, even under penalty of death they attempted to maintain their ancestral religious practices, especially the vision quest and ceremonial dances. Dancing is liturgy for Native people. It is as integral to worship and community life as the celebration of the Eucharist is to Christian churches. Every aspect of the dance contains rich visionary meaning. The drum is a sacred instrument; the chants are forms of prayer; the clothing worn is like vestments; the movement of the dance is liturgical action that transforms common elements into sacrament. Therefore, Native people sought to carry on their liturgical dances (e.g., the Sun Dance) even though they were forbidden by the white government. Like Christians meeting in the catacombs to secretly share in the Eucharist even at the risk of death, so did the Native faithful gather out of sight of the military to hold their dances. Even if everything else was taken away, they still had this one remaining bond for faith and kinship.

• From H Is for Hawk (2014)

  Accomplished, cantankerous, with a bracing wit, he never fails to arrogate himself, tell us how perfectly his hawks behave: craning on tiptoe to pick marrow from his fingertips, they are happy to travel with him wherever he goes. When away from home, Bert boasts, he’d put his hawk on ‘a velvet stoole, in a dining-chamber or parlour, as the place was whereunto I went, for I would have my Hawke as much in my eye as could be. Perhaps I should see the Lady or Mistress of the house look discontentedly thereat,’ he deadpans, ‘but so well have I been acquainted with my hawk’s good disposition that I have promised if my hawk should make a mute in the room, I would lick it up with my tongue.’ Edmund Bert haunted White as he trained his hawk, just as White haunted me. But it was a different kind of haunting. ‘I had a sort of schoolgirlish “pash” for that serious old man who lived three hundred years ago,’ he privately confessed. He wanted to impress Bert. He was in love with him. Dizzied by medievalist imaginings, in love with a falconer three hundred years dead, he had decided to ignore the teachings of Blaine, for the most part, and train his hawk the old-fashioned way. The old hawk masters had invented a means of taming them which offered no visible cruelty, and whose secret cruelty had to be born [sic] by the trainer as well as by the bird. They kept the bird awake. Not by nudging it or by any mechanical means, but by walking about with their pupil on their fist and staying awake themselves. The hawk was ‘watched’, was deprived of sleep by a sleepless man, for a space of two, three, or as much as nine nights together. White wilfully misunderstood Bert’s methods. The seventeenth-century austringer would have had any number of friends and attendants to take over while he slept. But White was desirous of a rite of passage. A proper knight’s vigil. And he needed to do it alone, man against man, as it were. Watching his hawk would be a privation, an ordeal, a test of his Word. He would not be cruel. But he would conquer both the hawk and himself in one fell swoop. ‘Man against bird,’ he wrote, ‘with God as an umpire, they had sat each other out for three thousand years.’

• From The History of Christian Theology (2008)

  125 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. 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 sel¿ sh desire to ¿ nd happiness in God. To condemn the aspiration for such pure love is to insist, with Augustine and Aquinas, that the desire to ¿ nd 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 ful¿ llment, which is the essence of medieval Christian ethics, comes to seem sel¿ sh. Ŷ de Sales, Treatise on the Love of God. John of the Cross, The Spiritual Canticle. Teresa of Avila, The Interior Castle. ———, The Life of Teresa of Jesus. Suggested Reading 126 Lecture 34: Catholic Mystical Theology 1. Do you think mystical theology is a valuable form of religion? Why or why not? 2. Do you agree that there is something wrong with the idea that pure love of God involves no self-interest at all? Questions to Consider

• 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 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 Tipping the Velvet (1998)

  I said, Oh yes, I should like that very much, and she nodded with something like satisfaction. Then she made me another little bow, and we said good-night; and she closed the door and was gone.I stood quite still, facing the little 7, the hand-written card, Miss Kitty Butler. I found myself unable to move from in front of it - quite as unable as if I really were a mermaid and had no legs to walk on, but a tail. I blinked. I had been sweating, and the sweat, and the smoke of her cigarette, had worked upon the castor oil on my lashes to make my eye-lids very sore. I put my hand to them - the hand that she had kissed; then I held my fingers to my nose and smelled through the linen what she had smelled, and blushed again.In the dressing-room all was silent. Then at last, very low, came the sound of her voice. She was singing again the song about the oyster-girl and the basket. But the song came rather fitfully now, and I realised of course that as she was singing she was stooping to unlace her boots, and straightening to shrug her braces off, and perhaps kicking free her trousers ...All this; and there was only the thickness of one slender door between her body and my own smarting eyes!It was that thought which made me find my legs at last, and leave her. Watching Miss Butler perform upon the stage after having spoken to her, and been smiled at by her, and had her lips upon my hand, was a strange experience, at once more and less thrilling than it had been before. Her lovely voice, her elegance, her swagger: I felt I had been given a kind of secret share in them, and pinked complacently every time the crowd roared their welcome or called her back on to the stage for an encore. She threw me no more roses; these all went, as before, to the pretty girls in the stalls. But I know she saw me in my box, for I felt her eyes upon me, sometimes, as she sang; and always, when she left the stage, there was that sweep of her hat for the hall, and a nod, or a wink, or the ghost of a smile, just for me.But if I was complacent, I was also dissatisfied. I had seen beyond the powder and the strut; it was terribly hard to have to sit with common audiences as she sang, and have no more of her than they. I burned to visit her again - yet also feared to. She had invited me, but she hadn’t named a time; and I, in those days, was terribly anxious and shy.

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

  בקש adverb. use in‏ ;27 28 20“ ;‘5 ₪ ד 22“ nine‏ this sense (without prep. or art.) Ex16’ Nu 16’.‏ n.£.verbal. a seeking, ny MPI‏ ]7173[ 1 iN1y Ez 34” like a shepherd's seeking his flock. Tnpa n.f. punishment after examination (inquisition) Ly 19”; (scourging B AV after Jewish trad. Kerith'* Sifra Saad. AE Ki 01. Malbim*"* Jastrow 21% ( Vb. seek (Ph. wp3)—Pi. Pf‏ ג [|בקש]1 wPaDt13" + 15t.; WPAHc7™ Est 2”; sf. pnvipa‏ Ct 3° cf. 59; WPS Hzr2™+ 12 t.;‏ בקשתיו ;2° Ho‏ sf. '2¥P2 Is65!+4 2 %.; Impf. UP2 Jos 22% +‏ pr22°4 3t.;‏ אבקשה “UPD? Pri5+ 2 t.;‏ ;.+ 37 t.;‏ 23 +67 18 ְבַקָשוּ ;6 7 +*23 18 ְבַקְשָהוּ sf.‏ Wpa 1S 287 +‏ ;3% + 9% ₪ 1 בק Imv.‏ Pt. WPI Gn 37"‏ ;29% + סז §1 Inf. wpa?‏ -1---.%6 38 + 07ז 18% מִבקְשִים pl.‏ .5 23 + to find: a. abs. Ju 6% 2K 2” 76 = Ez 34° Ee 3°‏ (yet'v. Ew). b. 806. Gn 37*8 Jos 2” (J)‏ 87 Ju 42 14' 1S 93 104116 1 § 234 243 26?‏ obj. a flea, but rd. YD] ₪ Th We‏ 26% 24°44 a Keene‏ ד ד .28 Kirkp Klo Dr;‏ וט 1Ch 4” 2 Ch 22° zr 2 (= New)‏ ו 6 Seat II oi Pr 24 2 5% 208 qe‏ Je 274.83 La yil Hz bbe 22° 7 Ho 20 Na a‏ d. ace. rei‏ *סז 10 2 Ze 11° Mal 2”. ¢. with‏ K 1? Ru3! Est 2?‏ ד 287 "1813 pers. Jur8!‏ > y122°Is 40% Lar’ Na3%. 2. seek to secure:‏ a. acc. the priesthood Nu 16” (P); David for‏ king 283”; in battle 28 87 (21 Ch 14°);‏ seek to take one’s‏ בקש נפש y27' Je 45° (cf. v°);‏ a ee‏ ב כ רס 22525 )20 כ ב life Ex 4" (J)‏ BGs 38" 40” 54° 63” 70° 86" Pr 20%‏ ש I K EO‏ 4am BIC gore 46% 49°.‏ 2 227 !21 ד וך 1 Je‏ seek hurt of Nu35%‏ בקש רעה b. aim at, practise:‏ ב' בזןב ;97 (P)r8 2.41 25% (DN) 1K 20 718 Est‏ eee)‏ הצ Pray?‏ שבר cf. Pray,‏ 45 שי % ש שלום **2 May Zp‏ ,צדק ,}5 Je‏ אמונה ,™2 Ne‏ Dn 8", nyt Pr15* 18",‏ בינה ,7% Pr 14° Ec‏ חכמה of dir.‏ ל !18 תאוה ,17° Pr‏ אהבה ,2 Mal‏ תורה Inf. Ex 4* (J) Je 26.‏ .6 ."ל Ec‏ חשבנות obj.),‏ )סד 2° d. & Inf. Gn 43° Ex‏ eles‏ הש ”20 ₪ 2 23° "19° 144 18 He 12° 200 3. seck‏ 30 657 25 2 the face a. of rulers 1 K 10% )=2 Ch 9”) Pr‏ b. of God (from resorting to sacred‏ .29° places) Ho 5° 1 Ch 16" (= 105) 2 Ch 7™*‏ Dt 4”‏ יהוה .0 32‘ without‏ ;27°8 24° ץ '21 0 2 Zp 1° 2° Ho 3°5° Ex 337(J) 1 Ch 16” (=wW105")‏ אלהים ;50% Ch 116204 18 811 Pr 28° Zc 8"! Je‏ 2 ro 2ef. Hz 8" Is 4565) Ch 15° Hoy‏ 28 Dn 93; 735‏ 697 70° 40% ש !3 Je 29% Mal‏

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

  2 ₪ 11% 2K 4”; notably ילד שלח‎ 2K 3' and he went and sent. ¢. following other verbs : ויקמג וילבו‎ Gn 22 (E) 61.24" (J) 43° (J) טא‎ 16" (JE) Ju 4% 7222 TYI-Gn 33" )1(. d. esp. as result of action expr. in preced, vb., such as vb. of sending, etc.: וישלח אֶתדאֶחָיו וללכו‎ Gn 45 (E) ef. Jos1° (D) 1 86* Jb38®; also OD WNW 329 24” an east wind shall carry him off, and he shall depart ; ויגרשהו וילףּ‎ 345 (title). (Cf. depart also of inanimate things 3 supr.) e. in longer series: pb) nas) 35) ז‎ a9)75 וישב‎ . . . DN IV YON 2 K 19% = Is 377; ef. Nu 24° (JE); 8292" ויקם‎ Juz”; also DP 73%) ויבא‎ 2 [6 ro’ | ₪ oft. in Imv. foll. by 2nd Imv. or equiv., (1) לףּ קחדלי‎ Gn 2738 (J) go, bring me (them), cf. 110 17; לבו רע‎ Gn 207 (J) go, feed (them), cf. 37" 427 Ex 4" +(in all 6. 57 t.; only JED in Hex); but also (2) weakened to mere introductory word (as also supr. passim: esp. 2 K 37 etc.), go to, or come, do (let us do) so & so; NI AMI nap Gn 31" come, let us make a compact, cf. nad נשָקֶה‎ 19” (where subj. fem.); 7133) לבו‎ 189° come, and let us go, so ,"ל‎ 11% 18 25111 4°, ef. Zc 67+; even בא ְאֶשָלְחָה‎ 3b 2K 5° go to, come, and let me send, cf. Is 22° 26” Ez Bells further Jurg™* 1S 9° 1K 1” ץ‎ 34°4+(in all 6.49 t.; only JE in Hex). (3) apparently intermediate, and shewing transition fr. (1) to (2) are: a9) Ex 10% 32’ cf. ג‎ 18"; 1D לבו‎ רֶרו‎ + ₪ 18% TD Ney לף‎ Ex לבו 1970 ;ב‎ PIND Jos 18° & AYW לכו באו‎ Gn 47 cf. 1 8 22° 1K 1% 2 16 7°; v. further 7228 לַכְנָה‎ Ru 1° & app) שַבְנָה‎ vy”; also 2S 3% ד‎ K 19%? + (in 811 6. 30 5.( > II. Fig.; the most common uses follow; in most the origin in a literal meaning is evident: +1. pass away, die; in phrases denoting or implying death (cf. Ar. als perish); כָּלהָאָרֶץ‎ TTB MT אכ הולף‎ TaN away childless, but possibly sub 2 ve 28 12% [ am going הלף)‎ 8) to him 7: so of mankind 82 7} דור הלף‎ Ec 1°; more explicitly, אֶלמָקוּם 748 הפל הָיָה‎ Abin הפל‎ שָב אֶלהָעְפָּר‎ ODI “BY 1D 186 3” ef. 6°; also ney הלף‎ nme awe הָאָדֶם ₪ ,"יף בשאוּל‎ Abn עולמי‎ MSO 12% cf. NN) TN DIA ץ‎ 30" before I depart and be not ; so acc. to some 2 Ch iS} DM, 7 2 34 הלך

• From The History of Christian Theology (2008)

  123 Catholic Mystical Theology Lecture 34 We follow up now with a further lecture on Catholic theology in the modern period picking up on the doctrine of grace, which we discussed in our previous lecture. We’re now going to look at the upper reaches, as it were, of the experience of supernatural grace in Catholic theology. C atholic mystical theology is concerned with the higher stages of the supernatural life. It should not be confused with much later academic theories of mysticism, which are not speci¿ cally Christian or theological. It is called mystical theology, not mysticism, because it belongs to a tradition of reÀ ection derived from the Mystical Theology by Pseudo- Dionysius (Saint Denys, as he was known in the West). He calls this treatise Mystical Theology because it concerns what is unknown and essentially hidden from us. Catholic mystical theology, therefore, concerns states of the soul in which it is supernaturally elevated beyond its own powers or faculties. The most important representatives of Catholic mystical theology are the Spanish mystics of the 16 th century, Saint Teresa of Avila and Saint John of the Cross. Teresa provides the classic 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 ¿ nding 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 ¿ nd God. For both Augustine and Teresa, the essence of prayer is desire for God. The most important representatives of Catholic mystical theology are the Spanish mystics of the 16 th century, Saint Teresa of Avila and Saint John of the Cross.

• From Fields of Blood: Religion and the History of Violence (2014)

  The Han had learned from Qin’s mistakes. But Bang wanted to preserve the centralized state and knew that the empire needed Legalist realism because no state could function without coercion and the threat of violence. “Weapons are the means by which the sage makes obedient the powerful and savage, and brings stability in times of chaos,” wrote the Han historian Sima Qian. “Instruction and corporal punishment cannot be abandoned in a household, mutilating punishments cannot be halted under Heaven. It is simply that in using them some are skillful and some clumsy, in carrying them out some are in accord [with Heaven] and some against it.”118 But Bang knew that the state also needed a more inspiring ideology. His solution was a synthesis of Legalism and Daoism.119 Still reeling from the Qin inquisition, people yearned for “empty,” open-minded governance. Han emperors would maintain absolute control over the commanderies but would refrain from arbitrary interventions; there would be strict penal law but no draconian punishments. The patron of the new regime was the Yellow Emperor. All empires need theater and pageantry, and the Han rituals gave a new twist to the ancient Shang complex of sacrifice, hunting, and warfare.120 In autumn, the season for military campaigning, the emperor held a ceremonial hunt in the royal parks, which teemed with every kind of animal, to provide meat for the temple sacrifice. A few weeks later there were military reviews in the capital to show off the skills of elite troops and help maintain the martial competence of the min, who manned the imperial armies. At the end of winter there were hunting contests in the parks. These rituals, designed to impress visiting dignitaries, all recalled the Yellow Emperor and his animal troops. Men and animals fought as equal combatants, just as they had at the beginning of time before the sage kings separated them. There were football matches in which players kicked the ball from one side of the field to the other, to reproduce the alternation of yin and yang in the seasonal cycle. “Kickball deals with the power of circumstances in the military. It is a means to train warriors and recognize who have talent,” explained the historian Liu Xiang (77–6 BCE). “It is said that it was created by the Yellow Emperor.”121 Like the Yellow Emperor, Han rulers would use religious rituals in an attempt to take the bestial savagery out of warfare so that it became humane.