Love

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 Another Country (1962)

  And this look, this moment, entered into Eric, to remain with him forever. There was a terrifying innocence in Yves’ face, a beautiful yielding: in some marvelous way, for Yves, this moment in this bed obliterated, cast into the sea of forgetfulness, all the sordid beds and squalid grappling which had led him here. He was turning to the lover who would not betray him, to his first lover. Eric crossed the room and sat down on the bed and began to undress. Again, he heard the murmur of the stream. “Will you give me a cigarette?” Yves asked. He had a new voice, newly troubled, and when Eric looked at him he saw for the first time how the face of a lover becomes a stranger’s face. “Bien sûr.” He lit two cigarettes and gave one to Yves. They watched each other in the fantastic, tiny glow—and smiled, almost like conspirators. Then Eric asked, “Yves, do you love me?” “Yes,” said Yves. “That’s good,” said Eric, “because I’m crazy about you. I love you.” Then, in the violent moonlight, naked, he slowly pulled the covers away from Yves. They watched each other and he stared at Yves’ body for a long time before Yves lifted up his arms, with that same sad, cryptic smile, and kissed him. Eric felt beneath his fingers Yves’ slowly stirring, stiffening sex. This sex dominated the long landscape of his life as the cathedral towers dominated the plains. Now, Yves, as though he were also remembering that day and night, turned his head and looked at Eric with a wondering, speculative, and triumphant smile. And at that moment, Madame Belet entered, with a sound of knives and forks and plates, and switched on the lights. Yves’ face changed, the sea vanished. Yves rose from the hassock, blinking a little. Madame Belet put the utensils on the table, carefully, and marched out again, returning immediately with a bottle of wine, and a corkscrew. She placed these on the table. Yves went to the table and began opening the wine. “She thinks you are going to abandon me,” said Yves. He poured a tiny bit of wine into his own glass, then poured for Eric. He looked at Eric, quickly, and added more wine to the first glass, and set the bottle down. “Abandon you?” Eric laughed. Yves looked relieved and a little ashamed. “You mean—she thinks I’m running away from you?” “She thinks that perhaps you do not really intend to bring me to New York. She says that Americans are very different—when—in their own country.” “Well, how the hell does she know?” He was suddenly angry. “And it’s none of her fucking business, anyway.” Madame Belet entered, and he glared at her. Imperturbably, she placed on the table a platter containing les crudités, and a basket full of bread. She re-entered the kitchen, Eric staring malevolently at her straight, chauvinistic back. “If there’s one thing I can’t stand, it’s malicious old ladies.”

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

  I was also able, for the first time, to clearly see him switch back and forth from his authentic self, when he talked about his business or his niece and nephew, for example, to his cult self, when he talked about energetic things that had happened to him or recited a new bit of cult rhetoric that I hadn’t yet heard, and I was able to feel empathy for his cult self and deep, abiding, almost overpowering love for his authentic self. It was blissful to be so physically close to him and excruciatingly painful to feel that he was six million miles away. After we settled up with the waitress, she assured us that we could sit and talk for as long as we wanted. Michael then came to the reason for his request to see me. “The past five years,” he said, “have been an intense learning process for me and I believe that was the intention for both of us when our relationship was broken up. But through it all I maintained the hope that somehow, someday the stars would align to bring us together again.” He paused. “I never really let you go.” I was stunned and listened as quietly and with as much presence as I could. I had wondered for the past five years if he felt this way because it was how I felt. We had been forced apart without our consent but, for me, that hadn’t meant that my feelings for him had changed or disappeared. It was extraordinary to hear him say out loud what I had felt all along. He paused again to sip some wine and then gathered himself to carry on. It was clear that what he was saying was difficult for him, but I could also see his spiritual resolve shoring him up. “I’ve learned a lot, thanks to Lady Limori.” He smiled with affection and devotion when he said her name. I wanted to gag. “It hasn’t been easy but I keep going because I’ve known for twenty years that whatever my fate is, I have much to learn in order to be ready for it, and I feel strongly that she can teach me.” I understood, by him saying it hadn’t been easy, that he was emphasizing to me his belief that I had given up on God when the going got tough and he had stuck it out because of his greater love for God. His cultic beliefs required him to place the responsibility for our break-up at my feet. I knew that he couldn’t allow himself to consider that Limori might not have ALL the answers in the universe, and that it was possible to be a good person and serve God outside her realm, because if he began thinking thoughts like that his entire belief system and his sense of self would be brought into question, and that is dangerous territory. He continued.

• From Another Country (1962)

  She looked at him, looked away. He put one hand on her arm; she bit her lip to control her trembling. “Come back to me, please. Don’t you love me any more? You can’t have stopped loving me. I can’t live without you. You’ve always been the only woman in the world for me.” She could keep silence and go into his arms, and the last few months would be wiped away—he would never know where she had been. The world would return to its former shape. Would it? The silence between them stretched. She could not look at him. He had existed for too long in her mind—now, she was being humbled by the baffling reality of his presence. Her imagination had not taken enough into account—she had not foreseen, for example, the measure or the quality or the power of his pain. He was a lonely and limited man, who loved her. Did she love him? “I don’t despise you,” she said. “I’m sorry if I’ve made you think that.” Then she said nothing more. Why tell him? What good would it do? He would never understand it, she would merely have given him an anguish which he would never be able to handle. And he would never trust her again . Did she love him? And if she did, what should she do? Very slowly and gently, she took her arm from beneath his hand; and she walked to the window. The blinds were drawn against the night, but she opened them a little and looked out: on the lights and the deep black water. Silence rang its mighty gongs in the room behind her. She dropped the blinds, and turned and looked at him. He sat, now, on the floor, beside the chair that she had left, his glass between his feet, his great hands loosely clasped below his knees, his head tilted up toward her. It was a look she knew, a listening, trusting look. She forced herself to look at him; she might never see that look again; and it had been her sustenance so long! His face was the face of a man entering middle age, and it was also—and always would be, for her—the face of a boy. His sandy hair was longer than usual, it was beginning to turn gray, his forehead was wet, and his hair was wet. Cass discovered that she loved him during the fearful, immeasurable second that she stood there watching him. Had she loved him less, she might have wearily consented to continue acting as the bulwark which protected his simplicity. But she could not do that to Richard, nor to his children. He had the right to know his wife: she prayed that he would take it. She said, “I have to tell you something, Richard.

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

  These spirit guides were firm but gentle and advised us on matters such as the colour of clothes to wear to enhance our energy or the type of crystal necklace to wear to strengthen our ability to communicate with our own spirit guides. Soon there was one specific spirit guide, named Azeen, whom Limori channelled exclusively. Azeen was said to be “an aspect of God’s purest light.” His (Azeen was referred to as a he) guidance started out by being similar to that of the former spirit guides but progressed to advice about relationships, careers and family members who were perhaps “flirting with the darkness.” Later, probably circa 1992 or 1993, it would be announced that Limori was now strictly channelling God Himself. We had been inched along to this point for so long that this extraordinary proclamation caused barely a ripple among the faithful. See what I mean about the frog in boiling water? If someone walked up to you on the street and said she was channelling God Himself and that every word out of her mouth was coming directly from the Almighty, you would no more believe her and become one of her disciples than you would strip down to your birthday suit and stand on your head, right there on the sidewalk, singing “I’m a Little Teapot.” And neither would I. But slowly, just like that frog in the pot, degree by degree, belief by belief, I bought it. All of it. And I was proud and honoured to do so. Many human beings experience times in life like the one I experienced in the late 1980s and early 1990s, where we leave an old way of being, not quite sure yet what our new life will look like. Divorce, a family death, job loss or gain, a geographic move – any of these events, and many, many others, can leave us feeling as if we are between worlds, with no place, psychologically or physically, to call our own. This kind of upheaval happens over and over again in life, and each event brings with it its own type of discomfort and disorientation. My experience is that part of what makes transitions like this so painful and awkward is that when we leave behind one set of criteria by which we define ourselves, we haven’t yet formed a new set. We feel we are nowhere and no one. It requires a specific set of emotional skills to be able to sit with the discomfort and dis-ease that arises from not knowing how to define ourselves at these times. When we don’t have that skill set, we tend to rush toward and grasp onto anything that will return to us a feeling of being on solid ground, where we can once again define ourselves. Perhaps we charge into a new job or relationship, one we know is ill suited to us, simply because it feels like solid ground, after days or weeks of being emotionally at sea.

• From Mystical Tradition: Judaism, Christianity, and Islam (2008)

  1. The role of the shaykh, a spiritual leader with absolute authority over the disciple (murid), is decisive; the zawiah is the place of gathering. 2. The communal structure of the brotherhoods provides support to the seeker. C. The Sufi follows a threefold path of knowledge, love, and prayer toward union with al-haqq. 1. Knowledge includes both esoteric knowledge concerning ascent and theosophical knowledge of the relation of the self to God; elements of Gnosticism and Pantheism are sometimes found. 2. The Sufi cultivates an emotional response of love, as well as external obedience; the use of erotic language to express the love of Allah is not uncommon. 3. The characteristic prayer of the Sufi is recollection (dhikr); sometimes, this involves the use of music (sawa) and the recitation of the “names of Allah” on prayer beads. D. The Sufi’s progression is marked by definite stages and states on the path to Allah. 1. Stages are the result of human effort and include repentance, watchfulness, renunciation, poverty, mortification, and absolute trust in Allah. The prayer of recollection moves one along this path. 2. States are gifts of Allah over which the Sufi has no control. The highest two states are “passing away” (fana) and “passing away of passing away” (fana al-fana). IV. Like mysticism in Judaism and Christianity—but perhaps even more dramatically—Sufism has posed problems for the exoteric tradition in Islam. A. At the theoretical level, the tendency of Sufi Monotheism to move toward Pantheism, the esoteric reading of the Qur’an, and the exaltation of the saints can all erode the Shari’ah and even the shahadah. B. At the practical level, the cultivation of saints has given rise to a number of problematic associations, and the power of the brotherhoods always challenges the authority of the ulama. 118 ©2008 The Teaching Company. Recommended Reading: Nicholson, R. A. The Mystics of Islam. Questions to Consider: 1. Compare the Sufi brotherhood to Jewish and Christian mystical communities, noting points of similarity and dissimilarity. 2. Why is sexual asceticism a feature of renunciation in Christianity but not in Judaism and Islam? ©2008 The Teaching Company. 119

• From Little Women (1868)

  nightgown to look out, and say, no matter whether it rained or shone, "Oh, pitty day, oh, pitty day!" Everyone was a friend, and she offered kisses to a stranger so confidingly that the most inveterate bachelor relented, and baby-lovers became faithful worshipers. "Me loves evvybody," she once said, opening her arms, with her spoon in one hand, and her mug in the other, as if eager to embrace and nourish the whole world. As she grew, her mother began to feel that the Dovecote would be blessed by the presence of an inmate as serene and loving as that which had helped to make the old house home, and to pray that she might be spared a loss like that which had lately taught them how long they had entertained an angel unawares. Her grandfather often called her 'Beth', and her grandmother watched over her with untiring devotion, as if trying to atone for some past mistake, which no eye but her own could see. Demi, like a true Yankee, was of an inquiring turn, wanting to know everything, and often getting much disturbed because he could not get satisfactory answers to his perpetual "What for?" He also possessed a philosophic bent, to the great delight of his grandfather, who used to hold Socratic conversations with him, in which the precocious pupil occasionally posed his teacher, to the undisguised satisfaction of the womenfolk. "What makes my legs go, Dranpa?" asked the young philosopher, surveying those active portions of his frame with a meditative air, while resting after a go- to-bed frolic one night. "It's your little mind, Demi," replied the sage, stroking the yellow head respectfully. "What is a little mine?" "It is something which makes your body move, as the spring made the wheels go in my watch when I showed it to you." "Open me. I want to see it go wound." "I can't do that any more than you could open the watch. God winds you up, and you go till He stops you." "Does I?" and Demi's brown eyes grew big and bright as he took in the new

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

  I will be forever grateful to him for seeing me when no one else seemed to, and for listening to me with his entire body when I spoke. He tried to teach me that I was valuable, but that was a lesson I wouldn’t absorb until long after we’d parted. At the root of everything, there was each person’s love for God. That was the greatest love story of all. If we hadn’t loved God, we wouldn’t have been there in the first place. Each person had such tremendous love for the divine, for the goodness in the universe, that they were willing to allow their own lives and spirits to be ripped to shreds in order to try to fulfill the promise of that love. The irony and tragedy of this lives with me every day and I shake my head and my fist at this paradox that allows people like Limori to use and abuse those who are pure of heart. That is the saddest part of this love story. Writing this book is also a gesture of love. By telling my story I am loving myself by giving myself back the voice that was silenced for so long. I am contradicting so much of what Limori taught me: that I didn’t matter, that she was the only person who had any significance or anything significant to say, that my feelings and thoughts meant nothing, and that I only mattered to God when I was pleasing Limori. All these things were lies, and by addressing them as such, I am trying to offer love to myself and to anyone else who has had the experience of being controlled and abused in this way. I received so much comfort, solace and, indeed, love from the books about cults that I read when I was ready to explore what had happened to me, that I wanted to find a way to pay that love forward, and say to anyone else who has had a similar experience, “It’s going to be alright, I promise you.” And, “I understand,” which were the two most comforting words in the world to me when I realized I’d been in a cult. Being able to name the experience and find that I was not alone in it was, all by itself, immeasurably healing. EpilogueW hy did it take me ten years to leave Limori’s cult? And why do some people continue to stay, in that group and in other, even more abusive groups? I found the most succinct and poignant explanation for this in, of all places, the animated film Kung Fu Panda . Panda’s teacher asks him why he doesn’t quit trying to be a Kung Fu master, when they both know he is ill-suited to the role, both physically and temperamentally. Panda replies that he stays with his master because the rigorous training he endures is less painful than being just himself, in his regular life, working at his father’s noodle shop.

• From Wild (2012)

  I was her daughter, but more. I was Karen, Cheryl, Leif. Karen Cheryl Leif. KarenCherylLeif. Our names blurred into one in my mother’s mouth all my life. She whispered it and hollered it, hissed it and crooned it. We were her kids, her comrades, the end of her and the beginning. We took turns riding shotgun with her in the car. “Do I love you this much?” she’d ask us, holding her hands six inches apart. “No,” we’d say, with sly smiles. “Do I love you this much?” she’d ask again, and on and on and on, each time moving her hands farther apart. But she would never get there, no matter how wide she stretched her arms. The amount that she loved us was beyond her reach. It could not be quantified or contained. It was the ten thousand named things in the Tao Te Ching’s universe and then ten thousand more. Her love was full-throated and all-encompassing and unadorned. Every day she blew through her entire reserve. She grew up an army brat and Catholic. She lived in five different states and two countries before she was fifteen. She loved horses and Hank Williams and had a best friend named Babs. Nineteen and pregnant, she married my father. Three days later, he knocked her around the room. She left and came back. Left and came back. She would not put up with it, but she did. He broke her nose. He broke her dishes. He skinned her knees dragging her down a sidewalk in broad daylight by her hair. But he didn’t break her. By twenty-eight she managed to leave him for the last time. She was alone, with KarenCherylLeif riding shotgun in her car. By then we lived in a small town an hour outside of Minneapolis in a series of apartment complexes with deceptively upscale names: Mill Pond and Barbary Knoll, Tree Loft and Lake Grace Manor. She had one job, then another. She waited tables at a place called the Norseman and then a place called Infinity, where her uniform was a black T-shirt that said GO FOR IT in rainbow glitter across her chest. She worked the day shift at a factory that manufactured plastic containers capable of holding highly corrosive chemicals and brought the rejects home. Trays and boxes that had been cracked or clipped or misaligned in the machine. We made them into toys—beds for our dolls, ramps for our cars. She worked and worked and worked, and still we were poor. We received government cheese and powdered milk, food stamps and medical assistance cards, and free presents from do-gooders at Christmastime. We played tag and red light green light and charades by the apartment mailboxes that you could open only with a key, waiting for checks to arrive.

• From The Confessions of Saint Augustine (354)

  The great men of the race are they who are chiefly capable of a great sincerity. Other men may be entirely sincere, but the entire sincerity of great natures is of larger importance; of them it may be said that they are not relatively but absolutely and positively more sincere than the rest, And in nothing else, obviously, is a great sincerity so momentous as in religion. St. Augustine, St. Francis, Pascal have taken the narrowest way into self-knowledge, and have entered in at the straightest gate. No illusion, no substitute for experience, no substitute for life, no excuse against grief, no exaggeration, no self-sparing, no tradition, is able to cling to the man so secretly despoiled—despoiled of all except the difficult truth; but especially despoiled, St. Francis of hampering material circumstance, Pascal of the fictions of words, St. Augustine of the detaining tenderness of secondary loves. It is true that the intellectual imagination was also a barrier in his way, so that he needed to put it also to silence, before he was able to conceive the new idea of Divinity; but he, undeceived, discovered the turning aside, the pausing, of love to have been the thing that chiefly kept him for a while from the First and Only Fair. Nay, a company of other hindrances there were: for example, the partial, or heretical faith—the faith of a sect which during his earlier years offered him the little-realised idea of God—and much the idea of the modern world, and much the conception of the modern mind—against which he had the candor to revolt. In bereavement, he tells us, he had tried to persuade his soul to find consolation in God, but his soul had replied that she could not, for the friend she had lost, being a man, was better than this God. But more than heresy, more than a will unsacrificed, more than any other cause of delay in the ‘conversion’ of Augustine was the love astray that is assuredly, far more than the self-love involved in ambition, the infirmity of noble minds. St. Augustine, thinker, reasoner, dialectician, whose intellectual encounters left him a Father of the Church, is eminently the Saint of love. He loved love first and last. Feeling love, and in search of that which he should love, he found it ultimately to be love, and closed in the end with his early desire.

• From Little Women (1868)

  to gif you. I came to see if you could care for it, and I waited to be sure that I was something more than a friend. Am I? Can you make a little place in your heart for old Fritz?" he added, all in one breath. "Oh, yes!" said Jo, and he was quite satisfied, for she folded both hands over his arm, and looked up at him with an expression that plainly showed how happy she would be to walk through life beside him, even though she had no better shelter than the old umbrella, if he carried it. It was certainly proposing under difficulties, for even if he had desired to do so, Mr. Bhaer could not go down upon his knees, on account of the mud. Neither could he offer Jo his hand, except figuratively, for both were full. Much less could he indulge in tender remonstrations in the open street, though he was near it. So the only way in which he could express his rapture was to look at her, with an expression which glorified his face to such a degree that there actually seemed to be little rainbows in the drops that sparkled on his beard. If he had not loved Jo very much, I don't think he could have done it then, for she looked far from lovely, with her skirts in a deplorable state, her rubber boots splashed to the ankle, and her bonnet a ruin. Fortunately, Mr. Bhaer considered her the most beautiful woman living, and she found him more "Jove-like" than ever, though his hatbrim was quite limp with the little rills trickling thence upon his shoulders (for he held the umbrella all over Jo), and every finger of his gloves needed mending. Passers-by probably thought them a pair of harmless lunatics, for they entirely forgot to hail a bus, and strolled leisurely along, oblivious of deepening dusk and fog. Little they cared what anybody thought, for they were enjoying the happy hour that seldom comes but once in any life, the magical moment which bestows youth on the old, beauty on the plain, wealth on the poor, and gives human hearts a foretaste of heaven. The Professor looked as if he had conquered a kingdom, and the world had nothing more to offer him in the way of bliss. While Jo trudged beside him, feeling as if her place had always been there, and wondering how she ever could have chosen any other lot. Of course, she was the first to speak—intelligibly, I mean, for the emotional remarks which followed her impetuous "Oh, yes!" were not of a coherent or reportable character. "Friedrich, why didn't you..." "Ah, heaven, she gifs me the name that no one speaks since Minna died!" cried the Professor, pausing in a puddle to regard her with grateful delight.

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

  As I removed my coat at the entrance, I looked across the restaurant and could see him sitting at the table he’d been given. I was delighted to discover, as I joined him, that the indelible connection between us was there, as strong as ever. I was at once excited and nervous to see him. Excited because I longed to hear and see how he was and catch up on all the things I didn’t know about his life. Nervous because I knew that our interactions were always tainted with the shadow of his guru’s mind control. And because I knew what his beliefs told him about me and my negative energy. Our visit had been prompted by a Christmas card. Earlier in the month I had sent him a card, which was not something I had done since we’d broken up. Though we had been apart for five years, I had acknowledged to myself that I loved him as much as ever and wanted to say hello, even if it was via a greeting card. He called me a few days after he’d received the card and requested that we get together for this meal. I confess that I jumped at the opportunity to see him. Yes, I had logged thousands of hours of therapeutic and recovery work at this point and knew without question that it was a cult he was involved in; my head was so shrunk I was often surprised it was still visible on top of my shoulders. But the truth was that I loved him still, despite everything, and needed no convincing at all to spend an evening with him. Five years had passed, almost to the day, since our relationship had been severed. We chatted for hours, although it seemed like minutes, about his business and mine, our lives and our friends and family and ourselves. Our waitress finally came and requested that we pay our bill because she wanted to finish her shift. We looked up from the deeply pleasurable well of reconnection, stunned to find that it was almost midnight and that we were the last customers in the restaurant. His face was so familiar to me, and so beloved, and yet as we talked I realized that he was now a stranger. He was quite obviously more deeply attached to Limori and her other followers than ever. For the first time, he was referring to her as Lady Limori, saying that she had claimed a royal title that was rightfully hers. I could barely stop myself from snorting and rolling my eyes. The good news was that I had done enough of my own healing and recovery work that I could listen to the cultic pronouncements that snuck into his conversation with a measure of detachment and compassion.

• From Another Country (1962)

  “You know, I think I do? It’s funny, I haven’t thought of church or any of that type stuff for years. But it’s still there, I guess.” She smiled and sighed. “Nothing ever goes away.” And then she smiled again, looking into his eyes. This shy, confiding smile made his heart move up until it hung like a Ferris wheel at its zenith, looking down at the fair. “It seems to go away,” she said in a wondering tone, “but it doesn’t, it all comes back.” And his heart plunged; he watched her face, framed by the brilliant shawl. “I guess it’s true, what they used to tell me—if you can get through the worst, you’ll see the best.” They turned off the Avenue, toward Cass’ house. “What a beautiful girl you are,” he said. She turned from him, irrepressibly humming her song. “You are, you know.” “Well,” she said, and turned toward him again, “I don’t know if I’m beautiful or not. But I know you’re crazy.” “I’m crazy about you. I hope you know that.” He said it lightly and did not know if he should curse himself for his cowardice or congratulate himself on his restraint. “I don’t know what I’d have done without you,” she said, “these last few months. I know I didn’t see much of you, but I knew you were there, I felt it, and it helped—oh, more than I’ll ever be able to tell you.” “I had the feeling sometimes,” he said, “that you thought I was just being a pest.” And now he did curse himself for not saying more precisely what he felt and for sounding so much like a child. But this was his day, apparently—he seemed to be coming to the end of the tunnel in which he had been traveling so long. “A pest!” she cried, and laughed. “If you aren’t the cutest thing.” Then, soberly, “I was the one who was the pest—but I just couldn’t help it.” They turned into a gray, anonymous building which had two functionless pillars on either side of the door and an immense plain of imitation marble and leather beyond it. And he suddenly remembered—it had gone entirely out of his mind—that this lunch was for the purpose of celebrating the publication of Richard’s first novel. He said to Ida, “You know, this lunch is a celebration and I forgot to bring anything.” The elevator man rose from his chair, looking at them dubiously, and Vivaldo gave him the floor number and then, as the man still seemed to hesitate, the number of the apartment. He closed the door and the elevator began to move upward. “What are we celebrating?” Ida asked.

• From Mystical Tradition: Judaism, Christianity, and Islam (2008)

  Lecture Thirty Early Sufi Masters Scope: In this sampling of Sufi passages from the 8th–10th centuries, we see how the Qur’an was mystically interpreted and how the quest for Allah could be captured by the form of traditional Arabic poetry (the qasida). This lecture discusses traditions associated with the famous female Sufi R(cid:407)bi’a al-‘Adawiyya, al-Muhasibi, Abu Yazid al-Bistami, and Abu al-Qasim al-Junayd and concludes with the controversial figure of Mansur al-Hallaj, who was executed for heresy. Outline I. In the remaining lectures, we will examine some of the many writings produced by mystics in the Sufi tradition. Two important sources for the symbolism of Sufi Mysticism are pre-Islamic poetry and the Qur’an and Hadith. A. Of special importance is the nasib, the first part of the Arabic poetic form called the qasida, which tropes the meeting of lovers, the separation of lovers, and the recollection of the beloved. 1. The qasida also supplies the imagery of stages and stations in the quest for the beloved. 2. This love poetry provides the framework for Sufi Mysticism; a 7th-century example of this kind of poem, “To the encampments of Máyya,” gives us a sense of it. B. Early Sufis paid special attention to the Isra and miraj of the Prophet, which are only intimated in the Qur’an (in Suras 17:1 and 53) but are elaborated dramatically by early Hadith. C. The imagery is given a systematic structure by the Sufi path of knowledge, love, and prayer toward “the real” (al-haqq), as we see, for example, in “On Annihilation” (fana) by Abu al-Qasim al- Junayd (d. 910). II. The example of two early Sufis demonstrates the complexity of the traditions that grew up around such saints. A. R(cid:407)bi’a al-‘Adawiyya al-Qaysiyya (d. 801) is the most notable early female Sufi, whose sayings and deeds are memorialized, among 120 ©2008 The Teaching Company.

• From Wild (2012)

  The same could not be said of Faulkner’s As I Lay Dying, or rather the thin portion of the book I still had in my pack. I’d torn off the cover and all the pages I’d read the night before and burned them in the little aluminum pie pan I’d brought to place beneath my stove to safeguard against errant sparks. I’d watched Faulkner’s name disappear into flames feeling a bit like it was a sacrilege—never had I dreamed I’d be burning books—but I was desperate to lighten my load. I’d done the same with the section from The Pacific Crest Trail, Volume 1: California that I’d already hiked. It hurt to do it, but it had to be done. I’d loved books in my regular, pre-PCT life, but on the trail, they’d taken on even greater meaning. They were the world I could lose myself in when the one I was actually in became too lonely or harsh or difficult to bear. When I made camp in the evenings, I rushed through the tasks of pitching my tent and filtering water and cooking dinner so I could sit afterwards inside the shelter of my tent in my chair with my pot of hot food gripped between my knees. I ate with my spoon in one hand and a book in the other, reading by the light of my headlamp when the sky darkened. In the first week of my hike, I was often too exhausted to read more than a page or two before I fell asleep, but as I grew stronger I was reading more, eager to escape the tedium of my days. And each morning, I burned whatever I’d read the night before. As I held my unspoiled copy of O’Connor’s short stories, Albert emerged from his tent. “Looks to me like you could stand to lose a few things,” he said. “Want some help?” “Actually,” I said, smiling ruefully at him, “yes.” “All right, then. Here’s what I want you to do: pack up that thing just like you’re about to hike out of here for this next stretch of trail and we’ll go from there.” He walked toward the river with the nub of a toothbrush in hand—the end of which he’d thought to break off to save weight, of course.

• From The Confessions of Saint Augustine (354)

  But for what fruit would they hear this? Do they desire to joy with me, when they hear how near, by Thy gift, I approach unto Thee? and to pray for me, when they shall hear how much I am held back by my own weight? To such will I discover myself For it is no mean fruit, O Lord my God, that by many thanks should be given to Thee on our behalf, and Thou be by many entreated for us. Let the brotherly mind love in me what Thou teachest is to be loved, and lament in me what Thou teachest is to be lamented. Let a brotherly, not a stranger, mind, not that of the strange children, whose mouth talketh of vanity, and their right hand is a right hand of iniquity, but that brotherly mind which when it approveth, rejoiceth for me, and when it disapproveth me, is sorry for me; because whether it approveth or disapproveth, it loveth me. To such will I discover myself: they will breathe freely at my good deeds, sigh for my ill. My good deeds are Thine appointments, and Thy gifts; my evil ones are my offences, and Thy judgments. Let them breathe freely at the one, sigh at the other; and let hymns and weeping go up into Thy sight, out of the hearts of my brethren, Thy censers. And do Thou, O Lord, he pleased with the incense of Thy holy temple, have mercy upon me according to Thy great mercy for Thine own name’s sake; and no ways forsaking what Thou hast begun, perfect my imperfections.

• From The Confessions of Saint Augustine (354)

  But where in my memory residest Thou, O Lord, where residest Thou there? what manner of lodging hast Thou framed for Thee? what manner of sanctuary hast Thou builded for Thee? Thou hast given this honour to my memory, to reside in it; but in what quarter of it Thou residest, that am I considering. For in thinking on Thee, I passed beyond such parts of it as the beasts also have, for I found Thee not there among the images of corporeal things: and I came to those parts to which I committed the affections of my mind, nor found Thee there. And I entered into the very seat of my mind (which it hath in my memory, inasmuch as the mind remembers itself also), neither wert Thou there: for as Thou art not a corporeal image, nor the affection of a living being (as when we rejoice, condole, desire, fear, remember, forget, or the like); so neither art Thou the mind itself; because Thou art the Lord God of the mind; and all these are changed, but Thou remainest unchangeable over all, and yet hast vouchsafed to dwell in my memory, since I learnt Thee. And why seek I now in what place thereof Thou dwellest, as if there were places therein? Sure I am, that in it Thou dwellest, since I have remembered Thee ever since I learnt Thee, and there I find Thee, when I call Thee to remembrance. Where then did I find Thee, that I might learn Thee? For in my memory Thou wert not, before I learned Thee. Where then did I find Thee, that I might learn Thee, but in Thee above me? Place there is none; we go backward and forward, and there is no place. Every where, O Truth, dost Thou give audience to all who ask counsel of Thee, and at once answerest all, though on manifold matters they ask Thy counsel. Clearly dost Thou answer, though all do not clearly hear. All consult Thee on what they will, though they hear not always what they will. He is Thy best servant who looks not so much to hear that from Thee which himself willeth, as rather to will that, which from Thee he heareth. Too late loved I Thee, O Thou Beauty of ancient days, yet ever new! too late I loved Thee! And behold, Thou wert within, and I abroad, and there I searched for Thee; deformed I, plunging amid those fair forms which Thou hadst made. Thou wert with me, but I was not with Thee. Things held me far from Thee, which, unless they were in Thee, were not at all. Thou calledst, and shoutedst, and burstest my deafness. Thou flashedst, shonest, and scatteredst my blindness. Thou breathedst odours, and I drew in breath and panted for Thee. I tasted, and hunger and thirst. Thou touchedst me, and I burned for Thy peace.

• From Boys & Sex (2020)

  “Looking back,” Wyatt said, “I did have Golden Dick Syndrome. And yeah, I led the consent workshops for guys, but I’ve realized that consent is the bare minimum that should be expected when you’re with someone. People think once they’ve been granted consent for sex that all bets are off in terms of what you do to someone emotionally, how you treat them. And that’s not true.” Nate, too, fell in love shortly after his ill-fated junior year hookup. His girlfriend, who was a year older, was flirting with him in school one day and suggested, “Hey, we should hang out sometime.” He was reluctant at first, afraid of being mocked again, but then he told himself, Nate, you cannot hide from this your whole life, and asked her out. “She is just amazing,” he told me, grinning. “She’s so kindhearted. So sweet. We just totally like to be together.” And physically? “The first time we hooked up, we had oral sex,” he said. “Both ways. She thought it was funny that I didn’t know what I was doing, because she did. She’d gone out with an older guy for two years. But she smiled at me the whole time and was genuinely laughing and having fun. I was like, ‘You’re enjoying this?’ It was shocking to me. But she let me know what she wanted, and I let her know what I wanted, and it was all very healthy.” Even a year later, after she’d graduated and gone to college, breaking Nate’s heart, he didn’t regret the relationship. “I’m learning what love really is,” he told me. “And I’ve realized that I’m so unattracted to the idea of making sex just good for me as a guy so I can brag about it to my friends. That seems so stupid if sex is about being intimate and enjoying a shared experience with someone. And, honestly, I don’t think a lot of the guys really even have fun doing it, either.”

• From Little Women (1868)

  I was half afraid to put the idea into your head, lest you should write and congratulate them before the thing was settled." "I'm not the scatterbrain I was. You may trust me. I'm sober and sensible enough for anyone's confidante now." "So you are, my dear, and I should have made you mine, only I fancied it might pain you to learn that your Teddy loved someone else." "Now, Mother, did you really think I could be so silly and selfish, after I'd refused his love, when it was freshest, if not best?" "I knew you were sincere then, Jo, but lately I have thought that if he came back, and asked again, you might perhaps, feel like giving another answer. Forgive me, dear, I can't help seeing that you are very lonely, and sometimes there is a hungry look in your eyes that goes to my heart. So I fancied that your boy might fill the empty place if he tried now." "No, Mother, it is better as it is, and I'm glad Amy has learned to love him. But you are right in one thing. I am lonely, and perhaps if Teddy had tried again, I might have said 'Yes', not because I love him any more, but because I care more to be loved than when he went away." "I'm glad of that, Jo, for it shows that you are getting on. There are plenty to love you, so try to be satisfied with Father and Mother, sisters and brothers, friends and babies, till the best lover of all comes to give you your reward." "Mothers are the best lovers in the world, but I don't mind whispering to Marmee that I'd like to try all kinds. It's very curious, but the more I try to satisfy myself with all sorts of natural affections, the more I seem to want. I'd no idea hearts could take in so many. Mine is so elastic, it never seems full now, and I used to be quite contented with my family. I don't understand it." "I do," and Mrs. March smiled her wise smile, as Jo turned back the leaves to read what Amy said of Laurie. "It is so beautiful to be loved as Laurie loves me. He isn't sentimental, doesn't say much about it, but I see and feel it in all he says and does, and it makes me so happy and so humble that I don't seem to be the same girl I was. I never knew how good and generous and tender he was till now, for he lets me read his heart, and I find it full of noble impulses and hopes and purposes, and am so proud to know it's mine. He says he feels as if he 'could make a prosperous voyage now with me aboard as mate, and lots of love for ballast'.

• From Another Country (1962)

  Her body kept shaking and he felt her tears on his hands. He raised her hands to his lips and kissed them. He tried to look into her face, but she kept her face turned away. “Ida. Ida, please.” “I don’t know any of these people,” she said, “I don’t care about them. They think I’m just another colored girl, and they trying to be nice, but they don’t care. They don’t want to talk to me. I only stayed because you asked me, and you’ve been so nice, and I was so proud of you, and now you’ve spoiled it all.” “Ida,” he said, “if I’ve spoiled things between you and me, I don’t know how I’m going to live. You can’t say that. You’ve got to take it back, you’ve got to forgive me and give me another chance. Ida.” He put one hand to her face and slowly turned it toward him. “Ida, I love you, I do, more than anything in this world. You’ve got to believe me. I’d rather die than hurt you.” She was silent. “I was jealous and I was scared and that was a very dumb thing I said. But I was just afraid you didn’t care about me. That’s all. I didn’t mean anything bad about you.” She sighed and reached for her purse. He gave her a handkerchief. She dried her eyes and blew her nose. She looked very tired and helpless. He moved and sat beside her on the bed. She avoided looking at him but she did not move. “Ida—” and he was shocked by the sound of his voice, it contained such misery. It did not seem to be his voice, it did not seem to be under his control. “I told you, I love you. Do you care about me?” She rose and walked to the mirror. He watched her. “Please tell me.” She looked into the mirror, then picked up her handbag from the bed. She opened it, closed it, then looked in the mirror again. Then she looked at him, “Yes,” she said, helplessly, “yes, I do.” He took her face between his hands and kissed her. At first she did not answer him, seemed merely to be enduring him, seemed suspended, hanging, waiting. She was trembling and he tried to control her trembling with the force of his arms and hands. Then something seemed to bend in her, to give, and she put her arms around him, clinging to him. Finally, he whispered in her ear, “Let’s get out of here. Let’s go.” “Yes,” she said, after a moment, “I guess it’s time to go.” But she did not step out of his arms at once. She looked at him and she said, “I’m sorry I was so silly. I know you didn’t mean it.” “I’m sorry, too. I’m just a jealous, no-good bastard, I can’t help it, I’m crazy about you.” And he kissed her again.

• From Another Country (1962)

  He must—he must have been in great pain. He must have loved her.” She turned to him, searching his face. “I’m sure he loved her.” “Some love,” he said. “Richard,” she said, “you and I have hurt each other—many times. Sometimes we didn’t mean to and sometimes we did. And wasn’t it because—just because —we loved—love—each other?” He looked at her oddly, head to one side. “Cass,” he said, “how can you compare it? We’ve never tried to destroy each other—have we?” They watched each other. She said nothing. “I’ve never tried to destroy you. Have you ever tried to destroy me?” She thought of his face as it had been when they met; and watched it now. She thought of all they had discovered together and meant to each other, and of how many small lies had gone into the making of their one, particular truth: this love, which bound them to one another. She had said No, many times, to many things, when she knew she might have said Yes, because of Richard; believed many things, because of Richard, which she was not sure she really believed. He had been absolutely necessary to her—or so she had believed; it came to the same thing—and so she had attached herself to him and her life had taken shape around him. She did not regret this for herself. I want him, something in her had said, years ago. And she had bound him to her; he had been her salvation; and here he was. She did not regret it for herself and yet she began to wonder if there were not something in it to be regretted, something she had done to Richard which Richard did not see. “No,” she said, faintly. And then, irrepressibly, “But I wouldn’t have had to try.” “What do you mean by that?” “I mean”—he was watching her; she sat down again, playing with the glass of whiskey—“a man meets a woman. And he needs her. But she uses this need against him, she uses it to undermine him. And it’s easy. Women don’t see men the way men want to be seen. They see all the tender places, all the places where blood could flow.” She finished the whiskey. “Do you see what I mean?” “No,” he said, frankly, “I don’t. I don’t believe all this female intuition shit. It’s something women have dreamed up.” “You can say that—and in such a tone!” She mimicked him: “Something women have dreamed up. But I can’t say that—what men have ‘dreamed up’ is all there is, the world they’ve dreamed up is the world.” He laughed. She subsided. “Well. It’s true.” “What a funny girl you are,” he said. “You’ve got a bad case of penis envy.” “So do most men,” she said, sharply, and he laughed. “All I meant, anyway,” she said, soberly, “is that I had to try to fit myself around you and not try to make you fit around me.