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 Saint Thomas Aquinas Collection (22 Books) (2016)

  AUGUSTINE. (Tract. cxxiii) He who denied and loved, died in perfect love for Him, for Whom he had promised to die with wrong haste. It was necessary that Christ should first die for Peter’s salvation, and then Peter die for Christ’s Gospel. 21:19–2319. And when he had spoken this, he saith unto him, Follow me. 20. Then Peter, turning about, seeth the disciple whom Jesus loved following; which also leaned on his breast at supper, and said, Lord, which is he that betrayeth thee? 21. Peter seeing him saith to Jesus, Lord, and what shall this man do? 22. Jesus saith unto him, If I will that he tarry till I come, what is that to thee? follow thou me. 23. Then went this saying abroad among the brethren, that that disciple should not die: yet Jesus said not unto him, He shall not die; but, If I will that he tarry till I come, what is that to thee? AUGUSTINE. (Tract. cxxiv) Our Lord having foretold to Peter by what death he should glorify God, bids him follow Him. And when He had spoken this, He saith unto him, Follow Me. Why does He say, Follow Me, to Peter, and not to the others who were present, who as disciples were following their Master? Or if we understand it of his martyrdom, was Peter the only one who died for the Christian truth? Was not James put to death by Herod? Some one will say that James was not crucified, and that this was fitly addressed to Peter, because he not only died, but suffered the death of the cross, as Christ did. THEOPHYLACT. Peter hearing that he was to suffer death for Christ, asks whether John was to die: Then Peter, turning about, seeth the disciple whom Jesus loved following; which also leaned on His breast at supper, and said, Lord, which is he that betrayeth Thee? Peter seeing him saith to Jesus, Lord, and what shall this man do? AUGUSTINE. (Tract. cxxiv) He calls himself the disciple whom Jesus loved, because Jesus had a greater and more familiar love for him, than for the rest; so that He made him lie on His breast at supper. In this way John the more commends the divine excellency of that Gospel which he preached. Some think, and they no contemptible commentators upon Scripture, that the reason why John was loved more than the rest, was, because he had lived in perfect chastity from his youth up. Then went this saying abroad among the brethren, that that disciple should not die: yet Jesus said not unto him, He shall not die; but, If I will that he tarry till I come, what is that to thee? THEOPHYLACT. i. e. Shall he not die?

• From Saint Thomas Aquinas Collection (22 Books) (2016)

  Here he gives the opinion of those who claimed that love is the first principle, although they did not hold this very explicitly or clearly. Accordingly, he says that some suspected that Hesiod had sought for such a principle to account for the good disposition of things, or anyone else who posited love or desire in nature. For when Parmenides attempted to explain the generation of the universe, he said that in the establishing of the universe “ Love, the first of all the gods, was made. ” Nor is this opposed to his doctrine that there is one immobile being, of which Aristotle speaks here; because this man held that there are many things according to the senses, although there is only one thing according to reason, as was stated above and will be stated below. Moreover, he called the celestial bodies, or perhaps certain separate substances, gods. 102. But Hesiod said that first of all there was chaos, and then broad earth was made, to be the receptacle of everything else; for it is evident that the receptacle [or void] and place are principles, as is stated in Book IV of the Physics. And he also held that love, which instructs all the immortals, is a principle of things. He did this because the communication of goodness seems to spring from love, for a good deed is a sign and effect of love. Hence, since corruptible things derive their being and every good disposition from immortal beings of this kind, this must be attributed to the love of the immortals. Furthermore, he held that the immortals are either the celestial bodies themselves, or material principles themselves. Thus he posited chaos and love as though there had to be in existing things not only a material cause of their motions, but also an efficient cause which moves and unites them, which seems to be the office of love. For love moves us to act, because it is the source of all the emotions, since fear, sadness and hope proceed only from love. That love unites things is clear from this, that love itself is a certain union between the lover and the thing loved, seeing that the lover regards the beloved as himself. This man Hesiod is to be numbered among the poets who lived before the time of the philosophers. 103. Now, as to which one of these thinkers is prior, i.e., more competent in knowledge, whether the one who said that love is the first principle, or the one who said hat intellect is, can be decided later on, that is, where God is discussed. He calls this decision an arrangement, because the degree of excellence belonging to each man is allotted to him in this way. Another translation states this more clearly: “ Therefore, in what order it is fitting to go over these thinkers, and who in this order is prior, can be decided later on. ” LESSON 6

• From Saint Thomas Aquinas Collection (22 Books) (2016)

  Now we must observe a certain difference in the aforesaid effects of grace. For though the name of grace befits them all, in that they are bestowed gratis, without any preceding merit: the effect alone of love deserves furthermore the name of grace for this other reason, that it makes man pleasing (gratum) to God: for it is said (Prov. 8:17): I love them that love Me. Consequently faith and hope, and other things directed to faith, can be in sinners who are not pleasing to God: but love alone is the peculiar gift of the righteous, because he that abides in charity, abideth in God, and God in him (1 Jo. 4:16). But there is yet another difference to be noticed in the aforesaid effects of grace. Because some of them are necessary to man during his whole life, seeing that without them he cannot be saved: for instance, faith, hope, charity, and obedience to God’s commandments. For such effects man needs to have certain habitual perfections within him, in order that when it is time for him to do so, he may be able to act according to them.—Whereas the other effects are necessary, not during the whole of man’s life, but at certain times and places: such as working miracles, foretelling the future, and so forth. For the like habitual perfections are not bestowed, but certain impressions are made by God which cease as soon as the act ceases; and must be repeated when there is need for the act to be repeated: thus the prophet’s mind is enlightened with a new light in each revelation; and in each miraculous work there must be a renewal of the activity of the divine power. CHAPTER CLV THAT MAN NEEDS THE DIVINE AID IN ORDER TO PERSEVERE IN GOODMAN also needs the aid of divine grace in order to persevere in good. Because everything that is changeable of itself, needs the aid of an immovable mover, in order to stand fast to one thing. Now, man is changeable from evil to good, and from good to evil. Therefore, that he may persevere unchangeably in good, in a word, that he may persevere, he needs the divine assistance.

• From Saint Thomas Aquinas Collection (22 Books) (2016)

  When the Son is said to be the First-Born of creatures, this does not imply that the Son is to be reckoned among creatures, but that the Son proceeds from the Father, and receives from the Father from whom creatures proceed and receive. The Son however receives identity of nature, whereas creatures do not: wherefore the Son is called not only the First-Born, but also the Only Begotten, on account of the singular mode of that reception. The words of our Lord to His Father in reference to His disciples, That they may be one, as we also are one (Jo. 17:22), prove that Father and Son are one in the same way as it behoves the disciples to be one, namely, by love. But this manner of union does not exclude unity of nature, rather does it prove it. For it is said (Jo. 3:35): The Father loveth the Son: and he hath given all things into his hand: and this shows that the fulness of the Godhead is in the Son, as we have already stated. Hence it is clear that the authority of Scripture invoked by the Arians in support of their view is in no way opposed to the truth as declared by the Catholic Faith. CHAPTER IX EXPLANATION OF THE TEXTS QUOTED BY PHOTINUS AND SABELLIUSIN sequence to the foregoing animadversions it is clear that the texts also of Holy Scripture quoted by Photinus and Sabellius fail to support their errors. For our Lord’s words after His resurrection, All power is given to me in heaven and in earth (Matth. 28:18), do not imply that He received this power then for the first time, but that the power which the Son of God had received from eternity began to be manifested in Him after He had become man, through His victory over death in His resurrection. When the Apostle says in reference to the Son (Rom. 1:3), Who was made to him of the seed of David, the sense is clear from the words that follow, according to the flesh. For he did not say that the Son of God was made absolutely, but that He was made of the seed of David, according to the flesh, by taking human nature: even so it is said (Jo. 1:14): The Word was made flesh. Wherefore it is plain that the words that follow (verse 4), Who was predestinated the Son of God, refer to the Son in His human nature. Because it was not of human merits, but of the grace of God predestinating, that human nature was united to the Son of God, so that a man could be called the Son of God.

• From New Testament Words (1964)

  The very essence of Christianity is the restoration of a lost relationship. The summons of Christianity is to return to a God whose love men spumed, but whose love is ever waiting for men to come home. The task of the preacher is to break men’s hearts at the sight of the broken heart of God. KATARTIZEINTHE WORD OF CHRISTIAN DISCIPLINEThe great practical interest of katartizein lies in the fact that it is the word used in Gal. 6.1, for, as the AV puts it, ‘restoring’ a brother who is taken in fault. If, then, we can penetrate into its meaning it will greatly assist us in forming a correct view of the method and purpose of Christian discipline. In classical Greek it has a wide variety of meanings, all of which can be gathered together under one or other of two heads. (i) It means ‘to adjust, to put in order, to restore’. Hence it is used of pacifying a city which is tom by faction; of setting a limb that has been dislocated; of developing certain parts of the body by exercise; of restoring a person to his rightful mind; of reconciling friends who have become estranged. (ii) It is used of ‘equipping or fully furnishing someone or something for some given purpose’. So it is used of fitting out a ship and it is used of an army, fully armed and equipped, and drawn up in battle-array. Its uses in the papyri do not add greatly to our insight into its meaning. There, too, it is used of something ‘prepared for a given purpose or person’. It is, for instance, so used of clothes which have been made and prepared for someone to wear. In the NT it is used about thirteen times, twice in quotations from the OT (Matt. 21.16; Heb. 10.5). It has three main lines of usage. (i) It is the word which is used of the disciples ‘mending their nets’ (Matt. 4.21; Mark 1.19). It may possibly there mean that they were ‘folding up the nets’. But whether it means mending or folding up the idea is that the nets were being prepared for future use. (ii) There is a set of passages in which the basic meaning is that of equipment. In Luke 6.40 it is said that a scholar cannot turn out better equipped than his teacher. Rom. 9.22 speaks of vessels of wrath equipped for destruction. (iii) There is a set of passages in which the AV translates it ‘to perfect’ (II Cor. 13.11; I Thess. 3.10; Heb. 13.21; I Pet. 5.10). (iv) There is one passage in I Cor. 1.10 where the AV translates it ‘perfectly joined together’. It is there used of the drawing together of the discordant elements in the Corinthian Church; and the idea could be either that of setting together dislocated and broken limbs, or that of calming and pacifying the warring elements in a disturbed city.

• From New Testament Words (1964)

  (i) It is sometimes—not often—described in human terms. So, for instance, Paul speaks of the Church of the Thessalonians (I Thess. 1.1; II Thess. 1.2). In a sense the Church is composed of men and belongs to men; men are the bricks out of which the edifice of the Church is built. It is worth noting that in all the NT the word Church is never used to describe a ‘building’. It always describes a body of men and women who have given their hearts to God. (ii) Far more frequently it is described in divine terms. By far the commonest description is the ‘Church of God’ (I Cor. 1.2; II Cor. 1.1; Gal. 1.13; I Thess. 2.14; I Tim. 3.5, 15). The Church belongs to God and comes from God. Had there been no such thing as the love of God there would have been no such thing as a Church; and unless God was a self-communicating God there would be no message and no help in the Church. (iii) Sometimes the Church is described as the Church of Christ, (a) In this connection Christ is the head of the Church (Eph. 5.23, 24). It ought to be according to the mind and thought and will of Christ that the Church lives and moves. (b) The Church is the body of Christ (Col. 1.24). It is through the Church that Jesus Christ acts. It must be hands to work for him, feet to run upon his errands, a voice to speak for him. An Indian described the Church as ‘the Church which carries on the life of Christ’. One last point is to be noted. In NT times the Church had no buildings. Christians met in any house which had a room large enough to accommodate them. These gatherings were called ‘house-churches’ (Rom. 16.5; I Cor. 16.19; Col. 4.15; Philem. 2). Every home ought to be in a real sense a Church. Jesus is Lord of the dinner table as he is Lord of the Communion table. And it will always be true that they pray best together who first pray alone. ELPIS AND ELPIZEINTHE CHRISTIAN HOPEThe noun elpis means hope, and the verb elpizein means to hope. These words are not of any particular linguistic interest. Their great interest lies in the fact that if we examine and analyse their use in the NT we can discover the content and the basis of the Christian hope. Elpis, hope, is one of the three great pillars of the Christian faith. It is on hope, along with faith and love, that the whole Christian faith is founded (I Cor. 13.13). Hope is characteristically the Christian virtue and it is something which for the non-Christian is impossible (Eph. 2.12). Only the Christian can be an optimist regarding the world. Only the Christian can hope to cope with life. And only the Christian can regard death with serenity and equanimity. Let us then see in what this Christian hope consists.

• From Saint Thomas Aquinas Collection (22 Books) (2016)

  BEDE. (ubi sup.) But observe that the righteousness of the law, when kept in its own time, conferred not only earthly goods, but also eternal life on those who chose it. Wherefore the Lord’s answer to one who enquires concerning everlasting life is, Thou knowest the commandments, Do not commit adultery, Do not kill; for this is the childlike blamelessness which is proposed to us, if we would enter the kingdom of heaven. On which there follows, And he answered and said unto him, Master, all these have I observed from my youth. We must not suppose that this man either asked the Lord, with a wish to tempt him, as some have fancied, or lied in his account of his life; but we must believe that he confessed with simplicity how he had lived; which is evident, from what is subjoined, Then Jesus beholding him loved him, and said unto him. If however he had been guilty of lying or of dissimulation, by no means would Jesus, after looking on the secrets of his heart, have been said to love him. ORIGEN. (in Evan. tom. xv. 14) For in that He loved, or kissed himp, He appears to affirm the truth of his profession, in saying that he had fulfilled all those things; for on applying His mind to him, He saw that the man answered with a good conscience. PSEUDO-CHRYSOSTOM. (Cat. in Marc. Oxon.) It is worthy of enquiry, however, how He loved a man, who, He knew, would not follow Him? But this is so much as to say, that since he was worthy of love in the first instance, because he observed the things of the law from his youth, so in the end, though he did not take upon himself perfection, he did not suffer a lessening of his former love. For although he did not pass the bounds of humanity, nor follow the perfection of Christ, still he was not guilty of any sin, since he kept the law according to the capability of a man, and in this mode of keeping it, Christ loved himq. BEDE. (ubi sup.) For God loves those who keep the commandments of the law, though they be inferior; nevertheless, He shews to those who would be perfect the deficiency of the law, for He came not to destroy the law, but to fulfil it. Wherefore there follows: And said unto him, One thing thou lackest; go thy way, sell whatsoever thou hast, and give to the poor, and thou shalt have treasure in heaven: and come, follow me; (Matt. 5:17) for whosoever would be perfect ought to sell all that he has, not a part, like Ananias and Sapphira, but the whole. THEOPHYLACT. And when he has sold it, to give it to the poor, not to stage-players and luxurious persons.

• From New Testament Words (1964)

  Twice Paul uses a kind of intensified form of this word, apokatallassein. In Eph. 2.16 he tells how Jesus Christ has reconciled Jews and Gentiles to each other, and both to God; and in Col. 1.21 he tells how Jesus Christ has reconciled all things and all men to God. (i) First and foremost, Paul sees the work of Jesus Christ as above and beyond all else a work of reconciliation. Through that which he did, the lost relationship between man and God is restored. Man was made for friendship and fellowship with God. By his disobedience and rebellion he ended up at enmity with God. That which Jesus did took that enmity away, and restored the relationship of friendship which should always have existed, but which was broken by man’s sin. (ii) It is to be carefully noted that Paul never speaks of God being reconciled to men, but always of men being reconciled to God. The most significant of all the passages, II Cor. 5.18-20, three times speaks of God reconciling man to himself. It was man, not God, who needed to be reconciled. Nothing had lessened the love of God; nothing had turned that love to hate; nothing had ever banished that yearning from the heart of God. Man might sin, but God still loved. It was not God who needed to be pacified, but man who needed to be moved to surrender and to penitence and to love. (iii) Here then we are face to face with an inescapable truth. The effect of the Cross—at least in this sphere of the thought of Paul—was on man, and not on God. The effect of the Cross changed, not the heart of God, but the heart of man. It was man who needed to be reconciled, not God. It is entirely against all Pauline thought to think of Jesus Christ pacifying an angry God, or to think that in some way God’s wrath was turned to love, and God’s judgment was turned to mercy, because of something which Jesus did. When we look at it in Paul’s way, it was man’s sin which was turned to penitence, man’s rebellion which was turned to surrender, man’s enmity which was turned to love, by the sacrificial love of Jesus Christ upon the Cross. It cost that Cross to make that change in the hearts of men. (iv) One thing remains to be said. If all this is so—and it is so—the ministry of the Church is a ministry of reconciliation, as indeed Paul said it was (II Cor. 5.19, 20). The function of the preacher is to convey to men, not the announcement of the threat of God’s wrath, but the proclamation of the offer of God’s love. The message of the preacher must ever be: Look at that Cross and see how much God loves you. Can you hold back in face of a love like that?

• From Between Us

  The importance of the OURS model is that it places emotions squarely in our social interactions and relationships. There is no question that feelings are important in MINE emotions, but we should not lose sight of the primary function of emotions: emotions are for acting, and particularly for acting in the social world. Yes, we may feel something, of course we do, but we primarily have emotions in order to adjust to changes in our relationship with the (social) world. Even in cultural environments where MINE emotions prevail, our pride seeks to benefit from the advantage of moving up in the hierarchy and our shame seeks to do some damage control when we find ourselves sliding further towards the bottom of that hierarchy; our happiness brings us closer to others, and our anger is antagonistic; our excitement engages us in social activities, and our sadness disengages. Holding our own emotions against the template of OURS models helps us to ask some very important questions: How do our emotions act to change our relationship with the world? Or, as one of my students who became a therapist said, What does this emotion want in the social world? And what about outside-in emotions? How could we be “authentic” if we acted on norms or expectations, rather than inner feelings? Perhaps we do this more than we realize. Like many parents, I have felt that loving my children was the easiest plight of all; it came so naturally. If other relationships are filled with ambiguity, the bond with my kids has been one of pure love. But is it possible that my love for my children flowed so naturally because the feeling rules for a mother towards her children are crystal clear and uncontestable? Your child simply needs your love and acceptance. The culturally desired emotional mix in the relationship between parents and children is always clear. This is in fact what Arlie Hochschild suggests. If this were true, should the most natural emotions of all—parental love—be considered outside-in? Do we always cultivate our emotions to fit the social norms? Our emotions may be more OURS than we acknowledge most of the time.

• From The Chronology of Water (2011)

  When Andy Mingo entered my life, I’d walk around at my job or the grocery store or the beach or bars or parties kind of wanting to tug on someone’s shirt and say, “Um, I need to say something about men. Turns out? I was wrong. There’s something … I can’t put my finger on it, but there’s something sort of … vital about them. Doesn’t that beat all?” Or I’d be mid-lecture or mid-mouthful of food or mid swim lap and think “Hey - somebody - I want to note that I’m feeling something. It feels a little like my heart is breaking. Like breaking open. Do I need medical attention? Is there a pill? What should I do?” Or I’d be in medias res lovemaking, I mean mind blowing lovewaves with this … this … man creature from another planet and think “I really, really need to go get a different degree to understand this mutual respect and compassion and fleshheartmind hunger business. A Ph.D. just doesn’t cut it. I’m quite clearly under educated. Can I speak to someone in charge?” The one thing I didn’t think? Drink it away. Possibly the only strong thing I’ve ever not thought. That’s why I say I didn’t get god. Everything I ever loved about books and music and art and beauty all became recollected in the body of the man I met who hit the bag and played the cello. After that we started arranging rendezvous all over town. Hungry. Frenzied. Did I mention he was married? Yeah. Well. What did you expect? I’m still me, after all. We met on benches at the ends of piers in San Diego where he’d make me cum with his hands down my pants at the end of a pier while tourists and seagulls and fishermen stretched out behind us. We met on the beach with the surf pounding and the sunset cliffs and one night even when I finished coming and sang my siren song a bunch of hippies in the cliff shadows put down their spliffs and gave me a standing ovation. We met in bars where we sat next to each other on red leather stools and pressed knees and shoulders and mouths together so hard I’d find bruises in the morning. With my fancy job money I bought us weekends back in Portland or San Francisco with rich people hotel rooms and room service and porn channels and 300 thread count sheets that we soiled and soiled. He said “Sometimes love is messy.” It’s true his almost not anymore wife chased me in her O.J. white Ford Bronco. But our lovers story isn’t the only story. Though our affair was epic. And sordid. Narrative and passion have that in common. There’s a story under that one.

• From Saint Thomas Aquinas Collection (22 Books) (2016)

  This is, seemingly, becoming to the Incarnation of the Word. For, just as our word, which is conceived in our mind, is invisible but becomes perceptible to the senses when it is spoken; so the Word of God is invisible as regards His eternal generation in the bosom of the Father, but became visible to us through the Incarnation. Wherefore the Incarnation of God’s Word is like the vocal utterance of our word. Now we give expression to our word by means of the breath (per spiritum) whereby we form words expressive of our thoughts. It is therefore fitting that the flesh of the Son of God should be formed by His Spirit. This is also in keeping with human generation. For the active power of human seed is actuated by the spirit in drawing to itself the material provided by the mother; the same power being derived from the spirit whose purity accounts for the whiteness of the foam-like semen. Accordingly, when the Word of God took to Himself a body from a virgin, it was fitting that this body should be fashioned by the Holy Ghost. This was also fitting, as indicating the motive of the Incarnation of God’s Word. For this motive could be no other but God’s love for man whose nature He wished to unite to Himself in unity of person. Now, in God, it is the Holy Ghost who proceeds as love, as proved above. Therefore the work of the Incarnation is fittingly ascribed to the Holy Ghost. Moreover, Holy Scripture is wont to ascribe all graces to the Holy Ghost; because that which is freely given would seem to be bestowed through the love of the giver. Now no grace has been bestowed on man greater than his union with the divine Person. Therefore this work is fittingly ascribed to the Holy Ghost. CHAPTER XLVII THAT CHRIST WAS NOT THE SON OF THE HOLY GHOST ACCORDING TO THE FLESHALTHOUGH we speak of Christ as having been conceived by the Holy Ghost and the Virgin, the Holy Ghost cannot be called His father, in respect of His human generation, as the Virgin is called His Mother. For the Holy Ghost did not produce the human nature in Christ out of His own substance, but by His power alone was He the active principle in its production. Consequently the Holy Ghost cannot be called Christ’s father in respect of His human generation.

• From Saint Thomas Aquinas Collection (22 Books) (2016)

  Again. Since man’s perfect happiness consists in the enjoyment of God, it was necessary for man’s affections to be disposed to desire it, since he has a natural desire for happiness. Now the desire for the enjoyment of a thing is caused by love of it. Hence it was necessary for man, who seeks perfect happiness, to be urged to the love of God. But nothing is a greater incentive to love someone than the experience of his love for us. And God’s love for man could not be proved more effectively than by His consenting to personal union with man: since it is peculiar to love that it unites lover and beloved, as far as this is possible. Therefore, since man seeks perfect happiness, it was necessary for God to become man. Moreover. Friendship is based on a certain equality, and consequently it would seem that those who are very unequal cannot be united in friendship. And so, that friendship between man and God might be more intimate, it was well for man that God should become man—since friendship between man and man is natural—in order that by knowing a God made visible to us, we might be drawn to the love of things invisible. It is also evident that heaven is the reward of virtue. Consequently those who are on their way to heaven should be disposed by virtue. Now we are incited to virtue by word and example; and a man’s example and word incite us to virtue so much the more efficaciously, as we are firmly convinced of his goodness. But it was not possible to be infallibly certain of a mere man’s goodness, since even the most holy men have at times been found wanting. Wherefore, that man might be strengthened in virtue, it was necessary for him to be taught virtue by the word and example of God incarnate. For which reason our Lord said (Jo. 13:15): I have given you an example, that as I have done to you, so you do also.

• From The Chronology of Water (2011)

  I had a few other encounters with her. We exchanged two letters about sexuality. I talked to her on the phone once when I thought I might be in love with a transsexual person. That’s it. And this. She read my writing and said: “You should keep doing it. Not everyone should. You should.” Kathy died in 1997 of breast cancer. Kesey died in 2001 of liver cancer. Sometimes in my head she is the good mother. He’s the good father. Me swimming in words. IV. Resuscitations A Drowning Scene MY SECOND HUSBAND WAS A CHARISMATIC NARCISSISTIC tender hearted frighteningly attractive artistic drunk. With hella black curls of hair traveling halfway down his back. And black eyes. It seemed. And a tiny zipper scar across his left wrist. My break up with Devin - poet, divine one - it took 11 years. Goddamn it. I took an informal poll of all the incredibly intelligent, intriguing, beautiful women I currently know on the question of why we find ourselves driven like moths to fire toward men who fuck us up. They said things like: “Because in loving his darkness I found my own.” Or “I learned from an early age that if it feels bad, it’s good, and if it feels good, you are bad.” Then there was the ever popular “Between slut and saint I choose slut.” And this one’s a classic of course: “Bad boys are more interesting than good ones. If you can survive it. And I still feel that way.” Also: “Suffering makes a stronger bond than love,” and “I’d rather feel alive and die than feel dead and live.” This one nearly made me cry: “He made me feel like someone somebody would risk something to choose.” But the one I personally identified with the most was, “He celebrated a death drive with me.” The first night I slept with Devin we consumed 25 bottles of Guinness and two jumbo bottles of wine. I barely remember the actual sex but I remember exactly what we drank. We listened to Jim Morrison all night in his bedroom. Strange Days and LA Woman until it felt like it was in our skin. When I woke up the next morning and looked at the desk across from the bed I saw as many bottles as I was old. I laughed and burped and went back to sleep, Devin’s arm pinning me to the bed. I didn’t feel anything about myself. It was everything to be filled with such nothing. I first met Devin at the orientation meeting for new graduate students at the University of Oregon in Eugene. It was my second year, his first.

• From Saint Thomas Aquinas Collection (22 Books) (2016)

  In like manner it was not expedient that God incarnate should, in this world, lead a life replete with wealth and the highest honour or dignity, as the twelfth objection argued.—In the first place, seeing that man’s mind was given to earthly things, He came to withdraw it from them, and to raise it to heavenly things. Hence it behoved Him, by His example, to draw men to the contempt of riches and of other things on which worldly men set their heart, and that He should lead a poor and hidden life in this world.—Secondly, if He had abounded in riches, and occupied a high position, the works He did as God would have been put down to His worldly power rather than to His Godly might. Hence it was a very strong proof of His divinity that, without the help of the secular arm, He converted the whole world to better things. Hence, it is plain how the thirteenth objection is to be answered. It is, indeed, far from being untrue that, according to the Apostle’s teaching, the incarnate Son of God suffered death in obedience to His Father’s command. God’s commands to men concern acts of virtue; and according as a man’s virtuous acts are more perfect, the more is he obedient to God. Now the greatest of the virtues is charity, to which all the others are referred. Hence Christ, whose act of charity was most perfect, was most obedient to God: for no act of charity is more perfect than that a man die for love of another, as our Lord Himself declared (Jo. 15:13), Greater love than this no man hath, that a man lay down his life for his friends. Therefore Christ, by dying for the salvation of man, and for the glory of God the Father, performed an act of perfect charity, and was most obedient to God. Nor was this incompatible with His Godhead, as the fourteenth objection averred. For the union was so made in the Person that both natures retained their respective properties, divine, namely, and human, as we have stated above: hence, though Christ suffered even death, besides those things which belonged to His human nature, His Godhead remained impassible, although on account of the unity of person, we say that God suffered and died. This is exemplified in ourselves, since although the body dies, the soul remains immortal. It must also be observed that although God wills not the death of man, as the fifteenth objection stated, nevertheless He wills the virtue whereby man suffers death with fortitude and braves the danger of death through charity. Thus did God will Christ’s death, in as much as Christ accepted death through charity, and bore it with fortitude.

• From Wild (2012)

  They got into the front and we drove. I looked out the window, at the towering trees whipping past, thinking of Eddie. I felt a bit guilty that I hadn’t mentioned him when the women asked about my parents. He’d become like someone I used to know. I loved him still and I’d loved him instantly, from the very first night that I met him when I was ten. He wasn’t like any of the men my mother dated in the years after she divorced my father. Most of those men had lasted only a few weeks, each scared off, I quickly understood, by the fact that allying himself with my mother meant also allying himself with me, Karen, and Leif. But Eddie loved all four of us from the start. He worked at an auto parts factory at the time, though he was a carpenter by trade. He had soft blue eyes and a sharp German nose and brown hair that he kept in a ponytail that draped halfway down his back. The first night I met him, he came for dinner at Tree Loft, the apartment complex where we lived. It was the third such apartment complex we’d lived in since my parents’ divorce. All of the apartment buildings were located within a half-mile radius of one another in Chaska, a town about an hour outside of Minneapolis. We moved whenever my mom could find a cheaper place. When Eddie arrived, my mother was still making dinner, so he played with Karen, Leif, and me out on the little patch of grass in front of our building. He chased us and caught us and held us upside down and shook us to see if any coins would fall from our pockets; if they did, he would take them from the grass and run, and we would run after him, shrieking with a particular joy that had been denied us all of our lives because we’d never been loved right by a man. He tickled us and watched as we performed dance routines and cartwheels. He taught us whimsical songs and complicated hand jives. He stole our noses and ears and then showed them to us with his thumb tucked between his fingers, eventually giving them back while we laughed. By the time my mother called us in to dinner, I was so besotted with him that I’d lost my appetite.

• From Wild (2012)

  We didn’t have a dining room in our apartment. There were two bedrooms, one bathroom, and a living room with a little alcove in one corner where there was a countertop, a stove, a refrigerator, and some cabinets. In the center of the room was a big round wooden table whose legs had been cut off so it was only knee-high. My mother had purchased it for ten dollars from the people who’d lived in our apartment before us. We sat on the floor around this table to eat. We said we were Chinese, unaware that it was actually the Japanese who ate meals seated on the floor before low tables. We weren’t allowed to have pets at Tree Loft, but we did anyway, a dog named Kizzy and a canary named Canary, who flew free throughout the apartment. He was a mannerly bird. He shat on a square of newspaper in a cat-litter pan in the corner. Whether he’d been trained to do it by my mother or did it of his own volition, I don’t know. A few minutes after we all sat down on the floor around the table, Canary landed on Eddie’s head. Usually when he landed on us, he’d perch there for only a moment and then fly away, but on top of Eddie’s head, Canary stayed. We giggled. He turned to us and asked, with false obliviousness, what we were laughing at. “There’s a canary on your head,” we told him. “What?” he said, looking around the room in pretend surprise. “There’s a canary on your head,” we yelled. “Where?” he asked. “There’s a canary on your head!” we yelled, now in delighted hysterics. There was a canary on his head and, miraculously, the canary stayed there, all through dinner, all through afterwards, falling asleep, nestling in. So did Eddie. At least he did until my mother died. Her illness had initially brought the two of us closer than we’d ever been. We’d become comrades in the weeks that she was sick—playing tag team at the hospital, consulting each other about medical decisions, weeping together when we knew the end was near, meeting with the funeral home director together after she died. But soon after that, Eddie pulled away from my siblings and me. He acted like he was our friend instead of our father. Quickly, he fell in love with another woman and soon she moved into our house with her children. By the time the first anniversary of my mother’s death rolled around, Karen, Leif, and I were essentially on our own; most of my mother’s things were in boxes I’d packed up and stored. He loved us, Eddie said, but life moved on. He was still our father, he claimed, but he did nothing to demonstrate that. I railed against it, but eventually had no choice but to accept what my family had become: not a family at all. You can’t squeeze blood from a turnip, my mother had often said.

• From New Testament Words (1964)

  But then katallassein takes a still further step and it begins to mean, more than anything else, the change of enmity into friendship. Clytaemnestra reminds Agamemnon how he had been responsible for the death of her former husband and her children and then says: ‘Reconciled to thee and to thy house, a blameless wife was I’ (Euripides, lphigeneia at Aulis 1157). Sophocles speaks of a man making his peace with heaven (Sophocles, Ajax 744). Thucydides tells how in the Sicilian wars Hermocrates pled with the warring sections to set aside conflicting claims, and become reconciled with each other (Thucydides, 4.59). Xenophon tells of a man who had made war on Cyrus and who had then become his friend again (Xenophon, Anabasis 1.6.1). In all these cases the verb is katallassein. So then in classical Greek katallassein becomes characteristically the word of the bringing together again of people who have been estranged. In a papyrus a man who is apparently a father who has had a difference with a member of his family, asks the question from an oracle: ‘Am I to be reconciled to my offspring?’ Even before the NT used it katallassein is the word of reconciliation. We now turn to katallassein and to its kindred words in the NT. With only two exceptions these words are used always of the restoration of the relationship between man and God. The first exception is I Cor. 7.11 where Paul lays it down that a woman who has left her husband must not marry another, but must be reconciled to him. The other case is the single usage in the NT of the kindred word sunallassein. It is used in Acts 7.26 of Moses when he tried to set at one the two Israelites who were quarrelling in Egypt. Even when this word is used in connexion with human relationships, it always refers to the restoration of a broken friendship and an interrupted fellowship. It is only Paul who uses this group of words in the NT; and he always uses these words of the restoration of the relationship between man and God. In Rom. 5.11 he speaks of Jesus Christ through whom we have now received the atonement (katallagē). In Rom. 11.15 he explains the casting away of the Jews by saying that the casting away was necessary for the reconciling of the world katallagē). In II Cor. 5.18, 19 he speaks of the ministry and the word of reconciliation (katallagē). In Rom. 5.10 he says that while we were enemies we were reconciled to God by the death of his Son (katallassein). In II Cor. 5.18-20 there is a whole series of uses of this word. God has reconciled us to himself by Jesus. God was in Christ reconciling the world unto himself. We pray you to be reconciled to God.

• From Wild (2012)

  I was six when my mother bought her. We were living on the basement level of an apartment complex called Barbary Knoll. My mother had just left my father for the last time. We barely had enough money to live, but my mother had to have that horse. I knew instinctively, even as a child, that it was Lady who saved my mother’s life. Lady who made it possible for her not only to walk away from my father, but also to keep going. Horses were my mother’s religion. It was with them she’d wanted to be on all those Sundays as a child, when she’d been made to put on dresses to go to mass. The stories she told me about horses were a counterpoint to the other stories she’d told me about her Catholic upbringing. She did anything she could to ride them. She raked stalls and polished tack, hauled hay and spread straw, any kind of odd job that came her way, so that she would be allowed to hang out at whatever stable happened to be nearest and ride someone’s horse. Images of her past cowgirl life came to me from time to time, captured in freeze-frame moments, as clear and concise to me as if I’d read them in a book. The overnight backcountry rides she’d done in New Mexico with her father. The daredevil rodeo tricks she’d practiced and performed with her girlfriends. At sixteen she got her own horse, a palomino named Pal, whom she rode in horse shows and rodeos in Colorado. She still had the ribbons when she died. I packed them in a box that was now in Lisa’s basement in Portland. A yellow third for barrel racing, a pink fifth for walk, trot, canter; green for showmanship and participation; and a single blue ribbon for riding her horse through all of the gaits smoothly over a course lined with mud pits and tight corners, laughing clowns and blaring horns, while she balanced an egg on a silver spoon in her outstretched hand for longer than anyone else could or did. In the stable where Lady first lived when she became ours, my mother did the same work she’d done as a kid, cleaning stalls and spreading hay, hauling things to and fro in a wheelbarrow. Often, she brought Karen, Leif, and me with her. We played in the barn while she did her chores. Afterwards, we watched her ride Lady around and around the ring, each of us getting a turn when she was done. By the time we moved to our land in northern Minnesota, we had a second horse, a mixed-breed gelding named Roger, whom my mother had bought because I’d fallen in love with him and his owner was willing to let him go for next to nothing. We hauled them both up north in a borrowed trailer. Their pasture was a quarter of our forty acres.

• From Speak, Memory (1966)

  Whenever I start thinking of my love for a person, I am in the habit of immediately drawing radii from my love—from my heart, from the tender nucleus of a personal matter—to monstrously remote points of the universe. Something impels me to measure the consciousness of my love against such unimaginable and incalculable things as the behavior of nebulae (whose very remoteness seems a form of insanity), the dreadful pitfalls of eternity, the unknowledgeable beyond the unknown, the helplessness, the cold, the sickening involutions and interpenetrations of space and time. It is a pernicious habit, but I can do nothing about it. It can be compared to the uncontrollable flick of an insomniac’s tongue checking a jagged tooth in the night of his mouth and bruising itself in doing so but still persevering. I have known people who, upon accidentally touching something—a doorpost, a wall—had to go through a certain very rapid and systematic sequence of manual contacts with various surfaces in the room before returning to a balanced existence. It cannot be helped; I must know where I stand, where you and my son stand. When that slow-motion, silent explosion of love takes place in me, unfolding its melting fringes and overwhelming me with the sense of something much vaster, much more enduring and powerful than the accumulation of matter or energy in any imaginable cosmos, then my mind cannot but pinch itself to see if it is really awake. I have to make a rapid inventory of the universe, just as a man in a dream tries to condone the absurdity of his position by making sure he is dreaming. I have to have all space and all time participate in my emotion, in my mortal love, so that the edge of its mortality is taken off, thus helping me to fight the utter degradation, ridicule, and horror of having developed an infinity of sensation and thought within a finite existence.

• From Chasing Beauty

  There was some speculation among friends that the Gardners had lived rather apart in their later years, at least when they weren’t traveling overseas. Like many couples in long marriages, they had developed somewhat separate lives, with Jack often retiring to one of his men’s clubs in the city, as on the night of his stroke, while Belle pursued her array of social occasions. She didn’t need his chaperoning. He continued to find her go-go-going interminable. He was a man of habits. He enjoyed working with numbers, keeping lists of all sorts, writing down train schedules to the exact minute. No detail was too small to include. He could seem something of a starched collar, maybe even dull. He relaxed with his burgundy wine and cigars and newspapers. But she needed—very badly—what he had given her. Like a partner in a pas de deux, he showcased her moves, not his own. He was the de facto manager of their domestic life, making sure guests felt welcome at dinners, planning menus, keeping track of finances, organizing travel, smoothing hurt feelings and misunderstandings. There were dust-ups. Isabella had been restless in midlife—her flirtation with Frank Crawford was an expression of that. And she could be trying, tyrannical even, “running rough shod” over propriety and expectation, as a friend would later recall. There’s a story of how Jack instructed the Gardner household servants to come to him always about their employment, to ignore her when she lost her temper and fired them, as she did on occasion. Once, when Isabella was behaving “uproariously” at a dinner, Jack turned to his table companion and observed, in a quiet voice, that the “trouble with Belle is she never grew up,” then added that her immaturity was “a secret of her charm.” Isabella may have had a kind of “perverseness in her conflicted nature,” in Morris Carter’s evocative phrase, which made her sometimes “trample devotion.” But Jack Gardner had been enchanted by his wife. Whatever disagreements they had, whatever confusions or hurt feelings between them—most of this was surface disturbance, ruffled waters on a clear, deep pond. After all, as Carter jotted in his notes, Jack had given her “his heart and himself completely.” During their courtship, Jack copied out several lines by the Irish poet Thomas Moore for her, on his stationery embossed with a large G, a paper she kept in a small drawer in her black-lacquer sewing box. Its sentiments are affectionate and private and tender. “My Mopsa is little,” the poem began, “her cheek is as smooth as the peach’s soft down, / and, for blushing, no rose can come near her; / In short, she has woven such / nets round my heart . . .”