Pride

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.

Page 13 of 174 · 20 per page

• From I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings (1969)

  The guard, the father and one or two small children began the herculean job of waking Dad. I watched coolly as the remaining people paraded, making figure eights around me and their badly bruised automobile. The two men shook and tugged and pulled while the children jumped up and down on my father's chest. I credit the children's action for the success of the effort. Bailey Johnson, Sr., woke up in Spanish. “Qué tiene? Qué pasa? Qué quiere?” Anyone else would have asked, “Where am I?” Obviously, this was a common Mexican experience. When I saw he was fairly lucid I went to the car, calmly pushed the people away, and said from the haughty level of one who has successfully brought to heel a marauding car and negotiated a sneaky mountain, “Dad, there's been an accident.” He recognized me by degrees and became my pre-Mexican-fiesta father. “An accident, huh? Er, who was at fault? You, Marguerite? Errer was it you?” It would have been futile to tell him of my mastering his car and driving it nearly fifty miles. I didn't expect or even need, now, his approbation. “Yes, Dad, I ran into a car.” He still hadn't sat up completely, so he couldn't know where we were. But from the floor where he rested, as if that was the logical place to be, he said, “In the glove compartment. The insurance papers. Get them and er give them to the police, and then come back.” The guard stuck his head in the other door before I could form a scathing but polite response. He asked Dad to get out of the car. Never at a loss, my father reached in the glove compartment, and took out the folded papers and the half bottle of liquor he had left there earlier. He gave the guard one of his pinch-backed laughs, and descended, by joints, from the car. Once on the ground he towered over the angry people. He took a quick reading of his location and the situation, and then put his arm around the other driver's shoulder. He kindly, not in the least condescendingly, bent to speak to the guard, and the three men walked into the hut. Within easy minutes, laughter burst from the shack and the crisis was over, but so was the enjoyment.

• From How to Read the Bible and Still Be a Christian (2015)

  In terms of those singled out for special comment, five are women (Mary, Tryphaena, Tryphosa, Persis, and an unnamed mother) and six are men (Epaenetus, Ampliatus, Urbanus, Stachys, Apelles, and Rufus). But only four, all women—Mary, Tryphaena, Tryphosa, and Persis (16:6, 12)—get the special accolade of having “worked hard” (kopiaō ) for Christ, elsewhere expressed by Paul only of himself (Gal. 4:11; 1 Cor. 15:10). One name in this final greeting created a problem that would be funny if it were not ridiculous, and comic if it were not tragic. Junia, who apparently was in prison with Paul, is a female name, so we know that this is a woman who was “prominent among the apostles” (Rom. 16:7). But to obviate that unorthodoxy, for the past thousand years Junia has been declared to be short for the masculine name Junianus. Needless to say, no such masculine abbreviation existed in antiquity. Paul takes it for granted that a woman could be an apostle, that is, a person sent (from the Greek apostellein, “to send”) by God or Christ to found a new Christian community. If you do not like that, Paul would have said, get over it, or take it up with God. Slavery: “There Is No Longer Slave or Free”WHAT WAS PAUL ’S VIEW on slavery and the slave economy of the Roman Empire? Did he agree with the fourth-century BCE Greek philosopher Aristotle that slavery was natural because “some men are by nature free, and others slaves” (Poetics 1.5)? Or with the first-century CE Jewish philosopher Philo that slavery was unnatural because “nature has created all men free, but the injustice and covetousness of some men who prefer inequality, that cause of all evil, having subdued some, has given to the more powerful authority over those who are weaker” (On the Contemplative Life 9.70)? The best and clearest answer comes rather incidentally from a very specific case in Paul’s letter to Philemon. You previously caught a glimpse of this letter as an “exploratory probe” in Chapter 2, but I explore it here again in greater detail. Paul, as you recall, was imprisoned, chained nightly to a guard in the barracks, when he wrote that personal letter to Philemon and also the communal letter to the Philippians. The location was, most likely, the governor’s jail at Ephesus (1 Cor. 15:32; 2 Cor. 1:8–9). Philemon’s slave Onesimus, in serious trouble with his owner (punishment? death?), fled, as was acceptable under Roman law, to his owner’s superior friend Paul to seek intercession and obtain forgiveness. We know, for example, that Pollio’s slave “fled to Caesar [Augustus’s] feet” to avoid death (Seneca, On Anger 3.40) and that Pliny the Younger interceded with his friend Sabinianus when “your freedman . . . threw himself at my feet” (Letters 9).

• From How to Read the Bible and Still Be a Christian (2015)

  In direct and deliberate contrast, this is how the prophet Zechariah described the Messiah entering the gates of Jerusalem: Rejoice greatly, O daughter Zion! Shout aloud, O daughter Jerusalem! Lo, your king comes to you; triumphant and victorious is he, humble and riding on a donkey, on a colt, the foal of a donkey. He will cut off the chariot from Ephraim and the war-horse from Jerusalem; and the battle bow shall be cut off, and he shall command peace to the nations; his dominion shall be from sea to sea, and from the River to the ends of the earth. (9:9–10) You will notice the explicit contrast between the peace donkey and the warhorse. Furthermore, the Messiah’s donkey is described very carefully as a full-bred donkey and not that half-horse, half-donkey known as a mule, making it clear that the animal he was riding was nothing like a (war)horse. When Jesus enters Jerusalem during that Palm Sunday demonstration in fulfillment of Zechariah, Mark simply mentions the single peace donkey. (Imagine Jesus coming into Jerusalem on a donkey from Bethany in the east and Pilate coming in on a warhorse from Caesarea in the west.) Matthew, however, intensifies the demonstration—and the lampoon—by having Jesus ride a nursing female donkey, a jenny, with her little colt trotting along beside her: “Jesus sent two disciples, saying to them, ‘Go into the village ahead of you, and immediately you will find a donkey tied, and a colt with her; untie them and bring them to me.’ . . . they brought the donkey and the colt, and put their cloaks on them, and he sat on them” (21:1–2, 7). That is the assertion of the historical Jesus on the biblical peace donkey. But we have already seen its subversion in the book of Revelation. Remember Christ as the rider on the white horse from Chapter 1 and recall that great feast he prepared for the vultures from the bodies of those “killed by the sword of the rider on the horse, the sword that came from his mouth; and all the birds were gorged with their flesh” (19:21). In summary: Radicality of God: Historical Jesus on the nonviolent peace donkey (Matt. 21:1–11) Normalcy of Civilization: Apocalyptic Christ on the violent warhorse (Rev. 19:11–21) This biblical patterning of yes-and-no justifies my choice of the nonviolent Jesus of the Incarnation over the violent Jesus of the Apocalypse as the true Jesus. Put simply, the nonviolent Jesus is the Christian Bible’s assertion, acceptance, and affirmation of the radicality of God while the violent Jesus is its corresponding subversion, rejection, and negation in favor of the normalcy of civilization. The interest and value, the honesty and integrity, of the Christian Bible resides triumphantly in the dialectic of yes and no, assertion and subversion. This dialectic means that both Judaism and Christianity took the radical challenges of God seriously.

• From Bastard Out of Carolina (1992)

  She stretched her neck to look over without getting up. “I don’t think those jars are setting deep enough in that pot.” Aunt Raylene poured mama some more ice tea. “Oh Anney. Bone’s doing a good job. When she grows up, she’s gonna know all she’ll need about canning and cooking and gossiping in the kitchen.” Mama spooned a little more sugar into her tea. “Raylene, you’re spoiling her. You should have had some of your own, and then you’d watch them all a little more sharply.” “Well, for not birthing any, it sure feels like I’ve raised a crowd. Seems like I’ve had somebody’s kids under my feet for years now. An’t nobody in this family ever been selfish with their children. Why, I’ve got up many a morning to find a porch full of young’uns somebody’s dropped off in the night.” “Most often Alma’s.” “Oh, don’t go on about Alma. She’s got a good heart, for all that temper of hers, and maybe because of it. And damn, but she’s had a hard time, especially with her girls. It don’t surprise me that this sick baby of hers is a girl. She’s had no luck with her girls. Ever since Temple left home she’s gone as sour as bad whiskey.” “Everybody says Temple takes after Alma, but I can’t see it,” Mama said. “I’d swear the girl was never easy in her body. Never gave a hoot about nobody or nothing, except her pride.” Aunt Raylene started giggling over the lip of her tea glass. “You know, she was standing in the yard that time the sheriff came and all the yelling started. Stood out there and tried to pretend wasn’t nothing going on, wasn’t no sheriffs in the yard with a warrant, no beating on the door, nobody throwing clothes out the window. The girl’s purely amazing.” “What’d she do, offer him a glass of water?” “Hell no, she tried to get Alma out of the house so she could give up the furniture quietly. She didn’t care what happened, didn’t care that the furniture-store man really was trying to rob her mama, just didn’t want the neighbors to think they couldn’t keep up the payments.” “As if everybody didn’t know it already. You can’t keep secrets like that.” “Well, you and I don’t even try. And certainly Alma don’t. She knows who she is. But it’s different for the kids. Seems like they’re all the time wanting just what they can’t have, and they’ve got such a funny dose of pride.” “No pride at all or too much, I can’t tell sometimes.” “Different from us is all, maybe.” Aunt Raylene’s face went slack and her voice dropped. “Look at your girls too, Anney. I’ve seen it in them. Not like Temple. No.

• From I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings (1969)

  I let myself be convinced and then the mark began to drag the Northern whites. He told me that they made Negroes sleep in the street in the North and that they had to clean out toilets with their hands in the North and even things worse than that. I was shocked and said, ‘Then I don't want to sell my land to that white man who offered seventy-five thousand dollars for it.’ Just Black said, ‘I wouldn't know what to do with that kind of money’ and I said that all I wanted was to have enough money to buy a home for my old mom, to buy a business and to make one trip to Harlem. The mark asked how much would that cost and I said I reckoned I could do it on fifty thousand dollars. “The mark told me no Negro was safe with that kind of money. That whitefolks would take it from him. I said I knew it but I had to have at least forty thousand dollars. He agreed. We shook hands. I said it would do my heart good to see the mean Yankee go down on some of ‘our land.’ We met the next morning and I signed the deed in his car and he gave me the cash. “Black and I had kept most of our things in a hotel over in Hot Springs, Arkansas. When the deal was closed we walked to our car, drove across the state line and on to Hot Springs. “That's all there was to it.” When he finished, more triumphant stories rainbowed around the room riding the shoulders of laughter. By all accounts those storytellers, born Black and male before the turn of the twentieth century, should have been ground into useless dust. Instead they used their intelligence to pry open the door of rejection and not only became wealthy but got some revenge in the bargain. It wasn't possible for me to regard them as criminals or be anything but proud of their achievements. The needs of a society determine its ethics, and in the Black American ghettos the hero is that man who is offered only the crumbs from his country's table but by ingenuity and courage is able to take for himself a Lucullan feast. Hence the janitor who lives in one room but sports a robin's-egg-blue Cadillac is not laughed at but admired, and the domestic who buys forty-dollar shoes is not criticized but is appreciated. We know that they have put to use their full mental and physical powers. Each single gain feeds into the gains of the body collective. Stories of law violations are weighed on a different set of scales in the Black mind than in the white. Petty crimes embarrass the community and many people wistfully wonder why Negroes don't rob more banks, embezzle more funds and employ graft in the unions. “We are the victims of the world's most comprehensive robbery. Life demands a balance.

• From I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings (1969)

  I approached the Time Step with the same determination to win that I had approached the time tables with. There was no Uncle Willie or sizzling pot-bellied stove, but there was Mother and her laughing friends, and they amounted to the same thing. We were applauded and given more soft drinks and more shrimp, but it was to be years later before I found the joy and freedom of dancing well. Mother's brothers, Uncles Tutti, Tom and Ira, were well-known young men about St. Louis. They all had city jobs, which I now understand to have been no mean feat for Negro men. Their jobs and their family set them apart, but they were best known for their unrelenting meanness. Grandfather had told them, “Bah Jesus, if you ever get in jail for stealing or some such foolishness, I'll let you rot. But if you're arrested for fighting, I'll sell the house, lock, stock and barrel, to get you out!” With that kind of encouragement, backed by explosive tempers, it was no wonder they became fearsome characters. Our youngest uncle, Billy, was not old enough to join in their didoes. One of their more flamboyant escapades has become a proud family legend. Pat Patterson, a big man, who was himself protected by the shield of a bad reputation, made the mistake of cursing my mother one night when she was out alone. She reported the incident to her brothers. They ordered one of their hangers-on to search the streets for Patterson, and when he was located, to telephone them. As they waited throughout the afternoon, the living room filled with smoke and the murmurs of plans. From time to time, Grandfather came in from the kitchen and said, “Don't kill him. Mind you, just don't kill him,” then went back to his coffee with Grandmother. They went to the saloon where Patterson sat drinking at a small table. Uncle Tommy stood by the door, Uncle Tutti stationed himself at the toilet door and Uncle Ira, who was the oldest and maybe everyone's ideal, walked over to Patterson. They were all obviously carrying guns. Uncle Ira said to my mother, “Here, Bibbi. Here's this nigger Patterson. Come over here and beat his ass.” She crashed the man's head with a policeman's billy enough to leave him just this side of death. There was no police investigation nor social reprobation. After all, didn't Grandfather champion their wild tempers, and wasn't Grandmother a near-white woman with police pull? I admit that I was thrilled by their meanness. They beat up whites and Blacks with the same abandon, and liked each other so much that they never needed to learn the art of making outside friends. My mother was the only warm, outgoing personality among her siblings. Grandfather became bedridden during our stay there, and his children spent their free time telling him jokes, gossiping with him and showing their love.

• From I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings (1969)

  People drank Coca-Colas like ambrosia and ate candy bars like Christmas. Some of the men went behind the Store and poured white lightning in their soft-drink bottles, and a few of the bigger boys followed them. Those who were not chased away came back blowing their breath in front of themselves like proud smokers. It would take an hour or more before the people would leave the Store and head for home. Those who lived too far had made arrangements to stay in town. It wouldn't do for a Black man and his family to be caught on a lonely country road on a night when Joe Louis had proved that we were the strongest people in the world.

• From I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings (1969)

  Proud laughter followed those declarations, for he had never had children. Because of his late-arriving but intense paternal sense, I was introduced to the most colorful characters in the Black underground. One afternoon, I was invited into our smoke-filled dining room to make the acquaintance of Stonewall Jimmy, Just Black, Cool Clyde, Tight Coat and Red Leg. Daddy Clidell explained to me that they were the most successful con men in the world, and they were going to tell me about some games so that I would never be “anybody's mark.” To begin, one man warned me, “There ain't never been a mark yet that didn't want something for nothing.” Then they took turns showing me their tricks, how they chose their victims (marks) from the wealthy bigoted whites and in every case how they used the victims' prejudice against them. Some of the tales were funny, a few were pathetic, but all were amusing or gratifying to me, for the Black man, the con man who could act the most stupid, won out every time over the powerful, arrogant white. I remember Mr. Red Leg's story like a favorite melody. “Anything that works against you can also work for you once you understand the Principle of Reverse. “There was a cracker in Tulsa who bilked so many Negroes he could set up a Negro Bilking Company. Naturally he got to thinking, Black Skin means Damn Fool. Just Black and I went to Tulsa to check him out. Come to find out, he's a perfect mark. His momma must have been scared in an Indian massacre in Africa. He hated Negroes only a little more than he despised Indians. And he was greedy. “Black and I studied him and decided he was worth setting up against the store. That means we were ready to put out a few thousand dollars in preparation. We pulled in a white boy from New York, a good con artist, and had him open an office in Tulsa. He was supposed to be a Northern real estate agent trying to buy up valuable land in Oklahoma. We investigated a piece of land near Tulsa that had a toll bridge crossing it. It used to be part of an Indian reservation but had been taken over by the state. “Just Black was laid out as the decoy, and I was going to be the fool. After our friend from New York hired a secretary and had his cards printed, Black approached the mark with a proposition. He told him that he had heard that our mark was the only white man colored people could trust. He named some of the poor fools that had been taken by that crook. It just goes to show you how whitefolks can be deceived by their own deception. The mark believed Black.

• From I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings (1969)

  In Arkansas, where we cured our own meat, we ate half-inch slabs of ham for breakfast, but in St. Louis we bought the paper-thin slices in a strange-smelling German store and ate them in sandwiches. If Grandmother never lost her German accent, she also never lost her taste for the thick black German Brot , which we bought unsliced. In Stamps, lettuce was used only to make a bed for potato salad or slaw, and peanuts were brought in raw from the field and roasted in the bottom of the oven on cold nights. The rich scents used to fill the house and we were always expected to eat too many. But that was a Stamps custom. In St. Louis, peanuts were bought in paper bags and mixed with jelly beans, which meant that we ate the salt and sugar together and I found them a delicious treat. The best thing the big town had to offer. When we enrolled in Toussaint L'Ouverture Grammar School, we were struck by the ignorance of our schoolmates and the rudeness of our teachers. Only the vastness of the building impressed us; not even the white school in Stamps was as large. The students, however, were shockingly backward. Bailey and I did arithmetic at a mature level because of our work in the Store, and we read well because in Stamps there wasn't anything else to do. We were moved up a grade because our teachers thought that we country children would make our classmates feel inferior—and we did. Bailey would not refrain from remarking on our classmates' lack of knowledge. At lunchtime in the large gray concrete playground, he would stand in the center of a crowd of big boys and ask, “Who was Napoleon Bonaparte?” “How many feet make a mile?” It was infighting, Bailey style . Any of the boys might have been able to beat him with their fists, but if they did, they'd just have had to do it again the next day, and Bailey never held a brief for fighting fair. He taught me that once I got into a fight I should “grab for the balls right away.” He never answered when I asked, “Suppose I'm fighting a girl?” We went to school there a full year, but all I remember hearing that I hadn't heard before was, “Making thousands of egg-shaped oughts will improve penmanship.” The teachers were more formal than those we knew in Stamps, and although they didn't whip their students with switches, they gave them licks in the palms of their hands with rulers. In Stamps teachers were much friendlier, but that was because they were imported from the Arkansas Negro colleges, and since we had no hotels or rooming houses in town, they had to live with private families.

• From The Letter to the Hebrews (The New Daily Study Bible) (2002)

  No one can evade the fact that, in the end, judgment comes. THE DANGER OF DRIFTING Hebrews 10:32–9 Remember the former days. Remember how, after you had been enlightened, you had to go through a hard struggle of suffering, partly because you yourselves were held up to insult and involved in affliction and partly because you had become partners with people whose life was like that. For you gave your sympathy to those in prison; you accepted the pillaging of your goods with joy; for you knew that you yourselves hold a possession which is better and which lasts. Do not throw away your confidence, for it is a confidence that has a great reward. You need fortitude so that, after you have done the will of God, you may receive the promise. For, in a short time, a very short time, ‘He who is to come will come and he will not delay. And my just man shall live by faith; but, if he shrinks back, my soul will not find pleasure in him.’ We are not men to shrink back from things and so to come to disaster, but we are men of a faith which will enable us to possess our souls. T HERE had been a time when those to whom this letter was written had experienced fierce opposition to their beliefs. When they had first become Christians, they had known persecution and plundering of their goods; and they had learned what it was to become involved with those who were under suspicion and unpopular. They had met that situation with gallantry and with honour; and now, when they were in danger of drifting away, the writer to the Hebrews reminds them of their former loyalty. It is a truth of life that, in many ways, it is easier to stand adversity than to stand prosperity. Comfort has ruined far more people than trouble ever did. The classic example is what happened to the armies of Hannibal. Hannibal of Carthage was the one general who had routed the Roman legions. But winter came, and the campaign had to be put on hold. Hannibal wintered his troops in Capua which he had captured, a city of luxury. And one winter in Capua did what the Roman legions had not succeeded in doing. The luxury so sapped the morale of the Carthaginian troops that, when the spring came and the campaign was resumed, they were unable to stand up to the Romans. Comfort had ruined them when struggle had only toughened them. That is often true of Christian life. It is often the case that people are able to meet the great hour of testing and of trial with honour; and yet they allow the times of plain sailing to sap their strength and weaken their faith. The appeal of the writer to the Hebrews is one that could be made to us all.

• From Comrade Loves of the Samurai (1972)

  But Jinnosuke answered icily: 'I have no need of your help. I am Strong enough to fight alone.'While they were thus becoming heated, Ibei Hanzawa arrived, seconded by sixteen samurai of very vulgar appearance. They meant to fight fiercely, with no thought for their lives. Jinnosuke killed two of them, while Gonkuro Struck down four. Seven others were seriously wounded, the rest fled in terror, and Ibei was killed in single combat. Gonkuro's servant, Hitjisuke, died defending his master. Gonkuro had a slight wound on the forehead, and Jinnosuke was also Stricken in the left shoulder. The two samurai remained conquerors. There was a little Buddhist temple called Yeianji quite close, to which Gonkuro and Jinnosuke walked, and there asked the priest to bury them, after they had killed themselves by Hara-kiri. But the priest dissuaded them, saying: 'You have both behaved very honourably in this duel. You ought first to report the matter to the Lord's advisers and inspectors; and you would do better to die publicly. Then your honour and glory will endure for ever.' He persuaded them to follow his advice, and they obeyed him. Then the priest hurried in person to the office of the police, and himself reported the matter. The Lord, through his inspector, ordered these young men to await their punishment. They were imprisoned and guarded during the night, and the Lord ordered their wounds to be tended. The accomplices of Ibeï were condemned to death; and the cowards who had fled were later found and executed. Jinnosuke had really broken the law by his action. But his father was a very loyal and devoted courtier; and also Jinnosuke had always done his duty faithfully. In the duel he had given proof of great courage and valour by fighting against so many assailants. The Lord thought that he deserved admiration rather than punishment. Therefore he was acquitted, and Gonkuro also obtained pardon. They were both ordered to leave their official service from the fifteenth of the month. The priest buried Ibei and his companions with considerable piety. When Jinnosuke was examined, it was seen that his left sleeve had been cut off, and that his robe was Stained with the blood which he had lost. But he did not specially suffer from his wounds, although he had more than twenty-seven of them on his body. He was greatly admired for his courage and endurance. [image file=image_rsrc1KV.jpg] 13 Love long ConcealedFOLLOWING A DISPUTE WITH THE counsellor of the Lord of the Province of Osumi, the samurai Jiuzayemon Fatjibana retired from official life. He lived very comfortably with his wife and son in a remote village. His son, Tamanosuke, was at that time fifteen years old, and so beautiful that people thought it a pity to leave him hidden in this remote village, and not to make him a well-known samurai in some large town.

• From I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings (1969)

  I approached the Time Step with the same determination to win that I had approached the time tables with. There was no Uncle Willie or sizzling pot-bellied stove, but there was Mother and her laughing friends, and they amounted to the same thing. We were applauded and given more soft drinks and more shrimp, but it was to be years later before I found the joy and freedom of dancing well. Mother's brothers, Uncles Tutti, Tom and Ira, were well-known young men about St. Louis. They all had city jobs, which I now understand to have been no mean feat for Negro men. Their jobs and their family set them apart, but they were best known for their unrelenting meanness. Grandfather had told them, “Bah Jesus, if you ever get in jail for stealing or some such foolishness, I'll let you rot. But if you're arrested for fighting, I'll sell the house, lock, stock and barrel, to get you out!” With that kind of encouragement, backed by explosive tempers, it was no wonder they became fearsome characters. Our youngest uncle, Billy, was not old enough to join in their didoes. One of their more flamboyant escapades has become a proud family legend.

• From How to Read the Bible and Still Be a Christian (2015)

  Result Octavian and Agrippa defeat Antony and Cleopatra off Cape Actium in northwestern Greece (31 BCE ). Finale Cleopatra and Antony commit suicide and Octavian acquires Egypt (29 BCE ). Rome had squandered the hundred-year aftermath of its Carthaginian triumphs in social conflict between the Optimates (the “haves” led by “haves”) and the Populares (the “have-nots” led by “haves”). The social unrest culminated in the decades of civil war from approximately 50 to 30 BCE . Finally, return for a moment to Octavian and Agrippa’s victory over Cleopatra and Antony at Actium. After he pursued them to their double suicide at Alexandria, Octavian erected a memorial Nicopolis, or Victory City, north of Cape Actium. But a special and separate victory monument was also erected with an altar and completed by 29 BCE . That special memorial included a row of thirty bronze attack rams captured from Antony’s defeated warships. Above them was a long inscription in which Octavian dedicated the memorial in the name of religion to Mars and Neptune in gratitude for the war he had fought and the victory he had won, and the subsequent peace. The result was, in lapidary Latin, PACE PARTA TERRA MARIQUE (“peace established on land and sea”). Already in 29 BCE , Roman imperial theology was structured around this quite clear and explicit sequence: religion, war, victory, peace, or, in briefest summary as mantra and motto: Peace Through Victory . There is, however, one striking aspect of that huge memorial. It was erected on the site of Octavian’s battle tent, “from which,” says that inscription, “he set forth to attack the enemy” that fateful morning of September 2, 31 BCE . Octavian’s bed had become sacred ground. Peace through victory was not so much established by Octavian as incarnated in Augustus. Civil war had not only threatened Rome’s survival, it had devastated the Mediterranean. (Notice, for example, that those three climactic battles were fought in Greece.) But now, war was over, peace was restored, the empire was safe, and Octavian would be decreed “Augustus” by the Senate in 27 BCE . The syllogism was set: only Gods give victory; but Augustus gave victory; therefore, Augustus was—a? or the?—God. Furthermore, Octavian-become-Caesar-become-Augustus was Rome’s redeemer from sin. The poet Horace pondered Rome’s civil wars and wondered, “Does some blind frenzy drive us on, or some stronger power, or fault [culpa ]”? Is Rome doomed by its original sin, by “the crime [scelus ] of a brother’s murder, ever since blameless Remus’s blood was spilt upon the ground, to be a curse upon posterity”? Were Romans “an impious generation, of stock accursed” [Epode 7]? Rome’s inaugural sin was repeated in the murder of Julius Caesar and the consequent fratricidal civil war. Once again, Horace asked: “Our children made fewer by their parents’ sins . . .

• From I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings (1969)

  The dentist showed me the medicine and the needle before he deadened my gums, but if he hadn't I wouldn't have worried. Momma stood right behind him. Her arms were folded and she checked on everything he did. The teeth were extracted and she bought me an ice cream cone from the side window of a drug counter. The trip back to Stamps was quiet, except that I had to spit into a very small empty snuff can which she had gotten for me and it was difficult with the bus humping and jerking on our country roads. At home, I was given a warm salt solution, and when I washed out my mouth I showed Bailey the empty holes, where the clotted blood sat like filling in a pie crust. He said I was quite brave, and that was my cue to reveal our confrontation with the peckerwood dentist and Momma's incredible powers. I had to admit that I didn't hear the conversation, but what else could she have said than what I said she said? What else done? He agreed with my analysis in a lukewarm way and I happily (after all, I'd been sick) flounced into the Store. Momma was preparing our evening meal and Uncle Willie leaned on the door sill. She gave her version. “Dentist Lincoln got right uppity. Said he'd rather put his hand in a dog's mouth. And when I reminded him of the favor, he brushed it off like a piece of lint. Well, I sent Sister downstairs and went inside, I hadn't never been in his office before, but I found the door to where he takes out teeth, and him and the nurse was in there thick as thieves. I just stood there till he caught sight of me.” Crash bang the pots on the stove. “He jumped just like he was sitting on a pin. He said, ‘Annie, I done tole you, I ain't gonna mess around in no niggah's mouth.’ I said, ‘Somebody's got to do it then,’ and he said, ‘Take her to Texarkana to the colored dentist’ and that's when I said, ‘If you paid me my money I could afford to take her.’ He said, ‘It's all been paid.’ I tole him everything but the interest had been paid. He said, ‘ 'Twasn't no interest.’ I said, ‘ 'Tis now. I'll take ten dollars as payment in full.’ You know, Willie, it wasn't no right thing to do, 'cause I lent that money without thinking about it. “He tole that little snippity nurse of his'n to give me ten dollars and make me sign a ‘paid in full’ receipt. She gave it to me and I signed the papers. Even though by rights he was paid up before, I figger, he gonna be that kind of nasty, he gonna have to pay for it.” Momma and her son laughed and laughed over the white man's evilness and her retributive sin.

• From The Pisces (2018)

  Now this was getting crazy. Was I a sorcerer? Had I conjured all of this? What was he trying to do? It was like I was the other woman and Megan was the one he was stuck with. I suddenly no longer felt hurt that he was with her. I liked being the desirable one. Also, I liked playing with him. I was going to ignore him. Already high on Garrett and our impending date, I would be able to do it. This was what I needed—multiple men at all times. Then I wouldn’t need any of them. Put me naked in a clamshell. Let them all fawn around me. 16.“You’re absolutely glowing! You’re not dating anyone, are you?” asked Annika. She was standing on the balcony of her hotel wearing a long embroidered caftan. Through video chat I could see the Provence sunset behind her. “No, I’m keeping to myself.” “Good,” she said. “Get that kundalini shakti recharged. Don’t go scattering that chi anywhere and you’ll be a warrior by the time I get back. How is the group?” “A nightmare,” I said. “But you’re going?” “I’m going.” “Let me see my baby.” I held the computer screen up to Dominic. She made cooing noises and he pawed it, whined a little. “He looks a touch sad,” she said. “You’re spending ample time with him?” “We’re thick as thieves.” “Good,” she said. “Maybe add a bit of coconut oil to his dry food. It keeps his coat nice and shiny.” “Already doing it.” “Thanks, and you should cook for him. That turkey, zucchini, and peas dish I left the recipe for out on the counter. He loves it. Vegetables are good for his blood sugar.” “Will do.” “I hate being separated from him for so long. You don’t think I’m a bad mother, do you?” “No, it’s the twenty-first century, don’t be a helicopter parent.” “But—” “That’s just patriarchal guilt. Enjoy your trip, Aunt Lucy is taking great care of him.” When we hung up I felt like an asshole. Annika had always tried to be a good sister to me. By the time my mother died she was already in college, out of the house, but she tried her best. She called often to check in on me and never made me feel like I had been forgotten. She sent me mix tapes, weed, and makeup, so that I could feel cool in high school. Before she was even rich she paid for the abortion I had at nineteen so I wouldn’t have to ask my father for the money. How was I repaying her? By neglecting the most beloved thing in her life for strangers on the Internet.

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

  He was of the earth earthy, but with his bold face lifted to heaven. He was not a polished diamond, but a rough block cut out from a granite mountain and well fitted for a solid base of a mighty structure. He laid the foundation, and others finished the upper stories. § 19. Luther in the University of Erfurt. At the age of eighteen, in the year 1501, he entered, as "Martinus Ludher ex Mansfeld," the University of Erfurt, which had been founded a hundred years before (1392) and was then one of the best in Germany.117 By that time his father was able to assist him so that he was free of care and could acquire a little library. He studied chiefly scholastic philosophy, namely: logic, rhetoric, physics and metaphysics. His favorite teacher was Truttvetter, called "Doctor Erfordiensis."118 The palmy days of scholasticism which reared those venerable cathedrals of thought in support of the traditional faith of the church in the thirteenth century, had passed away, and were succeeded by the times of barren disputes about Realism and Nominalism or the question whether the general ideas (the universalia) had an objective reality, or a merely nominal, subjective existence in the mind. Nominalism was then the prevailing system. On the other hand the humanistic studies were reviving all over Europe and opened a new avenue of intellectual culture and free thought. The first Greek book in Greek letters (a grammar) which was published in Germany, appeared in Erfurt. John Crotus Rubeanus (Jäger) who studied there since 1498 and became rector of the University in 1520 and 1521, was one of the leaders of humanism and the principal author of the first part of the famous anti-monkish Epistolae obscurorum virorum (1515); he was at first an intimate friend of Hutten and Luther, and greeted the latter on his way to Worms (1521) as the man who "first after so many centuries dared to strangle the Roman license with the sword of the Scripture," but afterward he fell away from the Reformation (1531) and assailed it bitterly.119 Luther did not neglect the study of the ancient classics, especially Cicero, Vergil, Plautus, and Livy.120 He acquired sufficient mastery of Latin to write it with clearness and vigor, though not with elegance and refinement. The knowledge of Greek he acquired afterward as professor at Wittenberg. In classical culture he never attained the height of Erasmus and Melanchthon, of Calvin and Beza; but in original thought and in the mastery of his own mother tongue he was unrivalled. He always regarded the languages as the sheath for the sword of the Spirit. Beside his literary studies he cultivated his early love for music. He sang, and played the lute right merrily. He was a poet and musician as well as a theologian. He prized music as a noble gift of God, as a remedy against sadness and evil thoughts, and an effective weapon against the assaults of the devil.

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

  Every Christian man could henceforth go to the fountain-head of inspiration, and sit at the feet of the Divine Teacher, without priestly permission and intervention. This achievement of the Reformation was a source of incalculable blessings for all time to come. In a few years Luther’s version had more readers among the laity than ever the Latin Vulgate had among priests; and the Protestant Bible societies circulate more Bibles in one year than were copied during the fifteen centuries before the Reformation. We must remember, however, that this wonderful progress was only made possible by the previous invention of the art of printing and by the subsequent education of the people. The Catholic Church had preserved the sacred Scriptures through ages of ignorance and barbarism; the Latin Bible was the first gift of the printing press to the world; fourteen or more editions of a German version were printed before 1518; the first two editions of the Greek Testament we owe to the liberality of a Spanish cardinal (Ximenes), and the enterprise of a Dutch scholar in Basel (Erasmus); and the latter furnished the text from which, with the aid of Jerome’s Vulgate, the translations of Luther and Tyndale were made. The Roman church, while recognizing the divine inspiration and authority of the Bible, prefers to control the laity by the teaching priesthood, and allows the reading of the Scriptures in the popular tongues only under certain restrictions and precautions, from fear of abuse and profanation. Pope Innocent III. was of the opinion that the Scriptures were too deep for the common people, as they surpassed even the understanding of the wise and learned. Several synods in Gaul, during the thirteenth century, prohibited the reading of the Romanic translation, and ordered the copies to be burnt. Archbishop Berthold, of Mainz, in an edict of January 4th, 1486, threatened with excommunication all who ventured to translate and to circulate translations of sacred books, especially the Bible, without his permission. The Council of Constance (1415), which burnt John Hus and Jerome of Prague, condemned also the writings and the hopes of Wiclif, the first translator of the whole Bible into the English tongue, to the flames: and Arundel, archbishop of Canterbury and chancellor of England, denounced him as that "pestilent wretch of damnable heresy who, as a complement of his wickedness, invented a new translation of the

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

  He was dead to the world and was willing to be buried out of the sight of men that he might win eternal life. His latter opponents who knew him in convent, have no charge to bring against his moral character except a certain pride and combativeness, and he himself complained of his temptations to anger and envy.124 It was not without significance that the order which he joined, bore the honored name of the greatest Latin father who, next to St. Paul, was to be Luther’s chief teacher of theology and religion; but it is an error to suppose that this order represented the anti-Pelagian or evangelical views of the North African father; on the contrary it was intensely catholic in doctrine, and given to excessive worship of the Virgin Mary, and obedience to the papal see which conferred upon it many special privileges. St. Augustin, after his conversion, spent several weeks with some friends in quiet seclusion on a country-seat near Tagaste, and after his election to the priesthood, at Hippo in 391, he established in a garden a sort of convent where with like-minded brethren and students he led an ascetic life of prayer, meditation and earnest, study of the Scriptures, yet engaged at the same time in all the public duties of a preacher, pastor and leader in the theological controversies and ecclesiastical affairs of his age. His example served as an inspiration and furnished a sort of authority to several monastic associations which arose in the thirteenth century. Pope Alexander IV. (1256) gave them the so-called rule of St. Augustin. They belonged to the mendicant monks, like the Dominicans, Franciscans and Carmelites. They laid great stress on preaching. In other respects they differed little from other monastic orders. In the beginning of the sixteenth century they numbered more than a hundred settlements in Germany. The Augustinian congregation in Saxony was founded in 1493, and presided over since 1503 by John von Staupitz, the Vicar-General for Germany, and Luther’s friend. The convent at Erfurt was the largest and most important next to that at Nürnberg. The monks were respected for their zeal in preaching, pastoral care, and theological study. They lived on alms, which they collected themselves in the town and surrounding country. Applicants were received as novices for a year of probation, during which they could reconsider their resolution; afterward they were bound by perpetual vows of celibacy, poverty and obedience to their superiors. Luther was welcomed by his brethren with hymns of joy and prayer. He was clothed with a white woollen shirt, in honor of the pure Virgin, a black cowl and frock, tied by a leathern girdle. He assumed the most menial offices to subdue his pride: he swept the floor, begged bread through the streets, and submitted without a murmur to the ascetic severities. He said twenty-five Paternosters with the Ave Maria in each of the seven appointed hours of prayer.

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

  And I shall further boast: I can expound Psalms and Prophets; which they can not. I can translate; which they can not .... Therefore the word allein shall remain in my New Testament, and though all pope-donkeys (Papstesel) should get furious and foolish, they shall not turn it out."466 The Protestant and anti-Romish character of Luther’s New Testament is undeniable in his prefaces, his discrimination between chief books and less important books, his change of the traditional order, and his unfavorable judgments on James, Hebrews, and Revelation.467 It is still more apparent in his marginal notes, especially on the Pauline Epistles, where he emphasizes throughout the difference between the law and the gospel, and the doctrine of justification by faith alone; and on the Apocalypse, where he finds the papacy in the beast from the abyss (Rev. 13), and in the Babylonian harlot (Rev. 17).468 The anti-papal explanation of the Apocalypse became for a long time almost traditional in Protestant commentaries. On the other hand, the Roman Catholic translators used the same liberty of marginal annotations and pictorial illustrations in favor of the doctrines and usages of their own church. Emser’s New Testament is full of anti-Lutheran glosses. In Rom. 3:28, he protests on the margin against Luther’s allein, and says, "Paul by the words ’without works of the law’ does not mean that man is saved by faith alone, without good works, but only without works of the law, that is, external circumcision and other Jewish ceremonies." He therefore confines the "law" here to the ritual law, and "works" to Jewish works; while, according to the best modern commentators, Paul means the whole law, moral as well as ceremonial, and all works commanded by the law. And yet even in the same chapter and throughout the whole Epistle to the Romans, Emser copies verbatim Luther’s version for whole verses and sections; and where he departs from his language, it is generally for the worse. The same may be said of the other two German Catholic Bibles of the age of the Reformation. They follow Luther’s language very closely within the limits of the Vulgate, and yet abuse him in the notes. Dr. Dietenberger adds his comments in smaller type after the chapters, and agrees with Emser’s interpretation of Rom. 3:28.469 Dr. Eck’s German Bible has few notes, but a strongly anti-Protestant preface.470

• From Whipping Girl: A Transsexual Woman on Sexism and the Scapegoating of Femininity (2007)

  It’s not just that MTF spectrum folks need feminism, but that feminism needs to embrace MTF experiences and perspectives. The fact that the lion’s share of the anti-trans sentiment specifically targets those of us on the MTF spectrum indicates that we are marked, not for failing to conform to gender norms per se but because we “choose” to be female and/or feminine. For feminism to ignore the society-wide effemimania and trans-misogyny we face is to allow one of the most pervasive forms of traditional sexism to go unchecked. Indeed, for feminists to continue to dismiss effemimania solely because it targets those who are male-bodied is particularly shortsighted. After all, as previously mentioned, much of the sexist behavior exhibited by cissexual men arises directly out of their being forced to disavow and mystify femininity from an early age. In this respect, MTF spectrum folks can provide feminism with crucial insight into the workings of effemimania and offer strategies to potentially challenge it. Additionally, those of us who transition to female can provide firsthand accounts of the very different ways that women and men are treated in the world—a perspective that is especially relevant today given how common it is for people to naively claim that we as a society have transcended sexism and moved into a “postfeminist” era. But perhaps most of all, what MTF spectrum trans people can offer feminism is a very different and far more empowering perspective on femininity. Over the years, many feminists have argued that femininity undermines women, or that it’s purposefully designed to subordinate women to men. Such a view no doubt stems from the experiences of those women who have felt that the expectation of femininity has been forced upon them against their will. But those of us on the MTF spectrum who have had the reciprocal experience—of inexplicably being inclined or compelled to express femininity that we were taught to avoid or repress—cannot so easily dismiss femininity as an artifice whose sole purpose is to devalue and disempower women. Because we come to embrace our own femininity for ourselves rather than to appease others, we are able to appreciate the many ways in which femininity can be freeing and empowering for those who gravitate toward it on their own. Many of us reject all of the inferior meanings and connotations that others project onto femininity—that it is weak, artificial, frivolous, demure, and passive—because for us, there has been no act more bold and daring than embracing our own femininity. In a world that is awash in antifeminine sentiment, we understand that embracing and empowering femininity can potentially be one of the most transformative and revolutionary acts imaginable. 18 Barrette Manifesto