Realization

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 The Chronology of Water (2011)

  Turns out, according to neuroscience, the more you actively “remember” something, the more the headstory you carry around changes. Every time you recall something, you modify it a little bit and that’s because brains-this is very cool - brains work through a mixture of images, pictures, feelings, words, facts, and fiction-all “recollected.” Eventually you are not remembering what happened at all, but your story or head movie about it. The safest memories are probably those embedded in the brains of people who have lost the ability to retrieve them. In writing, every narrative and linguistic choice you make forecloses others, directs the story a certain way, focuses on a particular image, extends a metaphor that on another day, you might have chosen very differently. Form has everything to do with content in this sense. So what is “true” in non-fiction writing is also always “crafted” - given shape and composition and emotional intensity-through our narrative choices as writers. And that’s in addition to the science of memory. So the true story is always a fiction. This is why I have come to believe that non-fiction and fiction are as inextricably linked as memory and imagination - which, as it turns out, also use the same brain circuits when they are active. So much of memory is recollecting pieces. And that’s what writing is - drawing from language to recollect and shape pieces of things. I am absolutely more able to reveal emotional truths about myself or anything inside fiction writing. The imaginative realm makes the most “sense” to me in my life - it’s everything else in life that is difficult. But I did find something in the course of writing this non-fiction book that truly amazed me. I could address my mother and father as characters from parts of their lives that did not include me. I could imagine a prestory to them. I could feel compassion for them. And I can thank them for this life I have, as bittersweet a process as that is to move through. Earlier you mentioned the metaphor of collecting rocks. One of my favorite chapters, “Metaphor,” describes this as follows: “The rocks. They carry the chronology of water. All things simultaneously living and dead in your hands.” Here also is your title. What does the chronology of water mean to you?

• From Worried about Everything Because I Pray about Nothing (2022)

  You take it in for service. None of us are perfect, but we should always pay the most attention to the areas that are most important. WHOLE PEOPLE ARE HEALTHY PEOPLE Spiritual bypassing comes from a mindset that sees our spirit as separate from the rest of our selves. We think that belief in God means ignoring the physical, tangible parts of our beings in favor of spiritual practices. But it doesn’t work that way. You can’t separate the pieces of yourself. Faith doesn’t exist separately. Our spirituality, and therefore our prayers, are inextricably connected to every aspect of who we are: mind, soul, spirit, body, will, emotion. Dr. Clark writes: One key identifier of spiritual bypass is an obvious imbalance or compartmentalization of the self; rather than integrating all levels of human consciousness, those in spiritual bypass focus solely on the spiritual level as a means to avoid painful psychological work. . . . The spiritual practices, seeking, and focus are not in and of themselves detrimental. Rather, the concern is the avoidance of the psychological and emotional work that is necessary for healing. Therefore, the discourse around spiritual bypass does not carry the implication that the spiritual life is wrong or unhealthy. There are times, however, when the most appropriate spiritual practice is to engage in necessary, albeit uncomfortable, psychological work.2 In other words, we need spiritual practices—but we also need to deal with trauma. We need to understand grief. We need to recognize our weaknesses, addictions, fears, and dreams. We need to take care of our entire selves: body, soul, and spirit. So yes, have faith for physical health. But also eat more salads and fewer corn dogs. Pray for your finals. But also study and get a good night’s sleep. Ask God to bless your finances. But read a book or take a class or at least watch a few YouTube videos about balancing a budget. Faith and works are friends. And they are on the same side—yours. Don’t pit them against each other. Beware of teaching or philosophies that deny reality in the name of faith or that permit abuse to continue under the guise of spirituality. There is nothing spiritual about ignoring reality. Faith is not blind. Only foolishness is. I remember an old preacher saying that he had met people who were “so heavenly minded they were no earthly good.” He makes a valid point. If your faith doesn’t work in the real world, maybe it’s not faith at all. Maybe it’s escapism. Real faith is fully aware of what is happening in the physical world, but it sees beyond that world. It takes God into account. It uses faith to inform the present, not deny it. Your faith should make you more whole, not more fragmented. It should align you, orient you, stabilize you, unify you. If it doesn’t, get a new one, because yours is broken.

• From Wild (2012)

  I walked down to the empty little beach along Elk Lake with the two pennies in my hand, wondering if I should toss them into the water and make a wish. I decided against it and put them in my shorts pocket, just in case I needed two cents between now and the Olallie Lake ranger station, which was still a sobering hundred miles away. Having nothing more than those two pennies was both horrible and just the slightest bit funny, the way being flat broke at times seemed to me. As I stood there gazing at Elk Lake, it occurred to me for the first time that growing up poor had come in handy. I probably wouldn’t have been fearless enough to go on such a trip with so little money if I hadn’t grown up without it. I’d always thought of my family’s economic standing in terms of what I didn’t get: camp and lessons and travel and college tuition and the inexplicable ease that comes when you’ve got access to a credit card that someone else is paying off. But now I could see the line between this and that—between a childhood in which I saw my mother and stepfather forging ahead over and over again with two pennies in their pocket and my own general sense that I could do it too. Before I left, I hadn’t calculated how much my journey would reasonably be expected to cost and saved up that amount plus enough to be my cushion against unexpected expenses. If I’d done that, I wouldn’t have been here, eighty-some days out on the PCT, broke, but okay—getting to do what I wanted to do even though a reasonable person would have said I couldn’t afford to do it. I hiked on, ascending to a 6,500-foot viewpoint from which I could see the peaks to the north and east: Bachelor Butte and glaciated Broken Top and—highest of them all—South Sister, which rose to 10,358 feet. My guidebook told me that it was the youngest, tallest, and most symmetrical of the Three Sisters. It was composed of over two dozen different kinds of volcanic rock, but it all looked like one reddish-brown mountain to me, its upper slopes laced with snow. As I hiked into the day, the air shifted and warmed again and I felt as if I were back in California, with the heat and the way the vistas opened up for miles across the rocky and green land.

• From Emotional Inheritance (2022)

  As time passes, the traumatic experience is reprocessed. In every developmental phase the child will revisit the abuse from a different angle and with different understanding. When that abused child becomes a teenager and then an adult, when they have sex for the first time or have children, when their child reaches the age they were when the abuse happened—in each moment the abuse will be reprocessed from a slightly different perspective. The process of mourning keeps changing and accrues new layers of meaning. Time will not necessarily make the memory fade; instead, the memory will appear and reappear in different forms and will be experienced simultaneously as real and unreal. NINETEEN YEARS AFTER I first met Lara, it is a gloomy day in mid-September and I’m about to meet her again. It is also my birthday. In the intervening years, I’ve had three children. I have stopped working with children and am now only seeing adults. My office is in the same neighborhood as it was nineteen years ago, in downtown Manhattan. I open my door and look at the tall young woman who stands there. I do not recognize her. “I grew up quite a bit.” She smiles as if reading my mind. “Thank you for answering my email so quickly, and for agreeing to see me.” She sits on the couch and looks around. “I like your new office.” I recognize her smile and these first words. “Those were your exact words when I met you for the first time,” I say, trying to learn something about her from the way she looks: the black T-shirt, the black long silk skirt, her sneakers and blue nail polish, and her long straight hair, which I think used to be curly. I’m trying to read what has happened to her in the years since then. Where has she been? Is she happy? Did she find out what really happened? “I know it’s your birthday today,” she then says to my surprise. I nod and smile. Some things don’t change. She still knows more about me than I expect. “Don’t worry, I can’t read your mind,” she adds as if reading my mind. “When I tried to find you, I googled you, and one of the first things I found on your Wikipedia page was your birthday. I was happy you scheduled our session for today. I really wanted to give you a gift.” Traditionally, therapists do not accept gifts from patients. The contract with our patients is clear; there is no dual relationship, no exchanges other than our professional services for an hourly fee. Psychoanalyst and patient share a joint goal of trying to explore the unconscious; therefore, it’s interesting to understand when and why a patient brings a gift and what that gift represents. But in reality nothing can make a gift feel unappreciated and dismissed more than analyzing it.

• From The Lives of Great Christians (2007)

  A. Instead, we will explore Luther, the man of faith. 1. He was troubled and burdened by his own failings and recognized his dependence on God. 2. He was a man of great personal courage who took extraordinary risks in proclaiming the truth of Christianity as he understood it. B. We will focus on events in Luther’s life that tell us the most about what sort of Christian he was. C. Luther’s writings reveal a man who was at times humble and at other times quite arrogant; a man who recognized love as the way humans express their faith, yet a man who was capable of virulent hatred and intolerance. D. It is significant that Luther’s last written words were: “We are beggars: this is true.” IV. Luther’s university training for a career in law was interrupted when, in fear during a storm, he pledged that he would become a monk if he survived. A. Luther entered the order of Augustinian friars at Erfurt, where he was studying, and changed his study to theology. B. Despite “heroic” attempts at fasting and other ascetic practices as well as quite frequent confession, Luther was deeply troubled. C. After profession, ordination, and years of study, he went to a small and rather insignificant new university in Wittenberg to teach. V. While Luther was preparing lectures on Paul, he had what we refer to as the Reformation discovery. A. Luther had been scrupulous about discipline and confession but continued to fear God’s wrath. B. Someone famously said to Luther that God was not angry with him but, rather, Luther was angry with God. C. As Luther reflected deeply on Paul, especially Romans 1:17, it was as if the scales fell from his eyes; he realized that the just person lives by faith. D. This primacy of faith had extraordinary implications, but it took Luther a while to grasp them. ©2007 The Teaching Company. 76

• From The Surrender: An Erotic Memoir (2004)

  “Can’t I see her, too? You know, separately?” He thought it a fine idea—same mom, common ground, and similar information. She was less enthusiastic, but she finally agreed. Great—I finally had the shrink of my dreams, and she could now help me deal with the very annoying man who came with the deal. Here was a different kind of triangle—not sexual, per se—but more insidious. All my conversations with the Boyfriend were about our different, and occasionally mutual, therapy. In bed with Mom we certainly were—trouble was, I came to love Mom more than I loved him, while he remained convinced that he was her most cherished client. Just like when a man has bought three lap dances from a stripper, has a raging hard-on, and declares in all seriousness, “I think she really likes me!” When I initiated mistressing, our dear therapist announced that one of us had to go—or both. If we were potentially not monogamous and she knew it, the therapy would be poisoned. The Boyfriend announced that he’d had enough therapy and was ready to hit the road alone, comforted by the notion that when a man chooses his lover over his therapist it is a sign of his newly found independence and maturity. This was fortunate because I announced that I would definitely not give up the shrink no matter what. I chose my therapist over my lover, which was a sign of my own growing maturity: I had finally decided to choose a woman over a man. After four or five months of mistressing, I ended it completely and during the last phone call with the Boyfriend the elegant irony became apparent: he had now lost not only his lover but his shrink as well. I see it like this: you just never really can know what a particular connection is about—until later. The Last Boyfriend was about me finding a woman who would not only witness and analyze my misery but whose very presence in my life echoed my never-before-possible ability to endorse myself above, and beyond, any man. And when A-Man entered my world, she endorsed me from behind as well—while I learned to embrace my masochism sexually and leave it out of my life. DURING A-MAN You just don’t know when he’s going to show up. The one who is going to change everything forever, the one who’s going to rock your world. He might even be someone you already know. The Young Man had been gone for two years. In the meantime, I had acquired the Boyfriend, while the redhead Pre-Raphaelite had acquired a tall, skinny, rocker musician who wore more makeup than she did: they painted each other’s nails and were mad in monogamous love. So when the Young Man called, I knew it would have to be a two-way; the safety of a three-way sandwich was no longer an option.

• From Emotional Inheritance (2022)

  Babies are often named after relatives or others who passed away. A child might be given the name of a person the parents loved, admired, or attributed certain characteristics to. The child’s name might reflect certain expectations, responsibilities, or roles. For example, one of my patients was named after his mother’s father, who died just before my patient was born. In therapy we connected his name to the role he was assigned at birth, as his mother’s caretaker. His mother described him as a mature and responsible baby, wise from a young age, whom she turned to for advice. Another patient was given a name by his mother that meant “mine.” It turned out that his father was ambivalent about having a child; she felt this baby was hers alone. As I describe in Part II, there is a profound meaning in naming a baby after a person who died in tragic circumstances, for example, a child or a person who died by suicide or was murdered. Doing so is often an expression of a wish not only to revive what was lost but also to repair the past and heal trauma. In mid-April Rachel, Marc, and baby Ruth go to Israel—to look for their future, to search for the past, to find out who Ruth was. What they discover is unbelievable but in fact also quite believable. Suddenly everything makes sense. In Jerusalem, Rachel, Marc, and Ruth meet the family of her grandfather’s friend from Auschwitz. His friend had died years earlier, but the man’s daughter and granddaughter are happy to see them. They invite them to the daughter’s house in Jerusalem. “We met them on a Sunday morning,” Rachel tells me. “I had never felt such a breeze as on that day in Jerusalem. We walked into our hosts’ home, with Ruth sleeping in the sling, and were invited to sit on the porch. As we sat down, Ruth woke up, and I introduced her to the family. ‘This is Ruth,’ I said, and the daughter looked at me, startled. She didn’t say a word and went to the kitchen to bring tea and cookies. When she came back, she said, ‘How meaningful that you named her Ruth. My father used to talk about Ruth. He said that your grandfather never recovered from her death. That a part of him died with her.’ “I didn’t know what to say. I was too embarrassed to tell her that I had no idea who Ruth was. That I only knew from my mother that she was a relative who had died at Auschwitz and that her name was on the memorial candle my grandparents used to light every holiday. I couldn’t breathe and instead kept silent. Marc looked at me and knew what I needed. He turned to our host and asked if she could tell us everything she knew about Ruth.

• From The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian (2007)

  Rowdy is indeed based on my childhood best friend on the Spokane Indian Reservation. But I completely disguised the connection between the fictional character and the real person. How thorough was that disguise? Rowdy’s real name is Randy. Randy J. Peone. So, okay, “Rowdy” and “Randy” are almost synonyms. But Rowdy and Randy differ in significant ways. Unlike Rowdy, Randy is not a single child. He has, like, eighteen thousand brothers and sisters, all of them ridiculously attractive. Unlike Rowdy’s angry father, Randy has a mother and father who are loving and supportive. For many years, Randy has lived in a house only five minutes away from his parents. Unlike Rowdy, Randy liked school. He studied science in college and has worked for our tribal fish hatchery for as long as I can remember. However, our dear Randy has always had a mean temper, like Rowdy. He has always liked to fight, physically and verbally. He has struggled with depression and anger issues. Sometimes he drinks too much. Sometimes he is cruel to his family and friends. So, yeah, Rowdy and Randy also have a lot in common. Don’t worry. Randy read this book before it was published, and he signed a release letter that stated he was cool with his fictional avatar. “Junior,” he said to me during a phone call, “the book is good. But I didn’t punch you in the face when you left Wellpinit.” “Yes, you did,” I said. “Nope,” he said. We argued about that point for a while. We, as they say, agreed to disagree. And then, a few months later, on a publicity visit in Miami, I dreamed of the day when Randy had punched me and sent me to my new school, to Reardan, with a fresh black eye. Except in my dream, a different kid slugged me. I woke from that dream and realized Randy wasn’t the one who’d punched me. It was a different Indian boy, one of my damned bullies. I thought about calling up Randy to apologize. But then I remembered that he had definitely punched me in the nose after a Little League baseball game. Well, I had punched him first, but that was only because he’d been picking on me, just like one of my eternal bullies. Randy was supposed to be my best friend. He was supposed to be my protector. So I punched him in the face for betraying me. And then he punched me back. But he punched me harder. I think he broke my nose. I never went to the doctor. I let it heal on its own. And my nose has been a little flatter ever since. So, okay, Randy did not punch me when I left him for Reardan. But he had slugged me one year earlier. I think the fictional and real punches had very similar emotional content.

• From A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on the Epistle to the Galatians (1921)

  BCDFGKL al. pier. Eus. Thdrt. Dam. omit it. Sheer accident would be as likely to operate on one side as on the other. At first sight intrinsic probability seems to make for the genuineness of the article, since the N. T. writers, and Paul in particular, rarely use 0e6<; as subject without the article. Yet the use of 0e6<; without the article, because employed with qualitative force with emphasis upon the divine attributes, especially in contrast with man, is an established usage of which there are numerous examples in Paul (see i Thes. i 9 24 i Cor. 2s 3»- 18) and a few in the nominative (i Thes. 25 Gal. 67 2 Cor. 510). In- asmuch, therefore, as there is in this passage just such a contrast, it would be in accordance with Pauline usage to omit the article, and the balance of intrinsic probability is apparently on this side. Tran- scriptional probability is also in its favour, since the scribe would be more likely to convert the unusual 0e6<; into 6 8e6q than the reverse. e/jiol ycip ol Sofcovvres ovSev irpocravdffGvro, "for to me the men of eminence taught nothing new/' In these words the apostle evidently says what he began to say in ATTO 8£ r&v SO/COVVTMV, giving it now the specific form that the Jerusalem apostles imposed on him no burden (of doctrine or practice), or imparted nothing to him in addition to what he already knew. See discussion of irpoa-avedevro below, yap may be justificatory, introducing a statement which justifies the seem- ingly harsh language of the two preceding statements, or ex- plicative, the thought overleaping the parenthetical statements just preceding, and the new clause introduced by yap putting in a different form the thought already partly expressed in awo &% r&v SoKoforaat. The latter is simpler and for that reason more probable* The uses of the verb nrp0aava<cC8i[jiat (Mid.) clearly attested outside of the present passage are three; (i) "To offer or* dedicate beside*': Boeckh. C. /, G. 2782. (2) "To confer with": Gal. i" ($.*.); Diod. Sic. 17, u64; Luc. Jup« Trog. i. (3) "To lay upon one's self in addition, to undertake besides": Xen. Mem, a.t8. Beside these there have been proposed for the present passage; (4) uTo lay upon in addition," L e, (3) taken actively instead of with a middle sense. Cf. Pollux, I gm, (5) (equiv. to vpoOTfthftAt) 4'To add," "to bestow something not possessed before ": Chrys., el al.; (6) (adding to the sense of dvaT£0«|xai in 2s and Acts 35", that of icp&<; In composition, "besides," "in addition ")» "To set forth in addition/1 L e., in this connection, " to teach in addition to what I had already leamed,*1 The word "impart1* in EV» might per- 90 GALATIANS

• From Tipping the Velvet (1998)

  She smiled - a curiously vague and inward-seeming kind of smile. ‘I never said, did I,’ she went on, ‘what I did that night?’ I shook my head. I remembered very well what I had done that night - I had supped with Diana, and then fucked her in her handsome bedroom, and then been sent from it, chilled and chastened, to my own. But I had never stopped to think what Florence might have done; and she, indeed, had never told me. ‘What did you do?’ I asked now. ‘Did you go to that - that lecture, on your own?’ ‘I did,’ she said. She took a breath. ‘I - met a girl there.’ ‘A girl?’ ‘Yes. Her name was Lilian. I saw her at once, and couldn’t take my eyes from her. She was so very - interesting looking. You know how it is, with a girl, sometimes? - well, no, perhaps you don’t...’ But I did, I did! And now I gazed at her, and felt myself grow warm; and then rather chill. She coughed, and put a hand to her mouth. Then she said, still gazing at the coals: ‘When the lecture was finished Lilian asked a question - it was a very clever question, and the speaker was quite thrown by it. I looked at her then, and knew I must know her. I went over to her, and we began to talk. We talked - we talked, Nance, for an hour, quite without stopping! She had the most unusual views. She’d read, it seemed to me, everything, and had opinions on it all.’ The story went on. They had become friends; Lilian had come calling... ‘You loved her!’ I said. Florence blushed, and then nodded. ‘You couldn’t have known her, and not loved her a little.’ ‘But Flo, you loved her! You loved her — like a tom!’ She blinked, and put a finger to her lip, and blushed harder than ever. ‘I thought,’ she said, ‘you might have guessed it ...’ ‘Guessed it! I - I am not sure. I never thought you might have - well, I cannot say what I thought...’ She turned her head away. ‘She loved me, too,’ she said, after a moment. ‘She loved me, like anything! But, not in the same way. I knew it never would be, I didn’t mind. The fact is, she had a man-friend, who wished to marry her. But she wouldn’t do it, she believed in the free union. Nance, she was the strongest-minded woman I ever knew!’ She sounded, I thought, insufferable; but I had not missed that was. I swallowed, and Florence gazed once at me, then looked again at the fire. ‘A few months after I first met her,’ she went on, ‘I began to see that she was not - quite well. One day she turned up here with a suitcase.

• From Less (2017)

  The restaurant sits on a rock above the river and is very old and water stained in ways that would delight a painter and trouble a contractor; some of the walls seem bent with humidity, and paper hangings have taken on the crinkle Less associates with books he has left in the rain. Intact are the old tile roof, wide roof beams, carved rosettes, and sliding paper walls of the old inn this used to be. A tall stately woman meets him at the entrance, bowing and greeting him by name. On their tour of the old inn, they pass a window onto an enormous walled garden. “The garden was planted four hundred years ago, when the surrounding area was poplar.” The woman makes a sweeping gesture, and he nods in appreciation. “And now,” Less says, “it’s unpoplar.” She blinks for a polite moment, then leads him into another wing, and he follows the sway of her green and gold kimono. At the portal, she slips off her clogs, and he unlaces and removes his shoes. There is sand in them: Saharan or Keralan? The woman gestures to a sniffling teenage girl in a blue kimono, who leads him down another corridor. This one is filled with hanging calligraphy and has the Alice in Wonderland effect of beginning with an enormous wooden frame and ending in a door so small that as the woman slides it sideways into a pocket in the wall, she is forced to get onto her knees to enter. It is clear that Less is meant to do the same. He supposes he is meant to experience humility; by now, he is well acquainted with humility. It is the one piece of luggage he has not lost. There, in the room, a small table, a paper wall, and one glass window so ancient that the garden behind it undulates dreamily as Less crosses the room. The room is wallpapered in large faint gold and silver snowflakes; he is told the design is from the Edo period, when microscopes made their way to Japan. Before that, no one had seen a snowflake. He takes a seat on a cushion beside a golden folding screen. The young woman exits through the little door. He hears her struggling to close it behind her; it has clearly suffered for centuries and is ready to die. He looks around at the golden screen, the stylized snowflakes, the single iris in a vase below a drawing of a deer, the paper wall. The only sound is the breathing of a humidifier behind him, and, despite the purity of the room, the view, no one has bothered to remove from its surface the sticker DAINICHI RELIABILITY . Before him: the warped view of the garden. He starts back in recognition. Here it is.

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

  " ’Not a few profane opinions plucked up by the roots the first principles of that doctrine which Thou hast delivered to us in Thy Word. The true meaning of Baptism and the Lord’s Supper, also, was corrupted by numerous falsehoods. And then, when all, with no small insult to Thy mercy, put confidence in good works, when by good works they strove to merit Thy favor, to procure justification, to expiate their sins, and make satisfaction to Thee (each of these things obliterating and making void the virtue of Christ’s cross), they were yet altogether ignorant wherein good works consisted. For, just as if they were not at all instructed in righteousness by Thy law, they had fabricated for themselves many useless frivolities, as a means of procuring Thy favor, and on these they so plumed themselves, that, in comparison of them, they almost contemned the standard of true righteousness which Thy law recommended,—to such a degree had human desires, after usurping the ascendancy, derogated, if not from the belief, at least from the authority, of Thy precepts therein contained. " ’That I might perceive these things, Thou, O Lord, didst shine upon me with the brightness of Thy Spirit; that I might comprehend how impious and noxious they were, Thou didst bear before me the torch of Thy Word; that I might abominate them as they deserved, Thou didst stimulate my soul. " ’But in rendering an account of my doctrine, Thou seest (what my own conscience declares) that it was not my intention to stray beyond those limits which I saw had been fixed by all Thy servants. Whatever I felt assured that I had learned from Thy mouth, I desired to dispense faithfully to the Church. Assuredly, the thing at which I chiefly aimed, and for which I most diligently labored, was, that the glory of Thy goodness and justice, after dispersing the mists by which it was formerly obscured, might shine forth conspicuous, that the virtue and blessings of Thy Christ (all glosses being wiped away) might be fully displayed. For I thought it impious to leave in obscurity things which we were born to ponder and meditate. Nor did I think that truths, whose magnitude no language can express, were to be maliciously or falsely declared. " ’I hesitated not to dwell at greater length on topics on which the salvation of my hearers depended. For the oracle could never deceive which declares (John 17:3): "This is eternal life to know Thee the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom Thou hast sent."

• From A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on the Epistle to the Galatians (1921)

  Ltft. Sief. Sd. e¢ al. Contra Zahn. ard arArOor eis ’ApaBiav, “but I went away into Arabia.” The purpose of this visit to Arabia, though not specifically stated, is clearly implied in od mpocaveéunv capki Kal atwarte above. By that phrase the apostle denies not only that he sought instruction from the Twelve in particular, but that he put himself in communication with men at all, excluding not only the receiving of instruction, but the imparting of it. The only natural, almost the only possible, implication is that he sought communion with God, a thought sufficiently indicated on the one side by the antithesis of “flesh and blood” and on the other by the mention of the relatively desert land to which he went. The view of some of the early fathers (adopted substantially by Bous.) that he sought no instruction from men, but having received his message hastened to Arabia to preach the gospel to the “barbarous and savage people” of this foreign land (for fuller statement of the early views see Ltft., p. 90) is not sustained by the language. He must in that case have written not mpocavebeuny, but some such expression as ove e6ntnoe SidacKkanriav, Nor is it in accordance with psy- chological probability. The revelation of Jesus as the Son of God must at once have undermined that structure of Pharisaic 56 GALATIANS thought which he had hitherto accepted, and, no doubt, fur- nished also the premises of an entirely new system of thought. But the replacement of the ruined structure with a new one built on the new premises and as complete as the materials and his power of thought enabled him to make it, however urgent the necessity for it, could not have been the work of an hour or a day. The process would have been simpler had the acceptance of Jesus as the Christ been, as it was to some of his fellow Jews, the mere addition to Judaism of the belief that Jesus was the long-expected Messiah; it would have been simpler if the acceptance of Jesus had been to him what it doubtless was to many of his Gentile converts, the acceptance of a new religion with an almost total displacement of former religious views and practices. To Paul the revelation of Jesus as the Son of God meant neither of these, but a revolutionary revision of his former beliefs, which issued in a conception of re- ligion which differed from the primitive Christian faith as com- monly held by Jewish Christians perhaps even more than the latter differed from current Judaism. Only prolonged thought could enable him to see just how much of the old was to be abandoned, how much revised, how much retained unchanged. Many days would be needed to construct out of the material new and old even so much of a new system as would enable him to begin his work as a preacher of the new faith.

• From A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on the Epistle to the Galatians (1921)

  prove that it was to this peninsula that Paul went. If it is necessary to suppose that he went to a city, Petra in the south and Bostra in the north are among the possibilities. There is nothing to necessitate the supposition that he went far from Damascus, nor anything to exclude a far-distant journey except that if he had gone far to the south a return to Damascus would perhaps have been improbable. ical ird\LV vTnl&rpetya ek &a/jt,a<r/cdv, "and again I returned to Damascus." An indirect assertion that the experience de- scribed above (aTrofcdkv^ai TOP vlov avrov iv IfMol) occurred at Damascus (cf. Acts g1'22 and parallels); from which, however, it neither follows that the aTrofcdXmfrw here spoken of must, he- cause of Acts 93' 4 be interpreted as an external appearance of Jesus, nor that the narrative in Acts is to be interpreted as referring to an experience wholly subjective. The identity of place, Damascus, and the evident fact that both passages refer to the experience by which Paul was led to abandon his opposi- tion to Jesus and accept him as the Christ, require us to refer both statements to the same general occasion; hut not (nor are we permitted), to govern the interpretation of one expression by the other. As shown above our present passage deals only with the subjective element of the experience. For the apos- tle's own interpretation of the character of the event viewed objectively, cf. i Cor. 91 is1*1, (c) Evidence of his independent apostkmhtp drawn from a visit to Jerusalem three years after his convention (tw'*°), The apostle now takes up the circumstances erf his first visit to Jerusalem after his Damascus experience, finding in it evi- dence that he was conscious of a source of truth independent of men* l$Tkm I up ie ID Cephm, and I Mm m of I/if did 1 sm the of I/M m re* the I to you, ftnl, / iii» not 18 * *Bwmi rpik ITIJ ik K,i$8»9 "Then 1 up to to visit Cephas/* The "after Is I, 18 59

• From Less (2017)

  Less sits there for a moment and then chuckles in astonishment. “Well,” he says, “summer-weight wool. At least Freddy was listening.” Carlos laughs, loses the pose, and becomes his old self again, leaning against a palm, and it flashes across his face again, briefly, the expression Less noticed in the car. Fear. Desperation. About something other than these “letters.” “So what do you say, Arthur? Sell them to me.” “No, Carlos. No.” Carlos turns from the fire, cursing his son. Less says, “Freddy has nothing to do with this.” Carlos looks out at the moonlight on the water. “You know, Arthur, my son’s not like me. Once I asked him why he was so lazy. I asked him what the hell he wanted. He couldn’t tell me. So I decided for him.” “Let’s back up a minute.” Carlos turns to look down at Less. “You really haven’t heard?” It must be the moonlight—that couldn’t be tenderness in his face. “What was that about the tragic half?” Less asks. Carlos smiles as if he has decided something. “Arthur, I changed my mind. You have the luck of a comedian. Bad luck in things that don’t matter. Good luck in things that do. I think—you probably won’t agree with this—but I think your whole life is a comedy. Not just the first part. The whole thing. You are the most absurd person I’ve ever met. You’ve bumbled through every moment and been a fool; you’ve misunderstood and misspoken and tripped over absolutely everything and everyone in your path, and you’ve won. And you don’t even realize it.” “Carlos.” He doesn’t feel victorious; he feels defeated. “My life, my life over the past year—” “Arthur Less,” Carlos interrupts, shaking his head. “You have the best life of anyone I know.” This is nonsense to Less. Carlos looks into the fire, then tosses back the rest of his champagne. “I’m heading back to shore; I’ve got to leave early tomorrow. Make sure you give Vincent your flight details. To Japan, right? Kyoto? We want to make sure you get home safe. I’ll see you in the morning.” And with that, he strides off across the island to where his boat waits in moonlight. But Less does not see Carlos in the morning. His own boat takes him back to the resort, where he stays up late looking at the stars, recalling the lawn outside his cottage and how it shimmered with glowworms, and he sees one particular constellation that looks like the stuffed squirrel named Michael he had as a boy, who was left behind in a Florida hotel room. Hello, Michael! He goes to bed very late, and when he does get up, he finds that Carlos has already left. He wonders what it is he is meant to have won.

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

  " ’I, O Lord, as I had been educated from a boy, always professed the Christian faith. But at first I had no other reason for my faith than that which then everywhere prevailed. Thy Word, which ought to have shone on all Thy people like a lamp, was taken away, or at least suppressed as to us. And lest any one should long for greater light, an idea had been instilled into the minds of all, that the investigation of that hidden celestial philosophy was better delegated to a few, whom the others might consult as oracles—that the highest knowledge befitting plebeian minds was to subdue themselves into obedience to the Church. Then, the rudiments in which I had been instructed were of a kind which could neither properly train me to the legitimate worship of Thy Deity, nor pave the way for me to a sure hope of salvation, nor train me aright for the duties of the Christian life. I had learned, indeed, to worship Thee only as my God, but as the true method of worshipping was altogether unknown to me, I stumbled at the very threshold. I believed, as I had been taught, that I was redeemed by the death of Thy Son from the liability to eternal death, but the redemption I thought of was one whose virtue could never reach me. I anticipated a future resurrection, but hated to think of it, as being an event most dreadful. And this feeling not only had dominion over me in private, but was derived from the doctrine which was then uniformly delivered to the people by their Christian teachers. " ’They, indeed, preached of Thy clemency towards men, but confined it to those who should show themselves deserving of it. They, moreover, placed this desert in the righteousness of works, so that he only was received into Thy favor who reconciled himself to Thee by works. Nor, meanwhile, did they disguise the fact that we are miserable sinners, that we often fall through infirmity of the flesh, and that to all, therefore, Thy mercy behoved to be the common haven of salvation; but the method of obtaining it, which they pointed out, was by making satisfaction to Thee for offences. Then the satisfaction enjoined was, first, after confessing all our sins to a priest, suppliantly to ask pardon and absolution; and, secondly, by good to efface from Thy remembrance our bad actions. Lastly, in order to supply what was still wanting, we were to add sacrifices and solemn expiations. Then, because Thou wert a stern judge and strict avenger of iniquity, they showed how dreadful Thy presence must be. Hence they bade us flee first to the saints, that by their intercession Thou mightest be rendered exorable and propitious to us.

• From Between Us

  Even within the Chinese American sample, exposure mattered: later generations showed more ingroup advantage for the European American face set than earlier generations; conversely, earlier generations showed more ingroup advantage for the Chinese face set than later generations. While the classic paradigm of linking emotion words to static displays is not tremendously helpful in describing the daily emotional interactions of immigrants or later generations of immigrant minorities, it does help to make the case that all aspects of doing emotions are subject to cultural learning—even the ones that were originally claimed to be universal. Remember how our Japanese respondents thought Jon or Taro were happier if a happy-looking Jon was surrounded by people who also looked happy, rather than looking angry, sad, or neutral? Remember also how North Americans, when asked to judge Jon’s happiness, only focused on Jon without considering the affective context? I used this finding as one example of North Americans perceiving MINE, and Japanese perceiving OURS emotions. Taka Masuda, himself Japanese-born and now a professor at the University of Alberta, set out to study whether the perceptive lens of Japanese immigrant populations would change from OURS to MINE. Tweaking our original research a bit, he found it did. White Canadians judged Jon’s emotions without regard for the affective context; they just looked at Jon’s face. As immigrants became part of North American social life, their emotion model gradually seemed to shift from OURS to MINE. Though both Asian Canadian and Asian international students in Canada relied too on the emotional displays of the surrounding people when they were asked to judge how happy, angry, or sad Jon was, their emotion judgments became less reliant on the emotions of the surrounding people with increased exposure to North American culture. The eye-tracking data show even Asian international students, who had spent relatively little time in Canada, focused on the central person’s emotions more than the Japanese students in Japan; yet not even the Asian Canadians had bridged the gap with the European Canadians. Describing changes in emotional lives as a result of immigrating to another culture is no easy task, and the available research only scratches the surface.

• From Birthday Girl (2018)

  —Sí, sí... —lo escucho mientras enjuaga los platos, y los pone en el lavaplatos—, bien, te veré por la mañana. Cuelga y deja el teléfono, y le lanzo otra rápida mirada. —¿Trabajo? —pregunto. Asiente, echando algo en un vaso y tirándolo. —Siempre. Estamos construyendo un edificio de oficinas en la veintidós antes de llegar al parque. —Me mira—. No importa cuánto lo planees y presupuestes, siempre hay sorpresas que intentan desestabilizarte, ¿sabes? La autopista veintidós. El mismo camino que tomo para ir a clases al Doral. Debo haber pasado por su lugar de trabajo muchas veces. —Nada nunca sale según lo planeado —reflexiono—. Incluso a mi edad, ya lo sé. Se ríe, las esquinas de su boca curvándose en una sonrisa mientras me mira. —Exactamente. De repente titubeo, un déjà vù me golpea. Por un momento, veo al tipo en el teatro otra vez. Parpadeo, tratando de mirar hacia otro lado. Sus ojos color avellana se ven más verdes bajo la lámpara que cuelga sobre su cabeza, su cabello se secó de la ducha y, de repente, parece más un hermano mayor de Cole que su padre. Aparto los ojos de su sonrisa, captando un vistazo de los tendones de su brazo que se están flexionando mientras trabaja en el fregadero. Tomo mi teléfono del mostrador y me doy vuelta para irme, pero luego recuerdo algo. —¿Puedo tener tu número de teléfono? —Me giro y pregunto—: ¿En caso que haya un problema aquí, pierda mi llave o algo así? Me mira por encima del hombro, con las manos todavía en el agua. —Ah, claro. —Cierra el grifo y agarra una toalla, secándose—. Buena idea. Toma. Agarra su teléfono y abre la pantalla, entregándomela. —Pon también el tuyo en el mío, entonces. Le doy mi teléfono y tomo el suyo, ingresando mi nombre y mi número de teléfono. Me alegro de haberlo recordado. Cualquier cosa podría salir mal con la casa. El sótano podría inundarse, podrían entregarse paquetes que no son míos, podría no poder encargarme de la cena alguna noche, que Cole y yo estemos juntos

• From Summer Sisters (1998)

  But Caitlin hasn’t finished. “Why do you think I stayed away?” she asks. “Haven’t you ever wondered about that?” You think you know someone really well and then you find out … “It never happened again,” Caitlin adds. “We never even saw each other again until a couple of months ago when I came back.” Vix catches a glimpse of herself in the mirror and is shocked that her face shows nothing, nothing . The photographer knocks. “One for the road,” she says, pushing open the bedroom door with her foot. She asks Vix to lean over Caitlin’s shoulder while they both look into the mirror. “That’s it …” she says, guiding them, “a little closer, so that your faces are almost touching. Yes!” Vix places the headband with the attached veil on Caitlin’s head, centers it just so, fluffs it out so that bits of lace and seed pearls frame Caitlin’s lovely face. The photographer snaps that one, too. Before they leave the house Caitlin leads Vix over to a table in the living room where Abby has displayed the wedding gifts. “Look at this,” she says, holding up a porcelain figurine of a girl in a tutu, standing atop a horse. The card reads: Darling girl, if all else fails, join the circus! Vix begins to laugh. Caitlin joins her. They hold on to one another, convulsed, until Phoebe separates them. “Time to get going,” she tells Caitlin, “if you’re sure you want to go through with this.” At the church, Grandmother Somers asks loudly, “Which one is she marrying?” Dorset points to Bru. “Oh, he’s quite handsome, isn’t he? Who are his parents? What do they do?” Sharkey escorts Phoebe down the aisle. She’s relaxed, smiling. Daniel escorts Abby, who looks tense, although she’s trying to hide it. The two women sit next to one another. Vix can’t look at Bru. She prays he won’t say anything … ever. How can he be sure Vix will keep their secret? Caitlin sails down the aisle on Lamb’s arm. He looks so proud, so loving, tears come to Vix’s eyes. Caitlin smiles directly at her. She has a feeling that Caitlin is about to pull something but she doesn’t know what. She half expects her to shove her island-grown bouquet of cosmos, bellflowers, and daisies in Vix’s face and say, You marry him. You two deserve each other! BruHE WAS CRAZY last night. Out of his fucking mind. What was he doing? Trying to get out of it? But here comes Caitlin on Lamb’s arm, drifting down the aisle like some kind of angel. Smiling right at him. Shit! What’s he supposed to do? He remembers the night she came to him with a message from Victoria, just after Nathan died. Beautiful Caitlin at seventeen, looking so sad, so sad … He’d taken her in his arms to stop her tears. Hadn’t meant to kiss her. But the way she’d looked at him, her lips parted and moist.

• From St. Augustine's Confessions (2004)

  Lecture Fourteen Book VII—Faith and Reason Scope: Augustine’s reading of the Platonist philosophers enables him to come to some conclusions about intellectual problems that he has been wrestling with for years. In this lecture, we will discuss what Augustine has learned about the nature of evil and about the goodness of creation. At the end of this book, Augustine knows that Christianity is true, but he still does not make the decision to be baptized. The end of the book is a powerful meditation on the limits of reason, on the necessity for faith, and on the relationship between faith and reason. In this lecture, we will discuss what Augustine has to say about these issues. Outline I. With the new insights that Augustine has gained from his reading of the Platonists, he is ready to seek new approaches to two questions that he had been wrestling with since he was 18. A. What is the nature of God? B. What is the nature of evil? II. With a faith that is based on the fact that the Platonists gave reasons for things that the Bible simply states to be true, Augustine turns to Scripture. A. He considers Exodus 3:14: “I am who am.” B. Augustine has been trying to figure out what sort of a being God is, but he has been asking the wrong question. C. God is not a being but, rather, being itself; God simply is. D. Augustine tells the readers that all doubt vanished from him when he recognized that God is being itself. III. Augustine describes his understanding of a neo-Platonic view of the universe. A. It is a hierarchy of being with God at the top and inanimate objects at the bottom. B. Humans are somewhere in the middle of this hierarchy. ©2004 The Teaching Company. 43