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 Barclay's Guide to the New Testament (2008)

  The argument that i Peter must be late because it quotes from Ephesians seems to us very uncertain and insecure, and probably mistaken. As an Elder Myself It is objected that Peter could not well have written the sentence: `Now as an elder myself ... I exhort the elders among you' (i Peter 5:1). It is maintained that Peter could not have called himself an elder. He was an apostle whose function was quite different from that of an elder. The apostle was characteristically someone whose work and authority were not confined to any one congregation, but whose remit ran throughout the whole Church; whereas the elder was the governing official of the local congregation. That is perfectly true. But it must be remembered that among the Jews there was no office more universally honoured than that of elder. Elders had the respect of the whole community, and the community looked to them for guidance in its problems and justice in its disputes. Peter, as a Jew, would feel nothing out of place in calling himself an elder, and in so doing he would avoid the conscious claim of authority that the title of apostle might have implied, and graciously and courteously identify himself with the people to whom he spoke. A Witness of the Sufferings of Christ It is objected that Peter could not honestly have called himself a witness of Christ's sufferings, for after the arrest in the garden all the disciples forsook Jesus and fled (Matthew 26:56), and, apart from the beloved disciple, none was a witness of the cross (John 19:26-7). Peter could call himself a witness of the resurrection, and indeed to be such a witness was the function of an apostle (Acts 1:22); but a witness of the cross he was not. In a sense, that is undeniable. And yet Peter is here claiming not to be a witness of the crucifixion but to be a witness of the sufferings of Christ. He did see Christ suffer, in his continual rejection by the people, in the poignant moments of the Last Supper, in the agony in the garden and in that moment when, after he had denied him, Jesus turned and looked on him (Luke 22:61). It is an insensitive and unimaginative criticism which denies to Peter the right to say that he had been a witness of the sufferings of Christ. Persecution for the Name

• From Buddenbrooks: The Decline of a Family (1901)

  – And with this question the night fell before his eyes again. He saw, he didn't know or understand anything anymore and let himself sink deeper into the pillows, completely blinded and exhausted by the bit of truth he had just been allowed to see. And he lay still and waited fervently, tempted to pray that it might come once more and enlighten him. And it came. With folded hands, not daring to move, he lay and was allowed to look... what was death The answer did not appear to him in poor and self-important words: he felt it, he possessed it inwardly. Death was a happiness so deep that it could only be fully appreciated in blessed moments like this one. It was the return of an unspeakably embarrassing mistake, the correction of one serious mistake, the liberation from the most adverse ties and barriers - a deplorable misfortune he made good again. end and resolution? Thrice merciful to anyone who felt these vain concepts to terrify! What would end and what would dissolve? This body of his... This personality and individuality of his, this clumsy, stubborn, flawed and hateful obstacle to being something different and better ! Wasn't every human being a blunder and misstep? Did he not end up in a painful prison as soon as he was born? Prison! Prison! Barriers and ties everywhere! Through the lattice windows of his individuality man stares hopelessly at the curtain walls of external circumstances until death comes and calls him home and freedom... Individuality!... Ah, what one is, can and has seems poor, grey, inadequate and boring; but what one is not, cannot and does not have, that is precisely what one looks at with that longing envy that becomes love because it is afraid of becoming hate. I carry within me the seed, the seed, the potential for all the skills and activities in the world... Where could I be if I weren't here! Who, what, how could I be if I were not me, if this my personal appearance did not shut me off and separate my consciousness from that of all those who are not me! Organism! Blind, thoughtless, regrettable eruption of the urgent will! Better, truly, this will weaves freely in the spaceless and timeless night than languishes in a dungeon poorly lit by the quivering and swaying little flame of the intellect! In my son did I hope to live on? In an even more anxious, weaker, more vacillating personality? Childish, deluded folly! What's a son to me? I don't need a son!... Where will I be when I'm dead? But it's so brilliantly clear, so overwhelmingly simple! I will be in all those who have said, say and say I over and over again become: but especially in those who say it fuller, stronger, happier ...

• From Blue Like Jazz (2003)

  [image "9780785263708_0169_003" file=Image00058.jpg] All the pretty girls at UMASS were running in their sweats that afternoon, the kids out smoking on the lawn, the trees behind them just sticks of things, just cobalt sky out for a walk. The place is lovely in the winter, very smart feeling, very bookish. The big houses are not close together. Red brick and ivy. Long lawns. Across town from UMASS is Amherst College. Emily’s grandfather started Amherst College because he wanted women to know the Bible as well as men. He was all vision and no hands, it seemed, and the place went bankrupt nearly immediately. The school was saved years later by the man’s son, Emily’s father, who was not like her grandfather in that he did not believe in the freedom or equality of women. Emily’s father kept women down. Austin, Emily’s brother, not Emily, was expected by the family to publish, to be a great writer. I was thinking about these things when I circled Amherst College and stopped at the Jones Library where some handwritten notes from Emily are kept, scribbles mostly, gentle pencil on a yellowed sheet within a glass case. It was like magic looking at them. I felt ashamed because I knew I had been reading her for only a year, and yet I felt as though I knew her, as though we were dear friends, what with her living in the apartment in Oregon with me and all. The man at Jones Library told me where to find the homestead, not much of a place, he said, and indeed I had passed it on the way into town without knowing it. I thought I would have felt it in my chest or sensed it to my right. I thought it would have been largely marked. I followed the man’s instructions and walked from the library down along the shops back toward Boston a mile. Her house is not very much like what you would think. Though it is big it is not grand, and there is a large tree in front that takes the view. A side door is greeted by concrete steps, the cheap sort, and the driveway has been paved. There is a historical marker, but it is small, and so the first thing a young man realizes when he visits the home of Emily Dickinson is that the world is, in fact, not as in love with her as he is. I wanted to gather the leaves, you know, clean up the place. And I was looking all about the house, before making my approach, when I saw this thing that was not her but only in my mind was her, swing open the side door and set a foot quickly on the step. She met my eyes and went white, whiter than she already was, anyway, and like a wind she fled back into the house. The door closed as if it were on a spring.

• From Blue Like Jazz (2003)

  But then there was conflict. Every good story has conflict in it. Some conflict is internal, some is external, but if you want to write a novel that sells, you have to have conflict. We understand conflict because we experience conflict, right? But where does conflict come from? Why do we experience conflict in our lives? This helped me a great deal in accepting the idea of original sin and the birth of conflict. The rebellion against God explained why humans experienced conflict in their lives, and nobody knows of any explanation other than this. This last point was crucial. I felt like I was having an epiphany. Without the Christian explanation of original sin, the seemingly silly story about Adam and Eve and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, there was no explanation of conflict. At all. Now some people process the account of original sin in the book of Genesis as metaphor, as symbolism for something else that happened; but whether you take it metaphorically or literally, this serves as an adequate explanation of the human struggle that every person experiences: loneliness, crying yourself to sleep at night, addiction, pride, war, and self-addiction. The heart responds to conflict within story, I began to think, because there is some great conflict in the universe with which we are interacting, even if it is only in the subconscious. If we were not experiencing some sort of conflict in our lives, our hearts would have no response to conflict in books or film. The idea of conflict, of having tension, suspense, or an enemy, would make no sense to us. But these things do make sense. We understand these elements because we experience them. As much as I did not want to admit it, Christian spirituality explained why. And then the element of story known as climax. Every good story has a climax. Climax is where a point of decision determines the end of the story. Now this was starting to scare me a little bit. If the human heart uses the tools of reality to create elements of story, and the human heart responds to climax in the structure of story, this means that climax, or point of decision, could very well be something that exists in the universe. What I mean is that there is a decision the human heart needs to make. The elements of story began to parallel my understanding of Christian spirituality. Christianity offered a decision, a climax. It also offered a good and a bad resolution. In part, our decisions were instrumental to the way our story turned out.

• From Blue Like Jazz (2003)

  He told me this over coffee because I was telling him how I thought, perhaps, man was broken; how for man, doing good and moral things was like swimming upstream. He wondered if God had mysteriously told me about his infidelity. He squirmed a bit and then spoke to me as if I were a priest. He confessed everything. I told him I was sorry, that it sounded terrible. And it did sound terrible. His body was convulsed in guilt and self-hatred. He said he would lie down next to his wife at night feeling walls of concrete between their hearts. He had secrets. She tries to love him, but he knows he doesn’t deserve it. He cannot accept her affection because she is loving a man who doesn’t exist. He plays a role. He says he is an actor in his own home. Designed for good, my friend was sputtering and throwing smoke. The soul was not designed for this, I thought. We were supposed to be good, all of us. We were supposed to be good. For a moment, sitting there above the city, I imagined life outside narcissism. I wondered how beautiful it might be to think of others as more important than myself. I wondered at how peaceful it might be not to be pestered by that childish voice that wants for pleasure and attention. I wondered what it would be like not to live in a house of mirrors, everywhere I go being reminded of myself. It began to rain that night on Mount Tabor. I rode my motorcycle home in the weather, which I hate doing because the streets are so slick. I got home white-knuckled and wet. My room was warm and inviting, as it always is with its wood panels and dignified birch outside the window. I sat on my bed and looked out at my tree, which by this time was gathering rain in applause. I didn’t feel much like Napoleon that night. I didn’t like being reminded about how self-absorbed I was. I wanted to be over this, done with this. I didn’t want to live in a broken world or a broken me. I wasn’t trying to weasel out of anything, I just wasn’t in the mood to be on earth that night. I get like that sometimes when it rains, or when I see certain sad movies. I put on the new Wilco album, turned it up and went into the bathroom to wash my hands and face. I know now, from experience, that the path to joy winds through this dark valley. I think every well-adjusted human being has dealt squarely with his or her own depravity. I realize this sounds very Christian, very fundamentalist and browbeating, but I want to tell you this part of what the Christians are saying is true. I think Jesus feels strongly about communicating the idea of our brokenness, and I think it is worth reflection.

• From Love & Sex: A Christian Guide to Healthy Intimacy (2018)

  For a split second, she recalled the brief conversation when Olivia asked her if her belief system played a part in the troubles she and James experienced. Olivia was clear that James’s behavior was James’s responsibility, but she also said we all have a powerful need to prove our belief system is true—even if it is destructive to love and life. At that moment, while speaking to these students, Kaycie had her own epiphany. She could feel it and it was real; deep down she believed trusting a man was emotional suicide. Momentarily stunned by this revelation, she knew she had to make things right with James. So much progress had been made between the two of them, but there was more work to be done if they were ever going to be truly naked and unashamed with each other. Wrapping up her talk, Kaycie asked the students if any of them experienced anything along the same lines as she did. She asked the student leaders and the Real Life team to come up to the front to be available to any of the students who needed support or prayer. It began slowly, but soon a throng of students flooded the front of the auditorium. Prayers, whispered truths, secrets were shared in this sacred space. Kaycie shook her head, always surprised by how many could relate to her story. It caused her to notice the heaviness in her heart, but just as quickly, the promise available for every student if they simply took hold of it. Jesus significantly healed her heart and was still doing so. And Jesus could heal their hearts too. It was quiet in the car on the drive home. Both were processing the time with the students and hearing some of their stories of sexual trauma and regrets. Both felt contented to have the opportunity to do as Scripture recommends—just put your ear to the lips of the victim and healing will begin. James interpreted her thoughts with, “You okay?” “Yes, I’m just processing what all happened tonight and a realization I had about myself. I know you are tired, but can we have some talk time when we get home, maybe after we have a shower and unwind?” “Sure, of course,” James responded. “Hey, let’s pray together before we get home so we can focus on each other.”

• From The Principles of Psychology (Volume 1 of 2) (1890)

  Dismiss the thought and out go its parts. You can no more make a new thought out of 'ideas' that have once served than you can make a new bubble out of old triangles. Each bubble, each thought, is a fresh organic unity, sui generis. [251] In his work, La Parole Intérieure (Paris, 1881), especially chapters VI and VII. [252] Page 198. [253] Page 146. To prove this point, M. Egger appeals to the fact that we often hear some one speak whilst our mind is preoccupied, but do not understand him until some moments afterwards, when we suddenly 'realize' what he meant. Also to our digging out the meaning of a sentence in an unfamiliar tongue, where the words are present to us long before the idea is taken in. In these special cases the word does indeed precede the idea. The idea, on the contrary, precedes the word whenever we try to express ourselves with effort, as in a foreign tongue, or in an unusual field of intellectual invention. Both sets of cases, however, are exceptional, and M. Egger would probably himself admit, on reflection, that in the former class there is some sort of a verbal suffusion, however evanescent, of the idea, when it is grasped—we hear the echo of the words as we catch their meaning. And he would probably admit that in the second class of cases the idea persists after the words that came with so much effort are found. In normal cases the simultaneity, as he admits, is obviously there. [254] A good way to get the words and the sense separately is to inwardly articulate word for word the discourse of another. One then finds that the meaning will often come to the mind in pulses, after clauses or sentences are finished. [255] The nearest approach (with which I am acquainted) to the doctrine set forth here is in O. Liebmann's Zur Analysis der Wirklichkeit, pp. 427-438. [256] See, for a charming passage on the Philosophy of Dress, H. Lotze's Microcosmus, Eug. tr. vol.

• From Love & Sex: A Christian Guide to Healthy Intimacy (2018)

  “This term signifies an intimate, experiential, personal, face to face, eye to eye, I to I, type of a relationship. It isn’t casual and it isn’t quick. This type of relationship takes the willingness to study and observe and watch and listen and attune to and notice. Honestly, it takes work, but it is the kind of work that is more like an investment. The more you invest, the greater the reward. “How would lovemaking be different if you approached it with this term in mind? If this is what you were made for?” The room was still for a few moments while Olivia patiently waited. James motioned with his raised hand he wanted to say something. “Well, it gives sex a totally different meaning. If I initiate sex with Kaycie from a position of wanting to know her—I want to understand her. I want to experience her—I imagine I would be thinking less about having an orgasm with her and more about really being with her, being present with her. I would have to bring myself fully to bed. I couldn’t be hidden, or preoccupied. I would have her as my focus and my heart in the right place. “If I want to know her, I would be focused on discovering what pleases her sexually and how I could engage her whole person. I would see her not just as a body, but a person with a soul, spirit, and personality. I would care about her needs, her desires, her likes and dislikes. I would listen for what arouses her. I would notice when she goes quiet or when it feels like she has left the room mentally. I would ask her where she went. I would ask her what she feels and likes and wants. I would be way more sensitive to her.” With that, he sat back down with tears filling his eyes. Olivia asked him, “James, what might you be feeling?” James closed his eyes for a minute before he said, “I haven’t ever really made love to my wife. It just hit me; I haven’t known how to make love to her. I thought it was all about getting it on with her because I wanted her, but now I know it’s deeper than that. I want to know her.” He turned and looked at Kaycie, “Would you forgive me for not getting it? Would you forgive me for being selfish?” “I forgive you, James; I haven’t known how to make love to you any more than you have known how to make love to me. I totally forgive you. Will you forgive me for withholding and withdrawing from you?” Kaycie asked. “Of course, I will. Man, I don’t deserve you.” James smiled. They leaned into each other for a tender kiss. Olivia asked, “How is that for you two?”

• From Blue Like Jazz (2003)

  The slot-machine God provided a relief for the pinging guilt and a sense of hope that my life would get organized toward a purpose. I was too dumb to test the merit of the slot machine idea. I simply began to pray for forgiveness, thinking the cherries might line up and the light atop the machine would flash, spilling shiny tokens of good fate. What I was doing was more in line with superstition than spirituality. But it worked. If something nice happened to me, I thought it was God, and if something nice didn’t, I went back to the slot machine, knelt down in prayer, and pulled the lever a few more times. I liked this God very much because you hardly had to talk to it and it never talked back. But the fun never lasts. My slot-machine God disintegrated on Christmas Eve when I was thirteen. I still think of that night as “the lifting of the haze,” and it remains one of the few times I can categorically claim an interaction with God. Though I am half certain these interactions are routine, they simply don’t feel as metaphysical as the happenings of that night. It was very simple, but it was one of those profound revelations that only God can induce. What happened was that I realized I was not alone in my own surroundings. I’m not talking about ghosts or angels or anything; I’m talking about other people. As silly as it sounds, I realized, late that night, that other people had feelings and fears and that my interactions with them actually meant something, that I could make them happy or sad in the way that I associated with them. Not only could I make them happy or sad, but I was responsible for the way I interacted with them. I suddenly felt responsible. I was supposed to make them happy. I was not supposed to make them sad. Like I said, it sounds simple, but when you really get it for the first time, it hits hard. I was shell-shocked. This is how the bomb fell: For my mother that year I had purchased a shabby Christmas gift—a book, the contents of which she would never be interested in. I had had a sum of money with which to buy presents, and the majority of it I used to buy fishing equipment, as Roy and I had started fishing in the creek behind Wal-Mart. My extended family opens gifts on Christmas Eve, leaving the immediate family to open gifts the next morning, and so in my room that night were wonderful presents—toys, games, candy, and clothes—and as I lay in bed I counted and categorized them in the moonlight, the battery-operated toys of greatest importance, the underwear of no consequence at all.

• From Blue Like Jazz (2003)

  For me, Trendy Writer coming to town was the beginning of something. It was the beginning of my authentic Christianity. Trendy Writer, Khwaja Khandir, and Tony the Beat Poet were the seeds of change. I knew Christ, but I was not a practicing Christian. I had the image of a spiritual person, but I was bowing down to the golden cows of religiosity and philosophy. It was one of those enlightenments, one of those honest looks in the mirror in which there is no forgetting who you are. It was a moment without make-believe. After that moment, things started to get interesting. 9 Change New Starts at Ancient Faith THERE IS A TIME WHEN EVERY PERSON WHO encounters Jesus, who believes Jesus is the Son of God, decides that they will spend their life following Him. Some people, like the Apostle Paul, make this decision the minute they meet Him, the minute they become a Christian. Others, like the Apostle Peter, endure years of half-hearted commitment and spiritual confusion before leaping in with all their passion. Still others may enjoy some benefits of God’s love and grace without entering into the true joy of a marriage with their maker. Not long after I graduated from high school, I found myself leading a college group at a large church just outside Houston. I cherished the role, at first, because it was a place of honor. I studied the Bible for hours, putting talks together that students enjoyed. It started as a substitute teaching job. The college minister couldn’t be there one week, so he asked me to fill in. When I was asked to speak again, I jumped at the chance like Homer Simpson at a donut. Pretty soon I was teaching all the time. I swam in the attention and the praise, I loved it, I lusted for it, I almost drowned in it. The more attention I got, the stranger I became. I was on my way to having my own religious television show. Okay, that’s a bit much, but you know what I mean. I was a smiler, a hand-shaker, a baby-kisser, a speech-giver. I said things like “God be with you,” and “Lord bless you.” I used clichés like a bad novelist. I led the college group for a couple of years and enjoyed it at first, but it wasn’t long before I felt like a phony. I got tired of myself. I didn’t like to hear my own voice because I sounded like a talk-show host. One afternoon I made an appointment with my pastor and told him I was leaving, that I was going into the world to get my thinking straight. “How long will you be gone?” he asked. “I don’t know.” I shrugged. “Are you okay?” “I think so. Maybe,” I told him. “Can you talk about it?” He looked concerned. “No, not really.” “I understand you need a break. Why don’t you take a couple weeks off.”

• From The Triumph of Christianity (2018)

  < 125 < Lecture 19  The Conversion of Constantine ` The next year, Constantius was dying. His junior colleague was named Severus, and he would ascend to the senior role. The new junior emperor to take Severus’s place was to be chosen based purely on merit and was not to be related to any of the other ruling three emperors. However, in a surprise move prior to his death, Constantius appointed his son Constantine for the position. ` The original senior emperor of the west, Maximian, had a son, Maxentius, who wanted the imperial rule for himself. Maxentius took imperial office by seizing power over the city of Rome itself. ` He called himself an emperor and claimed he was on equal status with the other four. Over some years, the two senior emperors of east (Galen) and west (Severus) both unsuccessfully tried to dislodge Maxentius from his fortified city. Severus eventually died in the effort. He was not replaced. Constantine ruled the west alone. ` Finally in 312 CE, Constantine marched his army across the Alps and made for Rome. In anticipation of the assault, Maxentius had all the bridges across the Tiber that provided access to the city destroyed. ` However, he then made a poor decision: He decided to come out in force to face Constantine’s army in the field. With the bridges out, there was no way to cross the Tiber north to favorable battlegrounds. ` Maxentius had a temporary pontoon bridge build next to the recently destroyed Milvian Bridge, marched his army across it, and engaged in battle. Constantine’s forces outmaneuvered him. His soldiers were backed up against the river. They desperately tried to cross the pontoons in a beeline for the city, but under the crushing weight, the bridge collapsed. ` Many of the soldiers, and Maxentius himself, drowned in the Tiber. Constantine entered Rome the next day as its ruler and as the emperor of the entire western half of the empire. ` As significant as the military event was in the political history of Rome, there was another outcome that was far more significant for the history of the West, down to today: Constantine believed that it was the Christian God who had assisted him and ensured his victory over Maxentius. He later claimed that it was on that day—October 28, 312—that he converted to become a Christian. The empire was never the same again.

• From What Belongs to You (2016)

  And the child who was my father yelled at him to come, that the man was hurting his mother and his brother, that he (my father) was frightened, and his grandfather grabbed one of the tools around him, a heavy wrench, my sister said, and set off to the field and approached the man and brought the wrench down on him, beating the man who had been beating his daughter, not furiously but with an eerie calm, repeatedly, as his daughter cried for him to stop and my father felt a different fear. So did he kill him too, my other sister asked, but G. couldn’t answer us; like all of her stories this one was patchworked and incomplete. But she did know that my father’s grandfather bore a mark from that day, that the palm of his hand was welted and scarred where he had gripped the wrench, which had been resting on the engine and was red-hot, she said. It didn’t even slow him down, she went on, can you imagine, for the rest of his life he was disfigured, the fingers on that hand were always a little bit curled, he couldn’t open them all the way. But when he grabbed it it didn’t even slow him down, he just took it in his hand like this—and here she raised her own hand, lifting it with her palm up and her fingers curled around an imaginary wrench, turning her wrist slightly as if it were dragged down by the weight of it. And though nothing in her story had been familiar to me I felt a sudden vertigo at the sight of it; I could see my father making that gesture, the very same, and I knew I must have heard the story before, that he must have told it to me when I was a child. It was my story too, I realized as my sister went on, and I wondered how much else I had forgotten about my father, how much I might still remember, how much was totally lost. As I sat by the water in Mladost, I held two images of my father in mind, weighing them against what I felt: in one he was a child, vulnerable and finally blameless as all children are blameless, and in the other he was old and in need and trying to repair what he had broken.

• From Tipping the Velvet (1998)

  He seemed to say it guilelessly enough; but as he did so I saw Tootsie smile and give a sideways glance at Percy - and, worse! saw Kitty blush and turn her face away - and all at once I understood what they all knew, and cursed to think I had not guessed it sooner. A half-hour later, when Walter presented himself at the parlour door, offering a gleaming cheek to Kitty and crying ‘Kiss me, Kate!’, I didn’t smile, but only bit my lip, and wondered.He was a little in love with her; perhaps, indeed, rather more than a little. I saw it now - saw the dampness of the looks he sometimes turned upon her, and the awkwardness of the glances which, more hastily, he turned away. I saw how he seized every foolish opportunity to kiss her hand, or pluck her sleeve, or place his arm, heavy and clumsy with desire, about her slender shoulders; I heard his voice catch, sometimes, or grow thick, when he addressed her. I saw and heard it all, now, because - it was the very reason that had kept me blind and deaf to it before! - because his passion was my own, which I had long grown used to thinking unremarkable, and right.I almost pitied him; I almost loved him. I did not hate him - or if I did, it was only as one loathes the looking-glass, that shows one one’s imperfect form in strict and fearful clarity. Nor did I now begin to resent his presence on those strolls and visits that I should otherwise have made with Kitty on my own. He was my rival, of sorts; but in some queer way it was almost easier to love her in his company, than out of it.

• From Under the Banner of Heaven (2003)

  Upon arriving home DeLoy considered the enormity of what had just occurred: “Uncle Rulon spoke to God on a continual basis. All his wisdom and knowledge supposedly came straight from the Lord. But in a matter of moments it had become apparent to me that this man wasn’t really communicating with God, or he would have known that what he accused me of was a lie. Right then and there I decided to leave the Work, even though I knew it would mean the end of my life as I knew it.” When DeLoy failed to show up for the weekly priesthood meeting on the following Sunday, within twenty-four hours Uncle Rulon dispatched someone to DeLoy’s house to take away his wives and children. According to UEP dogma, wives do not belong to their husbands, nor do children belong to their parents; all are property of the priesthood and may be claimed at any time. Uncle Rulon decreed that DeLoy’s wives and progeny were to be given to another, worthier man immediately. But both of DeLoy’s wives declined to leave him. Uncle Rulon was flabbergasted. “The priesthood means far more than family or anything else,” explains DeLoy. “For my wives to defy Uncle Rulon and stick with me, even though I was going straight to hell—that was unheard of.” DeLoy’s spouses, and all his children except the three oldest, thus became apostates, too. In Colorado City, the faithful are taught that apostates are more wicked than Gentiles, or even mainline Mormons. * In a sermon preached on July 16, 2000, Bishop Warren Jeffs (Uncle Rulon’s son and heir apparent) emphasized that an apostate “is the most dark person on earth.” Apostates, he explained, have “turned traitor on the priesthood and their own existence, and they are led about by their master: Lucifer. . . . Apostates are literally tools of the devil.” When DeLoy apostatized, relatives who remained in the religion were forbidden to speak to him, his wives, or his apostate children ever again. And although DeLoy had built and paid for his home, the UEP owns all the land within the city limits, including the lot on which DeLoy’s house was built. Uncle Rulon and the UEP have filed a legal action to take possession of DeLoy’s house and are currently trying to evict him from Colorado City.

• From The Story of My Experiments with Truth (An Autobiography) (1927)

  But Abdulla Sheth was not the man to let me sail without a send-off. He gave a farewell party in my honour at Sydenham. It was proposed to spend the whole day there. Whilst I was turning over the sheets of some of the newspapers I found there, I chanced to see a paragraph in a corner of one of them under the caption ‘Indian franchise’. It was with reference to the Bill then before the House of Legislature, which sought to deprive the Indians of their right to elect members of the Natal Legislative Assembly. I was ignorant of the Bill, and so were the rest of the guests who had assembled there. I inquired of Abdulla Sheth about it. He said: ‘What can we understand in these matters? We can only understand things that affect our trade. As you know all our trade in the Orange Free State has been swept away. We agitated about it, but in vain. We are after all lame men, being unlettered. We generally take in newspapers simply to ascertain the daily market rates, etc. What can we know of legislation? Our eyes and ears are the European attorneys here.’ ‘But,’said I, ‘there are so many young Indians born and educated here, Do not they help you?’ ‘They!’ exclaimed Abdulla Sheth in despair. ‘They never care to come to us, and to tell you the truth, we care less to recognize them. Being Christians, they are under the thumb of the white clergymen, who in their turn are subject to the Government.’ This opened my eyes. I felt that this class should be claimed as our own. Was this the meaning of Christianity? Did they cease to be Indians because they had become Christians? But I was on the point of returning home and hesitated to express what was passing through my mind in this matter. I simply said to Abdulla Sheth: ‘This Bill, if it passes into law, will make our lot extremely difficult. It is the first nail into our coffin. It strikes at the root of our self-respect.’ ‘It may,’ echoed Sheth Abdulla. ‘I will tell you the genesis of the franchise question. We knew nothing about it. But Mr. Escombe, one of our best attorneys, whom you know, put the idea into our heads. It happened thus. He is a great fighter, and there being no love lost between, him and the Wharf Engineer, he feared that the Engineer might deprive him of his votes and defeat him at the election. So he acquainted us with our position, and at his instance we all registered ourselves as voters, and voted for him. You will now see how the franchise has not for us the value that you attach to it. But we understand what you say. Well, then, what is your advice?’ The other guests were listening to this conversation with attention. One of them said: ‘Shall I tell you what should be done?

• From Confessions of a Mask (1958)

  Whenever I said so, the grownups would laugh at first, but then, wondering if they were not being tricked, they would look distastefully at the pallid face of that unchildlike child. Sometimes I happened to say so in the presence of callers who were not close friends of the family; then my grandmother, fearing I would be taken for an idiot, would interrupt in a sharp voice and tell me to go somewhere else and play. While they were still smiling from their laughter, the grownups would usually set about trying to confute me with some sort of scientific explanation. Trying to devise explanations that a child's mind could grasp, they would always start babbling with no little dramatic zeal, saying that a baby's eyes are not yet open at birth, or that even if his eyes are completely open, a newborn baby could not possibly see things clearly enough to remember them. "Isn't that right?" they would say, shaking the small shoulder of the still-unconvinced child. But just then they would seem to be struck by the idea that they were on the point of being taken in by the child's tricks: Even if we think he's a child, we mustn't let our guard down. The little rascal is surely trying to trick us into telling him about "that," and then what is to keep him from asking, with still more childlike innocence: "Where did I come from? How was I born?" And in the end they would look me over again, silently, with a thin smile frozen on their lips, showing that for some reason, which I could never understand, their feelings had been deeply hurt. But their fears were groundless. I had not the slightest desire to ask about "that." Even if I had wanted to ask, I was so fearful of hurting adult feelings that the thought of using trickery would never have occurred to me. No matter how they explained, no matter how they laughed me away, I could not but believe I remembered my own birth. Perhaps the basis for my memory was something I had heard from someone who had been present at the time, or perhaps it was only my own willful imagination. However that may have been, there was one thing I was convinced I had seen clearly, with my own eyes. That was the brim of the basin in which I received my first bath.

• From The Story of My Experiments with Truth (An Autobiography) (1927)

  The’Rebellion’ did not occupy me for more than six weeks, but this brief period proved to be a very important epoch in my life. The importance of vows grew upon me more clearly than ever before. I realized that a vow, far from closing the door to real freedom, opened it. Up to this time I had not met with success because the will had been lacking, because I had had no faith in myself, no faith in the grace of God, and therefore, my mind had been tossed on the boisterous sea of doubt. I realized that in refusing to take a vow man was drawn into temptation, and that to be bound by a vow was like a passage from libertinism to a real monogamous marriage. ‘I believe in effort, I do not want to bind myself with vows,’ is the mentality of weakness and betrays a subtle desire for the thing to be avoided. Or where can be the difficulty in making a final decision ? I vow to flee from the serpent which I know will bite me, I do not simply make an effort to flee from him. I know that mere effort may mean certain death. Mere effort means ignorance of the certain fact that the serpent is bound to kill me. The fact, therefore, that I could rest content with an effort only, means that I have not yet clearly realized the necessity of definite action.’But supposing my views are changed in the future, how can I bind myself by a vow ? ‘ Such a doubt often deters us. But that doubt also betrays a lack of clear perception that a particular thing must be renounced. That is why Nishkulanand has sung ‘Renunciatfon without aversion is not lasting.’ Where therefore the desire is gone, a vow of renunciation is the natural and inevitable fruit. 64BRAHM ACHARYA - IIAfter full discussion and mature deliberation I took the vow in 1906. I had not shared my thoughts with my wife until then, but only consulted her at the time of taking the vow. She had no objection. But I had great difficulty in making the final resolve. I had not the necessary strength. How was I to control my passions? The elimination of carnal relationship with one’s wife seemed then a strange thing. But I launched forth with faith in the sustaining power of God. As I look back upon the twenty years of the vow, I am filled with pleasure and wonderment. The more or less successful practice of self-control had been going on since 1901. But the freedom and joy that came to me after taking the vow had never been experienced before 1906. Before the vow I had been open to being overcome by temptation at any moment. Now the vow was a sure shield against temptation. The great potentiality of brahmacharya daily became more an more patent to me. The vow was taken when I was in Phoenix.

• From Lady Chatterley's Lover (1928)

  There was the house, low and long and obscure, with one light burning downstairs, in Sir Clifford's room. But which room she was in, the woman who held the other end of the frail thread which drew him so mercilessly, that he did not know. He went a little nearer, gun in hand, and stood motionless on the drive, watching the house. Perhaps even now he could find her, come at her in some way. The house was not impregnable: he was as clever as burglars are. Why not come to her? He stood motionless, waiting, while the dawn faintly and imperceptibly paled behind him. He saw the light in the house go out. But he did not see Mrs. Bolton come to the window and draw back the old curtain of dark-blue silk, and stand herself in the dark room, looking out on the half-dark of the approaching day, looking for the longed-for dawn, waiting, waiting for Clifford to be really re-assured that it was daybreak. For when he was sure of daybreak, he would sleep almost at once. She stood blind with sleep at the window, waiting. And as she stood, she started, and almost cried out. For there was a man out there on the drive, a black figure in the twilight. She woke up greyly, and watched, but without making a sound to disturb Sir Clifford. The daylight began to rustle into the world, and the dark figure seemed to go smaller and more defined. She made out the gun and gaiters and baggy jacket--it would be Oliver Mellors, the keeper. Yes, for there was the dog nosing around like a shadow, and waiting for him! And what did the man want? Did he want to rouse the house? What was he standing there for, transfixed, looking up at the house like a love-sick male dog outside the house where the bitch is! Goodness! The knowledge went through Mrs. Bolton like a shot. He was Lady Chatterley's lover! He! He! To think of it! Why, she, Ivy Bolton, had once been a tiny bit in love with him herself! When he was a lad of sixteen and she a woman of twenty-six. It was when she was studying, and he had helped her a lot with the anatomy and things she had had to learn. He'd been a clever boy, had a scholarship from Sheffield Grammar School, and learned French and things: and then after all had become an overhead blacksmith shoeing horses, because he was fond of horses, he said: but really because he was frightened to go out and face the world, only he'd never admit it. But he'd been a nice lad, a nice lad, had helped her a lot, so clever at making things clear to you. He was quite as clever as Sir Clifford: and always one for the women. More with women than men, they said.

• From Between the World and Me (2015)

  This chasm makes itself known to us in all kinds of ways. A little girl wanders home, at age seven, after being teased in school and asks her parents, “Are we niggers and what does this mean?” Sometimes it is subtle—the simple observation of who lives where and works what jobs and who does not. Sometimes it’s all of it at once. I have never asked how you became personally aware of the distance. Was it Mike Brown? I don’t think I want to know. But I know that it has happened to you already, that you have deduced that you are privileged and yet still different from other privileged children, because you are the bearer of a body more fragile than any other in this country. What I want you to know is that this is not your fault, even if it is ultimately your responsibility. It is your responsibility because you are surrounded by the Dreamers. It has nothing to do with how you wear your pants or how you style your hair. The breach is as intentional as policy, as intentional as the forgetting that follows. The breach allows for the efficient sorting of the plundered from the plunderers, the enslaved from the enslavers, sharecroppers from landholders, cannibals from food. Dr. Jones was reserved. She was what people once referred to as “a lady,” and in that sense reminded me of my grandmother, who was a single mother in the projects but always spoke as though she had nice things. And when Dr. Jones described her motive for escaping the dearth that marked the sharecropper life of her father and all the others around her, when she remembered herself saying, “I’m not going to live like this,” I saw the iron in her eyes, and I remembered the iron in my grandmother’s eyes. You must barely remember her by now—you were six when she died. I remember her, of course, but by the time I knew her, her exploits—how, for instance, she scrubbed white people’s floors during the day and went to school at night—were legend. But I still could feel the power and rectitude that propelled her out of the projects and into homeownership.

• From The Story of My Experiments with Truth (An Autobiography) (1927)

  BRAHMACHARYA -- I We now reach the stage in this story when I began seriously to think of taking the brahmacharya vow. I had been wedded to a monogamous ideal ever since my marriage, faithfulness to my wife being part of the love of truth. But it was in South Africa that I came to realize the importance of observing brahmacharya even with respect to my wife. I cannot definitely say what circumstance or what book it was, that set my thoughts in that direction, but I have a recollection that the predominant factor was the influence of Raychandbhai, of whom I have already written, I can still recall a conversation that I had with him. On one occasion I spoke to him in high praise of Mrs. Gladstone’s devotion to her husband. I had read some where that Mrs. Gladstone insisted on preparing tea for Mr. Gladstone even in the House of Commons, and that this had become a rule in the life of this illustrious couple, whose actions were governed by regularity. I spoke of this to the poet, and incidentally eulogized conjugal love.’Which of the two do you prize more,’ asked Raychandbhai,’the love of Mrs. Gladstone for her husband as his wife, or her devoted service irrespective of her relation to Mr. Gladstone? Supposing she had been his sister, or his devoted servant, and ministered to him with the same attention, what would you have said? Do we not have instances of such devoted sisters or servants? Supposing you had found the same loving devotion in a male servant, would you have been pleased in the same way as in Mrs. Gladstone’s case ? Just examine the view-point suggested by me.’ Raychandbhai was himself married. I have an impression that at the moment his words sounded harsh, but they gripped me irresistibly. The devotion of a servant was, I felt, a thousand times more praiseworthy than that of a wife to her husband. There was nothing surprising in the wife’s devotion to her husband, as