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 Pisces (2018)

  27.I didn’t go back to the rocks that night. I could see myself too clearly in Diana and her suffering. If there was anything in the universe, any kind of guiding force, any kind of greater power, I saw now that it probably hadn’t brought me Theo to show that I could be friends with a beautiful member of the opposite sex. Maybe it had brought him to me at the same time as Diana to teach me a lesson. I didn’t know if the universe actively taught lessons. But if it did, the lesson was that I could not handle what I thought I could handle. The lesson was that I didn’t need to act out with Theo to learn the lesson. I didn’t have to suffer again. The suffering of others, Claire and now Diana, could remind me of my own suffering: the suffering of the past and my potential future suffering. Maybe this is why we did things in groups. Maybe this is why people had friends: so we could see ourselves and our own insanity in them. Instead I went over to Abbot Kinney with Dominic. A few people stopped and commented on him, how beautiful he was, how regal. I felt proud of him, not eclipsed by him, as though being with him somehow made me better. He made me feel purebred. What was money anyway? What was polish? Why was I so susceptible to flights of fancy, my perception of other people’s views of me? Look at Diana. I thought she had it together and she was a mess. She actually liked me. Maybe I didn’t need someone else to define me, but oh, I still wanted it. How vacuous was I? How empty was I that I needed a border drawn by someone else to tell me who I was? It didn’t even matter whether the person was real, a lover, a new friend, or even a dog. The person could even be imaginary, like the fancy people I saw on the street, who were not themselves imaginary, but became whatever it was I projected onto them. Seeing myself through the eyes of a projection, however uncomfortable the judgment, made me feel safe in a strange way. It was like a box in which to live: a boundary against the greater nothingness, to think one knew something about what others thought of you. It was there I could begin and end. And perhaps it was a prison, to have to begin and end, but it was also a relief. This is why the Greeks needed myth: for that boundary, to know where they stood amidst the infinite. No one can simply coexist with the ocean, storms, the cypress trees. They had to codify the elements with language and greater meaning, and create gods out of them—gods who looked suspiciously like themselves—so that even if they were powerless over nature, there were better versions of them in control.

• From The Well of Loneliness (1928)

  The spring would come sweeping across the whole valley, from the Cotswold Hills right up to the Malverns; bringing daffodils by their hundreds and thousands, bringing bluebells to the beech wood down by the lakes, bringing cygnets for Peter the swan to protect; bringing sunshine to warm the old bricks of the house—but she would not be there any more in the spring. In summer the roses would not be her roses, nor the luminous carpet of leaves in the autumn, nor the beautiful winter forms of the beech trees: ‘And on evenings in winter these lakes are quite frozen, and the ice looks like slabs of gold in the sunset, when you and I come and stand here in the winter. . . .’ No, no, not that memory, it was too much —‘when you and I come and stand here in the winter. . . .’ Getting up, she wandered about the room, touching its kind and familiar objects; stroking the desk, examining a pen, grown rusty from long disuse as it lay there; then she opened a little drawer in the desk and took out the key of her father’s locked bookcase. Her mother had told her to take what she pleased—she would take one or two of her father’s books. She had never examined this special bookcase, and she could not have told why she suddenly did so. As she slipped the key into the lock and turned it, the action seemed curiously automatic. She began to take out the volumes slowly and with listless fingers, scarcely glancing at their titles. It gave her something to do, that was all—she thought that she was trying to distract her attention. Then she noticed that on a shelf near the bottom was a row of books standing behind the others; the next moment she had one of these in her hand, and was looking at the name of the author: Krafft Ebing—she had never heard of that author before. All the same she opened the battered old book, then she looked more closely, for there on its margins were notes in her father’s small, scholarly hand and she saw that her own name appeared in those notes— She began to read, sitting down rather abruptly. For a long time she read; then went back to the bookcase and got out another of those volumes, and another. . . . The sun was now setting behind the hills; the garden was growing dusky with shadows. In the study there was little light left to read by, so that she must take her book to the window and must bend her face closer over the page; but still she read on and on in the dusk. Then suddenly she had got to her feet and was talking aloud—she was talking to her father: ‘You knew! All the time you knew this thing, but because of your pity you wouldn’t tell me.

• From How God Became King (2012)

  Indeed, once we understand that, we may also glimpse one possible reason why both have been turned down so low or even off altogether. If this story of Jesus is the story of Israel reaching its climax, it is inescapably political and will raise questions the Western world has chosen not to raise, let alone face, throughout the period of so-called critical scholarship. The post-Enlightenment world was born out of a movement that split church and state apart and has arranged even its would-be historical scholarship accordingly; and that same Enlightenment insisted that Judaism was the wrong kind of religion, far too gross, too material. Rejection, from the start, of a “political” reading of the gospels and of a “Jewish” reading went together. Fortunately, genuine history—the actual study of the actual sources—can sometimes strike back and insist that what a previous generation turned off this generation can at last turn back on. It is time, and long past time, to reread the gospels as what we can only call political theology—not because they are not after all about God and spirituality and new birth and holiness and all the rest, but precisely because they are. What, then, about John? There is a whole book to be written on the implicit and sometimes explicit undermining of Caesar’s empire in John’s gospel. But for the moment we can at least say this. In the midst of the dozens of other major Johannine themes, we begin to hear in chapter 12 a note of where it’s all going. Some Greeks come to the festival and ask to see Jesus, and Jesus, to our surprise, speaks about a grain of wheat that will fall into the earth and, dying, bear much fruit: Some Greeks had come up with all the others to worship at the festival. They went to Philip, who was from Bethsaida in Galilee. “Sir,” they said, “we would like to see Jesus.” Philip went and told Andrew, and Andrew and Philip went together to tell Jesus. “The time has come,” said Jesus in reply. “This is the moment for the son of man to be glorified. I’m telling you the solemn truth: unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains all by itself. If it dies, though, it will produce lots of fruit.” (12:20–24) The scene then gains an extra dramatic element when Jesus prays that God will glorify God’s name, and the crowds think they hear thunder in reply: “I have glorified it,” came a voice from heaven, “and I will glorify it again.” “That was thunder!” said the crowd, standing there listening. “No,” said others. “It was an angel, talking to him.” “That voice came for your sake, not mine,” replied Jesus. “Now comes the judgment of this world!

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

  Perhaps the best way to describe how my subconscious sex feels to me is to say that it seems as if, on some level, my brain expects my body to be female. Indeed, there is some evidence to suggest that our brains have an intrinsic understanding of what sex our bodies should be.1 For example, there have been numerous instances in which male infants have been surgically reassigned as female shortly after birth due to botched circumcisions or cloacal exstrophy (a non-intersex medical condition). Despite being raised female and appearing to have female genitals, the majority of such children eventually come to identify as male, demonstrating that brain sex may override both socialization and genital sex.2 There have also been studies that have examined a small, sexually dimorphic region of the brain known as the BSTc. Researchers found that the structure of the BSTc region in trans women more closely resembles that of most women, while in trans men it resembles that of most men.3 Like all brain research, such studies have certain limitations and caveats, but they do suggest that our brains may be hardwired to expect our bodies to be female or male, independent of our socialization or the appearance of our bodies. Personally, I am drawn to the brain-hardwiring hypothesis, not because I believe that it has been proven scientifically beyond a doubt, but because it best explains why the thoughts I have had of being female always felt vague and ever-present, like they were an unconscious knowing that always seemed to defy conscious reality. It would also account for how I knew there was something wrong with me being a boy before I ever could consciously put it into words; why I had dreams about being or becoming a girl well before I experienced any conscious desire to be female or feminine; why my first experiences masturbating as a teen (which happened before I had ever seen or heard anything about what happens when people have sex) involved me spreading my legs, placing my hand on my crotch, and rocking my hand back and forth the way many girls instinctively do it. The brain-hardwiring hypothesis can also account for why thinking of myself as female has always been beyond my conscious reach, why I was unable to repress it or rationalize it away no matter how hard I tried. A lot of people assume that trans people have an addict-like obsession with being the other sex: The more we think about it, the more we want it or convince ourselves into believing it to be true. I have found that being trans is quite the opposite: The more I tried to ignore the thoughts of being female, the more persistently they pushed their way back into the forefront of my mind. In that way, they felt more like other subconscious feelings, such as hunger or thirst, where neglecting the urge only makes the feeling more intense with time.

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

  For example, when ordering drinks at bars, I found that if I looked around the room while waiting for my drink (as I always unconsciously had prior to transitioning), men started hitting on me because they assumed I was signaling my availability (when I was perceived as male, the same action was likely to be interpreted simply as me scoping out the room). And in supermarket checkout lines, when the child in the cart ahead of me started smiling and talking to me, I found that I could interact with them without their mother becoming suspi cious or fearful (which is what often happened in similar situations when I was perceived as male). During the first year of my transition, I experienced hundreds of little moments like that, where other people interpreted my words and actions differently based solely on the change in my perceived sex. And it was not merely my behaviors that were interpreted differently, it was my body as well: the way people approached me, spoke to me, the assumptions they made about me, the lack of deference and respect I often received, the way others often sexualized my body. All of these changes occurred without my having to say or do a thing. I would argue that social gender is not produced and propagated because of the way we as individuals “perform” or “do” our genders; it lies in the perceptions and interpretations of others. I can modify my own gender all I want, but it won’t change the fact that other people will continue to compulsively assign a gender to me and to view me through the distorted lenses of cissexual and heterosexual assumption. While no gendered expression can subvert the gender system as we know it, we are nevertheless still capable of instituting change in that system. However, such change will not come by managing the way we “do” our own gender, but by dismantling our own gender entitlement. If we truly want to bring an end to all gender-based oppression, then we must begin by taking responsibility for our own perceptions and presumptions. The most radical thing that any of us can do is to stop projecting our beliefs about gender onto other people’s behaviors and bodies. 19 Putting the Feminine Back into Feminism I remember back in college —when I was admittedly rather naive with regard to gender politics—someone asked a friend of mine whether she considered herself a feminist. I was surprised to hear her answer “No.” After all, she certainly seemed like a feminist to me. She was independent, intelligent, career-minded, pro–women’s reproductive rights. She regularly stood up for herself and was keenly aware of the disparity between how certain professors treated her and how they treated her male counterparts.

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

  But before I begin, there are two important points that must be made prior to any discussion regarding hormones. First, contrary to popular belief, hormones do not simply act like unilateral on/off switches controlling female/feminine or male/masculine development. All people have both androgens (which include testosterone) and estrogens in their systems, although the balance is tipped more toward the former in men and the latter in women. Not only are there different types of androgens and estrogens, but these hormones require different steroid receptors to function, are metabolized by numerous enzymes that can shift the balance by converting one hormone to another, and function by regulating the levels of scores of “downstream genes,” which are more directly responsible for producing specific hormonal effects. Because of all these variables, there’s an extensive amount of natural variation built into the way individual people experience and process specific hormones. The second issue to keep in mind is the difficulty in distinguishing “real” hormone effects from their perceived or presumed effects. For example, shortly after I began hormone therapy, I had a strong craving for eggs. I immediately attributed this to the hormones until other trans women told me that they never had similar cravings. So perhaps that was an effect of the hormones only I had. Or maybe I was going through an “egg phase” that just so happened to coincide with the start of my hormone therapy. Hence, the problem: Not only can hormones affect individuals differently, but we sometimes attribute coincidences to them and project our own expectations onto them. For these reasons, I will limit my discussion here to those hormonal changes I have experienced that have been corroborated by other trans women I have spoken with. Also, rather than get into the more physical effects of hormones (i.e., muscle/fat distribution, hair growth, etc.) which are not in dispute, I will focus primarily on the “psychological” changes—in my emotions, senses, and sexuality—that I experienced early on when I began taking estrogen along with an anti-androgen, which suppresses endogenous testosterone levels, to shift my hormonal balance into the range that most adult women experience. People often say that female hormones make women “more emotional” than men, but in my view such claims are an oversimplification. How would I describe the changes I went through, then? In retrospect, when testosterone was the predominant sex hormone in my body, it was as though a thick curtain were draped over my emotions.

• From How God Became King (2012)

  A disembodied, timeless eternity! That is Plato, not the Bible—and it’s a measure of how far Western Christianity has drifted from its moorings that it seldom even realizes the fact. Anyway, granted this assumption, when we find the Greek phrase zoe aionios in the gospels (and indeed in the New Testament letters), and when it is regularly translated as “eternal life” or “everlasting life,” people have naturally assumed that this concept of “eternity” is the right way to understand it. “God so loved the world,” reads the famous text in the King James Version of John 3:16, “that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish but have everlasting life .” There we are, think average Christian readers. This is the biblical promise of a timeless heavenly bliss. But it isn’t. In the many places where the phrase zoe aionios appears in the gospels, and in Paul’s letters for that matter, it refers to one aspect of an ancient Jewish belief about how time was divided up. In this viewpoint, there were two “aions” (we sometimes use the word “eon” in that sense): the “present age,” ha-olam hazeh in Hebrew, and the “age to come,” ha-olam ha-ba . The “age to come,” many ancient Jews believed, would arrive one day to bring God’s justice, peace, and healing to the world as it groaned and toiled within the “present age.” You can see Paul, for instance, referring to this idea in Galatians 1:4, where he speaks of Jesus giving himself for our sins “to rescue us from the present evil age.” In other words, Jesus has inaugurated, ushered in, the “age to come.” But there is no sense that this “ age to come ” is “ eternal ” in the sense of being outside space, time, and matter. Far from it. The ancient Jews were creational monotheists. For them, God’s great future purpose was not to rescue people out of the world, but to rescue the world itself, people included, from its present state of corruption and decay. If we reframe our thinking within this setting, the phrase zoe aionios will refer to “the life of the age,” in other words, “the life of the age to come.” When in Luke the rich young ruler asks Jesus, “Good Teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?” (18:18, NRSV ), he isn’t asking how to go to heaven when he dies. He is asking about the new world that God is going to usher in, the new era of justice, peace, and freedom God has promised his people. And he is asking, in particular, how he can be sure that when God does all this, he will be part of those who inherit the new world, who share its life.

• From How God Became King (2012)

  What has happened seems to be this. Some centuries after the gospels were written, Christians found that one of their major challenges was not only explaining, but also “proving” Jesus’s “divinity.” Since the gospels do indeed seem to provide some excellent material on this subject (we shall look at it in more detail in Chapter 5), and since for those Christians the kingdom agenda of the gospels seems to have receded somewhat, it was easy for them to assume that the gospel writers were trying to do exactly the same thing they were. They have therefore read the miracle stories, for instance, as contributing to that aim. A glance at Israel’s scriptures, however, shows that some of the prophets did that same kind of thing (multiplying food, raising the dead, and so on) without anyone concluding that they were “divine.” In fact, one could make a case—supposing this were the thing one wanted to prove—for seeing the “powerful works” of Jesus as evidence of his true humanity, since it is genuine humans who are in charge of God’s world, and to see his suffering and death on behalf of others as evidence of his divinity, since only God can rescue people from their sins. That would be stretching a point. But the fact that one can reverse the normal assumption without making total nonsense shows how unlikely it is that the gospels were written as the backstory, the historical proof if you like, for the Chalcedonian definition. The gospels do indeed exhibit a belief in Jesus’s full divinity and humanity. But that is not the primary story they were written to tell. But there is more. To speak of Jesus’s divinity without speaking of his kingdom coming on earth as in heaven is to take a large step toward the detached spirituality—almost a form of Gnosticism—that the first two centuries of the church firmly rejected. Only recently did the awful realization dawn on me that a certain stance was not only possible, but actually occurring: people were affirming the divinity of Jesus—which I also fully and gladly affirm—and then using it as a shelter behind which to hide from the radical story the gospels were telling about what this embodied God was actually up to.

• From How God Became King (2012)

  Title : How God Became King Author: Wright, N. T. How God Became KingThe Forgotten Story of the Gospels N. T. Wright [image file=image_rsrc22P.jpg] DedicationTo the faculty and students of St. Mary’s College, St. Andrews ContentsDedication Preface Part One: The Empty Cloak 1. The Missing Middle 2. The Opposite Problem All Body, No Cloak 3. The Inadequate Answers Part Two: Adjusting the Volume 4. The Story of Israel 5. The Story of Jesus as the Story of Israel’s God 6. The Launching of God’s Renewed People 7. The Clash of the Kingdoms Part Three: The Kingdom and the Cross 8. Where We Get Stuck Enlightenment, Power, and Empire 9. Kingdom and Cross in Four Dimensions 10. Kingdom and Cross The Remaking of Meanings Part Four: Creed, Canon, and Gospel 11. How to Celebrate God’s Story Further Reading Scripture Index Books by N. T. Wright Copyright About the Publisher PREFACEIT HAS BEEN slowly dawning on me over many years that there is a fundamental problem deep at the heart of Christian faith and practice as I have known them. This problem can be summarized quite easily: we have all forgotten what the four gospels are about. Yes, they’re about Jesus, but what exactly are they saying about Jesus? Yes, they’re about God, but what precisely are they saying about God? Yes, they’re about the beginnings of what later became known as Christianity, but what are they saying about that strange new movement, and how do they resource it for its life and work? As I have both studied and written about Jesus and the gospels, and as I have tried to lead and teach Christian communities that were doing their best to follow Jesus and order their lives by the gospels, I have had the increasing impression, over many years now, that most of the Western Christian tradition has simply forgotten what the gospels are really all about. Despite centuries of intense and heavy industry expended on the study of all sorts of features of the gospels, we have often managed to miss the main thing that they, all four of them, are most eager to tell us. I have therefore come to the conclusion that what we need is not just a bit of fine-tuning, an adjustment here and there. We need a fundamental rethink about what the gospels are trying to say, and hence about how best we should read them, together and individually. And—not least—about how we then might order our life and work in accordance with them.

• From How God Became King (2012)

  That the scriptures must be fulfilled is precisely the point made by Luke at key points in his gospel. Luke has structured his opening so that we hear in the background the great stories of Samuel and David, all pointing forward to the arrival of the true king. The great poems we call the Magnificat and the Benedictus, the songs of Mary and of Zechariah (1:46–55; 1:68–79) speak powerfully of the fulfillment of God’s ancient purposes and promises in the forthcoming births of John the Baptist and Jesus himself. This theme runs right through the gospel and is emphasized in such passages as 22:37, where Jesus declares, at table with his friends, that everything about him in the scriptures “must reach its goal.” Even Jesus’s closest followers, however, cannot begin to see in the strange events of his arrest, trial, and death any kind of fulfillment. They had been living in the currently prevailing version of the Jewish story, and it certainly wasn’t supposed to end with the violent death of God’s anointed. “We were hoping,” say the two on the road to Emmaus, “that he was going to redeem Israel!” (24:21). But he obviously hadn’t. The answer, highlighted in Luke’s matchless telling both of the Emmaus story and of the larger story of Jesus as a whole, is clear: “You are so senseless!” he said to them. “So slow in your hearts to believe all the things the prophets said to you! Don’t you see? This is what had to happen: the Messiah had to suffer, and then come into his glory!” So he began with Moses, and with all the prophets, and explained to them the things about himself throughout the whole Bible. (24:25–27) In other words—as the disciples excitedly discover in going over the scene immediately afterwards—there was a new “opening of the Bible” as Jesus expounded to them the large story, which, when seen in this light, was bound to lead to the crucifixion and resurrection of the Messiah as the complex event through which, indeed, Israel and the world would be redeemed.

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

  It’s not dissimilar to how I feel when I think back to high school—recalling all of the things that I thought, said, and did, yet feeling almost as if I were reminiscing about another person. I now look back on my years as an adult male, remembering how I acted and interacted with others, but having some difficulty relating to the person I was back then. My life has very much been reshaped by the experiences of being and feeling physically female and having other people react to me as such.People often squabble over what defines a person as a woman or a man—whether it should be based on their chromosomes, assigned sex, genitals, or other factors—but such reductionist views deny our indisputably holistic gendered realities. For all of us, gender is first and foremost an individual experience, an amalgamation of our own unique combinations of gender inclinations, social interactions, body feelings, and lived experiences.While our experiential gender is often shaped or influenced by our perceived gender (the gender others assume us to be), one does not necessarily follow from the other. For example, I had lived and was treated as a man for many years, yet I always felt rather ambivalent about belonging to that class. Sometimes when my female friends would go off on a tirade about men in general, I would join in with them, not because I hated men or enjoyed making generalizations about people, but as a way of expressing the fact that I did not feel like a man. That identity never made sense to me given my constant struggles with gender dissonance, the persistent body feelings I experienced that informed me that there was something not quite right with my being physically male, and my personal history of consciously exploring and expressing my femaleness and femininity both in my imagination and in public. I gravitated toward genderqueer identities for most of the years that I was male-bodied—at different points, viewing myself as a boy who wanted to be a girl, a crossdresser, and bigendered—because they resonated with the myriad of gendered experiences that I had had up to that point. They captured the fact that, at the time, I really did feel like I was straddling both maleness and femaleness in some way.Genderqueer identities no longer resonate with my experiential gender in the same way. This is not to say that I now denounce them altogether, as I know firsthand just how rewarding and empowering it can be to see yourself as being outside, in between, or transcending both femaleness and maleness. It’s just that at this point in my life, I don’t feel genderqueer anymore. Experiencing the world (and my own body) as female makes the word “woman” feel like a far better fit for me now.

• From How God Became King (2012)

  You are the one I love! You make me very glad.” (1:11) “You’re the Messiah.” (8:29) “This is my son, the one I love. Listen to him!” (9:7) “Are you the Messiah, the son of the Blessed One?” (14:61) “This fellow really was God’s son.” (15:39) This, clearly, is what Mark intends us to learn. But all the way through, this sonship, which as we saw picks up the global royal commission of Psalm 2, is steadily redefined by the vocation to suffer. Mark never envisages a period where Jesus was simply doing kingdom work without the shadow of the cross falling over the page. Hence the great irony (which Paul sums up in the words Christos estauromenos, “the crucified Messiah,” 1 Cor. 1:23) that characterizes Mark throughout. Caiaphas asks a question, but the words he uses, depending on the tone of voice, are just as much a statement: “You are the Messiah, the son of the Blessed One!” And the centurion confesses Jesus as God’s son at the very moment when, as he dies, he seems anything but. Goodness knows what Mark thought the centurion meant. The irony is acute. Jesus will come to this global sovereignty, it seems, only through suffering; and by “through” suffering Mark seems to mean not just that he must pass through it to his goal, as a necessary dark tunnel before coming out into the light, but also that the suffering will somehow be effective in accomplishing his task and establishing his sovereignty. And it is Caiaphas—the high priest, in charge of the Temple itself—who utters the fullest and the most fully ironic “confession of faith”: “Messiah, Son of the Blessed One!” It cannot be that both Jesus and Caiaphas are correct. Either Caiaphas is right, and Jesus is a dangerous blasphemer. Or Jesus is right, and Caiaphas is central to the problem that had gripped the Jewish leadership of the time: they did not recognize the moment of divine visitation (Luke 19:44). The evangelists are in no doubt: Jesus is the reality, the place where Israel’s God now dwells, the human being in and through whom the one who called Abraham and uttered his voice from Sinai had now returned to judge and to save. Jesus is the reality, and the present Temple and its official spokesmen must give way before him. It is no accident, from the evangelists’ point of view, that when Jesus finally breathes his last, the veil of the Temple is torn in two from top to bottom (Mark 15:38).

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

  If we are to follow the History of Tauler’s Life and Conscience, which appeared in the first published edition of his works, 1498, Tauler underwent a remarkable spiritual change when he was fifty.470 Under the influence of Nicolas of Basel, a Friend of God from the Oberland, he was then led into a higher stage of Christian experience. Already had he achieved the reputation of an effective preacher when Nicolas, after hearing him several times, told him that he was bound in the letter and that, though he preached sound doctrine, he did not feel the power of it himself. He called Tauler a Pharisee. The rebuked man was indignant, but his monitor replied that he lacked humility and that, instead of seeking God’s honor, he was seeking his own. Feeling the justice of the criticism, Tauler confessed he had been told his sins and faults for the first time. At Nicolas’ advice he desisted from preaching for two years, and led a retired life. At the end of that time Nicolas visited him again, and bade him resume his sermons. Tauler’s first attempt, made in a public place and before a large concourse of people, was a failure. The second sermon he preached in a nunnery from the text, Matt. 25:6, "Behold the bridegroom cometh, go ye out to meet him," and so powerful was the impression that 50 persons fell to the ground like dead men. During the period of his seclusion, Tauler had surrendered himself entirely to God, and after it he continued to preach with an unction and efficiency before unknown in his experience. Some of Tauler’s expressions might give the impression that he was addicted to quietistic views, as when he speaks of being "drowned in the Fatherhood of God," of "melting in the fire of His love," of being "intoxicated with God." But these tropical expressions, used occasionally, are offset by the sober statements in which he portrays the soul’s union with God. To urge upon men to surrender themselves wholly to God and to give a practical exemplification of their union with Him in daily conduct was his mission. He emphasized the agency of the Holy Spirit, who enlightens and sanctifies, who rebukes sin and operates in the heart to bring it to self-surrender.471 The change effected by the Spirit, which he called Kehr — conversion—he dwelt upon continually. The word, which frequently occurs in his sermons, was almost a new word in mediaeval sermonic vocabulary. Tauler also insisted upon the Eckartian Abgeschiedenheit, detachment from the world, and says that a soul, to become holy, must become "barren and empty of all created things," and rid of all that "pertains to the creature." When the soul is full of the creature, God must of necessity remain apart from it, and such a soul is like a barrel that has been filled with refuse or decaying matter. It cannot thereafter be used for good, generous wine or any other pure drink.472

• From The Decameron (1353)

  He was still wide awake when, halfway through the night, he thought he could hear people entering the building by way of the roof; and shortly afterwards, through the cracks in the bedroom door, a glimmer of light could be seen. He therefore crept silently across to the door and began to peep through the crack in order to discover what was happening, and caught sight of a very pretty girl carrying the light and being met by three men who had descended from the roof. They all exchanged certain greetings, then one of the men addressed the girl as follows: ‘We’ve nothing more to fear, thank God, because we’ve learnt for certain that Tedaldo Elisei’s brothers have proved he was killed by Aldobrandino Palermini, who has made a confession. The sentence has already been signed, but all the same we’ll have to keep this thing quiet, because if it ever leaks out that we did it, we’ll be in the same sorry plight as Aldobrandino.’ This announcement was greeted by the woman with evident relief, and they all retired to bed in the lower part of the house. Having overheard the whole of this, Tedaldo began to reflect how fatally easy it was for people to cram their heads with totally erroneous notions. His thoughts turned first of all to his brothers, who had gone into mourning and buried some stranger in his own stead, after which they had been impelled by their false suspicions to accuse this innocent man and fabricate evidence so as to have him brought under sentence of death. This in turn led him to reflect upon the blind severity of the law and its administrators, who in order to convey the impression that they are zealously seeking the truth, often have recourse to cruelty and cause falsehood to be accepted as proven fact, hence demonstrating, for all their proud claim to be the ministers of God’s justice, that their true allegiance is to the devil and his iniquities. Finally, Tedaldo turned his thoughts to the question of how he could save Aldobrandino, and decided upon the course of action he would have to adopt. When he got up next morning, he left his servant behind and made his way, at what seemed a suitable hour, to the house of his former mistress. Since the door happened to be open, he went in, and there, sitting on the floor in a little room downstairs, he found his lady-love, all tearful and forlorn. Scarcely able to restrain himself from crying at this piteous spectacle, he walked over to where she was sitting.

• From The Decameron (1353)

  Tedaldo was greatly astonished that anyone could resemble him so closely as to be mistaken for his own person, whilst the news of Aldobrandino’s plight distressed him deeply. On making further inquiries he discovered that the lady was alive and well, and since it was now dark, he returned to the inn, his mind in a positive whirl. After dining in the company of his servant, he was shown up to his sleeping quarters, which were situated almost at the very top of the building. But because his mind was so active and his bed so uncomfortable, and also perhaps because of the meagreness of his supper, Tedaldo was unable to drop off to sleep. He was still wide awake when, halfway through the night, he thought he could hear people entering the building by way of the roof; and shortly afterwards, through the cracks in the bedroom door, a glimmer of light could be seen. He therefore crept silently across to the door and began to peep through the crack in order to discover what was happening, and caught sight of a very pretty girl carrying the light and being met by three men who had descended from the roof. They all exchanged certain greetings, then one of the men addressed the girl as follows: ‘We’ve nothing more to fear, thank God, because we’ve learnt for certain that Tedaldo Elisei’s brothers have proved he was killed by Aldobrandino Palermini, who has made a confession. The sentence has already been signed, but all the same we’ll have to keep this thing quiet, because if it ever leaks out that we did it, we’ll be in the same sorry plight as Aldobrandino.’ This announcement was greeted by the woman with evident relief, and they all retired to bed in the lower part of the house. Having overheard the whole of this, Tedaldo began to reflect how fatally easy it was for people to cram their heads with totally erroneous notions. His thoughts turned first of all to his brothers, who had gone into mourning and buried some stranger in his own stead, after which they had been impelled by their false suspicions to accuse this innocent man and fabricate evidence so as to have him brought under sentence of death. This in turn led him to reflect upon the blind severity of the law and its administrators, who in order to convey the impression that they are zealously seeking the truth, often have recourse to cruelty and cause falsehood to be accepted as proven fact, hence demonstrating, for all their proud claim to be the ministers of God’s justice, that their true allegiance is to the devil and his iniquities. Finally, Tedaldo turned his thoughts to the question of how he could save Aldobrandino, and decided upon the course of action he would have to adopt.

• From The Decameron (1353)

  When the entire populace was assembled in front of the church, Friar Cipolla began to preach his sermon, never suspecting for a moment that any of his things had been tampered with. He harangued his audience at great length, carefully stressing what was required of them, and on reaching the point where he was to display the Angel Gabriel’s feather, he first recited the Confiteor11 and caused two torches to be lit; then, throwing back the cowl from his head, he carefully unwound the taffeta and drew forth the casket, which, after a few words in praise and commendation of the Angel Gabriel and his relic, he proceeded to open. When he saw that it was full of coal, Guccio Balena was the last person he suspected of playing him such a trick, for he knew him to be incapable of rising to such heights of ingenuity. Nor did he even blame the man for being so careless as to allow others to do it, but inwardly cursed his own stupidity in entrusting his things to Guccio’s care, knowing full well, as he did, that he was negligent, disobedient, careless and witless. Without changing colour in the slightest, however, he raised his eyes and hands to Heaven, and in a voice that could be heard by all the people present, he exclaimed: ‘Almighty God, may Thy power be forever praised!’ Then, closing the casket and turning to the people, he said: ‘Ladies and gentlemen, I must explain to you that when I was still very young, I was sent by my superior into those parts where the sun appears,12 with express instructions to seek out the privileges of the Porcellana,13 which, though they cost nothing to seal and deliver, bring far more profit to others than to ourselves. ‘So away I went, and after setting out from Venison, I visited the Greek Calends, then rode at a brisk pace through the Kingdom of Algebra and through Bordello, eventually reaching Bedlam, and not long afterwards, almost dying of thirst, I arrived in Sardintinia. But why bother to mention every single country to which I was directed by my questing spirit? After crossing the Straits of Penury, I found myself passing through Funland and Laughland, both of which countries are thickly populated, besides containing a lot of people. Then I went on to Liarland, where I found a large number of friars belonging to various religious orders including my own, all of whom were forsaking a life of discomfort for the love of God, and paying little heed to the exertions of others so long as they led to their own profit. In all these countries, I coined a great many phrases, which turned out to be the only currency I needed.

• From The Decameron (1353)

  Tedaldo marvelled exceedingly that any one should so resemble him as to be taken for him and was grieved for Aldobrandino's ill fortune. Then, having learned that the lady was alive and well and it being now night, he returned, full of various thoughts, to the inn and having supped with his servant, was put to sleep well nigh at the top of the house. There, what with the many thoughts that stirred him and the badness of the bed and peradventure also by reason of the supper, which had been meagre, half the night passed whilst he had not yet been able to fall asleep; wherefore, being awake, himseemed about midnight he heard folk come down into the house from the roof, and after through the chinks of the chamber-door he saw a light come up thither. Thereupon he stole softly to the door and putting his eye to the chink, fell a-spying what this might mean and saw a comely enough lass who held the light, whilst three men, who had come down from the roof, made towards her; and after some greetings had passed between them, one of them said to the girl, 'Henceforth, praised be God, we may abide secure, since we know now for certain that the death of Tedaldo Elisei hath been proved by his brethren against Aldobrandino Palermini, who hath confessed thereto, and judgment is now recorded; nevertheless, it behoveth to keep strict silence, for that, should it ever become known that it was we [who slew him], we shall be in the same danger as is Aldobrandino.' Having thus bespoken the woman, who showed herself much rejoiced thereat, they left her and going below, betook themselves to bed. Tedaldo, hearing this, fell a-considering how many and how great are the errors which may befall the minds of men, bethinking him first of his brothers who had bewept and buried a stranger in his stead and after of the innocent man accused on false suspicion and brought by untrue witness to the point of death, no less than of the blind severity of laws and rulers, who ofttimes, under cover of diligent investigation of the truth, cause, by their cruelties, prove that which is false and style themselves ministers of justice and of God, whereas indeed they are executors of iniquity and of the devil; after which he turned his thought to the deliverance of Aldobrandino and determined in himself what he should do. Accordingly, arising in the morning, he left his servant at the inn and betook himself alone, whenas it seemed to him time, to the house of his mistress, where, chancing to find the door open, he entered in and saw the lady seated, all full of tears and bitterness of soul, in a little ground floor room that was there.

• From Crazy Brave (2012)

  He called his helpers. He chanted and sang, and as he sang, the song literally lifted him up into dance. As he danced, he became the poem he was singing. He became an animal. A medicine plant accompanied him. He became a transmitter of healing energy, with poetry, music, and dance. As I sat there alone in front of the story box, I became the healer, I became the patient, and I became the poem. I became aware of an opening within me. In a fast, narrow crack of perception, I knew this is what I was put here to do: I must become the poem, the music, and the dancer. I would not truly understand how for a long, long time. This was when I began to write poetry. EAGLE POEM To pray, you open your whole self To sky, to earth, to sun, to moon To one whole voice that is you. And know that there is more That you can’t see, can’t hear Can’t know, except in moments Steadily growing and in languages that aren’t always sound But other circles of motion Like eagle that Sunday morning Over Salt River Circled in blue sky, in wind Swept our hearts clean with sacred wings We see you see ourselves And know that we must take The utmost care and kindness In all things Breathe in knowing we are made of all of this And breathe, knowing we are truly blessed because we were born and die soon within a true circle of motion. Like eagle, rounding out the morning inside us We pray that it will be done In beauty, in beauty I knew I had to break off from the father of my child. He’d stop drinking, and then his friends and relatives would come by to visit with six-packs and brown paper bags of hard stuff. We’d sit around the table and they would pass a beer or a drink to him, though he’d tell them he had quit. “Come on, brother,” they’d tease and urge him on. “What kind of Indian are you?” I’d get angry with them. I’d remind him and his friends that he wasn’t drinking. They’d look at me askance. I was a woman, and my tribe wasn’t even from here. I was not a real person. But then he would take one, just one. And he couldn’t stop. At first he burned eloquent. He was funny. He’d sing. He’d read poetry that would break you and put you back together with sunrise. It was hard to believe that this was the same boy who had caused great concern in his family when he reached the age of four and still couldn’t speak. One of the tribe’s helpers performed a ceremony with fire and loosened his tongue. He joked that they were probably very sorry now. He would get sad. Then he would get angry. One night I was forced to leave our house in the middle of the night.

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

  The importance of this theological tournament lies in this: that it marks a progress in Luther’s emancipation from the papal system. Here for the first time he denied the divine right and origin of the papacy, and the infallibility of a general council. Henceforward he had nothing left but the divine Scriptures, his private judgment, and his faith in God who guides the course of history by his own Spirit, through all obstructions by human errors, to a glorious end. The ship of the Reformation was cut from its moorings, and had to fight with the winds and waves of the open sea. From this time Luther entered upon a revolutionary crusade against the Roman Church until the anarchical dissensions in his own party drove him back into a conservative and even reactionary position. Before we proceed with the development of the Reformation, we must make the acquaintance of Melanchthon, who had accompanied Luther to the Leipzig disputation as a spectator, suggesting to him and Carlstadt occasional arguments,218 and hereafter stood by him as his faithful colleague and friend. § 38. Philip Melanchthon. Literature (Portrait). The best Melanchthon collection is in the Royal Library of Berlin, which I have consulted for this list (July, 1886). The third centenary of Mel.’s death in 1860, and the erection of his monument in Wittenberg, called forth a large number of pamphlets and articles in periodicals. I. Works of Melanchthon. The first ed. appeared at Basel, 1541, 5 vols. fol.; another by Peucer (his son-in-law), Wittenberg, 1562–64, 4 vols. fol.; again 1601. Selection of his German works by Köthe. Leipzig, 1829–30, 6 vols. *Best ed. of Opera omnia (in the "Corpus Reformatorum") by Bretschneider and Bindseil. Halle, 1834–60, 28 vols. 4°. The most important vols. for church history are vols. i.-xi. and xxi.-xxviii. The last vol. (second part) contains Annates Vitae (pp. 1–143), and very ample Indices (145–378). Add to these: Epistolae, Judicia, Consilia, Testimonia, etc., ed. H. E. Bindseil. Halle, 1874. 8°. A supplement to the "Corpus Reform." Compare also Bindseil’s Bibliotheca Melanthoniana. Halis 1868 pp. 28). Carl Krause: Melanthoniana, Regesten und Briefe über die Beziehungen Philipp Mel. zu Anhalt und dessen Fürsten. Zerbst, 1885. pp. 185. II. Biographies of Mel. An account of his last days by the Wittenberg professors: Brevis narratio exponens quo fine vitam in terris suam clauserit D. Phil. Mel. conscripta a professoribus academiae Vitebergensis, qui omnibus quae exponuntur interfuerunt. Viteb. 1560. 4°. The same in German. A funeral oration by Heerbrand: Oratio in obitum Mel. habita in Academia Tubingensi die decima quinta Maji. Vitebergae, 1560. *Joachim Camerarius: Vita Mel. Lips. 1566; and other edd., one with notes by Strobel. Halle, 1777; one with preface by Neander in the Vitae quatuor Reformatorum. Berlin, 1841.

• From Trash (1988)

  It was the first time anyone had ever suggested Mattie might be pretty. She started leaving home earlier so she could walk slower past the railway siding. On the mornings when one of the other Gibson boys was there, she felt disappointed. They tended to giggle when they saw her, which always made her wonder what James said about her to them. “I told them to keep an eye on you.” James smiled wide when she asked him. “I told them to keep their hands off and their eyes open. What you think about that?” “I think you talking a lot for nothing having been said between us.” “What do we need to say?” But Mattie could not answer that. She didn’t know what she wanted to say to anybody. She only knew she wanted to start finding things out. She felt as if her eyes were coming open, as if light were sneaking into a dark place inside her. At the dinner table Mattie watched how her mama spooned rice out of the bowl, all the while talking about how only trash served food out of a cooking pot. “Quality people use serving dishes.” Shirley slapped Bo’s hand. “Quality people don’t come to the table with grease under their nails.” “I washed.” Mattie watched rice grains fall off her fork. She hated butter beans with rice. White on white didn’t suit her. Black-eyed peas with pork and greens—that was better. Red tomatoes on the side of the plate almost spoke out loud. Best of all was pinto beans cooked soft and thick with little green bits sprinkled on at the last and chopped collards laid round the sides of the plate. Color. When she had her own kitchen, there would be lots of color. “If you’d really washed, you would be clean,” Shirley was saying. “Nobody in my family ever came to the table with dirt under their nails. You go wash again.” My family, Mattie thought. My family. Bo’s face creased and uncreased, as if the words he wasn’t saying were pushing up inside him. His long skinny body vibrated in his overalls. He kept quiet, though, and pushed himself up to go out to the porch to wash again. Tucker slapped his behind lightly as he went past. Mattie put her fork between her teeth, realizing in that moment how bad their father was looking. He wasn’t eating either. It didn’t seem as if he ever ate much anymore. All he did was drink lots of tea out of his special jar from under the pump. He’s a drunk, Mattie thought, examining the broken veins in her father’s nose. He really is a drunk. “What are you thinking about, Miss High and Mighty?” Shirley spooned butter beans onto another plate and pursed her lips at Mattie. “Nothing.” Mattie filled her mouth with rice so she wouldn’t have to talk.