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.

Page 44 of 63 · 20 per page

• From The Spiral Staircase: My Climb Out of Darkness (2004)

  But the principal target of the Crusaders had been Islam, and now I had to come to terms with the third Abrahamic religion. Without knowing anything about it, I had always assumed that the Muslim faith was inherently violent and fanatical. It was a religion of the sword, and had established itself only by means of warfare. I had been instinctively moved by Islam when I had visited the Middle East, but I assumed that I would find the theology as repellent as the crusading ethos. But yet again—as with The First Christian— once I was confronted with the facts, I found the reality to be quite different. Islam might have become more intolerant during the last half century; this seemed to be due to the peculiar strains of our modernity. In general, however, it had been far more respectful of other faiths than Christianity. During the Crusades, Muslim generals, such as Nur ad-Din and Saladin, who led the Islamic riposte, had behaved with greater restraint and compassion than their Christian counterparts. Increasingly—just as I had done with Saint Paul—I had to dismantle my old position, which I could now see to be ignorant, prejudiced, and deeply conditioned by the culture into which I happened to have been born. Westerners had needed to hate Islam; in the fantasies they created, it became everything that they hoped that they were not, and was made to epitomize everything that they feared that they were. Islam had become the shadow self of the West, and even in the 1980s, I noticed, we seemed to find it difficult to regard Muslim faith and civilization with fairness and objectivity. The stereotypical view of Islam, first developed at the time of the Crusades, was in some profound sense essential to our Western identity.

• From The Spiral Staircase: My Climb Out of Darkness (2004)

  Saint Paul seemed a great place to start. I was convinced that many if not all of the failings of Christianity could be traced back to this pugnacious apostle. The churches’ obsession with complex doctrine, their denigration of women and the body, their intolerance and authoritarian corruption could all be laid at his door. He had perverted the simple, loving message of Jesus, and the religion that came after him had never fully recovered. But as I started to read a little more deeply, I found that the role of Paul in early Christianity had been even more significant. I had stumbled unawares into the minefield of New Testament scholarship, whose findings astounded me. In the convent, I had been introduced to the rudiments of modern biblical criticism while working for my theology diploma, but this had been a very ladylike syllabus, which had excluded most of the really challenging material. Now, reading in my flat in the weeks before my departure for Israel, while June was arguing with Channel 4 about my contract, I made some startling discoveries. A disturbing number of eminent scholars agreed that Jesus had no intention of founding a new religion. He had preached only to his fellow Jews, and there was nothing strikingly original about his teaching, which was in line with other strands of first-century Judaism. Jesus certainly never claimed to be God, but preferred the title “Son of Man,” which emphasized his humanity. After the scandal of his crucifixion, his traumatized disciples had had visions of him risen from the tomb and concluded that he was the long-awaited Jewish Messiah, who would shortly return to inaugurate the kingdom of God on earth. But the early Christians still regarded themselves as forming an exclusively Jewish sect. It was Saint Paul, who had never known the historical Jesus, who had first marketed the faith for the non-Jewish world of the Roman Empire. But even Paul had not seen Jesus as divine in any simplistic way. When he called him “Son of God,” he used the phrase in its strictly Jewish sense: Jesus was an ordinary human being who had been given a special mission by God; as a result of his obedience and devotion, he had been elevated to a position of unique intimacy with God and given the title “Lord,” or kyrios. But (I now read) there is always a clear distinction in the New Testament between the kyrios Christos and God the Father.

• From A Theology for the Social Gospel (1918)

  THE SOCIAL GOSPEL AND THE ATONEMENT 267 creation of such aneffectivenucleus isessential to any real reconciliation. This conception is freefrom the artificial and immoral elements inherent in all forensicand governmental inter- pretations of the atonement. It begins with the solidarity between God and Christ, and proceeds tothe solidarity between God and mankind. Itdealswith social and re- ligious realities.It connectsthe idea of reconciliation and the idea of the Kingdom ofGod.Itdoes notdis- pense with the moraleffort ofmen and the moral re- newal of social life but absolutely demands both. It fur- nishesa mystic basis for the social revolution. Itwould be a theological conception which the social gospel could utilize and enforce. Finally we must inquire how the atonementaffected men. What did the deathof Christ add tohis life in the way of reconciling, and redemptivepower? The answer- to thiscan not benarrowed downto a single influence. An event likethedeathof Jesus influences human thought and feeling in many ways. I shall mentionthree. First: It was theconclusive demonstration of the power of sin in humanity. I can not contemplate the force and malignancy of the six socialand racial sins which converged on Jesus without a deep sense ofthe enormous power ofevilin theworld and ofthebitter task before those who make up the cutting edge ofthe Kingdom of God. Invarious ways this realization comes to all who think of the cross of Christ. But the solidar- istic interpretation ofthe killing power of sin is by far

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

  Letting God be God is a good thing. We would be terrible at that job. Imagine if five-year-olds ruled the world for a day, and every idea they had was promptly carried out by adults. On the one hand, it could be the most entertaining thing ever. On the other, it wouldn’t take long before the world descended into total chaos. School would be outlawed, sinks would flow with chocolate milk, and bedtime would simply not happen. Kids need adults because they aren’t the best judges of their own needs. And the difference in maturity and wisdom between a kindergartner and an adult is nothing compared to the difference between us and God. Praying that His will would be done reminds us that we aren’t as smart as our Twitter bio or our résumé makes us sound. Also, notice that the line doesn’t say, “your will be done in my life, God, because it’s my life that really matters here.” It says, “on earth.” Your problems and needs are real. And they are almost as important as mine are. Just kidding, of course. But that’s how we tend to think, right? Our problems take precedence over those of others. God, unsurprisingly, has a bigger perspective. And prayer has a way of helping us zoom out a bit and see the bigger picture. It’s amazing when you think about it. Jesus is asking us to partner with God in prayer, not just to get our own needs met but to see His kingdom—His power, love, glory, and purpose—accomplished on earth. That realization adds a whole new dimension to our prayers. Practicing the Lord’s Prayer Your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven. Am I committed to obeying God? Do I trust Him enough to do what He says? Specifically, what is God’s will in my family today? What is His will in my work, school, or friendships?

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

  Arnobius, a successful teacher of rhetoric with many pupils (Lactantius being one of them), was first an enemy, then an advocate of Christianity. He lived in Sicca, an important city on the Numidian border to the Southwest of Carthage, in the latter part of the third and the beginning of the fourth century . He was converted to Christ in adult age, like his more distinguished fellow-Africans, Tertullian and Cyprian. "O blindness," he says, in describing the great change, "only a short time ago I was worshipping images just taken from the forge, gods shaped upon the anvil and by the hammer .... When I saw a stone made smooth and smeared with oil, I prayed to it and addressed it as if a living power dwelt in it, and implored blessings from the senseless stock. And I offered grievious insult even to the gods, whom I took to be such, in that I considered them wood, stone, and bone, or fancied that they dwelt in the stuff of such things. Now that I have been led by so great a teacher into the way of truth, I know what all that is, I think worthily of the Worthy, offer no insult to the Godhead, and give every one his due .... Is Christ, then, not to be regarded as God? And is He who in other respects may be deemed the very greatest, not to be honored with divine worship, from whom we have received while alive so great gifts, and from whom, when the day comes we expect greater gifts?"1573 The contrast was very startling indeed, if we remember that Sicca bore the epithet "Veneria," as the seat of the vile worship of the goddess of lust in whose temple the maidens sacrificed their chastity, like the Corinthian priestesses of Aphrodite. He is therefore especially severe in his exposure of the sexual immoralities of the heathen gods, among whom Jupiter himself takes the lead in all forms of vice.1574 We know nothing of his subsequent life and death. Jerome, the only ancient writer who mentions him, adds some doubtful particulars, namely that he was converted by visions or dreams, that he was first refused admission to the Church by the bishop of Sicca, and hastily wrote his apology in proof of his sincerity. But this book, though written soon after his conversion, is rather the result of an inward impulse and strong conviction than outward occasion.

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

  But as God took me back over those life-altering experiences with Him, I realized I was missing something. I was missing prayer. Prayer had been at the heart of every encounter with God and every season of ministry. It was the overlooked element that grounded my faith, guided my steps, and guarded my heart. It was the reason kids spent half their lunchtime in a gym. It was the reason our youth group exploded from twenty-four people to over six hundred. It was the power behind the church in Bogotá and other churches around the world. I heard God say simply, “Chad, this year, add prayer to the church.” Our church has great people, great leaders, great ministries. We were doing many good things for people in our community. Now, though, it was time to grow in prayer. Both as a church and as individuals, God was asking us to meet Him and to know Him better through prayer. The next week, I taught our staff meeting on the topic of prayer. A couple months later, I started a sermon series about prayer. We also created a prayer card to hand out to our church (it’s included in the back of this book). We ramped up our regular, focused prayer times like never before. Now I’m writing a book about prayer. Unexpectedly, yes—but enthusiastically. My focus in these pages will be how prayer can help you navigate the stress, uncertainty, and blind curves in all areas of life. We will look at how prayer involves God in every facet of our day-to-day existence, including our emotions, finances, faith, ministry, and more. I’m a pastor, but first, I’m a husband and father and neighbor and friend and boss and Lakers fan and overall normal human being. I’ve found that prayer has a place in all the spheres of my life. Especially the Lakers sphere. (Come on, if you don’t pray for your team, are you even a real fan?) The same goes for you. Regardless of your age, gender, financial picture, marital status, career aspirations, favorite sports team, or any other variable, you need prayer. You will come to love prayer (if you don’t already!). Prayer connects you to God, and being connected to Him changes everything. As you read, keep in mind that terms like anxiety and fear are used across a wide spectrum of behavior, emotion, and mental health. The last thing I want to do is imply that I have easy answers for problems that are beyond my knowledge or training. I’m also not saying that prayer should replace other tangible actions and strategies. That kind of superficial, cheap dismissal is called spiritual bypassing, and it does a huge disservice to prayer. I have an entire chapter on that later on.

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

  After the earthquake came a fire, but the LO R D was not in the fire. And after the fire came a gentle whisper. When Elijah heard it, he pulled his cloak over his face and went out and stood at the mouth of the cave. Then a voice said to him, “What are you doing here, Elijah?” Elijah knew God’s presence. It wasn’t in the hurricane or the earthquake or the fire, although God was powerful enough to control those. God’s presence was in the whisper. In the quietness. In the silence. We need to make space in our lives to hear that whisper. Many people do this by having a time of devotions in the morning before they jump into the busyness of the day. Others prefer to do it at night, when the day is over and there is time to pause and reflect. Do what works for you in your current schedule and change it up if your schedule is adjusted. 4. God’s voice is lovingly uncomfortable. If God’s voice conveniently agrees with your own thoughts all the time, it’s probably not God. Read that again. God speaks for himself. He confronts sin, reveals weaknesses, uncovers vulnerabilities, cleans out the wounds we’ve been trying to hide. He loves us enough to hurt us, but always for our good. He is the friend described in Proverbs 27:6: “Wounds from a friend can be trusted, but an enemy multiplies kisses.” God doesn’t condemn, but He does convict. Condemnation says, “You just did that wrong, and you did it that way because you are a failure. You do everything wrong, actually. You are terrible. You are worthless. You are hopeless.” Condemnation writes us off as lost causes. It is general, vague, and permeated with despair and shame. Conviction, on the other hand, brings hope. It says, “You did wrong, but I love you and have forgiven you already. Now you need to make it right, and you need to do things differently in the future.” Conviction tells us that God loves us enough to correct us when we need it. It is specific, practical, and loving. And it comes with the grace to change. I’m not saying God will always say things you hate to hear. He’s not a divine critic who exists solely to point out your failures. Often, especially when you are weak or hurting, His voice will be both what you want and what you need. It will comfort and encourage, strengthen and support. Whatever He says, it will be honest. It may not be what we expect to hear, hope to hear, or try to hear, but it will be what we need to hear. And it will bring healing and life. Some of us have an internal critic who mercilessly critiques everything we do. That isn’t God.

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

  It’s pretty much built into the job description of a preacher, after all. I literally get paid to stand in front of people and talk. There’s a lot more to the job than that, of course, but that’s the most public part. Now, if you’ve been to very many church services, you know how this typically works—the preacher stands up front with a microphone, shares whatever is on their heart for longer than they meant to, apologizes for going overtime, keeps preaching, apologizes again, keeps preaching some more, prays a prayer that includes the points they didn’t get to during their message, and finally closes the service. I love it. I don’t take it for granted at all. I’m aware that I’m sharing my own point of view, that I don’t have all the answers, and that everybody listening to me has total freedom to agree or disagree with what I say. That’s part of the fun. I do have one pet peeve with preaching, though. What I’m about to describe doesn’t happen every week, but when it does, it’s usually the same people who do it. After the closing prayer, while everybody is packing up their stuff and deciding where to eat lunch, someone will come up to me and say how much they loved the message, how much they agree with it, and how it’s exactly what they’ve been thinking during the week. Then they’ll spend ten minutes summarizing the sermon I just preached and sharing their favorite parts. Except nothing they say will be what I said during the message. Nothing. At all. It’s like they’re preaching their own sermon to an audience of one—yours truly. Maybe it’s cosmic payback for the times I’ve been that guy preaching too long. I’m so glad they are engaged and excited, but they clearly weren’t listening. Here’s the thing, though. I wonder how often I’ve done that to God? I show up in prayer with an agenda, a prayer list, and a plan. I tell God what He’s thinking. I tell Him what He should do. I impose my ideas on Him. Then I walk away, happy to have expressed my point of view. And God is like, “Bro, you haven’t heard a thing I’ve been saying.” Prayer is not just a time for us to talk to God. It’s also a time to listen to Him. To know Him better. To understand His ways. To gain His perspective. If you look back over the benefits of prayer that we covered in the first section, you’ll realize that the majority of prayer is not about us telling God stuff, but about us receiving something from Him.

• From The Chronology of Water (2011)

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

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

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

• From The Surrender: An Erotic Memoir (2004)

  Once gravity reasserted its hold on me, I immediately started examining my experience. It felt like my new job. I’d been given a gift and now I had to attempt some understanding. Why? Why me? Why him? Why there? I had given my vaginal virginity to the first man who paid me any consistent sexual attention. I would have married him as only a virgin would: with adoration and ignorance. Eight penises later, I married one. Ten years later, when I departed that union, I was horny as hell, like never before—a bunny on a hot tin roof—but intercourse was not what I wanted. I needed love, admiration, and pussy worship. This insatiable desire ruled my life. But then A-Man came along and shook my overanalyzed ego off its self-important pedestal. I was an anal virgin. He showed me, physically, where my rage resided. Anger thrives in your ass. A Dickensian alley, the ass. Despite its tiny, ignored entry, once opened, it contains literally yard upon yard of coiled past traumas, the internal gripping of the emotionally unbearable. A-Man penetrated the site of my anger and cauterized my wound. I was now being given a second chance—not on the well-trodden vaginal trail, but in a place entirely new to my consciousness—and it quickly became the site of my consciousness. Truly virgin, once again. With the discovery of this new world, I experienced all the wonder and beauty that a deflowering might be but rarely is. And so it began, in naive complicity, once a week, twice a week, three times a week. Mostly late afternoons. He was an expert and I was willing. I began to count. It just seemed like the right thing to do. #41 Ablaze afterward, he stood up, still hard, and slugged some water from a blue bottle. “What is it about?” I asked from the bed, flushed and dazed. He stopped drinking, looked over at me, paused, and said, “Vibrations.” He says we’re learning something about time. The passage of time, the experience of time, the truth of time, the eternity of time. The best time. ENTERING THE EXIT Once initiated, I couldn’t help thinking about anal everything. Including the mechanics. The digestive system is a one-way pipe where peristaltic contractions urge food from mouth to anus. Ass-fucking entails the bold—and contrary—attempt to travel the route in reverse. Fucking a pussy is entering a cave with only one pinprick exit—the hole in the cervix that enters the womb. (And, of course, it is an “exit” to parenthood.) Under normal circumstances, the pussy is a pretty closed, if expandable, place. The vagina is a receptacle. The anal canal, on the other hand, is directly, though complexly, connected to the mouth, the point of entry, the place that feeds the life. Thirty feet or so of digestive track from rectum to colon to small intestine to stomach to esophagus to throat to mouth is the route entered by the anal fucker.

• From Wild (2012)

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

• From Justine (Alexandria Quartet vol. 1) (1957)

  Sailing upwards to the fifth floor in the lift, making awkward attempts to appear presentable (feeling the dark stubble on his chin, retying his tie) Nessim questioned his reflection in the cheap mirror, puzzled by the whole new range of feelings and beliefs these brief scenes had given him. Under everything, however, aching like a poisoned tooth or finger, lay the quivering meaning of those eight words which Melissa had lodged in him. In a dazed sort of way he recognized that Justine was dead to him — from a mental picture she had become an engraving, a locket which one might wear over one’s heart for ever. It is always bitter to leave the old life for the new — and every woman is a new life, compact and self-contained and sui generis. As a person she had suddenly faded. He did not wish to possess her any longer but to free himself from her. From a woman she had become a situation. He rang for Selim and when the secretary appeared he dictated to him a few of the duller business letters with a calm so surprising that the boy’s hand trembled as he took them down in his meticulous crowsfoot shorthand. Perhaps Nessim had never been more terrifying to Selim than he appeared at this moment, sitting at his great polished desk with the gleaming battery of telephones ranged before him. Nessim did not meet Melissa for some time after this episode but he wrote her long letters, all of which he destroyed in the lavatory. It seemed necessary to him, for some fantastic reason, to explain and justify Justine to her and each of these letters began with a long painful exegesis of Justine’s past and his own. Without this preamble, he felt, it would be impossible ever to speak of the way in which Melissa had moved and captivated him. He was defending his wife, of course, not against Melissa, who had uttered no criticism of her (apart from the one phrase) but against all the new doubts about her which emerged precisely from his experience with Melissa. Just as my own experience of Justine had illuminated and re-evaluated Melissa for me so he looking into Melissa’s grey eyes saw a new and unsuspected Justine born therein. You see, he was now alarmed at the extent to which it might become possible to hate her. He recognized now that hate is only unachieved love. He felt envious when he remembered the single-mindedness of Pursewarden who on the flyleaf of the last book he gave Balthazar had scribbled the mocking words: Pursewarden on Life N.B. Food is for eating Art is for arting Women for — — — — — Finish RIP

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

  You develop empathy and a smidge of humility. You have kids of your own and suddenly wish you would have given your parents more grace. You discover that who they are to you matters far more than what they give you . I’m a grown man with a family, house, and job of my own. I don’t “need” my parents to give me anything. But my relationship with them is genuine, deep, fulfilling, and vital. The way I value them has changed dramatically since I was a teenager. Mark Twain is often quoted as saying, “When I was a boy of fourteen, my father was so ignorant I could hardly stand to have the old man around. But when I got to be twenty-one, I was astonished at how much the old man had learned in seven years.” If I’m honest, sometimes I’ve viewed God the way I viewed my parents. At first, He was there to provide for my needs, but that was about it. But I’ve changed. I’ve grown up, so to speak. And now I’m astonished at how much God means to me, how much He does, and how important my relationship with Him has become. I’ve learned that, like my parents, who God is matters far more than what He gives me . So if I pray just to get something from God, I’m missing out on most of what prayer is for. In the following chapters, we’re going to explore the benefits of prayer. We’ll ask questions like, “Why do I need God?” and “What is prayer good for?” You’ll notice that the last chapter is the only one that talks about answered prayer. Answered prayer is awesome, of course. But it’s actually far down the list of importance. The rest of the chapters focus on what prayer does in, through , and for us. In the grand scheme of your life, those are the things that matter most. Prayer changes things. Mostly you. TWO Relaxing on a roller coasterPrayer and peace I can still remember playing hide-and-seek with my friends as a kid. I would hide under a bed or in a closet while someone counted to ten. Then the person would stalk the house in search of a victim. After a few moments, I would inevitably hear footsteps right beside the bed or outside the closet. It would strike me—too late—that, like a total newbie, I had chosen the most obvious hiding place in the room. I would be as terrified as if I were hiding from an actual ax murderer. My heart would dislodge itself from its normal spot inside my chest and make its way up my throat. There would be nothing to do but hold my breath and hope the “seeker” assumed no one would be stupid enough to hide where I was.

• From Emotional Inheritance (2022)

  It turned out that his father was ambivalent about having a child; she felt this baby was hers alone. As I describe in Part II, there is a profound meaning in naming a baby after a person who died in tragic circumstances, for example, a child or a person who died by suicide or was murdered. Doing so is often an expression of a wish not only to revive what was lost but also to repair the past and heal trauma. In mid-April Rachel, Marc, and baby Ruth go to Israel—to look for their future, to search for the past, to find out who Ruth was. What they discover is unbelievable but in fact also quite believable. Suddenly everything makes sense. In Jerusalem, Rachel, Marc, and Ruth meet the family of her grandfather’s friend from Auschwitz. His friend had died years earlier, but the man’s daughter and granddaughter are happy to see them. They invite them to the daughter’s house in Jerusalem . “We met them on a Sunday morning,” Rachel tells me. “I had never felt such a breeze as on that day in Jerusalem. We walked into our hosts’ home, with Ruth sleeping in the sling, and were invited to sit on the porch. As we sat down, Ruth woke up, and I introduced her to the family. ‘This is Ruth,’ I said, and the daughter looked at me, startled. She didn’t say a word and went to the kitchen to bring tea and cookies. When she came back, she said, ‘How meaningful that you named her Ruth. My father used to talk about Ruth. He said that your grandfather never recovered from her death. That a part of him died with her.’ “I didn’t know what to say. I was too embarrassed to tell her that I had no idea who Ruth was. That I only knew from my mother that she was a relative who had died at Auschwitz and that her name was on the memorial candle my grandparents used to light every holiday. I couldn’t breathe and instead kept silent. Marc looked at me and knew what I needed. He turned to our host and asked if she could tell us everything she knew about Ruth. “And then we discovered my grandparents’ secret. She told us that when the war started, my grandfather was married and had a daughter named Ruth. She was still a baby when they arrived at Auschwitz. His wife and daughter were separated from him and taken to the women’s section. He never saw them again. Someone told him they were taken to the gas chambers and murdered just a few hours after they’d arrived.” Rachel tells me that while they were talking, a siren sounded. Their hostess apologized for not preparing them. “What a symbolic moment,” she said. “Today is Holocaust Day.

• From Emotional Inheritance (2022)

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

• From The Lives of Great Christians (2007)

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

• From The Surrender: An Erotic Memoir (2004)

  One heroic diver would come over, eat me out, slowly, slowly, daring me not to come. Sometimes I’d last over an hour. How wonderful to be in the position of trying to hold back, of not praying to come. There was one thing he did want, to lick my ass. Okay, I said, go ahead. But he didn’t just lick my ass, he fucked my ass with his tongue, very impressive indeed, never had a tongue deeper to date. He never took his clothes off, and he had the good taste to never kiss me on the mouth. There is risk, however, with the Pussy Hounds. The final fading of my respect has sometimes happened when a man is so eager to suck my pussy that I know he indulges his need to please rather than an actual love of pussy. It’s distracting. Intention is all—I can feel it with my clit. It is more important to me that a man love pussy in general than mine in particular. After all, if he likes them as a whole, then mine is a slam dunk. But if a man likes only mine and not all the others, well, I just don’t trust him. With this type of man I have learned to guide my orgasm with fantasy, and, like him, play the using game. While he licks furiously, indulging his codependence, I file through my Rolodex of every man I’ve ever known, all in the audience, erections puncturing the air, watching this one lap at the altar they all still covet. Works every time. It is my altruism, not my narcissism, that fosters this fantasy. After all, a man can acquire such wisdom at the source of a woman’s orgasm: how to slow down, speed up, be consistent, be nonlinear, be persistent, be unpredictable, be patient, be outrageous, be generous, be witty. There is, in fact, nothing of value, philosophically and practically, that he can’t learn if he can turn the delta of Venus into the site of Vesuvius. Most men will lick and suck and drink a pussy—and I’m not complaining. But it is the rare man who does so with his whole consciousness poised on his tongue. It is this awareness that will move a woman; when her consciousness—on her clit—encounters his, orgasm marks their meeting. Ultimately, it is here—or rather, down there—that a man will learn how to be a winner or a loser, with women as in life. WHY THERE? Once gravity reasserted its hold on me, I immediately started examining my experience. It felt like my new job. I’d been given a gift and now I had to attempt some understanding. Why? Why me? Why him? Why there?

• From The Surrender: An Erotic Memoir (2004)

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

• From Justine (Alexandria Quartet vol. 1) (1957)

  I turned at last into an empty café where I drank coffee served by a Saidi whose grotesque squint seemed to double every object he gazed upon. In the far corner, curled up on a trunk and so still that she was invisible at first sat a very old lady smoking a narguileh which from time to time uttered a soft air-bubble of sound like the voice of a dove. Here I thought the whole story through from beginning to end, starting in the days before I ever knew Melissa and ending somewhere soon in an idle pragmatic death in a city to which I did not belong; I say that I thought it through, but strangely enough I thought of it not as a personal history with an individual accent so much as part of the historical fabric of the place. I described it to myself as part and parcel of the city’s behaviour, completely in keeping with everything that had gone before, and everything that would follow it. It was as if my imagination had become subtly drugged by the ambience of the place and could not respond to personal, individual assessments. I had lost the capacity to feel even the thrill of danger. My sharpest regret, characteristically enough, was for the jumble of manuscript notes which might be left behind. I had always hated the incomplete, the fragmentary. I decided that they at least must be destroyed before I went a step further. I rose to my feet — only to be struck by a sudden realization that the man I had seen in the little booth had been Mnemjian. How was it possible to mistake that misformed back? This thought occupied me as I recrossed the quarter, moving towards the larger thoroughfares in the direction of the sea. I walked across this mirage of narrow intersecting alleys as one might walk across a battlefield which had swallowed up all the friends of one’s youth; yet I could not help in delighting at every scent and sound — a survivor’s delight. Here at one corner stood a flame-swallower with his face turned up to the sky, spouting a column of flame from his mouth which turned black with flapping fumes at the edges and bit a hole in the sky. From time to time he took a swig at a bottle of petrol before throwing back his head once more and gushing flames six feet high. At every corner the violet shadows fell and foundered, striped with human experience — at once savage and tenderly lyrical. I took it as a measure of my maturity that I was filled no longer with despairing self-pity but with a desire to be claimed by the city, enrolled among its trivial or tragic memories — if it so wished.