Relief

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 Little Sister: A Memoir (2019)

  My mother was wearing her nun’s clothes, with her hair rolled up in a bun that looked like a half-moon and a tiny black hat pinned on her head. I was dressed in my postulant’s attire. What will my grandparents think of our clothes? But my mother seemed unperturbed as she walked up the front steps, turned the brass knob, and opened the heavy brown door without ringing the doorbell, as though it really were her own place. The hallway had mullioned windows at each floor that let in warm sunlight with a pink tinge. In the air was the scent of cooking, a sign of family life behind the closed doors. “Our apartment is on the third floor,” she said. “Follow me.” Together we climbed the broad wooden stairs, Sister Elizabeth Ann leading the way with a brisk and almost impatient stride, while I followed, holding my breath with anxious anticipation. We reached the second-floor landing, then headed up to the third. “Hello,” Sister Elizabeth Ann called out as we neared the top step. In an instant, the door flew open, as though my grandparents had been waiting for us with their ears pressed against the door. My spectacled grandfather, tall, broad chested, and bald, was dressed in a blue blazer, white shirt, and tie. He greeted my mother with outstretched arms, unable to speak, as tears streamed down his cheeks. She embraced him, and they hugged, the silence broken only by his sobs. My grandmother stood a bit behind him, dry-eyed but beaming. She was a tiny, white-haired woman, poised and upright, wearing an elegant pink suit and matching pink lipstick. “Betsy,” she said as they kissed. “It’s so good to see you.” I was taken aback at hearing my mother called Betsy. It seemed out of place, almost a mistake. After that first emotional moment passed, my mother turned to introduce me. “And this is my oldest daughter.” “Mary Pat,” said my grandmother, “you are some lovely young lady.” I was flattered, but also caught off-guard. I hadn’t been called Mary Pat since Father had changed my name to Anastasia when I was nearly five years old. It was strange to hear myself called by my real name. My grandmother’s accent was Southern, and she said my name as though it were one word: “Marepat.” Holding my hand and leading me into the living room, she cooed, “Now dearie, you just call us Grandma and Grandpa.” My anxiety evaporated, and I started to relax. A broad bay window poured bright light into the comfortably furnished living room. “Mary Pat, what would you like to drink? Ginger ale?” “Yes, please,” I replied. “Grandpa’s putting lunch on the table. He’s the cook in the family. We’ll soon eat.” And what a feast it was. The circular dining room table was set with elegant china, real silver, linen napkins, and crystal glasses.

• From Little Sister: A Memoir (2019)

  Gone was the hollow-eyed stare as she gobbled down fried eggs, bacon, coffee cake, and milk. “What a good girl you are,” said Sister Catherine in the well-practiced motherly voice she could use when she wanted to. The tension eased in my stomach, and I ate my own breakfast with a relief I hadn’t felt in days. Mary Catherine smiled and seemed to be her old self once more. Maybe this will be the last time , I thought, with a hopeful prayer. But it wasn’t. Mary Catherine’s episodes became more and more frequent. One Saturday morning, Sister Catherine tried a new tactic. After she’d spoken to us from the doorway between our refectories, she approached Mary Catherine’s table. In a quiet voice, she said, “Mary Catherine, I want to see you in my office after breakfast.” Maybe she’s going to try kindness , I thought, hoping that would work. But it was hard to tell with Sister Catherine; she could play tricks on you. Mary Catherine was gone for the entire morning and I spent the time in lackluster play but inwardly was racked with anxiety. When we gathered for lunch, I held my breath as the bowl of soup was set in front of Mary Catherine. She picked up her spoon, dipped it into the bowl, and brought it to her mouth, without hesitation. Thank you, God , I prayed. It’s a miracle . Cornering my sister that afternoon, I questioned her. “What did Sister Catherine say to you this morning?” I said. “I’m not supposed to tell you,” she replied, turning away from me. I was hurt. “Not supposed to tell me? Why?” I asked. “Sister Catherine said it was a secret,” was all she said. A secret from me? That couldn’t be. I was the one watching out for her. I was the only one she had. 21 Father 1958 W ith the move to Still River, power shifted from Father to Sister Catherine. He now seemed older and frailer. At sixty-one, his black hair had turned to gray and was thinning. His jacket sagged on his sloping shoulders, and his walk, once bold, had now slowed to a shuffle. His thin lips turned downward, making him look melancholy, and his once-piercing black eyes now often seemed dull and faded. Alongside Sister Catherine, who was nearly six feet tall and had a stately carriage, Father looked broken down, worn out. Father was a social person. He enjoyed the bustle of life in an urban setting like Cambridge. Still River offered none of that stimulation, so he created his own social life by spending each afternoon off the property, making acquaintance with merchants in the surrounding towns. To have company on his daily trips, he often invited a few of the children to go with him.

• From Cults Inside Out: How People Get In and Can Get Out (2014)

  He or she might also admit that the group or leader manipulated him or her; he or she might offer vivid examples based on criteria previously discussed during the intervention. In my experience when people begin to disclose such potentially damaging information about the group or leader, they have probably decided to move on and leave. Again, no one must say or do anything to apply any pressure to make this declaration. And nothing should be said or implied that might make the individual feel ashamed about whatever information he or she has disclosed. Instead, those present at the intervention must do their best to express unconditional support and affirm the love and friendship they feel and value. The person has suffered enough and quite often, due to the manipulation and abuse of the group or leader, is in a fragile state. Everything must be done to sustain an atmosphere of support and safety, and deference must be given for the sake of the person’s dignity. The goal of an intervention is education, which can form the basis of more independent and informed decision making. Nothing must be done to hinder that process by causing unnecessary emotional distress. Families will frequently ask, “What comes next?” if the intervention is successful. Some former cult members express a desire to follow up through counseling, while others do not. This is an individual choice based on personal reflection and the varying needs of each former member. Family members and others involved must not put undue pressure on the former cult member to seek professional counseling. They may simply suggest that this is a potential possibility or future option. There are very few professionals who have specific experience counseling former cult members. Many former cult members seem to prefer education rather than counseling. That is, they may engage in further research about cults, coercive persuasion, and influence techniques to better understand their experience. Issues former cult members commonly face will be discussed in more detail in the chapter “Moving On.” An intervention is not a “magic bullet” or miracle solution that will somehow fix every problem. Typically, people who leave cults and abusive, controlling relationships will continue to have personal problems just like everyone else. The family and friends of a person who is the focus of an intervention must understand this truth and have reasonable expectations. Net Result The net result of the preparation meeting is that everyone who plans to participate in the intervention fully understands his or her role, specific boundaries and rules, and crucial points that will be covered during the intervention. He or she now has both a meaningful understanding of the process and realistic expectations. By addressing these issues in some depth and answering any related questions, the potential for misunderstandings, conflicts, and needless missteps during the intervention can be greatly reduced and hopefully avoided.

• From Reading Biblical Literature: Genesis to Revelation (2016)

  Reading Biblical Literature: Genesis to Revelation 60 ‹The story has moved from loss to a new relationship. And the end has one final surprise. We learn that Ruth and Boaz had children and grandchildren and that their great-grandson was King David. David was the king who did the most to define Israel’s national identity; thus, it’s intriguing to think of Ruth—a foreigner—as his great-grandmother. Suggested Reading Gunn, Judges through the Centuries. Pressler, Joshua, Judges, and Ruth. Questions to Consider 1. The book of Judges is sometimes read as a collection of hero stories. To what extent might Deborah and Samson be considered heroic? What elements would not fit the usual assumptions of heroism? 2. The main figures in the book of Ruth must deal with loss and dislocation. What losses does Naomi experience, and how does she deal with them? What losses does Ruth experience, and how does she deal with them? What similarities and differences do you see? 61 LECTURE 9 Saul, the Tragic King I n this lecture, we begin a consideration of the rule of the first three kings of Israel. Israel has moved from a rather loose confederation of 12 tribes into the struggle for a more unified national identity. Historically, we are in the decades just prior 1000 B.C. It’s a time of major political change. Up to this point, the people have relied on judges and warlords to maintain order and defend their territories against invasion. But now, they’ll be governed by kings, which marks the beginning of a new era. And the first king, our focus for this lecture, is Saul. Act 1: End of an Era ‹We’ll read 1 Samuel as a drama in three acts: Act 1 recounts the end of the old era by focusing on a judge named Samuel. Act 2 marks the beginning of a new era, as Samuel identifies Saul as Israel’s first king and Saul rises to power. Finally, Act 3 traces the path of Saul’s tragic downfall. ‹In Act 1, God seems to be the primary shaper of events. The actions that occur carry out God’s purpose, which is to change a pattern of corruption among the clergy. ●Having witnessed corruption at the sanctuary of the Ark of the Covenant, God determines to take action. He answers the prayer of a woman named Hannah, who has no children but desperately wants one, enabling her to bear a son called Samuel. ●In gratitude, Hannah offers a prayer of celebration, which tells of God turning the social order upside down: He will destroy the weapons of the powerful, while giving help to the needy; he will bring down the rich and arrogant, while giving honor to the poor. This prayer foreshadows a time of dramatic social change. ‹This change is achieved through a battle, in which the people of Israel wrongly assume that God is on their side. Their adversaries are the Philistines. Because

• From The Well of Loneliness (1928)

  Anna also wrote, and from her Stephen learnt of the death of Roger Antrim. He had been shot down while winning his V.C. through saving the life of a wounded captain. All alone he had gone over to no-man’s-land and had rescued his friend where he lay unconscious, receiving a bullet through the head at the moment of flinging the wounded man into safety. Roger—so lacking in understanding, so crude, so cruel and remorseless a bully—Roger had been changed in the twinkling of an eye into something superb because utterly selfless. Thus it was that the undying urge of mankind towards the ideal had come upon Roger. And Stephen as she sat there and read of his passing, suddenly knew that she wished him well, that his courage had wiped one great bitterness out of her heart and her life for ever. And so by dying as he had died, Roger, all unknowing, had fulfilled the law that must be extended to enemy and friend alike—the immutable law of service. 4Events gathered momentum. By the June of that year 700,000 United States soldiers, strong and comely men plucked from their native prairies, from their fields of tall corn, from their farms and their cities, were giving their lives in defence of freedom on the blood-soaked battlefields of France. They had little to gain and much to lose; it was not their war, yet they helped to fight it because they were young and their nation was young, and the ideals of youth are eternally hopeful. In July came the Allied counter-offensive, and now in her moment of approaching triumph France knew to the full her great desolation, as it lay revealed by the retreating armies. For not only had there been a holocaust of homesteads, but the country was strewn with murdered trees, cut down in their hour of most perfect leafing; orchards struck to the ground, an orgy of destruction, as the mighty forces rolled back like a tide, to recoil on themselves—incredulous, amazed, maddened by the outrage of coming disaster. For mad they must surely have been, since no man is a more faithful lover of trees than the German.

• From An Unquiet Mind: A Memoir of Moods and Madness (1995)

  Qualifying examinations came and went; I conducted a completely uninspired doctoral study about heroin addiction and wrote a correspondingly uninspired dissertation based upon it; then after two weeks of frantically cramming every bit of trivia that I could into my brain, I walked into a room filled with five unsmiling men seated around a table, sat down, and went through the ordeal that is politely known as a Final Oral Examination, or, more aptly, in a military sense, the defense of ones dissertation. Two of the men at the table were the professors with whom I had worked for years; one of them was easy on me, the other was—I suppose in an attempt to demonstrate impartiality—unrelenting. One of the three psycho-pharmacologists, the only one without tenure, felt compelled to give me a particularly bad time, but the other two, who were full professors, clearly felt he had gone too far in establishing his mastery of the minutia of statistics and research design and eventually forced him to return to a less Rottweilerian level of general civility. After three hours of the intricate intellectual ballet that constituted the defense of my thesis, I left the room and stood in the hallway while they voted; endured the requisite moments of agony; and returned to find the same five men who, hours earlier, had seemed so grim and unfriendly. But this time they were smiling; their hands were outstretched to shake mine; and they all said, to my vast relief and pleasure, Congratulations. The rites of passage in the academic world are arcane and, in their own way, highly romantic, and the tensions and unpleasantries of dissertations and final oral examinations are quickly forgotten in the wonderful moments of the sherry afterward, admission into a very old club, parties of celebration, doctoral gowns, academic rituals, and hearing for the first time “Dr.,” rather than “Miss,” Jamison. I was hired as an assistant professor in the UCLA Department of Psychiatry, got good parking for the first time in my life, joined the faculty club posthaste, and began to work my way up the academic food chain. I had a glorious—as it turns out, too glorious—summer, and, within three months of becoming a professor, I was ravingly psychotic.

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

  As we have seen, the idea of the covenant is basic to the thought of the writer, by which he meant a relationship between God and human beings. The first covenant was dependent on people keeping the law; as soon as they broke the law, the covenant became ineffective. Let us remember that, to our writer, religion means access to God. Therefore, the basic meaning of the new covenant, which Jesus inaugurated, is that men and women should have access to God or, to put it another way, have fellowship with him. But here is the difficulty. People come to the new covenant already stained with the sins committed under the old covenant, for which the old sacrificial system was powerless to atone. So, the writer to the Hebrews has a tremendous thought and says that the sacrifice of Jesus Christ is effective retrospectively. That is to say, it wipes out the sins committed under the old covenant and inaugurates the fellowship promised under the new covenant. All that seems very complicated; but, behind it, there are two great eternal truths. First, the sacrifice of Jesus gains forgiveness for past sins. We ought to be punished for what we have done, and to be shut out from God; but, because of what Jesus did, the debt is wiped out, the breaking of the law is forgiven and the barrier is taken away. Second, the sacrifice of Jesus opens a new life for the future. It opens the way to fellowship with God. The God whom our sins had made a stranger, the sacrifice of Christ has made a friend. Because of what he did, the burden of the past is rolled away, and life becomes life with God. It is the next step in the argument which seems to us a fantastic way in which to argue. The question in the mind of the writer is why this new relationship with God should involve the death of Christ. He answers it in two ways.

• From The Well of Loneliness (1928)

  ith Martin’s return Stephen realized how very deeply she had missed him; how much she still needed the thing he now offered, how long indeed she had starved for just this—the friendship of a normal and sympathetic man whose mentality being very much her own, was not only welcome but reassuring. Yes, strange though it was, with this normal man she was far more at ease than with Jonathan Brockett, far more at one with all his ideas, and at times far less conscious of her own inversion; though it seemed that Martin had not only read, but had thought a great deal about the subject. He spoke very little of his studies, however, just accepting her now for the thing that she was, without question, and accepting most of her friends with a courtesy as innocent of patronage as of any suspicion of morbid interest. And thus it was that in these first days they appeared to have achieved a complete reunion. Only sometimes, when Mary would talk to him freely as she did very often of such people as Wanda, of the night life of the cafés and bars of Paris—most of which it transpired he himself had been to—of the tragedy of Barbara and Jamie that was never very far from her thoughts, even although a most perfect spring was hurrying forward towards the summer—when Mary would talk to him of these things, Martin would look rather gravely at Stephen. But now they seldom went to the bars, for Martin provided recreations that were really much more to Mary’s liking. Martin the kindly, the thoroughly normal, seemed never at a loss as to what they should do or where they should go when in search of pleasure. By now he knew Paris extremely well, and the Paris he showed them during that spring came as a complete revelation to Mary. He would often take them to dine in the Bois. At the neighbouring tables would be men and women; neat, well tailored men; pretty, smartly dressed women who laughed and talked very conscious of sex and its vast importance—in a word, normal women. Or perhaps they would go to Claridge’s for tea or to Giro’s for dinner, and then on to supper at an equally fashionable restaurant, of which Mary discovered there were many in Paris. And although people still stared a little at Stephen, Mary fancied that they did so much less, because of the protective presence of Martin. At such places of course, it was out of the question for a couple of women to dance together, and yet every one danced, so that in the end Mary must get up and dance with Martin. He had said: ‘You don’t mind, do you, Stephen?’ She had shaken her head: ‘No, of course I don’t mind.’ And indeed she had been very glad to know that Mary had a good partner to dance with.

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

  (5) There is one even more fundamental difference. The old covenant depended on obedience to an externally imposed law. The new covenant is to be written upon human hearts and minds. People would obey God not because of the terror of punishment, but because they loved him. They would obey him not because the law compelled them unwillingly to do so, but because the desire to obey him was written on their hearts. (6) It will be a covenant which will really bring about forgiveness. See how that forgiveness is to come. God said that he would be gracious to their iniquities and would forget their sins. Now it is all from God. The new relationship is based entirely on his love. Under the old covenant, people could keep this relationship to God only by obeying the law; that is, by their own efforts. Now everything is dependent not on human efforts but solely on the grace of God. The new covenant puts men and women into relationship with a God who is still a God of justice but whose justice has been swallowed up in his love. The most tremendous thing about the new covenant is that it makes our relationship to God no longer dependent on our obedience but entirely dependent on God’s love. There is one thing left to say. In Jeremiah’s words about the new covenant, there is no mention of sacrifice. It would seem that Jeremiah believed that, in the new age, sacrifice would be abolished as irrelevant; but the writer to the Hebrews can only think in terms of the sacrificial system, and very shortly he will go on to speak of Jesus as the perfect sacrifice, whose death alone made the new covenant possible. THE GLORY OF THE TABERNACLEHebrews 9:1–5 So, then, the first tabernacle, too, had its ordinances of worship and its holy place, which was an earthly symbol of the divine realities. For the first tabernacle was constructed and in it there was the lamp stand and the table with the shewbread, and it was called the holy place. Behind the second curtain, there was that part of the tabernacle which was called the Holy of Holies. It was approached by means of the golden altar of incense, and it had in it the ark of the covenant, which was covered all over with gold. In the ark, there was the golden pot with the manna and Aaron’s rod which budded and the tables of the covenant. Above it, there were the cherubim of glory, overshadowing the mercy seat; but this is not the place to speak about all these things in detail.

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

  The sense of what they were saying became lost, and only the exercise remained. The exchange was conducted with the certainty of a measured hoedown and had the jerkiness of Monday's wash snapping in the wind-now cracking east, then west, with only the intent to whip the dampness out of the cloth. Within a few minutes the intoxication of doom had fled, as if it had never been, and Momma was encouraging Mr. Taylor to take in one of the Jenkins boys to help him with his farm. Uncle Willie was nodding at the fire, and Bailey had escaped back to the calm adventures of Huckleberry Finn. The change in the room was remarkable. Shadows which had lengthened and darkened over the bed in the corner had disappeared or revealed themselves as dark images of familiar chairs and such. The light which dashed on the ceiling steadied, and imitated rabbits rather than lions, and donkeys instead of ghouls . I laid a pallet for Mr. Taylor in Uncle Willie's room and crawled under Momma, who I knew for the first time was so good and righteous she could command the fretful spirits, as Jesus had commanded the sea. “Peace, be still.”

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

  The people told Petronius, “If we cannot prevail with you in this, then we offer up ourselves for destruction” (OEG 233), and “they presented themselves, their wives, and their children, ready for the slaughter” (JW 2.197). “Falling on their faces and baring their throats, they declared that they were ready to be slain” (JA 18.271). But, luckily for all concerned, that impasse was solved by the assassination of Caligula on January 24 of 41 CE . In the light of all that, I believe that Tacitus’s description of the Jewish reaction to Caligula’s statue is incorrect: “They chose rather to resort to arms, but the emperor’s death put an end to their uprising” (Histories 5.9.2). Such an uprising would have been what was expected, but that is not what happened. I turn next to see how the Romanization process of Israel began and to underline that those two very divergent options for resistance—nonviolent and violent—were both a reality from the very beginning of that process. “King of the Jews”LATE IN THE YEAR 40 BCE , the Roman Senate voted unanimously for the Idumean-Jewish Herod to be their new “King of the Jews.” That official decree replaced the century-old Judean-Jewish dynasty of the Hasmoneans with that of the Idumean-Jewish Herodians. Accompanied by his patron-sponsors, Octavian and Mark Antony, the “King of the Jews” ascended the Capitoline Hill to offer sacrifice to Jupiter Optimus Maximus, supreme God of the Romans. Herod then sailed home to take over his Kingdom and create a Roman Israel. Consider these actions: For his Roman masters, he built a magnificent all-weather port on the open Mediterranean coast. It was a state-of-the-art facility using hydraulic cement that, mixed with volcanic tufa, solidified under water to form caissons for the great warehouse-topped breakwater piers. He called the port Sebastos (Greek for Augustus) and the city Caesarea. Furthermore, he crowned city and port with the (very first?) Temple of Rome and Augustus, the divine couple at the center of the new world order. He carefully oriented it off the city’s westward-facing grid so that its gleaming marble facade looked northwestward toward the harbor entrance and the faraway city of Rome. Romanization had begun hard—at least in the south of the country. For his Jewish subjects, in another state-of-the-art construction, he enlarged the Temple’s plaza to the size of fifteen football fields and called it the Court of the Gentiles. It is surely hard to imagine Herod as apostle of the Gentiles, but still, the Temple was now “a house of prayer for all peoples” (Isa. 56:7 = Mark 11:17). Furthermore, to appease popular nostalgia by forming a Hasmonean-Herodian alliance, he married the Hasmonean princess Mariamme. (Later he executed her, and in protest, “Mary” became a favorite name for newborn females in the first-century Jewish homeland.) Did all go well with Herod’s twin-pronged project for creating Romanized Jews in a Roman Israel? Here is one particular and one general response from the people at his death in 4 BCE .

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

  Standing outside, I found there was only one person taller than I, and that I was only a few years younger than any of them. I was asked my name, where I came from and what led me to the junkyard. They accepted my explanation that I was from San Francisco, that my name was Marguerite but that I was called Maya and I simply had no place to stay. With a generous gesture the tall boy, who said he was Bootsie, welcomed me, and said I could stay as long as I honored their rule: No two people of opposite sex slept together. In fact, unless it rained, everyone had his own private sleeping accommodations. Since some of the cars leaked, bad weather forced a doubling up. There was no stealing, not for reasons of morality but because a crime would bring the police to the yard; and since everyone was underage, there was the likelihood that they'd be sent off to foster homes or juvenile delinquent courts. Everyone worked at something. Most of the girls collected bottles and worked weekends in greasy spoons. The boys mowed lawns, swept out pool halls and ran errands for small Negro-owned stores. All money was held by Bootsie and used communally. During the month that I spent in the yard I learned to drive (one boy's older brother owned a car that moved), to curse and to dance. Lee Arthur was the only boy who ran around with the gang but lived at home with his mother. Mrs. Arthur worked nights, so on Friday evening all the girls went to his house for a bath. We did our laundry in the Laundromat, but those things that required ironing were taken to Lee's house and the ironing chore was shared, as was everything else. On Saturday night we entered the jitterbug contest at the Silver Slipper, whether we could dance or not. The prizes were tempting ($25 to first couple, $10 to second and $5 to third), and Bootsie reasoned that if all of us entered we had a better chance. Juan, the Mexican boy, was my partner, and although he couldn't dance any better than I, we were a sensation on the floor. He was very short with a shock of straight black hair that swished around his head when he pivoted, and I was thin and black and tall as a tree. On my last weekend at the yard, we actually won the second prize. The dance we performed could never be duplicated or described except to say that the passion with which we threw each other around the small dance area was similar to the zeal shown in honest wrestling matches and hand-to-hand combat. After a month my thinking processes had so changed that I was hardly recognizable to myself. The unquestioning acceptance by my peers had dislodged the familiar insecurity. Odd that the homeless children, the silt of war frenzy, could initiate me into the brotherhood of man.

• From Comrade Loves of the Samurai (1972)

  If I do not die a beautiful death by committing suicide, it is no shame; for I am an old woman. But you are a young samurai, and you must pass honourably. Be brave, my son, and go first. I shall follow you Straightway.' Inosuke calmly answered: 'Yes, mother.'He did up his hair, bared his breast, and serenely sat down on a mat. He was already holding the knife in his hand and preparing to kill himself, when there crept into the room a little dog which seemed to belong to some good family. It was white with some black spots, and had a collar with a little bell. Tied to its neck were two packets wrapped in paper. It wagged its tail very familiarly, and went up to Inosuke as if it wanted to speak to him. The astonished mother untied the packets and opened them. One contained some provisions, and a note on which was written this sentence: 'It is easy to die.'In the other packet were some comforts and another note with this sentence: 'But it is more difficult to live for honour's sake.' In this manner someone had sent them help just as they were despairing. Mother and son wondered who in the world this person could have been who wished them well. Someone at least knew of the injustice of their disgrace. They resolved to live a little longer, and delayed their death. They caressed the dog, who was very pleased with this and went out by a hole in the wall. After that, the faithful little beast came every morning and evening, bringing round his neck something for their subsistence. Two years passed in this way, and it was now five since the Lord had exiled them and con-fined them to their cottage. Inosuke was grieving to death, and indeed fell ill; but a kindly Heaven was watching over them. The Lord at last relented and delivered them from this long disgrace. Inosuke thanked him, and asked the reason for his punishment. The Lord showed him the paper telling of his scandalous conduct, and Inosuke at once guessed that another page, named Naminojyo Toyura, had plotted to denounce him to his master because he was jealous of him, and that he who had written the false and outrageous accusation was a certain fencing master of the people, named Kenpatji Iwasaka. Both of these men were put to a cruel death. The Lord regretted that he had punished Inosuke so long and so unjustly, and made him a samurai and Keeper of the Seals. Thus Inosuke's honour was ensured, and the people loved and honoured him more than before. He then returned to his Province and called together all his relatives, to ask them who had been the charitable person who had sent the dog to comfort him and his mother when they were in despair. But it was none of them; and Inosuke continued to search for his benefactor.

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

  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. It deadened their intensity, made all of my feelings pale and vague as if they were ghosts that would haunt me. But on estrogen, I find that I have all of the same emotions that I did back then, only now they come in crystal clear. In other words, it is not the actual emotions, but rather their intensity that has changed—the highs are way higher and the lows are way lower. Another way of saying it is that I feel my emotions more now; they are in the foreground rather than the background of my mind. The anecdote that perhaps best captures this change occurred about two months after I started hormone therapy. My wife, Dani, and I had an argument and at one point I started to cry—something that was not all that uncommon for me when I was hormonally male. What was different was that after about a minute or so, I began to laugh while simultaneously continuing to cry. When Dani asked me why I was laughing, I replied, “I can’t turn it off.” Back when I was hormonally male, I felt as though I was always capable of stopping the cry, of holding it all in, if I really wanted to. Now, I find it nearly impossible to hold back the tears once I start crying. I’ve learned instead to just go with it, to let myself experience the cry, and it feels a lot more cathartic as a result. In general, even though my emotions are much more intense these days, I certainly do not feel as though they get in the way of my logic or reasoning, or that they single-handedly control my every thought or decision. I remain perfectly capable of acting on rational thought rather than following my feelings. However, what I can no longer do (at least to the extent that I used to) is completely ignore my emotions, repress them, or entirely shut them out of my mind.

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

  When I returned from the kitchen and poured her beer, as she had taught Bailey and me beer should be poured, she patted the bed. “Sit down, baby. Read this.” Her fingers guided my eyes to VULVA.I began to read. She said, “Read it out loud.” It was all very clear and normal-sounding. She drank the beer as I read, and when I had finished she explained it in every-day terms. My relief melted the fears and they liquidly stole down my face. Mother shot up and put her arms around me. “There's nothing to worry about, baby. It happens to every woman. It's just human nature.” It was all right then to unburden my heavy, heavy heart. I cried into the crook of my arm. “I thought maybe I was turning into a lesbian.” Her patting of my shoulder slowed to a still and she leaned away from me. “A lesbian? Where the hell did you get that idea?” “Those things growing on my … vagina, and my voice is too deep and my feet are big, and I have no hips or breasts or anything. And my legs are so skinny.” Then she did laugh. I knew immediately that she wasn't laughing at me. Or rather that she was laughing at me, but it was something about me that pleased her. The laugh choked a little on the smoke in its way, but finally broke through cleanly. I had to give a small laugh too, although I wasn't tickled at all. But it's mean to watch someone enjoy something and not show your understanding of their enjoyment. When she finished with the laughter, she laid it down a peal at a time and turned to me, wiping her eyes. “I made arrangements, a long time ago, to have a boy and a girl. Bailey is my boy and you are my girl. The Man upstairs, He don't make mistakes. He gave you to me to be my girl and that's just what you are. Now, go wash your face, have a glass of milk and go back to bed.” I did as she said but I soon discovered my new assurance wasn't large enough to fill the gap left by my old uneasiness. It rattled around in my mind like a dime in a tin cup. I hoarded it preciously, but less than two weeks later it became totally worthless. A classmate of mine, whose mother had rooms for herself and her daughter in a ladies' residence, had stayed out beyond closing time. She telephoned me to ask if she could sleep at my house. Mother gave her permission, providing my friend telephoned her mother from our house.

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

  What you reckon it mean, Sister Henderson?” Momma had reared back in her rocking chair, a half smile on her face, “If you sure you wasn't dreaming, Brother Taylor ...” “I was as wide awake as I am”—he was becoming angry again—“as I am right now.” “Well, then, maybe it means—” “I ought to know when I'm asleep and when I'm awake.” “-maybe it mean Sister Florida wants you to work with the children in the church.” “One thing I always used to tell Florida, people won't let you get your words in edgewise—” “Could be she's trying to tell you—” “I ain't crazy, you know. My mind's just as good as it was.” “-to take a Sunday school class—” “Thirty years ago. If I say I was awake when I saw that little fat angel, then people ought to—” “Sunday school need more teachers. Lord knows that's so.” “—believe me when I say so.” Their remarks and responses were like a Ping-Pong game with each volley clearing the net and flying back to the opposition. The sense of what they were saying became lost, and only the exercise remained. The exchange was conducted with the certainty of a measured hoedown and had the jerkiness of Monday's wash snapping in the wind-now cracking east, then west, with only the intent to whip the dampness out of the cloth. Within a few minutes the intoxication of doom had fled, as if it had never been, and Momma was encouraging Mr. Taylor to take in one of the Jenkins boys to help him with his farm. Uncle Willie was nodding at the fire, and Bailey had escaped back to the calm adventures of Huckleberry Finn. The change in the room was remarkable. Shadows which had lengthened and darkened over the bed in the corner had disappeared or revealed themselves as dark images of familiar chairs and such. The light which dashed on the ceiling steadied, and imitated rabbits rather than lions, and donkeys instead of ghouls. I laid a pallet for Mr. Taylor in Uncle Willie's room and crawled under Momma, who I knew for the first time was so good and righteous she could command the fretful spirits, as Jesus had commanded the sea. “Peace, be still.”

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

  If you had them, you'd tell the world.” I wasn't sorry or glad not to have them, but made a mental note to look up “crabs” in the library on my next trip. She looked at me closely and only a person who knew her face well could have perceived the muscles relaxing and interpreted this as an indication of concern. “You don't have a venereal disease, do you?” The question wasn't asked seriously but knowing Mother I was shocked at the idea. “Why Mother, of course not. That's a terrible question.” I was ready to go back to my room and wrestle alone with my worries. “Sit down, Ritie. Pass me another cigarette.” For a second it looked as if she was thinking about laughing. That would really do it. If she laughed, I'd never tell her anything else. Her laughter would make it easier to accept my social isolation and human freakishness. But she wasn't even smiling. Just slowly pulling in the smoke and holding it in puffed cheeks before blowing it out. “Mother, something is growing on my vagina.” There, it was out. I'd soon know whether I was to be her ex-daughter or if she'd put me in a hospital for an operation. “Where on your vagina, Marguerite?” Uh-huh. It was bad all right. Not “Ritie” or “Maya” or “Baby.” “Marguerite.” “On both sides. Inside.” I couldn't add that they were fleshy skin flaps that had been growing for months down there. She'd have to pull that out of me. “Ritie, go get me that big Webster's and then bring me a bottle of beer.” Suddenly, it wasn't all that serious. I was “Ritie” again, and she just asked for beer. If it had been as awful as I anticipated, she'd have ordered Scotch and water. I took her the huge dictionary that she had bought as a birthday gift for Daddy Clidell and laid it on the bed. The weight forced a side of the mattress down and Mother twisted her bed lamp to beam down on the book. When I returned from the kitchen and poured her beer, as she had taught Bailey and me beer should be poured, she patted the bed. “Sit down, baby. Read this.” Her fingers guided my eyes to VULVA.I began to read. She said, “Read it out loud.” It was all very clear and normal-sounding. She drank the beer as I read, and when I had finished she explained it in every-day terms. My relief melted the fears and they liquidly stole down my face. Mother shot up and put her arms around me.

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

  After a month my thinking processes had so changed that I was hardly recognizable to myself. The unquestioning acceptance by my peers had dislodged the familiar insecurity. Odd that the homeless children, the silt of war frenzy, could initiate me into the brotherhood of man. After hunting down unbroken bottles and selling them with a white girl from Missouri, a Mexican girl from Los Angeles and a Black girl from Oklahoma, I was never again to sense myself so solidly outside the pale of the human race. The lack of criticism evidenced by our ad hoc community influenced me, and set a tone of tolerance for my life. I telephoned Mother (her voice reminded me of another world) and asked her to send for me. When she said she was going to send my air ticket to Daddy, I explained that it would be easier if she simply sent my fare to the airline, then I'd pick it up. With the easy grace characteristic of Mother when she was given a chance to be magnanimous she agreed. The unrestrained life we had led made me believe that my new friends would be undemonstrative about my leaving. I was right. After I picked up my ticket I announced rather casually that I would be leaving the following day. My revelation was accepted with at least the equal amount of detachment (only it was not a pose) and everyone wished me well. I didn't want to say goodbye to the junkyard or to my car, so I spent my last night at an all-night movie. One girl, whose name and face have melted into the years, gave me “an all-enduring friendship ring,” and Juan gave me a black lace handkerchief just in case I wanted to go to church sometime. I arrived in San Francisco, leaner than usual, fairly unkempt, and with no luggage. Mother took one look and said, “Is the rationing that bad at your father's? You'd better have some food to stick to all those bones.” She, as she called it, turned to, and soon I sat at a clothed table with bowls of food, expressly cooked for me. I was at a home, again. And my mother was a fine lady. Dolores was a fool and, more important, a liar. 33The house seemed smaller and quieter after the trip south, and the first bloom of San Francisco's glamour had dulled around the edges. Adults had lost the wisdom from the surface of their faces. I reasoned that I had given up some youth for knowledge, but my gain was more valuable than the loss.

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

  While some cissexual women assume that men have a monopoly on gender privilege, this is not the case. Many trans men have written at length about both the male privileges they gained post-transition, as well as the numerous ways their lives became more difficult, complex, or even dangerous once they were regularly perceived as male.9 Their comments have been echoed by Norah Vincent, a cissexual woman who spent over a year and a half socially “passing” as a man as a part of an investigative journalism project.10 These perspectives, which all come from people who were born and socialized female, help demonstrate how oppositional sexism ensures that both maleness and femaleness come with their own very different sets of privileges, restrictions, expectations, and assumptions. The concept of “male privilege” not only ignores oppositional sexism; it assumes that women are the sole targets of traditional sexism. While those who live full-time as women surely bear the brunt of traditional sexism, female-and feminine-inclined male-bodied people are also clearly targeted by this form of sexism, as is evident in our culture’s rampant effemimania. As a trans woman, I have, on many occasions, had cissexual women claim that I shouldn’t be given the same rights as them to label myself a “woman” or to enter women-only spaces because I have experienced “male privilege” in the past. This claim always strikes me as odd. After all, unlike them, I have actually experienced having others treat me as both male and female at different points in my life. One could easily make the case that transsexuals are uniquely positioned to give firsthand accounts of what exactly “male privilege” is or isn’t. As I have discussed at various points throughout this book, there are many male privileges that I received prior to my transition: I was generally taken more seriously, given more space, and harassed far less. Perhaps there are additional male privileges that exist but which were regularly denied to me because I was a rather unmasculine (and at times, downright feminine) guy. In any case, as a female-and feminine-identified person, I find that the male privileges I have lost since transitioning, while significant, do not compare to the privileges that I have gained from finally having my subconscious and physical sexes aligned and from being able to live openly as female.

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

  Therefore, the basic meaning of the new covenant , which Jesus inaugurated, is that men and women should have access to God or, to put it another way, have fellowship with him. But here is the difficulty. People come to the new covenant already stained with the sins committed under the old covenant, for which the old sacrificial system was powerless to atone. So, the writer to the Hebrews has a tremendous thought and says that the sacrifice of Jesus Christ is effective retrospectively. That is to say, it wipes out the sins committed under the old covenant and inaugurates the fellowship promised under the new covenant. All that seems very complicated; but, behind it, there are two great eternal truths. First, the sacrifice of Jesus gains forgiveness for past sins. We ought to be punished for what we have done, and to be shut out from God; but, because of what Jesus did, the debt is wiped out, the breaking of the law is forgiven and the barrier is taken away. Second, the sacrifice of Jesus opens a new life for the future. It opens the way to fellowship with God. The God whom our sins had made a stranger, the sacrifice of Christ has made a friend. Because of what he did, the burden of the past is rolled away, and life becomes life with God. It is the next step in the argument which seems to us a fantastic way in which to argue. The question in the mind of the writer is why this new relationship with God should involve the death of Christ. He answers it in two ways. (1) His first answer is – to us almost incredibly – founded on nothing other than a play on words. We have seen that the use of the word diathēkē in the sense of covenant is characteristically Christian, and that its normal secular use was in the sense of will or testament. Up to verse 16, the writer to the Hebrews has been using diathēkē in the normal Christian sense of covenant; then, suddenly and without warning or explanation, he switches to the sense of will. Now, a will does not become operative until the testator dies; so the writer to the Hebrews says that no diathēkē, will, can be operative until the death of the testator, so that the new diathēkē, covenant, cannot become operative apart from the death of Christ. That is a merely verbal argument and is quite unconvincing to our way of thinking; but it must be remembered that basing an argument on a play between two meanings of a word was a favourite method of the Alexandrian scholars in the time when this letter was written.