Sadness

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 Saint Thomas Aquinas Collection (22 Books) (2016)

  We, will especially examine whether the counsel given by Christ to the young man (Matt. 19:21): “If you would be perfect, go, sell all that you have, and give to the poor” was addressed to that youth only, or to all men. We can best consider this passage by referring to its context, where Peter says: “See, we have left all things and have followed You.” And our Lord promises the reward to all men saying, “Everyone who has left house or brethren etc. for my name’s sake... shall receive a hundredfold and shall possess life everlasting.” Thus we see that this counsel is no less to be followed by all men than if it had been given to each individually. Hence St. Jerome, writing to the presbyter Paulinus, says: “You have heard our Saviour’s words: ‘If you would be perfect, go, sell what you have and give to the poor, and come, follow me.’ Put these words then into practice. Strip yourself of all, and thus, following the Cross of poverty, you will more speedily and more easily ascend Jacob’s ladder.” And, although our Lord addressed the counsel of poverty individually to the rich young man, He nevertheless gave the same advice to all mankind (Mt 16:24): “If anyone will come after Me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow Me.” St. Chrysostom, commenting on this text, says, “He addresses this teaching to the whole world, saying, ‘If anyone’—be it man or woman, king, free man, or serf.” Now self-denial, according to St. Basil, means complete forgetfulness of past things and the abnegation of our own will. In it, therefore, is included the disposal of the property which we possess of our own will. Therefore the counsel given to the young man is to be understood as given to all.

• From The Selected Works of Audre Lorde

  My mother had roasted two chickens and cut them up into dainty bite-size pieces. She packed slices of brown bread and butter and green pepper and carrot sticks. There were little violently yellow iced cakes with scalloped edges called “marigolds,” that came from Cushman’s Bakery. There was a spice bun and rock-cakes from Newton’s, the West Indian bakery across Lenox Avenue from St. Mark’s School, and iced tea in a wrapped mayonnaise jar. There were sweet pickles for us and dill pickles for my father, and peaches with the fuzz still on them, individually wrapped to keep them from bruising. And, for neatness, there were piles of napkins and a little tin box with a washcloth dampened with rosewater and glycerine for wiping sticky mouths. I wanted to eat in the dining car because I had read all about them, but my mother reminded me for the umpteenth time that dining car food always cost too much money and besides, you never could tell whose hands had been playing all over that food, nor where those same hands had been just before. My mother never mentioned that Black people were not allowed into railroad dining cars headed south in 1947. As usual, whatever my mother did not like and could not change, she ignored. Perhaps it would go away, deprived of her attention. I learned later that Phyllis’s high school senior class trip had been to Washington, but the nuns had given her back her deposit in private, explaining to her that the class, all of whom were white, except Phyllis, would be staying in a hotel where Phyllis “would not be happy,” meaning, Daddy explained to her, also in private, that they did not rent rooms to Negroes. “We will take among-you to Washington, ourselves,” my father had avowed, “and not just for an overnight in some measly fleabag hotel.” American racism was a new and crushing reality that my parents had to deal with every day of their lives once they came to this country. They handled it as a private woe. My mother and father believed that they could best protect their children from the realities of race in america and the fact of american racism by never giving them name, much less discussing their nature. We were told we must never trust white people, but why was never explained, nor the nature of their ill will. Like so many other vital pieces of information in my childhood, I was supposed to know without being told. It always seemed like a very strange injunction coming from my mother, who looked so much like one of those people we were never supposed to trust. But something always warned me not to ask my mother why she wasn’t white, and why Auntie Lillah and Auntie Etta weren’t, even though they were all that same problematic color so different from my father and me, even from my sisters, who were somewhere in-between.

• From My Life and Loves, Vol. 1 (of 4) (1922)

  “All right,” she said eagerly, “I’ll tell all I know: it’s not much,” she added bitterly; “I’m not twenty yet; but you’d have taken me for more, now wouldn’t you?” “No,” I replied, “you look about eighteen: in a few minutes we were climbing the stairs of a tenement house. The girl’s room was poorly furnished and narrow, a hall bedroom just the width of the corridor, perhaps six feet by eight. As soon as she had taken off her thick cloak and hat, she hastened out of the room saying she’d be back in a minute. In the silence, I thought I heard her running up the stairs; a baby somewhere near cried; and then silence again, till she opened the door, drew my head to her and kissed me: “I like you,” she said, “though you’re funny.” “Why funny?” I asked. “It’s a scream,” she said, “to give five dollars to a girl and never touch her: but I’m glad for I was tired tonight and anxious.” “Why anxious?” I queried, “and why did you go out if you were tired?” “Got to,” she replied through tightly closed lips. “You don’t mind if I leave you again for a moment?” she added and before I could answer she was out of the room again. When she returned in five minutes I had grown impatient and put on my overcoat and hat. “Goin?” she asked in surprise: “Yes”, I replied, “I don’t like this empty cage while you go off to someone else.” “Someone else” she repeated and then as if desperate: “it’s my baby if you must know: a friend takes care of her when I’m out or working.” “Oh, you poor thing,” I cried, “fancy you with a baby at this life!” “I wanted a baby”, she cried defiantly. “I wouldn’t be without her for anything! I always wanted a baby: there’s lots of girls like that.” “Really?” I cried astounded. “Do you know her father?” I went on. “Of course I do,” she retorted. “He’s working in the stock yards; but he’s tough and won’t keep sober.” “I suppose you’d marry him if he would go straight?” I asked. “Any girl would marry a decent feller!” she replied. “You’re pretty,” I said. “D’ye think so?” she asked eagerly pushing her hair back from the sides of her head. “I used to be but now—this life—” and she shrugged her shoulders expressively. “You don’t like it?” I asked. “No,” she cried; “though when you get a nice feller, it’s not so bad; but they’re scarce,” she went on bitterly, “and generally when they’re nice, they’ve no bucks. The nice fellers are all poor or old,” she added reflectively.

• From Heptaméron (1559)

  Less than a year ago there was in Cremona a gen- tleman named Messire Jean Pierre, who had long loved a lady in his neighbourhood ; but for all he could do he had never been able to obtain from her the response he longed for, though she loved him with all her heart. The poor gentleman was so distressed at this that he secluded himself at hoine, resolving to abandon a vain pursuit in which he was wasting his life. Thinking to detach himself from his cruel fair one, he remained some days without seeing her, and fell into such a pro- found melancholy that no one would have known him, so altered were his looks. His relations sent for physi- cians, who, seeing his face yellow, thought it was an obstruction of the liver, and bled him. The lady who had been so coy, knowing very well that his illness was nothmg but grief that she had not responded to his love, sent a trusty old woman with orders to tell hiin that, as she could no longer doubt that his love was genuine and sincere, she had made up her mind to grant him what she had so long refused ; and to that end she had con- trived means to leave home and go to a place where he might see her without impediment. The gentleman, who had been let blood that morn- ing from the arm, finding himself more relieved by this embassy than by all the remedies of his physicians, sent her word that he would not fail to meet her at the ap- 42 2 THE HEPTAMEKON OF THE \_Noz^d ^q.

• From The Unexpected Legacy of Divorce: A 25-Year Landmark Study (2000)

  In the space of just a few months, this cheerful, chatty, always available young mother whom Paula and Joan had known and counted on was transformed into a strained, quiet, driven, desperately tired stranger who came home only to scream at her daughters and the babysitter for not cleaning up the mess in the house or to sit, silent and resentful, eating the TV dinners that had replaced home-cooked meals. Every night she stumbled directly to her bedroom after ordering her daughters to bed without the stories and cuddling they had always shared together. Paula’s mother is one of an army of women for whom divorce brings economic nightmares. The statistics are well documented. 2 Divorced mothers as a group earn a lot less than divorced fathers do, and child support does not make up the difference. Studies show that women and children who were in the upper economic group prior to divorce suffer the most precipitous decline in income. In 1991, 40 percent of all divorced women with children were living below the poverty level. The situation was even more desperate for those women with children below the age of six, like Paula’s mother. Over half of these mostly younger women with young children were living below the poverty level. Divorced women are not only poor after divorce but remain poor for many years. 3 This is because, despite improved collection of child support, the average amount that they receive, when it is paid, is much less than the cost of raising a child. Moreover, when the women seek employment, many, like Paula’s mother, are handicapped in the marketplace. They lack the requisite skills to begin with or they have spent the years prior to the divorce taking care of children and working part-time or working full-time as homemakers. After the divorce they are faced with the double burden of acquiring a new education or updating their former skills and simultaneously supporting their children and themselves. Many take night jobs, shift jobs, temp jobs, or real estate jobs that keep them away from home all weekend. They are physically exhausted and emotionally depleted as they run in place, like the Red Queen in Alice in Wonderland —the faster she runs, the more she stays in one place. Their valiant efforts to feed, clothe, and house their children tragically diminishes their availability as parents. As Paula told me, “I have no memory of her sitting down and reading to me or playing or just hanging out. It still makes me mad and sad to think about this.” Of course, in the flesh-and-blood world of a child living in a postdivorce family, economic issues are not separate from psychological is-sues—a fact that is rarely talked about.

• From The Selected Works of Audre Lorde

  Homophobia and heterosexism mean you allow yourselves to be robbed of the sisterhood and strength of Black Lesbian women because you are afraid of being called a Lesbian yourself. Yet we share so many concerns as Black women, so much work to be done. The urgency of the destruction of our Black children and the theft of young Black minds are joint urgencies. Black children shot down or doped up on the streets of our cities are priorities for all of us. The fact of Black women’s blood flowing with grim regularity in the streets and living rooms of Black communities is not a Black Lesbian rumor. It is sad statistical truth. The fact that there is widening and dangerous lack of communication around our differences between Black women and men is not a Black Lesbian plot. It is a reality that is starkly clarified as we see our young people becoming more and more uncaring of each other. Young Black boys believing that they can define their manhood between a sixth-grade girl’s legs, growing up believing that Black women and girls are the fitting target for their justifiable furies rather than the racist structures grinding us all into dust, these are not Black Lesbian myths. These are sad realities of Black communities today and of immediate concern to us all. We cannot afford to waste each other’s energies in our common battles. What does homophobia mean? It means that high-powered Black women are told it is not safe to attend a Conference on the Status of Women in Nairobi simply because we are Lesbians. It means that in a political action, you rob yourselves of the vital insight and energies of political women such as Betty Powell and Barbara Smith and Gwendolyn Rogers and Raymina Mays and Robin Christian and Yvonne Flowers. It means another instance of the divide-and-conquer routine. How do we organize around our differences, neither denying them nor blowing them up out of proportion? The first step is an effort of will on your part. Try to remember to keep certain facts in mind. Black Lesbians are not apolitical. We have been a part of every freedom struggle within this country. Black Lesbians are not a threat to the Black family. Many of us have families of our own. We are not white, and we are not a disease. We are women who love women. This does not mean we are going to assault your daughters in an alley on Nostrand Avenue. It does not mean we are about to attack you if we pay you a compliment on your dress. It does not mean we only think about sex, any more than you only think about sex.

• From The Selected Works of Audre Lorde

  I can only distinguish One thread within running hours You . . . flowing through selves Toward you. Spring III Spring is the harshest Blurring the lines of choice Until summer flesh Swallows up all decision. I remember after the harvest was over When the thick sheaves were gone And the bones of the gaunt trees Uncovered How the dying of autumn was too easy To solve our loving. To a Girl Who Knew What Side Her Bread Was Buttered On He, through the eyes of the first marauder Saw her, catch of bright thunder, heaping Tea and bread for her guardian dead Crunching the nut-dry words they said And (thinking the bones were sleeping) He broke through the muffled afternoon Calling an end to their ritual’s tune With lightning-like disorder: Leave the bones, Love! Come away From these summer breads with the flavour of hay— Your guards can watch the shards of our catch Warming our bones on some winter’s day! Like an ocean of straws the old bones rose Fearing the lightning’s second death. There was little time to wonder At the silence of bright thunder As, with a smile of pity and stealth She buttered fresh scones for her guardian bones And they trampled him into the earth. Father Son and Holy Ghost I have not ever seen my fathers grave. Not that his judgment eyes have been forgotten Nor his great hands print On our evening doorknobs One half turn each night and he would come Misty from the worlds business Massive and silent as the whole day’s wish, ready To re-define each of our shapes— But that now the evening doorknobs Wait, and do not recognize us as we pass. Each week a different woman Regular as his one quick glass each evening— Pulls up the grass his stillness grows Calling it weed. Each week A different woman has my mother’s face And he, who time has Changeless Must be amazed, who knew and loved but one. My father died in silence, loving creation And well-defined response. He lived still judgments on familiar things And died, knowing a January fifteenth that year me. Lest I go into dust I have not ever seen my father’s grave. Generation How the young attempt and are broken Differs from age to age We were brown free girls Love singing beneath their skin Sun in their hair in their eyes Sun their fortune The taste of their young boys’ manhood Swelling like birds in their mouths. In a careless season of power We wept out our terrible promise Now these are the children we try For temptations that wear our face And who came back from the latched cities of falsehood Warning—the road to Nowhere is slippery with our blood Warning—You need not drink the river to get home For we purchased bridges with our mothers’ bloody gold We are more than kin who come to share Not blood, but the bloodiness of failure.

• From The Selected Works of Audre Lorde

  It was actually quite sad. Dr. Lorenz had just told her that her breast cancer has spread to her bones, and she doesn’t know what she is going to do. She has to make plans for her elderly mother for whom she now cares at home but will no longer be able to. There is no one she knows to whom she can turn for help because her sister died last year. I felt very sorry for her. Here it is, almost New Year’s Eve, and there isn’t even anyone she can talk to about her worries except two strange americans in a tea shop. Then she went on to explain that she and her sister had had to live with foreign workers (she meant Italians) in the factory where they worked during World War II, and that the foreigners were very dirty, with lice and fleas, so she and her sister would sprinkle DDT in their hair and their beds every night so as not to catch diseases! And she is sure that is why the cancer has spread to her bones now. There was something so grotesque about this sad lonely old woman dying of bone cancer still holding on to her ethnic prejudices, even when she was realizing that they were going to cost her her life. The image of her as a young healthy aryan bigot was at war inside me with the pathetic old woman at our table, and I had to get out of there immediately. December 31, 1985 Arlesheim Old Year’s Day, the last day of this troubled year. And yes, all the stories we tell are about healing in some form or the other. In this place that makes such a point of togetherness and community, Frances and I sat through an ornate New Year’s Eve dinner tonight surrounded by empty chairs on each side of us, an island unto ourselves in the festive hall. It’s good that we have each other, but why should I have to suffer through this ostracism and pay for it as well? I guess because the point is not that I enjoy it but that I gain from it, and that’s up to me. As Gloria said on the phone, “Take what you can use and let the rest GO!” They don’t have to love me, just help me. My Maori jade tiki is gone forever, either lost or stolen from my room. How much more do I have to lose before it is enough?

• From The Selected Works of Audre Lorde

  When she was young, and open to any fever Wearing gold like a veil of fortune on her face, She waited through each rain a dream of light. But the sun came up Burning our eyes like crystal Bleaching the sky of promise and My sister stood Black, unblessed and unbelieving Shivering in the first cold show of love. I saw her gold become an arch Where nightmare hunted Down the porches Of her restless nights. Now through the echoes of denial She walks a bleached side of reason Secret now My sister never waits, Nor mourns the gold that wandered from her bed. My sister has my tongue And all my flesh unanswered And I presume her trustless as a stone. Now that I Am Forever with Child How the days went While you were blooming within me I remember each upon each— The swelling changed planes of my body— And how you first fluttered, then jumped And I thought it was my heart. How the days wound down And the turning of winter I recall, with you growing heavy Against the wind. I thought Now her hands Are formed, and her hair Has started to curl Now her teeth are done Now she sneezes. Then the seed opened. I bore you one morning just before spring— My head rang like a fiery piston My legs were towers between which A new world was passing. From then I can only distinguish One thread within running hours You . . . flowing through selves Toward you. Spring III Spring is the harshest Blurring the lines of choice Until summer flesh Swallows up all decision. I remember after the harvest was over When the thick sheaves were gone And the bones of the gaunt trees Uncovered How the dying of autumn was too easy To solve our loving. To a Girl Who Knew What Side Her Bread Was Buttered On He, through the eyes of the first marauder Saw her, catch of bright thunder, heaping Tea and bread for her guardian dead Crunching the nut-dry words they said And (thinking the bones were sleeping) He broke through the muffled afternoon Calling an end to their ritual’s tune With lightning-like disorder: Leave the bones, Love! Come away From these summer breads with the flavour of hay— Your guards can watch the shards of our catch Warming our bones on some winter’s day! Like an ocean of straws the old bones rose Fearing the lightning’s second death.

• From The Unexpected Legacy of Divorce: A 25-Year Landmark Study (2000)

  In the intact family, even among troubled intact families, a successful father is eager for his child to follow in his footsteps. Both parents are proud when their son or daughter attends their alma mater and many are pleased when their children join the same fraternities or sororities or live in the same dormitories. Other parents expect to attend alumnae events, both to enjoy with their children and to nostalgically recall their youth. As these passionate connections are revived, both generations feel part of a historic chain. But in divorced families, the line of succession between father and child is somehow weakened. The connection is strangely blunted by the marital rupture, by remaining anger between the couple, and by the many years of partial separation and the possible presence of a new wife and new children. An in-house parent is very different psychologically from a parent who lives far away. The child you see daily evokes different feelings of love and allegiance than the child you see at scheduled intervals, no matter how frequent they are. Despite their blood relationship some divorced fathers do not see their children as their moral or social heirs. They acknowledge their legal responsibility to help take care of the children, but this obligation ends at age eighteen. Although many fathers stay in close touch with their children and visit regularly, they nevertheless fail to contribute to their children’s college support. What is it with these dads? For clues, we can look to our study. Contrary to what many believe, the amount of past or present acrimony between parents was irrelevant to a father’s willingness to help pay for college. I was very surprised to discover that the fathers who insisted on court-ordered visiting and held the children to a rigid schedule despite the youngsters’ protests contributed partially or not at all to college expenses. When I asked these fathers about their failure to support their children at this juncture, none pleaded poverty or even temporary financial reverses. A few cited their greater obligations to their new family. Some felt a greater obligation to send their stepchildren to college over their biological children. None denied the value of a college education. Most said that they had paid child support over many years in accord with court orders and that they were finished with their legal obligations. “I did all that was required” was the recurrent theme.

• From Speak, Memory (1966)

  And, really, her French was so lovely! Ought one to have minded the shallowness of her culture, the bitterness of her temper, the banality of her mind, when that pearly language of hers purled and scintillated, as innocent of sense as the alliterative sins of Racine’s pious verse? My father’s library, not her limited lore, taught me to appreciate authentic poetry; nevertheless, something of her tongue’s limpidity and luster has had a singularly bracing effect upon me, like those sparkling salts that are used to purify the blood. This is why it makes me so sad to imagine now the anguish Mademoiselle must have felt at seeing how lost, how little valued was the nightingale voice which came from her elephantine body. She stayed with us long, much too long, obstinately hoping for some miracle that would transform her into a kind of Madame de Rambouillet holding a gilt-and-satin salon of poets, princes and statesmen under her brilliant spell. She would have gone on hoping had it not been for one Lenski, a young Russian tutor, with mild myopic eyes and strong political opinions, who had been engaged to coach us in various subjects and participate in our sports. He had had several predecessors, none of whom Mademoiselle had liked, but he, as she put it, was “le comble.” While venerating my father, Lenski could not quite stomach certain aspects of our household, such as footmen and French, which last he considered an aristocratic convention of no use in a liberal’s home. On the other hand, Mademoiselle decided that if Lenski answered her point-blank questions only with short grunts (which he tried to Germanize for want of a better language), it was not because he could not understand French, but because he wished to insult her in front of everybody. I can hear and see Mademoiselle requesting him in dulcet tones, but with an ominous quiver of her upper lip, to pass her the bread; and, likewise, I can hear and see Lenski Frenchlessly and unflinchingly going on with his soup; finally, with a slashing “Pardon, monsieur,” Mademoiselle would swoop right across his plate, snatch up the breadbasket, and recoil again with a “Merci!” so charged with irony that Lenski’s downy ears would turn the hue of geraniums. “The brute! The cad! The Nihilist!” she would sob later in her room—which was no longer next to ours though still on the same floor.

• From The Selected Works of Audre Lorde

  My mother never mentioned that Black people were not allowed into railroad dining cars headed south in 1947. As usual, whatever my mother did not like and could not change, she ignored. Perhaps it would go away, deprived of her attention. I learned later that Phyllis’s high school senior class trip had been to Washington, but the nuns had given her back her deposit in private, explaining to her that the class, all of whom were white, except Phyllis, would be staying in a hotel where Phyllis “would not be happy,” meaning, Daddy explained to her, also in private, that they did not rent rooms to Negroes. “We will take among-you to Washington, ourselves,” my father had avowed, “and not just for an overnight in some measly fleabag hotel.” American racism was a new and crushing reality that my parents had to deal with every day of their lives once they came to this country. They handled it as a private woe. My mother and father believed that they could best protect their children from the realities of race in america and the fact of american racism by never giving them name, much less discussing their nature. We were told we must never trust white people, but why was never explained, nor the nature of their ill will. Like so many other vital pieces of information in my childhood, I was supposed to know without being told. It always seemed like a very strange injunction coming from my mother, who looked so much like one of those people we were never supposed to trust. But something always warned me not to ask my mother why she wasn’t white, and why Auntie Lillah and Auntie Etta weren’t, even though they were all that same problematic color so different from my father and me, even from my sisters, who were somewhere in-between. In Washington, D.C. we had one large room with two double beds and an extra cot for me. It was a back-street hotel that belonged to a friend of my father’s who was in real estate, and I spent the whole next day after Mass squinting up at the Lincoln Memorial where Marian Anderson had sung after the D.A.R. refused to allow her to sing in their auditorium because she was Black. Or because she was “Colored,” my father said as he told us the story. Except that what he probably said was “Negro,” because for his times, my father was quite progressive. I was squinting because I was in that silent agony that characterized all of my childhood summers, from the time school let out in June to the end of July, brought about by my dilated and vulnerable eyes exposed to the summer brightness.

• From The Selected Works of Audre Lorde

  and chicken foot stew and the day before Christmas having no presents to wrap I poured two ounces of Nux Vomica into a bottle of Cream Soda and listened to the old lady puke all night long. When spring came I crossed the river again moving up in the world six and half stories and one day on the corner of eighth street across from Wanamakers which had burned down while I was away in Brooklyn— where I caught the bus for work every day a bus driver slowed down at the bus stop one morning— I was late it was raining and my jacket was soaked— and then speeded past without stopping when he saw my face. I have been given other doses of truth— that particular form of annihilation— shot through by the cold eye of the way things are baby and left for dead on a hundred streets of this city but oh that captain marvel glance brushing up against my skull like a steel bar in passing and my heart withered sheets in the gutter passing passing booted feet and bus drivers and old yentes in Brighton Beach kitchens SHIT! said the king and the whole court strained passing me out as an ill-tempered wind lashing around the corner of 125th Street and Lenox. Keyfood In the Keyfood Market on Broadway a woman waits by the window daily and patient the comings and goings of buyers neatly labeled old like yesterday’s bread her restless experienced eyes weigh fears like grapefruit testing for ripeness. Once in the market she was more comfortable than wealthy more black than white more proper than friendly more rushed than alone all her powers defined her like a carefully kneaded loaf rising and restrained working and making loving behind secret eyes. Once she was all the sums of her knowing counting on her to sustain them once she was more somebody else’s mother than mine now she weighs faces as once she weighed grapefruit. Waiting she does not count her change Her lonely eyes measure all who enter the market are they new are they old enough can they buy each other? To The Girl Who Lives In A Tree A letter in my mailbox says you’ve made it to Honduras and I wonder what is the colour of the wood you are chopping now. When you left this city I wept for a year down 14th Street across the Taconic Parkway through the shingled birdcotes along Riverside Drive and I was glad because in your going you left me a new country where Riverside Drive became an embattlement that even dynamite could not blast free where making both love and war became less inconsistent and as my tears watered morning I became my own place to fathom While part of me follows you still thru the woods of Oregon splitting dead wood with a rusty axe acting out the nightmares of your mothers creamy skin soot-covered from communal fires

• From Barclay's Guide to the New Testament (2008)

  Eusebius (3:28) tells another story of John which he got from the works of the second-century theologian, Irenaeus. We have seen that one of the leaders of the Gnostic heresy was a man called Cerinthus. `The apostle John once entered a bath to bathe; but, when he learned that Cerinthus was within, he sprang from his place and rushed out of the door, for he could not bear to remain under the same roof with him. He advised those who were with him to do the same. "Let us flee," he said, "lest the bath fall, for Cerinthus, the enemy of the truth, is within."' There we have another glimpse of the temper of John. Boanerges was not quite dead. Writing in the fifth century, John Cassian tells another famous story about John. One day he was found playing with a tame partridge. A narrower and more rigid brother rebuked him for thus wasting his time, and John answered: `The bow that is always bent will soon cease to shoot straight.' It is the great biblical scholar Jerome who tells the story of the last words of John. When he was dying, his disciples asked him if he had any last message to leave them. `Little children,' he said, `love one another.' Again and again he repeated it; and they asked him if that was all he had to say. `It is enough,' he said, `for it is the Lord's command.' Such then is our information about John; and he emerges as a figure of fiery temper, of wide ambition, of undoubted courage and, in the end, of gentle love. The Beloved Disciple If we have been following our references closely, we will have noticed one thing. All our information about John comes from the first three gospels. It is the astonishing fact that the Fourth Gospel never mentions the apostle John from beginning to end. But it does mention two other people. First, it speaks of the disciple whom Jesus loved. There are four mentions of him. He was leaning on Jesus' breast at the Last Supper (John 13:23-5); it is into his care that Jesus committed Mary as he died upon his cross (19:25-7); it was Peter and he whom Mary Magdalene met on her return from the empty tomb on the first Easter morning (20:2); and he was present at the last resurrection appearance of Jesus by the lakeside (21:20). Second, the Fourth Gospel has a kind of character whom we might call the witness.

• From The Selected Works of Audre Lorde

  She gave my chin a little shake, as I looked up into her hooded grey eyes, now becoming almost gentle. The kitchen felt suddenly oppressively hot and still, and I felt myself beginning to shake all over. Tears I did not understand started from my eyes, as I realized that my old enjoyment of the bone-jarring way I had been taught to pound spice would feel different to me from now on, and also that in my mother’s kitchen, there was only one right way to do anything. Perhaps my life had not become so simple, after all. My mother stepped away from the counter and put her heavy arm around my shoulders. I could smell the warm herness rising from between her arm and her body, mixed with the smell of glycerine and rose-water, and the scent of her thick bun of hair. “I’ll finish up the food for supper.” She smiled at me, and there was a tenderness in her voice and an absence of annoyance that was welcome, although unfamiliar. “You come inside now and lie down on the couch and I’ll make you a hot cup of tea.” Her arm across my shoulders was warm and slightly damp. I rested my head upon her shoulder, and realized with a shock of pleasure and surprise that I was almost as tall as my mother, as she led me into the cool darkened parlor. The Uses of Anger Women Responding to Racism R acism . The belief in the inherent superiority of one race over all others and thereby the right to dominance, manifest and implied. Women respond to racism . My response to racism is anger. I have lived with that anger, ignoring it, feeding upon it, learning to use it before it laid my visions to waste, for most of my life. Once I did it in silence, afraid of the weight. My fear of anger taught me nothing. Your fear of that anger will teach you nothing, also. Women responding to racism means women responding to anger; the anger of exclusion, of unquestioned privilege, of racial distortions, of silence, ill-use, stereotyping, defensiveness, misnaming, betrayal, and cooptation. My anger is a response to racist attitudes and to the actions and presumptions that arise out of those attitudes. If your dealings with other women reflect those attitudes, then my anger and your attendant fears are spotlights that can be used for growth in the same way I have used learning to express anger for my growth. But for corrective surgery, not guilt. Guilt and defensiveness are bricks in a wall against which we all flounder; they serve none of our futures. Because I do not want this to become a theoretical discussion, I am going to give a few examples of interchanges between women that illustrate these points. In the interest of time, I am going to cut them short.

• From Barclay's Guide to the New Testament (2008)

  Both the form and the personal character of i John will be explained if we think of it as what someone has called `a loving and anxious sermon', written by a pastor who loved his people, and sent out to the various churches over which he had charge. Any such letter is produced by an actual situation apart from which it cannot be fully understood. If we wish to understand i John, we have first of all to try to reconstruct the situation which produced it, remembering that it was written in Ephesus a little after AD 100. The Falling Away By AD ioo, certain things had almost inevitably happened within the Church, especially in a place like Ephesus. (i) Many were now second- or even third-generation Christians. The thrill of the first days had, to some extent at least, passed away. In `The Prelude', Wordsworth said of one of the great moments of modern history: Bliss was it in that dawn to be alive. In the first days of Christianity, there was a glory and a splendour; but now Christianity had become a thing of habit, `traditional, half-hearted, nominal'. People had grown used to it, and something of the wonder had been lost. Jesus knew human nature, and he had said: `The love of many will grow cold' (Matthew 24:12). John was writing at a time when, for some at least, the first thrill had gone and the flame of devotion had died to a flicker. (2) One result was that there were members of the Church who found that the standards which Christianity demanded were becoming a burden and who were tired of making the effort. They did not want to be saints in the New Testament sense of the term. The New Testament word for saint is hagios, which is also commonly translated as holy. Its basic meaning is different. The Temple was hagios because it was different from other buildings; the Sabbath was hagios because it was different from other days; the Jewish nation was hagios because it was different from other nations; and Christians were called to be hagios because they were called to be different from other men and women. There was always a distinct division between Christians and the world. In the Fourth Gospel, Jesus says: `If you belonged to the world, the world would love you as its own. Because you do not belong to the world, but I have chosen you out of the world - therefore the world hates you' (John 15:19). `I have given them your word,' said Jesus in his prayer to God, `and the world has hated them because they do not belong to the world, just as I do not belong to the world' (John 17:14). All of this involved an ethical demand.

• From The Unexpected Legacy of Divorce: A 25-Year Landmark Study (2000)

  Who does she have to comfort her in the years following divorce? Or does she gradually learn to block her own feelings and needs because they are too painful? Karen told me how she liked to sit alone in her grandmother’s garden where it was quiet and she felt safe. I regretted that she didn’t have many friends but was pleased to hear she had at least this one oasis. I remember Karen years later telling me, “My grandmother saved my life.” There’s no way for a sensitive child to see her mother cry or her father fall into depression without worrying that she’s the cause of it—and so she takes full responsibility for her mother’s tears and father’s moods. I watched Karen with a feeling of great helplessness, realizing there was nothing I could do to alleviate her pain or slake her thirst for protection. I remember once asking her, “What will you be when you grow up, Karen?” She blushed. “I want to work with children who are blind or retarded or who can’t speak.” I thought of Karen’s mother who sat alone and cried, of her brother who was afraid of the dark, of all the sorrowful people in this family, including herself, whom this amazing child wanted to rescue and I almost cried. When a child forfeits her childhood and adolescence to take on responsibilities for a parent, her capacity to enjoy her life as a young person, develop close friendships, and cultivate shared interests is sacrificed. Beyond this loss, there is a major psychological hazard if the upside-down dependence goes on too long. The child may become trapped into feeling that she alone must rescue the troubled parent. When she attends to her own needs and wishes, she feels guilty and undeserving. This happens if the parent’s unhappiness continues for years and the parent comes to rely on the child for comfort or when the child herself assumes the role and won’t give it up. Whatever its origins, the child feels obliged to care for the parent in whatever capacity is needed—as caregiver, companion, mentor, or the person who keeps depression at bay. Karen said, “My mom has no one. Only me.” As strange as this sounds, many of these youngsters believe that it’s their duty to keep their parent alive. Without them, the parent would die. This is an awesome responsibility, especially for a child who has no one to confide in. It is far beyond the kind of help a devoted child gives to a parent in a temporary crisis, divorce or otherwise. It is an overburdening that seriously inhibits the child’s freedom to separate normally and to lead a healthy adolescence. Bound to the troubled parent by unbreakable strands of love, compassion, guilt, and self-sacrifice, the child is not free to leave home emotionally or to follow her heart in love or marriage.

• From Speak, Memory (1966)

  Now the colored pencils in action. The green one, by a mere whirl of the wrist, could be made to produce a ruffled tree, or the eddy left by a submerged crocodile. The blue one drew a simple line across the page—and the horizon of all seas was there. A nondescript blunt one kept getting into one’s way. The brown one was always broken, and so was the red, but sometimes, just after it had snapped, one could still make it serve by holding it so that the loose tip was propped, none too securely, by a jutting splinter. The little purple fellow, a special favorite of mine, had got worn down so short as to become scarcely manageable. The white one alone, that lanky albino among pencils, kept its original length, or at least did so until I discovered that, far from being a fraud leaving no mark on the page, it was the ideal implement since I could imagine whatever I wished while I scrawled. Alas, these pencils, too, have been distributed among the characters in my books to keep fictitious children busy; they are not quite my own now. Somewhere, in the apartment house of a chapter, in the hired room of a paragraph, I have also placed that tilted mirror, and the lamp, and the chandelier drops. Few things are left, many have been squandered. Have I given away Box I (son and husband of Loulou, the housekeeper’s pet), that old brown dachshund fast asleep on the sofa? No, I think he is still mine. His grizzled muzzle, with the wart at the puckered corner of the mouth, is tucked into the curve of his hock, and from time to time a deep sigh distends his ribs. He is so old and his sleep is so thickly padded with dreams (about chewable slippers and a few last smells) that he does not stir when faint bells jingle outside. Then a pneumatic door heaves and clangs in the vestibule. She has come after all; I had so hoped she would not.

• From The Selected Works of Audre Lorde

  And make no mistake; you will be paid well not to feel, not to scrutinize the function of your differences and their meaning, until it will be too late to feel at all. You will be paid in insularity, in poisonous creature comforts, false securities, in the spurious belief that the midnight knock will always be upon somebody else’s door. But there is no separate survival. POETRY from The First Cities (1968) For Genevieve, Miriam, Clem, no more words For Marian, Neal, Ed, different ones. A Family Resemblance My sister has my hair my mouth my eyes And I presume her trustless. When she was young, and open to any fever Wearing gold like a veil of fortune on her face, She waited through each rain a dream of light. But the sun came up Burning our eyes like crystal Bleaching the sky of promise and My sister stood Black, unblessed and unbelieving Shivering in the first cold show of love. I saw her gold become an arch Where nightmare hunted Down the porches Of her restless nights. Now through the echoes of denial She walks a bleached side of reason Secret now My sister never waits, Nor mourns the gold that wandered from her bed. My sister has my tongue And all my flesh unanswered And I presume her trustless as a stone. Coal I Is the total black, being spoken From the earth’s inside. There are many kinds of open. How a diamond comes into a knot of flame How a sound comes into a word, coloured By who pays what for speaking. Some words are open Like a diamond on glass windows Singing out within the crash of passing sun Then there are words like stapled wagers In a perforated book—buy and sign and tear apart— And come whatever wills all chances The stub remains An ill-pulled tooth with a ragged edge. Some words live in my throat Breeding like adders. Others know sun Seeking like gypsies over my tongue To explode through my lips Like young sparrows bursting from shell. Some words Bedevil me. Love is a word another kind of open— As a diamond comes into a knot of flame I am black because I come from the earth’s inside Take my word for jewel in your open light. Now that I Am Forever with Child How the days went While you were blooming within me I remember each upon each— The swelling changed planes of my body— And how you first fluttered, then jumped And I thought it was my heart. How the days wound down And the turning of winter I recall, with you growing heavy Against the wind. I thought Now her hands Are formed, and her hair Has started to curl Now her teeth are done Now she sneezes. Then the seed opened. I bore you one morning just before spring— My head rang like a fiery piston My legs were towers between which A new world was passing. From then

• From My Life and Loves, Vol. 1 (of 4) (1922)

  We argued for hours: I couldn’t convince him any more than he could persuade me; he tried his best to get me to stay two years at any rate and then go with full pockets: “you can easily spare two years”, he cried, but I retorted, “not even two days: I’m frightened of myself.” When he found that I wanted the money to go round the world with first, he saw a chance of delay and said I must give him some time to find out what was coming to me; I told him I trusted him utterly (as indeed I did) and could only give him the Saturday and Sunday, for I’d go on the Monday at the latest. He gave in at last and was very kind. I got a dress and little hat for Lily and lots of books beside a chinchilla cape for Rose and broke the news to Lily next morning, keeping the afternoon for Rose. To my astonishment I had most trouble with Lily: she would not hear any reason: “There is no reason in it”, she cried again and again, and then she broke down in a storm of tears: “What will become of me?” she sobbed, “I always hoped you’d marry me!” she confessed at last, “and now you go away for nothing, nothing—on a wild-goose chase—to study”, she added in a tone of absolute disdain, “just as if you couldn’t study here!” “I’m too young to marry, Lily,” I said, “and—” “You were not too young to make me love you”, she broke in, “and now what shall I do? Even Mamma said that we ought to be engaged and I want you so,—oh! oh!” and again the tears fell in a shower. I could not help saying at last that I would think it all over and let her know and away I went to Rose. Rose heard me out in complete silence and then with her eyes on mine in lingering affection, she said: “Do you know, I’ve been afraid often of some decision like this. I said to myself a dozen times, ‘why should he stay here? the wider world calls him’ and if I feel inclined to hate my work because it prevents my studying, what must it be for him in that horrible court, fighting day after day? I always knew I should lose you, dear!” she added, “but you were the first to help me to think and read, so I must not complain. Do you go soon?”