Surprise

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 Simply Jesus (2011)

  In a shocking reversal, amounting almost to a slap in the face to his hearers (including, we assume, his own family), Jesus declares that the people who will benefit from this great act of God will not, after all, be the people of Israel as they stand. This is what he says next to his hearers in the synagogue that day: Everyone remarked at him; they were astonished at the words coming out of his mouth—words of sheer grace. “Isn’t this Joseph’s son?” they said. “I know what you’re going to say,” Jesus said. “You’re going to tell me the old riddle: ‘Heal yourself, doctor!’ ‘We heard of great happenings in Capernaum; do things like that here, in your own country!’ “Let me tell you the truth,” he went on. “Prophets never get accepted in their own country. This is the solemn truth: there were plenty of widows in Israel in the time of Elijah, when heaven was shut up for three years and six months, and there was a great famine over all the land. Elijah was sent to none of them, only to a widow in the Sidonian town of Zarephath. “And there were plenty of people with virulent skin diseases in Israel in the time of Elisha the prophet, and none of them was healed—only Naaman, the Syrian.” When they heard this, everyone in the synagogue flew into a rage. (Luke 4:22–28) The people who will benefit will be the outsiders, the wrong people, the foreigners. Even, perhaps, the commander of the enemy army. Naaman the Syrian, to whom Jesus refers as the one man who was healed by the prophet Elisha, was the commander of the army that, in the old story, had been attacking the Israelites (2 Kings 5). Startling though this is, it fits with everything else we know about Jesus’s public teaching. “Love your enemies,” he told his followers (Matt. 5:44), and he elaborated the point from a dozen different angles. Forgiveness was at the heart of his message. This was a striking departure from the otherwise universal practice of Jewish martyrs, for whom it was a point of honor to call down heaven’s curses upon their torturers and executioners. The grisly story of the torture and death of seven brothers and their mother in 2 Maccabees includes the threats they uttered against King Antiochus: After him they brought forward the sixth [brother]. And when he was about to die, he said, “Do not deceive yourself in vain. For we are suffering these things on our own account, because of our sins against our own God. Therefore astounding things have happened.

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

  “What!” In my astonishment I forgot to whisper, and we both froze and turned anxiously back to the bed. But fortunately Jacob slept on. “Sorry”—I spoke as softly as I could—“but you must admit that this is a bit of a turnaround. I mean, I would have thought it was the last thing . . .” “Yes, I know.” She smiled ruefully and made a helpless gesture. “I know it must sound perfectly mad. Herbert and I, of all people! Can’t you imagine what our friends are going to say? I know it seems illogical, inconsistent. But I’ve often thought that Jacob ought to have some kind of religion. All that ritual, for example— he’d simply love that. And religion is supposed to give some kind of comfort, isn’t it?” She looked up at me tentatively. “Well . . .” I trailed off, unwilling to go down that road, tonight of all nights. I couldn’t resist a little sarcasm. “You wouldn’t feel like coming along yourself, I suppose? You haven’t seen the light? And perhaps Herbert would like to join us?” “Oh, heavens no!” We both laughed, as noiselessly as possible, at the absurdity of the suggestion. “But seriously,” Jenifer continued, “the Blackfriars Mass sounds ideal, because presumably no one would mind if he made some kind of fuss. And he’d get to meet lots of new people at your coffee morning afterwards. I really think that it would do him good.” She sounded as though religion were like an iron tonic: a regular dose each week would automatically induce peace of soul. “He would probably enjoy it,” I conceded somewhat reluctantly. The very idea of Jacob or any Hart in a church was so astounding that it was difficult to imagine. “But”—again I could hear the irony in my voice—“I take it he’ll just be going along for the show. You won’t want me to give him instruction or anything like that?” “Oh Lord, no—he doesn’t have to understand it!” Jenifer exclaimed, slightly scandalized. I stared at her hard: this really was a bit of a cheek. And yet, I reflected, how many Catholics truly understood the labyrinthine complexity of their doctrinal system? “I don’t want him getting any of those ghastly ideas you all have— God, heaven and hell, or anything of that sort,” Jenifer went on, oblivious to any offense that her words might give. “Of course, all those beliefs are nonsense anyway. Ludicrous, in fact! He doesn’t need to know any of that !” “He’ll probably have to know something, though, to help him into the experience,” I said, trying to see how the Mass might look to a complete outsider. “It would all be a sort of fantasy to him, of course, on a par with Guy Fawkes or Goldilocks. But he might grasp the point of some of the stories. Nothing heavy, just—I don’t know—Jesus loves me and is my friend.”

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

  Most of us forgot how to be nuns from time to time. We would run upstairs, burst into loud laughter, or answer back when reprimanded, but not Sister Rebecca. She was always controlled, composed, and peaceful. When I had arrived at Oxford in the autumn of 1967, she was in her final year at St. Anne’s, reading French and Italian, and because we were the only two student nuns in the community, we were thrown much together. Every afternoon we went to the convent chapel together after lunch to perform all our spiritual duties, one after the other, in a soulless marathon of examination of conscience, rosary, spiritual reading, and thirty minutes of mental prayer. The idea was that we should get these “out of the way” so that we could spend the evening studying. When we had finished praying, we took a forty-five-minute walk. And we talked. Although we were not supposed to form friendships, Rebecca and I were so isolated from the other students and from the rest of the community that inevitably a relationship developed. We both loved our work but had nobody else to discuss it with. I would tell her all about Milton, and she would impart to me her latest discoveries about Dante or Proust. But the conversation did not always remain on such an exalted level. I was beginning to rebel. The Oxford community was not an easy one. Most of the nuns there were adamantly opposed to the reforms, about which both Rebecca and I were excited. The evening recreation would often consist of long communal lamentations about the abolition of the old ways, and Rebecca and I would exchange sardonic looks. I discovered that beneath her apparently perfect exterior, Rebecca had quite a sharp tongue and a salty turn of phrase, though she was unfailingly sweet to the older nuns and never showed her irritation, as I so frequently did. During our walks, Rebecca had listened to my growing saga of frustration with the religious life. She had been a lifeline in that last, difficult year, but she had not shared my disenchantment. Why had she summoned me? I wondered as we pulled into the station. Was she in trouble? We had arranged that she would meet my train with the convent car, but I did not see her on the platform; nor was she in the entrance hall after I had handed in my ticket. Then, suddenly, I caught sight of a nun standing beneath the old-fashioned wall clock, wearing one of those modern habits that gave her the appearance of an Edwardian nurse. There was something familiar about her, but she was far, far too thin. That could not be Rebecca. I looked around again, but found my gaze drawn back to that modest figure, whose eyes were meekly cast down on the tiled floor.

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

  The bus was taking me away from my nice safe job, but it seemed to be going in the right direction. 7. Infirm Glory This could not be happening. I stared incredulously at the gentleman sitting opposite me and asked him to repeat his question. The room was noisy, after all, and I might have misheard. We were in the BBC studios in Glasgow, having dinner before going on to make a live television program. But this was a dinner party with a difference. There must have been about a hundred guests, most of whom would make up the studio audience, and apparently they were all prostitutes, pimps, strippers, drag artists, porn dealers, and other members of Glasgow’s vice ring. There were also a number of bathing beauties and beauty queens. As one of the principal discussants, I was seated at the top table. A few seats to my right was Linda Lovelace, the notorious star of Deep Throat, now in her feminist phase, slightly overweight and clad in a tent dress and sneakers, earnestly explaining to one of the transvestites that her little boy was going into first grade that fall. To my left was Oliver Reed, who was downing malt whiskey as though it were lemonade, and already looked the worse for wear. A few weeks earlier, I had been invited by the BBC to take part in a new talk show, which would deal in depth with the seven deadly sins. It was billed to me as a serious enterprise, and my publishers were excited by the idea. It would go out live in a prime slot on Saturday evening, and would give me a chance to show that I could talk about other things than being a nun. I would contribute to the very first program, which would focus on lust—presumably because my years of chastity gave me an interesting angle. But already Sin on Saturday was turning out to be very different from anything that we had expected. The cheery Scottish gentleman opposite me was the agent of many of the strippers in the room. He had asked me what my job was and why I was taking part in the program, and I had replied that I had been a nun and was currently unemployed. His eyes brightened; he had leaned across the table in his enthusiasm and asked me the question that I now wanted him to repeat. “Would ye be interested in doing an act called ‘The Stripping Nun’? “No!” he continued vehemently, as I gazed at him, flabbergasted. “I’m quite serious—I think it would go down wonderfully! You’d be great!” I replied that it was not quite the career that I had in mind. The program was a catastrophe. I was on first with Linda Lovelace, who explained that she had done what she did in Deep Throat only because her then lover had put a revolver to her head and threatened to pull the trigger.

• From Tipping the Velvet (1998)

  He had joined me at the window, and seemed slowly to have inched his way towards me; now he was really very close indeed - so close that I could feel the warmth of his arm against my own, and smell the soap on him. I didn’t turn to examine his face; I could see that his shoes, however, were highly polished and rather fine.After a minute or two of silence, he spoke: ‘A pleasant evening.’Still I didn’t look round, only agreed - all guilelessly - that it was. There was another silence.‘You are admiring the display, perhaps?’ he went on then. I nodded - now I did turn to glance at him - and he looked pleased. ‘Then we are kindred spirits, I can tell!’ He had the voice of a gentleman, but kept his tone rather low. ‘Now, I’m not a smoker; and yet I find myself quite unable to resist the lure of a really good tobacconist’s. The cigars, the brushes, the nail-clippers ...’ He gestured with his hand. ‘There is something so very masculine about a tobacconist’s shop - don’t you think?’ His voice, at the last, had dipped to little more than a murmur. Now he said in the same tone but very fast: ‘Are you up for it, Private?’His words made me blink.‘Pardon?’He looked about him with an eye that was quick, practised, smooth as a well-oiled castor; then he glanced back to me. ‘Are you up for a lark? Have you a room we might go to?’‘I don’t know what you mean,’ I said - although, to be frank, I felt the stirrings of an idea.He, at least, must have thought that I was teasing. He smiled, and licked at his moustaches. ‘Don’t you, now. And I thought all you guardsmen fellows knew the game all right ...’‘Not me,’ I said primly. ‘I only joined up last week.’He smiled again. ‘A raw recruit! And you’ve never done it with another lad, I suppose? A handsome fellow like you?’ I shook my head. ‘Well’ - he swallowed - ‘won’t you do it now, with me?’‘Do what?’ I said. Again there was that swift, well-lubricated glance.‘Put your pretty arse-hole at my service - or your pretty lips, perhaps. Or simply your pretty white hand, through the slit in my breeches. Whatever, soldier, you prefer; only cease your teasing, I beg you. I’m as hard as a broom-handle, and aching for a spend.’Through all this astonishing exchange our outward show of gazing into the tobacconist’s window had barely been disturbed.

• From Tipping the Velvet (1998)

  I confess, I was intrigued. Any gent who could bring such a sense of drama to the staging of an encounter which, in the ordinary course of things, might be settled so unspectacularly - by a word, or a nod, or the fluttering of one spit-blacked lash - was clearly someone special. I was also, frankly, flattered; and having been flattered, generous. Since he had had to make do so far with admiring my bottom from a distance, I felt it only fair to give him the chance of a closer look — though he must, of course, be content only to look.I advanced a little towards the open door. Within, all was dark; I saw only the vague outline of a shoulder, an arm, a knee, against the lighter square of the far window. Then briefly the end of a cigarette glowed bright in the blackness, and glimmered redly on a pale gloved hand, and a face. The hand was slender, and had rings upon it. The face was powdered: a woman’s face. I was too surprised even to laugh - too startled, for a moment, to do anything but stand at the rim of gloom that seemed to spill out from the carriage, and gape at her; and in that moment, she spoke.‘Can I offer you a ride?’Her voice was rich and rather haughty, and somehow arresting. It made me stammer. I said: ‘That, that’s very kind of you, madam’ - I sounded like a mincing shop-boy refusing a tip - ‘but I’m not five minutes from home, and I shall get there all the quicker if you’ll let me say good-night, and pass on my way.’ I tilted my cap towards the dark place where the voice had come from, and, with a tight little smile, I made to move on.But the lady spoke again.‘It’s rather late,’ she said, ‘to be out on one’s own, in streets like these.’ She drew on her cigarette, and the tip glowed bright again in the shadows. ‘Won’t you let me drop you somewhere ? I have a very capable driver.’I thought, I am sure you do: her man was still hunched forward in his seat, his back to me, his thoughts his own. I felt suddenly weary. I had heard stories in Soho about ladies like this — ladies who rode the darkened streets with well-paid servants, on the lookout for idle men or boys like me who’d give them a thrill for the price of a supper.

• From Simply Jesus (2011)

  He therefore invoked the language of the book of Daniel—against the very city and Temple for which Daniel had been so concerned. The “abomination that desolates” would stand in the Temple (Dan. 9:27; Matt. 24:15) not as a prelude to the Temple being rescued, but rather as a prelude to the tumultuous event that would be like the fall of Babylon itself, an event for which the only appropriate language would be the darkening of sun and moon and the falling of the stars (Matt. 24:29; Isa. 13:10). And in that terrible event, Jesus wanted his followers to see the sign of his own vindication. No longer would the Temple in Jerusalem be the place where heaven and earth met. From now on, heaven and earth would meet in the person and through the achievement of the “one like a son of man,” who after his suffering would be vindicated, who would be “coming on the clouds of heaven” to be seated beside “the Ancient One” (Matt. 24:30, quoting Dan. 7:13). The greatest empires of the world would do their worst, and Israel’s representative would be enthroned as their Lord, establishing a kingdom that could never be shaken. To say that this was not what anyone else in Israel at the time had imagined, let alone dreamed of or prayed for, was putting it mildly. The disciples themselves must have been shocked and dismayed. But this vision of judgment is not an extra bit of teaching tacked onto the end of a public career that was in all other respects about something else. The note of warning had been there throughout, from the Sermon on the Mount (think of the foolish man building his house on the sand!), to the Nazareth Manifesto (think of God’s blessing bypassing God’s people and going out to the foreigners!), to the solemn warnings in Luke 13, following reports of Jews being killed by Roman soldiers and by a falling tower in the southeast corner of Jerusalem, to repent or to perish in the same way. No wonder people thought Jesus was like Jeremiah, always warning that the enemy would come and destroy, and that when that happened it would be God’s own wrath rather than simply a ghastly accident. Then comes the twist. Jesus was not simply announcing God’s judgment on his rebel people, warning like Jeremiah that Israel and its leaders had so badly misread God’s vocation that they were now rushing down a steep slope to destruction. Jesus was speaking and acting in such a way as to imply that he was to go ahead of his people, to meet the powers of destruction in person, to take their full weight on himself, so as to make a way through, a way in which God’s people could be renewed, could rediscover their vocation to be a light to the nations, could be rescued from their continuing slavery and exile.

• From Simply Jesus (2011)

  But until thirty years before the birth of Jesus of Nazareth, Rome had been a republic. An intricate system of checks and balances ensured that nobody could hold absolute power, and those who did have power didn’t have it very long. Rome had had tyrants many centuries before and was proud to have rid itself of them. But with Julius Caesar all that changed. “Caesar” was simply his family name, but Julius made it a royal title from that day on (the words “Kaiser” and “Tsar” are variations on “Caesar”). A great military hero out on the frontiers, he did the unthinkable: he brought his army back to Rome itself and established his own power and prestige there. It seems that he even allowed people to think he was divine. The traditionalists were furious, and they assassinated him. But this threw Rome into a long and bloody civil war from which one winner emerged, Caesar’s adopted son, Octavian. He took the title “Augustus,” which means “majestic” or “worthy of honor.” This, along with “Caesar,” became the name or title of his successors as well. He declared that his adoptive father, Julius, had indeed become divine; this meant that he, Augustus Octavian Caesar, was now officially “son of god,” “son of the divine Julius.” If you’d asked anybody in the Roman Empire, from Germany to Egypt, from Spain to Syria, who the “son of god” might be, the obvious answer, the politically correct answer, would have been “Octavian.” In a world where mainstream religion was emphatically a branch of the state, Augustus took the senior priestly roles. He became pontifex maximus (“chief priest” in Latin) and passed that role too to his successors. Meanwhile, Augustus’s court poets and historians did a great job with their propaganda. They told the thousand-year story of Rome as a long and winding narrative that had reached its great climax at last; the golden age had begun with the birth of the new child through whom peace and prosperity would spread to the whole world. The whole world is now being renewed, sang Virgil in a passage 4 that some later Christians saw as a pagan prophecy of the Messiah. (The fathers of the American Constitution borrowed a key phrase from this poem, novus ordo seclorum, “a new order of the ages,” not only for the Great Seal of the United States, but also for the dollar bill. They were thereby making the striking claim that history turned its vital corner not with Augustus Caesar, nor even with Jesus of Nazareth, but with the birth and Constitution of the United States.) Virgil’s poem goes on to promise that from now on, in this new age, under the divine kingship of Apollo himself, the earth will produce all that one could require. Earth, sea, and heaven will rejoice at the child now to be born.

• From Simply Jesus (2011)

  I have argued in detail elsewhere that the only possible explanation for the rise of Christianity and for its taking the shape it did was that Jesus of Nazareth, three days after being very thoroughly dead (Roman executioners were professional killers and didn’t let would- be rebel leaders slip out of their clutches), was found by his followers to be very thoroughly and very bodily alive again. His tomb was empty; had it not been, his followers would have believed they were seeing some kind of an apparition. Such things were well known in the ancient world, as in fact they are today. Equally, they really did see, touch, and share food with Jesus as a real, bodily presence; had they not, they would have concluded that an empty tomb meant that the grave had been robbed. Such things were better known in the ancient world than they are today. The combination of empty tomb and definite, solid appearances is far and away the best explanation for everything that happened subsequently. “Solid?” I hear someone ask. Didn’t they tell stories about this risen Jesus going through locked doors, not always being recognized right away, and eventually vanishing upward into thin air? Yes, they did, and we have to take those stories seriously too. They don’t correspond to what first-century Jews, the majority of whom believed in eventual resurrection, would have thought “the resurrection” would be like. (For another thing, they never imagined that “resurrection” would happen to one person in the middle of time; they believed it would happen to all people at the end of time. The Easter stories are very strange, but they are not projections of what people “always hoped would happen.”) The stories don’t fit, in fact, into either of our regular categories. We tend to divide things up into solid, physical objects, on the one hand, and evanescent, insubstantial “objects” or appearances, on the other, such as (so we imagine) ghosts. But the stories of the risen Jesus have a different quality altogether. They seem to be about a person who is equally at home “on earth” and “in heaven.” And that is, in fact, exactly what they are. Remember—before this gets too confusing!—that “heaven” in biblical thought is not a long way away from “earth.” In the Bible, “heaven” and “earth” overlap and interlock, as the ancient Jews believed they did above all in the Temple. Remember too that “heaven” and “earth” are not like oil and water, resisting one another and separating themselves out. Most people in today’s Western world imagine that “heaven,” by definition, could not contain what we think of as a solid, physical body.

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

  There was a moment when, as they say, the world stood still. I felt literally blank, and could not even begin to think what this might mean. There was a pause, and then I told him about the blackouts. “And you were about eighteen when this started?” Dr. Wolfe made a note and nodded, as if to himself. “This condition quite often appears in late adolescence—with the hormonal changes, you see. And the good nuns didn’t advise you to check these medically?” “No. We thought it was all due to emotional disturbance.” Dr. Wolfe sighed impatiently. “I do wish people wouldn’t play psychiatrist and make these facile assumptions!” he said, his lips taut with suppressed irritation. “It’s the current fashion to see every illness as psychosomatic, but epilepsy is a physical disease and needs physical treatment, though there are often quite traumatic emotional e fects. You see, I am interested in the fear that you say you experience, the distress, and the smell. This is what we call an aura, and it is associated with a particular kind of focal epilepsy, centered in the temporal lobe, the part of the brain responsible for the retention of memories, and for the senses of taste and smell.” So all that anguish about my feeble willpower had been entirely misdirected. I could have been as emotionally stolid as a sloth and it would have made no difference. I felt a dawning sense of vindication, but Dr. Wolfe’s next question took me completely by surprise. “Now—please don’t be afraid to speak honestly about this; nobody will think that you are mad or deranged in any way if the answer is yes, but have you ever had any hallucinatory experience, seen or heard things that aren’t there?” Again, the silence in the little consulting room vibrated and I sat, afraid almost to move or speak, in case the hope that I was beginning to feel should prove to be yet another delusion. But slowly, in response to his careful probing, I began to answer his questions. “And have you found things looking rather strange? Or have you done things without realizing it? Started to go to one place, perhaps, and ended up somewhere completely different?” Almost winded by the implications of what I was hearing, I answered, hesitantly at first, but then the words almost tumbled over one another in my eagerness to explain. And more wonderful than almost anything else was the fact that Dr. Wolfe was nodding as though this was only to be expected. “Yes,” he said at last. “These are all classic symptoms of temporal lobe epilepsy.” He took some more notes, and then looked up, frowning slightly. “But, forgive me, I’m puzzled. This must have been very alarming for you. Why on earth did you not take these symptoms to a doctor?”

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

  But this Easter, I did not attempt the trek to Mevagissey. If anybody at Lamledra noticed this, they all tactfully forbore to mention it. I was surprised, even slightly shocked, that such a final break with religion had affected me so little. From the Harts’ atheist stronghold, the events of that first Holy Week—the suffering and death of Jesus and his rising from the tomb—seemed an obvious fiction, a mere myth, an arbitrary sequence of improbable events that bore no relevance to life in the twentieth century. But in the convent, when we had lived that myth step by step, moment by moment, from Ash Wednesday through the long journey of Lent all the way to Golgotha, the myth had meant something entirely different. Holy Week, the culmination of Lent, had always been a special time. We had sung the whole of the divine office every day, instead of chanting an abridged version. Each novice had to sing a chapter from the Lamentations of Jeremiah. The plaintive cadences of the Gregorian chant had penetrated our hearts; then there had been the drama of the Easter Vigil. I had never seriously questioned the myth itself because the liturgy, the fasting, and the strict silence of the convent during these days had re-created it, so that in some sense, whatever had happened in Jerusalem two thousand years before was not as important as the fact that the events had somehow been brought to life here and now. But without these rituals, the myth was dead. If you wanted to preserve your faith, the trick clearly was to keep practicing. If you stopped and looked at those rites and stories from the outside, they seemed absurd. Ludicrous, in fact. “Isn’t it Easter tomorrow?” one of the guests asked at supper. “Don’t talk about Easter and all that boring stuff!” Jacob commanded. Everybody laughed but broke off raggedly, looking rather warily at me. “Karen, do you insist on doing the washing up, so that Nanny can come upstairs with me?” “Yes, of course,” I said, grateful for the diversion. “As long as you don’t use the dishwasher,” Herbert muttered darkly. “I absolutely forbid anybody to use that dishwasher. It’s an absurd waste of—” “Karen, do you absolutely insist?” “Karen.” Jean Floud, the mistress of Newnham College, leaned across the table. “I’ve got to go back to Cambridge tomorrow. I’ll be leaving pretty early. If you’d like to come with me, I could drop you off at Mevagissey for Mass.” My heart sank. I really didn’t feel like making a public announcement of my loss of faith. “Well, Jean, it’s very kind—” I began. “Oh, for God’s sake, don’t take her to Mass,” Jenifer exclaimed, helping people to more lasagna. “She always comes home in such a bad temper!” She dropped a second helping on my plate. “Do I really, Jenifer?” I was astonished. “Yes, you do! I must say I don’t approve of a religion that makes people so gloomy.”

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

  More often than not, the couple would give me the goods I had requested as a gift, so I learned not to make the offer. “Please,” they would say, “you are our guest!” Finally my friends would arrive and sweep me off to dinner. After one of these evenings, Ahmed and three of his mates were driving me back to the hotel. The car radio was blaring out some tinny Arabic music, and two of the men on the backseat were drinking bottled beer. Suddenly the music stopped, there was an announcement, and the atmosphere in the car became very still. “It’s the Koran,” Ahmed told me tersely, but with eager anticipation, as though he were expecting a great treat. I was surprised. I knew that Ahmed was not a practicing Muslim; in fact, he seemed to dislike religion. Had I been driving in London with beer-drinking secularists and found that we were about to be treated to a reading from the Bible on the radio, somebody would have lunged immediately for the off button. But it was very different here. I listened to the chanted recitation as it filled the car. Periodically one of the men would make an involuntary exclamation of delight, and soon, feeling sorry for me, they tried to include me in the experience, by translating the text into English, the words tumbling over one another as they tried to express its complexity. “This is so beautiful!” Ahmed kept saying in obvious excitement. “I wish you could hear this!” He would then attempt another version of the words but broke off in frustration. “It is that, but more than that. Too much to tell you!” I was not merely impressed, but astonished. Somehow this scripture could still move these tough fifty-year-old men almost to tears, even though they never went near a mosque and saw religion as the bane of the Middle East. It was another impression to file away to think about later, when I had time. These glimpses of other traditions were intriguing, but I was still convinced that God and I were through. And there were many aspects of Middle Eastern piety that fueled my aversion. The offices of the film company were near Meah Shearim, one of the ultra-Orthodox quarters of Jerusalem, and the placards on the walls there, which equated Zionism with Hitler and which commanded the “daughters of Israel” to dress modestly, repelled me— though my aversion was mild compared to the rage that the ultra-Orthodox inspired in Joel.

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

  As I left the school grounds to wait for the bus that had been the bane of my life during the last six years, I felt as though I were beginning a new journey. Other people seemed to progress much more smoothly through life, I reflected wryly, as the bus finally crested the hill and roared toward me. They went through college, chose a career and a partner without all this drama. But that didn’t seem to happen to me. I kept getting derailed, ejected from one job, one lifestyle after another. Doors kept slamming in my face. But had I really wanted to be ordinary; had I really wanted what T. S. Eliot had called “the usual reign”? I forced myself to remember all the times I had been bored and frustrated by the school, despite the regular salary. I couldn’t have it both ways. And now, here I was again, heading into the unknown, and yet I felt in some strange way as though I were back on track. The bus was taking me away from my nice safe job, but it seemed to be going in the right direction. 7. Infirm Glory This could not be happening. I stared incredulously at the gentleman sitting opposite me and asked him to repeat his question. The room was noisy, after all, and I might have misheard. We were in the BBC studios in Glasgow, having dinner before going on to make a live television program. But this was a dinner party with a difference. There must have been about a hundred guests, most of whom would make up the studio audience, and apparently they were all prostitutes, pimps, strippers, drag artists, porn dealers, and other members of Glasgow’s vice ring. There were also a number of bathing beauties and beauty queens. As one of the principal discussants, I was seated at the top table. A few seats to my right was Linda Lovelace, the notorious star of Deep Throat, now in her feminist phase, slightly overweight and clad in a tent dress and sneakers, earnestly explaining to one of the transvestites that her little boy was going into first grade that fall. To my left was Oliver Reed, who was downing malt whiskey as though it were lemonade, and already looked the worse for wear.

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

  The nun looked up and her face brightened with delighted recognition as she gave me a small, discreet wave. And for a moment, my heart stopped. Gone was the serene Madonna. This nun looked as though she had just been released from a concentration camp or was in the final stages of cancer. Her face had shrunk, so that she looked all eyes, which now seemed huge and protuberant. There were cavernous hollows beneath her sharply etched cheekbones. As she crossed the hall toward me I was appalled to see how skeletal her legs were. She was about five foot ten inches, and could not have weighed more than eighty pounds. But when she spoke, her voice was the same, and I had to face it: this was indeed Rebecca, but dreadfully, frighteningly altered. Quickly, I pulled my own face into what I hoped was an answering smile. “I didn’t recognize you for a moment in your new habit,” I murmured as we exchanged the nunlike kiss, pressing each other’s cheeks smartly, one after the other. I kept smiling. “It’s lovely to see you.” “And so good of you to come.” Together we crossed the station forecourt and got into the car. “This is a first,” I said, in what I hoped was a cheery tone of voice. “How long have you been allowed to drive? We could have done with this car in Oxford. Think of the lovely trips we could have taken!” “To the Cotswolds . . . Blenheim . . . How is it all? I do miss it.” Rebecca inched through the traffic and we started the forty-minute drive to the convent. “Oh, it’s all much the same,” I replied. “Though of course, it isn’t the same being outside.” “You sound as though you’ve just got out of prison!” We laughed uneasily, our eyes firmly fixed on the road ahead. “But it’s all so different inside these days,” she continued. “The car, the habit—those are the most obvious changes, and we have more baths, more talking. We can make our cells into bed-sitting-rooms and give each other cups of Nescafé. It’s probably a bit like St. Anne’s—lots of girlish laughter; intense discussions and pop psychology. We all sit around talking about how damaged we are.” There we were; we had arrived at the heart of what was uppermost in both our minds. There was silence, and then Rebecca said quietly: “Karen, thank you for not saying anything.” “About your weight.” It was not a question. I forced myself to turn and look directly at her. “When did it happen?” “Very quickly.” Rebecca sighed. “In London, while I was doing the certificate of education.

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

  I was surprised and moved that I—a woman and a kafir —should be invited to speak to Muslims on the occasion of their Prophet’s birthday, and wondered if Christians would be prepared to invite a Muslim to address their congregation on Christmas Day—the birthday of the prophet Jesus, who is, of course, greatly revered in Islam. These gatherings were not entirely an unmixed delight, however. I had no problem accommodating Muslim faith, but as an uptight Westerner who hates to be late, I sometimes had difficulty coming to terms with the relaxed Oriental attitude to punctuality. I once got up to speak at the time when my host had suggested that I order the taxi to take me home. And what was a wine-loving lady like me doing at a dinner where you could hope only for a stiff mineral water on the rocks? On one occasion, I sat on the high table next to an eminent Sufi sheikh who, to the dismay of his followers in the hall, refused to address a single word to me. Eventually I gave up and turned to my other neighbor, an ambassador from one of the Muslim countries, who was a delight. As the evening ground on, lecture following lecture, he leaned toward me confidentially. “Tell me, what is your advice?” he muttered. “Should I speak for a long, or short, time?” “Oh—as short as you possibly can!” I whispered back. “Look at them!” Hundreds of people on the floor below were gazing in our direction with the glazed, punch-drunk expression of those who have listened to too many speeches. The ambassador, who was to sum up the proceedings, was introduced with a long, elaborate encomium. He approached the mike, and glanced back at me. “Short!” I mouthed back. He certainly took me at my word. “Thank you very much and all the best!” he cried, and sat down, to the consternation of our hosts but to thunderous applause from the floor. On one such occasion I met Rabbi Dr. Jonathan Magonet, principal of the Leo Baeck College, the chief academy for Reform Judaism in Europe, which happened to be near my house in Finchley. He later asked me if I would like to teach Christianity to his fourth-year rabbinical students. I agreed, and found that I looked forward to the classes. It was fun to teach future rabbis about the Trinity and the Incarnation, and the students were wonderful: open and enthusiastic, welcoming me for the most part with genuine affection. And I noticed that during these classes, feeling loved and appreciated, I became a more lovable person and that my ideas flowed more freely. It was an important lesson. But these outside events were a rarity. After completing Muhammad, I had returned to my book about God. Most of my days were spent in a silence that also had a transforming effect.

• From Wild (2012)

  When I woke the next morning to the soft sound of Spanish Needle Creek, I dallied in my tent, watching the sky brighten through the mesh ceiling. I ate a granola bar and read my guidebook, bracing myself for the trail ahead. I rose finally and went to the creek and bathed in it one last time, savoring the luxury. It was only nine in the morning, but it was hot already, and I dreaded leaving the shady patch along the creek. As I soaked in the four-inch-deep water, I decided I wasn’t going to hike to Kennedy Meadows. Even that was too far at the rate I was going. My guidebook listed a road the trail would cross in twelve miles. On it, I’d do what I’d done before: walk down it until I found a ride. Only this time I wasn’t going to come back. As I prepared to depart, I heard a noise to the south. I turned and saw a bearded man wearing a backpack coming up the trail. His trekking pole made a sharp clicking sound against the packed dirt with each step. “Hello!” he called out to me with a smile. “You must be Cheryl Strayed.” “Yes,” I said in a faltering voice, every bit as stunned to see another human being as I was to hear him speak my name. “I saw you on the trail register,” he explained when he saw my expression. “I’ve been following your tracks for days.” I’d soon become used to people approaching me in the wilderness with such familiarity; the trail register served as a kind of social newsletter all summer long. “I’m Greg,” he said, shaking my hand before he gestured to my pack: “Are you actually carrying that thing?” We sat in the shade talking about where we were going and where we’d been. He was forty, an accountant from Tacoma, Washington, with a straitlaced, methodical accountant’s air. He’d been on the PCT since early May, having started where the trail begins at the Mexican border, and he planned to hike all the way to Canada. He was the first person I’d met who was doing essentially what I was doing, though he was hiking much farther. He didn’t need me to explain what I was doing out here. He understood.

• From 50 Shades Uncovered (2015)

  It's what sells. Nelson: It had already sold 200,000 copies in Kindle before it even went to paper. I mean, that's extraordinary. Most books don't sell 200,000 copies in all forms. Most books, you sell 100,000 copies of a book in its lifetime, that's a big deal. This book sold 600,000 copies in one week. That they were page-turners was more important than being particularly well-written. You know, they appealed to the audience. Gaukroger: I heard something about a Travelodge, uh... - O'Shea: Yeah. - ...that "Fifty Shades of Grey" was their most left-behind book and they collected over 7,000 copies of it just left in hotel rooms. This is still a book that you would leave behind on the bookshelf in the apartment that you rented for a week's holiday to have a bit of nooky with the husband you hate, and you'd leave it behind on the shelf 'cause you don't want to be seen with it. It's a love story, but it just happens to have something a bit different. Everyone's just so interested in romantic relationships. They love reading about them, they compare them to their own. Clearly what sets it apart is the-- (laughs) is the sex. Hodson: I think that is the licitness, the permission that women like. After all, how else to explain that this is the most successful book practically ever? (music playing) Narrator: The arrival of e-book technology allowed readers to download literature discreetly on their Kindles, launching a whole new world of sales. It was the first major book to have come out of the Kindle revolution. It came along at a really critical point in publishing. Suddenly technology was instrumental. Kite: Romantic fiction needs really voracious readers. They go through books super fast. When e-readers came around, romantic fiction readers were early adopters of those because it's a way to consume books really, really quickly and have them all piled on there for them ready to read whenever they wanted. Nelson: This was one of the first books that went from self-published on Kindle to mass-market print and Kindle. And at one point the Kindle version was outselling the print version four to one. One of the things about e-reading is that nobody can see what you're reading when you're reading it. Kite: If people wanted to read it in private, they had the opportunity to do so. It is the equivalent of the brown paper cover. Nelson: Plain brown wrapper, I call it. The Kindle is the plain brown wrapper. Narrator: "Fifty Shades of Grey" is a book that got everything right. Packaging, timing, controversy. Gaukroger: If you type "provocative fiction" into Google, you get "Fifty Shades of Grey" and "Mein Kampf," which is Hitler's autobiography. - Yeah. - Two top choices not to read in the park. White: It saved the High Street book stores, but it proved that there was still a huge appetite for physical books. ♪ ...want with the key...

• From Tipping the Velvet (1998)

  Why, she was practically drooling into your plate!’‘You don’t mean - you can’t mean - that she is just - like us?’She nodded: ‘Of course. And as for little Blake - why, I plucked her, poor child, from a reformatory cell. They had sent her there for corrupting a house-maid ...’She laughed again, while I marvelled. Then she leaned with her napkin to wipe a splash of gravy from my cheek.We had been served cutlets and sweetbreads, all very fine. I ate steadily, as I had eaten at breakfast. Diana, however, did more drinking than eating, and more smoking than drinking; and more watching, even, than smoking. After the exchange about the servants, we fell silent: I found that many of the things I said produced a kind of twitching at her lips and brow, as if my words - sensible enough to my ears - amused her; so at last I said no more, and neither did she, until the only sounds were the low hiss of the gas-jets, the steady ticking of the clock upon the mantel, and the clink of my knife and fork against my plate. I thought involuntarily of those merry dinners in the Green Street parlour, with Grace and Mrs Milne. I thought of the supper I might be having with Florence, in the Judd Street public. But then I finished my meal, and Diana threw me one of her pink cigarettes; and when I had grown giddy on that, she came to me and kissed me. And then I remembered that it was hardly for table-talk that I had been engaged.That night our love-making was more leisurely than it had been before - almost, indeed, tender. Yet she surprised me by seizing my shoulder as I lay on the edge of sleep - my body delightfully sated and my arms and legs entwined with hers - and rousing me to wakefulness. The day had been a day of lessons for me; now came the last of all.‘You may go, Nancy,’ she said, in exactly the tone I had heard her use on her maid and Mrs Hooper. ‘I wish to sleep alone tonight.’It was the first time she had spoken to me as a servant, and her words drove the lingering warmth of slumber quite from my limbs. Yet I took my leave, uncomplaining, and made my way to the pale room along the hall, where my own cold bed awaited. I liked her kisses, I liked her gifts still more; and if, to keep them, I must obey her - well, so be it. I was used to servicing gents in Soho at a pound a suck; obedience - to such a lady, and in such a setting - seemed at that moment a very trifling labour.

• From A Theology for the Social Gospel (1918)

  CHAPTER XIX THE SOCIALGOSPEL AND THEATONEMENT Tocountless Christian mindsthedoctrine ofthe atone- ment hasbeen the marrowof theology. We have re- served it forthecloseofourdiscussion. Doesthe social gospel contain anything which would verify,interpret, quicken, or expand thatdoctrine? And what formof the doctrine would best express and support thesocial gospel? The theological interpretation ofthe death of Christ has a long and varied history. Itwill aidusinestimat- ing our modernneeds if we pass it briefly in review. To the first disciples the death of theirLordwas an astonishing catastrophe, an unexpected, terrible, and ap- parently impossible outcome ofthework ofthe Messiah. For that very reason they cravedan explanation of the event which would interpret it as afundamental part of God's plan. Theirmethod was to prove that it hadbeen foretold throughout the Scripture and foreshadowed by typology. Paulwas thefirst to give the deathofour Lorda really central position in a theologicalsystem. But the early Church never appropriated or utilized more thana few leading ideasof Paul. The most popu- lar and elaborate theological explanation wasthe theory that Christ's death was a ransom paid to Satan. By the fallthe human racebecame subject to Satan, and he had 240 THE SOCIAL GOSPEL ANDTHE ATONEMENT 24! a rightful claim onit as its sovereign. God in mercy desired to emancipate humanity from the thraldom of Satan, but would notusehis superior power towrest from him what was his by legal right. Soheoffered Christto Satanasa ransomin exchange, and Satan gladly accepted. Butin killing thesinless Christ, Satan overstepped his legal claims and thereby forfeited all his rights. Or, according to other Fathers, Satan was at- tracted by thehuman beauty of Christ, but did not real- ize that thiswasthe incarnate Logos; the marriage of Mary to Joseph had concealed fromhim the mystery of the incarnation. Godknewbeforehand thateven if Satan took possession of the ransom, hecouldneverhold Christ. SoGodofferedSatana bait and tricked him. When Satan triedto imprison Christ in Hades, he burst the gates and cameforth with a throng of souls. This legal negotiation between two sovereigns reminds oneof modern diplomacy. Afew Fathers objected to theele- mentof trickery, but on the whole this wasthe orthodox theology till Anselm of Canterbury substituted something better forit in A. D. 1098. Anselm's doctrine was a real advance in ethical and religious insight. Its main points arethese: Our sinhas robbedGod of thehonourdue him; an equivalent mustbe offered him before he can forgive sin; we ourselves can notrender the"satisfaction " due to him; God alone can; thereforeGod had to become man ; being divine and sin- less, his death furnished an offsetand equivalent for the boundlesssins of mankind. This theory hasfurnished the ground-work forortho- dox theology eversince Anselm. Yet it raises tinanswer-

• From Tipping the Velvet (1998)

  I didn’t pause to gaze upon these objects then, however; indeed, I hardly registered them at all. For on the top of the jumble, on a square of velvet, lay the queerest, lewdest thing I ever saw. It was a kind of harness, made of leather: belt-like, and yet not quite a belt, for though it had one wide strap with buckles on it, two narrower, shorter bands were fastened to this and they, too, were buckled. For one alarming moment I thought it might be a horse’s bridle; then I saw what the straps and the buckles supported. It was a cylinder of leather, rather longer than the length of my hand and about as fat, in width, as I could grip. One end was rounded and slightly enlarged, the other fixed firm to a flattened base; to this, by hoops of brass, the belt and the narrower bands were all also fastened.It was, in short, a dildo. I had never seen one before; I did not, at that time, know that such things existed and had names.For all I knew of it, this might be an original, that the lady had had fashioned to a pattern of her own.Perhaps Eve thought the same, when she saw her first apple. Even so, it didn’t stop her knowing what the apple was for...But in case I still wondered, the lady now spoke. ‘Put it on,’ she called - she must have caught the opening of the trunk - ‘put it on, and come to me.’I struggled for a moment or two over the placing of the straps, and the tightening of the buckles. The brass bit into the white flesh of my hips, but the leather was wonderfully supple and warm. I glanced again towards the looking-glass. The base of the phallus was a darker wedge upon my own triangular shield of hair, and its lowest tip nudged me in a most insinuating way. From this base the dildo itself obscenely sprang - not straight out, but at a cunning angle, so that when I looked down at it I saw first its bulbous head, gleaming in the red glow of the fire and split by a near-invisible seam of tiny, ivory stitches.When I took a step, the head gave a nod.‘Come here,’ said the lady when she saw me in the doorway ; and as I walked to her, the dildo bobbed still harder.