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 Introduction to the Hebrew Bible and Deutero-Canonical Books (2018)

  THE ARK NARRATIVE (4:1B—7:1) The story of Samuel is interrupted in 4:1b—7:1 by an episode in which he plays no part. This episode is generally recognized as an independent source document incorporated by the Deuteronomists. The theme of the story is the capture of the ark of the covenant by the Philistines. The ark is variously called the ark of God, the ark of YHWH, the ark of the covenant, or the ark of testimony. The association of the ark with the covenant is typical of the Deuteronomists; the Priestly writers prefer “the ark of the testimony.” In Deut 10:1-5 Moses is told to make an ark of wood as a receptacle for the stone tablets of the covenant. The story in 1 Samuel 4–6, however, makes clear that it is no mere box. It is the symbol of the presence of the Lord. It is carried into battle to offset the superior force of the Philistines, in the belief that YHWH is thereby brought into the battle. (Compare the chant uttered when the ark set out, according to Num 10:35: “Arise, O L ORD , let your enemies be scattered.”) The ark was also associated with the divine throne as the footstool of the Deity. The drama of the story in 1 Samuel 4–6 comes from the fact that YHWH’s enemies are not scattered before the ark. The Philistines overcome their initial panic and capture the ark. The capture of a people’s god or gods was not unusual in the ancient Near East. When one people captured the city of another, they typically carried off the gods, represented by statues, as booty. Even the god of Babylon, Marduk, was carried off in this manner. This was meant to show the superior power of the victor’s gods. The defeated people, however, explained things differently. Their gods were supposed to have let themselves be carried off because of anger with their own people. Nonetheless, the capture of the ark in battle was evidently a great shock to the Israelites. The shock led directly to the death of Eli, and his daughter-in-law named her son Ichabod (“no glory”), for “the glory departed from Israel” when the ark was captured. The story of the ark, however, has a positive ending for the Israelites. YHWH asserts his power by mysteriously destroying the statue of the Philistine god

• From Introduction to the Hebrew Bible and Deutero-Canonical Books (2018)

  Isaiah, we shall discuss Isaiah’s response in that context, in light of Isaiah’s whole career. For the present, it is sufficient to note that Isaiah tells the king not to fear and predicts that God will deliver Jerusalem for the sake of his servant David. It should be noted, however, that the prophet also says that the Judeans would have to eat what grows of itself for a year, and then what grows from that. Only in the third year would they be able to sow and reap in a normal manner. The manner of the deliverance is miraculous. The angel of the Lord struck down 185,000 in the camp of the Assyrians. Sennacherib had no choice but to return home. What are we to make of this as a historical report? It is certainly surprising that Sennacherib did not destroy Jerusalem. Various explanations are possible. An epidemic in the Assyrian army might have given rise to the tradition that the angel of the Lord had intervened. There is a report in Herodotus (2.141) that the Assyrian army was ravaged by a plague of mice at the border of Egypt, but Herodotus’s report is also quite fantastic and does not inspire much confidence. According to 2 Kgs 19:9, Sennacherib heard that “King Tirhakah of Ethiopia” had set out to fight against him. (Tirhakah became pharaoh of Egypt only c. 690 B.C.E., but he had been a general in the Egyptian army long before that.) Sennacherib claimed victory in the battle ( ANET, 287), but the victory may have been less decisive than he claimed. Another possibility is suggested by the words of Isaiah in 2 Kgs 19:7: “I will put a spirit in him so that he shall hear a rumor and return to his own land.” No doubt, Sennacherib could have conquered Jerusalem, but it would have taken time. He may have had pressing affairs back home. Timely submission by Hezekiah may have saved the city and his own life. The account in 2 Kings, however, presents us with two quite different outcomes of the episode. In the first, Hezekiah had to scrape the gold off the temple to pay off the Assyrians. In the second, the Assyrian army was devastated and went home in defeat. Some scholars have argued that Sennacherib invaded Judah twice. The mention of Tirhakah as king, which he became only about 690 B.C.E., lends a little support to this view, but not enough. There is no other archaeological or historical evidence for a second campaign. Thus it is most

• From Introduction to the Hebrew Bible and Deutero-Canonical Books (2018)

  has to do is fear God and keep his commandments. This is the only time that the commandments are mentioned in Qoheleth. The epilogue practically tells the reader not to pay too much attention to the book. One does not need wisdom; it is sufficient to keep the commandments. We find a somewhat similar attitude later in the book of Baruch (see chapter 28 below). Qoheleth, in contrast, never suggested that “the whole duty of everyone” could be identified so simply. It is not surprising, however, that some scribes found Qoheleth troubling and tried to limit its influence. The greater surprise is surely that it was included in the canon of Scripture at all. Its inclusion may have been due to its supposed Solomonic authorship, but it also testifies to the critical spirit that pervades so much of the Hebrew Scriptures. FOR FURTHER READING Job Commentaries S. E. Balentine, Job (Macon, GA: Smyth & Helwys, 2006). Well-illustrated theological commentary. N. C. Habel, The Book of Job (OTL; Philadelphia: Westminster, 1985). Detailed commentary. Distinctive for defending the authenticity of the Elihu speeches. J. G. Janzen, Job (Interpretation; Atlanta: John Knox, 1985). Theological consideration of existential questions raised by Job. C. A. Newsom, “The Book of Job,” NIB 4:319–637. Elegant, literate commentary with theological reflections. M. H. Pope, Job (AB 15; New York: Doubleday, 1979). Classic philological commentary, rich in parallels with ancient Near Eastern literature. C.-L. Seow, Job 1–21. Interpretation and Commentary (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2013). Literary-theological commentary with attention to reception history. Studies J. L. Crenshaw, “Job, Book of,” ABD 3:858–68. Excellent overview of the critical issues. ————, Reading Job (Macon, GA: Smyth & Helwys, 2011). Literary and theological commentary. K. J. Dell, The Book of Job as Sceptical Literature (BZAW 197; Berlin: de Gruyter, 1991). Categorizes Job as different from Proverbs/Wisdom. G. Gutiérrez, On Job: God-Talk and the Suffering of the Innocent (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 1987). Interpretation of Job in light of liberation theology. Avi Hurvitz, “The Date of the Prose Tale of Job Linguistically Reconsidered,” HTR 67 (1974): 17–34. Argument for the date of the prologue on the basis of language. C. A. Newsom, The Book of Job: A Contest of Moral Imaginations (New York: Oxford University Press, 2003). Sophisticated literary and moral analysis. L. G. Perdue, Wisdom in Revolt: Metaphorical Theology in the Book of Job (JSOTSup 112; Sheffield: JSOT Press, 1991). Good discussion of the critical issues. S. Terrien, The Iconography of Job through the Centuries (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1996). Superb illustrated volume. J. W. Whedbee, The Bible and the Comic Vision (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2002), 221–62. Job as comedy.

• From Little Sister: A Memoir (2019)

  This confluence of events led Feeney’s Jesuit superior to address the situation by ordering him to leave his post as chaplain at the Center and to report to Holy Cross College (forty-five miles away in the diocese of Worcester, Massachusetts) as an English teacher for the fall semester in 1948. Feeney refused. In December of that year, the Jesuit provincial (Feeney’s superior) informed him in a letter that as of the year-end, he would no longer be allowed to exercise his priestly duties in the Boston diocese. The Center was now under siege. Three weeks later, on January 19, 1949, Feeney, Catherine Clarke, and fifty-one followers—students and married couples, including my parents, Jim and Betsy Walsh—signed a document establishing themselves as a religious order, with Father Leonard Feeney, S.J., as their spiritual director. They signed under a statement that read: “We, the undersigned, having banded together as a religious order, dedicated to the glory of God and the protection of the doctrines of the Holy Catholic Apostolic Roman Church, have made our vows under the title of The Slaves of the Immaculate Heart of Mary.” Each one of them took simple vows as religious members, promising “to make the first interest of my life the doctrinal crusade of Saint Benedict Center….” In other words, they were dedicating their lives to the doctrine of “No Salvation Outside the Catholic Church.” There was an irony in that declaration, because they were heading down a path that would end in Feeney’s excommunication. In addition, each of the signors pledged blind allegiance to Feeney, promising “obedience to Father [Leonard Feeney] and to whomever he may delegate.” The members of the newly formed religious community continued to work in their professions and support their families. My father, together with Fakhri Maluf and Charlie Ewaskio, carried on as teachers at Boston College, but less than three months later, each of them received a letter from the president of the college requesting their presence in his office. In the verbal confrontation that ensued, the “three professors” (as they were referred to by the members of the Center) maintained their commitment to teaching strict orthodox Catholic doctrine. The meeting ended in their dismissal. The date was April 13, 1949, the Wednesday before Easter Sunday. The headlines in all the Boston newspapers the following morning screamed “B.C. Teachers Fired after Probe,” and the story covered the front pages of the papers. The community, consisting of nearly sixty members, was in shock. As they gathered together in the cavernous main room of the Center on that day in 1949, I was among them, just eight months old. The two photos on the opposite page display the joviality of the Center shortly before the troubles unfolded. Four days later, on Easter Sunday, the professors appealed by cablegram to the Vatican, and the following day they met in person with Archbishop Cushing. But the most shocking news was yet to come.

• From Little Sister: A Memoir (2019)

  The momentary pause before she continued heightened my tension. I held my breath, not knowing what to expect in this “little conversation.” “You know, dear, religious life is not for everyone,” she began, “and we have concluded that you do not have a vocation to be a nun. There’s nothing to be ashamed of, because not everyone receives a higher calling from God. We will always love you and support you, and you will forever be my dearest godchild, whom I remember each day in my prayers.” I was stunned, trying to absorb Sister Catherine’s words, which came to me almost like a foreign language because of their stark contrast to what she and Father (that was how everyone at the Center addressed Leonard Feeney) had repeated verbatim for as long as I could remember: “You thirty-nine children are among the chosen few who have been dedicated to God from your infancy. Each of you has received a special blessing and calling to follow His will in religious life.” All my life, I’d been raised to believe that my destiny was not mine to determine. Despite my intense curiosity about all things worldly, I was well aware that I would have to forgo a life in the real world. I was preordained to live within the confines of this community. Having taken the first step toward the life of a nun—postulancy—at age sixteen, now a year later, I was nearing the day when I would enter the novitiate, one rung closer to taking final vows, which would signify my lifelong marriage to Christ and no other. Suddenly, in a flash, Sister Catherine was reversing the course of my young life. She continued to speak as I tried to grapple with the full meaning of her enigmatic message. “Many girls out in the world get married,” she went on, her tone of voice uncharacteristically dulcet, her manner as though she were educating me on a subject I knew nothing about, which was mainly true. I had not borne witness to marriages, because marriages had been banished in the community, including that of my parents. “But,” she said, and there was a long pause before the sweet tone of her voice took on a more somber timbre, “you should know, dear, that life as a wife isn’t as wonderful as it might seem in books. Each day before your husband comes home from work at five o’clock, you will have to stop whatever you’re doing and make yourself look pretty for him by putting on lipstick and curling your hair.” I shifted my glance from Sister Catherine to my mother in a futile attempt to glean what this monologue meant, but she stood silent, a passive participant in this meeting. I could only listen in disbelief as Sister Catherine described as mine the very life she had been decrying for years. Is she really telling me I can have a husband? And lipstick? And curl my hair?

• From Little Sister: A Memoir (2019)

  Little did any of us anticipate the turn of events that was about to unfold. 58 Cataclysm 1968 M y father broke the news to me one Sunday evening at the apartment in Cambridge. We were sitting together on the couch watching news that was consumed with the upcoming funeral arrangements for Martin Luther King, Jr. who’d been assassinated three days earlier. Out of almost nowhere, he said in a soft and solemn voice, “Sister Catherine is dying.” “Dying” was the word he used—not “sick,” not “ill.” He was somber, as though devastated by the realization that Sister Catherine was soon to leave this world. “Is it cancer?” I asked, aware that she’d been rumored to be ill for some time and that she’d been going for treatments that no one discussed. “Yes,” he said, “Hodgkin’s lymphoma. She doesn’t have long now.” My father’s words jolted me—not out of any feeling of empathy toward Sister Catherine, but because it shattered my image of her invincibility. It brought back to my mind the words I had silently said to myself hundreds of times at the Center in my moments of despair. Some day she will die, and then I’ll be free. But I was already free—she had seen to that. Once the news settled in, I saw a certain poetic justice in Sister Catherine’s impending demise at the relatively young age of sixty-seven. For twenty years, she had been center of the universe within the community, controlling the lives of nearly one hundred people. But the tide had now turned, and she was about to lose her grip on that control. Mortality was trouncing indomitability. Soon she’d be ashes like all of humanity that preceded her. During her final weeks, my father would shake his head and say woefully, “What will we do without her?” His words surprised me. Despite the evident pleasure he took in visiting me on Sundays, he was still tethered to the Center—body and soul. It was early in May, not quite two years from the day I had been forced to leave the Center, when my father called to tell me, in a reverent tone of voice, that Sister Catherine had died. As I sat at the reception desk, an array of emotions reverberated through my mind and my heart, running the gamut from elation to relief and including even a sense of emptiness. I had never known Sister Catherine not to exist. Now she was gone, her power terminated, her authority forever silenced. I thought of the Community, thrust into mourning, as they made plans for the funeral of their foundress, their once indomitable leader. There was no doubt in my mind that I would attend Sister Catherine’s wake, as well as the Requiem mass and burial in the cemetery on the property at Still River. I saw the occasion as an opportunity to visit my family, my whole Center family, whom I missed and still considered dear to me.

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

  Reading Biblical Literature: Genesis to Revelation206 assumes the prisoners have escaped and he will be held accountable. But Paul and the others have dutifully remained in prison. The jailer is so impressed that he, too, becomes a believer and is baptized, along with his household. ‹ In the morning, the city magistrates agree to let Paul and Silas go free, but now Paul turns the tables on them. He announces that he is a Roman citizen, which means that his punishment without a proper trial was illegal. Here, his Roman citizenship is his point of shared experience with his listeners. Suggested Reading Parsons, Acts. Westerholm, ed., The Blackwell Companion to Paul. Questions to Consider 1. Acts portrays Paul as someone connected to Jewish, Greek, and Roman cultures. How does the narrative show him drawing on each of those aspects of his identity? 2. Acts says that a transformative moment for Paul was his experience of the risen Jesus on the road to Damascus. What changed through that experience? Are there characteristics of Paul that seem to have remained the same?

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

  Reading Biblical Literature: Genesis to Revelation 18 ●Finally, to have land and many descendants would be considered a blessing in Abraham’s culture, but the promise is that he will also be a blessing to all the families of the earth. How that could happen through an obscure traveling herder is anything but clear. ●The surprise is that Abraham and Sarah set out. They take the risk and go to see what the future might hold. ‹A gentle sense of irony enters the story here through a series of missteps on the part of Abraham. He seems to overshoot the land where God wants him to live. In the span of just a few verses, he wanders into and out of the Promised Land, then into a series of troubles in Egypt. ●In an attempt to protect himself and Sarah from the Egyptians, he tells her to say that she is his sister rather than his wife. But as soon as the Egyptians arrive, they take Sarah into the king’s royal harem. ●The Egyptians treat Abraham well, but his scheme to protect himself has put Sarah at risk. And his attempt to secure his own future actually threatens the future, because without Sarah, the promise of descendants will not be realized. ●To get things back on track, God afflicts the king’s household with plagues, which the king realizes were somehow triggered by Sarah. When he learns that Sarah is Abraham’s wife, he sends her back to her husband, then sends them both out of Egypt. After this comedy of errors, they make their way back to the Promised Land. ●This humor in the story is part of the characterization of Abraham. So often, he is remembered as an exemplar of faith, and it’s clear that his willingness to step into an unknown future is a major part of the story. But at the same time, Abraham is a person who can seem woefully shortsighted. His actions create as many problems as they solve. This humorous side makes Abraham all the more engaging. The Promise and Conflict ‹In chapter 15, an episode takes place that heightens the tension between faith in an expansive future and realism about limits in the present. By this point in the narrative, time has passed, and Abraham still has no children of his own. God might have called him with the promise of becoming a great nation, but so far, God has not followed through.

• From The Bible: A Biography (2007)

  The Jesus movement was becoming controversial even before the disaster of 70.48 Christians, like all the other Jewish groups, were shocked to the core when they saw Herod’s magnificent shrine reduced to a pile of burnt, stinking masonry. They may have dreamed of replacing Herod’s temple but nobody had envisaged life without a temple at all. But the Christians also saw its destruction as an apokalypsis, a ‘revelation’ or ‘unveiling’ of a reality that had been there all along but had not been seen clearly before – namely that Judaism was finished. The temple ruins symbolized its tragic demise and were a sign that the end was approaching. God would now pull down the rest of the defunct world order and establish the kingdom. The destruction of the first temple in 586 BCE had inspired an astonishing burst of creativity among the exiles in Babylon. The destruction of the second temple spurred a similar literary effort among the Christians. By the middle of the second century, nearly all the twenty-seven books of the New Testament had been completed. Communities were already quoting Paul’s letters as though they were scripture,49 and readings from one of the biographies of Jesus that were in circulation had become customary during Sunday worship. The gospels attributed to Matthew, Mark, Luke and John would eventually be selected for the canon, but there were many others. The Gospel of Thomas (c. 150) was a collection of secret sayings of Jesus that imparted a redemptive ‘knowledge’ (gnosis). There were gospels, now lost, of the Ebionites, Nazarenes and Hebrews, that catered to Jewish-Christian congregations. There were many ‘gnostic’ gospels representing a form of Christianity that emphasized gnosis and distinguished a wholly spiritual God (who had sent Jesus as his envoy) from the demiourgos, who had created the corrupt material world.50 Other writings did not survive: a gospel known to scholars as Q, because it was a source (German: quelle) for Matthew and Luke; various anthologies of Jesus’s teachings; and an account of his trial, torture and death.

• From The Bible: A Biography (2007)

  44 In an extraordinary passage, the author saw the entire history of Israel as exemplifying the virtue of pistis, trust in ‘realities that at present remain unseen’. 45 Abel, Enoch, Noah, Abraham, Moses, Gideon, Barak, Samson, Jephthah, David, Samuel and the prophets had all exhibited this ‘faith’: that had been their greatest, indeed their sole achievement. 46 But, the author concluded, ‘they did not receive what was promised, since God made provision for us to have something better, and they were not to reach perfection except with us .’ 47 In this exegetical tour de force, the whole of Israelite history had been redefined, but in the process the old stories, which had been about far more than pistis, lost much of their rich complexity. Torah, temple and cult simply pointed to a future reality because God had always had something better in mind. Paul and the author of Hebrews showed future generations of Christians how to interpret the Hebrew Bible and make it their own. The other New Testament writers would develop this pesher and make it very difficult for Christians to see Jewish scripture as anything more than a prelude to Christianity. The Jesus movement was becoming controversial even before the disaster of 70. 48 Christians, like all the other Jewish groups, were shocked to the core when they saw Herod’s magnificent shrine reduced to a pile of burnt, stinking masonry. They may have dreamed of replacing Herod’s temple but nobody had envisaged life without a temple at all. But the Christians also saw its destruction as an apokalypsis, a ‘revelation’ or ‘unveiling’ of a reality that had been there all along but had not been seen clearly before – namely that Judaism was finished. The temple ruins symbolized its tragic demise and were a sign that the end was approaching. God would now pull down the rest of the defunct world order and establish the kingdom. The destruction of the first temple in 586 BCE had inspired an astonishing burst of creativity among the exiles in Babylon. The destruction of the second temple spurred a similar literary effort among the Christians. By the middle of the second century, nearly all the twenty-seven books of the New Testament had been completed. Communities were already quoting Paul’s letters as though they were scripture, 49 and readings from one of the biographies of Jesus that were in circulation had become customary during Sunday worship. The gospels attributed to Matthew, Mark, Luke and John would eventually be selected for the canon, but there were many others. The Gospel of Thomas ( c. 150) was a collection of secret sayings of Jesus that imparted a redemptive ‘knowledge’ ( gnosis ).

• From The Bible: A Biography (2007)

  By this time, Assyria was in decline and Egypt in the ascendancy. In 656 the Pharoah forced Assyrian troops to withdraw from the Levant and the Judahites watched with astonishment, as the Assyrians vacated the territories of the former kingdom of Israel. While the great powers fought for supremacy, Judah was left to its own devices. There was a surge of national feeling and in 622 Josiah began to repair Solomon’s temple, the symbolic memorial of Judah’s golden age. During the construction, the high priest Hilkiah made a momentous discovery and hurried with the news to Shaphan, the royal scribe. He had found the ‘scroll of the law’ (sefer torah), which Yahweh had given to Moses on Mount Sinai.36 In the older stories, there was no mention of Yahweh’s teaching (torah) being committed to writing. In the JE accounts, Moses had passed on Yahweh’s directions by word of mouth and the people had responded orally.37 The seventh-century reformers, however, added verses to the JE saga which explained that Moses ‘put all the commands of Yahweh into writing’ and read the sefer torah to the people.38 Hilkiah and Shaphan claimed that this scroll had been lost and its teachings never implemented, but its providential discovery meant that Judah could make a new start. Hilkiah’s document probably contained an early version of the book of Deuteronomy, which described Moses delivering a ‘second law’ (Greek: deuteronomion) shortly before his death. But instead of being an ancient work, Deuteronomy was an entirely new scripture. It was not unusual for reformers to attribute new ideas to a great figure of the past. The Deuteronomists believed that they were speaking for Moses at this time of transition. In other words, this was what Moses would say to Josiah if he were delivering a ‘second law’ today. Instead of simply recording the status quo, for the first time an Israelite text was calling for radical change. After the scroll had been read aloud to him, Josiah tore his garments in distress and immediately inaugurated a programme that followed Yahweh’s new torah to the letter. He burned down Manasseh’s abominations in the temple and, because the Judahites had always regarded the royal shrines of the northern kingdom as illegitimate, demolished the temples of Bethel and Samaria, killed the priests in the rural sanctuaries and contaminated their altars.39

• From Under the Banner of Heaven (2003)

  In early February 2003 they held a press conference during which they released the best police sketch to the public. Soon thereafter a woman who saw the composite drawing called to report that it bore a resemblance to her brother, a man of strong religious views named Brian David Mitchell who refered to himself as Immanuel. She sent in a photo of Mitchell, which on February 15 was broadcast on the television show America’s Most Wanted, along with photos and videotape of Elizabeth and footage of Ed Smart pleading with viewers to help find his daughter. On March 12, 2003, an alert motorist who had watched the America’s Most Wanted segment spotted someone who resembled Mitchell in the suburb of Sandy, walking down State Street, a busy, six-lane thoroughfare that is one of the main north-south arterials in Salt Lake County. The Mitchell look-alike was dressed in seedy robes and sandals and was accompanied by a middle-aged woman and a teenage girl, who were similarly attired. The motorist dialed 911. A pair of police officers, Karen Jones and Troy Rasmussen, pulled up in a squad car and stopped the oddly dressed trio. The man, who had a bushy salt-and-pepper beard and wore flowers in his unkempt hair, gave his name as Peter Marshall and insisted on speaking for the two females, who were wearing sunglasses and cheap gray wigs in an apparent attempt to disguise their identities. When questioned directly, the teenager denied that she was Elizabeth Smart, adamantly maintaining that her name was Augustine Marshall. She said she was eighteen years old and that the man with the beard was her father. She seemed extremely reluctant to say or do anything without his consent. Officer Jones took the girl aside and questioned her further, but “Augustine” continued to be evasive and uncooperative. When Officer Rasmussen asked her why she was wearing a wig, “she became angry,” he told NBC News. “Told me that was personal, none of my business.” The cops nevertheless persisted in asking if she was Elizabeth Smart, and after forty-five minutes of grilling the teen finally relented. On the brink of tears, she conceded her true identity with a biblical utterance: “Thou sayest”—Jesus’s reply to Pilate when asked if he was king of the Jews. Even after she had revealed that she was indeed Elizabeth and was sitting in the back of the squad car on her way to be reunited with her father at the police station, she continued to express concern for the well-being of Mitchell and Barzee. “The first question out of her mouth,” said Officer Jones, “was ‘What’s gonna happen to them? Are they going to be OK?’ Didn’t want them in trouble, didn’t want them to be hurt. . . .

• From The Well of Loneliness (1928)

  Valérie came forward with a smile of welcome. She was not beautiful nor was she imposing, but her limbs were very perfectly proportioned, which gave her a fictitious look of tallness. She moved well, with the quiet and unconscious grace that sprang from those perfect proportions. Her face was humorous, placid and worldly; her eyes very kind, very blue, very lustrous. She was dressed all in white, and a large white fox skin was clasped round her slender and shapely shoulders. For the rest she had masses of thick fair hair, which was busily ridding itself of its hairpins; one could see at a glance that it hated restraint, like the flat it was in rather splendid disorder. She said: ‘I’m so delighted to meet you at last, Miss Gordon, do come and sit down. And please smoke if you want to,’ she added quickly, glancing at Stephen’s tell-tale fingers. Brockett said: ‘Positively, this is too splendid! I feel that you’re going to be wonderful friends.’ Stephen thought: ‘So this is Valérie Seymour.’ No sooner were they seated than Brockett began to ply their hostess with personal questions. The mood that had incubated in the motor was now becoming extremely aggressive, so that he fidgeted about on his chair, making his little inadequate gestures. ‘Darling, you’re looking perfectly lovely! But do tell me, what have you done with Polinska? Have you drowned her in the blue grotto at Capri? I hope so, my dear, she was such a bore and so dirty! Do tell me about Polinska. How did she behave when you got her to Capri? Did she bite anybody before you drowned her? I always felt frightened; I loathe being bitten!’ Valérie frowned: ‘I believe she’s quite well.’ ‘Then you have drowned her, darling!’ shrilled Brockett. And now he was launched on a torrent of gossip about people of whom Stephen had never even heard: ‘Pat’s been deserted—have you heard that, darling? Do you think she’ll take the veil or cocaine or something? One never quite knows what may happen next with such an emotional temperament, does one? Arabella’s skipped off to the Lido with Jane Grigg. The Grigg’s just come into pots and pots of money, so I hope they’ll be deliriously happy and silly while it lasts—I mean the money. . . . Oh, and have you heard about Rachel Morris? They say. . . .’ He flowed on and on like a brook in spring flood, while Valérie yawned and looked bored, making monosyllabic answers. And Stephen as she sat there and smoked in silence, thought grimly: ‘This is all being said because of me. Brockett wants to let me see that he knows what I am, and he wants to let Valérie Seymour know too—I suppose this is making me welcome.’ She hardly knew whether to feel outraged or relieved that here, at least, was no need for pretences.

• From The Pisces (2018)

  The flippers too really looked like fish fins: thick by where I guessed his ankles would be and then fading to a translucency at the bottom. Sheer black. They reminded me of a black bubble-eye fish I had at thirteen who died while my father and I were traveling to visit Annika at college. When we returned home, the fish was floating on her side at the top of the water, the tank stinking. I remember feeling embarrassed and not wanting to show my father she had died. I wasn’t afraid he would blame me for her death, but something about her curvy little body, just floating there, made me feel exposed. It was as though I were lying at the top of the tank, naked and smelling, too intimate an experience to share with my father. I remembered how her tail had already begun disintegrating, and a tiny piece of it had detached and was floating next to her. This is what his flippers looked like. Then something turned in my eye, or the eye of my mind, like when you look at one of those psychedelic posters that can be seen two ways. For a while you look at something one way, but then, all of a sudden, the image flips. Once you see the second way you can’t go back to the first. What I saw was that this was no wet suit at all, but somehow a massive, slimy, heavy tail. It was literally connected to his body. Maybe it was his body? Underneath the cloth were what I assumed might be genitals, then, if he had them? And just below that was an area where the tail, or whatever this was, met his skin. It did not meet in a straight line like the top of a pair of pants, but blended gradually. First there was an area that was mostly skin with a peppering of black scales, like one or multiple birthmarks. From there the scales became more raised, almost like moles or lesions. They began to cluster closer together until they became a solid mass, like rubber or the thick skin of a fish. It looked like time happening, like a wave gradually rolling up on the sand. It was as though whatever this was had happened over time, like some kind of infection—gradually taking over his body. Except this wasn’t an infection. It was like he was part fish. “Are you grossed out?” he asked. “No,” I said. What the fuck was this? Was Theo a mermaid? “Freaked out?” “No. Just shocked and wondering if I’m crazy. How did this happen?” “I was born this way,” he said. “I am what you are thinking I am. Sort of.” “What do you think I think you are?” “A merman.” “Yeah,” I said, rubbing my eyes. “I was thinking that.” “I don’t call myself that. None of us think we are that. But to humans we are that.”

• From Available: The unfiltered and empowering new memoir for women about sex, dating and divorce after 40 (2021)

  Michael took a deep breath and sighed angrily as he threw the blankets off and followed me out of the room so we wouldn’t disturb Georgia. We went downstairs to our cozy family room, a name that seemed like a cruel joke to me now. “It’s not what you think. You’re acting crazy,” he said, shaking his head in disgust. “Michael, the worst thing you can do is lie to me. If you have any love left for me, you’ll tell me the truth.” “There’s nothing to tell. You’re being ridiculous. It was a fantasy. We didn’t act on it,” he said. “I don’t believe you. I’m begging you to tell me the truth.” “You don’t understand what you read, it was out of context,” he said. “I’m telling you the truth.” “Can you at least admit that you crossed a line in your friendship with her? That whether or not you physically crossed a line, you crossed a line emotionally?” “OK, I crossed a line emotionally. But that’s it.” “How many others have there been?” I asked, my mind lurching back through time, remembering countless business trips and late dinners and missed phone calls. “None!” he insisted indignantly. “I can’t do this with you,” I said. “I know what I read. Until you’re ready to come clean, I will not talk to you. If you won’t respect me by telling me the truth, I’ll have enough respect for myself not to listen to your lies.” With that, I walked back upstairs, my alarm growing with each step that I took without him trying to stop me or offer reasonable explanations. What surreal nightmare had I become ensnared in? Could I go to bed now and pretend this didn’t happen in the morning? I walked straight into our bathroom, which I locked behind me as I went through my night-time washing rituals. My life was exploding in pieces around me, but I was damned if I wasn’t going to floss and brush my teeth. By the time I came out, Michael was back on his side of the bed and I nudged Georgia into the middle so I could climb into my side. I lay there for what felt like hours, my heart pounding and my mind racing. This is our bed , I thought, and this is our child between us. This is our home, this is my husband, our son is asleep upstairs . What, really, had changed? All the physical pieces of our life were exactly the same, but now I was a foreigner in it. When I could no longer bear to hear him breathing across the bed from me, I tucked the blankets carefully around Georgia and slipped across the hall to her room, where I curled up in her canopy bed, her soft yellow blanket tucked under my chin. At the break of dawn, Michael came into the room. “Can I lie with you?” he asked.

• From Available: The unfiltered and empowering new memoir for women about sex, dating and divorce after 40 (2021)

  The last thing I expected tonight when I walked into my usual watering hole was to find a beautiful woman in a slinky dress sitting alone.” I’m surprised to hear that he noticed me as I have felt invisible both times I have gone out to bars on my own. I assumed both when #1 and #3 started talking to me, they did so because they stumbled upon me, not because they actively noticed me. In my mind, when I’m alone in public, I am not much more than an apparition. It’s not that I don’t think I’m attractive – I think I’m pretty but not conventionally beautiful, that I have a nice figure but not one that commands attention. I’m petite with a voluminous head of curly hair, neither sleek nor statuesque. When I look at photos of myself, I see a genuine smile, complete with dimples, but one that makes my eyes disappear. So not until now has it occurred to me that I might be attractive according to the literal definition of the word – not necessarily beautiful, but appealing to people – and that that appeal is not because of my hair color or figure or blue eyes but from something as subtle as the way I sit or smile. Or maybe it comes from something I have only just learned about myself: I hold my head high. I’m proud to be myself, to be recovering from this broken mess of a year, to be present and alive when the alternative of closing into myself would have been so much easier and more comfortable. I’m bruised but not shattered as I’ve been regarding myself, my head is most certainly not hanging low, and if I’m not actually a shadow of my former self, can it be that I’m stronger and more capable than I ever knew? #3 is sweet, gentle and, as he has pointed out, nervous. He puts on a brave face and the condom he’s opened and when I orgasm and he doesn’t, he is embarrassed and apologetic. “Please don’t worry,” I say. “I basically forced myself on you, so it’s only fair you weren’t ready for me.” I can’t help noting that this is the second time this has happened, so my track record is starting to take on a troubling pattern: I come, but the men can’t. Is it the condoms? Am I doing something wrong? Is it possible I’ve had it all wrong, thinking men could come on a dime but women had to really work for it? Should I feel the guilt that rises up in me that I am leaving these experiences sexually satisfied but the men are not? “Can I see you again?” he asks. “I need to get my head in the right place. It’ll be better next time, I assure you. I really liked spending time with you.” I nod my head and smile.

• From The Pisces (2018)

  It was as though I were lying at the top of the tank, naked and smelling, too intimate an experience to share with my father. I remembered how her tail had already begun disintegrating, and a tiny piece of it had detached and was floating next to her. This is what his flippers looked like. Then something turned in my eye, or the eye of my mind, like when you look at one of those psychedelic posters that can be seen two ways. For a while you look at something one way, but then, all of a sudden, the image flips. Once you see the second way you can’t go back to the first. What I saw was that this was no wet suit at all, but somehow a massive, slimy, heavy tail. It was literally connected to his body. Maybe it was his body? Underneath the cloth were what I assumed might be genitals, then, if he had them? And just below that was an area where the tail, or whatever this was, met his skin. It did not meet in a straight line like the top of a pair of pants, but blended gradually. First there was an area that was mostly skin with a peppering of black scales, like one or multiple birthmarks. From there the scales became more raised, almost like moles or lesions. They began to cluster closer together until they became a solid mass, like rubber or the thick skin of a fish. It looked like time happening, like a wave gradually rolling up on the sand. It was as though whatever this was had happened over time, like some kind of infection—gradually taking over his body. Except this wasn’t an infection. It was like he was part fish. “Are you grossed out?” he asked. “No,” I said. What the fuck was this? Was Theo a mermaid? “Freaked out?” “No. Just shocked and wondering if I’m crazy. How did this happen?” “I was born this way,” he said. “I am what you are thinking I am. Sort of.” “What do you think I think you are?” “A merman.” “Yeah,” I said, rubbing my eyes. “I was thinking that.” “I don’t call myself that. None of us think we are that. But to humans we are that.” “Holy shit,” I said. “This is fucking crazy. So, like, there actually are mer-people? And Sirens?” “Sort of. But not the way you conceive of us. Well, we are sort of the way you conceive of us. I mean, obviously I’m very sexy.” He laughed. “You are!” I said. “Ha, not really. But I mean, we aren’t like the Siren myths and stuff. It’s not like we are trying to kill humans or keep them imprisoned on an island. We aren’t like the way they are in The Odyssey . Homer slandered us. But we do live a long, long time. Youthfully. Hundreds of years.

• From The Pisces (2018)

  I wondered how long Jamie had pined for Megan the scientist. Probably for a long time. Maybe they had even started an affair while we were together and he had fantasized about her, wished he could be with her instead of me. But now that he was with her, I had become her and she had become me. We’ve all heard of men who leave their wives for a mistress, only to miss the comfort and predictability of their wife. But I felt certain that this wasn’t the case. He wasn’t missing my predictability. He was wanting me because he could no longer have me. He could tell I was gone and that was a new spell for him. 40.In the morning my phone rang again from the same number that had rung twice the night before. I hadn’t checked the message yet. “Hello, is this Lucy?” It was a male voice. “Yes,” I said. “Who is this?” “This is Arnold Schuman. Claire’s husband.” “Oh,” I said. “I didn’t know Claire was still married.” Then I covered my mouth with my hand. Fuck. Who knew what he knew about her dating life? “Well, the papers haven’t been finalized yet, but yes, for all intents and purposes we are no longer together,” he said. “Oh, okay, I’m sorry about that,” I said. “Is everything okay with Claire?” “As a matter of fact no, not right now. Last night she made an attempt on her life. She’s in the psych ward.” “Oh my God,” I said. “It was really bad,” he said. “She took a handful of pills and then tried to hang herself from her closet doorknob. Luckily the kids weren’t there, but some man showed up and broke in. He found her and got her to the hospital. Her boyfriend or something, I’m not sure.” I wondered for a moment which of her men had saved her life. Was it David? Best Buy Dude? Even if it was Ponytail Man, I was genuinely grateful for his existence. “Oh no, poor Claire. I’m so sorry.” “He didn’t take her cell phone so I went to her place and grabbed it to see if I could reach out to some of her friends. I heard your message. Sounds like you aren’t in great shape either.” “I’m totally fine. Fuck, what hospital is she at?” “She’s at the UCLA Neuropsychiatric Hospital,” he said. “She is allowed visitors from ten to three. I just saw her for the first time this morning and she is doing well, all things considered. But I think she could really use a shred of normalcy right now, and a friend. She really hates it there, but she’s not getting out anytime soon. I’m going to try to get her to go to treatment for drugs and depression following her stay. Apparently she’d been taking pills again.”

• From A History of Christianity (1976)

  In 1862, to mark the canonization of twenty-six missionaries martyred in Japan, Pius invited the entire episcopate to attend a Pentecostal celebration in Rome. The response was encouraging: 323 cardinals, patriarchs, archbishops and bishops, over 4,000 priests, and 100,000 Catholic lay-folk. In 1864, the Pope made a characteristically late-medieval gesture: he published an encyclical, Quanta cura, announcing that the following year would be a jubilee, in which a plenary indulgence might be gained by those strong in the Catholic faith. And by way of an appendix to the encyclical he included a document listing the propositions which a good Catholic was specifically enjoined not to hold. This ‘Syllabus of Errors’ was in fact an index, giving references to various views already condemned in papal speeches, letters, addresses and encyclicals. Its precise status and authority was not, therefore, entirely clear, but in the circumstances it appeared to be a defiant manifesto against the whole of the modern world. Sections 1–7 condemned pantheism, naturalism and absolute rationalism; 8–14 moderate rationalism; 15–18 indifferentism, latitudinarianism, socialism, communism, secret societies, Bible societies and liberal clerical groups. Sections 19–76 set out the rights of the Church, and of the Roman pontiff and his state, in the most uncompromising and triumphalist manner, and any infringements by civil society were roundly condemned. It was wrong to deny the Pope the right to ‘a civil princedom’ or to the use of force to defend it; Catholics were forbidden to accept civil education, or to deny the assertion that the ‘Catholic religion was the sole religion of the state to the exclusion of all others’; and in Section 79 freedom of speech was condemned as leading to ‘corruption of manners and minds’ and ‘the pest of indifferentism’. Finally, Section 80 summarized the document by condemning the assertion that ‘the Roman pontiff can and should reconcile and harmonize himself with progress, with liberalism, and with recent civilization’. The Syllabus was received with astonishment, not to say incredulity by many non-Catholics, and with dismay by liberal Catholics (and a number of bishops). Some governments, notably those of France, Austria and Bavaria, feared that it might be invested with full dogmatical authority at any forthcoming council. There was some attempt, on the part of those Catholics who thought it both theologically possible and socially essential, for the Church to adjust to the modern world, to organize opposition and put the brakes on the headlong progress to triumphalism. Among the leading English laity, the liberal historian Lord Acton, who had extensive academic and political contacts on the Continent, went on a tour of European state archives in the years 1864–8, which awoke him to what he termed ‘the vast tradition of conventional mendacity’, including the willingness of a triumphalist papacy to employ lying and violence to further essentially secular policies. In his travels he was able to consult with the critical Catholic element, especially in Germany.

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

  He wrote to his friend Link: "Suddenly, and while I was occupied with far other thoughts, the Lord has, plunged me into marriage." The manner was highly characteristic, neither saint-like nor sinner-like, but eminently Luther-like. By taking to himself a wife, he wished to please his