Tenderness

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 Wild (2012)

  “It’s at a club near the hostel, if that’s where you’re staying,” she told me. She was plump and pretty, her flaxen hair tied into a loose bun at the back of her head. “We’re traveling around too,” she added, gesturing to my pack. I didn’t understand who the “we” referred to until a man appeared by her side. He was her physical opposite—tall and almost painfully thin, dressed in a maroon wrap skirt that hung barely past his bony knees, his shortish hair bound into four or five pigtails scattered around his head. “Did you hitchhike here?” asked the man. He was American. I explained to them about hiking the PCT, about how I planned to lay over in Ashland for the weekend. The man was indifferent, but the woman was astounded. “My name is Susanna and I am from Switzerland,” she said, taking my hand in hers. “We call what you’re doing the pilgrim way. If you’d like, I would rub your feet.” “Oh, that’s sweet, but you don’t have to do that,” I said. “I want to. It would be my honor. It is the Swiss way. I will return.” She turned and walked into the co-op, as I called after her telling her she was too kind. When she was gone, I looked at her boyfriend. He reminded me of a Kewpie doll, with his hair like that. “She really likes to do this, so no worries,” he said, sitting down beside me. When Susanna emerged a minute later, she held her hands cupped before her, a puddle of fragrant oil in her palms. “It’s peppermint,” she said, smiling at me. “Take off your boots and socks!” “But my feet,” I hesitated. “They’re in pretty rough shape and dirty—” “This is my calling!” she yelled, so I obeyed; soon she was slathering me with peppermint oil. “Your feet, they are very strong,” said Susanna. “Like those of an animal. I can feel their strength in my palms. And also how they are battered. I see you miss the toenails.” “Yes,” I murmured, reclining on my elbows in the grass, my eyes fluttering shut. “The spirits told me to do this,” she said as she pressed her thumbs into the soles of my feet. “The spirits told you?” “Yes. When I saw you, the spirits whispered that I had something to give you, so that is why I approached with the flyer, but then I understood there was something else. In Switzerland, we have great respect for people who travel the pilgrim way.” Rolling my toes one by one between her fingers, she looked up at me and asked, “What does this mean on your necklace—that you are starved?”

• From Boys & Sex (2020)

  As for intimate relationships, dads can offer guidance on personal integrity; establishing and respecting sexual boundaries; mutuality; caring; pleasure. They may want to share their own evolution on some of these topics, including past mistakes and regrets. Let me reiterate: no need to be perfect, to have all the answers, or even to feel totally comfortable discussing the questions. As one college sophomore told me, “In high school, it would have made all the difference in the world to have my dad talk to me about this, even though my mom did a really good job. Because subconsciously, as a teen guy, she was still a woman telling me these things, and I really, really needed my dad to be like, ‘Noah, this is real.’ And because he didn’t have those kinds of conversations with me, it instilled a pattern of me not having them with my friends or my partners. And I want to be having these conversations.” Mothers are more likely to talk with their sons about intimacy, but not as deeply or as broadly as they do with their daughters. Moms can also offer a more nuanced vision of female sexuality and explain why girls might act against their own best interests (by, say, hooking up with a guy known to be a jerk, or feeling obliged to satisfy a boy). Again, without going into excessive detail, you might consider sharing some of your own past experience, including with trauma. Women who have been sexually assaulted often feel compelled to tell their girls, even as they wrestle with when or how. But among the boys I met, hearing from a mother that she had been harmed had a life-altering impact. Obviously, that personal connection shouldn’t be necessary to inspire compassion, but for teenagers, who are still relatively concrete thinkers, knowing someone in your innermost circle was affected makes an issue real (it is also a chance for moms to model resilience). A college freshman, one of just three guys in his school’s anti-assault advocacy group, recalled, “When I was seventeen, my mom told me about times in college when she was drunk and men took advantage of her. I was so shocked. It was like, ‘This is happening to people I care about, people I love.’ That was when I realized how common it was. I will never forget that.”

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

  It would at least be familiar, and a holiday from the endless struggle of trying to fit into secular life. And perhaps a little rest was all that I needed. If a pall of gloom had hung over my meeting with Dr. Piet, Jane treated the whole sorry affair as a tremendous adventure. She strode into the ward as if into a party, carrying a suitcase filled with my errant sponge bag, some clothes, a bunch of grapes, and a pile of novels. I glanced at the covers: John Updike, Saul Bellow, Margaret Drabble, and Iris Murdoch. They looked a little daunting. Jane waved aside my embarrassed thanks and apologies. “For God’s sake! It was a marvelous piece of luck for me! I feel enormously noble and resourceful, though it was really just a question of dialing nine- nine-nine and dealing with the Harts.” I winced. “How did they take it?” “They looked pretty aghast, I must say. Jenifer hopped from one leg to another like an anguished stork, and Herbert was put right off his supper. Pity, really. He’d gone to quite a lot of trouble with it.” She explained that she had made an impromptu visit, as she often did when at a loose end. Seeing that my light was on, she had let herself in through the kitchen door, as usual, to find Herbert concocting one of his elaborate late-night snacks in the dim light of the unshaded forty-watt bulb. He had greeted Jane with enthusiasm, knowing that she was a good cook, and asked her advice. Should he add a touch more oregano? They had chatted amicably for a few minutes, and then Jane had run up to my room, tapped on the door, and getting no answer, had peered in to see me lying unconscious on my bed. Jacob fortunately had slept through the whole business. “I’m afraid I didn’t do anything heroic, like trying to make you vomit,” Jane went on. “I tell myself that I was afraid of doing more harm than good, but really I was just too squeamish. I must say”— she grinned—“that it’s never dull knowing you.” I lay back on my pillows and contemplated Jane with amusement. She seemed determined to see the whole business as an entertaining tale on which she could dine out in the future. I listened as she relived the highlights: what the ambulance men had said, what I looked like, and the sturdy disapproval of the nurses. I knew that I could never be like that. I could not habitually view events in a positive or humorous light—nor did I particularly want to. But there was something comforting that afternoon in Jane’s buoyant refusal to look on the dark side of the episode. As I watched her transform last night’s mess into a highly crafted anecdote, it occurred to me that a little of her insouciance would do me no harm.

• From Tipping the Velvet (1998)

  Except, you have tied it crooked. Here.’ She came towards me, and took hold of the knot to straighten it; the pulse at my throat began at once to knock against her fingers, and I started a fruitless fumbling at my hips for a pair of pockets in which to thrust my hands. ‘What a fidget you are,’ she said mildly, quite as if she were addressing Cyril; but her cheeks, I noticed, had not paled - nor was her voice, I thought, quite steady.She finished at my throat at last, then stepped away again.‘There is just my hair,’ I said. I took two brushes and dampened them in my water-jug, and combed the hair away from my face till it was flat and sleek; then I greased my palms with macassar - I had macassar, now - and ran them over my head until the hair felt heavy, and the little, overheated room was thick with scent. And all the time, Florence leaned against the frame of the parlour door and watched me; and when I had finished, she laughed.‘My word, what a pair of beauties!’ This was Ralph, come that moment along the passageway, with Cyril at his feet. ‘We didn’t recognise them, did we, son?’ Cyril held up his arms to Florence, and she lifted him with a grunt. Ralph put his hand upon her shoulder and said, in an altogether softer tone, ‘How fair you look, Flo. I haven’t seen you look so fair, for a year and more.’ She tilted her head, graciously; they might for a moment have been a knight and his lady, in some medieval portrait. Then Ralph looked my way, and smiled; and I didn’t know who it was that I loved more, then - his sister, or him.‘Now, you will manage with Cyril, won’t you?’ said Florence anxiously, when she had handed the baby back to Ralph and begun to button her coat.‘I should think I will!’ said her brother.‘We won’t be late.’‘You must be as late as you like; we shall not wonder. Only mind you are careful.

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

  His eyes lit up. “Oh, Geoffrey,” he breathed, “can I make it?” I smiled at Geoffrey. We both knew that this was a long-cherished dream. “Come over here.” With his hands on his knees, Jacob bent low over the thurible, his blond head close to Geoffrey’s tow-colored one. “Snap, crackle, and pop!” he whispered gleefully as the charcoal spluttered. “Karen, watch this! Just watch me now!” He carefully spooned incense onto the glowing pellet, and a cloud of fragrance rose up and filled the small room. I glanced warily at Jenifer, fearful that this popish flummery might be one step too far. But she was watching Jacob, as he swung the thurible to and fro, with a rather sad smile, acknowledging that he had gone to a place where she could not follow. His face was transfigured, his head flung back as he snuffed histrionically. “Right.” Geoffrey nodded, and Jacob instantly replaced the thurible on the stand. “Did you see me, Karen? Mummy, did you see me?” Geoffrey cut the ceremony to a minimum. There was no complicated creed for me to recite on Jacob’s behalf, an affirmation of faith that, as Geoffrey knew, I could not honestly make and which had no relevance in Jacob’s case. The exorcisms were omitted: Jacob was not to be frightened by the idea of a demon trapped inside him. Instead, we had just the bare essentials. I stood behind Jacob and made the responses; Jacob knelt on a prie-dieu, bolt upright, his hands joined and his eyes fixed sternly ahead. “What do you ask of the church of God?” Geoffrey asked. “Faith!” I replied in Jacob’s stead, catching Geoffrey’s eye for a moment. He smiled at me, kindly, accepting the irony. What did faith really mean? If you could leave out the creed, as we had just done, could faith be liberated from belief? Could it mean that we sought the kind of trust and confidence we feel when we say that we have faith in a person or an ideal? Maybe the church could give Jacob this kind of faith—I looked at his rapt face—but it had signally failed with me. “What does faith bring to you?” Geoffrey continued. “Life everlasting,” I replied. No, I couldn’t believe in the prospect of immortality. But could faith not simply bring an enhanced life, here and now? A more abundant life, as Jesus had promised, even though my so-called faith seemed to have diminished my own mind and heart? “If, then, you desire to enter into life,” Geoffrey went on, “keep the commandments: You shall love the Lord your God with your whole heart, and with your whole soul, and with your whole mind, and your neighbor as yourself.”

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

  This in itself was surprising. Visitors were generally discouraged and I could scarcely be considered a suitable companion for Rebecca. Things had obviously changed during the fourteen months that I had been away. But I had some misgivings about my own reactions. I had no idea how it would feel to be in a convent atmosphere once more. Sister Rebecca had been two years ahead of me. When I had been a postulant, she had been a second-year novice, and we had all seen her as the perfect young nun. She had the serene face of a Botticelli Madonna, her habit was never creased, her eyes were modestly cast down, and she spoke always in a quiet, dispassionate tone, just above a whisper. 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.

• From Pleasure Activism (2017)

  I want to offer that the same practices we use for getting naked in the realm of sex and intimacy—the unveiling of skin—can teach us to bring our unapologetic selves into any space where we need to get naked. Know Your Own Nakedness In my early years of hooking up, I never looked at myself naked. I would get my outfit on, and once things were sucked in and lifted up and shaped into a stiff mannequin version of my body I would look in the mirror and approve. Later, if the night went well, as the clothes were coming off I would turn off or move away from bright light and hope the other person didn’t notice the difference between presentation and reality. I am grateful for formative experiences where I got to practice being naked around others in relationship, at hot springs and bathhouses. I am grateful for children who love my soft enveloping hugs. And for lovers who said, “You’re beautiful.” But the most meaningful work was a year of personal practice: looking in mirrors at my naked body and finding something I liked. It’s tender to remember that at first I could only say “my left pinky,” but it was a beginning: “Left pinky, you are smooth and unbitten. You look delicate, and your nail is beautiful.” My standard was that I couldn’t repeat a body part. Eventually I got to the stretch marks, scars, and dimples of cellulite. Eventually I got to a place of seeing myself whole, in motion, decompartmentalized. Eventually I realized it was a sacred and beautiful body. I have been through a similar process for my emotions, for my spirit, and for my movement worker self. Knowing this nakedness allows me to have more than gumption when it is time to show myself to others; it allows me to have dignity. I keep up the practice, and these days I sometimes find it hard to keep any clothes on at all. Be Good to Your Body Moisturize. Eat your greens. Stretch. Say nice things in the mirror like “damn god/dess, you look delectable today.” Be Sure You Want to Be Naked If you’re in a situation where keeping clothes on feels right, listen to that feeling without judgment; be curious. What is the data inside that feeling that can help you understand yourself and the situation? There’s a lot of fun and sexy sex to be had in various states of partial dress, and I support all of that. Or there might be a question of safety or comfort that needs attending to that hasn’t been articulated or agreed on yet. And while there’s nothing that compares to the experience of skin on skin, it has to be in the right setting with the right person or people. Nakedness is vulnerability. Vulnerability is something we offer where it is earned; as it is held well, we can offer more. So ask yourself, has this moment earned my nakedness?

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

  It is easy to see that this appeal to a pseudo-Petrine primitive Christianity was made by the author of the Homilies with a view to reconcile all the existing differences and divisions in Christendom. In this effort he, of course, did not succeed, but rather made way for the dissolution of the Ebionitic element still existing in the orthodox catholic church. Besides these Homilies, of which the Epitome is only a poor abridgement, there are several other works, some printed, some still unpublished, which are likewise forged upon Clement of Rome, and based upon the same historical material, with unimportant deviations, but are in great measure free, as to doctrine, from Judaistic and Gnostic ingredients, and come considerably nearer the line of orthodoxy. The most important of these are the Recognitions of Clement, in ten books, mentioned by Origen, but now extant only in a Latin translation by Rufinus. They take their name from the narrative, in the last books, of the reunion of the scattered members of the Clementine family, who all at last find themselves together in Christianity, and are baptized by Peter. On the question of priority between these two works, critics are divided, some making the Recognitions an orthodox, or at least more nearly orthodox, version of the Homilies;793 others regarding the Homilies as a heretical corruption of the Recognitions.794 But in all probability both works are based upon older and simpler Jewish-Christian documents, under the assumed names of Peter and Clement.795 As to their birth-place, the Homilies probably originated in East Syria, the Recognitions in Rome. They are assigned to the second half of the second century. In a literary point of view, these productions are remarkable, as the first specimens of Christian romance, next to the "Pastor Hermae." They far surpass, in matter, and especially in moral earnestness and tender feeling, the heathen romances of a Chariton and an Achilles Tatios, of the fourth or fifth centuries. The style, though somewhat tedious, is fascinating in its way, and betrays a real artist in its combination of the didactic and historical, the philosophic and the poetic elements. Notes.

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

  The former was the most favorite figure, not only in the Catacombs, but on articles of daily use, as rings, cups, and lamps. Nearly one hundred and fifty such pictures have come down to us. The Shepherd, an appropriate symbol of Christ, is usually represented as a handsome, beardless, gentle youth, in light costume, with a girdle and sandals, with the flute and pastoral staff, carrying a lamb on his shoulder, standing between two or more sheep that look confidently up to him. Sometimes he feeds a large flock on green pastures. If this was the popular conception of Christ, it stood in contrast with the contemporaneous theological idea of the homely appearance of the Saviour, and anticipated the post-Constantinian conception. The picture of Orpheus is twice found in the cemetery of Domitilla, and once in that of Callistus. One on the ceiling in Domitilla, apparently from the second century, is especially rich: it represents the mysterious singer, seated in the centre on a piece of rock, playing on the lyre his enchanting melodies to wild and tame animals—the lion, the wolf, the serpent, the horse, the ram—at his feet—and the birds in the trees;491 around the central figure are several biblical scenes, Moses smiting the rock, David aiming the sling at Goliath (?), Daniel among the lions, the raising of Lazarus. The heathen Orpheus, the reputed author of monotheistic hymns (the Orphica), the centre of so many mysteries, the fabulous charmer of all creation, appears here either as a symbol and type of Christ Himself,492 or rather, like the heathen Sibyl, an antitype and unconscious prophet of Christ, announcing and foreshadowing Him as the conqueror of all the forces of nature, as the harmonizer of all discords, and as ruler over life and death. § 80. Allegorical Representations of Christ. Pictures of Christ came into use slowly and gradually, as the conceptions concerning his personal appearance changed. The Evangelists very wisely keep profound silence on the subject, and no ideal which human genius may devise, can do justice to Him who was God manifest in the flesh. In the ante-Nicene age the strange notion prevailed that our Saviour, in the state of his humiliation, was homely, according to a literal interpretation of the Messianic prophecy: "He hath no form nor comeliness."493 This was the opinion of Justin Martyr,494 Tertullian,495 and even of the spiritualistic Alexandrian divines Clement,496 and Origen.497 A true and healthy feeling leads rather to the opposite view; for Jesus certainly had not the physiognomy of a sinner, and the heavenly purity and harmony of his soul must in some way have shone, through the veil of his flesh, as it certainly did on the Mount of Transfiguration. Physical deformity is incompatible with the Old Testament idea of the priesthood, how much more with the idea of the Messiah.

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

  When the sinner gives reasonable evidence of repentance he is to be restored. Calvin objects to "the excessive austerity of the ancients," who refused to readmit the lapsed. He approves of the course of Cyprian, who says: "Our patience and kindness and tenderness is ready for all who come; I wish all to return into the Church; I wish all our fellow-soldiers to be assembled in the camp of Christ, and all our brethren to be received into the house of God our Father. I forgive everything; I conceal much. With ready and sincere affection I embrace those who return with penitence." Calvin adds: "Such as are expelled from the Church, it is not for us to expunge from the number of the elect, or to despair of them as already lost. It is proper to consider them as strangers to the Church, and consequently to Christ, but this only as long as they remain in a state of exclusion. And even then let us hope better things of them for the future, and not cease to pray to God on their behalf. Let us not condemn to eternal death the offender, nor prescribe laws to the mercy of God who can change the worst of men into the best." He makes a distinction between excommunication and anathema; the former censures and punishes with a view to reformation and restoration; the latter precludes all pardon, and devotes a person to eternal perdition. Anathema ought never to be resorted to, or at least very rarely. Church members ought to exert all means in their power to promote the reformation of an excommunicated person, and admonish him not as an enemy, but as a brother (2 Cor. 2:8). "Unless this tenderness be observed by the individual members as well as by the Church collectively, our discipline will be in danger of speedily degenerating into cruelty." 2. As regards the discipline of the clergy, Calvin objects to the exemption of ministers from civil jurisdiction, and wants them to be subject to the same punishments as laymen. They are more guilty, as they ought to set a good example. He quotes with approval the ancient canons, so shamefully neglected in the Roman Church of his day, against hunting, gambling, feasting, usury, commerce, and secular amusements. He recommends annual visitations and synods for the correction and examination of delinquent clergymen.

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

  Katherine Luther cut a prominent figure in her husband’s personal history and correspondence, and survived him several years, which she spent in poverty and affliction. Idelette de Bure lived in modest retirement, and died in peace fifteen years before Calvin. Luther submitted as "a willing servant" to the rule of his "Lord Kathe," but he loved her dearly, played with his children in childlike simplicity, addressed to her his last letters, and expressed his estimate of domestic happiness in the beautiful sentence: "The greatest gift of God to man is a pious, kindly, God-fearing, domestic wife."594 Luther’s home life was enlivened and cheered by humor, poetry, and song; Calvin’s was sober, quiet, controlled by the fear of God, and regulated by a sense of duty, but none the less happy. Nothing can be more unjust than the charge that Calvin was cold and unsympathetic.595 His whole correspondence proves the reverse. His letters on the death of his wife to his dearest friends reveal a deep fountain of tenderness and affection. To Farel he wrote, April 2, 1549:—596

• From Tipping the Velvet (1998)

  She was so good and honest, after all- I should have hated to have had to lie to her.Indeed, I should have hated to have had to abuse her, in any way. When she worked so hard and grew so weary, it made me pace about the room and wring my hands, and want to shake her. It was not her job at the girls’ home that so exhausted her, it was the endless guild and union work - the piles of lists and ledgers she would place upon the supper-table, when the supper-things had been cleared off it, and squint at, all night long, until her eyes were red, and creased as currants. Sometimes, since I had nothing better to do, I would take a chair and sit beside her, and make her share the chores with me: she gave me envelopes to address, or other little harmless tasks I could not muddle. When, in spring, the Guild set up a local seamstresses’ union, and Florence began visiting the home-workers of Bethnal Green - all the poor women who worked long hours, alone, in squalid rooms, for wretched pay - I went with her. The scenes we saw were very miserable, and the women were pleased to be visited, and the Guild was grateful; but it was for Florence’s sake I really went. I couldn’t bear for her to do the dreary task, and walk the East End streets, at night, alone.And then - as I have said, a housekeeper will look for any little thing to liven her day - I began to labour for her, in the kitchen. She was thin, and the thinness looked wrong on her: the sight of the shadows at her cheeks made me feel sad.

• From A Theology for the Social Gospel (1918)

  214 A THEOLOGYFOR THESOCIAL GOSPEL existence of purgatory, it denied that the Church could render any quid pro quo for its vested incomes, and this weakened the legal and moral hold of the Church on its endowments, and cut under some of the most offensive practices ofthe Church. Unless these practical consid- erations had made purgatory a social issue, it may be questioned whether the lack of biblical support for the doctrine would have sufficed to suppress it. Theresult- ing contest of Protestant theology against the doctrine of purgatory induced it, by its necessary reactions, to assert thatthe fate of thesoul is fixed at death and the saved enter into glory. Perhaps the modern hesitancy about the doctrine of hell also has social causes. Despotic governments for- merly accustomed mento frequent, public, and very hor- rible executions, and to long and hopeless imprisonments. Since the spread of democracy has somewhat weakened the cruel grip ofthe governing classes, the criminal law has become more humane. Capital punishments have become less frequent, less public, and less cruel. The outfit of prisons has improved. There is an increasing feeling that punishment should notbe merely vindictive and terrifying, but remedial and disciplinary, aiming at the salvation and social restoration of the offender. Our prisons are our human hells, where men are cut off from all that exercises a saving influence on ourlives the love of wife andchild and home, work and play, contact with nature, hope, ambition, only fearandco- ercion are in full force. If democracy should further weaken the hold of the governing classes on the penal system of the country; and if Christianity should im-

• From Tipping the Velvet (1998)

  Mrs Milne tilted her head. ‘Now, she’s a mote shy,’ she said in a low voice, ‘but don’t you pay no mind to her if she starts being silly on you. It’s just her way.’ I smiled, uncertainly. In a second Gracie had begun her ascent; a few seconds more, and she was in the room and at her mother’s side.I had expected some extraordinary beauty. Grace Milne was not beautiful — but she was, I saw at once, rather extraordinary. Her age was hard to judge. She might, I thought, have been anything between seventeen and thirty; her hair, however, was as yellow and fine as flax, and hung loose about her shoulders like a girl’s. She was clad in an odd assemblage of clothes - a short blue dress, and a yellow pinafore, and beneath that gaudy stockings with clocks upon them, and red velvet slippers. Her eyes were grey, her cheeks very pale. Her features had a strange, smooth quality to them, as if her face was a drawing to which someone had halfheartedly taken a piece of india-rubber. When she spoke her voice was thick and slightly braying. I realised then, what I might have guessed before: that she was rather simple.I saw all this, of course, in less than a moment. Grace had put her arm through her mother’s and, on being introduced to me, had indeed hung back rather shyly. Now, however, she gazed with obvious delight at the jacket that I held before me, and I could see that she was desperate to seize its coloured sleeve and stroke it.And after all, it was a lovely jacket. I asked her, ‘Would you like to try it on?’She nodded, then glanced at her mother: ‘If I might.’ Mrs Milne said she might. I raised the jacket for her to step into, then moved around her to fasten the buttons. The scarlet serge and the gold trim went bizarrely well with her hair, her eyes, her dress and stockings.‘You look like a lady in a circus,’ I said, as her mother and I stood back to study her. ‘A ring-master’s daughter.’ She smiled - then took a clumsy bow. Mrs Milne laughed and clapped.‘May I keep it?’ Gracie asked me then. I shook my head.‘To be honest, Miss Milne, I don’t believe that I can spare it. Had I only two the same ...’‘Now Gracie,’ said her mother, ‘of course you can’t keep it. Miss Astley needs the costume for her theatricals.’

• From Wild (2012)

  When The Ten Thousand Things had turned to ash, I pulled out the other book in my ziplock bag. It was The Dream of a Common Language. I’d carried it all this way, though I hadn’t opened it since that first night on the trail. I hadn’t needed to. I knew what it said. Its lines had run all summer through the mix-tape radio station in my head, fragments from various poems or sometimes the title of the book itself, which was also a line from a poem: the dream of a common language. I opened the book and paged through it, leaning forward so I could see the words by the firelight. I read a line or two from a dozen or so of the poems, each of them so familiar they gave me a strange sort of comfort. I’d chanted those lines silently through the days while I hiked. Often, I didn’t know exactly what they meant, yet there was another way in which I knew their meaning entirely, as if it were all before me and yet out of my grasp, their meaning like a fish just beneath the surface of the water that I tried to catch with my bare hands—so close and present and belonging to me—until I reached for it and it flashed away. I closed the book and looked at its beige cover. There was no reason not to burn this book too. Instead, I only hugged it to my chest. We reached Timberline Lodge a couple of days later. By then it wasn’t just Doug and me. Tom had caught up to us, and we’d also been joined by two women—a twenty-something ex-couple who were hiking Oregon and a small section of Washington. The five of us hiked together in duos and trios of various formations, or sometimes all of us in a row, making a leisurely party of it, the vibe festive because of our numbers and the cool sunny days. On our long breaks we played hacky sack and skinny-dipped in an icy-cold lake, incited the wrath of a handful of hornets and then ran from them while we laughed and screamed. By the time we reached Timberline Lodge 6,000 feet up on the south flank of Mount Hood, we were like a tribe, bonded in that way I imagined kids felt when they spent a week together at summer camp.

• From Tipping the Velvet (1998)

  She turned to me and shook her head, and smiled; but again, her smile seemed sad.‘Just tired.’My jug and bowl were on the side. I poured a little water out and carried it to her, for her to wash her hands and splash her face. The water spotted her dress, and dampened the fringe of her hair into dark little points.She had a purse swinging at her waist, and now she dipped her fingers into it and drew out a cigarette and a box of matches. She said, ‘I am sure your mother would disapprove, but I’m just about busting for a smoke.’ She lit the cigarette, and drew upon it heavily.We gazed at one another not speaking. Then, because we were weary and there was no where else for us to sit, we sat upon the bed, side by side, and quite close. It was terribly strange to be with her in the very room - on the very spot! - where I had spent so many hours dreaming of her, so immodestly. I said, ‘It ain’t half strange -’ But as I said it she also spoke; and we laughed. ‘You first,’ she said, and drew again upon her fag.‘I was just going to say, how funny it is to have you here, like this.’‘And I,’ she said, ‘was going to say how funny it is to be here! And this is really your room, yours and Alice’s? And your bed?’ She looked about her, as if in wonder - as if I might have taken her to a stranger’s chamber, and be trying to pass it off as my own - and I nodded.She was silent again, then, and so was I; and yet I sensed that she had more to say, and was only working up to saying it. I thought, with a little thrill, that I knew what it was; but when she spoke again it wasn’t about the contract, but about my family - about how kind they were, and how much they loved me, and how lucky I was to have them.

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

  Jesus proved that when He came to earth to walk among us, to show us God with skin on, and to draw us close to Him. God’s greatest delight is to be with you and me, with us, His children. And we have a need hardwired into our soul to be with Him. Amid the worries and the hustle of life, we sometimes forget the healing power of simply being with God. When we sense His closeness, everything changes. Our fears fade away, our minds clear, our hearts become calm. THE FELT PRESENCE OF GOD The idea of God’s presence is found throughout the Bible. God is, of course always present. He’s omnipresent, meaning He is everywhere, all the time. Paul, writing about Jesus, says, “He is before all things, and in him all things hold together” (Colossians 1:17). God is the life-force that keeps the universe humming. On a more personal level, the author of Hebrews, speaking for God, says, “Never will I leave you; never will I forsake you” (13:5). God doesn’t just hold all of creation together; He holds us in His arms. He remains with us no matter what. God’s presence in the universe and in our lives never changes. But there is another element of His presence that we find in the Bible and in our walk with Him. It’s His “felt presence,” for lack of a better term. It’s that sudden, unexplainable, thrilling awareness that He is, quite literally, in the room. You can’t explain it. It might include emotion, but it’s deeper than any human feeling. It might cause goosebumps or tears or laugher, but it’s more than superficial reactions. It might be specific words or thoughts that drop into your heart, but it goes beyond mere imagination. You just know that God showed up. And His presence changes everything.

• From A Theology for the Social Gospel (1918)

  baptism from the religious and theological emptiness which now threatens its very existence. Its older doc- trinal meanings have leaked away or evaporated. In the ancient Church it was closely connected with the prev- alent belief in demonism. Patristic and scholastic theology bound it up with original sin. But we do not live in a realizing sense of demon powers, and original sin and baptismal regeneration seem to be marked for extinction. To say that Christ commanded it and that we must obey his ordinance, is equivalent to confessing that the act has lost its enthusiasm and its religious con- viction. It is simply an order, which must be obeyed. Why not connect baptism with the Kingdom of God? It has always been an exit and an entrance ; why not the exit from the Kingdom of Evil and the entrance into the Kingdom of God? That would, under right teaching and with the right people, give it solemn impressiveness. It would make it a truly Christian act. Baptism has al- ways been dogged by superstitions, and thrust down into paganism. The individualistic interpretation of it as an escape from damnation tainted it with selfishness. Con- tact with the Kingdom of God would restore baptism to its original ethical and spiritual purity. The Lord’s Supper, like Baptism, has had a tragic history. The meal in the upper room at Jerusalem was the last of many meals in which Jesus had broken the bread with his friends in the close intimacy of their wandering life. The spirit of all the previous meals was in this last meal. It was pervaded by the same strong .and 202 A THEOLOGY FOR THE SOCIAL GOSPEL holy feelings of friendship which make the disappoint- ment of Jesus in the garden so pathetic. It is a ques- tion whether Jesus’ thought ran beyond the group of his friends when he asked for a repetition of the meal; it seems at least very unlikely that he purposed a cult act such as actually developed. His purpose was to create an act of loyalty which would serve to keep memory and fidelity alive until he should return and eat and drink with them again in the Kingdom of God. Jesus had created a wonderful social group. He wanted it to hold together. The Lord’s Supper came into existence through strong religious and social feeling and its pur- pose was the maintenance of the highest loyalty.

• From Wild (2012)

  I opened up The Novel, but my headlamp was flickering and dying, so I turned it off and lay in the dark. I smoothed my hands over my arms, hugging myself. I could feel my tattoo beneath my right fingers; could still trace the horse’s outline. The woman who’d inked it had told me that it would stand up on my flesh for a few weeks, but it had remained that way even after a few months, as if the horse were embossed rather than inked into my skin. It wasn’t just a horse, that tattoo. It was Lady—the horse my mother had asked the doctor at the Mayo Clinic if she could ride when he’d told her she was going to die. Lady wasn’t her real name—it was only what we called her. She was a registered American Saddlebred, her official name spelled out in grandiose glory on the breeder’s association certificate that came with her: Stonewall’s Highland Nancy, sired by Stonewall Sensation and foaled by Mack’s Golden Queen. My mother had managed, against all reason, to buy Lady in the horrible winter when she and my father were finally and forever breaking up. My mother had met a couple at the restaurant where she worked as a waitress. They wanted to sell their purebred twelve-year-old mare for cheap, and even though my mother couldn’t afford even cheap, she went to see the horse and struck a deal with the couple to pay them three hundred dollars over the course of six months, and then she struck another deal with another couple who owned a stable nearby, doing work in exchange for Lady’s board. “She’s breathtaking,” my mother said each time she described Lady, and she was. Over sixteen hands tall, lean and long-limbed, high-stepping and elegant as a queen. She had a white star on her forehead, but the rest of her coat was the same red chestnut as the fox I’d seen in the snow.

• From The Fermata (1994)

  It would have taken me months to amass a few thousand dollars, so I would have worked for my loot in a sense, and I would have been stealing a trifling amount from each business. But I found that there was something horrible about the sensation of pulling a dollar bill that was not mine from under that springy clamp that held it down with its own species. There was misery in it, not excitement. I was behind the glove counter at Filene’s trying to steal my very first dollar and I could not do it. Instead, I stood behind the motionless glove salesperson, a woman of twenty or so, very close to her, and squeezed her hard, so that I fancied I could feel the tiny cysts in her breasts as well as the ribs beneath her shirt. (I always find that it is good for me to hug a woman like this because when I feel her ribs I know she is human. Ribs inspire pity and tenderness and the sense that we are all in the same sparred boat.) She was an Italian woman, I think, who looked as if she had taken a few courses in beauty school and had had her natural esthetic sense injured by the experience. She wore a big engagement ring with an oblong diamond. She was a person who would never be physically attracted to a person like me, just as I would never be physically attracted by a person like her. This total incompatibility made me able to feel a surge of momentary sympathy for her which was almost like an infatuation. I pushed the diamond on her finger back and forth. (Her nails were cut short, but polished—perhaps short because she liked trying on the gloves she sold?) Then I slipped her engagement ring off and looked through it. It said 14 K on the inside. On a whim, I knelt and held her hand and slipped the ring gently back on. “Will you?” I said. I had not been aware before that moment of the straightforward erogenousness of a ring: it suddenly occurred to me that the sides of the fingers are sensitive in an upper-thigh sort of way, and that the singling out of that fourth vulnerable shy finger, the planet Neptune of fingers, which otherwise gets no unique treatment in life and does very little on its own except control the C on the high school clarinet or type the number two and the letter X, to be held and gently stimulated forever by an expensive circle of gold is really quite surprisingly sexual.