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 The Selected Works of Audre Lorde

  Thembi, called Alice, flames under her taut sweetness, walking a dangerously narrow path too close to the swamp where there are bright lights flashing like stars just below the murky surface in harmony with the voices of astonished frogs in the green night. She begs me to release her from the pain of not doing enough for our own, of not making our daughters into ourselves. She tells me to dream upon all of their stories and write them a poem. Petal, whose eyes are often too quiet as she moves about, short, solid, and graceful. We discuss love, comparing tales, and her eyes flash, amused and aglow. Other times they are wary, filled with distrust and grieving. Petal, who bore seven children and only two live. Who was tortured for weeks by the South African police. Who was helped by the International Hospital for Torture Victims in Switzerland. Sula, wry and generous, knows how to get any question answered with a gentle inescapable persistence. Sometimes she drinks a lot. Her first husband broke her heart, but she quickly married again. “The missionaries lied to us so much about our bodies,” she said, indignantly, “telling us they were dirty and we had to cover them up, and look now who is running about in bikinis on the Riviera, or naked and topless! I had a friend . . .” and she starts another story, like one most of these women tell, of a special woman friend who loved her past explaining. Sweet-faced Emily tells of the militant young comrades in Soweto, their defiance of the old ways, carrying their determination for change into the streets. She demonstrates for us a spirited and high-stepping rendition of their rousing machine-gun dance. She does not like to listen to the other women singing hymns. Emily, who loved her best friend so much she still cannot listen to the records they once enjoyed together, and it is five years already since her friend died. Linda of the hypnotic eyes who was questioned once by the South African police every single day for an entire month. About Zamani Soweto Sisters and subversive activities, such as a tiny ANC flag stitched on the little dead boy’s pocket in the corner of a funeral procession quilt. “The quilts tell stories from our own lives. We did not know it was forbidden to sew the truth, but we will caution the women never to stitch such a thing again. No, thank you, I do not wish to take a cup of tea with you.” I can hear her grave dignity speaking. She finishes the tale with a satisfied laugh. Linda has a nineteen-year-old daughter. The women joke and offer us their daughters to introduce to our sons and nephews in america. No one offers us their sons for our daughters.

• From Saint Thomas Aquinas Collection (22 Books) (2016)

  THEOPHYLACT. While the soldiers were doing their cruel work, He was thinking anxiously of His mother: These things therefore the soldiers did. Now there stood by the cross of Jesus His mother, and His mother’s sister, Mary the wife of Cleophas, and Mary Magdalene. AMBROSE. Mary the mother of our Lord stood before the cross of her Son. None of the Evangelists hath told me this except John. The others have related how that at our Lord’s Passion the earth quaked, the heaven was overspread with darkness, the sun fled, the thief was taken into paradise after confession. John hath told us, what the others have not, how that from the cross whereon He hung, He called to His mother. He thought it a greater thing to shew Him victorious over punishment, fulfilling the offices of piety to His mother, than giving the kingdom of heaven and eternal life to the thief. For if it was religious to give life to the thief, a much richer work of piety it is for a son to honour his mother with such affection. Behold, He saith, thy son; behold thy mother. Christ made His Testament from the cross, and divided the offices of piety between the Mother and the disciples. Our Lord made not only a public, but also a domestic Testamnet. And this His Testament John sealed, a witness worthy of such a Testator. A good testament it was, not of money, but of eternal life, which was not written with ink, but with the spirit of the living God: My tongue is the pen of a ready writer. (Ps. 45:1) Mary, as became the mother of our Lord, stood before the cross, when the Apostles fled, and with pitiful eyes beheld the wounds of her Son. For she looked not on the death of the Hostage, but on the salvation of the world; and perhaps knowing that her Son’s death would bring this salvation, she who had been the habitation of the King, thought that by her death she might add to that universal gift. But Jesus did not need any help for saving the world, as we read in the Psalm, I have been even as a man with no help, free among the dead. (Ps. 87) He received indeed the affection of a parent, but He did not seek another’s help. Imitate her, ye holy matrons, who, as towards her only most beloved Son, hath set you an example of such virtue: for ye have not sweeter sons, nor did the Virgin seek consolation in again becoming a mother.

• From I'm Not a Mourning Person (2023)

  I just assumed they’d be given intravenous food and fluids or something. But the only thing Dad’s body had energy to process was the completion of life. We moistened his dry throat with a small wet sponge on a lollipop stick and softened his chapped lips with olive oil. Day turned into night as Dad hung on, holding fast to life. The next morning, everything changed. His breath slowed to a raspy crawl. His moans grew fainter and fainter. His skin illuminated. My mom lit candles, and I played soft classical music. Together, we created a sanctuary for his passing. The dogs came in and out, curling up at the foot of the bed. Mom sat on one side of him, and I sat on the other. She held his heart, and I held his hand. Her breath deepened on the inhale and “whooshed” on the exhale, as if she were leading a holy meditation. My breath automatically followed. With each rise and fall, I could feel Dad relax. Instinctively, Mom knew to coach him with the sweetest encouragement. “You’re doing such a good job at this, my love. I am so proud of you.” “You can do this, my love. It’s going to be OK.” “We love you so much. And we’re going to really miss you. But you can go whenever you’re ready. We’re going to be OK. You’re going to be OK, my love.” Watching her shepherd him through this passage with such powerful tenderness left me awestruck. It was as if the deepest, most sacred parts of her maternal and spiritual instincts were allowing her to open the doors to eternity for her precious love to walk through. As Dad took his final breath, I heard what sounded like a timid little boy’s voice. Though I have no idea what he was actually experiencing, this vulnerable, childlike sound reminded me of the first day of school, when you don’t know anyone and hope to make new friends. Or that moment of excitement and pulsing nerves right before you jump off a cliff into a warm lake. These thoughts and images felt somewhat comforting. They made me feel like he wasn’t leaving us; he was heading off to a new adventure. We watched him as he moved into the unknown, still straddling both worlds, yet so much further out of reach. And right as we were about to lose him fully, the most beautiful smile spread across his face. I’ve never seen anything like it. He looked so happy, peaceful, and, most of all, relieved. It was as if he was being welcomed by people who loved him. No one had to tell him it would be OK anymore—it just was.

• From Speak, Memory (1966)

  Except for two corner windows in the upper story (my mother’s sitting room), the house was already dark. The night watchman let me in, and slowly, carefully, so as not to disturb the arrangement of words in my aching head, I mounted the stairs. My mother reclined on the sofa with the St. Petersburg Rech in her hands and an unopened London Times in her lap. A white telephone gleamed on the glass-topped table near her. Late as it was, she still kept expecting my father to call from St. Petersburg where he was being detained by the tension of approaching war. An armchair stood by the sofa, but I always avoided it because of its golden satin, the mere sight of which caused a laciniate shiver to branch from my spine like nocturnal lightning. With a little cough, I sat down on a footstool and started my recitation. While thus engaged, I kept staring at the farther wall upon which I see so clearly in retrospect some small daguerreotypes and silhouettes in oval frames, a Somov aquarelle (young birch trees, the half of a rainbow—everything very melting and moist), a splendid Versailles autumn by Alexandre Benois, and a crayon drawing my mother’s mother had made in her girlhood—that park pavilion again with its pretty windows partly screened by linked branches. The Somov and the Benois are now in some Soviet Museum but that pavilion will never be nationalized. As my memory hesitated for a moment on the threshold of the last stanza, where so many opening words had been tried that the finally selected one was now somewhat camouflaged by an array of false entrances, I heard my mother sniff. Presently I finished reciting and looked up at her. She was smiling ecstatically through the tears that streamed down her face. “How wonderful, how beautiful,” she said, and with the tenderness in her smile still growing, she passed me a hand mirror so that I might see the smear of blood on my cheekbone where at some indeterminable time I had crushed a gorged mosquito by the unconscious act of propping my cheek on my fist. But I saw more than that. Looking into my own eyes, I had the shocking sensation of finding the mere dregs of my usual self, odds and ends of an evaporated identity which it took my reason quite an effort to gather again in the glass. [image file=image_rsrc13F.jpg] The author in Cambridge, Spring 1920. It was not unnatural for a Russian, when gradually discovering the pleasures of the Cam, to prefer, at first, a rowboat to the more proper canoe or punt.

• From Saint Thomas Aquinas Collection (22 Books) (2016)

  II. On the second head it is to be noted that the spiritual sight consists also of seven graces. (1) Of faith—S. Luke 18:42, “Receive thy sight: thy faith hath saved thee.” S. Austin, “Faith is the illumination of the mind, the means by which it is enlightened from the First Light to behold spiritual blessings.” (2) Of humility—S. John 9:39, “For judgment I am come into this world, that they which see not might see:” these are humble who think that they see not. (3) Of present trial and bitterness—Tobit 6:9, “The gall is good for anointing the eyes in which there is a little white speck.” (4) Of love of one’s neighbour—Rev. 10:1, “Eye-salve, that thou mayest see.” (5) Abundance of tears: this is illustrated by he who, being born blind, went and washed in the pool of Siloam—S. John 9:7, “He went his way therefore and washed, and came seeing.” (6) Of fervent prayer—S. Matt. 20:31, “Cried out, saying, Have mercy on us, O Lord, thou Son of David.… So Jesus had compassion on them, and touched their eyes, and immediately their eyes received sight.” (7) Of the reverential hearing of Holy Scripture—Isa. 29:18, “In that day shall the deaf hear the words of the book, and the eyes of the blind shall see out of obscurity and out of darkness.” THE HOMILIES OF S. THOMAS AQUINAS, FOR THE SUNDAYS FROM LENT TO THE ASCENSIONCONTAINING TWENTY-FOUR HOMILIES UPON THE EPISTLES AND GOSPELS FOR THE SUNDAYS IN LENT, EASTER DAY, AND THE SUNDAYS AFTER EASTER TRANSLATED BY JOHN M. ASHLEY, B.C.L., TRANSLATOR OF THE “ADVENT HOMILIES OF S. THOMAS AQUINAS;” AUTHOR OF THE “VICTORY OF THE SPIRIT,” THE “RELATIONS OF SCIENCE,” ETC.; CURATE OF SWANSCOMBE; AND SUNDAY EVENING LECTURER OF S. MARY’S, GREENHITHE LONDON: CHURCH PRESS COMPANY (LIMITED), 13, BURLEIGH STREET, STRAND, W.C. MDCCCLXVII.

• From The Surprising Lives of Christian Saints Course Guidebook (2023)

  7. Saint Making in the Middle Ages 52 After the process was reviewed in consistory, the pope announced his decision. Either the person was not a saint, at which point their cult was supposed to be suppressed (though this often did not happen), or the person was a saint, in which case the pope would preside at a splendid mass celebrating them, enter their feast day into the liturgical calendar, and promulgate a bull of canonization describing their special attributes and miracles. New Trends in Religious Lifestyles The 12th-century Renaissance, not to be confused with the later, more famous Italian Renaissance, had an enormous impact on medieval life and the way people thought about their place in this world and the next. Fueled by new agricultural and sailing technologies, the 11th-century economy boomed its way into the 12th century. As crop yields and populations rose, so did cities. These new city dwellers sought a sense of community and purpose. Above all, as the laity became more informed about their prospects of an afterlife and what a good life looked like, they began to experiment with different forms of religious life themselves. Until this time, religious education had been relatively limited, as was the ordinary person’s access to sermons and other forms of religious teaching. Saints and other holy models had shown them only one path to a truly holy life: entry into a monastery, virginity, and separation from the world. But there were few monasteries, and they almost exclusively accepted children of the wealthy. By the 12th century, a growing literate middle class, with access to preaching and good religious education, was becoming concerned about their prospects in the afterlife. And the church was beginning to promote new models of holy living for people who remained “in the world”—that is, outside the monastery cloister. At first, these remained aristocratic models, but increasingly, local cults recognized holy people who were not nuns, monks, priests, or royals. Married couples might decide to live in service to others and without sexual intimacy. Women, in particular, were drawn to living a religious lifestyle while in the world.

• From The Surprising Lives of Christian Saints Course Guidebook (2023)

  2. Philip Neri: Playful Pragmatist 10 His family struggled financially. Francesco was known to have been a supporter of Girolamo Savonarola, the Dominican preacher who had captivated the city with prophecies and radical social reforms nearly 20 years earlier. In 1498, Savonarola was tortured, tried, and executed. By the time Philip was born, the Medici had returned to Florence and Savonarola’s supporters were in disgrace, including his father. In his late teens, Philip left to live with a relative who was making good money as a merchant in San Germano, a small town near the abbey of Montecassino. But the world of business didn’t hold his interest for long. Two years later, we find him in Rome, where he took a job tutoring. In his spare time, he studied philosophy at the University of Rome, La Sapienza, and theology with the Augustinians. He admitted later that he made a poor student, more occupied with prayer than study. He abandoned his course within the year but was slow to choose a new direction. Philip’s Charity Work The Rome in which Philip arrived in 1533 was a confusion of old and new, of Renaissance luxuries, humanist ideals, and brutal political realities. Philip wandered the countryside as a sort of urban hermit. He was especially drawn to the churches of the martyrs and the catacomb of Saint Sebastian. He also grew closer to some of the independent religious organizations working with the city’s poor, particularly the Confraternity of Charity, which he joined. They were mostly laymen, based at the church of San Girolamo della Carità and working in the nearby hospital of San Giacomo. This was the last refuge for many of the poorest, sickest, and most desperate people in Rome, who were quite numerous at this time. Hospitals at this point provided some basic necessities, such as shelter, perhaps a bed, and, if you were lucky, basic medical care from doctors or medical students. But they lacked things such as cleaning staff, food for patients, and nursing staff. Charitable volunteers stepped into the breach. Philip began doing this work as a young man in the 1540s and continued it throughout his life.

• From Another Country (1962)

  “Hell, no.” Vivaldo dried his eyes with the back of his hand. “Let’s have another drink. Let’s watch the dawn come up.” “Okay.” Eric started to move away. Vivaldo grabbed his hand. “Eric—” He watched Eric’s dark, questioning eyes and the slightly parted, slightly smiling lips. “I’m glad I told you about that. I guess I couldn’t have told anybody else.” Eric seemed to smile. He took Vivaldo’s face between his hands and kissed him, a light, swift kiss, on the forehead. Then his shadow vanished, and Vivaldo heard him in the kitchen. “I’m out of ice.” “The hell with the ice.” “Water?” “No. Well, maybe a little.” Eric returned with two glasses and put one in Vivaldo’s hand. They touched glasses. “To the dawn,” said Eric. “To the dawn,” Vivaldo said. Then they sat together, side by side, watching the light come up behind the window and insinuate itself into the room. Vivaldo sighed, and Eric turned to look at his lean, gray face, the long cheeks hollowed now, and the stubble coming up, the marvelous mouth resigned, and the black eyes staring straight out—staring out because they were beginning to look inward. And Eric felt, for perhaps the first time in his life, the key to the comradeship of men. Here was Vivaldo, long, lean, and weary, dressed, as he almost always was, in black and white; his white shirt was open, almost to the navel, and the shirt was dirty now, and the hair on his chest curled out; the hair on his head, which was always too long, was tousled, and fell over his forehead; and he smelled Vivaldo’s sweat, his armpits and his groin, and was terribly aware of his long legs. Here Vivaldo sat, on Eric’s bed. Not a quarter of an inch divided them. His elbow nearly touched Vivaldo’s elbow, as he listened to the rise and fall of Vivaldo’s breath. They were like two soldiers, resting from battle, about to go into battle again. Vivaldo fell back on the bed, one hand covering his forehead, one hand between his legs. Presently, he was snoring, then he shuddered, and turned into Eric’s pillow, toward Eric’s wall. Eric sat on the bed, alone, and watched him. He took off Vivaldo’s shoes, he loosened Vivaldo’s belt, turning Vivaldo to face him. The morning light bathed the sleeper. Eric made himself another drink, with ice this time, for the ice was ready. He thought of reading Yves’ letter again, but he knew it by heart; and he was terrified of Yves’ arrival. He sat on the bed again, looking at the morning.… Mon plus cher. Je te previendra la jour de mon arrivée. Je prendrai l’avion. J’ai dit au revoir à ma mère. Elle a beaucoup pleurée. J’avoue que ça me faisait quelque chose. Bon. Paris est mortelle sans toi. Je t’adore mon petit et je t’aime. Comme j’ai envie de te serre très fort entre mes bras. Je t’embrasse. Toujours à toi. Ton YVES.

• From The Selected Works of Audre Lorde

  But however many girls be brought to sun Someday A man will thirst for sleep in his southern night Seeking his peace where no peace is And come to mourn these children Given to the dust. A Lover’s Song Give me fire and I will sing you morning Finding you heart And a birth of fruit For you, a flame that will stay beauty Song will take us by the hand And lead us back to light. Give me fire and I will sing you evening Asking you water And quick breath No farewell winds like a willow switch Against my body But a voice to speak In a dark room. Suspension We entered silence Before the clock struck Red wine is caught between the crystal And your fingers The air solidifys around your mouth. Once-wind has sucked the curtains in Like fright, against the evening wall Prepared for stormBefore the room ExhalesYour lips unfold. Within their sudden opening I hear the clock Begin to speak again. I remember now, with the filled crystal Shattered, the wind-whipped curtains Bound, and the cold storm Finally broken, How the room felt When your word was spoken— Warm As the center of your palms And as unfree. from Cables to Rage (1970) for Elizabeth and Jonno my presents Rooming houses are old women Rooming houses are old women rocking dark windows into their whens waiting incomplete circles rocking rent office to stoop to community bathrooms to gas rings and under-bed boxes of once useful garbage city issued with a twice-a-month check the young men next door with their loud midnight parties and fishy rings left in the bathtub no longer arouse them from midnight to mealtime no stops inbetween light breaking to pass through jumbled up windows and who was it who married the widow that Buzzie’s son messed with? To Welfare and insult from the slow shuffle from dayswork to shopping bags heavy with leftovers Rooming houses are old women waiting searching through their darkening windows the end or beginning of agony old women seen through half-ajar doors hoping they are not waiting but being an entrance to somewhere unknown and desired and not new.

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

  (a) In the Fourth Gospel, we miss the note of compassion which is in the miracle stories of the others. In the others, Jesus is moved with compassion for the leper (Mark 1:41); his sympathy goes out to Jairus (Mark 5:22); he is sorry for the father of the epileptic boy (Mark 9:14); when he raises to life the son of the widow of Nain, Luke says with an infinite tenderness: `He gave him to his mother' (Luke 7:15). But in John the miracles are not so much deeds of compassion as deeds which demonstrate the glory of Christ. After the miracle at Cana of Galilee, John comments: `Jesus did this, the first of his signs, in Cana of Galilee, and revealed his glory' (2:11). The raising of Lazarus happens `for God's glory' The blind man's blindness existed to allow a demonstration of the glory of the works of God (John 9:3). To John, it was not that there was no love and compassion in the miracles; but in every one of them he saw the glory of the reality of God breaking into time and into human affairs. (b) Often the miracles of Jesus in the Fourth Gospel are accompanied by a long discourse. The feeding of the 5,000 is followed by the long discourse on the bread of life (chapter 6); the healing of the blind man springs from the saying that Jesus is the light of the world (chapter 9); and the raising of Lazarus leads up to the saying that Jesus is the resurrection and the life (chapter ii). To John, the miracles were not simply single events in time; they were insights into what God is always doing and what Jesus always is; they were windows into the reality of God. Jesus did not merely once feed 5,000 people; that was an illustration that he is forever the real bread of life. Jesus did not merely once open the eyes of a blind man; he is forever the light of the world. Jesus did not merely once raise Lazarus from the dead; he is forever and for everyone the resurrection and the life.

• From Speak, Memory (1966)

  Still watching the sleigh, I saw it stop at Treumann’s (writing implements, bronze baubles, playing cards). Presently, my mother came out of this shop followed by the footman. He carried her purchase, which looked to me like a pencil. I was astonished that she did not carry so small an object herself, and this disagreeable question of dimensions caused a faint renewal, fortunately very brief, of the “mind dilation effect” which I hoped had gone with the fever. As she was being tucked up again in the sleigh, I watched the vapor exhaled by all, horse included. I watched, too, the familiar pouting movement she made to distend the network of her close-fitting veil drawn too tight over her face, and as I write this, the touch of reticulated tenderness that my lips used to feel when I kissed her veiled cheek comes back to me—flies back to me with a shout of joy out of the snow-blue, blue-windowed (the curtains are not yet drawn) past. A few minutes later, she entered my room. In her arms she held a big parcel. It had been, in my vision, greatly reduced in size—perhaps, because I subliminally corrected what logic warned me might still be the dreaded remnants of delirium’s dilating world. Now the object proved to be a giant polygonal Faber pencil, four feet long and correspondingly thick. It had been hanging as a showpiece in the shop’s window, and she presumed I had coveted it, as I coveted all things that were not quite purchasable. The shopman had been obliged to ring up an agent, a “Doctor” Libner (as if the transaction possessed indeed some pathological import). For an awful moment, I wondered whether the point was made of real graphite. It was. And some years later I satisfied myself, by drilling a hole in the side, that the lead went right through the whole length—a perfect case of art for art’s sake on the part of Faber and Dr. Libner since the pencil was far too big for use and, indeed, was not meant to be used.

• From The Selected Works of Audre Lorde

  Only then would I lift the pestle, and with one hand firmly pressed around the carved side of the mortar caressing the wooden fruit with my aromatic fingers, I would thrust sharply downward, feeling the shifting salt and the hard little pellets of garlic right up through the shaft of the wooden pestle. Up again, down, around, and up, so the rhythm would begin. The thud push rub rotate and up, repeated over and over; the muted thump of the pestle on the bed of grinding spice, as the salt and pepper absorbed the slowly yielded juices of the garlic and celery leaves and became moist; the mingling fragrances rising from the bowl of the mortar; the feeling of the pestle held between my fingers and the rounded fruit of the mortar’s outside against my palm and curving fingers as I steadied it against my body; all these transported me into a world of scent and rhythm and movement and sound that grew more and more exciting as the ingredients liquefied. Sometimes my mother would look over at me with that amused annoyance which passed for tenderness with her, and which was always such a welcome change for me from the furious annoyance which was so much more usual. “What you think you making there, garlic soup? Enough, go get the meat now.” And I would fetch the lamb hearts, for instance, from the icebox and begin to prepare them. Cutting away the hardened veins at the top of the smooth firm muscles, I would divide each oval heart into four wedge-shaped pieces, and taking a bit of the spicy mash from the mortar with my fingertips, I would rub each piece with the savory mix. The pungent smell of garlic and onion and celery would envelop the kitchen. The last day I ever pounded seasoning for souse was in the summer of my fourteenth year. It had been a fairly unpleasant summer, for me. I had just finished my first year in high school. Instead of being able to visit my newly found friends, all of whom lived in other parts of the city, I had had to accompany my mother on a round of doctors with whom she would have long whispered conversations that I was not supposed to listen to. Only a matter of the utmost importance could have kept her away from the office for so many mornings in a row. But my mother was concerned because I was fourteen and a half years old and had not yet menstruated. I had breasts but no period, and she was afraid there was “something wrong” with me. Yet, since she had never discussed this mysterious business of menstruation with me, I was certainly not supposed to know what all this whispering was about, even though it concerned my own body.

• From The Selected Works of Audre Lorde

  In Gainesville the last time there was only one sister present who said“I’m gonna remember your name and the next time you come there’ll be quite a few more of us, hear?” and there certainly wasa warm pool of dark women’s faces in the sea of listening. The first thing I did when I got home after kissing my honey was to wash my hair with small flowers and begin a five-day fast. Political Relations In a hotel in Tashkent the Latvian delegate from Riga was sucking his fishbones as a Chukwu woman with hands as hot as mine caressed my knee beneath the dinner table her slanted eyes were dark as seal fur we did not know each other’s tongue. “Someday we will talk through our children” she said “I spoke to your eyes this morning you have such a beautiful face” thin-lipped Moscow girls translated for us smirking at each other. And I had watched her in the Conference Hall ox-solidblack electric hair straight as a deer’s reinfire-disc eyes sweeping over the faces like a stretch of frozen tundra we were two ends of one taut rope stretched like a promise from her mouth singing the friendship song her people sang for greeting There are only fourteen thousand of us left it is a very sad thingit is a very sad thing when any peopleany peopledies “Yes, I heard you this morning” I saidreaching out from the place where we touched poured her vodkaan offering which she accepted like roses leaning across our white Russian interpreters to kiss me softly upon my lips.

• From The Selected Works of Audre Lorde

  II A Black woman and a white woman in the open fact of our loving with not only our enemies’ hands raised against us means a gradual sacrifice of all that is simple dreams where you walk the mountain still as a water-spirit your arms lined with scalpels and I hide the strength of my hungers like a throwing knife in my hair. Guilt wove through quarrels like barbed wire fights in the half forgotten schoolyard gob of spit in a childhood street yet both our mothers once scrubbed kitchens in houses where comfortable women died a separate silence our mothers’ nightmares trapped into familiar hatred the convenience of others drilled into their lives like studding into a wall they taught us to understand only the strangeness of men. To givebut not beyond what is wanted to speakas well as to bear the weight of hearing Fragments of the word wrong clung to my lashes like ice confusing my vision with a crazed brilliance your facedistorted into grids of magnified complaint our first winter we made a home outside of symbol learned to drain the expansion tank together to look beyond the agreed-upon disguises not to cry each other’s tears. How many Februarys shall I lime this acid soil inch by inch reclaimed through our gathered waste? from the wild onion shoots of April to mulch in the August sun squash blossomsa cement driveway kale and tomatoes muscles etch the difference between I need and forever. When we first met I had never been for a walk in the woods III light catches two women on a trail togetherembattled by choice carving an agenda with tempered lightning and no certainties we mark tomorrow examining every cell of the past for what is usefulstoked by furies we were supposed to absorb by forty still we growmore precise with each usage like falling stars or torches we print code names upon the scars over each other’s resolutions our weaknessesno longer hateful. When women make love beyond the first exploration we meet each otherknowing in a landscape the rest of our lives attempts to understand. IV Leaf-dappled the windows lighten after a battle that leaves our night in tatters and we two glad to be aliveand tender the outline of your ear pressed on my shoulder keeps a broken dish from becoming always. We rise to dogshitdumped on our front porch the brass windchimes from Sundance stolen despair offerings of the 8 A.M.

• From Saint Thomas Aquinas Collection (22 Books) (2016)

  THEOPHYLACT. The wickedness of the Pharisees in tempting Christ, has been related above, and now is shewn the great faith of the multitude, who believed that Christ conferred a blessing on the children whom they brought to Him, by the mere laying on of His hands. Wherefore it is said: And they brought young children to him, that he might touch them. CHRYSOSTOM. (ubi sup.) But the disciples, out of regard for the dignity of Christ, forbade those who brought them. And this is what is added: And his disciples rebuked those who brought them. But our Saviour, in order to teach His disciples to be modest in their ideas, and to tread under foot worldly pride, takes the children to Him, and assigns to them the kingdom of God: wherefore it goes on: And he said unto them, Suffer little children to come unto me, and forbid them not. ORIGEN. (Matt. tom. xv. 7) If any of those who profess to hold the office of teaching1 in the Church should see a person bringing to them some of the foolish of this world, and low born, and weak, who for this reason are called children and infants, let him not forbid the man who offers such an one to the Saviour, as though he were acting without judgment. After this He exhorts those of His disciples who are already grown to full stature to condescend to be useful to children, that they may become to children as children, that they may gain children; for He Himself, when He was in the form of God, humbled Himself, and became a child. On which He adds: For of such is the kingdom of heaven. (1 Cor. 9:22) CHRYSOSTOM. (ubi sup.) For indeed the mind of a child is pure from all passions, for which reason, we ought by free choice to do those works, which children have by nature. THEOPHYLACT. Wherefore He says not, for of these, but of such is the kingdom of God, that is, of persons who have both in their intention and their work the harmlessness and simplicity which children have by nature. For a child does not hate, does nothing of evil intent, nor though beaten does he quit his mother; and though she clothe him in vile garments, prefers them to kingly apparel; in like manner he, who lives according to the good ways of his mother the Church, honours nothing before her, nay, not pleasure, which is the queen of many; wherefore also the Lord subjoins, Verily I say unto you, Whosoever shall not receive the kingdom of God as a little child, he shall not enter therein.

• From The Selected Works of Audre Lorde

  But mostly they laugh back, because Etta’s gaiety is so infectious. Her face turns serious as she discusses what she wants to do with her life back home. Helen is another one of the young ones, as they are called by everyone else. Their relationship to the other women is clearly one of respect, almost like daughters-in-law. And this is in addition to the warmth and mutual esteem evident between all the women. Helen already moves in a dignified and considered way, but she has twinkling and mischievous eyes and tells me confidentially that she is the naughtiest one of all. Rita, the last of the young ones, is quiet and small and rather proper. All the “mas” like her a lot, and smile approvingly at her. She is always helpful and soft-voiced, and really enjoys singing religious songs. Bembe, light-skinned and small-boned, cleans and irons all day and sometimes at night when she is disturbed about something, like their imminent trip home. She is Zulu, like Etta, and loves to dance. Butterfly marks across her cheeks suggest she has lacked vitamins for a long time. Hannah sings a spirited and humorous song about marriage being a stamping out of a woman’s freedom, just like her signature in the marriage register is a stamping out of her own name as written in the book of life. All the other women join in the high-spirited chorus with much laughter. This is one of their favorite songs. Hannah talks about mothers-in-law, and how sometimes when they finally get to have their own way, they take it out on their sons’ wives. And by tradition, the daughters-in-law must remain meek and helpful, blowing their lungs out firing the wood braziers and coal stoves for the rest of the family every morning. She tells of her own young self rising at 4:00 a.m., even on the morning after her wedding night, lighting the fire to fix her father-in-law his coffee. But she not only eventually stopped this, she even joined her daughter once in punching out her daughter’s philandering husband, caught in the act in his wife’s bed. Mary, the oldest woman in the group, is called Number One. Witty, wise, and soft-spoken, she says love and concern came to her very late in life, once she started to work with Zamani. She is very grateful for the existence of the group, a sentiment that is often expressed by many of the other women in various ways. When we part she kisses me on my lips. “I love you, my sister,” she says. Wassa, round-cheeked and matter-of-fact, talks of her fear of reentry into Johannesburg. “But at least we will be all together,” she says, “so if something happens to one of us the others can tell her people.”

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

  Luke's gospel is specially the gospel of prayer. At all the great moments of his life, Luke shows us Jesus at prayer. He prayed at his baptism (3:2I); before his first collision with the Pharisees (5:16); before he chose the Twelve (6:12); before he questioned his disciples as to who they thought he was; before his first prediction of his own death (9:18); at the transfiguration (9:29); and upon the cross (23:46). Only Luke tells us that Jesus prayed for Peter in his hour of testing (22:32). Only he tells us the prayer parables of the friend at midnight (11:5-13) and the unjust judge (18:1-8). To Luke the unclosed door of prayer was one of the most precious in all the world. The Gospel of Women In Palestine the place of women was low. In the Jewish morning prayer a man thanks God that he has not made him `a Gentile, a slave or a woman'. But Luke gives a very special place to women. The birth narrative is told from Mary's point of view. It is in Luke that we read of Elizabeth, of Anna, of the widow at Nain, of the woman who anointed Jesus' feet in the house of Simon the Pharisee. It is Luke who makes vivid the pictures of Martha and Mary and of Mary Magdalene. It is very likely that Luke was a native of Macedonia where women held a more emancipated position than anywhere else; and that may have something to do with it. The Gospel of Praise In Luke the phrase praising God occurs oftener than in all the rest of the New Testament put together. This praise reaches its peak in the three great hymns that the Church has sung throughout all her generations - the Magnificat (1:46-55), the Benedictus (1:68-79) and the Nunc Dimittis (2:29-32). There is a radiance in Luke's gospel which is a lovely thing, as if the sheen of heaven had touched the things of earth. The Universal Gospel But the outstanding characteristic of Luke is that it is the universal gospel. All the barriers are down; Jesus Christ is for all people without distinction. (a) The kingdom of heaven is not shut to the Samaritans (9.51-6). Luke alone tells the parable of the Good Samaritan (10:30-7). The one grateful leper is a Samaritan (17:11-19). John can record a saying that the Jews have no dealings with the Samaritans (John 4:9). But Luke refuses to shut the door on anyone. (b) Luke shows Jesus speaking with approval of Gentiles whom an orthodox Jew would have considered unclean. He shows us Jesus citing the widow of Zarephath and Naaman the Syrian as shining examples (4:25-7). The Roman centurion is praised for the greatness of his faith (7:9). Luke tells us of that great word of Jesus, `People will come from east and west, from north and south, and will eat in the kingdom of God' (13:29).

• From Blue Nights (2011)

  I said there must be a reason. “Only the sharks,” she said. I looked at her. She was clearly disappointed, even a little disgusted, impatient with the turn the morning had taken. She shrugged. “They were just blues,” she said then. W hen I remember the “sundries” I am forced to remember the hotels in which she had stayed before she was five or six or seven. I say “forced to remember” because my images of her in these hotels are tricky. On the one hand those images survive as my truest memories of the paradox she was—of the child trying not to appear as a child, of the strenuousness with which she tried to present the face of a convincing adult. On the other hand it is just such images—the same images—that encourage a view of her as “privileged,” somehow deprived of a “normal” childhood. On the face of it she had no business in these hotels. The Lancaster and the Ritz and the Plaza Athénée in Paris. The Dorchester in London. The St. Regis and the Regency in New York, and also the Chelsea. The Chelsea was for those trips to New York when we were not on expenses. At the Chelsea they would find her a crib downstairs and John would bring her breakfast from the White Tower across the street. The Fairmont and the Mark Hopkins in San Francisco. The Kahala and the Royal Hawaiian in Honolulu. “Where did the morning went,” she would ask at the Royal Hawaiian when she woke, still on mainland time, and found the horizon dark. “Imagine a five-year-old walking to the reef,” she would say at the Royal Hawaiian, near a swoon, when we held her hands and swung her through the shallow sea. The Ambassador and the Drake in Chicago. It was at the Ambassador, in the Pump Room at midnight, that she ate caviar for the first time, a mixed success since she wanted it again at every meal thereafter and did not yet entirely understand the difference between “on expenses” and “not on expenses.” She had happened to be in the Pump Room at midnight because we had taken her that night to Chicago Stadium to see a band we were following, Chicago, research for A Star Is Born . She had sat through the concert onstage, on one of the amps. The band had played “Does Anybody Really Know What Time It Is,” and “25 or 6 to 4.” She had referred to the band as “the boys.” When we left Chicago Stadium with the boys that night the crowd had rocked the car, delighting her .

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

  He had in his possession little letters of Paul which said exactly the things that should be said; but, as they stood, they were too short and too fragmentary to publish. So he amplified them and made them supremely relevant to the contemporary situation and sent them out to the church. In the Pastoral Epistles, we are still hearing the voice of Paul, and often hearing it speak with a unique personal intimacy; but we think that the form of the letters is the work of a Christian teacher who summoned the help of Paul when the church of the day needed the guidance which only he could give. 15 Philemon More than a Slave The Unique Letter In one respect, this little letter to Philemon is unique. It is the only private letter of Paul which we possess. Doubtless Paul must have written many private letters; but, of them all, only Philemon has survived. Quite apart from the grace and the charm which pervade it, this fact gives it a special significance. Onesimus, the Runaway Slave There are two possible reconstructions of what happened. One is quite straightforward; the other, connected with the name of the American scholar E. J. Goodspeed, is rather more complicated and certainly more dramatic. Let us take the simple view first. Onesimus was a runaway slave and very probably a thief into the bargain. `If he has wronged you in any way', Paul writes, `or owes you anything, charge that to my account' (verses 18-19). Somehow the runaway had found his way to Rome, to lose himself in the crowded and busy streets of that great city; somehow he had come into contact with Paul, and somehow he had become a Christian, the child to whom Paul had become a father during his imprisonment (verse io). Then something happened. It was obviously impossible for Paul to go on harbouring a runaway slave, and something brought the problem to a head. Perhaps it was the coming of Epaphras. It may be that Epaphras recognized Onesimus as a slave he had seen at Colosse, and at that point the whole wretched story came out; or it may be that, with the coming of Epaphras, Onesimus' conscience moved him to make a clean breast of all his discreditable past. Paul Sends Onesimus Back In the time that he had been with him, Onesimus had made himself very nearly indispensable to Paul; and Paul would have liked to keep him beside him. `I wanted to keep him with me', he writes (verse 13). But he will do nothing without the consent of Philemon, Onesimus' master (verse 14).

• From The Selected Works of Audre Lorde

  But I felt her strong fingers on my upper arm, turning me around, her other hand under my chin as she peered into my face. Her voice softened. “Is it your period making you so slow-down today?” She gave my chin a little shake, as I looked up into her hooded grey eyes, now becoming almost gentle. The kitchen felt suddenly oppressively hot and still, and I felt myself beginning to shake all over. Tears I did not understand started from my eyes, as I realized that my old enjoyment of the bone-jarring way I had been taught to pound spice would feel different to me from now on, and also that in my mother’s kitchen, there was only one right way to do anything. Perhaps my life had not become so simple, after all. My mother stepped away from the counter and put her heavy arm around my shoulders. I could smell the warm herness rising from between her arm and her body, mixed with the smell of glycerine and rose-water, and the scent of her thick bun of hair. “I’ll finish up the food for supper.” She smiled at me, and there was a tenderness in her voice and an absence of annoyance that was welcome, although unfamiliar. “You come inside now and lie down on the couch and I’ll make you a hot cup of tea.” Her arm across my shoulders was warm and slightly damp. I rested my head upon her shoulder, and realized with a shock of pleasure and surprise that I was almost as tall as my mother, as she led me into the cool darkened parlor. Uses of the Erotic The Erotic as Power There are many kinds of power, used and unused, acknowledged or otherwise. The erotic is a resource within each of us that lies in a deeply female and spiritual plane, firmly rooted in the power of our unexpressed or unrecognized feeling. In order to perpetuate itself, every oppression must corrupt or distort those various sources of power within the culture of the oppressed that can provide energy for change. For women, this has meant a suppression of the erotic as a considered source of power and information within our lives. We have been taught to suspect this resource, vilified, abused, and devalued within western society. On the one hand, the superficially erotic has been encouraged as a sign of female inferiority; on the other hand, women have been made to suffer and to feel both contemptible and suspect by virtue of its existence. It is a short step from there to the false belief that only by the suppression of the erotic within our lives and consciousness can women be truly strong. But that strength is illusory, for it is fashioned within the context of male models of power. As women, we have come to distrust that power which rises from our deepest and nonrational knowledge.