Yearning

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 Case for God (2009)

  The very constitution of the idea is deconstructive of any such construction … the very formula that describes God is that there is no formula with which God can be described. 69 When Caputo argues that the “event” requires a response rather than “belief,” he echoes the rabbis’ definition of scripture as miqra , a summons to action. Above all, both Caputo and Vattimo stress the importance of the apophatic. All these perceptions that were once central to religion tended to be submerged in the positivist discourse of modernity, and the fact that they have surfaced again in a different form suggests that this type of “unknowing” is inherent in our very humanity. The distinctively modern yearning for purely notional, absolute, and empirically proven truth may have been an aberration. Caputo himself suggests as much. Noting that atheism is always a rejection of a particular conception of the divine, he concludes: “If modern atheism is the rejection of a modern God, then the delimitation of modernity opens up another possibility, less the resuscitation of premodern theism than the chance of something beyond both the theism and the atheism of modernity.” 70 It is an enticing prospect. If atheism was a product of modernity, now that we are entering a “postmodern” phase, will this too, like the modern God, become a thing of the past? Will the growing appreciation of the limitations of human knowledge—which is just as much a part of the contemporary intellectual scene as atheistic certainty— give rise to a new kind of apophatic theology? And how best can we move beyond premodern theism into a perception of “God” that truly speaks to all the complex realities and needs of our time? Faith and Reason B y the end of the eleventh century, philosophers and theologians in the West had embarked on a project that, they believed, was entirely new. They had begun to apply their reasoning powers systematically to the truths of faith. By now Europe was beginning to recover from the dark age that had descended after the fall of Rome. The Benedictine monks of Cluny in Burgundy had initiated a campaign to educate the clergy and laity, many of whom were woefully ignorant of the rudiments of Christianity. Hundreds of churches were built throughout Christendom, even in quite small villages and settlements, where people could attend Mass and hear the biblical readings. This instruction was reinforced by the cult of pilgrimage. During the long, difficult trek to a holy place— Jerusalem, Rome, Santiago de Compostela, Conques, or Glastonbury—lay folk experienced a “conversion” of life, turning away from their secular affairs and toward the centers of holiness. They traveled in a community of pilgrims, dedicated for the duration to the monastic ideals of austerity, charity, celibacy, and nonviolence. The rich had to share the hardships of the poor, who, in turn, realized that their poverty had spiritual value.

• From The Case for God (2009)

  Hesychia was not what we call “mysticism” today. It was not a specialized form of prayer, characterized by impressive spiritual visions and available only to an elite group of practitioners. The monks were the professionals, certainly, because they could devote themselves to it full-time, but hesychia was also prescribed for the laity. All the regular Christian practices—theology, liturgy, exegesis, morality, and acts of kindness—were supposed to be informed by the silent, reticent attitude of hesychia. It was not just for solitaries but could also be experienced in public worship and human relationships.28 One of the most famous exponents of the new apophatic theology was a married man who had been a professional orator until he became bishop of the small Cappadocian town of Nyssa. Gregory of Nyssa (c. 331–95) had become involved in the political turmoil of the Arian controversy with great reluctance. He was uneasy about these theological disputes, because it was impossible to adjudicate Christian teaching from a position of magisterial detachment. Theology depended on practice, and its truth could be assessed only by people who allowed its doctrines to change them. We could not speak about God rationally, as we speak about ordinary beings, but that did not mean that we should give up thinking about God at all.29 We had to press on, pushing our minds to the limits of what we could know, descending ever deeper into the darkness of unknowing and acknowledging that there could be no final clarity. After an initial frustration, the soul would realize that “the true satisfaction of her desire consists in constantly going on with her quest and never ceasing in her ascent, seeing that every fulfillment of her desire continually generates further desire for the Transcendent.”30 You had to leave behind “all that can be grasped by sense or reason” so that “the only thing left for contemplation is the invisible and the incomprehensible.”31

• From The Canterbury Tales (2009)

  But it worked! He hit upon the right formula and, for two weeks, it seemed to the world that the dark rocks had disappeared. They were nowhere to be seen. Meanwhile Aurelius had been in a state of panic and uncertainty. He did not know whether he would win or lose his love. He was waiting for a miracle. When he knew that it had occurred, and that the ragged rocks had vanished from sight, he went immediately to the magician and fell down at his feet. ‘To you, my lord,’ he said, ‘I owe everything. I was a woeful wretch, but you have saved me. Thank you, master. Together with my Lady Venus you have rescued me from a life of cold care.’ Thereupon he went to the local temple, where he knew that he would see Dorigen. And there she was. With much trembling he approached her. He greeted her timidly, and then began to speak. ‘My dear lady,’ he said, ‘whom I most love and fear in all this world. I would never do anything to hurt or displease you. But I cannot disguise my love for you. I could die here at your feet. I cannot begin to tell you of my misery. Yet I know that I must either express my feelings for you or perish on the spot. Even though you are innocent of any crime, you are killing me! But even if you have no pity for my plight, take care that you do not forfeit your honour. Relent. Keep your oath, for the sake of God in heaven, and save my life. You know well enough what you promised me. Understand that I claim nothing by right, and that I am entirely dependent on your grace. You know that, in a garden on a spring morning, you made an oath to me on a certain subject. You gave me your hand on it. If the rocks were gone, then you would grant me your love. I was, and still am, unworthy of it. I know that. But you should not renege on your promise. I am more concerned with your honour than my life. I swear it. I have done as you ordered. If you don’t believe me, go to the shore and see for yourself. You must do as you like, of course, but once again I beg you. Do not forget your oath. Living or dead, I will be yours for ever. It lies in your power to decide my fate. I know only this. The dark rocks have gone.’

• From City of Night (1963)

  Once, going to Sally’s bar, I saw him closely. He looked at me; and realizing I had noticed, he quickly turned away. He resembled a highschool coach: neatly cropped hair, ruddy face, trim build. He was possibly in his late 30s. He didnt look like a score; he didnt look like a masculine homosexual (that is, his masculinity did not seem posed); he looked completely incongruous—and I suppose this is why I had first noticed him. After seeing him so often, standing in almost the same spot those afternoons—I began to be strongly intrigued by him. That afternoon, when I saw him again, I was lying on the beach with two fairies who had spotted me for a teahead and were trying to get me to go with them by telling me they had some marijuana at home—changing the subject when I kept referring to being “broke”: the standard hint when youre not entirely sure someone will pay you for making it.... Both of them were youngish and slender; they looked masculine, but their coy gestures, their rolling eyes, their suggestive, high-pitched comments canceled out their initial physical appearance. “Well, hon,” said one, “if you dig—uh—pod, we will—uh—turn you on—and have a—real smash—I mean blast—at our—uh—pad.” He spoke the jivewords as if he had memorized them. Im still looking at the man standing before the concrete ledge separating the beach from the sidewalk.... I said to the gushing fairy lying beside me on the sand: “Well, see, I would dig making it to your pad—but I dont know how far out you live, and I dont even have enough bread to make it back downtown.” “Well,” said the other one, “no problem there, honey—well be glad to give you a lift back!” They were either very dense or determinedly avoiding the hint—and I leaned heavily toward the latter theory. In a few minutes I would leave. I had stayed this long largely because the sun kept me glued to the beach—that lazy, pleasurable, sensual feeling hugging me as I felt my skin turn browner. “Who are you looking at?” the first fairy asked me. Startled to find that I had been so obviously staring at the man on the sidewalk, I turned quickly sideways—but following my gaze, the fairy had already discovered where I had been looking. “Look,” he said to the other one, “theres that strange man again. Hes here every weekend—just stands there. Ive never seen him go with anyone. He just stands there.” “I wouldnt be too Interested in him, hon,” the other one warned me. “He may be welldressed—but he doesnt look like a score.” And now I knew they had been hip to my scene all along, trying to con me with the weed. “Hes kinda cute, too—but not Young enough,” he added.

• From The Case for God (2009)

  In France as in England, people outside the establishment were becoming critical of the orthodox Enlightenment belief in the inertia of matter. In 1706, Jean Pigeon (1654–1739), a self-educated military man with a flair for mechanical physics, had presented Louis XIV with a model of the Copernican system that he had made himself.42 But he found that the experience of constructing his own universe, as it were, took all the wonder out of creation; God suddenly seemed little more than a craftsman like himself. He also came to believe that matter was not passive after all. Pigeon’s son-in-law Andre-Pierre Le Guay de Prémontval (1716–64) continued to preach the gospel of dynamic matter and a downsized God to large audiences until he was forced to flee to Holland. Julien Offray de La Mettrie (1709–51) had also taken refuge in the Netherlands, where he published Man, a Machine (1747) which ridiculed Cartesian physics and argued that intelligence was inherent in the material structure of organisms. For La Mettrie, God was simply an irrelevance.43 He included the record of a conversation with a fellow skeptic, who yearned for the destruction of religion. No more theological wars, no more soldiers of religion— such terrible soldiers! Nature infected with sacred poison would repair its rights and purity. Deaf to all other voices, tranquil mortals will follow only the spontaneous dictates of their own being, the only commands which can never be despised with impunity, and which alone can lead us to happiness through the pleasant paths of virtue.44 People were sick of the intolerant behavior of the churches. But few were prepared to break with religion entirely. La Mettrie himself was careful to distance himself from the opinions of the “wretch” he quoted.

• From The Case for God (2009)

  The gospels show Jesus undergoing an agonizing death and experiencing the extremity of despair while forgiving his executioners, making provision for his mother, and having a kindly word for one of his fellow victims. Instead of becoming stridently virtuous, aggressively orthodox, and contemptuous of the ungodly, these paradigmatic personalities became more humane. The rabbis were revered as avatars of the Torah, because their learning and practice enabled them to become living, breathing, and human embodiments of the divine imperative that sustained the world. Muslims venerate the Prophet Muhammad as the “Perfect Man,” whose life symbolizes the total receptivity to the divine that characterizes the archetypal, ideal human being. Just as the feats of a dancer or an athlete are impossible for an untrained body and seem superhuman to most of us, these people all developed a spiritual capacity that took them beyond the norm and revealed to their followers the untapped “divine” or “enlightened” potential that exists in any man or woman. From almost the very beginning, men and women have repeatedly engaged in strenuous and committed religious activity. They evolved mythologies, rituals, and ethical disciplines that brought them intimations of holiness that seemed in some indescribable way to enhance and fulfill their humanity. They were not religious simply because their myths and doctrines were scientifically or historically sound, because they sought information about the origins of the cosmos, or merely because they wanted a better life in the hereafter. They were not bludgeoned into faith by power-hungry priests or kings: indeed, religion often helped people to oppose tyranny and oppression of this kind. The point of religion was to live intensely and richly here and now. Truly religious people are ambitious. They want lives overflowing with significance. They have always desired to integrate with their daily lives the moments of rapture and insight that came to them in dreams, in their contemplation of nature, and in their intercourse with one another and with the animal world. Instead of being crushed and embittered by the sorrow of life, they sought to retain their peace and serenity in the midst of their pain. They yearned for the courage to overcome their terror of mortality; instead of being grasping and mean-spirited, they aspired to live generously, large-heartedly, and justly, and to inhabit every single part of their humanity. Instead of being a mere workaday cup, they wanted, as Confucius suggested, to transform themselves into a beautiful ritual vessel brimful of the sanctity that they were learning to see in life.

• From The Case for God (2009)

  Yan Hui expressed this beautifully when he spoke of the endless struggle to achieve ren “with a deep sigh.” The more I strain my gaze towards it, the higher it soars. The deeper I bore down into it, the harder it becomes. I see it in front, but suddenly it is behind. Step by step, the Master skilfully lures one on. He has broadened me with culture, restrained me with ritual. Even if I wanted to stop, I could not. Just when I feel that I have exhausted every resource, something seems to rise up, standing over me sharp and clear. Yet though I long to pursue it, I can find no way of getting to it at all. 74 Living a compassionate, empathetic life took Yan Hui beyond himself, giving him momentary glimpses of a sacred reality that was not unlike the “God” worshipped by monotheists. It was both immanent and transcendent: it welled up from within but was also experienced as an external presence “standing over me sharp and clear.” Religion as defined by the great sages of India, China, and the Middle East was not a notional activity but a practical one; it did not require belief in a set of doctrines but rather hard, disciplined work, without which any religious teaching remained opaque and incredible. The ultimate reality was not a Supreme Being—an idea that was quite alien to the religious sensibility of antiquity; it was an all- encompassing, wholly transcendent reality that lay beyond neat doctrinal formulations. So religious discourse should not attempt to impart clear information about the divine but should lead to an appreciation of the limits of language and understanding. The ultimate was not alien to human beings but inseparable from our humanity. It could not be accessed by rational, discursive thought but required a carefully cultivated state of mind and the abnegation of selflessness. But how would this apply to the monotheistic religions of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, which present themselves as religions of the word rather than religions of silence? In the eighth century BCE, the people of Israel were about to attempt something unusual in the ancient world. They would try to make Yahweh, the “holy one of Israel,” the only symbol of ultimate transcendence. A God t the beginning of time, the first human being (Hebrew: adam) found himself alone in Eden, the Land of Pleasure. This garden had been planted by the god Yahweh, who had caused a spring to gush forth in the eastern desert to create a paradisal oasis. There it divided into four separate rivers—the Pishon, the Gihon, the Tigris, and the Euphrates—that flowed from this sacred center to give life to the rest of the world. Yahweh had molded Adam from the soil (adama), blown the breath of life into his nostrils, and put him in charge of the garden. Eden was indeed a land of delights, and Adam could have led a blissful life.

• From City of Night (1963)

  “Well—see—like I say—I was just outta the marines. Busted. I kept going awol. Christ, man—I was restless to start living. You know—really Living....” “We all want to live,” said the fatman sneeringly. “Thats not strange.” “Yeah,” says Skipper. “Sure—but see—when I got outta the service—busted—I was just making it. No gig.... So I made this Main Street scene. Then I met this guy—this guy I told you about—right here I met him—see—I just got busted out of—out of the marines—I—” “You told us that,” said the fatman. “I would have liked to be in the marines.” the skinny man said wistfully. “But—” “We know, we know,” the fatman dismisses him, “they put you in the wacs instead.” He turned to Skipper. “You were out of the marines, and you met lots of people—who ‘helped’ you—” “Well—this guy,” Skipper said, “there was this one guy—he—... Man, he used to call me an ‘angel’—dig—and he says he wants a picture of me—for this—for this crazy album he had—of guys—...” And suddenly, in double, near-drunk pity, I want to laugh.... And Skipper is saying: “So this guy takes me to this photographer, who takes these body pictures—you know—hardly any clothes—and he—this photographer—he asked me to come back—gonna take more pictures....” “I wouldnt have minded being in the navy,” the skinny man muttered. His cigarette holder has lost its magic. It rests before him, discarded, dead, along with the previous pose. “So this guy—he was Okay, this photographer—he wants to help me—he tells me someone called him—wants to meet me—this big Director out in Hollywood—and I go out there.... Got this real mean pad—I mean, swimming pool—the size—the size—” He looks into the bar. “Bigger than this bar,” he finishes. “And this Director, he calls this photographer—wants to meet me. See, those photographs—they were in one of those body magazines—” “What was this director’s name?” Skipper answers. (I had heard the director’s name—everyone in that world has. He is one of its kings. Later, in the Hollywood bars, when I would make that scene, I would hear the giddy fairies excitedly—enviously—narrate who the director’s newest “discovery” was. Still later, with an old auntie—a prissy old man—I went to the director’s home, his mansion. That day, another youngman was there—the director’s current “discovery”—living with him. And later, when I think of Skipper, I’ll remember that other youngman. Life reveals itself, if at all, slowly—and often through patterns discovered in retrospect...) Closing his eyes completely now as if for him the memory of the past is too special to allow it in this bar, Skipper says: “It was a Beautiful home....”

• From The Case for God (2009)

  A popular image, found in many cultures, imagined this fructifying, sacred energy welling up like a spring from these focal places and flowing, in four sacred rivers, to the four quarters of the earth. People would settle only in sites where the sacred had once become manifest because they wanted to live as closely as possible to the wellsprings of being and become as whole and complete as they had been before they were ejected from paradise. This brings us to the second principle of premodern religion. Religious discourse was not intended to be understood literally because it was only possible to speak about a reality that transcended language in symbolic terms. The story of the lost paradise was a myth, not a factual account of a historical event. People were not expected to “believe” it in the abstract; like any mythos, it depended upon the rituals associated with the cult of a particular holy place to make what it signified a reality in the lives of participants. The same applies to the creation myth that was central to ancient religion and has now become controversial in the Western world because the Genesis story seems to clash with modern science. But until the early modern period, nobody read a cosmology as a literal account of the origins of life. In the ancient world, it was inspired by an acute sense of the contingency and frailty of existence. Why had anything come into being at all, when there could so easily have been nothing? There has never been a simple or even a possible answer to this question, but people continue to ask it, pushing their minds to the limit of what we can know. One of the earliest and most universal of the ancient cosmologies is particularly instructive to us today. It was thought that one of the gods, known as the “High God” or “Sky God” because he dwelt in the farthest reaches of the heavens, had single-handedly created heaven and earth. 39 The Aryans called him Dyaeus Pitr, the Chinese Tian (“Heaven”), the Arabians Allah (“the God”), and the Syrians El Elyon (“Most High God”). But the High God proved to be an unviable deity, and his myth was jettisoned. It suffered from an internal contradiction. How could a mere being—even such a lofty one—be responsible for being itself? As if in response to this objection, people tried to elevate the High God to a special plane. He was considered too exalted for an ordinary cult: no sacrifices were performed in his honor; he had no priests, no temples, and virtually no mythology of his own. People called on him in an emergency, but otherwise he scarcely ever impinged on their daily lives.

• From The Case for God (2009)

  As Socrates finished this moving explanation, Alcibiades burst in upon the company and, his tongue loosened by drink, described the extraordinary effect Socrates had upon him. He might be as ugly as a satyr, but he was like the popular effigies of the satyr Silenus that had a tiny statue of a god inside. He was like the satyr Marsyas, whose music propelled an audience into a tranced yearning for union with the gods, except that Socrates did not need a musical instrument because his words alone stirred people to the depths. He had made Alcibiades aware of how deficient he was in wisdom and how lacking in self-knowledge: “He always traps me, you see, and he makes me admit that my political career is a waste of time, while all that matters is just what I most neglect: my personal shortcomings, which cry out for the closest attention.”47 He tried to stop his ears against Socrates’ imperative summons to virtue but simply could not keep away from him. “I swear to you, the moment he starts to speak, I am beside myself: my heart starts leaping in my chest, the tears come streaming down my face.” The logoi of Socrates filled him with the same kind of “frenzy” as the Mysteries of Dionysus; the listener felt “unhinged” (explexis) and on the brink of illumination: “I don’t know if any of you have seen him when he’s really serious. But I once caught him when he was open like Silenus’ statues, and I had a glimpse of the figures he keeps hidden within: they were so godlike—so bright and beautiful, so utterly amazing—that I no longer had a choice—I just had to do whatever he told me.”48

• From The Case for God (2009)

  Like the mystai at Eleusis, the people who came to converse with Socrates did not come to learn anything but to have an experience and a radical change of mind. The Socratic dialogue was a spiritual exercise. The French historian and philosopher Pierre Hadot has shown that unlike modern philosophy, which tends to be purely notional, Athenian rationalism derived its insights from practical exercises and a disciplined lifestyle.31 The conceptual writings of philosophers like Plato or Aristotle were either teaching aids or merely served as a preliminary guide for those looking for a new way of living. Unlike the phusikoi, Socrates was primarily interested in goodness, which, like Confucius, he refused to define. Instead of analyzing the concept of virtue, he wanted to live a virtuous life. When asked for a definition of justice, for example, Socrates replied: “Instead of speaking it, I make it understood in my acts.”32 It was only when a person chose to behave justly that he could form any idea of a wholly just existence. For Socrates and those who came after him, a philosopher was essentially a “lover of wisdom.” He yearned for wisdom precisely because he realized that he lacked it. As Paul Friedlander has explained, there was “a tension between ignorance—that is, the impossibility ultimately to put into words ‘what justice is’—and the direct experience of the unknown, the existence of the just man, whom justice raises to the level of the divine.”33 As far as we can tell from Plato’s dialogues, Socrates seems to have been reaching toward a transcendent notion of absolute virtue that could never be adequately conceived or expressed but could be intuited by such spiritual disciplines as meditation. Socrates was famous for his formidable powers of concentration. “Every now and then he just goes off,” a friend remarked, “and stands motionless, wherever he happens to be.”34 Alcibiades, the famous Athenian politician, recalled that during a military campaign, Socrates had started thinking about a problem, could not resolve it, and to the astonishment of his fellow soldiers “stood there, glued to the spot,” all day and all night, leaving his station only at dawn, “when the sun came out and he made his prayers to the new day.”35 Plato’s dialogues were a model for the type of meditation that Socrates and his followers practiced; it was nothing like yoga but took the form of a conversation with oneself—conducted either in solitude or together with others—that pushed thought to the very limit.

• From The Canterbury Tales (2009)

  There were many young virgins Happy to slake his urgings When they should have been asleep. But he did not so much as peep At them. He was chaste as a lily And stayed so willy-nilly. So it befell that on one morning Just as the light was dawning Sir Thopas rode out on his steed In hope of doing daring deeds. He held his lancet like a lord, And by his side there hung a sword. He made his way through forests dark Where wolves howl and wild dogs bark. He himself was after game, Which once more I rhyme with tame. But listen while I tell you more Of how Sir Thopas almost swore With vexation. Around him sprang weeds of every sort, The flea-bane and the meadow-wort. Here were the rose and primrose pale, And nutmeg seeds to put in ale Whether it be fresh or stale Or only good as slops in pail. The birds were singing sweetly enough, Among the nightingales a chough. Was that a chaffinch on the wing, Or was it a dove just chattering? He heard a swallow sing on high, And then a parrot perched near by. What a lot of noise! And when he heard the birdies sing He was filled with love longing. He spurred on his horse Over briar and gorse Until the beast was sweating. It looked like it had been rutting With a mare. Thopas himself was exhausted. He got down from his quadruped And lay stretched on the ground. The horse was free at one bound. It wriggled its arse And chewed on the grass. Fodder was solace. ‘Woe is me,’ Thopas lamented, ‘Why am I so demented For love? I dreamed last night That I had caught a bright Elf-queen under the sheets. What sexual feats I accomplished! ‘If my dreams could come true What deeds would I do. I really need a fairy queen, No mortal girl is worth a bean. All other women I forsake, A fairy girl is all I’ll take In country or in town.’ Then up on to his steed He jumped, in need Of action with a fairy queen. He rode along each hill and dale Looking for that certain female. Then quite by chance he found A secret spot of magic ground, The kingdom of the fairies. In truth it was a little scary And wild. And desolate. He was not surprised to see a giant Whose name was Oliphiant. He had a mace Which he aimed at the face Of Thopas, saying, ‘Get out Or I will give your horse a clout. The queen of fairy Lives in this aery Abode. It is not for you. Your horse is unwelcome, too.’ Sir Thopas turned red as rhubarb pie And said in angry voice ‘I defy You, Oliphiant, and I swear To aim my lance here where It hurts. Come out at break of day And I will show you my way Of dealing with giants.’

• From City of Night (1963)

  “Do you realize that a year ago in December I left New York and came to El Paso and went to Los Angeles and Pershing Square then went to San Diego and La Jolla in the sun and returned to Los Angeles and went to Laguna Beach to a bar on the sand and San Francisco and came back to Los Angeles and went back to the Orange Gate and returned to Los Angeles and Pershing Square and went to El Paso... and stopped in Phoenix one night and went back to Pershing Square and on to San Francisco again, and Monterey and the shadow of James Dean because of the movie, and Carmel where there’s a house like a bird, and back to Los Angeles and on to El Paso where I was born, then Dallas with Culture and Houston with A Million Population—and on to New Orleans where the world collapsed, and back, now, to El Paso grasping for God knows what?” The letter went on to evoke crowded memories of that Mardi Gras season, a culmination of the years I had spent traveling back and forth across the country—carrying all my belongings in an army duffel bag; moving in and out of lives, sometimes glimpsed briefly but always felt intensely. In that Carnival city of old cemeteries and tolling church bells, I slept only when fatigue demanded, carried along by “bennies” and on dissonant waves of voices, music, sad and happy laughter. The sudden quiet of Ash Wednesday, the mourning of Lent, jarred me as if a shout to which I had become accustomed had been throttled. I was awakened by silence, a questioning silence I had to flee. I walked into the Delta Airlines office and told a pretty youngwoman there that I had to return to El Paso immediately. Though I had left money with my belongings scattered about the city in the several places where I had been “living,” I didn’t have enough with me for the fare, and a plane would depart within an hour or so. Out of her purse, the youngwoman gave me the money I lacked, and added more, for the cab. I thanked her and asked her name so I might return the money. “Miss Wingfield,” she said in a moment of poetry not included in this novel because it is too “unreal” for fiction. I thought I had ripped up the letter I had written about that Carnival season; I knew I had not mailed it. A week later I found it, crumpled. I rewrote it, trying to shape its disorder. I titled it “Mardi Gras” and sent it out as a short story to the literary quarterly Evergreen Review.

• From The Case for God (2009)

  He alone could recall human beings to values that had been lost during the scientific age, which had tried to master and control the whole of reality: Calling the lapsed Soul And weeping in the evening dew That might controll The starry pole And fallen, fallen light renew. 63 The Enlightenment had created a God of “fearful symmetry,” like the Tyger, remote from the world in “distant deeps and skies.” 64 The God of Newton must undergo a kenosis, return to earth, die a symbolic death in the person of Jesus, 65 and become one with humanity. 66 In 1812, the revolutionary young aristocrat Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792–1822) was expelled from University College, Oxford, for writing an atheistic tract, but “The Necessity of Atheism” simply argued that God was not a necessary consequence of the material world. Shelley did not want to get rid of the divine altogether. Like his older contemporary William Wordsworth (1770–1850), he had a strong sense of a “Spirit,” an “unseen Power” that was integral to nature and inherent in all its forms. 67 Unlike the philosophes, the Romantics were not averse to the mysterious and indefinable. Nature was not an object to be tested, manipulated, and dominated but should be approached with reverence as a source of revelation. Far from being inactive, the material world was imbued with a spiritual power that could instruct and guide us. Since childhood, Wordsworth had been aware of a “Spirit” in nature. He was careful not to call it “God” because it was quite different from the God of the natural scientists and theologians; it was rather A presence that disturbs me with the joy Of elevated thoughts; a sense sublime Of something far more deeply interfused Whose dwelling is the light of setting suns, And the round ocean and the living air, And the blue sky, and in the mind of man: A motion and a spirit, that impels All thinking things, all objects of all thought And rolls through all things. 68 Always concerned with accuracy of expression, Wordsworth deliberately called this presence “something,” a word often used as a substitute for exact definition. He refused to give it a name, because it did not fit any familiar category. It bore little resemblance to the arid God of the scientists that had retreated from nature but was strongly reminiscent of the immanent force of being that people in the ancient world had experienced within themselves and in animals, plants, rocks, and trees. The Romantic poets revived a spirituality that had been submerged in the scientific age. By approaching nature in a different way, they had recovered a sense of its numinous mystery.

• From From Jesus to Constantine: A History of Early Christianity (2004)

  ©2004 The Teaching Company. 65 E. The account of her death in the arena is then narrated by an editor who took her diary and incorporated it into a longer martyrology, popular down through the ages until today. IV. Why were such Christians as Blandina in Lyons, Polycarp in Smyrna, and Perpetua in North Africa so firm in refusing to recant, so stalwart in the face of death? A. We can never know their personal reasons. But we do have some indications from the writings about them (by the Christians left behind) concerning why Christians preferred public torture, humiliation, and death to release and long life. B. It appears that many Christians were convinced that as bad as the torments of the present were, they were not nearly so bad as the torments awaiting those who rejected Christ in the world to come (as explicitly stated in the Martyrdom of Polycarp and the letter of the churches of Lyons and Vienne). 1. This view is rooted in a theodicy that maintained that God would reward the righteous but punish the unrighteous. 2. This message became one of the central features of Christian preaching and related closely to its exclusivistic claims. Not only were Christians right in what they believed, but those who chose not to agree would be punished with horrific torments eternally. C. Moreover, some Christians saw that a violent death at the hands of the authorities was a way to imitate Christ, who had died a similar death. 1. This view can be seen most clearly in the writings of one of the first Christians known to be martyred after the New Testament period, Ignatius of Antioch. 2. Ignatius was the bishop of Antioch, arrested for Christian activities, and sent to Rome to be thrown to the wild beasts. 3. En route, he wrote six letters to various churches that had sent representatives to greet him on the way. He wrote one other letter to the Christians in Rome, urging them not to interfere with the proceedings against him once he arrived, because it was by a violent death that he would be united with Christ and, thus, “attain to God.” 4. The longing of Ignatius for violent death may seem pathological to modern ears, but it was only logical for him:

• From The Case for God (2009)

  From almost the very beginning, men and women have repeatedly engaged in strenuous and committed religious activity. They evolved mythologies, rituals, and ethical disciplines that brought them intimations of holiness that seemed in some indescribable way to enhance and fulfill their humanity. They were not religious simply because their myths and doctrines were scientifically or historically sound, because they sought information about the origins of the cosmos, or merely because they wanted a better life in the hereafter. They were not bludgeoned into faith by power-hungry priests or kings: indeed, religion often helped people to oppose tyranny and oppression of this kind. The point of religion was to live intensely and richly here and now. Truly religious people are ambitious. They want lives overflowing with significance. They have always desired to integrate with their daily lives the moments of rapture and insight that came to them in dreams, in their contemplation of nature, and in their intercourse with one another and with the animal world. Instead of being crushed and embittered by the sorrow of life, they sought to retain their peace and serenity in the midst of their pain. They yearned for the courage to overcome their terror of mortality; instead of being grasping and mean-spirited, they aspired to live generously, large-heartedly, and justly, and to inhabit every single part of their humanity. Instead of being a mere workaday cup, they wanted, as Confucius suggested, to transform themselves into a beautiful ritual vessel brimful of the sanctity that they were learning to see in life. They tried to honor the ineffable mystery they sensed in each human being and create societies that protected and welcomed the stranger, the alien, the poor, and the oppressed. Of course, they often failed, sometimes abysmally. But overall they found that the disciplines of religion helped them to do all this. Those who applied themselves most assiduously showed that it was possible for mortal men and women to live on a higher, divine, or godlike plane and thus wake up to their true selves.

• From Shoe Dog: A Memoir by the Creator of Nike (2016)

  I went back to India, spent New Year’s Eve wandering the streets of Bombay, weaving in and out among oxen and long-horned cows, feeling the start of an epic migraine—the noise and the smells, the colors and the glare. I went on to Kenya, and took a long bus ride deep into the bush. Giant ostriches tried to outrun the bus, and storks the size of pit bulls floated just outside the windows. Every time the driver stopped, in the middle of nowhere, to pick up a few Masai warriors, a baboon or two would try to board. The driver and warriors would then chase the baboons off with machetes. Before stepping off the bus, the baboons would always glance over their shoulders and give me a look of wounded pride. Sorry, old man, I thought. If it were up to me. I went to Cairo, to the Giza plateau, and stood beside desert nomads and their silk-draped camels at the foot of the Great Sphinx, all of us squinting up into its eternally open eyes. The sun hammered down on my head, the same sun that hammered down on the thousands of men who built these pyramids, and the millions of visitors who came after. Not one of them was remembered, I thought. All is vanity, says the Bible. All is now, says Zen. All is dust, says the desert. I went to Jerusalem, to the rock where Abraham prepared to kill his son, where Muhammad began his heavenward ascent. The Koran says the rock wanted to join Muhammad, and tried to follow, but Muhammad pressed his foot to the rock and stopped it. His footprint is said to be still visible. Was he barefoot or wearing a shoe? I ate a terrible midday meal in a dark tavern, surrounded by soot-faced laborers. Each looked bone-tired. They chewed slowly, absently, like zombies. Why must we work so hard? I thought. Consider the lilies of the field… they neither toil nor spin. And yet the first-century rabbi Eleazar ben Azariah said our work is the holiest part of us. All are proud of their craft. God speaks of his work; how much more should man. I went on to Istanbul, got wired on Turkish coffee, got lost on the twisty streets beside the Bosphorus. I stopped to sketch the glowing minarets, and toured the golden labyrinths of Topkapi Palace, home of the Ottoman sultans, where Muhammad’s sword is now kept. Don’t go to sleep one night, wrote Rūmī, the thirteenth-century Persian poet. What you most want will come to you then. Warmed by a sun inside you’ll see wonders.

• From The Case for God (2009)

  A junzi was not born but crafted; he had to work on himself as a sculptor shaped a rough stone and made it a thing of beauty. “How can I achieve this?” asked Yan Hui, Confucius’s most talented disciple. It was simple, Confucius replied: “Curb your ego and surrender to ritual ( li ).” 72 A junzi must submit every detail of his life to the ancient rites of consideration and respect for others. This was the answer to China’s political problems: “If a ruler could curb his ego and submit to li for a single day, everyone under Heaven would respond to his goodness.” 73 The practice of the Golden Rule “all day and every day” would bring human beings into the state that Confucius called ren , a word that would later be described as “benevolence” but that Confucius himself refused to define because it could be understood only by somebody who had acquired it. He preferred to remain silent about what lay at the end of the religious journey. The practice of ren was an end in itself; it was itself the transcendence you sought. Yan Hui expressed this beautifully when he spoke of the endless struggle to achieve ren “with a deep sigh.” The more I strain my gaze towards it, the higher it soars. The deeper I bore down into it, the harder it becomes. I see it in front, but suddenly it is behind. Step by step, the Master skilfully lures one on. He has broadened me with culture, restrained me with ritual. Even if I wanted to stop, I could not. Just when I feel that I have exhausted every resource, something seems to rise up, standing over me sharp and clear. Yet though I long to pursue it, I can find no way of getting to it at all. 74 Living a compassionate, empathetic life took Yan Hui beyond himself, giving him momentary glimpses of a sacred reality that was not unlike the “God” worshipped by monotheists. It was both immanent and transcendent: it welled up from within but was also experienced as an external presence “standing over me sharp and clear.” Religion as defined by the great sages of India, China, and the Middle East was not a notional activity but a practical one; it did not require belief in a set of doctrines but rather hard, disciplined work, without which any religious teaching remained opaque and incredible. The ultimate reality was not a Supreme Being—an idea that was quite alien to the religious sensibility of antiquity; it was an all-encompassing, wholly transcendent reality that lay beyond neat doctrinal formulations.

• From Shoe Dog: A Memoir by the Creator of Nike (2016)

  Before I died, became too old or consumed with everyday minutiae, I wanted to visit the planet’s most beautiful and wondrous places. And its most sacred. Of course I wanted to taste other foods, hear other languages, dive into other cultures, but what I really craved was connection with a capital C. I wanted to experience what the Chinese call Tao, the Greeks call Logos, the Hindus call Jñāna, the Buddhists call Dharma. What the Christians call Spirit. Before setting out on my own personal life voyage, I thought, let me first understand the greater voyage of humankind. Let me explore the grandest temples and churches and shrines, the holiest rivers and mountaintops. Let me feel the presence of... God? Yes, I told myself, yes. For want of a better word, God. But first, I’d need my father’s approval. More, I’d need his cash. I’d already mentioned making a big trip, the previous year, and my father seemed open to it. But surely he’d forgotten. And surely I was pushing it, adding to the original proposal this Crazy Idea, this outrageous side trip—to Japan? To launch a company? Talk about boondoggles. Surely he’d see this as a bridge too far. And a bridge too darned expensive. I had some savings from the Army, and from various part-time jobs over the last several summers. On top of which, I planned to sell my car, a cherry black 1960 MG with racing tires and a twin cam. (The same car Elvis drove in Blue Hawaii.) All of which amounted to fifteen hundred dollars, leaving me a grand short, I now told my father. He nodded, uh-huh, mm-hmm, and flicked his eyes from the TV to me, and back again, while I laid it all out. Remember how we talked, Dad? How I said I want to see the World? The Himalayas? The pyramids? The Dead Sea, Dad? The Dead Sea? Well, haha, I’m also thinking of stopping off in Japan, Dad. Remember my Crazy Idea? Japanese running shoes? Right? It could be huge, Dad. Huge. I was laying it on thick, putting on the hard sell, extra hard, because I always hated selling, and because this particular sell had zero chance. My father had just forked out hundreds of dollars to the University of Oregon, thousands more to Stanford. He was the publisher of the Oregon Journal, a solid job that paid for all the basic comforts, including our spacious white house on Claybourne Street, in Portland’s quietest suburb, Eastmoreland. But the man wasn’t made of money. Also, this was 1962. The earth was bigger then. Though humans were beginning to orbit the planet in capsules, 90 percent of Americans still had never been on an airplane.

• From From Jesus to Constantine: A History of Early Christianity (2004)

  Let me be fodder for the wild beasts [said Ignatius to the Roman Christians]. That is how I can get to God. I am God’s wheat, and I am being ground by the teeth of wild beasts to be made a pure loaf of bread for Christ. I would rather that you fawn the beasts, so that they may be my tomb, and no scrap of my body be left. Thus, when I have fallen asleep, I shall be a burden to no one. Then, I shall be a real disciple of Christ. Then, the world will see my body no more. What a thrill I shall have from the wild beasts that are ready for me. I hope they will make short work of me. I shall coax them on to eat me up, all at once, and not hold off, as sometimes happens. Now is the moment I am beginning to be a disciple. May nothing seen or unseen begrudge me making my way to Jesus Christ. Come, fire, cross, battling with wild beasts, wrenching of bones, mangling of limbs, crushing of my whole body, cruel tortures of the devil. Only let me get to Jesus Christ. Thus, he went on, talking about how he wanted to imitate the passion of Christ, the death of Christ, so that he would be worthy of meeting Christ in the afterlife. As I pointed out—well, I didn’t need to point it out—this longing for violent death may sound pathological to our ears, but for him, it was only logical. This world was of no importance to Ignatius. What mattered was the other world, the world of God, which he could attain by imitating the martyrdom of Christ himself. This appears to have been a view of many of the early Christian martyrs. Not only were they thinking that the afterlife would be much better for them if they suffered this torment, but if they refused to suffer, they themselves would go through the torment. They were also thinking about imitating Christ’s own martyrdom. To sum up, it is difficult to actually know how many Christians went to face their deaths in this way. We don’t know what the numbers are because nobody recorded the numbers. The church father Eusebius, who recorded some of these incidents, sometimes said that six people were killed here, ten 207 people killed there. By and large, though, we don’t know how many people actually died, and I should point out that the people writing the accounts of the martyrdoms were always Christians who survived, so that these persecutions were not going after every Christian; a lot of people were left to witness the event, and wrote about it. It is difficult to know, then, how many Christians had to face death this way.