full transcript

From the Ted Talk by Lesley Hazleton: The doubt essential to faith


Unscramble the Blue Letters


So the man who fled down the mountain that night trembled not with joy but with a stark, primordial fear. He was overwhelmed not with conviction, but by doubt. And that panicked disorientation, that sundering of everything familiar, that daunting awareness of something beyond human cineorhsopmen, can only be called a terrible awe.

This might be somewhat difficult to gsarp now that we use the word "awesome" to describe a new app or a viral video. With the exception perhaps of a massive earthquake, we're protected from real awe. We clsoe the doros and hkenur down, cnvionced that we're in control, or, at least, hoping for control. We do our best to irogne the fact that we don't always have it, and that not everything can be explained. Yet whether you're a rationalist or a miytsc, whether you think the words Muhammad heard that night came from inside himself or from outside, what's clear is that he did experience them, and that he did so with a force that would shatter his sense of himself and his wlord and transform this otherwise mosedt man into a radical actoavde for social and economic justice. Fear was the only sane response, the only human response.

Open Cloze


So the man who fled down the mountain that night trembled not with joy but with a stark, primordial fear. He was overwhelmed not with conviction, but by doubt. And that panicked disorientation, that sundering of everything familiar, that daunting awareness of something beyond human _____________, can only be called a terrible awe.

This might be somewhat difficult to _____ now that we use the word "awesome" to describe a new app or a viral video. With the exception perhaps of a massive earthquake, we're protected from real awe. We _____ the _____ and ______ down, _________ that we're in control, or, at least, hoping for control. We do our best to ______ the fact that we don't always have it, and that not everything can be explained. Yet whether you're a rationalist or a ______, whether you think the words Muhammad heard that night came from inside himself or from outside, what's clear is that he did experience them, and that he did so with a force that would shatter his sense of himself and his _____ and transform this otherwise ______ man into a radical ________ for social and economic justice. Fear was the only sane response, the only human response.

Solution


  1. mystic
  2. convinced
  3. advocate
  4. grasp
  5. modest
  6. world
  7. doors
  8. close
  9. ignore
  10. comprehension
  11. hunker

Original Text


So the man who fled down the mountain that night trembled not with joy but with a stark, primordial fear. He was overwhelmed not with conviction, but by doubt. And that panicked disorientation, that sundering of everything familiar, that daunting awareness of something beyond human comprehension, can only be called a terrible awe.

This might be somewhat difficult to grasp now that we use the word "awesome" to describe a new app or a viral video. With the exception perhaps of a massive earthquake, we're protected from real awe. We close the doors and hunker down, convinced that we're in control, or, at least, hoping for control. We do our best to ignore the fact that we don't always have it, and that not everything can be explained. Yet whether you're a rationalist or a mystic, whether you think the words Muhammad heard that night came from inside himself or from outside, what's clear is that he did experience them, and that he did so with a force that would shatter his sense of himself and his world and transform this otherwise modest man into a radical advocate for social and economic justice. Fear was the only sane response, the only human response.

Frequently Occurring Word Combinations


ngrams of length 2

collocation frequency
real faith 2
conscious defiance 2
middle east 2



Important Words


  1. advocate
  2. app
  3. awareness
  4. awe
  5. called
  6. clear
  7. close
  8. comprehension
  9. control
  10. conviction
  11. convinced
  12. daunting
  13. describe
  14. difficult
  15. disorientation
  16. doors
  17. doubt
  18. earthquake
  19. economic
  20. exception
  21. experience
  22. explained
  23. fact
  24. familiar
  25. fear
  26. fled
  27. force
  28. grasp
  29. heard
  30. hoping
  31. human
  32. hunker
  33. ignore
  34. joy
  35. justice
  36. man
  37. massive
  38. modest
  39. mountain
  40. muhammad
  41. mystic
  42. night
  43. overwhelmed
  44. panicked
  45. primordial
  46. protected
  47. radical
  48. rationalist
  49. real
  50. response
  51. sane
  52. sense
  53. shatter
  54. social
  55. stark
  56. sundering
  57. terrible
  58. transform
  59. trembled
  60. video
  61. viral
  62. word
  63. words
  64. world