Admiration

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 Cleanness (2020)

  He told me about his day then, which was less regimented than mine, the day of a student. He was in Sofia as part of a program that shuttled college students around the EU, an attempt to stitch up the union though in R.’s case it hadn’t worked; he hated Bulgaria, he said, almost as much as he hated his own country. He had come with M., a friend from his university in Lisbon. He had thought it would be good to know someone here but it wasn’t good, he felt watched, forced to compromise and deceive, stuck with the self he would have liked to leave behind; that was really what he hated, I thought, not the country he lived in but the life he had made there. He was studying physical therapy, though he had wanted to major in languages, he told me the first time we met, when we talked for hours in a café before he came home with me. His parents insisted that he study something practical, a trade, but nothing’s practical now, he had said, laughing bitterly, there aren’t any jobs for anybody in Portugal, I should have studied what I wanted. He had a talent for languages; his English was almost perfect, natural and easy, and when he learned I was a teacher, he said with something like pride that he had always done well in his literature classes in high school, which were the only classes he enjoyed. When we got to my apartment that first time, before we moved into the bedroom, while we were still taking pleasure in delay, he recited a poem to me in his own language, a few lines of Pessoa he said everyone learned in school. It could have been anything, I didn’t understand a word of it, but it charmed me and allowed me to reach for him, to pull him close and press my mouth to his.

• From The Story of My Experiments with Truth (An Autobiography) (1927)

  I likewise discussed it with the late Hakim Saheb. Before the conference I contended that, if the Khilafat question had a just and legitimate basis, as I believe it had, and if the Government had really committed a gross injustice, the Hindus were bound to stand by the Musalmans in their demand for the redress of the Khilafat wrong. It would ill become them to bring in the cow question in this connection, or to use the occasion to make terms with the Musalmans, just as it would ill become the Musalmans to offer to stop cow slaughter as a price for the Hindus’ support on the Khilafat question. But it would be another matter and quite graceful, and reflect great credit on them, if the Musalmans of their own free will stopped cow slaughter out of regard for the religious sentiments of the Hindus, and from a sense of duty towards them as neighbours and children of the same soil. To take up such an independent attitude was, I contended, their duty, and would enhance the dignity of their conduct. But if the Musalmans considered it as their neighbourly duty to stop cow slaughter, they should do so regardless of whether the Hindus helped them in the Khilafat or not. ‘That being so,’ I argued, ‘the two questions should be discussed independently of each other, and the deliberations of the conference should be confined to the question of the Khilafat only.’ My argument appealed to those present and, as a result, the question of cow protection was not discussed at this conference. But in spite of my warning Maulana Abdul Bari Saheb said: ‘No matter whether the Hindus help us or not, the Musalmans ought, as the countrymen of the Hindus, out of regard for the latter’s susceptibilities, to give up cow slaughter.’ And at one time it almost looked as if they would really put an end to it. There was a suggestion from some quarters that the Punjab question should be tacked on to that of the Khilafat wrong. I opposed the proposal. The Punjab question, I said, was a local affair and could not therefore weigh with us in our decision to participate or not in the peace celebrations. If we mixed up the local question with the Khilafat question, which arose directly out of the peace terms, we should be guilty of a serious indiscretion. My argument easily carried conviction. Maulana Hasrat Mohani was present in this meeting. I had known him even before, but it was only here that I discovered what a fighter he was. We differed from each other almost from the very beginning, and in several matters the differences have persisted. Among the numerous resolutions that were passed at this conference, one called upon both Hindus and Musalmans to take the Swadeshi vow, and as a natural corollary to it, to boycott foreign goods. Khadi had not as yet found its proper place.

• From This Boy's Life: A Memoir (1989)

  My brother sent me a story he had written called “A Hank o’ Hair, A Piece of Bone.” It was about an American imprisoned in Italy for murdering a prostitute. His father was rich, but the young man refused to ask him for help. He was alienated from his father and from everyone else. He was so alienated that he wouldn’t even say he was sorry for killing the girl. He was sorry—he’d been drunk at the time—but such was his contempt for society that he would do nothing to court its mercy. The story was filled with closely observed details of prison life, such as automatic toilets flushing every few minutes and inmates banging on their bars with tin cups. I thought it was great. I couldn’t get over Geoffrey’s audacity in writing it. I sent him one of mine, a story about two wolves fighting to the death in the Yukon, but I knew his was better and contemplated submitting it to my English teacher as if it were my own. In the end I decided not to. I knew I’d never get away with it. Geoffrey wrote again to say he had liked my story and wanted me to send more. His letter was affectionate and full of news. This was his last year at Princeton. He hoped to move to Europe when he graduated, to work on a novel. There was also the possibility of a teaching job in Turkey. Princeton had been good to him, he said, and I ought to give it some serious consideration when the time came to choose my own college. Geoffrey also sent word of my father. He and his wife were separated. He had moved to California and found work at Convair Astronautics, the first real job he had had in years. In fact, Geoffrey said, they’d all been having a bumpy time of it for quite a while now. He would tell me more when he saw me, which he hoped to do before he left the country. It had been too long, he said. Geoffrey wanted to see me. That was plain. I had been wanting to see him for years, but before now, even when I hatched plans to join up with him, I never knew whether he felt the same way. In most respects we were strangers. But it mattered to me that he was my brother, and it seemed to matter to him. In his letters, elegance of tone had given way to simple friendliness. I carried the letters

• From The Day the Revolution Began (2016)

  That, of course, brought new challenges. Victories always do. That moment when the church was first permitted and then authorized as the official religion of the state was indeed difficult, and brought the church into a potentially compromised situation. Nobody ever suggested the church would face no challenges to its integrity, or that Jesus’s followers would never have difficulty working out what following him would mean in new situations. But it did mean that many brave and wise teachers and leaders navigated and negotiated their way through the new challenges, and that what at the time were clearly “Christian values”—an emphasis on education, medicine, and looking after the poor as well as on avoiding idolatry and immorality—ceased to be the strange, unnatural concerns of a minority and became instead the way of life that an increasing number recognized, not just as a new way to be human, but as a far better way. Sometimes things are not so clear-cut. In our own day the harrowing novel Silence by the Japanese writer Shusaku Endo tells of the sustained and vicious persecution of the small Japanese church a few hundred years ago and of the appalling dilemmas faced by those who wanted to stay loyal to their faith. As I write, the novel is being made into a film by the director Martin Scorsese. The Japanese Christian artist Mako Fujimura (with Philip Yancey) has written about it in a moving book entitled Silence and Beauty. As Fujimura brings out, even when God seems silent—as in the novel—there is still a message to be heard. Light is present in the darkness. Sometimes even silence can speak with hidden beauty and truth. These are uncomfortable messages for comfortable Western Christians to hear, and they are all the more important for that. But we don’t have to look to novels or to distant history. While I have been working on this book, Christians have been beheaded in public on a beach in North Africa. Others have been shot, raped, and tortured. On the day I am revising this chapter, a message comes from the struggling Christian community in Ethiopia, which is facing a massive refugee crisis and with it increased tensions between tribal as well as religious groups. Those of us for whom a visit to the dentist is about as much pain as we normally experience in a month and who confidently expect to worship and study scripture without any threats from either the authorities or hostile local groups find it almost impossible to imagine being in such a position. But these are our sisters and brothers. They are, quite literally, “martyrs”; the word means “witnesses.” Some of those who were beheaded on that beach shouted out “Jesus!” in their last moments. They knew him, loved him, and were ready to die for him, as he had died for them. We cannot tell what effect their witness will have in the days to come, but history suggests it will be powerful.

• From Momma and the Meaning of Life (1999)

  Therapists facilitate change in the patient and, in the process, are themselves changed. Good therapists are perpetual students on a never-ending voyage of self-discovery and, as they feel more secure in their own skins and are able to relinquish the garb of authority, they will welcome as a blessing a deeply intelligent, sensitive, and challenging patient like Irene. The existential frame of reference described throughout this volume posits that many patients fall into despair because of an encounter with some of the ultimate concerns of existence. The particular concerns most salient to clinical work are death, isolation, freedom, and meaninglessness—themes which form the spine of my text, Existential Psychotherapy (Basic Books, 1980). Since these sources of angst are universal—inherent in the human condition— psychotherapists cannot pretend that it is only “they,” the patients, who face these threats; instead it is “we,” all of us, who share a common destiny. Accordingly the metaphor of “fellow travelers” more aptly describes the therapist-patient relationship I strive for in my therapy work. I first met with Irene shortly after completing three years of research in which I and my colleagues studied the dynamics and clinical course of eighty bereaved spouses.* My research experience proved less relevant to the treatment course than I had expected; in fact there were many counter-productive instances—times when Irene felt, quite justifiably, that my reliance on the experience of other bereaved individuals impeded my appreciation of her unique experience. The effective therapist must be able to empty his/her mind of the expectations and stereotypes which obstruct vision in order to facilitate the patient’s unique narrative to unfold freshly in the relationship. And so, too, for therapy technique. Not only in “Seven Advanced Lessons in the Therapy of Grief,” but in the other tales as well I urge the therapist to create a new therapy for each patient. Hyperbolic though that may sound, I sincerely mean that the therapeutic venture must be organic: the therapist and patient must together shape the form of therapy—indeed, the joint process of shaping the work is an integral part of the work. The contemporary managed care trend toward brief, ready-made, protocol-driven therapy is a wrong turn and is deeply threatening to the whole therapeutic enterprise; it is based on a profound misunderstanding of the process of personal growth, namely that therapy consists of imparting information or advice. Ernest Lash, the therapist in the last two stories “Double Exposure” and “The Hungarian Cat Curse” had an earlier life as the protagonist of my novel, Lying on the Couch. His encore appearance is meant to signify that these two last tales are heavily fictionalized. “Double Exposure” is a “what if” story. Years ago, I regularly audiotaped the sessions of a patient who had a two-hour commute to my office and handed her the cassette to listen to on the drive to the following session. (I routinely do this with patients who come to see me from great distances.

• From Story of O (1954)

  Story of O is the work of an original writer, who has dared to present us with certain truths, or intimations of truth, rarely found in literature. However much one may disagree with, or even profoundly dislike, these truths (or, if you will, these ideas), Pauline Réage has done what all good artists aim for and, when they are successful, accomplish: to arouse us from the lethargy of our set ways and routine lives, prick us into consciousness, provoke a reaction (whether positive or negative, it matters little) within us; in short, to make us think. That in itself is a rare enough occurrence so that we should be grateful indeed whenever we have the good fortune to encounter it. M. Paulhan, in speculating about the book’s conclusion, suggests that the author may have permitted herself this one small indulgence—the end—with the thought in mind of one day continuing O’s adventures. To date, however, no sequel has been forthcoming, and the present work, with its many mysteries still unsolved, is all we have.2 For beyond the more or less general consensus that the author is a woman, nothing is certain about the work. And yet, perhaps there is a kind of virtue in this, for we are thus obliged to judge the book itself, uncluttered by any outside considerations. Like O before her judges, the work stands naked and alone. S. d’E. 1 There is a story, perhaps apocryphal, that when M. Paulhan was nominated for l’Académie Française, opponents to his candidacy placed a copy of the yellow-covered volume of O on the chair of each of the Academy members. Another version has it that the copies were so placed by members promoting his candidacy, who claimed that his discovery of and Preface to O constituted another proof of his literary acumen. Whatever the truth, M. Paulhan was promptly elected as one of France’s forty immortals.2 Or, to be exact, almost all. A year or two after O appeared, Miss Réage wrote the preface to another somewhat mysterious work entitled l’Image, by Jean de Berg, which was published in 1956 by Les Editions de Minuit, the publishers of most of the avant-garde fiction in France since World War II. Since then, however, she has not been heard from again.A Note on Story of OBy André Pieyre de Mandiargues

• From The Day the Revolution Began (2016)

  This was by no means necessarily the case for prophetic or would-be messianic figures in the Second Temple Jewish world. We do not know as much as we would like to about the leaders, including the would-be Messiahs, whom we meet briefly in the pages of Josephus or indeed about Simon bar-Kochba, who led the final failed revolt almost exactly a hundred years after Jesus’s public career. But we do not get the impression from them of a character such as we find in the stories about Jesus. Nor, for that matter, does John the Baptist come over as the sort of person who might claim to have a heart that was “gentle, not arrogant” or to offer his followers “the rest they deeply need” (Matt. 11:29). This is one place where the long traditions of displaying a romantic or sentimental Jesus figure have let us down. We are so used to the soppy picture of “gentle Jesus, meek and mild” and to the reaction that such a picture provokes, stressing Jesus’s occasional sternness and warnings against the Pharisees and others, that we have perhaps failed to notice how strange it is to have a major public figure who is treading a dangerous line between affirming ancient traditions and criticizing current abuses and who is known at the same time for a deeply caring approach to people of all sorts, especially those in distress. The reason for highlighting this here is not simply that it is an important and easily overlooked feature of the gospels, but that for all four evangelists this deliberately and explicitly constructs a picture of Jesus’s death not in terms of an angry father lashing out at an innocent and defenseless son, but in terms of someone embodying the love of God himself , acting as the personal expression of that love all the way to his death. If more attention had been paid to this feature, which is built into the narrative rather than being stuck in from the side by means of one or two scriptural quotations or allusions or the odd authorial “aside,” some of the more disturbing and unbiblical features of would-be “atonement” theology—and the social and cultural spinoffs that have sometimes accompanied them—could have been avoided. John, as we saw, opens his account of the events leading up to Jesus’s death by stressing that this was the completion of Jesus’s constant love (13:1). But this does not stand alone. For John, it draws out and makes explicit what has been implicit in passage after passage as Jesus transforms the lives of people of all sorts; biblical imagery, such as that of the “good shepherd,” also makes the same point.

• From The Day the Revolution Began (2016)

  The suffering and death of the Maccabean martyrs and their potential redemptive significance are discussed in more detail in 4 Maccabees, where the language of ransom and sacrifice becomes prominent. The book is drawing into Israel’s traditions philosophical ideas from elsewhere and indeed frames itself as a philosophical treatise extolling the exemplary virtues of the martyrs. This may mean that the author does indeed have the famous non-Jewish traditions about “dying for others” in mind. In setting up these Jewish heroes, he is saying that the Jews too can show evidence of the kind of noble behavior much vaunted in the non-Jewish world. Nevertheless, the language used here still carries the overtones of the Jewish cult, through which the land is purified: At this time it is fitting for me to praise for their virtues those who, with their mother, died for the sake of nobility and goodness, but I would also call them blessed for the honor in which they are held. All people, even their torturers, marveled at their courage and endurance, and they became the cause of the downfall of tyranny over their nation. By their endurance they conquered the tyrant, and thus their native land was purified through them. (1:10–11) This is then developed in the story of Eleazar. Having exhorted the “children of Abraham” to “die nobly for [their] religion” (6:22), he then addresses God in an explicit prayer of self-sacrifice: You know, O God, that though I might have saved myself, I am dying in burning torments for the sake of the law. Be merciful to your people, and let our punishment suffice for them. Make my blood their purification, and take my life in exchange for theirs. (6:27–29) When it comes to the seven brothers, the account follows that in 2 Maccabees in outline, though the final speech of the seventh brother is not so explicitly redemptive as the earlier version; he merely calls on God to be merciful to the nation, while warning the tyrant that God will take vengeance on him here and in the hereafter (12:17). But when the writer sums up what the martyrdom means, the redemptive note emerges again, and this time more fully: These, then, who have been consecrated for the sake of God, are honored, not only with this honor, but also by the fact that because of them our enemies did not rule over our nation, the tyrant was punished, and the homeland purified—they having become, as it were, a ransom for the sin of our nation. And through the blood of those devout ones and their death as an atoning sacrifice [hilastērion], divine Providence preserved Israel that previously had been mistreated. (17:20–22)

• From Momma and the Meaning of Life (1999)

  “What did that improvising feel like to you?” I asked, scribbling quickly. “Very scary sometimes. I wanted you to be the Oz wizard. I was lost, and I wanted you to know the way home to Kansas. Sometimes I was suspicious of your uncertainty. I wondered if your improvisation was real or whether it was just a pretense at improvisation, just your wizard’s way. “Another thing: you knew how much I insist on figuring out how to fix things for myself. So I thought your improvising with me was a plan—a pretty canny plan—to disarm me. “Another thought . . . you want me to just ramble like this, Irv?” “Exactly like this—keep going.” “When you told me about other widows or about your research findings, I knew you were trying to reassure me, and once in a while it helped to realize that I was in the midst of a process, that I would pass through certain states of mind just as other women had done. But generally that kind of comment left me feeling diminished. It was as though you were making me ordinary. I never felt ordinary when we were improvising. Then I was special, unique. We were finding our way together.” “Other helpful things?” “Again, simple things. You may not even remember, but at the end of one of our very first sessions, as I was walking out the door, you put your hand on my shoulder and said, ‘I’ll see this through with you.’ I never forgot that statement—it was a mighty staff of support.” “I remember, Irene.” “And it helped a lot when sometimes you’d stop trying to fix or to analyze or interpret me and you’d say something simple and straight like, ‘Irene, you’re going through a nightmare—one of the worst I can imagine.’ And the best thing of all was when you’d add—not often enough—that you admired and respected me for my courage in persevering.” Thinking to say something about her courage now, I glanced up and saw her looking at her watch, heard her say, “Oh dear, I’ve got to go.” So she was ending the session. How far the mighty have fallen! For a moment I had an impish impulse to fake a tantrum and accuse her of throwing me out but decided not to be so childish. “I know what you’re thinking, Irv.” “What’s that?” “You probably find the reversal amusing—that it’s I, not you, ending the session.” “Right on, Irene. As usual.” “You going to be here for a few minutes? I’m meeting Kevin down the street for lunch and can bring him up here to meet you. I’d like to do that.”

• From Story of O (1954)

  The short summer night waxed slowly brighter until, toward four o’clock, daylight drowned the last stars. O, who was sleeping with her legs together, was awakened by Anne-Marie’s hands probing between her thighs. But all Anne-Marie wanted was to awaken O, to have O caress her. Her eyes were shining in the half light, and her black hair, with the streaks of gray interspersed, was pushed up behind her on the pillow: only slightly curly, and cut quite short, it made her look like some mighty nobleman in exile, like some brave libertine. With her lips, O brushed the hard tips of her breasts, and her hand ran lightly over the valley of her belly. Anne-Marie was quick to yield—but not to O. The pleasure to which she opened her eyes wide, staring at the growing daylight, was an anonymous, impersonal pleasure of which O was merely the instrument. It made no difference whatever to Anne-Marie that O admired her face, smooth and glowing with renewed youth, her lovely panting lips, nor did she care whether O heard her moan when her lips and teeth seized the crest of flesh hidden in the furrow of her belly. She merely seized O by the hair to press her more closely to her, and only let her go in order to say to her: “Again, do it again.” O had loved Jacqueline in the same way, had held her completely abandoned in her arms. She had possessed her; or at least so she thought. But the similarity of gestures meant nothing. O did not possess Anne-Marie. No one possessed Anne-Marie. Anne-Marie demanded caresses without worrying about what the person providing them might feel, and she surrendered herself with an arrogant liberty. Yet she was all kindness and gentleness with O, kissed her on the mouth and kissed her breasts, and held her close against her for an hour before sending her back to her own room. She had removed her irons. “These are your final hours here,” she said, “you can sleep without the irons. The ones we’ll put on you in a little while you’ll never be able to take off.” She had run her hand softly, and at great length, over O’s rear, then had taken her into the room where she, Anne-Marie, dressed, the only room in the house where there was a three-sided mirror. She had opened the mirror so that O could see herself. “This is the last time you’ll see yourself intact,” she said. “Here, on this smooth, rounded area is where Sir Stephen’s initials will be branded, on either side of the cleft in your behind. The day before you leave I’ll bring you back here for another look at yourself. You won’t recognize yourself. But Sir Stephen is right. Now go and get some sleep, O.”

• From Story of O (1954)

  That you are a woman I have little doubt. Not so much because of the kind of detail you delight in describing—the green satin dresses, wasp-waist corsets, and skirts rolled up a number of turns (like hair rolled up in a curler)—but rather because of something like this: the day when René abandons O to still further torments, she still manages to have enough presence of mind to notice that her lover’s slippers are frayed, and notes that she will have to buy him another pair. To me, such a thought seems almost unimaginable. It is something a man would never have thought of, or at least would never have dared express. And yet, in her own way O expressed a virile ideal. Virile, or at least masculine. At last a woman who admits it! Who admits what? Something that women have always refused till now to admit (and today more than ever before). Something that men have always reproached them with: that they never cease obeying their nature, the call of their blood, that everything in them, even their minds, is sex. That they have constantly to be nourished, constantly washed and made up, constantly beaten. That all they need is a good master, one who is not too lax or kind: for the moment we make any show of tenderness they draw upon it, turning all the zest, joy, and character at their command to make others love them. In short, that we must, when we go to see them, take a whip along. Rare is the man who has not dreamed of possessing Justine. But, so far as I know, no woman has ever dreamed of being Justine. I mean, dreamed aloud, with this same pride at being grieved and in tears, this consuming violence, with this voracious capacity for suffering, and this amazing will, stretched to the breaking point, and even beyond. Woman you may be, but descended from a knight, or a crusader. As though yours was a dual personality, or the person for whom your letter was intended was so constantly present that you borrowed his taste, and his voice. But what kind of woman, and who are you?

• From Story of O (1954)

  Proud Réage … In the midst of her glowing tale, she has a way of involving herself, of slipping, at the worst possible moments, into the skin of her heroine, which is enough to make one shudder and at the same time make one feel a certain tenderness for her. The way one would feel toward a brave bull who has fought well. The château at Roissy, like the bull ring, is the sacrificial site. When women become exasperated, they sometimes assume postures wherein they seem to be offering themselves to the arrows of misfortune, and it would not be difficult to draw from them, for the sake of youth, some sublime examples. For it is difficult to go as far down as Réage does, under cover of the mask and of night but beneath the cruelest light, and she reaches depths of humiliation which have scarcely been plumbed by Genet, or by Adamov in the terrible pages of his L’Epreuve. With her, not the faintest trace of dilettantism. Still proudly, the black pact is candidly accepted, and carried through to its ultimate consequences. It is in this, perhaps, that she differs especially from the authors of erotic books, almost all of whom have known how to keep themselves aloof by keeping to the privileged terrain of dandyism, by torturing victims with whom they are unfamiliar, by using humor and imagination, by discreetly keeping exits open by which, at dawn, they can leave, without having overly sullied or compromised themselves. Such a descent into hell, of which the rightful issue is the destruction of the body (and it is O’s fanatic wish that her body be insulted, then destroyed), has raised the question of “masochism.” The word, first of all, is detestable, deriving from one of the worst, most stupid, and ridiculous writers of the second half of the nineteenth century. Venus in Furs was all the rage. Who, unless he were a trifle addle-brained, would still have any interest in this empty prattle? Who would dare to compare it with the great, heavy silence cast like a cape over O’s tortures? As for the passion, or vice, which the term designates, we can at most allot it a minor role in Pauline Réage’s book, for it is so completely overwhelmed by the heroine’s ardor, transfigured by a current which comes from the soul and not from the body, and which in fact is directed against the body.

• From Mating in Captivity: Unlocking Erotic Intelligence (2006)

  “How beautiful and how pathetic,” I say. “It’s great to know you can still come to life like that. And you know that you can never compare this state of intoxication with life at home, because home is about something else. Home is safe. Here, you’re trembling; you’re on shaky ground. You like it, but you’re also afraid that it can take you too far away. I think that you probably don’t let your wife evoke such tremors in you. There’s an evolutionary anthropologist named Helen Fisher who explains that lust is metabolically expensive. It’s hard to sustain after the evolutionary payoff: the kids. You become so focused on the incessant demands of daily life that you short-circuit any electric charge between you. At our next session, Ryan knows exactly where he wants to start. Earlier that week, Christine and Barbara had made plans to go out to dinner. Feeling guilty, as she usually does, about going out without him, Christine invited Ryan to come along. Then she proceeded to ignore him for the rest of the evening. For once, he didn’t mind taking a backseat as he watched the women reminisce. After college they had both spent a year in Togo with the Peace Corps. Christine came home; Barbara never did. As was often the case in their conversations, each reported her envy of and admiration for the life of the other. “We’d just finished a great bottle of Australian Shiraz,” said Ryan, “and we were all pretty tipsy, when Christine totally shocked me by blurting out to Barbara, ‘I look at you and I wonder if it’s worth it. Frankly, I don’t think I’m made for this—the kids, the house, the job. Sometimes I wonder if I did it just to prove I could.’ Then she says, ‘I find it all so oppressive.’ She wondered if it was all worth it—she finds it oppressive? I was stunned.” Ryan repeated these words in a dazed voice as if he still couldn’t quite believe hearing them. At my prodding, he told me the rest of his wife’s remarks—that she felt she had always just done what was expected of her, that this was easier than figuring things out on her own. He continued, his tone both mocking and full of admiration as he expertly mimicked his wife. “‘I know it’s not right to complain when you have it all,’ she says. ‘Where’s my gratitude? I’m blessed with the kids, with Ryan, the remnants of a decent career, good friends. When you don’t have it—the family, the marriage—you romanticize it. At least I did. But then when you do have it, you feel trapped. I have my blissful moments, but mostly I’m mired in drudgery.’”

• From The First Paul: Reclaiming the Radical Visionary Behind the Church's Conservative Icon (2009)

  What makes a good and what makes a bad householder? Is there a just, fair, and equal distribution of rights and responsibilities, of duties and privileges? Are all the children well fed, clothed, and sheltered? Does everyone have enough? Do some members get far more than they need, while others get far less? Is it, in summary, a household well run for all concerned? If it is, then, indeed, one praises the name of the householder. For Paul, the Householder of the earth-house, the Homemaker of the world-home, is God, and all people are God’s dependents and God’s children. God as Householder is the One who has responsibility and charge for the home’s extended family. Therefore, for Paul, the justice of equality is directly about God and indirectly about us. It is, first and foremost, about the honor and glory of a just God reflected in a just world. Paul is not thinking primarily about democracy, social justice, or human rights. He is thinking primarily about the honor and glory of God revealed in how Christ lived and died and how the world should live and not die. That, of course, is why there is so much family language in Paul. Christians have already taken their place in the family of God. Hence Philemon is Paul’s “brother” and Apphia his “sister” in God’s family (Philem. 1–2). It is also fascinating to watch how Paul moves back and forth between calling Christians “sons (huioi ) of God” and “children (tekna ) of God,” sometimes in the very same unit. Since all Christians are “in Christ” and Christ is “Son of God,” Paul emphasizes “sons of God” in the Greek of Galatians 3:26, but then he has “children of God” in the Greek of Philippians 2:15. Even more striking and revealing is how he interweaves “sons of God” twice in Romans 8:14, 19 with “children of God” twice in Romans 8:16, 21—and again in Romans 9:8. It is, for Paul, all about family values—but divine family values, and that is what makes him very, very radical. Finally, against that background of God as Householder of our world-home, we return to Paul’s emphasis on intra-Christian equality in Philemon, Galatians, and 1 Corinthians one more time. We might be tempted today to criticize Paul along these lines: “You are so narrow and parochial, dear Paul. You are only speaking about Christianity and not about the whole world.” We Americans have a Pledge of Allegiance assuring “liberty and justice for all, ” not just for Christians. And we open our Declaration of Independence by holding “these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” How might Paul have responded to those proclamations of universal and natural rights compared to his assertions of Christian rights and duties?

• From The First Paul: Reclaiming the Radical Visionary Behind the Church's Conservative Icon (2009)

  The first positive gift was vista and involved the advantages of a frontier city between the Greek and the Semitic worlds. We think today of the Mediterranean fault line between West and East as extending along the Dardanelles to the Bosphorus and splitting the modern city of Istanbul into European and Asian sections. At the turn of the era, you could more easily imagine it as extending along the Cydnus River and splitting into two parts, as it were, the ancient city of Tarsus. Tarsus looked toward both the West and the East. Those born there could easily imagine going north through the Cilician Gates in the Taurus Mountains and then west toward Asia Minor and Greece. They could just as easily imagine going east through the Syrian Gates in the Amanus Mountains and then south toward Israel and Egypt. Tarsus gave Paul an early vision of sea and mountain, gorge and river, gave him an early vista of difficult actualities, but open possibilities. The second positive gift was labor and involved an appreciation for what could be accomplished by hard work. The Tarsians made their city even as their city made them. To the south and the Mediterranean Sea, they had engineered a secure harbor from their river’s gift of a large lagoon. To the north and the Anatolian plateau, they had engineered a wagon road through their mountain’s gift of a deep defile. Tarsians connected together the open vista of the Mediterranean Sea, the steamy marsh of the Cilician plain, the icy cold of the Taurus range, and the baked heat of the Anatolian plateau. Geography was destiny, to be sure, but hard work could change geography and thus change history as well. The third positive gift was education and involved Jewish synagogue teaching in a Greek university city. In Strabo’s Geography, written when Paul was a young man, Tarsus’s university status gets very high marks. It “surpassed Athens, Alexandria, or any other place that can be named where there have been schools and lectures of philosophers.” It also had “all kinds of schools of rhetoric,” and, indeed, “it is Rome that is best able to tell us the number of learned men from that city; for it is full of Tarsians and Alexandrians” (14.5). Athens and Alexandria might have scoffed at that comparison but, if so, they would have done it quietly. After all, it was a Tarsian philosopher named Athenodorus who was teaching the nineteen-year-old Octavian at Apollonia in northwestern Greece, when his pupil’s great-uncle Julius Caesar was assassinated in 44 BCE. Athenodorus immediately accompanied Octavian back to Rome and stayed with him for the next thirty years, as that student became the divine Augustus, emperor of the Roman world. Athenodorus finally returned home to Tarsus about a dozen years before Paul was born and, as its university’s principal, proceeded successfully to reform that city’s constitution and lead its government.

• From Confessions of a Mask (1958)

  Time and time again I looked from the stains on my own white gloves to those on Omi's. . . . My blind adoration of Omi was devoid of any element of conscious criticism, and still less did I have anything like a moral viewpoint where he was concerned. Whenever I tried to capture the amorphous mass of my adoration within the confines of analysis, it would already have disappeared. If there be such a thing as love that has neither duration nor progress, this was precisely my emotion. The eyes through which I saw Omi were always those of a "first glance" or, if I may say so, of the "primeval glance." It was purely an unconscious attitude on my part, a ceaseless effort to protect my fourteen-year-old purity from the process of erosion. Could this have been love? Grant it to be one form of love, for even though at first glance it seemed to retain its pristine form forever, simply repeating that form over and over again, it too had its own unique sort of debasement and decay. And it was a debasement more evil than that of any normal kind of love. Indeed, of all the kinds of decay in this world, decadent purity is the most malignant. Nevertheless, in my unrequited love for Omi, in this the first love I encountered in life, I seemed like a baby bird keeping its truly innocent animal lusts hidden under its wing. I was being tempted, not by the desire for possession, but simply by unadorned temptation itself. To say the least, while at school, particularly during a boring class, I could not take my eyes off Omi's profile. What more could I have done when I did not know that to love is both to seek and to be sought? For me love was nothing but a dialogue of little riddles, with no answers given. As for my spirit of adoration, I never even imagined it to be a thing that required some sort of answer. One day I had a cold and, even though it was not at all serious, stayed home from school. Upon returning to school the next day, I discovered that the day I had chosen to miss had been nothing less than the day of the first spring physical examination in our third year. Several other students had likewise missed the examination, and we all went along together to the medical office. In the office a gas stove was sending up such a feeble blue flame into the sunlight that one could not even be certain it was lit.

• From The Decameron (1353)

  MITHRIDANES, ENVYING NATHAN HIS HOSPITALITY AND GENEROSITY AND GOING TO KILL HIM, FALLETH IN WITH HIMSELF, WITHOUT KNOWING HIM, AND IS BY HIM INSTRUCTED OF THE COURSE HE SHALL TAKE TO ACCOMPLISH HIS PURPOSE; BY MEANS WHEREOF HE FINDETH HIM, AS HE HIMSELF HAD ORDERED IT, IN A COPPICE AND RECOGNIZING HIM, IS ASHAMED AND BECOMETH HIS FRIEND Themseemed all they had heard what was like unto a miracle, to wit, that a churchman should have wrought anywhat magnificently; but, as soon as the ladies had left discoursing thereof, the king bade Filostrato proceed, who forthright began, "Noble ladies, great was the magnificence of the King of Spain and that of the Abbot of Cluny a thing belike never yet heard of; but maybe it will seem to you no less marvellous a thing to hear how a man, that he might do generosity to another who thirsted for his blood, nay, for the very breath of his nostrils, privily bethought himself to give them to him, ay, and would have done it, had the other willed to take them, even as I purpose to show you in a little story of mine. It is a very certain thing (if credit may be given to the report of divers Genoese and others who have been in those countries) that there was aforetime in the parts of Cattajo[443] a man of noble lineage and rich beyond compare, called Nathan, who, having an estate adjoining a highway whereby as of necessity passed all who sought to go from the Ponant to the Levant or from the Levant to the Ponant, and being a man of great and generous soul and desirous that it should be known by his works, assembled a great multitude of artificers and let build there, in a little space of time, one of the fairest and greatest and richest palaces that had ever been seen, the which he caused excellently well furnished with all that was apt unto the reception and entertainment of gentlemen. Then, having a great and goodly household, he there received and honourably entertained, with joyance and good cheer, whosoever came and went; and in this praiseworthy usance he persevered insomuch that not only the Levant, but well nigh all the Ponant, knew him by report. He was already full of years nor was therefore grown weary of the practice of hospitality, when it chanced that his fame reached the ears of a young man of a country not far from his own, by name Mithridanes, who, knowing himself no less rich than Nathan and waxing envious of his renown and his virtues, bethought himself to eclipse or shadow them with greater liberality. Accordingly, letting build a palace like unto that of Nathan, he proceeded to do the most unbounded courtesies[444] that ever any did whosoever came or went about those parts, and in a short time he became without doubt very famous.

• From Mating in Captivity: Unlocking Erotic Intelligence (2006)

  Soothed? Did we learn not to expect too much, to hide when we are upset, to make eye contact? In our family, we sense when it’s OK to thrive and when others might be hurt by our zest. We learn how to feel about our body, our gender, and our sexuality. And we learn a multitude of other lessons about who and how to be: to open up or to shut down, to sing or to whisper, to cry or to hide our tears, to dare or to be afraid. All these experiences shape our beliefs about ourselves and our expectations for others. They are part of the dowry each man and woman brings to adult love. Part of this emotional scorecard is obvious and manifest, but much of it is unspoken, concealed even from ourselves. Our sexual preferences arise from the thrills, challenges, and conflicts of our early life. How these bear on our threshold for closeness and pleasure is the object of our excavation. What turns you on and what turns you off? What draws you in? What leaves you cold? Why? How much closeness can you stand to feel? Can you tolerate pleasure with the one you love? When Steven’s father abandoned his mother, she picked up the pieces, devoted herself to caring for her children, and swore she would never let anyone hurt her like that again. An ER nurse, today she owns her home and has put three kids through college. Steven is filled with admiration and respect for his mother, and has spent much of his life guarding against becoming what he calls, “that asshole.” Six years into his marriage to Rita, he finds himself avoiding her démarches and ducking her accusations about his sexual passivity. Behind his excuses, Steven is baffled by his lack of interest—and by his unreliable erections. The more he loves and respects his wife, the harder it is for him to fuck her. In Steven’s mind, emotional security requires a constant monitoring of any selfish or aggressive inclinations. This belief, which grew out of his love for his mother, has become part of his sexuality. The more he loves Rita and the more he depends on her, the greater his need for caution and the more inhibited he is sexually. He doesn’t know how to experience the open range of lust in the context of emotional care. His unconscious is loyal to the past. For Dylan, a retail manager in his twenties, emotional security feels altogether impossible, with or without sexual excitement. His mother, who died when he was twelve, was the emotional linchpin of their family. When his eyes filled with tears at her funeral, his father said to him, “I hope you’re not going to fall apart on me.” In order to stay close to his father he had to excise his entire emotional life. He explains, “All feelings were a sign of weakness in our house.”

• From Mating in Captivity: Unlocking Erotic Intelligence (2006)

  Soothed? Did we learn not to expect too much, to hide when we are upset, to make eye contact? In our family, we sense when it’s OK to thrive and when others might be hurt by our zest. We learn how to feel about our body, our gender, and our sexuality. And we learn a multitude of other lessons about who and how to be: to open up or to shut down, to sing or to whisper, to cry or to hide our tears, to dare or to be afraid. All these experiences shape our beliefs about ourselves and our expectations for others. They are part of the dowry each man and woman brings to adult love. Part of this emotional scorecard is obvious and manifest, but much of it is unspoken, concealed even from ourselves. Our sexual preferences arise from the thrills, challenges, and conflicts of our early life. How these bear on our threshold for closeness and pleasure is the object of our excavation. What turns you on and what turns you off? What draws you in? What leaves you cold? Why? How much closeness can you stand to feel? Can you tolerate pleasure with the one you love? When Steven’s father abandoned his mother, she picked up the pieces, devoted herself to caring for her children, and swore she would never let anyone hurt her like that again. An ER nurse, today she owns her home and has put three kids through college. Steven is filled with admiration and respect for his mother, and has spent much of his life guarding against becoming what he calls, “that asshole.” Six years into his marriage to Rita, he finds himself avoiding her démarches and ducking her accusations about his sexual passivity. Behind his excuses, Steven is baffled by his lack of interest—and by his unreliable erections. The more he loves and respects his wife, the harder it is for him to fuck her. In Steven’s mind, emotional security requires a constant monitoring of any selfish or aggressive inclinations. This belief, which grew out of his love for his mother, has become part of his sexuality. The more he loves Rita and the more he depends on her, the greater his need for caution and the more inhibited he is sexually. He doesn’t know how to experience the open range of lust in the context of emotional care. His unconscious is loyal to the past. For Dylan, a retail manager in his twenties, emotional security feels altogether impossible, with or without sexual excitement. His mother, who died when he was twelve, was the emotional linchpin of their family. When his eyes filled with tears at her funeral, his father said to him, “I hope you’re not going to fall apart on me.” In order to stay close to his father he had to excise his entire emotional life. He explains, “All feelings were a sign of weakness in our house.”

• From The Day the Revolution Began (2016)

  It is after all generous love, Jesus-shaped love, that draws people into the Christian family in the first place, not the complex crossword puzzles of subtle theologians. But what a book like this may be able to do is to explain to such people and to confused onlookers how the larger picture fits together, so as to avoid the risk that love itself may be subverted by other influences. In particular, it may explain how the mission of the church is organically and intimately related to the great events at the heart of the faith. The truth of all this was brought home to many in my generation as we learned about Dietrich Bonhoeffer. He was one of the most brilliant young men of his generation and one of the finest theological minds of the century. When World War II broke out, he found himself in the comparative safety of the United States, but he believed firmly that God was calling him to return to his native Germany. Working as a pastor and teacher at a time of terrible ambiguities and uncertainties, with many friends regarding him as “a bit extreme” but with his conscience urging him on, he joined the campaign against Hitler, knowing well where it might lead. His Letters and Papers from Prison tells its own story of profound reflection and prayer as he faced the hangman’s noose not long before the end of the war. Who can say what wonderful works he might have written, had he survived? But who can tell what impact his faithful life and witness have had precisely through his martyrdom? This points all the way back to earlier examples of similar victories. In AD 177 a pagan mob in the city of Lyons, in southern France, killed several of the leading Christians in the area. The result was that Irenaeus came to Lyons as the new bishop (the previous bishop was among the martyrs) and was able, from that post, to teach and write vigorously on the subversive, world-changing truths of incarnation and resurrection against those, like the early Gnostics, who wanted to settle for a quieter life with the sharp edges of the gospel smoothed out. The blood of the martyrs was, in this case, the seed of some life-changing and gospel-enhancing theological teaching, which has served the church well ever since. Come forward from there a century or more. The initial victory of Jesus on the cross did not spare the church at the end of the third century from vicious and violent persecution under the emperor Diocletian. But the victory showed itself in a different way. Far from being stamped out, the church continued to grow at such a rate, not least because of the witness of those who had faced death for their faith, that the Roman Empire was forced to admit defeat. Nobody had known that people could live like that or face death like that. This was something new.