Anxiety

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.

Page 306 of 501 · 20 per page

• From A Greek-English Lexicon (Liddell-Scott) (1957)

  ἀπόκλϊσις, ews, 77, a turning off, declension, as of fortune, Plut. 2. 611 A. II. a descent, dismounting, Ib. 970 1). III. a sinking, of the sun, Id. Aemil. 17 ; of a ship, Id. Pomp. 47. dmoxAiréov, verb. Adj. one must incline, πρός τι Arist. Eth. N. 9. 2, 5. améKAtros, ov, inclined, sinking, Plut. 2. 273 Ὁ. ἀποκλύζω, fut. vow, to wask away, Theophr. C. P. 5. 9, 6:—Pass., Arist. Mund. 5, 12. II. in Med., Diod. 4.51; metaph., ποτίμῳ λόγῳ ἁλμυρὰν ἀκοὴν ἀπ. Plat. Phaedr. 243 D:—hence Zo avert by puri- fications, ὄνειρον Ar. Ran. 1340. ἀπόκλῦσις, 7, a washing off, ἐπικλύσεις καὶ ἀπ. flow and ebb, Themist. 167 B. eA verb, Adj. of ἀποκάμνω, one must grow weary, Plat. Rep. 445 B (as Bekk. for ἀποκνητέον). ἀπόκναισις, ews, 7, affliction, vexation, Hesych. ἀποκναίω, Att. --κνάω, inf. --κνᾶν Plat. Phil. 26 B: aor. -έκναισα Id. Rep. 406 B:—to scrape or rub off, τι Antiph. Incert. 9. II. dmoxv. τινά to wear one out, worry to death, Ar. Eccl. 1087, Plat. 1]. c.; σύ dmoxvales περιπατῶν Menand. Mic. 10; ἀποπναίει yap ἀηδίᾳ δήπου καὶ ἀναισθησίᾳ Dem. 564. 12, Theophr. Char. 7, cf. Dion. H. de Dem. 20 :—Pass. fo be worn out, Plat. Rep. 406 B; εἰσφοραῖς Xen. Hell. 6, 2, 1:—v. Ruhnk. Tim. ἀπ-οκνέω, to shrink from, c. acc., τὸν κίνδυνον Thuc. 3. 20; τὸν πλοῦν Id, 8.12 :—c. inf, to shrink from doing, Id. 4. 11, Plat. Phaedo 84 C, Theaet. 166 B. 2. absol. to shrink back, hesitate, Thuc. 3. 55.» 5 , 9 , αποκνήσις---- αποκρίνω. ἀπόκνησις, ews, ἡ, α shrinking from, στρατειῶν Thuc. 1.99; ἀπ. πρός τι Plut. 2. 783 8. ἀποκνητέον, verb. Adj. of dmoxvéw, Plat. Rep. 349 A, 372 A, Isocr. Lyi E; cf. ἀποκμητέον. ἀποκνίζω, fut. ἔσω, to nip or snip off, τι Hipp. 677. 6, Sotad, Ἔγκλει. 1. 23; ἀπό τινός Diod. 2.43; τινος Plut. 2. 977 B. ἀπόκνϊἴσις, ews, 7, a nipping off, Theophr. C.P. 5.9, 11. ἀπόκνισμα, τό, that which is nipt off, a little bit, Ar. Pax 790. ἀποκογχίζω, to draw out with a κόγχη (signf. τ. 2), Diosc. 1. 33. ἀποκοιμάομαι, Pass. with fut. med. ἥσομαι :—to sleep away from home, Plat. Legg. 762 C; ἐν Λακεδαίμονι Eupol. Toa. to. II. to get a little sleep, Hdt. 8. 76, Ar. Vesp. 213, Xen. Cyr. 2. 4, 22, sq. ;—ap- parently a military phrase, Dobree ad Ar. |. c. Tit. ἀπ. ἀπό τινος to rest, cease from.., Epiphan. ἀποκοιμίζω, to put to sleep, Alciphro 1. 39 :—Pass. ¢o go to sleep, Ep.Socr. ἀποκοινωνέω, to excommunicate ;—and verb. Adj. πητέος, a, ον, to be excommunicated, Eccl. ἀποκοιτέω, Zo sleep away from one’s post, Decret. ap. Dem. 238. 10. ἀπόκοιτος, ov, sleeping away from, τῶν συσσίτων Aeschin. 45.2; οὐκ ἀπ. παρὰ Ῥέας Luc. Ὁ. Deor. Io. 2. ἀποκολλάω, to unglue, disunite, Eunap. ap. Suid., Oribas. ap. Cocch. 82: to strip off, τί Twos Eust. 854. 33.

• From A Greek-English Lexicon (Liddell-Scott) (1957)

  ἄ-πορος, ov, first in Hdt. and Pind. (v. infr.), without passage, having no way in, out, or through, and so, I. of places, impassable, pathless, trackless, πέλαγος, πηλός Plat. Tim. 25 Ὁ, Criti. 108 E; ὁδός, ποταμός, ὄρος Xen. An. 2. 4, 4., 2. 5, 18, εἴς. II. of states or circumstances, hard to see one’s way through, impracticable, very difficult, like ἀμήχανος, Hdt. 5. 3, and Att.; ἄπ. ἀλγηδών, πάθος Soph. O. C. 513, Ph. 854; τἄπορον ἔπος Id. Ph. 897; ἄπ. χρῆμα Eur. Or. 70; ἀγών, κίνδυνος Lys. 108. 25., 111. 38; αἰσχύνη Plat. Legg. 873 C; Bios Menand. Kid. 1. 10; νύξ Longin. 9. 10 :---ἄπορον, τό, and ἄπορα, τά, as Subst., ἐκ τῶν ἀπόρων in the midst of their difficulties, Hdt. 8. 53, Plat. Legg. 699 B; εὔπορος ἐν τοῖς ἀπόροις Alex. Τραυμ. 2 (cf. ἄπορα πόριμος Aesch. Pr. 904); ἐν ἀπόροις εἶναι to be in great straits, Xen. An. 7. 6, II; εἰς ἄπορον ἥκειν, πίπτειν Eur. Hel. 813, Ar. Nub. 703; ἐν ἀπόρῳ εἴχοντο, ἦσαν they were at a loss how to.., Thue. I. 25., 3. 22:— ἄπορόν [ἐστι] c. inf., Pind. O. 10 (11). 48, Thuc. 2.77, etc.; so, amopa [ἐστι] Pind. Ο. 1. 82:—Comp., -wrepos ἡ λῆψις Thuc. 5. IIo. 2. ἀπ. ἐρωτήσεις, -- ἀπορίαι (signf. 111), Plut. Alex. 64, Luc. D. Mort. το. 8; ζήτησις Plat. Polit. 284 Ὁ. 8. hard to get, scarce, opp. to εὐπό- ριστος Id. Rep. 378 A, 453 D; ἄπορα [ὀφλήματα] bad debts, Dem. 1209. 7. III. of persons, hard to deal with, troublesome, un- manageable, Hdt. 3. 52, Eur. Bacch. 800, Plat. Apol. 18 Ὁ, al.: Ἢ. inf., ἄπ. προσμίσγειν, προσφέρεσθαι impossible to have any dealings with, Hdt. 4. 46., 9. 49;—-so, βορῆς ἄνεμος ἄπ. against whom nothing will avail, which there is no opposing, 1d. 6. 44. 2. without means or re- sources, helpless, ἔρημος, ἄπορος Soph. O. C. 1735, cf. Ar. Nub. 629, etc. ; ἄπορος ἐπὶ φρόνιμα Soph. O. T. 691; ἐπ᾽ οὐδέν Id. Ant. 360; ἄπορος γνώμῃ Thuc. 2.59; of soldiers, of ἀπορώτατοι the most helpless, worst equipt, Id. 4. 32 (which others take in signf. 1, hardest to deal with, v. Schol.). 3. poor, needy, Lat. inops, Thuc. 1. 9, Plat. Rep. 552A; opp. to εὔπορος, Arist. Pol. 3. 7, 5.» 4. 4, 22, al.; ἄπ. λειτουργεῖν too poor to undertake liturgies, Lys. 188. I :—also of states of life, scanty, ἄπ. δίαιτα Plat. Legg. 762 E. IV. Adv. ἀπόρως, Simon. 75, etc.; ἀπ. ἔχει μοί Eur. 1. T. 55; περί τινος Antipho 111. 35; ἀπ. ἔχειν, c. inf., Dion. H. 6. 14; ἀπόρως διατεθῆναι Lys. 151. 24: Comp. O2 196 -wrepov Thuc. 1. 82; but -wrépws διακεῖσθαι Antipho 121. 16; Sup. -πώτατα, Plat. Tim. 51 A, etc.

• From A Greek-English Lexicon (Liddell-Scott) (1957)

  ὑπ-οψία, Ion. -tn, ἡ: (ὑφοράω, fut. ὑπόψομαι) : 1. of the subject, suspicion, jealousy, ὑποψίην ἔχειν Hdt. 9. 99; ἔς τινα Id. 3. 52, cf. Antipho 116. 36 sq., Thuc. 4. 27, Andoc. 9. 41; τὰ ἴχνη τῆς bm. φέ- ροντα eis τινα Antipho 119.8 ; ὑποψίας μεστός Lys. 93.17; ὑπ. πρός τινα Dem. 1172. 10, Plut. Cic. 43; ὑπ. λαμβάνειν κατά τινος Dem. 852. 2; ὑπέρ τινος Plut. 2. 1092 A; ἐν ὑπ. ποιεῖσθαίΐ τι Aeschin. 2. 19; ἐν ὑπ., δι᾽ ὑποψίας ἔχειν τινά Plut. Pyrrh. 23, Cato Ma. 23; ὑπ. γίγνεται, εἰσ- épxerat τιν: Thuc. 2. 13, Plat. Lys. 218C; εἰς ὑπ. καθιστάναι τινά to bring him into suspicion, Thuc. 5. 29; ὑποψίαν πρὸς ἀλλήλους ποιεῖν Lys. 174. 27; opp. to eis ὑπ. ἐμπεσεῖν, Antipho 116. 37. 2. of the object, ἔχειν ὑπ. to admit of suspicion, Plat. Phaedo 84.C; ὑπ. ἐνδι- δόναι ὡς .. Id. Legg. 887 E; ὑπ. παρέχειν Thuc. 1. 132; bm. παρέχειν μὴ εἶναί τι Plat. Menex. 247 E. II. a jealous, censorious watch, ἡ πρὸς ἀλλήλους τῶν ἐπιτηδευμάτων ὑπ. Thuc. 2. 37. ὑποψιαστικῶς, suspiciously, Paroemiogr., Schol. Ar. Vesp. 641. ὑποψτθυρίζω, to whisper softly, Eumath. 1. 8: -ψιθύρισμα, τό, Walz Rhett. 1. 640. ὑπόψτλος, somewhat bald, Ptol. , ὑπ-όψιος, ov, (ὑφοράω, fut. ὑπόψομαι) viewed from beneath the brows, i.e. viewed with suspicious looks, ὑπόψιος ἄλλων Il. 3. 42 (where, how- ever, Ar. and Hdn. read ἐπόψιος), Q. Sm. 13. 289. ΤΙ. under the eye or view, conspicuous, Opp. H. 1. 30. ὑποψοφέω, to make a slight noise, ἐν τοῖς ποτοῖσι Hipp. Coac. 120; ὑπ. καὶ ὑπηχεῖν Ael. N. A. 6. 243 cf. Nake Choer. p. 250. ὑποψυχραίνω, to make somewhat cold, Eccl. ὑπόψυχρος, ov, somewhat cold, coolish, Hipp. Epid. 1. 954. 2. chilling, Id. Acut. 394. 8. metaph., of τὴν ἕξιν ὑπ. Philostr. Gymn. p.4 Kays.; κωμικοί frigid, Suid. 5. ν. Λύκις. ὑποψύχομαι [Ὁ]. Pass. fo cool a little, Ath. 297 A, Eccl. ὑπ-οψωνέω, to underbid in the purchase of victuals or to buy up under- hand, Ar. Ach. 842. ὑποψωρώδης, ες, (εἶδος) somewhat itchy or mangy, Hipp. 1127 C. ὑπτίαζω, fut. dow: (ὕπτιος) :—to lay oneself back, fall back, Hdn. τ. 4, Eust.; ὑπτιάζων βόλος an wnlucky cast, opp. to mpavys, Poll. 7. 204. II. metaph., of haughty persons, fo carry one’s head high, carry one’s chin in the air, Aeschin. 18. 34. 2. to be supine, careless or negligent, Hdn. 2. 12, etc. ; πρός τι Id. 2. ὃ. B. trans. ee ee ene Smear err a 1645 κάρα yap ὑπτιάζεται his head 7165 supine, Soph, Ph. 822; ὑπτιαζόμενοι lying on their backs, Joseph. B. J. 3. 7, 29 ;—of land, to slope evenly (cf. ὕπτιος TV), Ib. 5. 5, 6. II. metaph. to make haughty, lo. Lyd. de Mag. 2. 26. ὑπτίᾶσις, ἡ, -- ὑπτιασμός, Oribas. 71 Matth.

• From The Things They Carried (1990)

  One morning in late July, while we were out on patrol near LZ Gator, Lee Strunk and Dave Jensen got into a fistfight. It was about something stupid—a missing jackknife—but even so the fight was vicious. For a while it went back and forth, but Dave Jensen was much bigger and much stronger, and eventually he wrapped an arm around Strunk's neck and pinned him down and kept hitting him on the nose. He hit him hard. And he didn't stop. Strunk's nose made a sharp snapping sound, like a firecracker, but even then Jensen kept hitting him, over and over, quick stiff punches that did not miss. It took three of us to pull him off. When it was over, Strunk had to be choppered back to the rear, where he had his nose looked after, and two days later he rejoined us wearing a metal splint and lots of gauze. In any other circumstance it might've ended there. But this was Vietnam, where guys carried guns, and Dave Jensen started to worry. It was mostly in his head. There were no threats, no vows of revenge, just a silent tension between them that made Jensen take special precautions. On patrol he was careful to keep track of Strunk's whereabouts. He dug his foxholes on the far side of the perimeter; he kept his back covered; he avoided situations that might put the two of them alone together. Eventually, after a week of this, the strain began to create problems. Jensen couldn't relax. Like fighting two different wars, he said. No safe ground: enemies everywhere. No front or rear. At night he had trouble sleeping—a skittish feeling— always on guard, hearing strange noises in the dark, imagining a grenade rolling into his foxhole or the tickle of a knife against his ear. The distinction between good guys and bad guys disappeared for him. Even in times of relative safety, while the rest of us took it easy, Jensen would be sitting with his back against a stone wall, weapon across his knees, watching Lee Strunk with quick, nervous eyes. It got to the point finally where he lost control. Something must've snapped. One afternoon he began firing his weapon into the air, yelling Strunk's name, just firing and yelling, and it didn't stop until he'd rattled off an entire magazine of ammunition. We were all flat on the ground. Nobody had the nerve to go near him. Jensen started to reload, but then suddenly he sat down and held his head in his arms and wouldn't move. For two or three hours he simply sat there. But that wasn't the bizarre part. Because late that same night he borrowed a pistol, gripped it by the barrel, and used it like a hammer to break his own nose. Afterward, he crossed the perimeter to Lee Strunk's foxhole. He showed him what he'd done and asked if everything was square between them. Strunk nodded and said, Sure, things were square.

• From Shunned (2018)

  We started spending time together, either with groups of friends, or “alone” in public places, like restaurants. The Watch-tower Society discouraged single people of the opposite sex from spending time truly alone, which could lead to temptation and the sin of premarital sex. As I found myself falling in love with Ross, I appreciated the wisdom of chaperones. I had every intention of being a virgin when I married, and the sexual attraction I felt on first meeting Ross only grew as we spent time together. Thankfully, we had many friends in common, so group activities, such as skiing and going to movies, were not difficult to organize. My actions soon made it clear that I was not a tried-and-true member of the Triple A Club. Ross was working full-time for a maintenance-and-construction company while I kept busy pioneering, conducting Bible studies with interested people in the community, and working to cover modest expenses. When we spoke about the future, we included the possibility of pioneering or applying to Bethel as a couple. That made it easier for me to set aside my plans to go solo, dismissing them as distant and unlikely. Within four months we were engaged, and in another four months we were married. During our engagement, I experienced bouts of restlessness, sensing how far I was drifting from my dreams in which I ventured out as a single young woman; learned a new language; and traveled the world, preaching, teaching, and serving others while having grand adventures: ministering to children under tropical palms or reading soothing Bible verses to the destitute victims of heartless warlords in faraway lands. As I got to know Ross, I realized the emotional accessibility I originally found so attractive masked mood swings and self-doubt. I lacked the maturity to help him through those rough patches and often resented the need to. I contemplated breaking the engagement or postponing the wedding. We were both twenty-one years old. When I allowed myself to think about our inexperience, I got scared, sometimes waking in the middle of the night to full- throttle panic. We had very few financial resources between us, as we were both living paycheck to paycheck, and I didn’t believe the myth that two can live as inexpensively as one. One month before the wedding, I shared my doubts with one of the elders who knew us both. He listened and, while assuring me it was not too late to back out, reminded me that doing so would break a sacred vow, a promise. Hadn’t Jesus taught us to let our yes mean yes?

• From Shunned (2018)

  Whenever the sadness was too much, I could pace myself or wriggle out of the discomfort, seizing upon some distraction from the long list available to me. But this letter could not be avoided. I opened the envelope to find a card with a photograph of the tulip fields of Oregon’s Willamette Valley, the ones we always passed when driving to the Assembly Hall in Woodburn twice a year. Inside was written: Dear Linda, This is to let you know that I will be making a business trip to Indiana next month and will be passing through Chicago. I want to see you on my way back, which will be Saturday, October 11. I will call you that morning at your house. I wanted you to know this so you don’t go into shock when I call. Looking forward to seeing you! Love, Mom I felt like all the blood was draining out of my body, leaving me deflated and lifeless, like a leaky inner tube. I leaned back on the couch and stared across the room. Leo walked in, his tail up high, the end curled around in a question mark. Was she really looking forward to seeing me? Or was I being summoned for a grilling? She had given me one week’s notice. How should I prepare? Looking around my living room, I saw the furnishings through my mother’s eyes. She would be impressed by the arched doorways, my choice of colors, and the layout. I would take her out the French doors to the balcony and show her the flower garden I had nurtured through a Chicago summer. She’d be surprised to find such a peaceful place in the middle of the city. If things went well between us and I was feeling vulnerable and brave, I might tell her how I’d felt connected to her when I planted those flowers, despite our estrangement. I imagined her commenting on the impressionist painting hung above the television or the Venetian mask on a side wall, giving me an opening to tell her about my trips to France and Italy, where I’d purchased them. She would scan the framed photographs on top of the piano and see me with my new friends caught in various moments of fun and celebration. Through the photos, I could introduce her to everyone who now mattered in my life. There was the photograph of David and me in my kitchen after Thanksgiving dinner, surrounded by dirty dishes, toasting each other. We had hosted a meal for all our single friends, people like us with no family in town. Steve was there, and Geoff even flew in. When the feast was over we all played a contentious game of charades, with everyone yelling and screaming over each other. Later we strolled the neighborhood in a tryptophan haze while David and Geoff smoked cigars.

• From The Things They Carried (1990)

  In February we were working an area of operations called the Rocket Pocket, which got its name from the fact that the enemy sometimes used the place to launch rocket attacks on the airfield at Chu Lai. But for us it was like a two-week vacation. The AO lay along the South China Sea, where things had the feel of a resort, with white beaches and palm trees and friendly little villages. It was a quiet time. No casualties, no contact at all. As usual, though, the higher-ups couldn't leave well enough alone, and one afternoon an Army dentist was choppered in to check our teeth and do minor repair work. He was a tall, skinny young captain with bad breath. For a half hour he lectured us on oral hygiene, demonstrating the proper flossing and brushing techniques, then afterward he opened up shop in a small field tent and we all took turns going in for personal exams. At best it was a very primitive setup. There was a battery-powered drill, a canvas cot, a bucket of sea water for rinsing, a metal suitcase full of the various instruments. It amounted to assembly-line dentistry, quick and impersonal, and the young captain's main concern seemed to be the clock. As we Sat waiting, Curt Lemon began to tense up. He kept fidgeting, playing with his dog tags. Finally somebody asked what the problem was, and Lemon looked down at his hands and said that back in high school he'd had a couple of bad experiences with dentists. Real sadism, he said. Torture chamber stuff. He didn't mind blood or pain—he actually enjoyed combat— but there was something about a dentist that just gave him the creeps. He glanced over at the field tent and said, "No way. Count me out. Nobody messes with these teeth." But a few minutes later, when the dentist called his name, Lemon stood up and walked into the tent. It was over fast. He fainted even before the man touched him.

• From The Things They Carried (1990)

  "God's truth," Mitchell Sanders said. "A six-man patrol goes up into the mountains on a basic listening-post operation. The idea's to spend a week up there; just lie low and listen for enemy movement. They've got a radio along, so if they hear anything suspicious—anything—they're supposed to call in artillery or gunships, whatever it takes. Otherwise they keep strict field discipline. Absolute silence. They just listen." Sanders glanced at me to make sure I had the scenario. He was playing with his yo-yo, dancing it with short, tight strokes of the wrist. His face was blank in the dusk. "We're talking regulation, by-the-book LP. These six guys, they don't say boo for a solid week. They don't got tongues. A// ears." "Right," I said. "Understand me?" "Invisible." Sanders nodded. "Affirm," he said. "Invisible. So what happens is, these guys get themselves deep in the bush, all camouflaged up, and they lie down and wait and that's all they do, nothing else, they lie there for seven straight days and just listen. And man, I'll tell you—tt's spooky. This is mountains. You don't know spooky till you been there. Jungle, sort of, except it's way up in the clouds and there's always this fog—tlike rain, except it's not raining—everything's all wet and swirly and tangled up and you can't see jack, you can't find your own pecker to piss with. Like you don't even have a body. Serious spooky. You just go with the vapors—the fog sort of takes you in ... And the sounds, man. The sounds carry forever. You hear stuff nobody should ever hear. Sanders was quiet for a second, just working the yo-yo, then he smiled at me. "So after a couple days the guys start hearing this real soft, kind of wacked-out music. Weird echoes and stuff. Like a radio or something, but it's not a radio, it's this strange gook music that comes right out of the rocks. Faraway, sort of, but right up close, too. They try to ignore it. But it's a listening post, right? So they listen. And every night they keep hearing that crazyass gook concert. All kinds of chimes and xylophones. I mean, this is wilderness—no way, it can't be real—but there it is, like the mountains are tuned in to Radio fucking Hanoi. Naturally they get nervous. One guy sticks Juicy Fruit in his ears. Another guy almost flips. Thing is, though, they can't report music. They can't get on the horn and call back to base and say, 'Hey, listen, we need some firepower, we got to blow away this weirdo gook rock band.' They can't do that. It wouldn't go down. So they lie there in the fog and keep their mouths shut. And what makes it extra bad, see, is the poor dudes can't horse around like normal. Can't joke it away. Can't even talk to each other except maybe in whispers, all hush-hush, and that just revs up the willies. All they do is listen."

• From Martin Luther (2016)

  They were not to do with sexual desire but concerned what Luther called “the real knots”—his struggles with faith. So apparently untroubled was he by his sexuality that he unabashedly mentioned experiencing nocturnal emissions, which he simply dismissed as physical phenomena. For him, true “concupiscence of the flesh” was not primarily lust but concerned bad feelings toward a brother, such as envy, anger, or hate. 29 Luther worried at this time about his relations with others: Living in a monastic community, where he had to get on with the same small group of people all the time, could not have been easy. It may well have reawakened in him feelings of jealousy and anxieties about the envy of others that sprang from childhood relations with his siblings. Whatever the reasons, it was not lusts of the flesh, but Luther’s troubled relationship with God the Father that lay at the heart of his distress. These temptations or tribulations would continue all his life and they are fundamental to understanding Luther’s religiosity. For the first year in the monastery, he recalled, they did not trouble him; later he had a rest from them when he got married and had “a good time,” before they returned once more. During his time as a monk, the Anfechtungen seem to have chiefly concerned the idea that if he was a sinner, and if God was a judge, then God must hate him. The Anfechtungen were the corollary of his growing sense that there were no intermediaries, that nothing stood between the believer and God, and that nothing could be done to make the sinner acceptable. Looking back on these experiences in 1531 he concluded that the Anfechtungen were also necessary, for they set him on his path that would lead to the Reformation. He added a wry reminiscence about his superior Staupitz, who had remarked that he himself had never experienced temptations of this kind, “but, as I see, they are more necessary to you than eating and drinking.” 30 By the time Luther had left the monastery and broken with the Church of Rome, the Anfechtungen were more clearly centered on his battle with the Devil, though they still took physical form. He suffered from fits of ringing in the ears, sure that they were a diabolic attack. As he grew older, he confided to trusted companions about his temptations. Complaining in 1529 to a friend in Breslau that he had suffered headaches, nausea, and a dull noise in his ears for eight days, he wondered “whether it was exhaustion or a temptation of Satan.”

• From Martin Luther (2016)

  He had been happy to agree during the Augsburg negotiations that Anabaptists, like sacramentarians, should be treated as heretics, but until then he had also consistently maintained that no one should be executed for their faith; heretics would suffer in hell, and only if they were guilty of insurrection and rejecting secular authority were they to be punished. 14 But Melanchthon, in line with the imperial mandate against Anabaptists of 1528, began to take the view that all Anabaptists were guilty of the crime of sedition, and that secular authorities ought to punish Anabaptists “on body,” rather than just with fines. While Luther still argued in 1528 that Anabaptists should not be executed, because “[i]t is not right, and it pains me greatly, that people kill, murder and burn these poor folk so horribly,” by February Melanchthon had begun to advocate their execution, and the following year Luther was agreeing that “although it seems cruel to punish them with the sword, they themselves are being even more cruel in damning the ministry of the Word.” 15 Even if Luther felt queasy about it, he did not object to harsh punishment. When Fritz Erbe in the village of Herda near Eisenach refused to baptize his son in 1531, he was jailed. Imprisoned a second time in 1533, his fame spread and he became something of a celebrity in the town, so he was moved to the Wartburg, where Luther had stayed after the Diet of Worms. Here he was held in isolation from 1540 until his death in 1548, in a prison cell underground. Luther would have known about Erbe and his miserable fate. 16 Then, in 1534, a group of Anabaptists actually gained power in Münster, with consequences that would appall contemporaries. Reform had started there in a fairly conventional manner. As in so many towns across the empire, Lutherans had grown in numbers and been successful in council elections. But what had begun as a politically conservative Lutheran reformation suddenly changed as the leading preacher Bernhard Rothmann fell under the influence of sacramentarianism, and began to espouse a radical populism.

• From Martin Luther (2016)

  Committed to the communal Reformation, he rejected everything that smacked of priestly tyranny—the elevation of the Host, Communion in one kind, confession before Communion, the priest placing the wafer in the communicant’s mouth—while his admiration of mysticism, prophecy, and the power of the spirit enabled him to be more open to women’s role in the Church. 59 Aiming to escape his intellectual formation, and to reach for a purer emotional mysticism, he found his outlook difficult to express within the constraints of a traditionally written and argued pamphlet, the form at which Luther excelled. He tried several other genres, including dialogues, in which he put words into the mouths of his opponents so that he could refute them, but as he rejected images, and was neither a poet nor musician, he had no other practical outlet. While Luther’s rhetorical style was becoming ever clearer and more rebarbative, Karlstadt pushed the pamphlet format to its limit, eschewing intellectual, linear thinking. The result was a manner of writing that seems unfinished and obscure. So, for example, he could write in The Meaning of the Term “Gelassen”: “However, we must be on guard constantly that this same yielded egoism or self-absorption is seriously judged and surrendered, for the Devil sits in wait of unsurrendered yieldedness as a fox looks out for chickens which he plans to devour.” 60 He is clearly striving for emotional honesty as well as memorable imagery, but achieves this at the cost of clarity. The suffering and rejection Karlstadt experienced—Luther had made him feel “anxiety, envy, hatred, and disgrace”—enabled him to reach Gelassenheit . 61 As he wrote in a dialogue that dealt line by line with Luther’s Against the Heavenly Prophets: “Through such suffering we must subdue, break, and subordinate to the spirit our untamed flesh in order to assist hope, strengthen faith, and firm up the word. For tribulation brings about patience and patience leads to a certain knowledge and experience.” This, he insisted, had nothing to do with the “works of love,” the self-mortification and asceticism practiced by the monks, with which Luther identified his ideas. 62 What both men had in common, however, is that they invoked experience. For Luther, the story of his heroic stance at Worms was proof that he alone was the touchstone of truth, while Karlstadt regarded his own persecution and suffering as unique. It was something that Luther, living in his secure professorship in Wittenberg, could never understand. Thus the dispute between Luther and Karlstadt was personal as well as intellectual, reflecting both men’s understanding of their individual history and destiny. 63 Luther’s sacramental theology did not determine his moral theology, but the two were of a piece.

• From Lit: A Memoir (2009)

  Whoever eats the biggest shit sandwich wins, and I’m playing to justify the fact that I’d rather drink than love. The times Dev’s spiked a fever, I shook Warren awake and—fearing meningitis—we tore to Children’s Hospital. With medicine, it’d take Dev a week or so to stop coughing himself awake most nights. Then a week to stop nightly wakings, then here came the next cold, invariably flaming into a fever. The doctors agree the infections and fevers are strange but not unheard of. By every yardstick, my strapping son is a developmental champ. His bounce is boundless, but my limbs are filled with lead pellets, and my head has started to scramble like an anthill. Another series of whooping lands a hammer blow to my sternum, and I jerk upright. It’s the reflexive, automatic move from some gore-fest movie—that last scene when the butchered killer you think has finally bitten it jolts up. My arm wheels over to smack off the baby monitor. Then, lacking the will to rise (3:07), I plummet back down like a shot bird. The cough penetrates my dream with the sandpapered force of a chain-smoking speed freak. It’s Daddy’s pneumonia-laden cough, Mother’s emphysema wheeze. Even without the monitor, I can hear the hacking gasps start. My body’s a sandbag, but my eyelids split open like clam shells (3:10). On the table, a tumbler of mahogany whiskey burns bright as any flaming oil slick. Gone a little watery on top, it’s still possessed of a golden nimbus. That’s the secret to getting up: the glass talks and my neck cranes toward the drink like flower to sunbeam. My heavy skull rises, throbbing with a pulse beat. I grab the drink and let a long gulp burn a corridor through the sludge that runs up the middle of me—that trace of fire my sole brightness. A drink once brought ease, a bronze warmth spreading through all my muddy regions. Now it only brings a brief respite from the bone ache of craving it, no more delicious numbness. Slurping these spirits is soul preparation, a warped communion, myself serving as god, priest, and congregation. I rise on rickety legs, dripping sweat despite the air conditioner’s blast across my naked chest. Forgoing bathrobe, I pull on a wife-beater T-shirt. (3:15!) In the next room, my son, stout but saggy-kneed, clings to the crib bars like a prisoner. Menthol steam from the vaporizer has made a ghost of him. His ringlets are plastered to his head, and coughs rack his small frame. The animal suffering that’s rattling him throws ice water on me, and I enjoy a surge of unalloyed love for him, followed by panic, followed by guilt . He sees me rushing toward him and abruptly drops his outstretched arms an instant to say, No pants? His head’s tilted with bald curiosity.

• From Lit: A Memoir (2009)

  after that, we’ll get engaged. But before any of that, I have to meet the family, and boy am I eager, facing the task with a peasant girl’s bouncy determination to wow people not overimpressed by much. The final miles Warren’s tiny car putters, I hold a compact in one hand and a mascara wand in the other, globbing on lashes. (Little did I know my mother’s advice—You can never wear too much mascara—is, in this company, deeply wrong.) We pass through wrought-iron gates, and I look up, wand in hand, to ask, Is this a subdivision? This is my house, he says. It’s a testament to Warren’s reticence that he’s failed to mention the place is posh enough to sport a baronial-sounding name without seeming ridiculous: Fairweather Hall. There’s a separate wing for the live-in staff, severely reduced now that the six children are gone. If I remember right, the gardener even grew up on the estate since his father had been Mr. Whitbread’s valet in law school—sounding like a Chekhov serf to me. After Warren parks, I gawk my way from the car, jaw unhinged, about to burst out with a ghetto goddamn. Why didn’t you tell me about all this? I ask. Tell you about what? he wonders, completely sincere, for he’s never less than sincere, which partly informs my devotion. I already know how Warren shrinks from show. When people ask where he went to college, he’ll avoid dropping the H-bomb as long as possible, though I’d have tattooed it on my forehead. That ivy-scribbled house has a fairy-tale quality, with gardens sprawled around it and long, vaulted windows you could drive a Buick through. Plus a door bigger than my daddy’s bass boat, with a bronze knocker, even. The uniformed Irish maid waits outside to help us with our bags, which Warren refuses, partly because she’s at least seventy and no taller than five feet. They call her Kelley, though it’s her last name, and I’ll later find out she was deputized to take Warren trick-or-treating when he was a kid, with a sheet over her head and a bag for her own candy. Odd, I thought, my parents hadn’t taken me around, either. (Though the Whitbreads’ offhand parenting style was light-years from my family’s, both Warren and I grew up yearning for a warmer home than where we’d started.) I don’t have the sense not to hug whoever greets us, so I try to throw my arms around Kelley, and she flinches away, straightening her apron. Facing the big house, I’d like to say I’m neither wowed nor panicky, but I feel like a field hand called out of the cotton. Would you like some tea? Kelley asks. Yes, please, Warren says, closing the door. The foyer, a crystal chandelier like a sparkly jungle gym hangs from the two-story ceiling. Two dogs waggle around us, which Warren pats and baby- talks to while I stare. Cloudily mirrored alcoves hold Chinese vases.

• From Martin Luther (2016)

  His upbringing in Mansfeld would have given him a toughness and a readiness to put himself physically on the line, qualities that would be tested to the limit in the years ahead. From his father and the other mine owners he would have learned the importance of creating networks, a skill that would make the Reformation possible. He would have learned how to be a leader—and to expect not deference but assaults, arguments, and brickbats. Mansfeld nurtured in him a sense of politics that was grounded in authority and class division, and rested on a clear distinction between the counts who ruled from the hill and the “black miners,” as Luther termed them, who worked below. 63 Socially, it taught him the importance of friendship and kin. Through marriage he would become related to most of his Mansfeld friends and he would replicate the same patterns years later, as Lutheran clergy intermarried, creating a new professional caste, bound by ties of kinship. 64 Theologically, his childhood may have inclined him toward a powerful sense of the unbridgeable distance between God and man, and of the unpredictability of God’s providence. Nothing stood between the miner and disaster; and for every miner who struck a lucky seam there were more who lost everything. But those who did not trust Lady Luck, or grasped at superstition, might be left with a shrewd realism about the operations of the world, and a cynical distrust of the stars. W HEN YOUNG M ARTIN left Mansfeld in 1497 to go to school in Magdeburg, he was in his fourteenth year and his father’s future as a substantial smelter-master still looked rosy. He went with Hans Reinicke, the mining inspector’s son; ambitious as ever, his father wanted the same education for Martin as that enjoyed by the son of the most prominent man in town. Young Martin lodged with the archbishop’s official, Dr. Paul Moshauer, who also came from a mining family. 1 The careers of the two bright young lads offer a telling contrast. Martin went on to university at Erfurt, becoming a monk, while Reinicke followed in the family business, and married in 1511, aged around twenty-eight. By 1512, Luther had risen to become subprior and director of study for the monastery, while Reinicke ran his first two smelters.

• From Lit: A Memoir (2009)

  Stand next to me, then, he says, adding, I’ll drink for you. Toby doesn’t drink for me, of course. But he feels like a pillar propping me up. I woodenly shake hands with men in suits and ladies in cocktail clothes. Who they are, I have no clue, beyond knowing they outearn me. In the midst of this, Lux shows up, and between him and Toby, I manage not to accept a single glass of the nonstop champagne flutes foisted on me from various silver trays. Later, I’m called onto the stage, where I’m supposed to stand immobile while they read my résumé—skimpy compared to every other. Then I’m meant to shake hands with one paw while I take the check with the other. Instead, I’ve fallen into such a flop sweat that a pause in the speech causes me to grab the check, thus failing to strike for the photographers the pose of humble gratitude I’d practiced for weeks in front of a mirror. At the party, Toby introduces me to his agent, a whippet-thin blonde with silver bangles up her muscled arm. She wears a raw-silk size-zero pencil skirt and is almost exactly my sister’s height in pricey heels. She lets Lux and me tag along to the expensive dinner for Toby. At the table, I feel conspicuous not ordering a drink, and—since water glasses haven’t shown up—as everybody else hoists a glass at Toby, I feebly hold an invisible glass in the air, as my head says, Do you think they are convinced by the nonexistent drink you are faux-lifting? I look at Toby, and the fact that his eyes don’t meet mine makes me wonder if he actually asked the agent whether Lux and I could come, or are we crashing? Am I supposed to pay for this meal? Next I know, Toby holds his glass aloft again, saying, And to my old pal Mary. A few minutes after everybody’s gone back to their conversations, I blurt out to nobody special, Thanks for having us. I say it loud enough that neighboring diners look over, but nobody says anything back. Lux keeps talking to the woman on his left. About that time, a passing waiter stops beside me to lift my napkin and lower it into my lap. I keep sweatily waiting for somebody to ask me why I’m not drinking so I can fire off one of the salvos Joan and I came up with, for to an alcoholic, not drinking is conspicuously freakish. (Now I realize nobody would notice except another sot.) Maybe I’ll just say Fuck you or On second thought, maybe I will…Waiter!

• From Lit: A Memoir (2009)

  I’m worried about the side effects. Your addiction? she says. She gives me a watery smile. She finds my addiction droll. That and priapism, I say. Since a raging hard-on is one side effect they’d mentioned from the sleeping pill, I’m throwing her a bone, so to speak, and her face goes all eager.

• From The Things They Carried (1990)

  security at all. As soldiers, the ARVNs were useless; the Ruff-and-Puffs were outright dangerous. And yet even with decent troops the place was clearly indefensible. To the north and west the country rose up in thick walls of wilderness, triple-canopied jungle, mountains unfolding into higher mountains, ravines and gorges and fast-moving rivers and waterfalls and exotic butterflies and steep cliffs and smoky little hamlets and great valleys of bamboo and elephant grass. Originally, in the early 1960s, the place had been set up as a Special Forces outpost, and when Rat Kiley arrived nearly a decade later, a squad of six Green Berets still used the compound as a base of operations. The Greenies were not social animals. Animals, Rat said, but far from social. They had their own hootch at the edge of the perimeter, fortified with sandbags and a metal fence, and except for the bare essentials they avoided contact with the medical detachment. Secretive and suspicious, loners by nature, the six Greenies would sometimes vanish for days at a time, or even weeks, then late in the night they would just as magically reappear, moving like shadows through the moonlight, filing in silently from the dense rain forest off to the west. Among the medics there were jokes about this, but no one asked questions. While the outpost was isolated and vulnerable, Rat said, he always felt a curious sense of safety there. Nothing much ever happened. The place was never mortared, never taken under fire, and the war seemed to be somewhere far away. On occasion, when casualties came in, there were quick spurts of activity, but otherwise the days flowed by without incident, a smooth and peaceful time. Most mornings were spent on the volleyball court. In the heat of midday the men would head for the shade, lazing away the long afternoons, and after sundown there were movies and card games and sometimes all-night drinking sessions. It was during one of those late nights that Eddie Diamond first brought up the tantalizing possibility. It was an offhand comment. A joke, really. What they should do, Eddie said, was pool some bucks and bring in a few mama-sans from Saigon, spice things up, and after a moment one of the men laughed and said, "Our own little EM club," and somebody else said, "Hey, yeah, we pay our fuckin' dues, don't we?" It was nothing serious. Just passing time, playing with the possibilities, and so for a while they tossed the idea around, how you could actually get away with it, no officers or anything, nobody to clamp down, then they dropped the subject and moved on to cars and baseball. Later in the night, though, a young medic named Mark Fossie kept coming back to the subject. "Look, if you think about it," he said, "it's not that crazy. You could actually do it." "Do what?" Rat said. "You know. Bring in a girl. I mean, what's the problem?" Rat shrugged. "Nothing. A war."

• From The Historical Jesus (2000)

  the year 1260. These predictions played a major role in theological reflections during the later Middle Ages. C. A thousand years earlier, we find an important group of Christians living in Asia Minor adhering to the teachings of a second-century prophet named Montanus, who claimed that the world was going to end in his own generation. One of the greatest theologians of early Christianity, Tertullian, belonged to this group. D. Just over a century before that, we find the writings of the apostle Paul, which later came to form part of the New Testament—the earliest Christian writings of any kind that we have. Paul tells his followers that Christ will return from heaven in a mighty act of judgment and remove his followers from the world, both those who had previously died and, in Paul’s words, “we who are still alive.” E. These are just a few of the many, many prophets that we know about. 1. Most of those who have predicted the imminent end of all things are lost in the shrouds of history. 2. All these predictors of the end have two things in common: Every one of them was completely wrong, and every one of them could cite the words of Jesus in support of his or her views. V. Let me conclude by telling you my point in making this brief survey. A. My point is not to stress the fact that Jesus got it wrong. B. Instead, I think that his earliest followers got something right. 1. I have to admit to being a bit hesitant to make this point, given the fact that these lectures have been completely based on a historical study of Jesus rather than on any theological set of beliefs—mine, yours, or someone else’s. 2. To paraphrase the Hebrew prophet Amos, I myself am neither a theologian nor the son of a theologian. My concerns in these lectures are not theological. If someone were interested in theology, however, he or she might want to take heed of how the early Christians handled their traditions about Jesus. C. One of the frustrations of the historian of ancient Christianity is that the early Christians did not preserve their traditions about ©2000 The Teaching Company. 158

• From Lit: A Memoir (2009)

  Mary reads over the letter while I stand stumped in the shine of it. They make you an officer of the university, she says. What’s that mean? You can charge drinks at the Faculty Club. Drinks? Club soda and coffee, I say. O.J. Iced tea. She’s still rubbing her belly with a pinched look on her face. She hands me the letter. What? I say. What aren’t you saying? That says you have to go to a meeting this Monday, Mary says. Have to go. It’s an all-day orientation. I know, I know. I get keys to my office. I get to meet the other scholars. I can’t wait. She’ll never let you go, she says, referring to my in-house shrink: Alice in Wonderland. That’s what even the nurses call her behind her back, based on the platinum hair she wears past her knees, despite being on the far side of forty. It flaps behind her like a ship’s wake, or she pushes it back using horrid headbands with bows big enough to stick on a birthday convertible. (My doc was on August holiday, or she might’ve vetoed Alice.) She barely lets you go to the drunks’ group in the detox on Tuesday. Escorted. Won’t I be out by then? Mary shrugs, adding, Maybe not. Alice in fucking Wonderland, I say. A passing doctor hushes me and nods toward the mailroom, where the shrink in question—tiny, humorless, and ruthlessly well groomed—is reviewing charts. It’s such a cliché to hate your shrink when you’re in the bin. (In truth, all of my other shrinks contributed heartily to saving my life.) Dr. Alice herself would claim I’m projecting a buried hatred of my own seductive, narcissistic mother. But even other doctors seem to stiffen at her presence in group, and her lack of humor is legend in these halls. No one ever sees her pancaked face risk the breach of smiling. She beckons me now, and I summon the bravado to flounce behind her to an office. She slips behind her desk. She’s wearing a peach-colored headband to match her Chanel suit. She’s a buyer of name brands, this one, no thrift shops for her. Sitting primly in the chair across from her, I try to dazzle her with modest confidence. She has a tendency to bring up penis envy every session, and I swear that this time, when she does, I’ll confess to my intense longing for a dick of my own, for in most places that pretend to value honesty, I’ve usually found that sucking up is an underrated virtue given how well it works. Reviewing my chart, she squirts a dollop of lotion into her hands and rubs them together with the untroubled air of a woman who’s never picked up a check and never gone to sleep without flossing. She says, You’re still refusing the sleeping medication? I’m sleeping so well, I say. I think all our talks are paying off. What’s your objection to the medication?

• From A Greek-English Lexicon (Liddell-Scott) (1957)

  ἐπιλείπω, to leave behind, ἐπὶ δὲ πλεῖον ἐλέλειπτο Od. 8. 475, cf. Xen. An. 1. 8, 18:—Pass. c. gen. to fall short of, Plat. Epin. 978 A. 2. to leave untouched, ὡς ovT ἂν τῶν ἐμῶν ἐπιλίποιμι οὐδὲν οὔτε τῶν φίλων Plat. Prot. 210 E; c. part., μυρία ἐπ. λέγων Jd. Phil. 26 B, cf. 52 D. II. of things, to fail one, like Lat. deficere, c. acc. pers., 7Bynv.., ἥ μ᾽ ἐπιλείπει ‘Theogn. 1130; ὕδωρ μιν ἐπέλιπε the water failed him, Hdt. 7. 21, οἴ. 2.174; so, τῶν ὄμβρων ἐπιλιπόντων αὐτούς (sc. τοὺς ποταμούς) Id. 2.25; γλαῦκες ὑμᾶς οὔποτ᾽ ἐπιλείψουσι Ar. Av. 1102 ; ἐπειδὰν αὐτοὺς ἐπιλίπωσιν ἐλπίδες Thuc. 5. 103, cf. Antipho 121. 27; ἐπιλείπει με 6 χρόνος time fails me, Lat. dies me deficit, Isocr. 4A, cf. 345 C; ἐπιλείψει με λέγοντα ἡ ἡμέρα Dem. 324. 18 :—later, c. dat., Plut. Cic. 42, Ael. N. A. 8. 17. 2. in Hdt., often of rivers, ἐπ. τὸ ῥέεθρον to leave their stream unfilled, run dry, Hat. 7. 43, 58, etc.; and so without ῥέεθρον, to fail, run dry, 1d. 7.127; so, ἐπ. τὰ φρέατα Dem. 186. 16. 8. then, generally, to fail, be wanting, iva μὴ ἐπιλίπῃ κατεσθιόμενα Hdt. 3.108; σῖτος ἐπιλιπών a deficiency of it, Thuc. 3.20; τὰ ἐπιτήδεια ἐπ. Xen. An. 4.7, 1; ὥστε τὸν λόγον μηδέποτε ἐπ. Plat. Prot. 334 E; opp. to περιγίγνεσθαι, Ar. Pl. 554. ἐπιλείχω, to lick over, to lick, v. 1. Longus 1. 24. ἐπίλειψις, ews, ἡ, (ἐπιλείπω) a deficiency, failure, lack, ὀρνίθων Thuc. 2.50; THs δυνάμεως Plut. 2.695 Ὁ ; τελῶν C. I. 2695 ὃ. ἐπιλειςτ-άρχης, ov, 6, commander of a picked band, Plut. Arat. 32. ἐπίλεκτος, ov, (ἐπιλέγων chosen, picked, ξύλα πρὸς εὐωδίαν Emir, Ael. V.H. 5. 6:—esp. of soldiers, of ἐπίλεκτοι Xen. An. 3. 4, 43, Hell. 5.3.23; the Lat. extraordinarii, Polyb. 6. 26,6, etc. Adv. —rws, Schol. Thuc, ἐπιλελογισμένως, Adv. with consideration, Clem. Al. 186. ἐπίλεξις, ews, 7, (ἐπιλέγων choice, selection, App. Civ. 3. 5. ἐπιλεπτύνω, fo smear over with a thin coat, Hesych., Poll. 7.1, 24. ἐπιλέπω, fut. ψω, to strip of bark, ὄζον h, Hom. Merc. tog. ἐπιλευκαίνω, to be white on the surface, Arist. P. A. 4. 1,3, Theophr. H, P..3.:12,;9, etc. ἐπιλευκία, ἡ, -- λεύκη, leprosy, Plut. 2.670 F. ἐπίλευκος, ον, white on the surface, whitish, Theophr. H. P. 3. 7, 5. ἐπιλεύσσω, to look towards or at, τόσσον Tis τ᾽ ἐπιλεύσσει one can only see so far before one, Il. 3. 12. ἐπίληθος, ov, (ἐπιλανθάνων) causing to forget, c. gen., φάρμακον .., νηπενθές T ἄχολόν τε κακῶν T ἐπίληθον ἁπάντων (ἐπίληθες in Pseudo- Plut. Vit. Hom. p. 255, Clem. Al. 3), Od. 4. 221; with fem., ἴυγγα δέους ἐπίληθον παντός Ael.N. A. 4. 41., 15. 19.