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.

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• From Why We Believe: Finding Meaning in Uncertain Times

  Having grown up in the politically and religiously polarised context of Northern Ireland, I came to doubt those with strident views, believing it was possible to have civilised conversations despite divergent beliefs. I forced myself to talk to people with whom I disagreed across disciplinary, religious and ideological frontiers. The aim wasn’t to achieve consensus, but to understand the issues more fully. A key question for me was how it was possible to maintain my own beliefs with integrity, when I could not prove them. Russell’s comments led me on a journey of discovery, in which I began to appreciate how it was possible to live meaningfully in a world of uncertainties. This is precisely what I hope to explore in this book. Somewhere along the way ‘belief’ became synonymous with ‘ religious belief’, thus unleashing a predictable torrent of anti-religious invective directed against ‘belief’ in general, rather than being attentive to the multiple specific forms that belief takes, and its important and legitimate place within humanity’s attempts to make sense of our world. Belief, as I shall argue in this work, is ordinary , a routine aspect of the business of living and reflecting. Ambivalence towards religious institutions or ‘organised religion’ has led many people in recent decades to identify as ‘spiritual but not religious’ or as ‘religious Nones’. In both cases, these groups tend to avoid labelling themselves as ‘religious’ or affiliating with religious organisations such as churches. However, scepticism about religion need not lead to the rejection of the category of ‘belief’. Many of the twenty-two per cent of Americans who identify as ‘spiritual but not religious’ turn out to have sophisticated personal belief systems. For example, eighty-eight per cent of this group believe that there is something spiritual beyond the natural world and fifty-five per cent believe that deceased individuals can provide assistance, protection or guidance to the living. The issue is not belief itself, but rather the type of beliefs considered acceptable. 8 As Professor of Science and Religion at Oxford University, I have had time to reflect on the scientific study of beliefs, which calls into question the cultural oversimplifications of recent polemics. One of the most fruitful outcomes of recent scientific research in the field of belief is the clear indication that ‘belief’ is a generic category, which includes religious and secular forms. To draw on biological taxonomy, belief is the genus , and religious belief one of its many species . From an empirical point of view, the evidence suggests that it is the act of believing – rather than the substance of what is believed – that is of critical value for human existence. Despite their obvious differences, religious and secular beliefs both play similar psychological roles, and often lead to the same benefits – such as giving structure to life, providing reassurance, reducing anxiety and facilitating social integration. 9 This suggests that ‘any belief system that provides explanations of the world will afford comfort and assurance’.

• From Why We Believe: Finding Meaning in Uncertain Times

  Yet we now need to reflect on a question that many will see as essential to any discussion of beliefs, particularly religious beliefs – namely, how can these be evaluated? If a belief is something that cannot be proved to be true, what evidence can be set out in its support? We shall explore these questions further in the next chapter. Chapter 4Making Judgements: Belief, Explanation and InterpretationThe Oxford Dictionaries ‘Word of the Year’ for 2016 was a new arrival, symptomatic of yet another shift within the public rationality of western culture – ‘post-truth’, defined as ‘relating to or denoting circumstances in which objective facts are less influential in shaping public opinion than appeals to emotion and personal belief.’ The iconic cover of the April 1966 number of Time magazine posed a question, highlighted in red against a stark black background, that cut to the heart of the cultural debates of that age: Is God dead? Its March 2017 counterpart mimicked this dramatic style in posing the new question lying at the core of American public life: Is Truth dead? Do we live in an age of aggressively asserted private beliefs, rather than evidenced public truths? Was the sociologist and cultural critic Philip Rieff right in characterising the history of human civilisation as a shift from ‘fate’ to ‘faith’ – and finally to ‘fiction’?1 Why are objective facts now less influential in shaping public opinion than appeals to subjective emotion and personal belief? Is this just some transient form of generational narcissism, or is it the shape of the future? In such an environment, personal belief – that is, something that cannot be proved to be true but is believed to be reasonable – flourishes; the problem is that it is recategorised as ‘truth’. While some speak about a rejection of authority in western culture, we are really seeing a relocation of authority within individual private experience that leads to people becoming trapped in their own personal versions of reality, refusing to accept external referents that might call these into question. Many are alarmed at these developments, feeling that such an emphasis on context, discourse and history has led to a neglect of traditional concerns for truth and a responsible attempt to grasp a reality which ultimately lies beyond our control and to which we can be held accountable. We are caught up in a battle of ideas in which there is no criterion of adjudication accepted by both parties. Some claim that knowledge is independent of history, power and perspective, and others that knowledge is determined by history, power and perspective.

• From Austerlitz (2001)

  the star-shaped town, and perhaps that was why, at the sight of the records room, a kind of idée fixe forced itself upon me that, all along, my true place of work should have been there in the little fortress of Terezin, where so many had perished in the cold, damp casemates, and it was my own fault that I had not taken it up. =" AS fe pie i , & in ; f, 4 7 PS fS FSS As I was tormenting myself with such thoughts, distinctly aware, so Austerlitz continued, that my face was being marked by the signs of that anguish which so often assails me, I was approached by one of the library staff called Henri Lemoine, who had recognized me from those early years of mine in Paris when I went daily to the rue Richelieu. Jacques Austerlitz, inquired Lemoine, stopping by my desk and leaning slightly down to me, and so, said Austerlitz, we began a long, whispered conversation in the Haut-de-jardin reading room, which was gradually emptying now, about the dissolution, in line with the inexorable spread of processed data, of our capacity to remember, and about the collapse, l’effondrement, as Lemoine put it, of the Bibliotheque Nationale which is already under way. The new library building, which in both its entire layout and its near-ludicrous internal regulation seeks to exclude the reader as a potential enemy, might be described, so Lemoine thought, said Austerlitz, as the official manifestation of the increasingly importunate urge to break with everything which still has some living connection to the past. At a certain point in our conversation, said Austerlitz, and in response to a casual request of mine,

• From Fields of Blood: Religion and the History of Violence (2014)

  58 But by the end of the eighteenth century, traditional agrarian society was coming under increasing strain in Europe: more people were moving to the towns and working in nonagricultural trades and professions, literacy was more widespread, and there was unprecedented social mobility. In the spring of 1789, Louis XVI’s absolutist monarchy was in trouble. Profligate stewardship had plunged the French economy into crisis, and now the clergy and nobility (the First and Second Estates) were refusing a new regime of taxation by the crown. To break the deadlock, the king called the Estates General to meet at Versailles on May 2. 59 The king wanted the three estates—clergy, nobility, and commoners—to deliberate and vote separately, but the Third Estate refused to allow the aristocracy to dominate the proceedings and invited the clergy and nobility to join them in a new National Assembly. The first to defect to the Third Estate were 150 of the lower clergy, who came from the same background as the commoners, were weary of the bishops’ hauteur, and wanted a more collegial church. 60 There were also defections from the Second Estate: the rural gentry disdained by the Parisian aristocracy and the wealthy bourgeois who were impatient with the nobility’s conservatism. On June 17 members of the new National Assembly swore that they would not disperse until they had a new constitution. The Assembly had intended to conduct a reasoned, enlightened debate on the American model, but it had reckoned without the people. After a bad harvest, food supplies were dangerously low, the price of bread rocketed in the towns, and there was widespread unemployment. In April five thousand artisans had rioted in Paris, and revolutionary committees and citizen militias had formed across the country to contain the unrest. During the Assembly’s discussions, delegates were booed and heckled from the public galleries, and the distraught crowds took to the street, attacking any representative of the Old Regime who crossed their path. In a crucial development, some of the troops dispatched to quell these riots joined the rebels instead. On June 14 the mob stormed the Bastille in eastern Paris, released the prisoners, and hacked the jail’s governor to pieces. Other senior officials met the same fate. In the countryside, the famished peasantry were gripped by the “Great Fear,” convinced that the grain shortages had been engineered by the regime to starve them into submission. This suspicion was compounded by the arrival of impoverished laborers seeking work, who were thought to be the nobility’s advance troops. 61 Villagers raided the châteaux, attacked Jewish moneylenders, and refused to pay their tithes and taxes. As the country spun out of control, the Assembly became more radical. It produced the Declaration of the Rights of Man and the Citizen that vested sovereignty in the people rather than in the monarch and proclaimed that all men had natural rights of liberty of conscience, property, and free speech and must enjoy equality before the law, personal security, and equal opportunity.

• From The Well of Loneliness (1928)

  And now Angela was speaking in her soft, Southern drawl: ‘So you’ve found your way here at last,’ she was saying. And then, after a pause: ‘I’m so glad, Miss Gordon, do you know that your coming has given me real pleasure?’ Stephen said: ‘Yes—oh, yes—’ Then fell silent again, apparently intent on the carpet. ‘Have I dropped my cigarette ash or something?’ inquired her hostess, whose mouth twitched a little. ‘I don’t think so,’ murmured Stephen, pretending to look, then glancing up sideways at the impudent bullfinch. The bullfinch was now being sentimental; he piped very low and with great expression. ‘O, Tannebaum, O, Tannebaum, wie grün sind Deine Blätter’ he piped, hopping rather heavily from perch to perch, with one beady black orb fixed on Stephen. Then Angela said: ‘It’s a curious thing, but I feel as though I’ve known you for ages. I don’t want to behave as though we were strangers—do you think that’s very American of me? Ought I to be formal and stand-offish and British? I will if you say so, but I don’t feel British.’ And her voice, although quite steady and grave, was somehow distinctly suggestive of laughter. Stephen lifted troubled eyes to her face: ‘I want very much to be your friend if you’ll have me,’ she said; and then she flushed deeply. Angela held out her undamaged hand which Stephen took, but in great trepidation. Barely had it lain in her own for a moment, when she clumsily gave it back to its owner. Then Angela looked at her hand. Stephen thought: ‘Have I done something rude or awkward?’ And her heart thumped thickly against her side. She wanted to retrieve the lost hand and stroke it, but unfortunately it was now stroking Tony. She sighed, and Angela, hearing that sigh, glanced up, as though in inquiry. The butler arrived bringing in the tea. ‘Sugar?’ asked Angela. ‘No, thanks,’ said Stephen; then she suddenly changed her mind, ‘three lumps, please,’ she had always detested tea without sugar. The tea was too hot; it burnt her mouth badly. She grew scarlet and her eyes began to water. To cover her confusion she swallowed more tea, while Angela looked tactfully out of the window. But when she considered it safe to turn round, her expression, although still faintly amused, had something about it that was tender.

• From Why We Believe: Finding Meaning in Uncertain Times

  Yet even in a world in which there is a widening fissure between public truth and private belief, most still agree that beliefs need to be examined and assessed. The New Testament’s advice that Christians should ‘test everything, and hold fast to what is good’ exemplifies the critical spirit that intelligent religious faith demands, deserves and regularly – though sadly not invariably – exhibits.12 Pope Francis speaks for the Christian tradition as a whole when he points out that faith must be grounded in truth; if it does not it is simply ‘a beautiful story, the projection of our deep yearning for happiness, something capable of satisfying us to the extent that we are willing to deceive ourselves.’13 As Plato suggested, an ‘unexamined life’ is not a meaningful form of existence. We need to think critically about what we believe – both in terms of what we affirm, and what we exclude. We cannot live authentically through affirming publicly what we know to be false privately. Yet as an educationalist, I have come to the reluctant conclusion that an alarming number of people don’t want to think about their core beliefs or values, whether secular or religious, fearing that these might be exposed as inadequate or delusional. I remember a conversation with a retired politician in Belfast many years ago, when I queried him on this point. How, I asked him, could he publicly defend an idea that was (at least in my view) ridiculous. His answer? ‘Practice, dear boy. Lots of practice.’ We need to have a serious conversation about these matters. The denial of reality may be a convenient political stratagem, but it is hardly a basis for a sustainable worldview. Can we live a meaningful life if we suspect that we may have based our identities on something false? A good place to start is the science fiction writer Philip K. Dick’s 1978 speech ‘How to build a universe that doesn’t fall apart two days later’, in which he reflected on the nature of reality, and our generally hopeless attempts to resist the lure of fake realities.14 We live in a society in which ‘spurious realities are manufactured by the media, by governments, by big corporations, by religious groups, political groups – and the electronic hardware exists by which to deliver these pseudo-worlds right into the heads of the reader, the viewer, the listener.’ But there is a problem here that goes right to the heart of human identity: ‘Fake realities will create fake humans.’ Human authenticity depends on experiencing and encountering reality which challenges and excites us, not some fake reality designed to advance someone’s agenda. We need a centre to our lives that will hold firm and shelter us.

• From Why We Believe: Finding Meaning in Uncertain Times

  How can we, for example, achieve a workable synthesis of ethics and physics? In 1905, Albert Einstein published a seminal paper concerning the interchangeability of mass and energy, memorably expressed in the famous scientific equation, E = mc 2 . Forty years later, this scientific principle was put to destructive use in the two atom bombs that devastated the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Although Einstein played no role in this technological development, he was alarmed at the way in which science was being used to develop new and more deadly weapons of mass destruction, such as napalm (developed in the Harvard laboratories of Professor Louis Fieser in 1942) or nuclear weapons. Yet for Einstein, science by itself could not provide scientists with a viable moral framework: ‘science can only ascertain what is , not what should be , and outside of its domain value judgements of all kinds remain necessary.’ 36 David Hume, one of Einstein’s two favourite philosophers (the other being Baruch Spinoza), had exposed the intellectual problems of moving from an account of the way things are and the way things should be , and Einstein could see no way round this disjunction of fact and value. In their quest to be moral, scientists would have to draw on ethical values that originated from beyond their own specialist field of studies. Mary Midgley, perhaps the most significant public philosopher to deal with this question, highlighted the need to use all our ‘philosophical tools to bring these distinct kinds of thought together.’ 37 For Midgley, it was clear that ‘all explanation, and particularly the explanation of human action, quite properly uses many non-competing but convergent methods.’ 38 Difference in method does not entail incompatibility. Neither does difference in outcome , in that each could be seen as a particular perspective on a complex reality – such as the nature of universe or the meaning of human existence – which resists reduction to simplistic categories or single levels of explanation. We have to try and use our tools of knowing as best we can to align our ‘knowledge’ with something that we encounter but cannot control, and that demands progressing beyond monochrome surface readings of reality. Yet some insist that such a multidisciplinary approach is unnecessary and improper, in that the natural sciences can answer every significant question with a unique rational and cultural authority. This position is often known as ‘scientism’, which can be described as ‘a totalizing attitude that regards science as the ultimate standard and arbiter of all interesting questions.’ 39 I used to think this myself, so I can easily understand its appeal to anyone longing for certainty. For the philosopher of science Alex Rosenberg, science offers ‘irrefutably correct answers’ (hence eliminating any need for belief or any anxiety about uncertainty) to ‘persistent questions’ such as ‘What is the nature of reality?’

• From The Nasty Bits: Collected Varietal Cuts, Usable Trim, Scraps, and Bones (2006)

  His wife looked at him like he was out of his mind. "Are you all right?" she asked, her eyes narrowing as she searched his expression for any signs of incipient insanity, stroke, or Tourette's. "Fine! Fine!" insisted Marvin, beads of sweat erupting on his brow. "Best meal I've had in ages . . . ho ho ho. Waiter!" he commanded. "Some dessert, please!" Of course, Alexandra adroitly rescued the situation, smiling warmly at the two women guests, patting one on the hand and confiding, "Actually tonight's a very good night to be here. A very special night. The chef is cooking everything himself. You know he can't do that very often anymore. Tonight is a very special night. You're in luck." She whisked them to a four-top in the center of the dining room and seated them with menus. Ricardo, the restaurant's best waiter, was at their elbows in a second, while Paul, in a moment of possibly divine inspiration, pretending to visit the service bar for a consultation, whispered an order to extinguish the lights out front and draw the curtains. "Lock the door," he said. "No more customers." There was a brief exchange with Ricardo. "Mr. Schutz," said Ricardo in hushed tones meant to convey solemn, yet breathlessly concealed, delight, "the chef has instructed me to close the restaurant to all other customers. It would be his honor and pleasure to prepare a special menu for the four of you. If it's all right with you he'd like you to just relax and enjoy. He has something really extraordinary in mind for your party. Would that be satisfactory to you and your guests?" The two girls, already thrilled that America's Sexiest Chef would be personally preparing their meals, were exuberant, particularly as the two of them had, until their recent move to New York, experienced nothing more extravagant than Shoney's and Olive Garden. Here they were now—with Roland Schutz! Being fed personally by Rob Holland. And look! Look at this! A magnum of champagne, gratis! Headed their way was Ricardo, at his most graceful with the white napkin as he peeled the foil, removed the wire stay, and gently released the cork with a muffled pop. Schutz, who at this early stage of the evening was concerned with nothing more substantial than getting the two girls to go tag- team in his heart-shaped bed later, was happy to go along. They were happy? He was happy. Fuck the food. He'd just as soon be sitting on his couch in his silk boxer shorts, eating his usual peanut butter and bacon sandwich (no crusts) and watching American Gladiators with his chin-strap on. But chicks didn't dig that. The girls looked pleased. They looked impressed. And that was what was important. Cleveland, his security guard, ate, as far as he could tell, only energy bars and Grape Nuts. "Yes, of course. That would be delightful," he said. "Please thank Rob for me."

• From Naked Lunch (1959)

  So he go nuts and start screaming the Federals is after him and run down this alley and stick his head in the garbage can. And I said, 'What you think you are doing?' and he say, 'Get away or I shoot you. I got myself hid good.'" We are getting some C or RX at this time. Shoot it in the mainline, son. You can smell it going in, clean and cold in your nose and throat then a rush of pure pleasure right through the brain lighting up those C connections. Your head shatters in white explosions. Ten minutes later you want another shot... you will walk across town for another shot. But if you can't score for C you eat, sleep and forget about it. This is a yen of the brain alone, a need without feeling and without body, earthbound ghost need, rancid ectoplasm swept out by an old junky coughing and spitting in the sick morning. One morning you wake up and take a speed ball, and feel bugs under your skin. 1890 cops with black mustaches block the doors and lean in through the windows snarling their lips back from blue and bold embossed badges. Junkies march through the room singing the Moslem Funeral Song, bear the body of Bill Gains, stigmata of his needle wounds glow with a soft blue flame. Purposeful schizophrenic detectives sniff at your chamber pot. It's the coke horrors.... Sit back and play it cool and shoot in plenty of that GI M. Day of the Dead: I got the chucks and ate my little Willy's sugar skull. He cried and I had to go out for another. Walked past the cocktail lounge where they blasted the Jai Lai bookie. In Cuernavaca or was it Taxco? Jane meets a pimp trombone player and disappears in a cloud of tea smoke. The pimp is one of these vibration and dietary artists -- which is a means he degrades the female sex by forcing his chicks to swallow all this shit. He was continually enlarging his theories... he would quiz a chick and threaten to walk out if she hadn't memorized every nuance of his latest assault on logic and the human image. "Now, baby. I got it here to give. But if you won't receive it there's just nothing I can do." He was a ritual tea smoker and very puritanical about junk the way some tea heads are. He claimed tea put him in touch with supra blue gravitational fields. He had ideas on every subject: what kind of underwear was healthy, when to drink water, and how to wipe your ass.

• From From the Streets to the Sheets: Noire's Urban Erotic Quickies (2007)

  I woke up around ten that Saturday morning and knew that I needed to call my boo. Tears was probably worried sick about me. I had lied and told him I would be home late because I was accompanying Mr. Robinson to an important business meeting in the city, but that was no excuse to stay out all night long. I sat up in the hay and was surprised that Raheem was not by my side. I figured he’d probably gone inside the house for a moment, so I quickly got dressed. When I walked out of the barn I saw Henry tending one of the horses. “Where’s Raheem?” I asked. He looked at me like he never saw me before. “And you are?” he asked. “Ayeesha, remember? I came home with Raheem last night, and we had dinner together. We talked for hours.” “I’m sorry, I have no recollection of you,” he stated. “How did you get here anyway?” “Raheem brought me,” I told him. I suddenly noticed that the Benz was gone. But I also remembered Raheem telling me that Henry was getting old and his mind sometimes came and went. My ass had to take a cab home. I was pissed off that Raheem had left without waking me up or saying good-bye. But he was a busy man, making millions. I got home around noon, only to get into a heated argument with Tears for staying out all night with no good excuse. I thought that niggah was gonna attack me—he was just that fuckin’ furious. Over and over he threatened to kill me if he caught me fuckin’ some other niggah, but eventually he calmed down after I lied my ass off about my whereabouts, then sucked his dick, swallowed his kids, and gave him some bomb pussy that made him shut the fuck up about me not coming home last night. • • • Monday morning found me in my office bright and early. I was excited about Raheem’s new account and my involvement in it. I knew it would mean some major shit for the agency. I looked around the office for Raheem, but he was nowhere to be found. Noontime came, and I was getting anxious—still no Raheem. I sighed. I thought maybe he had come in even earlier than me, taken care of his business with the agency, and then had to leave on business. I left my desk and went to Mr. Robinson’s office. I knocked twice on his door and heard him call, “Come in.” I walked into his office and my boss was seated at his desk looking over some papers. “Mr. Robinson, did we get the new account?” I asked, smiling tremendously about it. He looked up at me and I saw his eyebrow arch. “New account?”

• From The Master and Margarita (1966)

  The apartment occupied by the late Berlioz, as well as by the Yalta-visiting Likhodeev, was empty, and in the study wax seals hung peacefully on the bookcases, unbroken by anyone. With that they left Sadovaya, and there also departed with them the perplexed and dispirited secretary of the house management, Bedsornev. In the evening Nikanor Ivanovich was delivered to Stravinsky’s clinic. There he became so agitated that an injection, made according to Stravinsky’s recipe, had to be given him, and only after midnight did Nikanor Ivanovich fall asleep in room 119, every now and then emitting a heavy, painful moan. But the longer he slept, the easier his sleep became. He stopped tossing and groaning, his breathing became easy and regular, and he was left alone. Then Nikanor Ivanovich was visited by a dream, at the basis of which undoubtedly lay the experience of that day. It began with Nikanor Ivanovich seeing as it were some people with golden trumpets in their hands leading him, and very solemnly, to a big lacquered door. At this door his companions played as it were a flourish for Nikanor Ivanovich, and then from the sky a resounding bass said merrily: ‘Welcome, Nikanor Ivanovich, turn over your currency!’ Exceedingly astonished, Nikanor Ivanovich saw a black loudspeaker above him. Then he found himself for some reason in a theatre house, where crystal chandeliers blazed under a gilded ceiling and Quinquet lamps 2 on the walls. Everything was as it ought to be in a small-sized but very costly theatre. There was a stage closed off by a velvet curtain, its dark cerise background spangled, as if with stars, with oversized gold pieces, there was a prompter’s box, and there was even an audience. What surprised Nikanor Ivanovich was that this audience was all of the same sex—male—and all for some reason bearded. Besides that, it was striking that there were no seats in the theatre, and the audience was all sitting on the floor, splendidly polished and slippery. Abashed in this new and big company, Nikanor Ivanovich, after a brief hesitation, followed the general example and sat down on the parquet Turkish-fashion, huddled between some stalwart, bearded redhead and another citizen, pale and quite overgrown. None of the sitters paid any attention to the newly arrived spectator. Here the soft ringing of a bell was heard, the lights in the house went out, and the curtain opened to reveal a lighted stage with an armchair, a little table on which stood a golden bell, and a solid black velvet backdrop. An artiste came out from the wings in an evening jacket, smoothly shaven, his hair neatly parted, young and with very pleasant features. The audience in the house livened up, and everyone turned towards the stage.

• From Saint Augustine (Penguin Lives) (1999)

  RETURNED TO MILAN by the beginning of Lent, Augustine was no doubt anxious to mix again with his fellow philosophers and to find out how his dialogues, sent back from Cassiciacum, had been received. While he was on a roll, he began an extension of the Dialogues with Myself. Now that he could talk again with Simplician and Theodore, he felt he could prove that the soul is immortal. There was no scriptural commentary in the dialogues from Cassiciacum, a fact that has been used to indicate that Augustine’s conversion was less to Christ than to Plotinus. But it would have been presumptuous for him to speak out on the faith before being instructed in its reserved mysteries, the disciplina arcani. And his real exposure to the symbolic reading of Scripture came with Ambrose’s Lenten instruction to the candidates (competentes) for baptism—a disciplined course all Christians went through at the time. All through Lent, the candidates went unbathed, wore penitential hairskins, and were assigned a special place in church. We have two versions of the Ambrosian instruction on baptism—which traced prefigurings of this spiritual “bath” to Noah’s flood, to the passage of the Red Sea, to healings at the pool of Siloam; to water that Moses sweetened, or water that floated Elijah’s axe (Sacraments 2.2; Mysteries 1.3). In this period, the candidates were given, by oral recitation, the Creed and the Lord’s Prayer for memorizing. On Thursday of Holy Week they were allowed to bathe, then submitted to physical inspection (S 216.11). On the eve of Easter, they prayed through the night, renounced Satan at dawn, turned toward the sun, and were conducted to the octagonal pool we can still see, in a tunnel under the cathedral plaza of Milan (O’Donnell 3.106–7). There are few places in Europe more charged with historical significance than this baptistry where Ambrose, the creator of structured disciplines for the medieval Church, received as a Christian Augustine, the creator of the theology that would resound in that Church. 5. Ostia: 387 BAPTIZED IN THE SPRING, Augustine headed south in the summer, traveling now in humbler state than on his trip up, with a reduced company trying to reach Ostia before winter shut down the sea lanes back to Africa. But when they arrived there, they found the Mediterranean sealed off by war, not winter. The forces of both emperors, Eastern and Western, were finally arrayed against the usurper Maximus, whose court in Trier Ambrose had visited during Augustine’s time in Milan. While they were stranded in Ostia, Monnica was taken ill and died. I have not said much about Monnica so far because too much is often made of her role in Augustine’s life. Rebecca West’s indictment of her is well known:

• From The Well of Loneliness (1928)

  Violet was plump, pert and adolescent, and had lately insisted on putting her hair up. She liked men, who in consequence always liked her, for like begets like when it comes to the sexes, and Violet was full of what people call: ‘allure,’ or in simpler language, of sexual attraction. Roger was home for Christmas from Sandiest, so that he would be there to assist his mother. He was now nearly twenty, a good-looking youth with a tiny moustache which he tentatively fingered. He assumed the grand air of the man of the world who has actually weathered about nineteen summers. He was hoping to join his regiment quite soon, which greatly augmented his self-importance. Could Mrs. Antrim have ignored Stephen Gordon’s existence, she would almost certainly have done so. She disliked the girl; she had always disliked her; what she called Stephen’s ‘queerness’ aroused her suspicion—she was never quite clear as to what she suspected, but felt sure that it must be something outlandish: ‘A young woman of her age to ride like a man, I call it preposterous!’ declared Mrs. Antrim. It can safely be said that Stephen at eighteen had in no way outgrown her dread of the Antrims; there was only one member of that family who liked her, she knew, and that was the small, hen-pecked Colonel. He liked her because, a fine horseman himself, he admired her skill and her courage out hunting. ‘It’s a pity she’s so tall, of course—’ he would grumble, ‘but she does know a horse and how to stick on one. Now my children might have been brought up at Margate, they’re just about fitted to ride the beach donkeys!’ But Colonel Antrim would not count at the dance; indeed in his own house he very seldom counted. Stephen would have to endure Mrs. Antrim and Violet—and then Roger was home from Sandiest. Their antagonism had never quite died, perhaps because it was too fundamental. Now they covered it up with a cloak of good manners, but these two were still enemies at heart, and they knew it. No, Stephen did not want to go to that dance, though she went in order to please her mother. Nervous, awkward and apprehensive, Stephen arrived at the Antrims that night, little thinking that Fate, the most expert of tricksters, was waiting to catch her just round the corner.

• From The Girls (2016)

  “Come where?” she said, her voice even. “Wherever you’re going,” I said. “I know you’re going somewhere.” The teasing lilt. “Russell didn’t ask you to go.” “But I want to,” I said. “Please.” Suzanne didn’t say yes, exactly. But she slowed enough so I could match her stride, a pace new to me, purposeful. “You should change,” Suzanne said. I looked down, trying to discern what had offended her: my cotton shirt, my long skirt. “Into dark clothes,” she said. 14The car ride was as slurred over and unbelievable as a long illness. Guy at the wheel, Helen and Donna beside him. Suzanne sat in the backseat, staring out the window, and I was right next to her. The night had dropped deep and dark, the car passing under the streetlights. Their sulfur glow gliding across Suzanne’s face, a stupor occupying the others. Sometimes it seemed like I never really left the car. That a version of me is always there. Russell stayed at the ranch that night. Which didn’t even register with me as strange. Suzanne and the others were his familiars, loosed out into the world—it had always been that way. Guy like his second in a duel, Suzanne and Helen and Donna not hesitating. Roos was supposed to have gone, too, but she didn’t—she claimed, later, that she’d gotten a bad feeling and stayed behind, but I don’t know if that is true. Did Russell hold her back, sensing a stubborn virtue in her that might yoke her to the real world? Roos with Nico, a child of her own. Roos, who did become the main witness against the others, taking the stand in a white dress with her hair parted straight down the middle. I don’t know if Suzanne told Russell I was coming—no one ever answered that question. The car radio was on, playing the laughably foreign soundtrack to other people’s lives. Other people who were getting ready to sleep, mothers who were scraping the last shreds of chicken dinner into the garbage. Helen was jawing away about a whale beaching down in Pismo and did we think it was true that it was a sign a big earthquake was gonna happen? Getting up on her knees then, like the idea thrilled her. “We’d have to go to the desert,” she said. No one was taking her bait: a hush had fallen over the car. Donna muttered something, and Helen set her jaw. “Can you open the window?” Suzanne said. “I’m cold,” Helen whined in her baby voice. “Come on,” Suzanne said, pounding the back of the seat. “I’m fucking melting.” Helen rolled the window down and the car filled with air, flavored with exhaust. The salt of the nearby ocean. And there I was among them. Russell had changed, things had soured, but I was with Suzanne. Her presence corralled any stray worries. Like the child who believes that her mother’s bedtime vigil will ward off monsters.

• From The Master and Margarita (1966)

  So you, too, can just vanish away along with your burnt notebook and dried-up rose! Sit here on the bench alone and entreat him to set you free, to let you breathe the air, to go from your memory!’ Her face white, Margarita came back to the bench. The redhead was looking at her, narrowing his eyes. ‘I don’t understand any of this,’ Margarita began quietly. ‘It’s possible to find out about the pages . . . get in, snoop around . . . You bribed Natasha, right? But how could you find out my thoughts?’ She scowled painfully and added: ‘Tell me, who are you? From which institution?’ ‘What a bore . . .’ the redhead muttered and then said aloud, ‘I beg your pardon, didn’t I tell you that I’m not from any institution? Sit down, please.’ Margarita obeyed unquestioningly, but even so, as she was sitting down, she asked once more: ‘Who are you?’ ‘Well, all right, my name is Azazello, but anyhow that tells you nothing.’ ‘And you won’t tell me how you found out about the pages and about my thoughts?’ ‘No, I won’t,’ Azazello replied drily. ‘But do you know anything about him?’ Margarita whispered imploringly. ‘Well, suppose I do.’ ‘I implore you, tell me only one thing . . . is he alive? . . . Don’t torment me!’ ‘Well, he’s alive, he’s alive,’ Azazello responded reluctantly. ‘Oh, God! . . .’ ‘Please, no excitements and exclamations,’ Azazello said, frowning. ‘Forgive me, forgive me,’ the now obedient Margarita murmured, ‘of course, I got angry with you. But, you must agree, when a woman is invited in the street to pay a visit somewhere . . . I have no prejudices, I assure you,’ Margarita smiled joylessly, ‘but I never see any foreigners, I have no wish to associate with them . . . and, besides, my husband . . . my drama is that I’m living with someone I don’t love . . . but I consider it an unworthy thing to spoil his life . . . I’ve never seen anything but kindness from him . . .’ Azazello heard out this incoherent speech with visible boredom and said sternly: ‘I beg you to be silent for a moment.’ Margarita obediently fell silent. ‘The foreigner to whom I’m inviting you is not dangerous at all. And not a single soul will know of this visit. That I can guarantee you.’ ‘And what does he need me for?’ Margarita asked insinuatingly. ‘You’ll find that out later.’ ‘I understand . . .

• From The History of Christianity: From the Disciples to the Dawn of the Reformation (2012)

  260 Lecture 36: The Ever-adapting Religion fresh translations of the Bible and the establishment of Christian institutions in distant lands. • Between the 16 th and 20 th centuries, therefore, Christianity became a truly “world religion,” with adherents in every land and language. o As it expanded, Christianity was increasingly required to engage questions of cultural diversity. Such questions, in turn, raised concerns about the possibility of compromising Christianity’s identity or the use of the Christian mission as an instrument of European cultural hegemony. o These questions remain open, even as Christianity faces more severe challenges that have been posed by modernity. Perhaps the greatest challenge of all, in light of the greatest part of Christian history, is this: How would Christianity deal with the end of the Constantinian era, when the church was decisively severed from its role as glue to the state if not society and when the state could once again even be hostile to this religion? The Limits of Historical Knowing • It is important to recognize that this “grand historical narrative” also misses a great deal of “what really happened” in the Christian past. As we noted in the first lecture of this course, there are intrinsic limits to our historical knowing. • Our ability to talk about this religion as a historical entity depends a great deal on Christianity’s involvement in the political order, precisely because it is in the realm of the political that chronology, documentation, and major events are most in evidence. • When Christianity has lacked clear political involvement or when historical evidence is not available, little can be said about the religion in those times or places. • There is every reason to believe, however, that Christianity thrived at the level of peoples’ lives, even when little or nothing of historical significant rose to the level of analysis.

• From The History of Christianity: From the Disciples to the Dawn of the Reformation (2012)

  48 Lecture 7: The Unpopular Cult—Persecution o Even when a cult enjoyed imperial recognition or official favor, it could be the target of local resentment and harassment. Ancient people were no less prone than we are to fear and resent that which is strange. • Two examples preceding Christianity show such premises at work and help explain the subsequent experience of Christ-believers when they became sufficiently numerous to be noticed by outsiders. o Although Judaism was granted imperial recognition as a national religion—and reciprocated by offering sacrifices and prayers for the emperor—there are instances of its being persecuted. o For example, the Maccabean books show that resistance to syncretism under Antiochus IV Epiphanes in Palestine led to executions, most famously that of the aged Eleazar and of the seven Maccabean brothers with their mother. Philo tells us of anti-Semitism in Alexandria that expressed itself in local riots against the Jews, requiring an appeal to the emperor for assistance. o Even among non-Jews, philosophers who challenged traditional beliefs or who withdrew from religious practices, such as the Epicureans, were suspected of subversion. Individual philosophers who challenged social mores or popular religious tenets were sometimes put to death (Socrates and Zeno) or exiled (Dio of Prusa, Epictetus, Seneca) as “enemies of the Roman order.” Early Christian Vulnerabilities • In its first centuries of its existence, Christianity was particularly vulnerable to attack from both Jews and Gentiles. It was sociologically underdetermined and ideologically oppositional. o As an intentional community, the Christian cult drew from both Jews and Greeks but had no secure place in the world. It did not meet in established temples or synagogues but in households.

• From The Girls (2016)

  His grandson rents it to us.” To make money, she explained, they took care of the llamas and worked for the farmer next door, harvesting lettuce with their pocketknives and selling his haul at the farmer’s market. Sunflowers and jars of marmalade gluey with pectin. “Three bucks an hour. Not bad,” Donna said. “But money gets tight.” I nodded, like I understood such concerns. I watched a young boy, four or five, hurtle himself at Roos, crash-landing into her leg. He was badly sunburned, his hair bleached white, and he seemed too old to still be wearing a diaper. I assumed the boy was Roos’s child. Was Russell the father? The quick thought of sex raised a queasy rush in my chest. The boy lifted his head, like a dog roused from sleep, and looked at me with a bored, suspicious squint. Donna leaned into me. “Come meet Russell,” she said. “You’ll love him, I swear.” “She’ll meet him at the party,” Suzanne said, cutting into our conversation. I hadn’t noticed her approach: her closeness startled me. She handed a sack of potatoes to me and took up a cardboard box in her arms. “We’re gonna dump this stuff in the kitchen, first. For the feast.” Donna pouted, but I followed Suzanne. “Bye, dolly,” she called, frittering her thin fingers and laughing, not unkindly. —I followed Suzanne’s dark hair through a jumble of strangers. The ground was uneven, a disorienting slope. It was the smell, too, a heavy smokiness. I was flattered Suzanne had enlisted my help, like it confirmed I was one of them. There were young people milling around in bare feet or boots, their hair drifty and sun lightened. I overheard feverish invocations of the solstice party. I didn’t know it yet, but it was rare for the ranch, all this efficient work. Girls wore their best thrift store rags and carried instruments in their arms as gently as babies, the sun catching the steel of a guitar and fractaling into hot diamonds of light. The tambourines rattling tuneless in their arms. “Those fuckers bite me all night,” Suzanne said, swatting at one of the vicious horseflies that droned around us. “I wake up all bloody from scratching.” Beyond the house, the land was scarred with boulders and the filtery oaks, a few hollow cars in a state of disrepair. I liked Suzanne but couldn’t shake the feeling that I was struggling to keep pace with her: it was an age when I often conflated liking people with feeling nervous around them. A boy with no shirt and a chunky silver belt buckle catcalled when we passed. “What you got there? A solstice present?” “Shut up,” Suzanne said. The boy smiled, raffish, and I tried to smile back. He was young, his hair long and dark, a medieval droop to his face I took as romantic. Handsome with the feminine duskiness of a cinematic villain, though I’d find out he was just from Kansas. This was Guy.

• From From the Streets to the Sheets: Noire's Urban Erotic Quickies (2007)

  Mission accomplished! Dushawn let out a loud groan that echoed through the large empty building. On his last stroke, he tried to plunge his big-ass dick up through the roof of my pussy. I felt like I was ’bout to bust wide open, but I kept ridin’. He moaned and kept grindin’. I threw my ass into overdrive and bounced on the leftovers until I finished my second hard cum. • • • We got dressed in the purple light of night. Just before we climbed out of a secret third-story entrance, Dushawn hugged me tightly and gently devoured my lips and tongue. He gave me one last sweet deep kiss and said, “Let’s bounce.” Holding hands, we left the old abandoned factory where we’d played hide-and-seek as kids, and started walkin’ back to Alameda to where we had parked our cars by Angel’s Doughnuts. We figured it was safe there cuz it’s always some old guys on the patio playin’ dominoes and takin’ bets. As we got closer to Angel’s, the streets got noisier and more crowded than usual because it was Friday night. All the soldiers lined the sidewalks and steps of their apartments, laughin’ and plottin’ capers. Pook and Dre were at the curb slippin’ dimes of Chronic, and a slick song was blastin’ from the windows of a big tan-and-white apartment building on Willowbrook. A couple of young moms were sittin’ out front, bouncin’ their babies to the beat while they kicked it and cut it up. “Hey, gurrrrrrrrrrrl!” It was this bitch named Nakisha. She knew me and Cami from Willowbrook. I could tell she was shocked to see me holdin’ hands with Dushawn. Life had not been kind to her. She was fat as fuck, with a kangaroo pouch in the front and two grocery bags of ass in the back. “Camille never told me you and her brother was kickin’ it.” “Did I miss something? When did you and Cami start kickin’ it? We talk er’ night and she never mentioned yo ass.” I shut that shit straight down, but I knew I’d have to talk to Cami right away. Dushawn never said a word, but he never let go of my hand either. A little further down, somebody was fryin’ the hell out of some chicken. It was smellin’ up the whole block. TVs were flickering through every other window. Dushawn was quiet and I was pretty quiet my damn self. My pussy was still clenching and throbbin’ from being broke off proper. I thought about Camille. I wondered how she’d act when I told her about me and Dushawn. She used to haaate the bitches that tried to get to Dushawn by tryin’ to strike up a fake-ass friendship with her. I knew I had to tell her before Nakisha blurted it out just to see the look on her face. You know how foul bitches do it. • • •

• From From the Streets to the Sheets: Noire's Urban Erotic Quickies (2007)

  But shit veered off course for her the next evening when Pluto called her cell phone and told her the G-Spot was closed and to stay home for the night. Monique was suspicious. She knew that amateur-ass Juicy had fallen off on her shit a few days ago, and was too worn out to work the rooms anymore. Niggahs had been tossing their room chips back at Greco and refusing to fuck her ’cause her stank pussy was bleeding and she was talking out of her head. So vacation time had come to a close for Monique and the other hoes, and niggahs was so full of cum that she’d been forced to take on a double load the night before. Ballers had been horny and wanted to fuck, so Monique had performed all of her little tricks to get them to nut as fast as possible, and Pluto’s call had caught her soaking her sore pussy in a hot tub of water and going over her pole routines in her mind. “Yeah,” Plutotoldher. “Stay the fuck home. We closed to the public for the night. Ballers only. So keep your ass at home.” Monique was too suspicious! What kinda private party could G be having that didn’t involve his hoes? She didn’t even like the way that shit sounded, so she had to let a niggah know! “What up like that? What kinda private fuckin’ party? Why ain’t nobody invite me?” “Jawn,” Pluto growled in her ear. “I’ll snap your mother-fuckin’ neck! You better remember ya goddamn role. Don’t be asking me no fuckin’ questions. Especially on the air. Just do like I said, and stay your ass the fuck home.” Click. Monique had looked at the phone for a second, then threw that shit up against the wall. That stank niggah better not be trying to roll nowhere without her! Just the thought that Pluto might try to shake her off and leave her in Harlem made her face sweat as she sat in all that hot water. She thought about that shit for a second, and decided it was best to regroup.