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 The Battle for God (2000)

  Just as revealing, but more successful and enduring, were the jamaat al-islamiyyah, the Islamist student associations which dominated the university campuses during the presidency of Sadat. Like Shukri’s Society, the jamaat saw themselves as Qutb’s vanguard; however, they did not practice a radical withdrawal from the mainstream, but tried to create an Islamic space for themselves in a society that seemed oblivious to their needs. Egyptian universities were not like Oxford, Harvard, or the Sorbonne. They were huge, heartless, mass institutions with lamentably poor facilities. Between 1970 and 1977, the number of students rose from about 200,000 to half a million. As a result, there was appalling overcrowding. Two or three students would have to share a seat, and the lecture halls and laboratories were so packed that it was virtually impossible to hear the teacher’s voice, especially since the microphones were often broken. The overcrowding was especially difficult for women students, many of whom had come from a traditional background and found it intolerable to be crammed up against young men on the benches or in the buses that conveyed the students back to their equally crowded halls of residence. Learning was by rote and success in the examinations required the mechanical regurgitation of the lecture notes and manuals issued by the professors. The humanities, law, and the social sciences were known as “garbage faculties,” and virtually written off. Whatever their personal inclinations, able students would be forced to study medicine, pharmacology, odontology, engineering, or economics, or else resign themselves to being taught by the worst professors and to having even less chance of a reasonable job after graduation. In this setting, the students were not trained to think creatively about the problems of humanity or of society. Instead, they were required to absorb information passively and soullessly. Their introduction to modern culture was chronically superficial, therefore, and left their religious beliefs and practices entirely untouched.37

• From I'm Not a Mourning Person (2023)

  Or as Dr. Maya Angelou put it, “People will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.” The same is true for our pace. Oftentimes we move really fast around the dying—not just physically but verbally. Maybe that’s because we’re jacked up on adrenaline, so focused on trying to get it right or to avoid discomfort that we fail to slow down and simply be. But when we don’t know how to slow down, the person we’re most concerned about may actually wind up feeling invisible. We’re still hyperconnected, after all, keeping up with the pace of our busy lives and busy worlds. But the person who is dying is winding down and getting more introspective. We’re in two very different places, so it takes awareness to recalibrate our energy. If we’re unaware of things like our anxiety, we might talk over the person or even avoid eye contact. I noticed this happening to my dad. I’d watch as uncomfortable people made him feel uncomfortable, and he’d eventually give up on trying to be included by them. This smashed my heart (and poked my protective instincts). When people didn’t make space for him to participate in conversation, even unintentionally, I was sure to make it for them. “Excuse me . . . what were you saying, Dad?” Or sometimes I’d just take the direct approach: “You’re interrupting him. . . . Go ahead, Dad.” Whether my conversation crossing-guard approach was helpful or not, the point here is that social dynamics change up until the very end and beyond. The more connected and committed we are to paying attention to our behavior, the healthier it is for everyone. KEEP LIVINGA few weeks before Dad slipped into a coma-like state, unable to communicate, he asked me to go to CVS and buy him Bioré strips. “You know, those strips that get the blackheads off your nose? Pick up some of those and let’s do facials.” Dying or not, Dad was all about looking “spiffy,” after all. When I was growing up, he spent more time in the bathroom than I did! He’d blow-dry his hair and set it perfectly with Vitalis for Men hair spray. I was more of an Aqua Net gal myself, and I definitely did not have the selftaught salon-quality skill he had somehow acquired. Dad was so good with hair that my mom and I nicknamed him “Kenzo,” and eventually trusted him with our own locks. When we needed a color touch-up, he’d head to CVS to get the classiest color he could find. For me, it was “Sahara” blonde. One of the last things Dad did before he died was touch-up Mom’s hair. He didn’t want to leave without spiffing her up one last time. He needed everything to be in order—including her roots. His way of giving us everything he possibly could.

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

  Pretty found the antique mirror again and tightened his tie. He pounded his braids. “Of course you run this. I don’t doubt that.” “Well, have a drink, Jarvis.” He walked back toward the bar. He held up an empty glass. “What do you drink?” “Henny.” Mr. Patterson’s laugh was full of pity. He not only looked down on Pretty’s apprehension to drink, he looked down on his choice of beverage. He needed a go-getter, but Pretty wasn’t biting. He needed to get to the crux of this black man. “Who drinks Henny, Jarvis?” Pretty’s tone was defensive. “The brothers I hang with.” “The brothers you hang with?” He poured Pretty a drink. “Do the brothers you hang with drink the good stuff?” Pretty accepted the beverage and put it to his nose. “Is this the good stuff?” “Taste it.” Pretty put it to his mouth and before he took a sip, Mr. Patterson interrupted, “Toast first, Jarvis.” He held his glass in the air. Pretty’s glass made contact with Mr. Patterson’s. Mr. Patterson continued, “Let’s toast to a proposition you cannot turn down, Jarvis.” Pretty remained silent and took a huge gulp. He gagged, choked, and spit out the remains that didn’t go down. “Damn! What is this shit?” Mr. Patterson laughed and handed him a napkin. “Wipe up your mess, Jarvis.” He took a sip of his own and uttered, “You gotta crawl before you can walk, son.” Pretty wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. “What is this?” Mr. Patterson held his glass in the air. “This, my friend, is the good stuff.” He took another sip. “This is Johnny Walker Black. Thirty dollars a shot at the bar.” “Well it tastes like crap.” “Everything tastes like crap until you get used to it. This warms the throat and soothes the soul, Jarvis.” He put his glass down and offered Pretty a seat. “You ready?” Pretty took his seat. “I have a great deal for you, Jarvis.” He closed his eyes and calculated with silence. He snapped himself out of his thoughts and continued, “I am willing to pay you three thousand dollars. Can you use three thousand dollars?” This got Pretty’s attention. His back stiffened. “Yes.” His eyebrow shot up. He eased back and looked toward the door. “What do I have to do?” Mr. Patterson pressed the intercom. “Can you send the party in, Ms. Randolph?” The secretary answered politely. Pretty readied himself for anything. He sat on edge, his weight rested on his toes. He interlocked his hands and waited. The door opened slowly. Pretty’s hands went to his head. He twisted the ends of his braids and tapped his foot. He began to sweat. Mr. Patterson grinned boastfully as he stood and extended his hand. His voice brimmed with pride. “This, Jarvis, is my wife. Tamanda Patterson.”

• From H Is for Hawk (2014)

  The pheasants are dead. One is in my waistcoat pocket, and the other is being plumed by my errant goshawk in lifting puffs of soft contour feathers that float and catch in the wire behind her. We need to get out of here fast before I have explaining to do. Shaking with worry, I take Mabel from her quarry. And then I injure myself horribly. Cutting through pheasant sinew, I take a wide, shallow strip of skin from my thumb. And as soon as I get Mabel back on the glove and stow her illicit prize in my waistcoat pocket, I start to worry about the amount of blood I’m losing. It’s not just that my hand is completely red; I can hear the drips falling to the woodland floor. I press the wound hard into the fabric of my hawking jacket. It’s covered in germs, I know, but I must stop the bleeding. Must. Stop. The. Blood. And blood pours from me all the long way back to the car, and all the way to Stuart’s house. I can never go back there, I think. Never, ever again. In March 1949, the publisher Wren Howard of Jonathan Cape travelled to the Channel Islands to stay at White’s new home. White had moved to the island of Alderney: it was a perfect refuge from the taxman and the world. He’d bought a white three-storeyed house in St Anne’s with magnolia wainscoted walls. He’d filled it with new things: his own surrealist paintings, a boudoir grand piano, silver candlesticks and a statuette of the Emperor Hadrian. There were dark curtains printed with bouquets of ghostly silver roses, jazz records, Jacobean chairs, and a sofa, towards which White ushered Howard to sit. Howard sat. It was wildly uncomfortable. He got up and examined the seat. There was something beneath the cushion. He reached under it and pulled out a thick pile of papers. He asked White what it was. White looked worried. It was the manuscript to a book he had written about hawks, he explained. He did not want it published because after it was written he became a good falconer, an authority on the subject, and there were things in it that were embarrassing to remember. Besides, the hawk had been lost. Howard leafed through the first few pages and was intrigued. He took it upstairs and read it overnight. In the morning he insisted on taking it back to London, for he was sure it should be published. White balked at the idea, but as the weeks went by, Howard and his friends persuaded him, and he consented to its publication on one condition: that he could write a postscript explaining how he ought to have trained the hawk, in the light of his later experience.

• From Open (2009)

  Then there’s the social anxiety, the doomed effort to fit in. At Braden-ton Academy, fitting in takes money. Most of the kids are fashion plates, whereas I have three pairs of jeans, five T-shirts, two pairs of tennis shoes—and one cotton crewneck with gray and black squares. In class, rather than thinking about The Scarlet Letter, I’m thinking about how many days per week I can get away with wearing my sweater, worrying about what I’ll do when the weather gets warm. The worse I do in school, the more I rebel. I drink, I smoke pot, I act like an ass. I’m dimly aware of the inverse ratio between my grades and my rebellion, but I don’t dwell on it. I prefer Nick’s theory. He says I don’t do well in school because I have a hard-on for the world. It might be the only thing he’s ever said about me that’s halfway accurate. (He typically describes me as a cocky showboater who seeks the limelight. Even my father knows me better than that.) My general demeanor does feel like a hard-on—violent, involuntary, unstoppable—and so I accept it as I accept the many changes in my body. Finally, when my grades hit bottom, my rebellion reaches the breaking point. I walk into a hair salon in the Bradenton Mall and tell the stylist to give me a mohawk. Razor the sides, shave them to the scalp, and leave just one thick strip of spiked hair down the middle. Are you sure, kid? I want it high, and I want it spiky. Then dye it pink. He works his shearer back and forth for eight minutes. Then he says, All done, and spins me around in the chair. I look in the mirror. The earring was good, this is better. I can’t wait to see the look on Mrs. G’s face. Outside the mall, while I wait for the bus back to the Bollettieri Academy, no one recognizes me. Kids I play with, kids I bunk with, they look right past me. To the casual observer I’ve done something that seems like a desperate effort to stand out. But in fact I’ve rendered myself, my inner self, my true self, invisible. At least, that was the idea. I FLY HOME FOR CHRISTMAS, and as the plane approaches the Strip, as the casinos below the canting right wing twinkle like a row of Christmas trees, the flight attendant says we’re stuck in a holding pattern. Groans. Since we know you’re all itching to hit the casinos, she says, we thought it might be fun to do a little gambling till we’re clear to land. Cheers. Let’s everybody take out a dollar and put it in this airsick bag. Then write your seat number on your ticket stub and throw it in this other airsick bag. We’ll pull out one ticket stub, and that person will win the jackpot!

• From In Search of Paul: How Jesus's Apostle Opposed Rome's Empire with God's Kingdom (2005)

  I robbed other churches by accepting support from them in order to serve you. And when I was with you and was in need, I did not burden anyone, for my needs were supplied by the friends who came from Macedonia. So I refrained and will continue to refrain from burdening you in any way. (11:8–9) The question, in other words, is very specific: Why did Paul refuse support precisely at Corinth and not elsewhere? What was wrong with Corinthian support? LETTER 1. Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians is lost, and we know about it only from his comment in 1 Corinthians 5:9: “I wrote to you in my letter.” But it is a second indication of previous trouble. He had warned them in it “not to associate with anyone who bears the name of brother or sister who is sexually immoral or greedy, or is an idolater, reviler, drunkard, or robber. Do not even eat with such a one,” as he put it in 1 Corinthians 5:11. How did such individuals come to be within Corinthian Christianity? And did the community not recognize that problem and have to be told by Paul to do something about it? LETTER 2. Letter 2 is our 1 Corinthians. After a long, powerful, and impassioned overture (chaps. 1–4), Paul reacts to several problems reported to him most likely by “Chloe’s people” (5–6) and then responds to several questions posed by the Corinthians (7–16). He must also have been updated on Corinth by “the coming of Stephanas and Fortunatus and Achaicus” (16:17). They were presumably on his side in the disputes with some at Corinth because he himself “did baptize also the household of Stephanas” and “members of the household of Stephanas were the first converts in Achaia” (1:16; 16:15). VISIT 2. Paul sent Timothy to Corinth, but with some trepidation, as he noted in 1 Corinthians 4:17 and 16:10. Timothy’s report was so serious that Paul made a short visit directly from Ephesus to Corinth and back. He refers later to it as a “painful visit” in 2 Corinthians 2:1 and 13:2. But matters continued to get worse. LETTER 3. This is another now lost letter and is known only because Paul mentions later that he wrote this letter to avoid making another “painful” visit. He also refers to it repeatedly in 2 Corinthians: I wrote you out of much distress and anguish of heart and with many tears, not to cause you pain, but to let you know the abundant love that I have for you…. For even if I made you sorry with my letter, I do not regret it (though I did regret it, for I see that I grieved you with that letter, though only briefly)…. I do not want to seem as though I am trying to frighten you with my letters. (2:4; 7:8; 10:9)

• From Momma and the Meaning of Life (1999)

  “How about in this room?” “Yes, here too.” “For example?” “No offense, Doctor, but I’m accustomed to more professionalism when I see a physician.” “Professionalism?” Ernest felt energized. Finally, something was happening. “I prefer to consult a physician who offers a discrete diagnosis and prescribes a treatment.” “And your experience here?” “I mean no offense, Dr. Lash.” “None will be taken, Halston. Your only task here is to speak your mind freely.” “Things are just—how to put it?—too informal here, too—too familiar. Your wish that we address one another by first names, for example.” “You see this informality as a denial of our professional relationship?” “Precisely. Makes me uneasy. Makes me feel we’re fumbling about as though we were somehow going to stumble upon the answer together.” Ernest played it loose. Nothing to lose. Halston was most likely gone anyway. Might as well, Ernest thought, give him something he can use in his next therapy. “I understand your preference for more formal roles,” he said, “and I appreciate your willingness to express your feelings about working with me. Let me try to do the same and share with you my experience in working with you.” Ernest had Halston’s full attention. Few patients are indifferent to the prospect of obtaining feedback from their therapist. “One of my major feelings is a certain frustration—I think it has to do with your being a trifle stingy.” “Stingy?” “Stingy—word-stingy. You don’t give me much. Whenever I ask you a question, you send me back a terse telegram. That is, you give me as few words, as few descriptive details, as few personal revelations as possible. And it is for this very reason that I have tried to establish a more intimate relationship between us. My approach to therapy depends on my patients’ sharing their deepest feelings. In my experience, formal roles slow down that process, and that’s my reason—my sole reason—for shucking them. And that’s also why I often ask you to look at your feelings toward me.” “Everything you say is eminently reasonable—I’m sure you know what you’re doing. But I can’t help it—the California touchy-feely culture sets my teeth on edge. That’s the way I am.” “One question about that. Are you satisfied with the way you are?” “Satisfied?” Halston looked baffled. “Well, when you say that’s the way you are, I believe you’re saying too that that’s the way you choose to be. So I’m asking, are you satisfied with that choice? With keeping such distance, remaining so impersonal?” “I’m not sure it’s a choice, Doctor. That,” he repeated, “is the way I am—my innermost constitution.” Ernest considered two alternatives. He could either attempt to persuade Halston of his own responsibility for his remoteness or launch one final major investigation of a specific crucial episode of Halston’s withholding. He chose the latter.

• From Love & Sex: A Christian Guide to Healthy Intimacy (2018)

  Being sexual with another human being was intended to be an expression of a love relationship. Scripture clearly makes a connection between married love and sex—a very necessary connection to make if we are going to reclaim the meaning and purpose of our sexuality. Some eliminate sex when they talk about love, thinking sexuality isn’t holy enough to be connected to love, and others eliminate love when they talk about sex, believing sex is about lust. God wants us to have an integrated wholeness as we develop our ideas, thinking, and beliefs about human sexuality. He wants us to have a love map for the expression of our sexuality. WHY IS IT IMPORTANT TO UNDERSTAND HOW OUR SEXUAL HISTORIES HAVE SHAPED US? New brain science has proven we are wired for relationships during the first years of our lives. God’s plan was for a child to be created by a loving husband who is committed to the wellbeing of his loving wife and she to him, so together they can commit to the well-being of their child. The mother has typically been the first love object of the newborn child and then the father is integrated as the child develops. When Daddy and Mommy love one another well, together they can love the child well. The child is then securely attached and is wired for future love relationships. The child has learned the world is safe and people can be trusted. Those most significant caretakers are people by whom the child has been nurtured, soothed, and comforted. Snuggles, warmth, and empathy have been the foundation for this newborn’s life. Unfortunately, this isn’t always the case. Many children are born into less than loving circumstances, some into cruel and evil environments. Instead of love wiring the child’s brain for how he or she will think, act, and feel about future relationships, either anxiety about relationships or avoidance become the child’s norm. New Love Science (a work started in the 1960s by Dr. John Bowlby, a British psychologist and psychiatrist who developed the idea of attachment theory, which was continued by Dr. Sue Johnson and her colleagues) teaches us the necessity of attachment to form strong relationships. Dr. Johnson has applied Bowlby’s theory of attachment to adult love relationships. Her research proves adults need attachment as desperately as do infants. I believe this aligns with God’s plan for our lives. He created mankind to reflect Him, and He is in a community of love and support with the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit: three unique individuals with separate roles and yet one. Marriage is intended to be a reflection of this love triune with a husband, a wife, and God—husband, wife, and children—with love being the primary glue holding it all together.

• From H Is for Hawk (2014)

  I spot her. She’s poised on a low branch of an ivy-covered oak, staring fascinated into a tangle of old feed sacks and bins in an inch of water. I walk closer. She’s making those snaky-necked prospecting parallax movements of her head that mean she’s locked onto something. She’s going to ignore me until she’s established to her satisfaction that it’s gone. Perhaps it has. I edge my way to where she’s looking, and before I know what is happening, a wet cock pheasant breaks from my feet, showering me with water. In slow motion, I see the sun through his primaries, splintering into bars and abrupt shadows, and watch Mabel do a smart wingover and her left foot flash out, but its two-and-a-half-inch back talons and crayon-yellow hand just miss him. He rises over – oh horror, I hadn’t seen it – a ten-foot chicken-wire fence – and buries himself in a huge stand of laurel and yew on the other side. She dives in after him. I can’t get to them. They’re in a bloody pheasant release pen! Shit! This is like taking a ferret into a fancy rabbit show. Not good. Not good. I can hear wings beating, bells ringing, the sounds of a struggle. I run like a rat around the perimeter of the pen, trying to find a way in. This is not what I had wanted to happen. Oh God. Oh God. There’s a door. It’s open. I dump the receiver on a blue feeder bin and run in. She’s no longer in the laurel. She’s on top of it. She turns away from me, and before I can take another breath, she is off again through the sun-filtered branches, fast and determined. Shit! Shit! I start running, over branches, past little corrugated shelters, over earth compacted by hundreds of pheasanty toes. Any minute now, I think, I am going to hear the ‘Oi!’ of an incredibly angry keeper. Perhaps he will have a shotgun, I think, as I watch Mabel pile into a hen pheasant at the far corner of the pen in a leafy explosion of buff and cappuccino feathers and beating wings. When I get to her she is sitting in a black puddle of acid woodland water, mantling over the body of a hen pheasant. And as I walk up, another hen pheasant emerges from under her wing, and she grabs that too. She has a pheasant in each foot. Oh my God. Carnage. Her tail is spread into the puddle, her feet are buried in feathers, and her whole being seems to be vibrating at some unlikely, scary frequency.

• From Love & Sex: A Christian Guide to Healthy Intimacy (2018)

  “For example, if someone didn’t call you back as fast as you wanted, ask your reality check person if that is a good reason to write that person off. Instead of getting all fired up about a perceived infraction, stop, tune in to yourself, tune in to what your reality test person is saying, calm yourself, and stay connected. People will disappoint you, but that doesn’t make him or her a bad person. It may just mean they had something going on, like the flu, or a sick kid, or a cranky boss. Develop your ability to be patient. 2. “Tell your story over and over until your history begins to make sense to you. “If you are more avoidant in your attachment style, you may find yourself saying, ‘I don’t remember anything about my childhood.’ Or if you had dismissive parents, you may have learned how to dismiss your own narrative and emotions. If you had a parent who flooded you with his or her problems or emotions, you may feel flooded by your own emotions. So ask others to help you develop emotional regulation. “Also, hearing other people’s stories may overwhelm you. If this happens to you, picture yourself in your own hula hoop, separate from the person telling their story. You don’t have to carry anyone else’s story, you are in community to care, but not to carry. Remember, we are attempting to heal your brain and bring harmony to your life. So, start exploring what you do remember. Don’t dismiss your story as insignificant. Keep pressing in validating to yourself and others, ‘We heal by telling.’ Ask God to help you remember, He longs to heal your life as much as you want your life healed. 3. “Attune, tune in, be present. Many children who didn’t receive a secure attachment learned how to fragment. We frequently call it compartmentalizing. It sounds like such a good idea and it is when we are focused on accomplishing a task. But when it comes to our lives, the well-being of our souls, we need to tune in to what we are feeling, experiencing, and needing. “Start asking yourself questions such as: What am I feeling right now? Then wait until you have a name for the emotion. Ask yourself, What do I see, hear, smell, taste? What do I experience when I touch something or someone? What is my body saying to me? Am I hungry, tired? Do I need to breathe deep, stretch, go for a walk, calm my brain by looking at the sky?

• From Love & Sex: A Christian Guide to Healthy Intimacy (2018)

  Then, I start looking for evidence he doesn’t love me, so my brain can say, See, I told you so. It’s not based on reality. Ron loves me and cognitively I know that 100 percent, all of the time. Ron isn’t my dad. He isn’t violent. He is a good man to be married to—the best. But my primal brain remembers the fear it felt when my dad went ballistic and how that self-fulfilling prophecy got wired into my system. It’s a painful place and I have had to grieve the losses of love I felt in my childhood and continue to be aware when it is triggered. It rarely happens anymore. But if I am tired or overworked, I can fall into this pit and find myself rehearsing the ways I am not loved. A self-fulfilling prophecy can be a positive or a negative expectation about circumstances, events, or people that can affect a person’s behavior toward them in a manner causing those expectations to be fulfilled. Sometimes our belief system can play a part of our relational challenges. We all have a powerful need to prove our belief system is true—even if it is destructive to love and life. THE REVELATION Kaycie could feel the butterflies in her stomach doing flips—it felt like a fleet invaded her body. James announced last week at Real Life that Kaycie would be sharing her story, but she had been too busy chasing kids, wiping noses, and kissing boo-boos to think much about it. Now the day was here and she regretted agreeing to talk in front of five hundred college kids. She was afraid she would freeze or go blank—then what? she wondered. What if I make a fool of myself? The back door closing shook her back into reality. Looking up, she saw the smiling face of James. “Hey, you look lost in your thoughts,” James said. “Yeah, I’m sort of freaking out about tonight.” “I get that. Do you want to talk about it?” “Well, I know I have done this for the last three years, but I’m not sure how it will go tonight. What if I blow it? What if I embarrass you? The ministry? What if they hate it and never come back?” James held open his arms and said, “Come here.” He scooped her up and held her close to his chest. “Breathe. Let the fear go. You can’t embarrass me. I have watched the students in the last three years and how they respond to you. Kaycie, they love you. And your story—well, you know how impactful it has been.” She felt her body relax as he held her, his body had a way of doing that these days. He melted her.

• From Love & Sex: A Christian Guide to Healthy Intimacy (2018)

  It was never God’s intent for us to do life alone. Your personal growth process requires courage. But know it’s okay to ask for help and even to need help, as you will discover Kaycie did. Kaycie needed help to uncover a dark secret that was sabotaging her sexual health and her marital intimacy. So let’s travel back three years earlier to when Kaycie’s story unfolds. THREE YEARS EARLIER Kaycie woke early, grateful she had an appointment with the therapist she had been seeing for the last six months. Once James sorted through his sexual past and the fog began to clear from their marriage, she could see how her own past was interfering with the two of them sharing true intimacy. She found herself avoiding his initiations with one lame excuse after another, usually to do with the kids needing her for something. This morning, she felt the wall she was building to keep James away growing taller. She knew this wasn’t what she wanted, but something inside her pushed against him anyway. Kaycie rolled over and watched James sleeping. She loved how peaceful he looked and soaked in his tanned, lean muscles from years of running in the Texas sun. Fondness swept over her, followed too quickly by the memory of him cheating on her. Suddenly the current of bad memories washed away the warmth and love she was experiencing. Frustrated, she grabbed her robe and headed to the bathroom. Why, she pondered, couldn’t she just stay with the new, good memories? Give James a chance to be the new man she believed he was becoming? The Bible talks about the old becoming new and how in Christ we are a new creation. Instead of feeling angry with James, she felt disgusted with herself. Talking to the reflection in the mirror, Kaycie said, “Maybe you aren’t a very good Christian. You need to get your act together and try harder to forgive and love this man.” With the baby crying in the back seat, Kaycie was relieved when she dropped Sam at school. She was even more relieved to get her younger two boys situated with her mom. While in the waiting room of her counselor’s office, she fidgeted with the bracelet James gave her for her thirty-first birthday. Engraved were the words, “Two are better than one.” Hmm—she wondered if it was true for them. She stared out the window, exploring how two people who hurt each other so deeply could ever heal and move forward. It seemed easier for James to let go, but then again, she reasoned, she wasn’t the one who cheated. A chill ran down her spine with the recollection of learning, not only was there a porn issue, but once he was six months into recovery he confessed that early in their marriage he had a one-night stand. Ouch! The memory still stung.

• From Lower than the Angels: A History of Sex and Christianity (2024)

  The new voice of the Hebrew Bible in Septuagintal form encouraged devout readers of Hellenistic outlook to view the text afresh. That provided new perspectives on matters relating to physicality, the body and sexual custom. Ancient as the Hebrew Bible was, and all the more impressive for that, it did present God in an immediate and physical fashion rather alarming to the philosophically minded. He walked in the garden of Eden talking, in increasing rage, with his first-created humans Adam and Eve; he was drawn into haggling with the patriarch Abraham as to how many righteous citizens of Sodom would qualify the city to avoid divine destruction; and Moses the deliverer from Egypt had on one occasion been afforded a reverent glimpse of his person, even if only in a rear view.[2] Such stories seemed indecorous if taken literally. Worse still were the wilder pronouncements of some of the prophets, particularly Hosea and Ezekiel. Fortunately, the Greeks had provided a technique for dealing with this problem, arising from their centuries of esteem for the epics of Homer. Some Greek commentators had decided that there must be deeper meanings behind the violence and the voyaging in the Iliad and Odyssey, so a volume of commentary had grown up expounding them: looking for allegorical profundities of which the literal text was simply a surface. The same allegorical technique could easily be transferred to the Hebrew Bible or Septuagint. It could extract much more than an unpromising literal meaning, as could typology – that is, treating a theme or event in the Bible as symbolizing some wider or more profound meaning. The allegorical or typological approach to sacred text was best exemplified in the voluminous writings of an Alexandrian Jewish intellectual who was a rather older contemporary of Jesus, Philo. Philo’s work was later more esteemed by Christians than by Jews, particularly because it enabled Christians to explore their whole Bible, ‘Old’ and ‘New’ Testaments together, using his method to reconcile their varied messages: to begin with, in Alexandria, but later throughout the Christian world.

• From Fifty Shades of Grey (2011)

  “Okay.” I grimace, knowing full well that my mother’s cooking is pretty hit or miss. Perhaps she’s improved since she moved to Savannah with Bob. There was a time I wouldn’t subject anyone to her cooking, even… Who do I hate? Oh yes—Mrs. Robinson. Elena. Well, maybe her. Will I ever meet this damned woman? I decide to send a quick thank-you to Christian. From: Anastasia Steele Subject: Soaring as Opposed to Sore-ing Date: June 2 2011 10:20 ET To: Christian Grey Sometimes, you really know how to show a girl a good time. Thank you Ana x From: Christian Grey Subject: Soaring vs Sore-ing Date: June 2 2011 10:24 ET To: Anastasia Steele I’ll take either of those over your snoring. I had a good time, too. But I always do when I’m with you. Christian Grey CEO, Grey Enterprises Holdings, Inc. From: Anastasia Steele Subject: SNORING Date: June 2 2011 10:26 ET To: Christian Grey I DO NOT SNORE. And if I do, it’s very ungallant of you to point it out. You are no gentleman, Mr. Grey! And you are in the Deep South, too! Ana From: Christian Grey Subject: Somniloquy Date: June 2 2011 10:28 ET To: Anastasia Steele I have never claimed to be a gentleman, Anastasia, and I think I have demonstrated that point to you on numerous occasions. I am not intimidated by your SHOUTY capitals. But I will confess to a small white lie: no—you don’t snore, but you do talk. And it’s fascinating. What happened to my kiss? Christian Grey Cad & CEO, Grey Enterprises Holdings, Inc. Holy shit. I know I talk in my sleep. Kate has told me enough times. What the hell have I said? Oh no. From: Anastasia Steele Subject: Spill the Beans Date: June 2 2011 10:32 ET To: Christian Grey You are a cad and a scoundrel—definitely no gentleman. So, what did I say? No kisses for you until you talk! From: Christian Grey Subject: Sleeping Talking Beauty Date: June 2 2011 10:35 ET To: Anastasia Steele It would be most ungallant of me to say, and I have already been chastised for that. But if you behave yourself, I may tell you this evening. I do have to go into a meeting now. Laters, baby. Christian Grey CEO, Cad & Scoundrel, Grey Enterprises Holdings, Inc. Right! I shall maintain radio silence until this evening. I fume. Suppose I’ve said I hate him, or worse still, that I love him, in my sleep. Oh, I hope not. I am not ready to tell him that, and I’m sure he’s not ready to hear it, if he ever wants to hear it. I scowl at my computer and decide that whatever Mom cooks, I will make bread to vent my frustrations while kneading the dough.

• From H Is for Hawk (2014)

  Everything. She flies a rabbit half-heartedly, lights upon a hedge-line and looks about. When I call her back she takes a while to return. The warning signs are there already, but I’m ignoring them. One more flight, I tell myself. But what Mabel is doing is revelling in the weight of the sun on her back, and in the little intimations that warm air is rising into this steady, grey-blue sky. She courses another rabbit, and sails onward, away from me, pitching high up in chestnut trees, and now I realise she’s losing all interest in me. I kick myself. After the last debacle here, I swore I’d be more careful. The trees are above a road; there’s an unsettling proximity of moving cars and trucks and tractors: she doesn’t want to be here any more. She crosses the road into a belt of trees and gravelled drives. I follow her. Rabbits break all around me and the PRIVATE: KEEP OUT signs. She ignores them. And me. She’s taken stand in a tree a good twenty-five feet above me, and looks out at the prospect all around. I’m waving my glove and whistling, but this is a lost cause. She fluffs her tummy and shakes her tail: a goshawk’s signs of happiness and contentment. But on an inaccessible branch, with the seconds ticking past, these lovely signs of relaxation and calm bring a sinking feeling. And I realise I failed to bring my telephone. Or my cigarettes. And the radiotracking receiver is in the car. After a minute or so, she slips away, out the back of the wood and away into land I know nothing about. It turns out there’s a lovely, soft field of burnt-butter coloured grasses here, and a thick grey wood about three hundred yards distant. And no goshawk anywhere. Back to the car I go, unpack the radio telemetry and spend ages tracking her down. The signal is all over the place. Beep. Beep. Beep. In this direction, the signal strength is 5. Here, 7.5. But then – 2? What? Triangulate! Triangulate! I angle the antenna and spin in circles. Is she moving? She must be. And over the distant wood I see her on the soar. She’s letting the rising air carry her, spilling over the wood in rich circles of sun-warmed flight. Another hawk comes up, and the two slip and rival each other for a while. I run, of course. By the time I reach the wood, there’s no sign of either of them, though I hear a buzzard mewing some way off. Then, suddenly, bells. Somewhere in there. I dive into the wood. The signs aren’t good. It’s not a thick wood. It’s not a wild wood. It’s a habited wood. It’s a pheasant release wood, to be sure. Oh lord, this goshawk is making me a criminal again.

• From H Is for Hawk (2014)

  The goshawk I was about to collect had been bred in an aviary near Belfast. Breeding goshawks isn’t for the faint-hearted. I’ve had friends who’ve tried it and shaken their heads after only one season, scratching their newly greyed hair in a sort of post-traumatic stupor. ‘Never again’, they say. ‘Ever. Most stressful thing I’ve ever done.’ Try it, and you discover there’s a very fine line between goshawk sexual excitement and terrible, mortal violence. You have to watch your hawks constantly, monitor their behaviour, ready yourself for intervention. It’s no good just putting a couple of goshawks in an aviary and leaving them to it. More often than not the female will kill her mate. So instead you house them in separate but adjoining solid-walled aviaries, with a barred hatch between the two through which the pair can see each other. As winter turns to spring they conduct their courtship, like Pyramus and Thisbe, through the gap in the wall, calling, displaying, dropping their powder-blue wings and fluffing their white undertail coverts that look for all the world like a pair of capacious marabou bloomers, and only when the female seems ready – a piece of fine judgement that does not admit error – do you let the male into the breeding chamber. If all goes well, they mate, lay eggs, and a new generation of home-bred goshawks, downy white chicks with bleary eyes and tiny talons, enters the world. I’d never met the breeder of my new hawk, but I knew already he was a man of steel nerves and superhuman patience.

• From Fifty Shades of Grey (2011)

  “I’m sorry,” I whisper, suddenly feeling stupid. I left because I thought we were incompatible, but he’s saying I could have stopped him? “Sorry for what?” he says alarmed. “Not using the safeword.” He closes his eyes, as if in relief. “We might have avoided all this suffering,” he mutters. “You look fine.” More than fine. You look like you. “Appearances can be deceptive,” he says quietly. “I’m anything but fine. I feel like the sun has set and not risen for five days, Ana. I’m in perpetual night here.” I’m winded by his admission. Oh my, like me. “You said you’d never leave, yet the going gets tough and you’re out the door.” “When did I say I’d never leave?” “In your sleep. It was the most comforting thing I’d heard in so long, Anastasia. It made me relax.” My heart constricts and I reach for my wine. “You said you loved me,” he whispers. “Is that now in the past tense?” His voice is low, laced with anxiety. “No, Christian, it’s not.” He looks so vulnerable as he exhales. “Good,” he murmurs. I’m shocked by his admission. He’s had a change of heart. When I told him I loved him before, he was horrified. The waiter is back. Briskly he places our plates in front of us and scuttles away. Holy hell. Food. “Eat,” Christian commands. Deep down I know I’m hungry, but right now, my stomach is in knots. Sitting across from the only man I have ever loved and debating our uncertain future does not promote a healthy appetite. I look dubiously at my food. “So help me God, Anastasia, if you don’t eat, I will take you across my knee here in this restaurant, and it will have nothing to do with my sexual gratification. Eat!” Keep your hair on, Grey. My subconscious stares at me over her half-moon specs. She is wholeheartedly in agreement with Fifty Shades. “Okay, I’ll eat. Stow your twitching palm, please.” He doesn’t smile but continues to glare at me. Reluctantly I lift my knife and fork and slice into my steak and pop a piece into my mouth. Oh, it’s mouthwateringly good. I am hungry, really hungry. I chew and he visibly relaxes. We eat our supper in silence. The music’s changed. A soft-voiced woman sings in the background, her words echoing my thoughts. I’ll never be the same since he came into my life. I glance at Fifty. He’s eating and watching me. Hunger, longing, anxiety combined in one hot look. “Do you know who’s singing?” I try for some normal conversation. Christian pauses and listens. “No…but she’s good, whoever she is.” “I like her, too.” Finally he smiles his private enigmatic smile. What’s he planning? “What?” I ask. He shakes his head. “Eat up,” he says mildly. I have eaten half the food on my plate. I cannot eat any more. How can I negotiate this? “I can’t manage any more. Have I eaten enough for Sir?”

• From Lower than the Angels: A History of Sex and Christianity (2024)

  As a result, Pauline Christianity was a rare example of a religious culture which did not make the appropriate expression of sex a priority in marriage. Paul gives the overriding reason for this half-way through his essay on marriage, with a proclamation of the approaching Last Days echoing teachings of Jesus: ‘the appointed time has grown very short; from now, let those who have wives live as though they had none…For the form of this world is passing away’ (1 Cor. 7.29–31). This set Christianity off in a radically different direction from the traditional view of marriage in its parent Judaism. Yet still Paul was drawing on one ancient Jewish theme as mediated in the thought of another Hellenized member of the Jewish Diaspora, Philo of Alexandria (above, Chapter 3). The intellectual genealogy between Philo and Paul is clear from Paul’s central justification for getting married: the avoidance of porneia, Philo’s catch-all word for any form of impermissible sexual activity. The spiritual meaning that Philo had given this word tied it into the tragic metaphor crafted by the Hebrew prophets: faithlessness in the people of God was like the fornication committed by a bad wife. Had not Paul told the Corinthians that they were like a pure bride to their one husband, Christ? The most extreme extrusion of this line of thinking from Philo into Paul’s writings is his opening salvo in what is now the first chapter of the Epistle to the Christian assembly in Rome. It is a blistering attack on idolatry: the universal propensity of humankind (Mediterranean humankind in particular) to exchange ‘the glory of the immortal God for images resembling mortal man or birds or animals or reptiles’ (Rom. 1.23). So far, so traditional Judaism; then Paul pulls out of his rhetorical storehouse a suitable punishment for idolatry, sent from God – a wholesale change of nature in the sexual behaviour of idolaters. ‘Their women exchanged natural relations for unnatural, and the men likewise gave up natural relations with women and were consumed with passion for one another, men committing shameless acts with men and receiving in their own persons the due penalty for their error’ (Rom. 1.26–27).

• From Lower than the Angels: A History of Sex and Christianity (2024)

  As a result, an air of anxiety hangs over New Testament references to widows. The Acts of the Apostles indeed backdates trouble even to before the time of Paul’s ministry, when the surviving disciples of Jesus had to sort out accusations of preferential treatment between Greek- and Hebrew/Aramaic-speaking widows in the assembly in Jerusalem (Acts 6.1–7). After the Pastoral Epistles’ detailed regulations for their behaviour and the scope of their activities within the Church, Churches developed formal associations for eligible widows, mostly centred on confining them as much as possible to private life. The most restrictive view comes from a Syrian order for the running of a Church community, probably of third-century date, the Didascalia Apostolorum (‘Teaching of the Apostles’). In general, the Didascalia seeks to remove Christian laypeople from civic life, but it is particularly ingeniously eloquent about widows staying home: ‘let a widow know that she is the altar of God’, it says, adding unctuously that ‘the altar of God indeed never wanders or runs about anywhere, but is fixed in one place.’[17] In view of such a narrowing of options for senior women, it is rather charming to find that the earliest known epitaph anywhere for any member of the Christian Church’s hierarchy, predating anything for bishops, priests or deacons, is for a formally enrolled widow from the second-century Church in Rome: Flavia Arcas, ‘the sweetest of mothers’ according to her daughter Flavia Theophila, who financed the inscription.[18] Moreover, it has to be said that a formal place for widows, and a warm and open welcome for the financial patronage that wealthy widows might offer a Church community, were a good deal more than the rabbis were offering women in the synagogue. Judaism also continued its relentless emphasis on marriage, whereas Christianity in the second century was on the verge of opening another possible choice for Christian women in developing institutional celibate communities, a matter which we will visit in Chapter 7.[19]

• From Lower than the Angels: A History of Sex and Christianity (2024)

  The eventual death blow to itinerant prophecy was a renewed surge of prophetic activity in mid-second-century Asia Minor, calling itself indeed ‘The New Prophecy’. It is otherwise known as Montanism, after its early leader Montanus, who proclaimed new revelations of the Holy Spirit and stirred up mass enthusiasm for his message in his native Phrygia. That was a direct challenge to the guardians of the Spirit in local communities, the bishops, but it was made more pointed by the fact that Montanus’ leading companions in authority were female prophets, Prisca and Maximilla, prominent in a ministry by now barely acceptable in the mainstream Church. Phrygian bishops could draw on Catholic contacts across the Mediterranean, and already it was an asset for them and a blow to their opponents to secure a condemnation of Montanism from one of the leaders of the large Church in Rome, Eleutherius. A further gathering of bishops reinforced the condemnation, but the fervent rhetoric of renewal in Montanism appealed more widely through the Mediterranean world beyond Asia Minor; it gained the allegiance of Tertullian, the constitutionally emphatic North African theologian whom we shall meet again. An obstinate Montanist remnant survived in their home territory of Phrygia for at least another four centuries, guarding the charisma that Montanus and his companions had conferred on their stronghold of Pepouza.[41] Along with the Montanists departed for the time being a Christian enthusiasm for prophecy and prophetic performance. Characteristically it has re-emerged in Christian tradition whenever Christians want to challenge existing power structures – as has a linked possibility, inadvisably dismissed as remote by one Victorian Church historian: ‘If Montanism had triumphed, Christian doctrine would have been developed, not under the superintendence of the church teachers most esteemed for wisdom, but usually of wild and excitable women.’[42] Amid stirrings of great change in Western Christianity some seven decades later, Monsignor Ronald Knox could still opine in his polemical but learned and entertaining study of Christian ‘enthusiasm’ that ‘[f]rom the Montanist movement onwards, the history of enthusiasm is largely a history of female emancipation, and it is not a reassuring one.’[43]