Anxiety

Passages

Every passage tagged with this emotion in the Vela corpus. Search the body text, narrow by source or register, click through to a book’s profile to see how the passage sits with the rest of the work.

Page 83 of 501 · 20 per page

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

  ὕπ-οπτοϑβ, ον : (ὑφοράω, fut. ὑπόψομαι) :—looked at from beneath the brows, i.e. viewed with suspicion or jealousy, Lat. suspectus, of persons, Aesch. Ag. 1637; opp. to πιστός (trusted), Thuc. 3. 82; ὑπ. τινι an object of suspicion to one, Eur. El. 644, Thuc. 4. 103, 104, etc.; tm. τινος suspected of a thing, Plut. Pomp. 56; ἐπί τινι Luc. Calumn. 29; c. inf., ὑπ. αὐτοῖς μὴ προθύμως πέμψαι suspected by them of not having sent .. , Thue. 6. 75. 2. of things, τάδ᾽ ἣν ὕποπτα Eur. 1. T. 1334; τούτων ὑπόπτων ὄντων Antipho 116. 45; ὕποπτον καθεστήκει it was a matter of jealousy, Thuc. 4. 71; ὑπ. ἂν γένοιτο Xen. Cyr. 2. 4,16; Um. καθε- στήκει, c. inf., it was matter for suspicion that .. , Thuc. 4. 78 :---τὰ tr. suspicious places, Plut. Galb. 24. 3. Adv., ὑπόπτως διακεῖσθαι or ἔχειν to lie under suspicion, τινί Thuc. 8. 68, Xen. Hell. 2. 3, 40; so, εἰς ὕποπτα μολεῖν τινι Eur. El. 345. II. act. suspecting, fearing, Lat. suspicax, suspiciosus, c. gen., ἁλώσεως Id, Hec. 11353; vm. πρός τι Aretae. Caus. Diut. 1. 5, etc. :--- τὸ ὕποπτον suspicion, jealousy, τὸ Um. τῆς γνώμης Thuc. i. 90; τῷ ὑπ. μου from suspicion of me, Id. 6. 89 :— Ady. with suspicion, ὑπόπτως ἀποδέχεσθαι τοὺς μηνυτάς Id. 6. 53, cf. 8. 66; ὑπ. ἔχειν πρός τινα Dem. 381. fin., Isocr. 182 A; περί τινος Arist. Probl. 20. 34. 2. of a horse, -- ὑπόπτη», Poll. 1. 197. ὑποπτύσσω, to fold, wrinkle under or a little, Hipp. 565. 27, in Pass. ὑποπτῦχίς, (50s, 7, a joint, τοῦ θώρακος Plut. Alex. τό. ὑπόπτωσις, ews, 7, a falling down, Eccl. :—Kad’ ὑπόπτωσιν submis- sively, Philo 1. 127. ΤΙ. a falling off gradually, τῶν τριχῶν Eccl. 2. a falling in one’s way, a meeting, incidence, Sext. Emp. M. 7. 85, cf. 161, 215. ὑποπτώσσω, -- ὑποπτήσσω, Q. Sm. 5. 368., 7. 132. II. to give way a little, ὑποπτώξασα ἡ νοῦσος Aretae. Cur. M, Diut. 1. 5. ὑποπτωτικῶς, Adv. submissively, Eccl. ὑπόπτωτος, ον, verb. Adj. of ὑποπίπτω, Hesych, under, subject, τῇ αἰσθήσει Porphyr. ὑποπύγιον, τό, v. 1. for οὐροπύγιον, Arist. P.A. 4. 12, 28. ὑποπυθμένιος, a, ov,=sq., Ath. 492 A, Byz. ὑποπύθμην, evos, 6, 7, under the bottom, read by some in Il. 11. 635, for ὑπὸ πυθμένες ἦσαν, v. Ath. 492 A, Eust. 869. 8. ὑποπυθμίδιος, a, ov, =foreg., Anth. P.6. 200. ὑποπυΐσκω, (πύον) to make to suppurate a little, Alex. Trall. ;—Pass. to begin to suppurate, Hipp. V. C. gio. ὑποπυκνάζω, to indulge somewhat frequently in, οἴνῳ, Luc. Lexiph. 14. ὑποπυκνόομαι, Pass. to thicken gradually, Ptol. Umomukvos, ov, somewhat thick, πνεῦμα Hipp. 1028 C. ὑπόπυος, ov, tending to suppuration, Hipp. V. C. 908: τὸ ὑπ. a kind of ulcer, Galen. II. mixed with pus, yada Arist. H. A. 3. 20, 9. ὑποπῦρεταίνω, to be somewhat feverish, Hipp. 1217 C.

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

  to look longingly, expect eagerly, ς. inf., Ar. Ach. 376, Vesp. 847. Ἶ to look to a thing, to take care, beware, ἀπό τινος Ev. Marc. 8.15; τι Ep. Philipp. 3. 2; c. acc. pers., BA. ἑαυτούς Ev. Mare. 13. Q; BA. wa..1 Ep. Cor. 16. 10; BX. pr. .2Ep. Jo. 8. IIT. trans. to see, behold, c. acc., Trag., etc.; ἐξ ὃ ἑαυτοῦ (aire self evident, Sext.Emp.M. 1.184. 2. BX. φάος, φῶς ἡλίου to see the light | of day, to live, Aesch. Pers. 261, 299, Eur. Hel. 60; so, βλέποντα viv μὲν ὄρθ᾽, ἔπειτα δὲ σκότον (i. 6. being blind), Soph. Θ᾽ T. 419 :—hence, without φάος, to be alive, live, Aesch. Ag. 677, etc.; βλέποντα κἀμπνέοντα Soph. Ph. 883, cf. 1349, Aj. 962; and of ithe, ἀληθῆ καὶ βλέποντα actually existing Aesch. Cho. 844. 3. to look to or for, BA. καὶ ζητεῖν τι Plat. Charm. | 172 C.—(The derivative βλέφαρα occurs in Hom., but not βλέπω itself.) βλεφᾶρίζω, fut. iow, to wink, Clem. Al. 294. 285 βλεφᾶρικός, ἡ, dv, of or for the eyelids, Cacl. Aur. Bredapts, (50s, ἡ, an eyelash, Ar. Eccl. 402: mostly in pl. eyelashes, Lat. cilia, Id. Eq. 373, Xen. Mem. 1. 4, 6, Arist. P. A. 2. 14, I, etc. ABE = βλέφαρον, an eyelid, Id. H. A. 2.12, 7., 3.11, 7, al. [Draco p. 45 says that it makes gen. --ἶδος in Jon. ; but no such instance is own βλεφαρῖτις, ἰδος, 4, of or on the eyelids, τρίχες Paul. Aeg. 7. Ρ. 255. βλεφᾶρο-κάτοχος, ov, holding the eyelid, Paul. Aeg. 6. p. 179. βλέφᾶρον, Dor. yAéhapov (v. BB. 111. 1), τό: (βλέπω) :—mostly in pl. (as always in Hom.), ¢he eyelids, βλέφαρ᾽ ἀμφὶ καὶ ὀφρύας Od. 9. 280: mostly of sleep, φίλα βλέφαρ᾽ ἀμφικαλύψας 5.498: ὕπνος ἀπὸ βλεφά- ροιΐν (dual) Il. 10. 187; ὕπνον ἐπὶ βλεφάροισιν € ἔχευεν Od. 20. 54, etc.; mat pov ἐπὶ γλεφάροις ὕπνον ἀναλίσκοισα Pind. P. 9. 43: So of sleep, Sia ee ἁδὺ κλάϊστρον Ib. b. (D4); Bx. συμβαλεῖν, xotpay Aesch. Ag. 15, Theb. 3:—of weeping, δάκρυ χαμαὶ βάλεν ἐκ βλεφάροιϊν Od. 17.490, cf. 23. 33: of death, λύειν BA. Soph. Ant. 1302 :—rarely in sing., βλέ- φαρον κέκλῃται Id. Fr. 85, cf. Eur. Or. 302; BA. τὸ ἄνω καὶ τὸ «aro Arist. ἘΠῚ A. 1.9, 1, cf. P.A. 2. 13. II. the eyes, βλεφάρων xvaveawy Hes. Sc. 7 (where the fem, Adj. points to a nom. ἡ βλέφαρο). and often in Trag., σκοτώσω BA. καὶ δεδορκότα Soph. Aj. 85, cf. Tr. 107 :—in sing., Soph. calls the sun ἁμέρας βλέφαρον, Ant. 104; and Eur. the moon νυκτὸς ἀφεγγὲς βλέφαρον, Phoen. 546.—Cf. ὄμμα 111. βλεφαρό-ξυστον, τό, an instrument for trimming the eyelids, Paul. Aeg. 3. p. 73: βλεψίας, 6, a fish, Dorion ap. Ath. 306 F. βλέψις, ews, 9, the act of seeing, sight, Plut. Pelop. 32, Hesych. βλήδην, Adv. (βάλλων by throwing, hurling, Hesych. βλήεται, v. sub βάλλω.

• From Shunned (2018)

  The Schiller family came, too: Bob and Vivian, with their teenage daughter, Chloe, and ten-year-old son, Michael, wearing a bow tie just like his dad. Todd led the meeting. First, we read the Daily Text, a spiritual thought for the day. Then Michael Schiller volunteered to read the Bible verse it was based on, a passage from Matthew: “He that has endured to the end is the one that will be saved.” I unbuttoned the sleeves of my starched cotton shirt and rolled them up into neat cuffs at the elbow. I was having a hard time paying attention. Thoughts about my job were knocking around my mind like pinballs. That week I had interviewed eight candidates for our training staff and had narrowed the choices down to two people. We were in the middle of a rapid national expansion. Could I convince my boss to hire both, or would I have to choose between the two? The meeting moved on to what the brothers and sisters would say at the doors, should we find a listening ear. The Watchtower Society provided weekly suggested talking points. This week’s topic was international peace and security, something people have longed for throughout time. We would acknowledge the complete failure of all human governments and man-made organizations to bring true and lasting peace. We would then point out—using our Bibles—that only Jehovah God could make it happen, empowering his reigning son, Christ Jesus, to bring a New System to our Earth. There were many prophecies pointing to now as the Last Days of this wicked world. Our preaching was a fulfillment of prophecy and an act of love for the people in our communities. Before God set up his righteous government on Earth, those not willing to bow to his divine sovereignty would be destroyed at Armageddon, the righteous theocratic battle that would precede the millennium. It was our Christian duty to warn our neighbors before it was too late. After about twenty minutes, Todd concluded the meeting with a prayer. We all stood and bowed our heads as he gave thanks to Jehovah, requested forgiveness for our sins, and asked that we be guided to the humble and openhearted people in the community. “We are honored to be used by you, Dear God, to help separate the sheep from the goats. And please, Father, protect us from Satan, who walks about like a roaring lion, seeking to devour someone. In Jesus’ name we pray. Amen.” We organized into our car groups. Enthusiastic about working with Todd, Ross had a twinkle in his eye. “I folded some tracts for you.” He kissed me on the forehead and slipped the pamphlets into my book bag, next to my Bible and The Watch-tower and Awake! magazines. Usually I carried other Bible study aids, but that morning I hadn’t taken the time to gather them.

• From Martin Luther (2016)

  But the financial costs of having a married clergy would indeed turn out to be a major issue for the new Church. It is not surprising that Karlstadt’s treatise would be listed in the Catholic Index of Forbidden Books . 21 When he issued it in German, and toned down much of the invective, Karlstadt included passages on the appropriate behavior of wives, which emphasize their duty to obey: “For this reason God made women (who are normally soft and gentle) especially tough. He hardened them so that they may serve their husbands.” 22 While Karlstadt advocated marriage, his revulsion toward sexuality and the flesh ironically owed a great deal to the Christian monastic ascetic tradition from which he was trying to escape. It was strong stuff. When Luther read it, he admired the learning but was taken aback by Karlstadt’s narrow and literalist understanding of the passage about Moloch, fearing it would lead to ridicule from their opponents. Luther worried that by exciting “such a big crowd of unmarried people to matrimony” through what seemed to him to be a biblical passage referring not to masturbation but to something as harmless as nocturnal emissions, they might create even greater burdens for their consciences. It was easier for Karlstadt, a secular priest, to be more radical than Luther, who still agonized over whether priests and monks were in the same position in relation to celibacy. Pondering it all, Luther joked to Spalatin that he certainly would not be driven to take a wife himself. 23 Some of his unease sprang from the fact that Karlstadt understood “flesh” more literally and narrowly than Luther, for whom it was a much more capacious term, including sins like envy, anger, or even reliance on other people’s physical presence. A letter of September 9, 1521, one of the most revealing letters Luther wrote from the Wartburg, shows him almost thinking aloud, as he considered the draft passages on monastic vows in Melanchthon’s Loci communes, which its author had sent him and which were also influenced by Karlstadt’s treatise. Luther’s thoughts suggest that he was grappling with his own sexuality. He opens by wishing that he and Melanchthon could engage in a face-to-face disputation, for then it would be possible to see where the real disagreements lay. Underneath the ostensible subject of debate—vows and their validity—it seems that what is actually disturbing Luther is the idea of the “burning flesh,” to which he comes at the end of the letter: What, Luther wondered, did Paul mean by “burning,” which both Karlstadt and now Melanchthon interpreted to mean sexual desire? And how serious a sin was it?

• From Lit: A Memoir (2009)

  I tell her maybe I could pray easier if it was a positive-thinking exercise . From the next room, Sam says, The smart money’s on the cobra. Wanna make a gentleman’s wager? Two’ll get you four for the mongoose, Joe says. Dumb money, Sam says, but I’ll take it. I’m thinking, This doesn’t seem like a cult or a trick, there’s something—I don’t know— realistic about these women. They don’t seem misty-eyed or drippy. So I tell them how shaky I am inside, afraid my marriage is a mistake, and how I can’t even read anymore. Liz says, Try lying in bed, picturing yourself held by two giant hands. Giant hands? Liz says, I know what you’re thinking. That’s idiotic . For some reason, my eyes well up, and I find myself saying to women I just met, I’m afraid I’m not a good mom. Dev runs up to me, announcing the victory of Rikki-Tikki-Tavi. While Sam is fishing bet money from his jeans, Joe says, Never mess with a mongoose. Sam drops quarters into Joe’s open palm next to a wadded-up dollar, adding—genially, it seems—Eff you, brother. Deb shoots him a look. Joe pockets the change, then pulls it back out. He offers to buy Dev a soda. Can I, Mom? Dev says, for soda is contraband in our house, and I say sure, and later in his life, Dev will remember the chesty rumble of the soda machine in the basement of that place, the faded tattoos on the bulging biceps of Joe and Sam. He’ll also remember the claim of Philosophy David (who’s working a security job while trying to start a novel) that a doctor made him keep the bandana on his head else it might explode. Several afternoons a week we spend with this company. Let go, they urge me. Let go. I have no idea what this letting go means beyond surrounding myself with sober women—I mostly talk to women—and grouchily taking their suggestions . But each sober day seems to widen the chasm between Warren and me. The halfway house is another hiding place from our troubles. With our therapist, I sit across the room and rail. Rather than scrutinize my own absence—first via booze, now via recovery—I devote each session to old grievances. How Warren went running during Daddy’s funeral, took his paternity leave when Dev and I were still in the hospital, left every single late-night feeding for me to handle alone. Not that these complaints don’t have weight, but I nurse my grudges like foundlings. For his part, he succinctly itemizes the shrewish railings I’ve unleashed on him. Eventually, he says, I can’t undo the past, Mare. What about now? Surely you’re not gonna be one of those women, the doctor says, who gets her husband’s attention and then bails out just when there’s a chance to get a marriage she wants? But I am. I say, I just don’t trust that he cares for me the way I want.

• From Shunned (2018)

  The muscles rippled under his cheeks with each clench of his jaw. “I’ve been rehearsing what I was going to say to you,” he began, still looking out the window. “I had all these sensible things to say, but then I realized”—he turned to look me in the eye—“I doubt you’d hear any of it. You were always so level-headed, but nothing about what you’re doing makes any sense to me.” Good. Then this will be a short conversation. “I can see why you’d think that,” I said. “Can you?” he asked. “Because from what I hear, you’re being very irrational these days.” “Well, it doesn’t feel irrational to me,” I said. I could feel my whole body tighten up, my own jaw clenching. Intimate conversations between Randy and me were rare. He wasn’t someone I’d ever consulted before making a big decision. It wasn’t that his opinions didn’t matter, but I never felt that he added an original voice to the insights already available. He’d always lived by the book and had recently been appointed to serve as an elder in his congregation. He possessed an innate and quiet goodness, and I’d be hard-pressed to find a soul with a bad word to say about him. Except for playing basketball and going steady with a worldly girl in junior high school, he’d never done a single contrary thing in his life. Five years my senior, Randy had always felt a bit distant. Growing up, I envied his ability to escape to a room of his own, filled at one time with the model airplanes he assembled, and later with canvas and brushes, stained color palettes, squeezed tubes of paints curled inward like toothpaste, turpentine—all the tools of an oil painter. Randy never took much to book learning, but he was good with his hands. He was an artist at heart. In particular, he was influenced by the Western art of Charles Russell, which captured his own experience in the wide-open spaces of central and eastern Oregon, where he went backpacking with friends or flyfishing and deer hunting with my father. When we were little, he would quietly pass me Lifesavers during long- winded sermons at the Kingdom Hall, and I would never forget his assistance on my very first talk in the Theocratic Ministry School. It was Randy who taught me how to ride a bike. (“You’re thinking too hard,” he said in my ear, bracing me in a vertical position as I sat looking straight down our driveway. “Feel your way, and the balance will come naturally. Don’t be scared.

• From Shunned (2018)

  I wondered how I might summon the courage to stand in my questions for however long it took to land on my own ground. Inside me, a hysterical angst was building. I was now facing a series of conversations I wasn’t sure I was ready for. I wallowed in the peculiar sort of loneliness reserved for married couples engulfed in conflict. Deeply connected by the ups and downs that come from nine years of shared living, we now stood at separate ends of a vast chasm, and I couldn’t fathom how to make things right without short-changing my process. A sense of belonging was very important to both of us. These new developments would bring an end to our blending in. Ross had married me thinking I would be his ideal Christian mate. We moved around a community that valued togetherness and idealized conformity. These thoughts plagued me as I drifted to sleep. The next thing I knew, I was being jostled awake as someone sat down at the foot of the bed. Lifting my head from the pillow, I saw Ross, still wearing the same clothes from the night before. Dawn slipped through the blinds. His side of the bed was undisturbed. It was just a few minutes before my alarm was set to go off. “Linda, wake up. I have something to tell you.” His shirt was untucked and wrinkled. “What is it? What’s going on?” I asked, sitting up in bed. My head began to pound, an aggressive reminder of too much whiskey. I switched on the lamp and winced. “First, promise not to kill me; then I’ll tell you,” Ross said. His face was drained of color. “I promise. Now, can we get on with it? What’s going on?” “Last night I was in a car wreck.” The words sliced through my hangover. I imagined shattered glass and spilt blood on gray concrete, red lights flashing in the distance. “What? Are you all right? Did anyone else get hurt? How did you get home?” The synapses in my brain fired up instantly. The previous night’s acrimony evaporated. Ross’s mouth twitched as he gazed down, gathering the will to say more. “Don’t worry about me—I wasn’t hurt at all, just shaken. And humiliated.” My heart softened with relief. “What happened?” I asked gently. “It was really stupid. Right after our argument, I decided to go for a drive to chill out.” “After all you had to drink?” I shook my head, barely remembering the rattling sound of the keys from the night before. I couldn’t fathom being so angry as to abandon good sense and drive drunk. He paused for a moment. “I took your car,” he said, looking at me out of the corner of his eye, “so I could blast the stereo.” “You what?” I wasn’t sure I had heard him right. “You took my car?

• From Shunned (2018)

  I’ve been a Witness all my life. I think it’s normal for someone like me to have doubts.” “Yes, I think it probably is.” “So I decided I was just going through a phase.” “A crisis of faith,” he said. “Yes! Exactly.” It was a relief to have a term for it. “A crisis of faith.” “I’ve heard other people talk about this,” he said. “How you go through times when you need to reaffirm your faith. Take it to a higher level.” “That’s exactly what I thought—I thought it might have something to do with being in my early thirties. We’ve entered a new stage of life as responsible homeowners, and then I’ve been getting all these great opportunities at work. Swirling through those transitions, I concluded it’s normal to have these thoughts.” The beach ball was on the top of the water now, released, bouncing around freely. “My first reaction was to study more, pray more, carry The Watchtower with me, read it on my flights.” Ross watched me and listened, sitting in his chair, holding his beer but not drinking. “But, Ross, here’s the part that frightens me.” I took a deep breath and spoke the truth: “My heart’s just not in it. I’m just not that interested anymore.” “You mean in studying? In praying?” “In the whole thing,” I said. The phrase caught in my throat; the implications were too big to pass through this opening. “You mean The Truth?” Ross asked. “I’m just not sure what I believe anymore,” I answered. My voice dropped. “Wow.” Ross was blank-faced, his shoulders slumped. “It makes it hard to go out in service. I feel like such a hypocrite, and then I don’t go, which ends up making me feel guilty.” I stopped short of telling him how disingenuous I’d felt the day of Dad’s baptism, of the split I’d felt between joy and impending doom. “I had no idea all of this was going on. I thought you were just preoccupied with work.” He took a sip of his beer, then started peeling the label with his thumbs. “Sounds to me like you’re still sorting this out for yourself. When are you going to talk to the elders?” My stomach tensed at the suggestion, and my hands tightened around my cold beer bottle. “Never, that’s when!” I said, my voice returning. “Why in the world would I do that?” “Because it’s their job, that’s why. To lend spiritual support to those who are ailing.” “And you think I’m ailing? Spiritually weak? Is that what you think?” “Now, don’t get defensive. You just said yourself, you’ve been through a lot of life changes in the last year, working, buying our house, and remodeling the kitchen. Who can blame you for getting tired and distracted?” “Ross, I’ve been tired before.

• From Shunned (2018)

  The sun had burned through the nimbus haze, and the humid smell of rotting leaves wafted around us. Hannah agreed to talk at the first door. I caught myself hoping no one was home on our side of the street, so I wouldn’t have to talk at all but could still get credit for doing the time—two hours closer to our family goal. The first house was a white colonial with a winding, tree-lined driveway. Two Mercedes were parked in front of the garage, and we heard music drifting from a back room. Surely Hannah saw this as a positive sign, but I was hoping the music was too loud for anyone to hear her knocking. Standing on the bristly WELCOME mat, we did not speak. After a second knock, Hannah looked at me and shrugged her shoulders. I pulled out one of the tracts Ross had given me. The caption read: “Life in a Peaceful New World,” accompanying a picture of a young girl feeding a bear in a beautiful park. It felt trite and distant, someone else’s idea of utopia, not mine. Still, I envied the exuberance on the girl’s face. An aura of contentment and full engagement surrounded her. I slipped the tract under the door. Hannah wrote down the address so we could attempt another visit. For the next twenty minutes, I got my wish: there was no answer at any of the houses we called on. “Linda, my knocks aren’t rousing many people. Are you ready to jump in here? Maybe you’ll have better luck.” I had been too occupied with my work to read the current issues of The Watchtower and Awake!—nor had I spent any time thinking through what I might say if someone answered the door. But I had been preaching month in and month out since I was nine years old, and was well trained to walk blithely by NO SOLICITING signs hammered to fence posts. In my late teens and early twenties, I had spent five years as a full-time pioneer, dedicating ninety hours each month to the ministry. It’s a volunteer ministry, so I supported myself with part-time clerical work. I attended the Pioneer School, which deepened my spiritual practice and expanded my repertoire of effective ways to reason and dialogue. My dad said I was born with the “gift of gab.” I found it exhilarating to engage with strangers, to skillfully bring them to an “aha moment” that could change their lives, or persuade them at least to consider a new possibility. Over the years, I conducted hundreds of home Bible studies and played a role in the formal dedication of eight people. I wasn’t the least bit nervous about talking. I could fall back on twenty-two years of experience.

• From Shunned (2018)

  Ross had gone to the morning meeting without me and still had on his suit pants and dress shirt, jacket and tie now discarded. I’d spent the morning browsing the local furniture stores, excitedly filling my mind with decorating ideas for my new apartment—and, later, collecting my thoughts for this meeting. The fact that Jerry had invited a second elder added a level of formality and seriousness. We were close to both men and their families. Vince’s fifteen-year-old daughter, Lucy, had always looked up to me. In her teen innocence, she had declared she wanted to grow up to be just like me, “smart and nice.” Now I cringed at the trite description. Having always been the good girl on the right side of the law, I was entering uncharted territory with this conversation. The mood was solemn. There were no warm welcomes or handshakes. No one smiled. Jerry sat down and motioned for us to take our seats. His eyes scanned my face and movements as I sat. His gaze lingered for a long moment on my blue jeans. It was a deliberate departure for me to be dressed casually. Did he read it as disrespect or defiance? Vince sat down next to me and raised his shoulders briefly to unbutton his gabardine jacket, one I recognized as an anniversary gift from his wife. “Ross tells us you’ve decided to end your marriage,” Jerry said. “Yes,” I said. “I’ve hired an attorney.” There was that phrase again—“an attorney.” It was getting easier to say. “And what, may I ask, are the grounds of the petition?” Vince asked. I wondered why it was any of his business but answered anyway. “Irreconcilable differences,” I said. Ross was sitting next to me, elbows resting on each knee, head bowed, looking down at the floor. “And how long have you been married?” Jerry asked. “Coming up on ten years,” I said. “And what does that mean, exactly, ‘irreconcilable differences’?” asked Vince. The tension in his voice triggered my defenses. This was a time to speak the truth if ever there was one. “It means I’m not happy with my marriage. I haven’t been happy for a long time. I’m tired of feeling mismatched. I want to be free, to live my life as I please. I know that may sound selfish, but that is what I want.” Saying this out loud felt liberating. Declaring my plans gave them substance. “Is there anything else we should know about?” asked Jerry. “Or anyone else?” It was the one question Ross had failed to ask me. I understood the intent behind Jerry’s question. He wanted to determine if I had broken any biblical laws. Was I an adulteress? That would have turned this from a family squabble into a judicial matter. “There is no one else,” I said. “Truly.”

• From The Things They Carried (1990)

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

• From Shunned (2018)

  You will be punished by your anger. —Mahatma Gandhi In the months after I confessed my crisis of faith to Ross, we continued drifting further apart. Or, to be more accurate, I started pulling away, guarding my words, shifting any reliance on him. Whenever he tried to talk about the growing distance between us, I put him off, sinking into a chair, heavy and lethargic, blanking out, refusing to engage. My therapist offered an explanation for this. It takes a lot of emotional energy to shut oneself down, she said. That is why I felt so sleepy when it occurred. She suggested this was a pattern I’d adopted as a child to deal with the many occasions when I’d had to suppress my true feelings in order to fit in. She invited me to reflect upon all the ways I fell in line with what others said was acceptable, ignoring my own intuition or desires. Until I sorted out my feelings and what I wanted to do about them, I was afraid to speak openly with Ross. Hiding was easier than tackling these problems with him. I spent hours journaling, fantasizing about a different life, one that freed me from the roles and rules that had once seemed so wise and ordinary. To boost my career, I had started taking golf lessons so I could play with clients, who were mostly middle-aged bankers. In these fantasies, I imagined leisurely mornings reading the paper, followed by nine holes of golf in the afternoon, my handicap improving with each round. Other times I pictured riding my bicycle through the French countryside, stopping in tiny villages to meet the local townspeople and play a round of boules. That got me wondering whether I should take French lessons, my true love, or the more practical Spanish. “To hell with practical!” I wrote, emphatically dotting multiple exclamation marks. Returning from a business trip on a long plane ride from Chicago, I’d confessed my spiritual questioning across the aisle to my coworker Robyn. She gave me an open invitation to join her for services at her ecumenical church. I was surprised by my openness to accept her offer, picturing myself next to her in the pew, curious and open. Any self-respecting Witness would have declined such invitations immediately. Acts of interfaith were discouraged. Up until that point in my life, I’d been inside other churches of Christendom only a few times, to attend the occasional wedding of a relative or pay my respects at a funeral. Decisions even to attend those events were approached with wary thoughtfulness. Robyn was active in a Catholic charity, so I asked her how her priest felt about her attending other nondenominational services. “Oh,” she replied, batting my question aside with her hand like a fly at a picnic, “he’s a very liberal priest.

• From The Things They Carried (1990)

  She glanced over at the Special Forces area, then turned and walked quickly across the compound toward her own bunker. Fossie stood still for a few seconds. A little dazed, it seemed. After a moment, though, he set his jaw and went after her with a hard, fast stride. "Not later!" he yelled. "Now!" What happened between them, Rat said, nobody ever knew for sure. But in the mess hall that evening it was clear that an accommodation had been reached. Or more likely, he said, it was a case of setting down some new rules. Mary Anne's hair was freshly shampooed. She wore a white blouse, a navy blue skirt, a pair of plain black flats. Over dinner she kept her eyes down, poking at her food, subdued to the point of silence. Eddie Diamond and some of the others tried to nudge her into talking about the ambush— What was the feeling out there? What exactly did she see and hear?—but the questions seemed to give her trouble. Nervously, she'd look across the table at Fossie. She'd wait a moment, as if to receive some sort of clearance, then she'd bow her head and mumble out a vague word or two. There were no real answers. Mark Fossie, too, had little to say. "Nobody's business," he told Rat that night. "One thing for sure, there won't be any more ambushes. No more late nights." "You laid down the law?" "Compromise," Fossie said. "I'll put it this way—we're officially engaged." Rat nodded cautiously. "Well hey, she'll make a sweet bride," he said. "Combat ready." Over the next several days there was a strained, tightly wound quality to the way they treated each other, a rigid correctness that was enforced by repetitive acts of willpower. To look at them from a distance, Rat said, you would think they were the happiest two people on the planet. They spent the long afternoons sunbathing together, stretched out side by side on top of their bunker, or playing backgammon in the shade of a giant palm tree, or just sitting quietly. A model of togetherness, it seemed. And yet at close range their faces showed the tension. Too polite, too thoughtful. Mark Fossie tried hard to keep up a self-assured pose, as if nothing had ever come between them, or ever could, but there was a fragility to it, something tentative and false. If Mary Anne happened to move a few steps away from him, even briefly, he'd tighten up and force himself not to watch her. But then a moment later he'd be watching. In the presence of others, at least, they kept on their masks. Over meals they talked about plans for a huge wedding in Cleveland Heights—a two- day bash, lots of flow ers. And yet even then their smiles seemed too intense. They were too quick with their banter; they held hands as if afraid to let go. It had to end, and eventually it did.

• From The Things They Carried (1990)

  walked out of the plant and drove home. It was midmorning, I remember, and the house was empty. Down in my chest there was still that leaking sensation, something very warm and precious spilling out, and I was covered with blood and hog-stink, and for a long while I just concentrated on holding myself together. I remember taking a hot shower. I remember packing a suitcase and carrying it out to the kitchen, standing very still for a few minutes, looking carefully at the familiar objects all around me. The old chrome toaster, the telephone, the pink and white Formica on the kitchen counters. The room was full of bright sunshine. Everything sparkled. My house, I thought. My life. I'm not sure how long I stood there, but later I scribbled out a short note to my parents. What it said, exactly, I don't recall now. Something vague. Taking off, will call, love Tim. I drove north. It's a blur now, as it was then, and all I remember is velocity and the feel of a steering wheel in my hands. I was riding on adrenaline. A giddy feeling, in a way, except there was the dreamy edge of impossibility to it— like running a dead-end maze—no way out—it couldn't come to a happy conclusion and yet I was doing it anyway because it was all I could think of to do. It was pure flight, fast and mindless. I had no plan. Just hit the border at high speed and crash through and keep on running. Near dusk I passed through Bemidji, then turned northeast toward International Falls. I spent the night in the car behind a closed-down gas station a half mile from the border. In the morning, after gassing up, I headed straight west along the Rainy River, which separates Minnesota from Canada, and which for me separated one life from another. The land was mostly wilderness. Here and there I passed a motel or bait shop, but otherwise the country unfolded in great sweeps of pine and birch and sumac. Though it was still August, the air already had the smell of October, football season, piles of yellow-red leaves, everything crisp and clean. I remember a huge blue sky. Off to my right was the Rainy River, wide as a lake in places, and beyond the Rainy River was Canada.

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

  δυσφρόνη, ἧ, -- 54., in pl. anwieties, troubles, δυσφρονέων ἐπιλήθεται Hes. Th. 102; in Pind, O. 2. 95, παραλύει δυσφρονᾶν (Mss. δυσφορῶν, δυσφοράν) is restored by Dind.; cf. ἀφρύόνη for ἀφροσύνη, A.B. 472; εὐφρόνη for εὐφροσύνη, Hesych. δυσφροσύνη, ἡ, anxiety, care, Hes. Th. 528, Simon. ap. Ath. 447 A,— both times in Ep. gen. pl. δυσφροσυνάων. δύσφρων, ον, gen. ovos, sad at heart, sorrowful, melancholy, τὸ δ. στύγος (ν. στύγος) Aesch. Ag. 547; ἄτη Soph. Ο. C. 202; λῦπαι Eur. Andr. 1043. 11. ill-disposed, malignant, δράκοντες Aesch. Supp. 511, cf. Ag. 608, 834; λόγοι Eur. Andr. 287. IIL. --ἄφρων, senseless, insensate, Aesch. Theb. 874; φρενῶν δυσφρόνων ἁμαρτήματα Soph. Ant. 1261 :—Adv. - όνως, foolishly, rashly, Aesch. Pers. 552. δυσφυής, és, growing slowly, Theophr. H. P. 7.1, 3. δυσφυΐα, 7, slow growth, opp. to ταχυβλαστία, Theophr. C. P. 4. 8, 2. δυσφῦύὕλακτέω, = δυσωρέομαι, Eust. 797. 28. δυσφύλακτος, ον, hard to guard, δυσφύλακτον οὐδὲν ὡς γυνή Alex. Incert. 40; of a city, Polyb. 2. 55, 2, etc. ΤΙ. hard to keep off or prevent, Eur. Phoen. 924, cf. Andr. 738. δυσφωνία, ἡ, roughness of sound, Dem. Phal, 48, Poll. 2. 112. δύσφωνος, ov, ill-sounding, harsh, Dem. Phal. 69, 70. δυσφώρᾶτος, ov, hard to detect, Plut.2.51D. Adv. -τως, Basil. δυσχἄλίνωτος [1], ov, hard to rein, unbridled, Galen. δυσχάριστος [a], ov, thankless, Aesch. Fr. 134. δυσχειμερινός, 7, dv, dub. for sq. in Theophr. H. P. ὃ. ὃ, 1. δυσχείμερος, ov, suffering from hard winters, very wintry, Hom. (only in Il.) as epith. of Dodona, 2. 750, 4]. ; χώρη Hdt. 4. 28; φάραγξ Aesch. Pr. 15 :—metaph., δ. πέλαγος δύης Ib. 746; δ. ἅται Id. Cho, 27ῈΣ ΤΙ. bearing winter ill, like δύσριγος, Arist. H. A. 8. 10, 5. δυσχείμων, ov, gen. ovos, -- δυσχείμερος, Ap. Rh. 4. 635. δυσχείρωμα, 76, a thing hard to be subdued, a hard conquest, Soph. Ant. 126; cf. χείρωμα. δυσχείρωτος, ov, hard to subdue, Hdt. 7. 9, 2, Dem. 1412. 21. δυσχεραινόντως. Adv. part. pres. with disgust, Arist. Rhet. 3. 7, 3.

• From Shunned (2018)

  I might as well face the firing squad and get it over with.” “Fine,” I said. There was a long pause. I had no problem with Ross joining me. I wasn’t going to say anything to them that he couldn’t hear or didn’t already know. It somehow felt right to go together, and he was entitled to manage his relationship with my parents however he wished. “If it’s okay with you,” I said, “I’d rather not be there when you tell your mom.” “Fine,” he said. “I’m going to have my hands full with the rest of my family.” “I said it was fine.” We walked in the front door of the house. Ross headed to his office and closed the door. I dialed my parents. Dad answered the phone. “You sound out of breath,” I said. “Hey, Lindy,” Dad said. “We’re just leaving for the Rivers’. They’re having a bunch of people over for dinner. We were getting in the car when I heard the phone ring.” “Okay, then, Dad,” I said, speaking more quickly, relieved that he’d answered the phone instead of Mom, “I’ll let you go, but are you and Mom going to be around tomorrow after work?” Whenever we found ourselves in their neighborhood, we popped in unannounced to see my parents. They welcomed spontaneous visits. We would raid the refrigerator, open a beer or make some tea, tear open a bag of chips, and sit down with them at the kitchen table. But we never did that on a weeknight and I wanted to be sure they’d be home. I did my best to sound nonchalant. Calling ahead added a level of formality none of us was used to. “Yeah, sure,” he said. “Ross and I are going to be over that way, and we thought we’d stop by.” He did not question me the way Mom would. The less said, the better. I didn’t want curious minds set in motion. If I said we had news to share, they might think we were coming to announce a pregnancy, and no good could come from that. “Okay. Have fun, and say hi to Mom for us,” I said. “For us.” I’d have to get used to not saying that anymore. That night I lay awake into the wee hours, unable to sleep in anticipation of the talk with my parents. My request for a divorce would astonish them, but that was the least of my worries. That news would pale in comparison with my plans for a break from The Truth. Exhausted by these worries, I fluffed my pillows and slipped more deeply between my cool sheets, pulling the covers to my chin. The next day, Ross and I carpooled to work.

• From Martin Luther (2016)

  24 His later anti-asceticism was closely linked with this passionate rejection of both Marianism and his own monkishness. “When I was a papist, I was ashamed to utter Christ’s name,” he recalled. “I thought: Jesus is a womanish name.” 25 To the later Luther, his youthful revolt against his father had been a retreat from manhood, into a matriarchal world populated with female religious figures and a false, perverted religiosity. — D URING his time as a monk, Luther was subject to what he termed Anfechtungen, which we might translate as temptations, or spiritual attacks like those Christ experienced in the wilderness, and which became a source of great fear and anxiety. As he later put it, “Then I was the most miserable person on earth, day and night was pure howling and despair, that no one could steer.” 26 When he realized his confessor’s incomprehension of his torment, he understood that he was undergoing something out of the ordinary, and became, as he put it, “like a dead corpse.” 27 The anxiety expressed itself physically: He perspired copiously, and as he later remarked, the monks’ false path to heaven was like a “sweat, yes anxiety bath,” in which he “had bathed full well.” During a procession at Corpus Christi at Eisleben in 1515, he was suddenly struck with terror of the Eucharist and broke out in a sweat, thinking he would perish. 28 On this occasion it was Christ’s presence in the monstrance that frightened him, just as the divine presence had caused a similar panic attack during his first Mass. Both events seem to be related to his father, who had attended that first Mass, while Eisleben, where Luther was born, would have reminded him of his upbringing and the mining world of his father. It is difficult to know exactly what role the conflict with his father might have played in these struggles, but it does seem that his spiritual troubles stemmed from the relationship he was forging with a paternal God. All the crises cluster around the terror of being confronted directly with God the Father, who is also God the judge, without any intermediary; whereas the whole purpose of the monastic life as Luther experienced it was to create a security net where the intercessions of Mary, prayers said on one’s behalf, and exercises to subdue the flesh all cushioned him against God’s transcendent power. So if Luther’s entry into the monastery was a retreat into a matriarchal world, that retreat was raising spiritual problems of its own. Luther’s Anfechtungen were physically overwhelming.

• From Shunned (2018)

  She shifted to a different tack. “I understand if you’re unhappy in your marriage. Your father and I have had our unhappy periods, so we understand how difficult that can be. But, Lindy, honey, don’t give up on your relationship with Jehovah.” I could feel my entire body tightening, my defenses building, and my voice was rigid and controlled when I responded, “When did I say I’d given up on my relationship with Jehovah? I only said I was taking a break from the meetings. Those are two separate things. Getting some space from an unhappy marriage and the relentless routine of meetings feels like a smart and healthy thing to do. It’s an act of self-preservation.” “Self-preservation or selfishness?” Mom said. “Getting space is going to hurt a lot of people and will only take you further away from Jehovah. You’ll only get more caught up in your job and being with worldly coworkers. It’s bound to take its toll. It already has. Yes, you must promise me you will talk to your sister, and soon.” To appease her, I said I would. “And, Lindy, you’ve gotta be careful out there in the big, bad world. You are going to find out that your only true friends are in The Truth. You can’t count on worldly people for lasting friendship. They’ll let you down every single time. It’s just the way it is.” Dad was twitching his lips. He turned to Ross. “Ross, what are your plans?” Ross half laughed and shook his head. “I don’t know, Frank. Survive. Get a roommate so I can afford the mortgage. See what happens.” “Well, you’re always welcome here,” Dad said. “Yes,” Mom said. “You’ve been a good son-in-law. Have you told your mom yet?” “That will happen tomorrow,” Ross said. “I’m taking her out for lunch.” “I’m sure she’ll be shocked,” Mom said, then turned back to me. “Lindy, that’s another horrible thing about this: it’s a scourge on Jehovah’s name and reflects poorly on our family. What will Elaine think when she finds out about this?” “I think she’ll be sad and feel protective of Ross and jump at the chance to support him,” I said. “I doubt she’ll give a second thought to Jehovah.” I was growing impatient with her predictable line of thinking. “It’s time for us to go,” I added. Everyone stood and hugged goodbye. It was difficult for me to read my father’s emotions, to tell if he was sad for me or disappointed in me, but when we embraced, he held on for a few extra moments. “Call your sister” were my mother’s parting words. The next day, Lory called with an invitation. “Come over,” she said. “We’ll sit in the sunroom and you can tell me what’s going on.” I sensed her capacity to empathize with my unhappiness. My aching heart was drawn to her warmth and support.

• From The Things They Carried (1990)

  Rat pushed himself up. He took the flashlight, muttered something, and moved down to the far end of the hootch. For privacy, the men had rigged up curtained walls around their cots, small makeshift bedrooms, and in the dark Rat went quickly from room to room, using the flashlight to pluck out the faces. Eddie Diamond slept a hard deep sleep—the others, too. To be sure, though, Rat checked once more, very carefully, then he reported back to Fossie. "All accounted for. No extras." "Eddie?" "Darvon dreams." Rat switched off the flashlight and tried to think it out. "Maybe she just—I don't know—maybe she camped out tonight. Under the stars or something. You search the compound?" "Sure I did." "Well, come on," Rat said. "One more time." Outside, a soft violet light was spreading out across the eastern hillsides. Two or three ARVN soldiers had built their breakfast fires, but the place was mostly quiet and unmoving. They tried the helipad first, then the mess hall and supply hootches, then they walked the entire six hundred meters of perimeter. "Okay," Rat finally said. "We got a problem." When he first told the story, Rat stopped there and looked at Mitchell Sanders for a time. "So what's your vote? Where was she?" "The Greenies," Sanders said. "Yeah?" Sanders gave him a savvy little smirk. "No other option. That stuff about the Special Forces—how they used the place as a base of operations, how they'd glide in and out—all that had to be there for a reason. That's how stories work, man." Rat thought about it, then shrugged. "All right, sure, the Greenies. But it's not what Fossie thought. She wasn't sleeping with any of them. At least not exactly. I mean, in a way she was sleeping with a// of them, more or less, except it wasn't sex or anything. They was just lying together, so to speak, Mary Anne and these six grungy weirded-out Green Berets." "Lying down?" Sanders said. "You got it." "Lying down how?" Rat smiled. "Ambush. All night long, man, Mary Anne's out on fuckin' ambush." ok ok ok Just after sunrise, Rat said, she came trooping in through the wire, tired- looking but cheerful as she dropped her gear and gave Mark Fossie a brisk hug. The six Green Berets did not speak. One of them nodded at her, and the others gave Fossie a long stare, then they filed off to their hootch at the edge of the compound. "Please," she said. "Not a word." Fossie took a half step forward and hesitated. It was as though he had trouble recognizing her. She wore a bush hat and filthy green fatigues; she carried the standard M-16 automatic assault rifle; her face was black with charcoal. Mary Anne handed him the weapon. "I'm exhausted," she said. "We'll talk later."

• From The Things They Carried (1990)

  "It's Mary Anne in there." "Sure, I know that. All the same, I'd knock real extra super polite." Even with the cooling night air Fossie's face was slick with sweat. He looked sick. His eyes were bloodshot; his skin had a whitish, almost colorless cast. For a few minutes Rat waited with him, quietly watching the hootch, then he patted the kid's shoulder and left him alone. It was after midnight when Rat and Eddie Diamond went out to check on him. The night had gone cold and steamy, a low fog sliding down from the mountains, and out in the dark there was music playing. Not loud but not soft either. It had a chaotic, almost unmusical sound, without rhythm or form or progression, like the noise of nature. A synthesizer, it seemed, or maybe an electric organ. In the background, just audible, a woman's voice was half singing, half chanting, but the lyrics seemed to be in a foreign tongue. They found Fossie squatting near the gate in front of the Special Forces area. Head bowed, he was swaying to the music, his face wet and shiny. As Eddie bent down beside him, the kid looked up with eyes, not quite in register, ashen and powdery. "Hear that?" he whispered. "You hear? It's Mary Anne." Eddie Diamond took his arm. "Let's get you inside. Somebody's radio, that's all it is. Move it now." "Mary Anne. Just listen." "Sure, but—" "Listen!" Fossie suddenly pulled away, twisting sideways, and fell back against the gate. He lay there with his eyes closed. The music—the noise, whatever it was—came from the hootch beyond the fence. The place was dark except for a small glowing window, which stood partly open, the panes dancing in bright reds and yellows as though the glass were on fire. The chanting seemed louder now. Fiercer, too, and higher pitched. Fossie pushed himself up. He wavered for a moment and then forced the gate open. "That voice," he said. "Mary Anne." Rat took a step forward, reaching out for him, but Fossie was already moving fast toward the hootch. He stumbled once, caught himself, and struck the door hard with both arms. There was a noise—a short screeching sound, like a cat—and the door swung in and Fossie was framed there for an instant, his arms stretched out, and then he slipped inside. After a moment Rat and Eddie followed quietly. Just inside the door they found Fossie bent down on one knee. He wasn't moving.