Confusion

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 17 of 112 · 20 per page

• From Available: The unfiltered and empowering new memoir for women about sex, dating and divorce after 40 (2021)

  It is indeed a criticism: he uses my body for sexual pleasure but not as a repository for his affection. Am I being greedy, wanting more than is offered to me, recognizing my needs and asking him to change his normal behavior to fulfill them? I call him, knowing this will quickly spiral out of control via text, and when he answers his voice is gruff. I apologize that my comment was unintentionally provocative, perplexed by how strong his reaction is. “Don’t text me something like that and then act innocent,” he spits out. “It’s not that big a deal. Some people are touchy and some aren’t. I noticed yesterday that you’re not. That’s all,” I say, sorry I said anything at all but also uncomfortable, unsure if my honesty came out aggressively or if he’s unable to accept even these small bits of feedback. Isn’t this how a relationship works, back and forth? Maybe I misunderstood and this is not a relationship at all, just two people killing time. “When should I have touched you?” he asks. “Like when we were walking in the woods, I tried to hold your hand a couple of times, but you moved away or dropped my hand very quickly. I wish you were more affectionate, but if that’s not you, it’s not you. It does bother me a little but I was trying to understand it more than I was criticizing you. Let’s move on,” I say. “It’s funny you bring this up, Laura. I have to say, I was really surprised the first time we had sex by how quickly you moved. I was put off by it, if we’re being honest,” he says. I think back to our first time together, how I had followed him into his bedroom and announced that I thought we should have sex before going out. I am taken aback, seeing now that what I had thought was a sexy, bold play was interpreted by him as aggressive and unseemly. It’s not that my sexual desire is so strong, though it certainly is, more that I feel like I have to get the first time knocked out and crossed off the list – I just have to make sure it happens. I’m no longer clear if that’s because it’s what I want or simply part of the persona I think I am supposed to inhabit. * That week, I make the dreaded annual pilgrimage to my gynecologist for a check-up and Pap smear. Sitting in the waiting room, I feel old and dried up in the midst of so much new life swelling and pulsing around me. This is a busy obstetrics and gynecology practice and I remind myself to find a new practice that offers just gynecology services and not obstetrics.

• From Available: The unfiltered and empowering new memoir for women about sex, dating and divorce after 40 (2021)

  I said, laughing. “Dad can barely keep track of us, how on earth would he keep track of a secret lover? You’ve been watching too much TV.” * The next morning, Michael was even colder and more hostile. I called him into the family room where I was working through a pile of mail and asked if we could talk before he left for the day. He stared hard at me and inhaled deeply, then turned and dramatically closed the double doors to the room so we could speak privately. “Here’s the thing,” he said, pausing as if to make an announcement. “I’m not happy with you.” His words hung heavily in the charged air between us. His demeanor was stiff and formal, so unlike his usually bouncy and high-spirited way of moving through his days that I wanted to laugh and say OK, enough of this charade, let’s be friends. But strangely, he didn’t so much as crack a small smile. “I don’t understand,” I said, shaking my head. “We barely communicate and spend zero time together unless the kids are involved. I’m not happy,” he said again. I suggested that was an easy fix and we should try to spend more time together. He let out a deep sigh, shaking his head. “Laura, you don’t get it. If I had to grade our relationship right now, I would give us a C. That’s how bad it is.” I grimaced and tried to joke that I was pretty sure a B was more in order, but I could see his frustration increase with my inability to digest what he was trying to impress upon me. “I don’t have time to deal with this right now. Work is a disaster and I have to get to the office. We need to deal with this, but not now.” With that, he flung the doors of the room open and within moments was gone from the apartment. I sat immobilized at my desk. What he had said to me felt unfair and out of left field. Happy? Who had said anything about our being entitled to happiness all the time? We were busy and didn’t have much time to connect, it was true. But he was suggesting we were at some sort of a crisis and I was perplexed. Our lives felt chaotic – three kids in three different schools, two homes, a business to run – compounded by a busy fall touring colleges with Daisy and helping to care for my normally healthy mother who had slipped weeks earlier, shattering her wrist and kneecap only days after being diagnosed with breast cancer. Why couldn’t he see that we needed to wait until our plates cleared and then hit the reset button?

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

  First, Vitalis sued Petronius and was awarded Justa, but with all the child’s earlier upkeep costs going to Petronius. Next, Vitalis and Petronius both died. Then, Calatoria sued Justa. She claimed Vitalis was still a slave when Justa was born, so Justa was slave-born, and she demanded that Justa and all her by then extensive property be returned to her. Justa defended herself, but Vitalis had been freed by oral declaration rather than formal manumission, so there was no written evidence of when it happened, and none, therefore, on whether Justa was born before or after her mother’s freedom. If before, she was slave-born; if after, she was freeborn. With no documents available, everything depended on witnesses. The case was too much for the Herculaneum authorities, and it was relegated to the urban praetor in the Forum of Augustus at Rome (remember those courts from Chapter 2?). Two witnesses, both freedmen, spoke for Calatoria. Five witnesses, two freeborn, two freed, and one whose name is lost, spoke for Justa. Of those the most important voice was that of the freedman Caius Petronius Telesphorus, whose Greek name was now preceded as usual by the first two names of the master who had manumitted him. For the first act of the drama, in December of 75, Telesphorus, who, as Calatoria’s tutor, had come with her to Petronius’s house, stood bail for her reappearance in court. But, in the second act, Calatoria has a new bondsman, and Telesphorus swore that Vitalis was his colliberta, freed along with him, that he himself (probably as Petronius’s steward) had overseen the repayment of those upkeep costs for Justa, and that he knew her to have been freeborn. You do not know the outcome of the case or whether that dossier belonged to Calatoria or Justa. Apparently no decision was handed down from Rome between 75 and 78, and by 79 Vesuvius rendered the case quite terribly moot. But you think long about its implications. Justa must have done very well to have sustained a long-distance court case at Rome with all the attendant expenses for herself and her witnesses. Female and male, freeborn and freed interacted within boundaries that might have been all quite clear in theory, but were marvelously messy in practice. In Herculaneum’s Insula V.13–18 ambiguities of architecture and structure intersect with those of social status and family relationship. Shrine of the Augustales

• From A History of Christianity (1976)

  We have already seen that the original legatee of Jesus’s mission, the Jerusalem Church, did not hold steadfast to his teaching and was slipping back into Judaism before it was, in effect, extinguished, its remnants being eventually branded as heretics. The Christology of Paul, which later became the substance of the Christian universal faith, came from the diaspora, and was preached by an outsider whom many in the Jerusalem Church did not recognize as an apostle at all. Christianity began in confusion, controversy and schism and so it continued. A dominant orthodox Church, with a recognizable ecclesiastical structure, emerged only very gradually and represented a process of natural selection – a spiritual survival of the fittest. And, as with such struggles, it was not particularly edifying. The Darwinian image is appropriate: the central and eastern Mediterranean in the first and second centuries AD swarmed with an infinite multitude of religious ideas, struggling to propagate themselves. Every religious movement was unstable and fissiparous; and these cults were not only splitting up and modulating but reassembling in new forms. A cult had to struggle not only to survive but to retain its identity. Jesus had produced certain insights and matrices which were rapidly propagated over a large geographical area. The followers of Jesus were divided right from the start on elements of faith and practice. And the further the missionaries moved from the base, the more likely it was that their teachings would diverge. Controlling them implied an ecclesiastical organization. In Jerusalem there were ‘leaders’ and ‘pillars’, vaguely defined officials modelled on Jewish practice. But they were ineffective. The Jerusalem Council was a failure. It outlined a consensus but could not make it work in practice. Paul could not be controlled. Nor, presumably, could others. Nor could the ‘pillars’ of the centre party maintain their authority even in Jerusalem. They slipped back into Judaism. Then came the catastrophe of 66–70, and the central organization of the Church, such as it was, disappeared. It is true that the Christians now had a homogenous and extremely virile body of doctrine: the Pauline gospel or kerygma. It stood a good chance of surviving and spreading. But it had no organization behind it. Paul did not believe in such a thing. He believed in the Spirit, working through him and others. Why should man regulate when the Spirit would do it for him? And of course he did not want a fixed system with rules and prohibitions: ‘If you are led by the Spirit you are not under the law.’ The Church was an inversion of normal society. Its leaders exercised their authority through gifts of the Spirit, not through office. The two noblest gifts were prophecy and teaching.

• From The Pisces (2018)

  I couldn’t tell if he seemed genuinely interested or if he was just being polite. “Heinous,” I said. “That can happen, I suppose,” he said. Suddenly I felt too…something. I wanted him to know I had gone on a date, because I wanted to see what his response would be. But I didn’t want him to think that I was a complainer or needy, or that things didn’t work out for me. I didn’t want to seem bitter. I wanted to seem youthful and full of joie de vivre. “It’s okay,” I said. “There’s another possible date on the horizon with someone else. This designer guy. Might make out with him.” What was I saying? “Ah,” he said. Did he look dejected? His expression was so serious that I couldn’t tell. “What about you?” I broke in. “Do you have a girlfriend?” “Not at the moment,” he said. “Boyfriend?” I asked. “Nope,” he said. “Really, I’m surprised. I would think people would be all over you.” I don’t know what I was trying to get him to say. Mostly, I wanted to get us talking about sex and love. But he changed the subject. “So which poets do you like?” he asked. “Me, no one at the moment. I actually want to kill all of poetry. If there was no more poetry left in the world I would be fine with it.” “I hate art too,” he said. “Really?” I asked. “No.” He grinned. “It’s not that I hate poetry. But I’ve been working on a project about a particular poet for a very long time. And I’m having trouble with it. So right now I’m feeling pretty over poetry.” “Which poet?” he asked. “Oh, her name is Sappho,” I said. “I know Sappho,” he said. “No you don’t,” I said. I assumed he was being one of those people whom, when asked about a movie they’ve never seen, responds with an affirmation about how much they loved it. “Yes, Sappho, she’s not exactly esoteric. Greek love poet. Well actually, she was a musician. Of course, most people don’t know that.” “Yeah, I know. How do you know that?” “I know a few things,” he said. “Amazing.” “So what is this project about?” “It’s bullshit, pretty much.” “Is it? I can’t imagine bullshitting about Sappho. Her words are so beautiful, what’s left of them anyway.” “I don’t know if it’s bullshit. It’s an attempt to sort of read Sappho through the—nothingness around her. Through the destruction of her text.” “That sounds interesting, actually. Nothingness is good. Almost as good as filling up every space,” he smiled. “And destruction. Destruction can be sexy.”

• From Available: The unfiltered and empowering new memoir for women about sex, dating and divorce after 40 (2021)

  I tell him that I am impressed and appreciative and he beams. Having a man cook me a meal with such care, being taken care of by being served dinner – that will never grow old for me. As we eat, he tells me that he’s made plans for us for the night. A salsa band will be playing at a bar he frequents with his friends and he’s excited for me to meet his gang. I murmur that it sounds like fun, but truthfully, it doesn’t. I don’t know him well enough to meet his friends and being with them at a noisy neighborhood bar sounds like the nights in college that were my least favorite. He is brimming with enthusiasm though and tells me that his friends are excited to meet me, so I smile and go along with it. We walk a block to the bar and he greets his friend Jay, who is standing outside smoking a cigarette. Jay wraps me in a hug, telling me that #7 has told him so much about me. The bar is fairly empty and the band doesn’t start for an hour, so #7 tells Jay we will return in a bit and we walk a few doors down to another, smaller bar, where he orders himself a tequila on the rocks. At his place we drank the entire bottle of red wine and started a second bottle with dinner and I’m not sure how many glasses I drank, so I order a club soda. We chat with a few people he introduces me to at the bar until he suggests we head back to the first bar, where the band will play. Bar hopping is another activity I haven’t done since my college days and I still don’t get what about it is supposed to be fun. When we return to the first bar, it is packed. We have to squeeze through a throng of people to reach his friend Abby, an attractive brunette around my age, who is waiting for us. #7 orders another tequila and I order another club soda. He leaves me with Abby while he talks to a small group of people nearby, saying he really wants me to get to know her. Abby is friendly but seems wary of me. He’s mentioned her to me frequently and told me she’s his absolute closest friend, but now she’s telling me that she moved here from the West Coast a few years ago and I am surprised to learn they haven’t known each other very long. I ask Abby as many questions as I can come up with to keep the conversation going while she remains fairly uninterested in me, and I am relieved when #7 returns to us. I see him catch her eye but can’t interpret the meaning of the look that passes between them. Have I just been approved or rejected?

• From Available: The unfiltered and empowering new memoir for women about sex, dating and divorce after 40 (2021)

  I am confused and also annoyed, as he’s just become geographically undesirable. “Is this a ruse you use to get city girls?” I ask with a laugh, though I’m on alert now – if you lie about where you live, what else might you lie about? “No, I used to stay there a lot and then I decided to rent it out to be closer to my daughter in Long Island. Hey, has anyone ever told you that you look like that actress, what’s her name?” he asks, eyebrows furrowed as he tries to recall the name. “Sarah Jessica Parker? I get that a lot,” I say. “No, not her,” he says. “Elaine from Seinfeld?” I ask. “I get that a lot too.” “No, no. I was totally in love with her when I was a teenager. She was in The Karate Kid and Cocktail. Elisabeth Shue!” he calls out, finally remembering. When I shake my head no, he calls over the waiter, asking him, “Doesn’t she look exactly like the actress Elisabeth Shue?” The waiter studies me for a long moment, tilting his head and flicking his eyes from my head down my body. “Nah,” he finally says with indifference, “she just looks like another white girl with curly hair,” and walks away. “Ouch. One man thinks I’m an ’80s film goddess, the other thinks I’m just another white girl,” I say. Scott pays the bill and we head outside to the muggy day. He says he is having such a great time that he doesn’t want the date to end and suggests a walk to the East River. He chivalrously offers to carry my tote bag, which is weighed down with two newspapers and a hefty 620-page hardcover novel that I schlep around for subway reading. The path along the river is wide and mostly empty, giving children and dogs ample room to run. A woman walks in our direction with a large, excited dog that suddenly bounds over to me so that I stop short, startled, and back up a few steps. The dog is more playful than menacing but still, for me, intimidating. The woman does not apologize, if anything scowling at me for not greeting her dog warmly. “See, this is what I hate about women with dogs. You don’t have a dog, do you?” he asks. I shake my head. “She let that dog run right up to you.

• From Available: The unfiltered and empowering new memoir for women about sex, dating and divorce after 40 (2021)

  It feels like I’m kicking things up a notch, but this seems like a natural progression if we consider ourselves to be in a relationship. Finally, I bite the bullet. I’m standing in my bathroom and I squeeze my eyes shut and sit on the side of the tub. “I was just thinking,” I say, on the phone with him midday. “Georgia is going to be here Friday night with a friend, do you want to come over and we can maybe cook dinner together?” “No thank you,” he says without hesitation. “The last thing I want to do on a Friday night is stay in and make slime with your daughter and her friend.” I reel back as if I’ve just been slapped. I am silent and so is he. “Well,” I finally muster, “no one said anything about making slime, I had only mentioned making dinner, but OK, it was just an idea.” He says he has to get back to work and I hang up the phone. My eyes fill with tears. I am not even sure what I want with him, but this had seemed like an organic extension of our path. I get it if he’s not ready, but to speak of the possibility of spending time with Georgia with disdain is not something I can live with. I call Lauren again to let her know the conversation did not go well, that he most definitely does not want to meet Georgia or come over when she’s here. I am hurt, but I am also confused, as maybe I don’t want him further enmeshed in my life either. I don’t want a boyfriend, I don’t want to be married again, I don’t want to live with a man, so do I just want a man who wants to meet my kids and be a bigger part of my life without actually meeting my kids or being a bigger part of my life? Why am I so terrified to want more than that? * I go back on Tinder and Hinge. I’ve let the dating apps sit dormant on my phone these past months while I’ve been spending time with #6, but now I’m hankering again to see what kind of single men are out there, and I want to get back to the simple, fun part of dating that involved a lot of sex without a lot of complicated feelings. A couple of weeks after the unfortunate slime conversation, as #6 and I are lounging in my bed early on a Sunday morning, I know that I have to address my recent wounds, unburden myself and clear the air. I would rather scare him away than keep him around while I harbor resentment and insecurity. I tell him how stung I was by his response to me. “Oh boy,” he says, sighing and staring up at the ceiling.

• From The Pisces (2018)

  But after a number of very grueling years of chemo and radiation, as well as a double mastectomy, I was declared cancer-free. And I’m still in remission.” “That’s great.” “It is,” she said. “But after the cancer, going through that horrible experience, I took a good look at my life. I thought about what I wanted the next years of my life to look like, however many I had left. And one thing I realized was that I no longer wanted to be with my husband. It was a very hard thing to come to terms with. I have no children. My family lives on the East Coast. He was my family and had seen me through the whole ordeal. He still loved me very much. But I was no longer in love with him. And I realized then that I would rather be by myself, even if it meant never finding anyone again, even with my body looking the way it did postsurgery, than spend the rest of my life with someone I didn’t love.” “How did you know you weren’t in love with him anymore?” I asked. “I just knew,” she said. “Over time I realized.” “I get so confused,” I said. “There were moments when I felt like I was no longer in love with Jamie at all. But after we broke up I wanted him back more than anything. So maybe it was the lust that had faded.” “Lust is lust,” she said. “Any woman can have sex. It’s not hard to find a man to sleep with you.” This was true. I’d never thought of it like that before. With Garrett and Adam, and even Theo, I’d felt like it was a sign that I was special when they’d wanted to have sex with me. “But love is…” She paused. “Well, love might be something beyond words. It’s funny, in all my years of doing this job, I still don’t really have the words for it.” “Right,” I said. “I think the place for you to start, the question that you might want to ask yourself, isn’t so much what is love,” she said. “But is it really love I’m looking for?” 49. As I left the hospital, I wondered if Claire was right. Was it possible that she had started seeing more clearly than me? The way she looked at me now was the way I had looked at Diana and at her before: lovingly, but full of pity. I decided it was she who was to be pitied. She had given up on the thing that made her most alive, even if it made her the most crazy. I knew the old way still sounded beautiful to her. But in an act of self-preservation, she was walking the path back to safety and sanity now. Even for Claire, the pain had just gotten too great.

• From A History of Christianity (1976)

  The Greek equivalent of this, prosopon, was not used by orthodox theologians because it had been discredited by the Sabellians. The upshot was that it proved comparatively easy to devise a definition in the Latin West; much more difficult to produce one for the Greek East, and almost impossible to create a translatable formula which both East and West could accept in good faith. It was difficult for non-theologians, especially in the West, to keep up. Augustine tells the story of the Italian general who engaged him in a debate on the Trinity under the impression that homoousios was an Eastern bishop. But in some ways it was even more difficult for the educated since they tended to invest words with portentous imagery. Thus Nestorius was appalled by the implications of the word theotokos, or God-bearer, as applied to the Virgin Mary. To him it implied Mary was a goddess. He went adrift on this one word; as the historian Socrates said, ‘He was frightened by that word theotokos, as though it were a terrible ghost.’ It can be said that Rome, speaking for Latin theologians generally, and taking a simpler and less sophisticated view of the affair, consistently supported a definition which accorded Christ full godhead and avoided charges of polytheism by use of the word persona . Rome, indeed, was more interested in blocking the evasions and misconstructions of heretics than in evolving an absolutely comprehensive and irrefragable formula of its own. Its position was put out most fully in the Tome of Leo, Bishop of Rome 440–61, and sent East as an authoritative statement representing not only the view of the oldest apostolic Church but the united opinion of the Latin West. The Greeks regarded the Latins as amateurs in theology and in general as barbarous and ill-educated persons. Nevertheless, they were so divided among themselves that Roman and Latin support ensured the eventual triumph of the ‘orthodox’, anti-Arian faction at the Council of Chalcedon, 451. Christ was ‘one substance with us as regarded his manhood; like us in all respects apart from sin; as regards his Godhead, begotten of the Father before the ages, but yet as regards his manhood begotten, for us men and for our salvation, of Mary the Virgin, the Godbearer; one and the same Christ, Son, Lord, Only begotten, recognized in two natures without confusion, without change, without division, without separation.’ This complicated formula has been held to mark the end of the controversy so far as the mainstream of Christianity is concerned. In fact it did nothing of the sort. It enormously strengthened the antagonism between East and West, in which the Trinitarian debate became not so much the cause of conflict as its most convenient and hallowed battlefield, and in the East it produced merely the illusion of ecumenical agreement. But the terminology of the debate changed, with those who refused to accept Chalcydon being grouped under the term ‘monophysite’.

• From The Well of Loneliness (1928)

  ‘You see,’ she would tell him,’ it’s very important to develop the brain as well as the muscles; I’m now doing both—stand still, will you, Raftery! Never mind that old corn-bin, stop rolling your eye round—it’s very important to develop the brain because that gives you an advantage over people, it makes you more able to do as you like in this world, to conquer conditions, Raftery.’ And Raftery, who was not really thinking of the corn-bin, but rolling his eye in an effort to answer, would want to say something too big for his language, which at best must consist of small sounds and small movements; would want to say something about a strong feeling he had that Stephen was missing the truth. But how could he hope to make her understand the age-old wisdom of all the dumb creatures? The wisdom of plains and primeval forests, the wisdom come down from the youth of the world. CHAPTER 81A t seventeen Stephen was taller than Anna, who had used to be considered quite tall for a woman, but Stephen was nearly as tall as her father—not a beauty this, in the eyes of the neighbours. Colonel Antrim would shake his head and remark: ‘I like ’em plump and compact, it’s more taking.’ Then his wife, who was certainly plump and compact, so compact in her stays that she felt rather breathless, would say: But then Stephen is very unusual, almost—well, almost a wee bit unnatural—such a pity, poor child, it’s a terrible drawback; young men do hate that sort of thing, don’t they?’ But in spite of all this Stephen’s figure was handsome in a flat, broad-shouldered and slim flanked fashion; and her movements were purposeful, having fine poise, she moved with the easy assurance of the athlete. Her hands, although large for a woman, were slender and meticulously tended; she was proud of her hands. In face she had changed very little since childhood, still having Sir Philip’s wide, tolerant expression. What change there was only tended to strengthen the extraordinary likeness between father and daughter, for now that the bones of her face showed more clearly, as the childish fullness had gradually diminished, the formation of the resolute jaw was Sir Philip’s. His too the strong chin with its shade of a cleft; the well modelled, sensitive lips were his also. A fine face, very pleasing, yet with something about it that went ill with the hats on which Anna insisted—large hats trimmed with ribbons or roses or daisies, and supposed to be softening to the features. Staring at her own reflection in the glass, Stephen would feel just a little uneasy: ‘Am I queer looking or not?’ she would wonder, ‘Suppose I wore my hair more like Mother’s?’ and then she would undo her splendid, thick hair, and would part it in the middle and draw it back loosely.

• From A History of Christianity (1976)

  He found himself fighting loose morals, rather than ignorance, and teaching discipline instead of grammar. The rule he drew up for his new establishments was very severe, and corporal punishment harsh and frequent. This was all very well: Columbanus’s success indicates the appeal of his mission. But his activities, for the first time, brought the nature of Celtic monasticism firmly to the attention of the Church authorities – to western bishops in general, and to the Bishop of Rome in particular. The Irish monks were not heretical. But they were plainly unorthodox. They did not look right, to begin with. They had the wrong tonsure. Rome, as was natural, had ‘the tonsure of St Peter’, that is, a shaven crown. Easterners had the tonsure of St Paul, totally shaven; and if they wished to take up an appointment in the West they had to wait until their rim grew before being invested. But the Celts looked like nothing on earth: they had their hair long at the back and, on the shaven front part, a half-circle of hair from one ear to the other, leaving a band across the forehead. More serious was their refusal to celebrate Easter according to the calculations made by Rome. There were a number of divergent calendar systems in the Mediterranean area; the one used by the Celts corresponded with none of them. The issue was more important than it may seem to us. Getting the right date for Easter was the most obvious instance of the problem of calculating time – man’s effort to orient himself in relation to events. There had been liturgical rows about Easter going back to the second century, perhaps even to the distant conflicts between gentile and Jewish Christians. In western Europe, the newly Christianized barbarian societies had adjusted their sense of the annual routine, from the court downwards, to fit the Christian year. Divergence over the most important and awesome event in the yearly round was not merely indecorous but sinister. And how could the Church claim unity if it could not even agree on the date of the resurrection, the core of its belief? Behind these discrepancies, which reflected not so much deliberate defiance on the part of the Celts as a drifting apart on details during a period when contact with Rome and Gaul had been lost, there was a much more fundamental difference about the nature of the Church. In a sense, the parallel was with the Donatists. Was the Church to embrace and reflect society, in the process of transforming it, as Augustine had taught, and as Rome and the Gaulish episcopate still assumed? Or was it an alternative to society? Celtic monasticism, so well adjusted to its native economic and social framework, seemed to pose impossible standards in areas of settled culture.

• From The Pisces (2018)

  We spend most of them looking like we are in our late teens and early twenties. I think it’s the saltwater. It preserves us in some way.” “So are you mythic? Are you a mythic creature? Is this a joke you are playing? Am I hallucinating you?” But from the look on his face I knew it wasn’t a joke. There was no way the place his skin met his tail could be fake. The gradations were too rough and eerie. There was no makeup or costume in the world that could do that. He really was part man and part fish. Or something. Had I lost it at some point along the way? Was I worse off than I thought? “You aren’t hallucinating, not really,” he said. “I mean, you are kind of hallucinating in the sense that your perspective has shifted. But in a way you were really hallucinating before you met me—in the sense that there was only one part of life you could see. You believed only that which was in front of you. Most people do. Most people believe that which you cannot see or know could not possibly exist. Humans are very arrogant. I don’t think you are arrogant, but I think it’s just your nature to only believe in what you can see.” “I don’t even know what to say,” I said. “I have so many questions for you.” “Let’s start slow,” he said. “Are you real?” I asked. He laughed. “I suffer like I’m real. I have wants like I’m real. I fear that I will be unliked or unloved. Men, women, I think that maybe everyone wants the same thing.” “Men want sex,” I said. “Don’t you?” he asked. “I do,” I said. “Maybe. But I think I mistake it for love, or something.” “How do you know when you’re mistaking it?” “I think when I get high off it.” “Well, why not? That could be love,” he said. “Can’t you get high off of love? I don’t think I want a love that doesn’t make me feel amazing.” “I don’t know if that’s love or something else,” I said. “But I don’t think it’s love if the person disappears.” “I wouldn’t say it’s not love,” he said. “But it’s hard. That is a very painful experience.” I was surprised to hear him say that. I felt that surely he must always be the one doing the disappearing. Merman, fish fillet, whatever the fuck he was, I still thought of him as a surfer who worried about nothing. Someone who was very free to just disappear off into the night at any time. I wondered what he looked like to the mermaids under there. Were there mermaids? Was he beautiful for the sea or just average? I didn’t dare ask. Surely the mermaids must be beautiful—breathing in and out under the ocean. I imagined them long-haired with little waists and shells on their tits. I imagined them all like Aphrodite.

• From Available: The unfiltered and empowering new memoir for women about sex, dating and divorce after 40 (2021)

  I was just asking you to join us for dinner, not play a role in my family. But OK, you’ve made your feelings clear and now I understand that,” I say. “It’s not about you, Laura, or your kids. I’m at a difficult place with my own kids right now, so it’s impossible for me to imagine having relationships with someone else’s kids. You’re so in love with your children, you can’t possibly understand,” he says, still staring at the ceiling. “I suspect this will be the last time I look up at that crack on the ceiling.” He points to a spidery crack over the bed with a sad smile. “Quite possibly,” I say with an equally sad smile. Yet, we manage to forge ahead, spending our weekends together when I don’t have the kids, and talking on the phone every day when he calls me from work and again before he goes to sleep. There is a rhythm and an easiness to being with him, and we have sex that is thrilling and nourishing and continues to keep me intrigued. At the same time, I question myself: what does this mean, what are we to each other, shouldn’t I still be having sex with lots of different men? Isn’t it too soon for me to feel I’m settling down with only one man, especially when that man doesn’t really want to be part of my life beyond my private relationship with him? CHAPTER 38 Laura’s Liberation Tour I’ve maintained traditional views of monogamy and relationships throughout my life, firmly believing one relationship at a time takes tremendous effort and concentration and that part of loving someone is loving only that someone. All of my relationships had been goal-oriented though, existing to culminate in a potential future together. I understand the motivation I had at the time – I had been young and looking for a husband, craving a family. If I’m no longer seeking a settled life with a man, don’t want a husband and already have a family, what’s the point of continuing to be steadfast about my views on monogamy? When I casually dated #3 and #4 simultaneously over the summer, it had felt different, less substantial. Now that my relationship with #6 is something, ill-defined and shapeshifting but something weighty nonetheless, I need to rethink how I feel about being with one man at a time. One evening at #6’s apartment after he’s cooked me a dinner of roasted sea bass he has professionally deboned and filleted himself, complete with cloth napkins and wine, I tell him I have a confession to make, that I have a coffee date later in the week with a man I met on Hinge. “Ahhhh, she’s back on her apps,” he says with a wry smile and a sigh. “I just wanted you to know.

• From The Pisces (2018)

  Looking at him, I really didn’t think he was cute. But I didn’t know what else to say so I shut my eyes and took the back of his head in my palm and pulled him toward me. Then he introduced his tongue, much deeper into my mouth, circling it in a clockwise motion. What the fuck was he doing? He was ruining it. I started to put my tongue out as a guard, to try to stop his rotating tongue, but I guess he just took this as a sign that I was turned on—that I was into it—because he continued with the circling, only deeper in my mouth, almost to my throat, gagging me. I put my finger up between our mouths, pretending to trace his lips, but really trying to create some distance. Then I closed my lips a lot, guiding him into softer and gentler kisses. I kept my eyes sealed shut. I could have just cut it off there. I’d gotten what I said I wanted. I’m not sure why I didn’t. He rubbed my tits over my black cotton dress. I could feel his bulge against me. Then he started kissing my ear and neck, which I think is a turn-on for some women, because men do it a lot—especially when they are younger. I remembered these moves now from when I was in my early twenties: the weird breathing in my ear, the sticky trail on my neck, moves he probably read on Esquire.com. All I could think about was how my neck and ear now smelled like his breath, which had taken on a sour quality: the whiskey, tequila, and smoke forming a noxious stew. “Let’s go back to my house,” he whispered into my ear. “Uhhh, I don’t think so,” I said. “What if you’re a murderer?” “I’m not a murderer.” He laughed. “If you were a murderer you obviously wouldn’t tell me.” “I’m so not a murderer,” he said. “Well, I will just walk a little further and then I’ll decide. Maybe I can pick up some more clues in the meantime.” “Yeah, let’s just walk in the direction of my house. Or we could go to your house instead?” I imagined bringing this kid to Annika’s house. I didn’t want him knowing where I lived. Or in there to begin with. “No, that’s okay. What’s your address?” I asked. Then I texted Claire: I’m going here with a strange boy from the internet it’s your fault if i don’t text you after then this is where to find the body

• From History of the Christian Church: The Complete Set of Eight Volumes (1858)

  celebration of the eucharist Gr. (thVn eujcaristivan), and they separated from each other in peace, all the church being at peace, both those that observed and those that did not observe [the fourteenth of Nisan], maintaining peace." This letter proves that the Christians of the days of Polycarp knew how to keep the unity of the Spirit without uniformity of rites and ceremonies. "The very difference in our fasting," says Irenaeus in the same letter, "establishes the unanimity in our faith." 2. A few years afterwards, about A.D. 170, the controversy broke out in Laodicea, but was confined to Asia, where a difference had arisen either among the Quartadecimanians themselves, or rather among these and the adherents of the Western observance. The accounts on this interimistic sectional dispute are incomplete and obscure. Eusebius merely mentions that at that time Melito of Sardis wrote two works on the Passover.340 But these are lost, as also that of Clement of Alexandria on the same topic.341 Our chief source of information is Claudius Apolinarius (Apollinaris),342 bishop of Hierapolis, in Phrygia, in two fragments of his writings upon the subject, which have been preserved in the Chronicon Paschale.343 These are as follows: "There are some now who, from ignorance, love to raise strife about these things, being guilty in this of a pardonable offence; for ignorance does not so much deserve blame as need instruction. And they say that on the fourteenth [of Nisan] the Lord ate the paschal lamb (to; provbaton e[fage) with his disciples, but that He himself suffered on the great day of unleavened bread344 [i.e. the fifteenth of Nisan]; and they interpret Matthew as favoring their view from which it appears that their view does not agree with the law,345 and that the Gospels seem, according to them, to be at variance.346 The Fourteenth is the true Passover of the Lord, the great sacrifice, the. Son of God347 in the place of the lamb ... who was lifted up upon the horns of the unicorn ... and who was buried on the day of the Passover, the stone having been placed upon his tomb." Here Apolinarius evidently protests against the Quartadecimanian practice, yet simply as one arising from ignorance, and not as a blameworthy heresy. He opposes it as a chronological and exegetical mistake, and seems to hold that the fourteenth, and not the fifteenth, is the great day of the death of Christ as the true Lamb of God, on the false assumption that this truth depends upon the chronological coincidence of the crucifixion and the Jewish passover.

• From A History of Christianity (1976)

  This situation was in time brought about by the victory of Pauline theology. The divinity of Christ gave Christianity its tremendous initial impact and assisted its universality. But it left Christian theologians with a dilemma: how to explain the divinity of Christ while maintaining the singularity of God. Were there not two Gods? Or, if the concept of the Spirit were introduced as a separate manifestation of divinity, three? The point became an irritant at a very early stage of Christian history. One possible solution was to regard Christ as a manifestation of a monolithic God and therefore not a man at all. This was the line followed, in general, by the gnostics. Thus Valentinus wrote: ‘Jesus ate and drank in a peculiar manner, not evacuating his food. So much power of continence was in him that in him his food was not corrupted, since he himself had no corruptibility.’ This weird theory invalidated most of the gospels, devalued the resurrection and made nonsense of the eucharist. The Docetists, who also belonged to this school, faced the issue squarely: as Christ’s human body was phantasm, his sufferings and death were mere appearance: ‘If he suffered, he was not God. If he was God, he did not suffer.’ Christianity thus presented lost much of its attraction. There were attempts to meet this objection by more sophisticated definitions. The Monarchianists, while emphasizing the unity of God, suggested that the Father himself descended into the Virgin Mary and became Jesus Christ, a formulation also known as Patripassionism. The Sabellianists put it a slightly different way: Father, Son and Holy Ghost were one and the same being, that is the body, the soul and the spirit of one substance – one God in three temporary manifestations. These were intellectually digestible concepts but they were still incompatible with the historical Jesus who was now an integral part of the canonical scriptures. A second line of solution was to stress the manhood of Christ. This, of course, had been preferred all along by the Judaizing elements in Christianity and was the essence of the heresy maintained by the Ebionites, the displaced rump of the Jerusalem Church. The objection, of course, was that it was then difficult to differentiate Christianity from Judaism and impossible to retain Pauline theology or (among other canonical texts) the gospel of St John. The halfway stage along this line was to deny Christ’s pre-existence as God and this is more or less what Arius, the most important of the Christological Trinitarian heresiarchs, tried to do. As he put it himself: ‘We are persecuted because we say that the Son had a beginning, but God is without beginning. . . and this we say because he is neither part of God nor derived from any substance.’ According to the historian Socrates, writing c.

• From A History of Christianity (1976)

  He employed two German pastors, Bartholomew Ziegenbald and Henry Plutschau, who based their work methodically on a number of assumptions which became standard. The mission church must be associated with a mission school (and later a hospital or clinic). The gospels (and preferably the whole of the Bible) must be translated. Missionaries must possess an accurate knowledge of the native mentality and language. Conversions must be made of individuals not of groups. And native missionaries and ministers must be trained as rapidly as possible. The last two of these principles raised controversy of a type which had already puzzled the Jesuits. The earliest Christians had made individual conversions, partly because they had no state power behind them. In the Dark Ages, missionaries had worked through kings and tribal leaders; the Germans and Slavs had become Christians in entire social units, sometimes indeed at the point of the sword. Both methods had worked. In India, it could be argued that only personal conversion enabled the adult neophyte to understand the true meaning of the Christian message and the privileges and responsibilities he was receiving. On the other hand, he thereby became detached from his social group – hence the practice of transplanting converts and bringing them together in new settlements, a method used, with variations, by Catholics and Protestants alike, all over the world. Others argued that it was much better to work on a whole community, and bring them over together when the moment was ripe, without damaging the social structure. Christianity then became fully integrated with the native way of life. But against this it was urged that the whole object of Christianity was to change the way of life. As a new religion, or cult, it necessarily involved the adoption of new cultural and social norms. This was the meaning of Paul’s expression, becoming ‘a new man’. Polygamy was a case in point. Enforcing Christian monogamy meant a huge and unwelcome change in the social structure. But this was unavoidable unless it was seriously proposed that Christianity should accept polygamy. If polygamy, why not cannibalism? The argument remained unresolved throughout the period – that is up to the end of the nineteenth century – when collective conversions were a possibility, at least in some areas. It was the same with the debate over a native clergy. As in the Catholic missions, the Protestants became divided, and usually in the same way. The home and secular authorities, and the hierarchies, were less anxious to train and promote natives than the men on the spot. Native clergy were regarded as incompatible with colonial rule; or with doctrinal orthodoxy. Some of the actual missionaries were much more ready to try experiments.

• From Anxious: Using the Brain to Understand and Treat Fear and Anxiety (2015)

  To help make the case for feelings, Panksepp turns to studies of electrical stimulation of the human brain. Figure 5.7: Basic and Cognitive Feeling Circuits in Panksepp’s Model. Brain areas involved in basic feelings of fear (primary process affective consciousness) and cognitively based feelings of fear are depicted. Basic feelings of fear depend on subcortical areas of the amygdala, hypothalamus, and periaqueductal gray (PAG), while cognitive feelings of fear depend on neocortical areas. When areas of the human brain are stimulated electrically, first-person verbal reports of inner experiences can be obtained and are potentially very useful in relating brain circuits to experienced feelings. This is important because the lack of verbal reporting makes it difficult to verify conscious experiences in animals (see Chapters 2 , 6 , and 7 ). Panksepp relies heavily on the classic and much publicized work of Robert Heath done in the 1950s and 1960s. 79 Heath claimed that he had found specific sights from which a range of emotions (fear, anger, pleasure, etc.) could be elicited in humans, as revealed by the verbal reports of the patients about what they experienced. But Heath’s conclusions have been called into question by other scientists who argue that contrary to the way the data have been portrayed, the findings do not in fact provide convincing support for the claim that stimulation of specific sites in the human brain elicit specific feelings. Both methodological and data interpretation issues have been identified. These issues are discussed further in the text box “Do Human Brain Stimulation Studies Reveal Specific Brain Sites Where Feelings Are Programmed?” In sum, Panksepp is a thoughtful researcher who has argued that powerful emotional feelings result when subcortical emotion command circuits are activated in animals and people. 80 I agree with some but not all of his conclusions. In contrast to him I do not believe that it is possible to distinguish between conscious and nonconscious states elicited by electrical stimulation of subcortical areas, especially in animals. Panksepp recognizes the difficulties. He and Marie Vandekerckhove note that basic, subcortical, innate feelings are “implicit,” “perhaps truly unconscious,” and occur “without explicit reflective awareness or understanding of what is happening.” 81 But “truly unconscious” states are not, by my definition, feelings. Feelings, even primitive ones, have to be felt (consciously experienced). Electrical stimulation most likely induces nonconscious central motivational states, such as those I described earlier, that result naturally when systems that control innate survival behaviors are activated (e.g., nonconscious defensive motivational states that are induced when a defensive survival circuit detects and responds to threats). I believe we should not assume conscious feelings in animals if nonconscious processes can account for the behavioral effects.

• From Available: The unfiltered and empowering new memoir for women about sex, dating and divorce after 40 (2021)

  If you want to date other men, we can work it out. Give me a chance. Please. I had a special day planned for you.” I am confused by him, his alternating belligerence and warmth. I think back to some of the conversations he’s had with me about his ex-wife, how roughly and unkindly he spoke about her, but how loving he is when I hear him on the phone with his daughter. I wonder if when Michael talks about me he does so with respect for the fact that I’m the mother of his children, or if his frustrations with me are so great that the anger comes first, and then the acknowledgement of the love we once shared. I decline #5’s invitation once again, but he persists. “Please. I like you so much, Laura. You’re the first woman I’ve opened up to in a long time. Just come spend the day, we’ll work this out,” he writes. I cave. I don’t know if it’s compassion or my ego, but this line of reasoning works on me, makes me feel I’m special to him and I dare not disappoint. When I arrive at his apartment, he looks at me forlornly and opens his arms to embrace me. I allow him to wrap me in a hug and he murmurs apologies in my ear, then guides me to the couch when I say that I am exhausted. He lies next to me and wraps himself around me. I am out of sorts, knowing I shouldn’t be here and feeling upset with myself that I let myself be so easily convinced, once again. After a few minutes, he rises and gently tucks a blanket around me. I hear him moving around in his small kitchen, making himself breakfast, and I drift off to sleep. When I wake up and look at my watch, I see that I have been asleep for two hours. He is working on his laptop at the table and smiles at me when he sees me rise, saying we should go to the health club soon before it gets too late. “OK,” I say, groggily. “Let me eat an apple or a banana or something first.” I check my phone while he rummages in his kitchen for a piece of fruit. There is a long text from Alan, “Good morning Laura, as we both know from literature and movies, NYC taxis either never show up fast enough or come too soon. Last night I felt the latter, a quick goodbye rather than a longer hello.