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.

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

  Passing by the bathroom, I extricate my hand from his, indicating that I’m going to make a quick stop first. When I enter his bedroom a minute later, he is lying on his back on the bed, stripped down to a pair of boxer shorts. His bed is neatly made beneath him, a purple geometrically patterned comforter covering a low platform bed. I pause at the side of the bed, pulling off my sweater so that I am down to a sheer camisole. I lie next to him and he immediately rolls over so that he is on top of me, tugging off my jeans and then my thong. When he sees my bare pubic area, he pauses and raises his eyebrows. “I did not expect you to have a wugget,” he says, smiling. “A what?” I ask, furrowing my eyebrows. “A wugget,” he repeats and I continue to look questioningly at him. “A bald monkey,” he adds, unhelpfully. “Translation please,” I say. “A shaved pussy,” he clarifies. “Wow, you’re a walking urban dictionary! Yes, well, surprise, here it is. I am told this is what men like now,” I say. “Would you like to weigh in?” “Yeah, I like it,” he says. “But do you prefer it this way? Is the presence of pubic hair a dealbreaker for you?” I ask. “Ha, no! Not much is a dealbreaker for me in terms of hair. But it’s a bold choice. I guess I would think with your daughters up in your business all the time, you might have wanted to keep some hair,” he says. “Just to be clear, my kids are definitely up in my business, but not the business of my vagina,” I say and he laughs. Within seconds his mouth is on my wugget, my bald monkey, my shaved pussy. I am definitely in some kind of weird clinical mindset because I am evaluating all that is happening to me without feeling any physical arousal. Am I just flat-out having too much sex so that I can’t even be bothered to feel anything anymore? Why does this suddenly feel like work? I always feel like I should reciprocate – and I use the word “should” here as frankly, even though my blow job skills are improving, I still don’t totally get the appeal – but honestly, he is so well-endowed, I can’t fathom putting him in my mouth. I am wholly intimidated by it, sheepish even, not confident that I have the skills yet to tackle this particular one. For the moment, I am off the hook as he reaches across me into his night table drawer for a condom. With the condom on, he aggressively thrusts inside of me and I can barely catch my breath before he has single-handedly flipped me onto my stomach. I raise myself to my hands and knees so that he can enter me from behind.

• From How God Became King (2012)

  I believe in the Holy Ghost, the holy catholic church, the communion of saints, the forgiveness of sins, the resurrection of the body, and the life everlasting. Most devout Christians, when they think about it, are aware of the gentle prompting of the Spirit. This doesn’t necessarily happen all or even most of the time, but it is a reality. Most are happy to trust that even when they are not explicitly conscious of that work, the Spirit is getting on with the job behind the scenes. But most, however “orthodox,” are happy to leave it at that, to think of the Spirit as basically given to make us like Jesus, to help us to be holy, to teach us to pray. All that is true, of course. But the truth of which the creed speaks at this point is so much more. Likewise, most well-taught Christians know that “catholic” here doesn’t mean “Roman Catholic.” (When I worked at Westminster Abbey, with a few hundred or more tourists coming to services every day and hearing the creed, one of the most frequent questions I was asked afterwards was, “Is this a Catholic church?” “Yes,” I used to say, “but not in the sense I think you mean.”) The word “catholic” here has its proper sense of “universal,” “worldwide.” Many, however, have not been taught even that much about the “communion of saints” (though for some it means that we are still able to be in touch, in some sense or other, with those we have loved and see no more). Forgiveness is something most creedal Christians quietly and gratefully celebrate, without being quite clear why it occurs here in the creed at all. When it comes to “resurrection” and “the life everlasting,” we still have a major problem. Most Christians, certainly in the Western churches, still assume that the whole purpose of the Christian faith is so that we might “go to heaven when we die.” God wants to share fellowship with people, and those who have faith will be those people. For some, “resurrection” functions simply as a fancy metaphor for “eternal life,” seen in terms of a spiritual bliss outside the world of space, time, and matter. For others, this ultimate goal still dominates the horizon, not least because countless prayers and hymns reinforce it. The word “resurrection,” especially the resurrection “of the body,” remains a puzzle. As I heard one elderly man say, “I’ll be going to heaven when I die, and I certainly don’t want to take this old body with me.” It is possible, it seems, to affirm everything the creed says—especially Jesus’s “divine” status and his bodily resurrection—but to know nothing of what the gospel writers were trying to say. Something is seriously wrong here.

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

  Georgia eyes me skeptically and then hands me her coconut so she can jump in the pool. I am perplexed by Michael, unable to decide if he simply forgets that we aren’t a couple anymore, or if he remembers but doesn’t feel that should stop him from doling out compliments. I remember when I first met him, how I found his tendency to blurt out unsolicited opinions to be refreshing at times, disconcerting at others. It’s not that I don’t appreciate any and all compliments, but the way he says this now, so adoringly, is a painful reminder of how I once felt so cherished by him. It had seemed to me from our very beginning together that he was smitten with me; I cannot for the life of me figure out when that stopped being the case. “I’m worried about Blaze,” he says as he plops himself down on the double-wide chaise longue I am sprawled across. “He wasn’t himself this morning, he was kind of subdued.” I am mid-swallow when he says this and I start coughing, the thin coconut milk coming back up my throat. He looks at me quizzically and when I catch my breath, I suggest that maybe Blaze was just tired. “It was weird. You know how he always has so much energy and gets excited to do his whole coconut machete show for Georgia? He looked sad, kind of sedated,” he says. “I wouldn’t worry. It may turn out he’s simply human like the rest of us and is having an off day,” I say, trying to play it cool as questions race through my mind. Could I have worn him out? Could he be feeling guilty? Does he wish last night hadn’t happened? Hudson jumps in the pool to join Georgia and they play their usual games, which involve a combination of shrieking, laughter and, eventually, tears. Michael and I are left alone on the chair, watching them and unsure what to talk about when we aren’t talking about them. In moments like this, I have to remind myself that we are not who we used to be to each other, that a tranquil moment like this is hard-won. “Michael,” I start. “Yes?” He swivels his head to look at me, seeming surprised and thrilled that I have initiated a conversation with him. “You know how I asked you for a laptop so that I could do some writing?” “Yes. I’m so glad you’re writing. I really think you could get copywriting work, the stuff you did for me was great.” “That’s not the kind of writing I want to do. I mean, if I can do that and make some money, I’d be thrilled, but I’m more interested in creative writing.” “OK, well do both.

• From The Well of Loneliness (1928)

  Its pitiful sails revolved in the wind, eternally grinding out petty sins—dry chaff blown in from the gutters of Paris. And after a while, having breasted the hill, she must climb a dusty flight of stone steps, and push open a heavy, slow-moving door; the door of the mighty temple of faith that keeps its anxious but tireless vigil. She had no idea why she was doing this thing, or what she would say to the silver Christ with one hand on His heart and the other held out in a patient gesture of supplication. The sound of praying, monotonous, low, insistent, rose up from those who prayed with extended arms, with crucified arms—like the tides of an ocean it swelled and receded and swelled again, bathing the shores of heaven. They were calling upon the Mother of God: ‘Sainte Marie, Mère de Dieu, priez pour nous, pauvres pêcheurs, maintenant et à l’heure de notre mort.’ ‘Et à l’heure de notre mort,’ Stephen heard herself repeating. He looked terribly weary, the silver Christ: ‘But then He always looks tired,’ she thought vaguely; and she stood there without finding anything to say, embarrassed as one so frequently is in the presence of somebody else’s sorrow. For herself she felt nothing, neither pity nor regret; she was curiously empty of all sensation, and after a little she left the church, to walk on through the wind-swept streets of Montmartre. CHAPTER 54 1 F ate, which by now had them well in its grip, began to play the game out more quickly. That summer they went to Pontresina since Mary had never seen Switzerland; but the Comtesse must make a double cure, first at Vichy and afterwards at Bagnoles de l’Orne, which fact left Martin quite free to join them. Then it was that Stephen perceived for the first time that all was not well with Martin Hallam. Try as he might he could not deceive her, for this man was almost painfully honest, and any deception became him so ill that it seemed to stand out like a badly fitting garment. Yet now there were times when he avoided her eyes, when he grew very silent and awkward with Stephen, as though something inevitable and unhappy had obtruded itself upon their friendship; something, moreover, that he feared to tell her. Then one day in a blinding flash of insight she suddenly knew what this was—it was Mary. Like a blow that is struck full between the eyes, the thing stunned her, so that at first she groped blindly. Martin, her friend . . . But what did it mean? And Mary . . . The incredible misery of it if it were true. But was it true that Martin Hallam had grown to love Mary? And the other thought, more incredible still—had Mary in her turn grown to love Martin?

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

  Christianity already filled the atmosphere of the age too much, to be wholly shut out. As might be expected, this compound of philosophy and religion was an extravagant, fantastic, heterogeneous affair, like its contemporary, Gnosticism, which differed from it by formally recognising Christianity in its syncretism. Most of the NeoPlatonists, Jamblichus in particular, were as much hierophants and theurgists as philosophers, devoted themselves to divination and magic, and boasted of divine inspirations and visions. Their literature is not an original, healthy natural product, but an abnormal after-growth. In a time of inward distraction and dissolution the human mind hunts up old and obsolete systems and notions, or resorts to magical and theurgic arts. Superstition follows on the heels of unbelief, and atheism often stands closely connected with the fear of ghosts and the worship of demons. The enlightened emperor Augustus was troubled, if he put on his left shoe first in the morning, instead of the right; and the accomplished elder Pliny wore amulets as protection from thunder and lightning. In their day the long-forgotten Pythagoreanism was conjured from the grave and idealized. Sorcerers like Simon Magus, Elymas, Alexander of Abonoteichos, and Apollonius of Tyana (d. A.D. 96), found great favor even with the higher classes, who laughed at the fables of the gods. Men turned wishfully to the past, especially to the mysterious East, the land of primitive wisdom and religion. The Syrian cultus was sought out; and all sorts of religions, all the sense and all the nonsense of antiquity found a rendezvous in Rome. Even a succession of Roman emperors, from Septimius Severus, at the close of the second century, to Alexander Severus, embraced this religious syncretism, which, instead of supporting the old Roman state religion, helped to undermine it.83 After the beginning of the third century this tendency found philosophical expression and took a reformatory turn in Neo-Platonism. The magic power, which was thought able to reanimate all these various elements and reduce them to harmony, and to put deep meaning into the old mythology, was the philosophy of the divine Plato; which in truth possessed essentially a mystical character, and was used also by learned Jews, like Philo, and by Christians, like Origen, in their idealizing efforts and their arbitrary allegorical expositions of offensive passages of the Bible. In this view we may find among heathen writers a sort of forerunner of the NeoPlatonists in the pious and noble-minded Platonist, Plutarch, of Boeotia (d. 120), who likewise saw a deeper sense in the myths of the popular polytheistic faith, and in general, in his comparative biographies and his admirable moral treatises, looks at the fairest and noblest side of the Graeco-Roman antiquity, but often wanders off into the trackless regions of fancy. The proper founder of Neo-Platonism was Ammonius Saccas, of Alexandria, who was born of Christian parents, but apostatized, and died in the year 243.

• From The Well of Loneliness (1928)

  It was rather a terrible summer for them all, the more so as they were surrounded by beauty, and great peace when the evening came down on the snows, turning the white, unfurrowed peaks to sapphire and then to a purple darkness; hanging out large, incredible stars above the wide slope of the Roseg Glacier. For their hearts were full of unspoken dread, of clamorous passions, of bewilderment that went very ill with the quiet fulfilments, with the placid and smiling contentment of nature—and not the least bewildered was Mary. Her respite, it seemed, had been pitifully fleeting; now she was torn by conflicting emotions; terrified and amazed at her realization that Martin meant more to her than a friend, yet less, oh, surely much less than Stephen. Like a barrier of fire her passion for the woman flared up to forbid her love of the man; for as great as the mystery of virginity itself, is sometimes the power of the one who has destroyed it, and that power still remained in these days, with Stephen. Alone in his bare little hotel bedroom, Martin would wrestle with his soul-sickening problem, convinced in his heart that but for Stephen, Mary Llewellyn would grow to love him, nay more, that she had grown to love him already. Yet Stephen was his friend—he had sought her out, had all but forced his friendship upon her; had forced his way into her life, her home, her confidence; she had trusted his honour. And now he must either utterly betray her or through loyalty to their friendship, betray Mary.

• 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 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 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 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)

  440, his actual formulation was as follows: ‘If the Father begat the Son, he that was begotten had a beginning of existence; hence it is clear that there was a time when the Son was not. It follows then of necessity that he had his existence from the non-existent.’ The intrinsic difficulty of the problem lay in the lack of room for manoeuvre for a middle course. A right-thinking theologian, anxious to remain orthodox, tended to smash his ship on Charybdis while trying to avoid Scylla. Thus Apollinaris, Bishop of Laodicea (d. 392), in his efforts to demonstrate his anti-Arianism, emphasized the divinity of the Lord at the expense of his manhood and ended by creating a heresy of his own which denied that Christ had a human mind. Nestorius, Bishop of Constantinople 428–31, reacting from Apollinarianism, reasserted the manhood of Christ to the extent of questioning the divinity of the infant Jesus and thus denying Mary her title of theotokos or ‘God-bearer’. He, too, found himself a reluctant heresiarch. In turn, Eutyches, a learned monk from Constantinople, in his anti-Nestorian fervour, swung too far in the direction of Apollinarianism and came to grief over Constantine’s compulsory word ‘consubstantial’. Summoned to recant before a council in 448, he gave up in despair: ‘Hitherto I have always avoided the phrase “consubstantial after the flesh” [as tending to confusion]. But I will use it now, since your holiness demands it.’ What room for manoeuvre there was consisted in verbal manipulations behind which lay nebulous concepts. ‘Consubstantial after the flesh’ was, indeed, such a device. But a clever formula might, in solving an old problem, raise an entirely new one and a compromise meaningful and satisfactory to one generation of fathers was often interpreted in rival ways by the next. The Church’s collective memory was an imperfect instrument. By the third century, for instance, it had forgotten the origins of the old Jewish-Christian Ebionites and assumed they were the followers of a heresiarch called Ebion; not only was he denounced by orthodox writers but sentences from his works were produced for refutation. All kinds of subsequent constructions were placed upon the Nicene formula, and the motives of those who approved it. Then there were language difficulties. Greek lent itself to complexity of religious discussion. This was one important reason why the great Christological rows were all of eastern origins and were mere imports in Latin-speaking areas. Our word ‘essence’ can be used in a general or a particular sense. The Greeks had two, hypostasis and ousia, each of which could be used in either sense. Some of the leading fourth-century Greek theologians began to employ ousia in the general sense and hypostasis in the particularist – ‘person’ or ‘character’. But the Latin for both words is substantia – which in fact is the exact equivalent of hypostasis. The Latin essentia, the equivalent of ousia, never gained currency. The Latins did, however, have the word persona, which they employed for the particularist sense.

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

  He’s gentle and kind, has a twinkle in his eye and is clearly a history buff, as he keeps peppering our conversation with stories about ancient noblemen and bits of Russian history. I concentrate on following what he’s saying – it’s noisy and I’m on my second drink and the stories seem to randomly appear without context. I don’t think he’s showing off for me, but maybe citing historical facts is a kind of nervous tic. When I stand to use the restroom, I totter for a moment in my high heels and hold onto the edge of the table to get my bearings. In the awkward lulls of our conversation, I consumed two drinks at lightning speed. When I return to the table, he has already paid the bill and is ready to go. I wonder if he’s anxious to get this date to its end, but he walks with me toward home and on the way suggests that we should stop for dessert. I doubt we will be able to get a table at the crowded restaurant he points to, but he says he knows the host and we will get in, no problem. Walking next to him, I note that we are eye-level, though in all fairness I’m wearing heels. Still, it feels weird to me and I realize that I’ve always been diminutive compared to men I’ve been with. If I’m being honest – even though I admit this with regret that I care – I like being the smaller one and feeling protected by a larger man at my side. I think of a friend who always dates men who are her height, with whom she can even share jeans – I shudder at the thought. I’ve often teased her that she likes men to be petite so she can tuck them in her pockets when she’s out and about and keep them close by. I have always conformed to gender stereotypes of physicality, feeling that masculinity is defined in part by physical prowess, but I also fully embrace the concept of metrosexuality. Michael had been more interested in fashion and shopping than I had ever been, and arguments we had about spending too much money on clothes, accessories or fancy toiletries were due to his bills, not mine. I didn’t like how much money he spent, but I liked that he cared about what he wore and how he looked.

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

  The study was published in Science, whose website led with the headline “Anxious Crayfish Can Be Treated Like Humans.” The New York Times announced, “Even Crayfish Get Anxious,” while the BBC, slightly more tempered, noted, “Crayfish May Experience a Form of Anxiety.” The theory of behavioral inhibition could, in fact, easily account for motivational conflict, behavioral arrest, and risk assessment in animals (including crayfish, rats, and people) without requiring the conscious experience of anxiety. Unfortunately, just as the meaning of defensive motivation gets tied up with subjective feelings when the motivational state and its brain system are labeled with the term “fear,” the meaning of behavioral inhibition becomes entangled with subjective states when it or its brain system is labeled with the term “anxiety.” Defensive motivation and behavioral inhibition are not the same as the conscious experience of fear and anxiety. That is not to say that the defensive motivation and behavioral inhibition states are unrelated to fear and anxiety, as they do make important contributions, but more is required to feel afraid or anxious. In June 2014, a psychology website’s headline read: “Fear Center in Brain Larger Among Anxious Kids.” 65 The story that followed described a study that measured the level of anxiety in a large group of children based on a questionnaire answered by their parents. 66 The brains of these children were then imaged and the findings related to the parents’ assessments. The results showed that the larger the amygdala of the child, the higher the level of anxiety rated by the parents. Let’s consider what this actually means. In this study the parents did what animal researchers often do: They based a conclusion about anxiety, an inner feeling, on observations of behavior—their child seemed nervous, edgy, or had trouble concentrating or sleeping. Thus, although the size of the amygdala might well correlate with certain behaviors, whether it was related to feelings of anxiety was not tested. The website’s headline was inaccurate in three respects: (1) What was being measured was behavioral activity, not the feeling of anxiety; (2) the kids were not anxious in the clinical sense, in spite of some being described as “anxious” in the story; and (3) the amygdala is not the fear center (and certainly not the anxiety center) if by fear or anxiety we mean a conscious feeling. Fear and anxiety are hardly the only emotions that are viewed in these inaccurate and confusing ways. As we saw above, a number of emotions, including anger, sadness, joy, and disgust, are often considered to be wired into brain circuits.

• From A History of Christianity (1976)

  Why did the Baptist make secret inquiries about Jesus’s mission and receive mysterious replies? The exotic story of the Baptist’s end, shorn of its romantic details, places him in a highly political posture and it is interesting that Herod Antipas did not like Jesus either. Was there, then, a political connection between these two religious innovators? Our ignorance of the Baptist inevitably clouds our view of the uniqueness of Jesus. Indeed, the historical problem of the Baptist, baffling as it is, serves merely as an introduction to the much greater problem of Jesus. There can, at least, be absolutely no doubt about his historical existence. Unfortunately, the Antiquities of Josephus (published about AD 93), so useful about other related topics, is virtually silent on the point. Josephus was a Hellenized Jew, a Romanophile, indeed a Roman general and historian whose work received imperial subsidies. The manuscript chain coming down to us inevitably passed through Christian control. Since Josephus was strongly opposed to Jewish irredentism, or any other sectarian movement which gave trouble to the authorities, he clearly adopted an anti-Christian posture. But this has been tampered with. Thus, he mentions the judicial murder of James by the high priest Ananias in AD 62, and calls James the brother ‘of Jesus, the so-called Christ’, in a way to suggest that he has already given an account of Jesus and his mission. But what has actually come down to us is a passage which describes Jesus as a wise man, a lover of truth, much beloved by his followers; it accepts his miracles and resurrection and hints strongly at his divinity. The passage is plainly a non-too-ingenious Christian invention and what Josephus actually wrote has gone. Attempts to reconstruct it have not so far won general acceptance. The inference from Josephus is that Jesus was a Jewish sectarian with messianic claims and a substantial following which had survived his extinction: a nuisance to the empire, in fact. This view is reflected in other non-Christian references, which are few but clearly confirm Jesus’s historicity. Tacitus, in his Annals, writing of the fire of Rome in 64, refers to ‘the detestable superstition’ of Christianity, to ‘Christus, the founder of this sect’, and to his crucifixion ‘in the reign of Tiberius by the Procurator Pontius Pilate’ – though it is not clear whether he got this last from Christian or official sources. Pliny the Younger, writing in 112, says the sect ‘sang a hymn to Christ as a God’, and refused to curse Christ; only renegades were willing to do so. The earliest reference, by Suetonius, which implies that Christians were known at Rome even in the reign of Claudius, AD 41–54, is unfortunately garbled: he writes of Jews being expelled from Rome because ‘they were constantly rioting at the instigation of Chrestus’. Did he think ‘Chrestus’ was still alive at the time? Anyway, he, and every other source referring to earliest Christianity, treat Jesus Christ as an actual, historical person.

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

  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. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to hurt your feelings, it’s just the last thing I want to do after an exhausting week of work is hang out with a couple of eight-year-old girls.” “You’re not making it better,” I say quietly. “You’ve basically repeated the exact thing that offended me to begin with, just taking out the bit about making slime.” “You’re right, I’m sorry. You caught me off guard when you asked me and I had a million things distracting me at work. That’s a classic example of a moment when I should have hit the pause button and asked you if I could think about it and get back to you,” he says. “Fair enough, but the part that’s bothering me is not that you didn’t think about it but that you seemed so genuinely horrified by the suggestion of it. It was hard for me to work up the courage to ask you and being shot down like that really hurt and frankly confused me.” “Laura, at this point in my life I don’t want to play daddy to other people’s kids. I don’t see myself standing on the sidelines of Georgia’s soccer games, cheering her on.” “She doesn’t play soccer and I didn’t suggest that you play daddy. Georgia already has a father.