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 Mating in Captivity: Unlocking Erotic Intelligence (2006)

  We kid around that we broke furniture when we first started dating; there was a lot of passion. I never looked at the kids as a defining moment in my life sexually, but obviously something switched somewhere deep inside.” I learn that Leo had begun to withdraw physically when Carla became pregnant with their first son, and they had no sexual contact at all during the last trimester. Leo just came home later and later from work. Carla knew something was up, though they never discussed it openly. “What changed for you when she became a mother?” I ask. “Her significance,” he answers. “Her whole being turned from being my lover, my partner, and my wife to being the mother of my son. And then the mother of my other son. For a while they needed her completely, and that was really OK with me. I thought it was the most awesome thing in the world to have our babies sleeping next to us, for her to nurse them through the night. I wasn’t jealous at all. I’m a very loving, nurturing father myself.” “What’s it like to suck the breast of a woman who’s been nursing a baby?” I ask him. “It was weird,” he answered. “The whole physical thing was a little weird. I watched her give birth, twice, and I’ve got to say it was not so great for our sex life.” “I know it’s supposed to be this magical moment, the miracle of life and all that, but no one seems to want to acknowledge the yuck factor,” I reassure him. “It’s not politically correct for a man to admit that watching his wife give birth can be gross. There’s a character in one of Alice Walker’s books, I think it’s Mr. Hal, who watches his partner give birth and is never able to touch her—or any other woman—for the rest of his life. He says he never wants to put someone through that again.” “That’s a little extreme, but yeah. I became different with her, more cautious, not as free. I guess it stopped me from being aggressive or passionate or desiring her in that way—really giving myself to her, or taking her, when normally that’s how we were together. It was definitely a shift.” “Couldn’t do that to the mother of your children?” I ask. “Apparently not,” he answers. “Let’s talk about this whole Madonna/whore business,” I continue. “It has deep psychological roots. A lot of men find it difficult to eroticize the mother of their children. It feels too regressive, too incestuous, too oedipal. What you need to remember is that she’s their mom, not yours. At this point, I recommend anything that can introduce a little healthy objectification.

• From The Pillar of Salt (1953)

  Alexandre, Mordekhai, Benillouche. Benillouche or, in Berber-Arabic dialect, the son of the lamb. From what mountain tribe did my ancestors descend? Who am I, after all? I sought — in everything from official documents to my own sharply defined features — some thread which might lead me to the knowledge of who I am. For a while, I believed my forebears had been a family of Berber princes converted to Judaism by Kahena, the warrior-queen and founder of a Jewish kingdom in the middle of the Atlas Mountains. It pleased me to think that I came from the very heart of the country. But then, another time, I found I was descended from an Italian Renaissance painter. I tore the article from the big Larousse encyclopedia and displayed reproductions of my ancestor’s paintings to all my friends. Philology could explain away what changes the name had undergone, and my friend Sitboun, the star Latin student, backed me up and even discovered that the patron of a Latin poet had had a similar name. But philology is a fragile science, and the past is much too far away. Could I be descended from a Berber tribe when the Berbers themselves failed to recognize me as one of their own? I was Jewish, not Moslem; a townsman, not a highlander. And even if I had borne the painter’s name, I would not have been acknowledged by the Italians. No, I’m African, not European. In the long run, I would always be forced to return to Alexandre Mordekhai Benillouche, a native in a colonial country, a Jew in an anti-Semitic universe, an African in a world dominated by Europe. Had I believed in signs, might I not have said that my name holds all the meaning of life? How is it possible to harmonize so many discords in something as smooth as the sound of a flute? My native city is after my own image. Through Tarfoune Street, our alley led to the Alliance School; and between home and the schoolyard, the atmosphere remained familiar, all of a piece. We were among Jews of the same class, and we had no painful awareness of our situation, no pretenses. At school, we persisted in speaking our own dialect despite the director’s posters which demanded French. Sometimes I crossed a Moslem quarter as if I were fording a river. It was not until I began attending the lycée that I really became acquainted with the city. Until then, I had believed that, by some special privilege, the doors of the world were being opened to me and that I need only walk through them to be greeted with joy. But I discovered I was doomed forever to be an outsider in my own native city. And one’s home town can no more be replaced than one’s mother.

• From The Day the Revolution Began (2016)

  But what I have just described is how a great many people, both inside and outside the church, perceive the language of “sin.” One of the reasons some former “insiders” are now “outsiders” is because they have reacted against such perceived teaching. There was a time when the people who worried about “sin” were impenitent wrongdoers. Today, the wrongdoers aren’t worried any more. The people banging on about “sin” are those who think it’s someone else’s problem. Over the last generation or so, therefore, the Western world, including the church, has found the language of “sin” sorely inadequate, not least because, as Jesus said about the Pharisees, it often cleans up things on the surface while hiding a deep rottenness within. But we haven’t yet decided what to put in its place. Some critics have suggested, with a certain amount of justification, that the whole point of talking about “sin” was really a way of controlling people. Sin talk is a power game, people have said; it is the moral equivalent of an overly fussy “health and safety” culture. It is designed to quench free spirits and to play a safety-first game with other people’s lives. It reflects an outdated and probably neurotic refusal to embrace the random indeterminacy of life and the radical freedom for which humans are born. Some in the churches, fearful of moral anarchy, have tried to cling to the old rules. Others have switched attention to newer, more fashionable issues, still thumping the pulpit, but now warning against fossil fuels rather than fornication. The older “sins” have been replaced by newer ones; the fierce energy of earlier moralisms has been transferred now to issues like ecology, feminism, and international debt. Others again have thrown over the whole idea, so that self-righteousness—the idea that “our way of life” is superior to “theirs”—is the only “sin” left. (This, of course, produces an infinite regress in which we congratulate ourselves because we are not self-congratulatory.) We cannot here go into the question of how we got into this muddle. Far more important for our present purposes is to see how to get out of it. Fortunately, the answer lies close at hand, and it offers a direct route to what the early Christians meant when they said that the Messiah had died “for our sins in accordance with the Bible.” As always, words mean what they mean within the larger story that is being told. In this case, the word “sin” means what it means within the story the Bible is telling. Taking it out of that context generates the difficulties just outlined. Actually, the Bible has several different words for sin: “wickedness,” “transgression,” and other terms for inappropriate or illegal behavior. These words all converge on the idea we sketched in the previous chapter: that humans were made for a purpose, that Israel was made for a purpose, and that humans and Israel alike have turned aside from that purpose, distorted the vision, and abused their vocation.

• From The Day the Revolution Began (2016)

  This reading also ignores the plain meaning of 2:17–20. It flattens out Paul’s careful statement of the vocation of “the Jew” (to be the light of the world) into simply another aspect of the general truth that “all have sinned.” This in turn leaves 3:1–9 high and dry, or at least very difficult. This short passage consists of a rapid-fire series of questions and answers that make excellent sense if we read 2:17–29 in the way I am suggesting, but very little sense any other way. Again, many commentators and preachers have noticed this; some very careful and “conservative” expositors declare that the passage is too complex and puzzling to be much help. This in turn results in a failure to see what Paul is getting at in 3:21–26. Finally, the “problem” Paul is addressing is assumed to be simply human wrongdoing (“sin”). However, in Romans 1:18–23 and in the summary of that passage in 3:23 we find a deeper element as well. “Sin” is rooted in idolatry, the swapping of the divine Glory for images. Here Paul is exactly on the map of Second Temple Jewish writings. But many today, eager to talk about “sin,” have forgotten that it is the second-order problem. The root cause of the trouble is the worship of idols. These exegetical problems point to the underlying theological difficulties with the usual reading. This usual reading is all about how we get “right with God” in order to “go to heaven”; but Paul never mentions “going to heaven,” here or elsewhere in Romans, and the idea of being “right with God,” though related to Paul’s theme, is usually taken out of the specific context he intends. Ironically, the usual reading takes “going to heaven” (or some near equivalent) for granted and then complains if, instead, someone tries to reintroduce into these chapters the themes that Paul demonstrably is expounding. It all becomes so complicated, people grumble—when what they really mean is, “I am so used to reading this passage one way that I find it hard to switch and consider other options.”

• From Momma and the Meaning of Life (1999)

  It was obvious that Halston was stressed because of cultural dislocation. From the age of nine he had lived in Great Britain and had only recently arrived in the United States and California as the managing officer of a British bank. But Ernest believed that cultural dislocation was only part of the story—there was something profoundly remote about this man. Okay, okay, Ernest took his own counsel, I won’t say, I won’t even think, “Geh Gesunter Heit.” He went back to work, choosing his words carefully so as to engage Halston. “Well, I can certainly understand that you want to reduce stress in your life, not to increase it by more time and money pressures. Makes sense. But you know, one thing about your decision puzzles me.” “Yes, and that is—?” “Well, I was pretty explicit about the time required and the fees before we started meeting. There have been no real surprises there. Right?” Halston nodded. “I cannot take issue with that. Doctor, you’re entirely correct.” “So it seems only logical to think there’s more to it than money and time pressures. Something about you and me? Is it possible you’d feel more comfortable seeing a black therapist?” “No, Doctor; off the mark. Wrong tree, as you Americans say. The racial difference is not an issue. Remember, I spent several years at Eton and six more at the London School of Economics. Very few blacks there. I’d feel no different, I assure you, consulting a black therapist.” Ernest decided to give it one final shot so that he need never accuse himself of having failed to fulfill his professional obligations. “Well, Halston, let me put it another way. I understand the reasons you gave. They make sense. Can’t be faulted. Let’s assume those are sufficient reasons to stop. I can honor that decision. But before we call it a day, I wonder if you’d consider one other question.” Halston looked up warily and, with a slight nod, gestured for Ernest to continue. “My question is, Could there be any additional reasons? I’ve known many patients—every therapist has—who’ve shied away from therapy for reasons that weren’t quite so rational. If that is true for you, would you be willing to give voice to any of those reasons?” He paused. Halston closed his eyes. Ernest could almost hear the gray cylinders of cognition creaking into motion. Would Halston take a chance? Even-money bet, Ernest thought. He watched Halston open his mouth, just a crack, as though to speak, but no words issued forth. “I’m not talking about anything big, Halston. But even a smidgen, a hint, of other reasons?” “Perhaps,” Halston ventured, “I belong neither in therapy nor in California.” Patient and therapist sat looking at each other: Ernest at Halston’s perfectly buffed fingernails and six-button gray vest; Halston, it seemed, at his therapist’s untidy mustache and white turtleneck sweater. Ernest decided to hazard a guess. “California too loose? Prefer London formality?” Bingo! Halston’s nod was almost animated.

• From Momma and the Meaning of Life (1999)

  “Is evenly suspended attention possible for any therapist?” asked Ron, a heavily bearded and intense therapist, and one of Ernest’s closest friends; they had been linked since medical school by their mutual iconoclasm. “It wasn’t for Freud. Look at his cases—Dora, the rat man, Little Hans. He always entered into his patients’ lives. I don’t believe it’s humanly possible to maintain a position of neutrality—that’s what Donald Spence’s new book argues. You never really apprehend the patient’s real experience.” “That doesn’t mean you give up trying to listen without letting your personal feelings contaminate the scene,” said Dr. Werner. “The more neutral you are, the closer you approximate the patient’s original meaning.” “Original meaning? Discovery of another’s original meaning is an illusion,” Ron shot back. “Look at the leaky communicational pathway. First, some of the patients’ feelings are transformed into their own images and then into their favorite vocabulary—” “Why do you say ‘some’?” asked Dr. Werner. “Because many of their feelings are ineffable. But let me finish. I was talking about the patients transforming images into words: even that process is not pure—the choice of words is heavily influenced by the individual’s imagined relationship with the audience. And that’s just the transmitting part. Then the reverse has to take place: if therapists are to grasp the meaning of the patients’ words, they must retranslate the words into their own private images and then into their own feelings. By the end of the process, what kind of match is possible? What’s the chance that one person can really understand the other’s experience? Or to put it another way, that two different people will hear another person in the same manner?” “It’s like that word game ‘Telephone’ we played as kids,” Ernest chipped in. “One person whispers a phrase into another’s ear, and that person whispers to another, and so on around the circle. By the time the phrase returns to the sender, it bears little relationship to the original.” “Which means that listening is not recording,” Ron said, coming down hard on each word. “Listening is a creative process. That’s why the analytic pretense that psychoanalysis is a science always rankles me. It cannot be a science, since science demands accurate measuring of reliable external data. In therapy that’s not possible, because listening is creative—the therapist’s mind distorts as it measures.” “We all know we err,” Ernest gleefully charged in, “unless we’re silly enough to believe in immaculate perception.” Since reading that phrase somewhere a few weeks before, he had been itching to use it in conversation.

• From Momma and the Meaning of Life (1999)

  That is, you give me as few words, as few descriptive details, as few personal revelations as possible. And it is for this very reason that I have tried to establish a more intimate relationship between us. My approach to therapy depends on my patients’ sharing their deepest feelings. In my experience, formal roles slow down that process, and that’s my reason—my sole reason—for shucking them. And that’s also why I often ask you to look at your feelings toward me.” “Everything you say is eminently reasonable—I’m sure you know what you’re doing. But I can’t help it—the California touchy-feely culture sets my teeth on edge. That’s the way I am.” “One question about that. Are you satisfied with the way you are?” “Satisfied?” Halston looked baffled. “Well, when you say that’s the way you are, I believe you’re saying too that that’s the way you choose to be. So I’m asking, are you satisfied with that choice? With keeping such distance, remaining so impersonal?” “I’m not sure it’s a choice, Doctor. That,” he repeated, “is the way I am—my innermost constitution.” Ernest considered two alternatives. He could either attempt to persuade Halston of his own responsibility for his remoteness or launch one final major investigation of a specific crucial episode of Halston’s withholding. He chose the latter. “Well, let me go back once again to the very beginning, to the night you entered the emergency room. Let me tell you my side of it. At about four in the morning, I received a call from the emergency room physician describing a patient in a state of great panic touched off by a nightmare. I told the physician to start you on medication for the panic and arranged to meet with you two hours later, at six. When we met you could recall neither the nightmare nor any of the events of the previous evening. In other words, I had no content, nothing to go on.” “That’s the way it was; everything about that evening remains a blackout.” “And so I’ve tried to work around it, and I agree with you—we’ve made little headway. But in our three hours together, I’ve been struck by your general remoteness from others, from me, possibly from yourself. I believe this remoteness, and your discomfort about my challenging it, is the major factor motivating your wish to terminate. “Let me share a second observation: I’m struck by your lack of curiosity about yourself. I feel that I have to supply the curiosity for both of us—that I alone must carry the entire burden of our work.” “I’m not deliberately concealing anything from you, Doctor. Why would I do that intentionally?

• From The Day the Revolution Began (2016)

  What are we to make of this? Are we to say, with some (like the great scholar Martin Hengel, in his book The Atonement, which lays out the evidence far more fully than we have done) that all this functioned as a kind of preparation for the gospel in the non-Jewish world? Are we to suppose that the Maccabean and other Jewish texts (see below) that do envisage people giving their lives for the nation are borrowing from pagan sources rather than relying on their own scriptures? Or what? Or is there a difference, and if so in what does it consist? Are we to suggest that the objection often raised to certain would-be Christian theories of the atonement, that they look like bloodthirsty paganism, has a certain justification? If so, how can we articulate what has to be said without providing that hostage to critical fortune? Of course, the analogies only go so far. The people who died on behalf of others in the pagan writings were dying what would be seen as a “noble death.” Nobody in the ancient world would have said that about crucifixion. The idea of that kind of death having some special significance would have been—as Paul knew only too well—sheer nonsense within the pagan world. There is an obvious mismatch as well as obvious echoes. As we consider how the message about Jesus of Nazareth would be heard within the wider world of Paul’s day, both elements are important. Within the Jewish World The second context of meaning within which we have to place the death of Jesus is that of the early Jewish world. Between the fall of Babylon in 539 BC and the failure of the bar-Kochba revolt in 135 there were many movements and many strands of thought, many changes of foreign regime and many attempts at new expressions of the Jewish way of life. I have written about this at length elsewhere (especially in Part III of The New Testament and the People of God), and there is no point going over that ground again. In any case, we shall be looking at the actual biblical material in Part Two, since the early Christians insisted that Jesus’s death should be interpreted “in accordance with the Bible.” But before we get to that point there are three things to be noted as of considerable importance.

• From The Pillar of Salt (1953)

  “It is absolutely necessary to live on Easy Street. It’s very important, and you’ll realize it, too.” But for whom this contempt? For those who failed to earn an easy living, or for his own philosophy of profit and earnings? At the time, I seemed to understand that he despised those whose earnings were small; on the whole, I agreed with him. Money was only one aspect of the glory that I hoped to win. In town, people were already complaining that the medical profession was overcrowded and that young doctors found it increasingly difficult to build up a practice. Pharmacies remained, however, an excellent business. Our middle class is too recent to have much respect for professional scales of values or for a disinterested vocation. It still understands only commercial success and, of course, this opinion of our middle class imposes itself on our other classes too. But even if Monsieur Bismuth was right, he now separated quite brutally two images that I had kept closely connected: the one, of my material success, of my studies, and the other, of myself in a white smock, the lancet in my hand as I accomplished a task that brought health to mankind and earned me its gratitude. At the same time, I was struck by Monsieur Bismuth’s happening to agree with my father, who so painfully and disturbingly insisted that one needs to earn as much as possible. I now accepted the advice, in spite of my incipient shame, simply because I felt that my noble mission justified it fully. But if I were to be deprived of the image of the white smock and of the meek and grateful poor, then I would be entirely lost and would find myself facing again my father’s bald and unqualified advice: “You have to make money.” If I adopted as my own all my father’s spoken daydreams, then I was really anxious to become a rich man or rather to break away from our poverty. But I had too closely bound the idea of money together with that of my future, of my most disinterested image of my own self. To my utter surprise, the pure and desirable light that had led me on now seemed to grow dim. So I was confused, and pushed the whole problem aside. We would see all this later, and I would see it too. But my admiration for my sponsor, spontaneously undivided though it had been, was now less clearly whole, and I began to resent in him this tyranny that annoyed me. “I’ll give you a letter to my bookstore. They’ll supply you with your schoolbooks.”

• From The Day the Revolution Began (2016)

  If certain “punishment” models of atonement are perceived to license abusive or aggressive behavior, whether in families or between nations, does that mean we should rule them out of order, even if they seem to be sanctioned by some passages of scripture? Or—to look at things from the other end of the telescope—if such models of atonement are deemed after all to be central to scripture and to the preaching of the gospel itself, so that to soft-pedal such ideas would be to give up on an element of vital spiritual power, ought we instead to regard the sort of objections I have described as a diabolical trick to distract the church from its core message? Sadly, these questions often get bundled up with other ones, including ones about cultural, political, and social problems. At that point, clear-headed fresh readings of scripture can be seen receding over the horizon. But if you take the first line—that “punishment” models of atonement are to be ruled out because of their horrible view of God or their equally horrible social consequences—what are the alternatives? Traditionally there have been two, both with strong claims to some kind of biblical basis. First, as we saw earlier, there is the remarkable and paradoxical idea that on the cross Jesus won a victory—or at least God won a victory through Jesus—over the shadowy “powers” that had usurped his rule over the world. That idea was popular in some quarters during the first few Christian centuries. Many thinkers in the second half of the twentieth century and up to the present day have advocated some version of this, partly as a way of warding off what they see as those dangerous ideas about punishment. But this simply pushes the question around the circle rather than answering it directly. What or who are these “powers”? Why would someone’s death—anyone’s death, the Messiah’s death, the death of the Son of God himself—why would such an event defeat these “powers”? Why would that be a revelation of divine love? And—perhaps the most pressing question of all—if these “powers” have been defeated, why does evil still appear to carry on as before, to reign unchecked? Did anything actually happen on the cross that made a real difference in the world, and if so what account can we give of it? Has the revolution really begun, or is it all wishful thinking? Second, there’s another idea that comes through prominently in the Bible that many have advocated as the “real meaning” of Jesus’s death. In this view, on the cross Jesus offered the supreme example of love, the ultimate display of what love will do. He thus transformed the world by offering a uniquely powerful example, a pattern for others to imitate. Now, of course, the New Testament does indeed insist on this line of thought.

• From The Day the Revolution Began (2016)

  One recent hymn puts it like this: And on the cross, when Jesus died, The wrath of God was satisfied— (This makes it sound like hunger that is satisfied by a good meal.) The line of thought goes like this, usually based on a particular arrangement of biblical texts: a.All humans sinned, causing God to be angry and to want to kill them, to burn them forever in “hell.” b.Jesus somehow got in the way and took the punishment instead (it helped, it seems, that he was innocent—oh, and that he was God’s own son too). c.We are in the clear after all, heading for “heaven” instead (provided, of course, we believe it). Many preachers and teachers put it much more subtly than this, but this is still the story people hear. This is the story they expect to hear. In some churches, if you don’t tell this story more or less in this way, people will say that you aren’t “preaching the gospel.” The natural reaction to this from many who have grown up hearing this message and feeling they had to believe it (if they didn’t, they would go to hell) is that its picture of God is abhorrent. This God, such people instinctively feel, is a bloodthirsty tyrant. If there is a God, we must hope and pray that he (or she, or it) isn’t like that at all. So they react in one of a number of predictable ways. Some people reject the whole thing as a horrible nonsense. Others, puzzled, go back to their Bibles and to the great teachers of the early church, and there they find all sorts of other things being said about the cross, for instance, that it was the means by which God’s rescuing love won the ultimate victory over all the forces of darkness. Or they find early writers urging Christians to imitate the self-giving love of Jesus, and they seize upon that as the “answer”: the cross, they say, wasn’t about God punishing sin; it was about Jesus giving us the ultimate example of love. Thus many different interpretations have arisen, affecting the ways in which people have been taught the Bible and the Christian faith. This has been a recipe for confusion. This confusion, as I shall be suggesting, gets in the way of what is arguably the most important thing. The New Testament insists, in book after book, that when Jesus of Nazareth died on the cross, something happened as a result of which the world is a different place. And the early Christians insisted that when people are caught up in the meaning of the cross, they become part of this difference.

• From Momma and the Meaning of Life (1999)

  Few patients are indifferent to the prospect of obtaining feedback from their therapist. “One of my major feelings is a certain frustration—I think it has to do with your being a trifle stingy.” “Stingy?” “Stingy—word-stingy. You don’t give me much. Whenever I ask you a question, you send me back a terse telegram. That is, you give me as few words, as few descriptive details, as few personal revelations as possible. And it is for this very reason that I have tried to establish a more intimate relationship between us. My approach to therapy depends on my patients’ sharing their deepest feelings. In my experience, formal roles slow down that process, and that’s my reason—my sole reason—for shucking them. And that’s also why I often ask you to look at your feelings toward me.” “Everything you say is eminently reasonable—I’m sure you know what you’re doing. But I can’t help it—the California touchy-feely culture sets my teeth on edge. That’s the way I am. ” “One question about that. Are you satisfied with the way you are?” “Satisfied?” Halston looked baffled. “Well, when you say that’s the way you are, I believe you’re saying too that that’s the way you choose to be. So I’m asking, are you satisfied with that choice? With keeping such distance, remaining so impersonal?” “I’m not sure it’s a choice, Doctor. That,” he repeated, “is the way I am—my innermost constitution.” Ernest considered two alternatives. He could either attempt to persuade Halston of his own responsibility for his remoteness or launch one final major investigation of a specific crucial episode of Halston’s withholding. He chose the latter. “Well, let me go back once again to the very beginning, to the night you entered the emergency room. Let me tell you my side of it. At about four in the morning, I received a call from the emergency room physician describing a patient in a state of great panic touched off by a nightmare. I told the physician to start you on medication for the panic and arranged to meet with you two hours later, at six. When we met you could recall neither the nightmare nor any of the events of the previous evening. In other words, I had no content, nothing to go on.” “That’s the way it was; everything about that evening remains a blackout.” “And so I’ve tried to work around it, and I agree with you—we’ve made little headway. But in our three hours together, I’ve been struck by your general remoteness from others, from me, possibly from yourself.

• From Laid and Confused: Why We Tolerate Bad Sex and How to Stop (2023)

  To start the session, she asked me if there was anything I needed to feel embodied and comfortable in the present moment. Did I need to change the way I was sitting, or move somewhere else? Was the temperature okay? Did I need a glass of water or a bite of something? Was I hungry, thirsty, cold, uncomfortable? This line of questioning jarred me. I don’t ask myself these questions, nor does anyone else, at least not since my Italian grandmother was alive. I fidgeted in my seat, genuinely unsure. I felt numb and sensation-free. Was I uncomfortable? What is uncomfortable … Was I hungry? What is hunger … I could eat, that much I knew. That much I always knew. I strained to locate hunger in my body but couldn’t find it, so no, I wasn’t hungry. But I felt a little cold! I think? That tingling on my feet was cold, yes? I counted this as progress—the ability to recognize I was cold. The bar was low. I let my mind run wild with the implications this had on my sex life, which obviously was the point of the exercise: How many times during sex have I not felt right in my body, but ignored the messages my body was giving me? I was on the precipice of spiraling. “I’m cold,” I said, and grabbed a blanket to wrap around my shoulders. I couldn’t tell if I was thirsty, so I said I was fine otherwise; I didn’t want to waste her time, even though I was paying her and she was begging me to take the time I needed to decide if I was thirsty. Weissfeld has just three rules in her sessions, which, like everything else under the sun, apply to sex: 1. Take care of yourself. 2. Listen to your body. 3. Don’t endure. Don’t endure, don’t endure, don’t endure. Yet again I had been viciously attacked! Enduring is my way of life. It’s my heritage, my religion, my lifestyle, my sexual ethos: if something doesn’t feel quite right, I wait it out, because that’s easier. He’s going down on me and I say faster and he goes faster but then he loses the clit and the wave of pleasure dissipates. Well, I’ve already said my one thing, better now to endure; enduring costs me nothing, or at least costs my partner nothing. What does it cost me? We began with breath work. She referred to breath as my “inner lover” and invited me to imagine it as such. “It’s carrying this nourishing oxygen to all these different parts of your body. It’s like giving you a little massage from the inside. It’s a nourishing touch.”

• From The Day the Revolution Began (2016)

  It is designed to quench free spirits and to play a safety-first game with other people’s lives. It reflects an outdated and probably neurotic refusal to embrace the random indeterminacy of life and the radical freedom for which humans are born. Some in the churches, fearful of moral anarchy, have tried to cling to the old rules. Others have switched attention to newer, more fashionable issues, still thumping the pulpit, but now warning against fossil fuels rather than fornication. The older “sins” have been replaced by newer ones; the fierce energy of earlier moralisms has been transferred now to issues like ecology, feminism, and international debt. Others again have thrown over the whole idea, so that self-righteousness—the idea that “our way of life” is superior to “theirs”—is the only “sin” left. (This, of course, produces an infinite regress in which we congratulate ourselves because we are not self-congratulatory.) We cannot here go into the question of how we got into this muddle. Far more important for our present purposes is to see how to get out of it. Fortunately, the answer lies close at hand, and it offers a direct route to what the early Christians meant when they said that the Messiah had died “for our sins in accordance with the Bible.” As always, words mean what they mean within the larger story that is being told. In this case, the word “sin” means what it means within the story the Bible is telling . Taking it out of that context generates the difficulties just outlined. Actually, the Bible has several different words for sin: “wickedness,” “transgression,” and other terms for inappropriate or illegal behavior. These words all converge on the idea we sketched in the previous chapter: that humans were made for a purpose, that Israel was made for a purpose, and that humans and Israel alike have turned aside from that purpose, distorted the vision, and abused their vocation. The normal Greek word for “sin,” namely hamartia , means “missing the mark”: shooting at a target and failing to hit it. This is subtly but importantly different from being given a long and fussy list of things you must and mustn’t do and failing to observe them all. In the story the Bible is telling, humans were created for a purpose, and Israel was called for a purpose, and the purpose was not simply “to keep the rules,” “to be with God,” or “to go to heaven,” as you might suppose from innumerable books, sermons, hymns, and prayers. Humans were made to be “image-bearers,” to reflect the praises of creation back to the Creator and to reflect the Creator’s wise and loving stewardship into the world. Israel was called to be the royal priesthood, to worship God and reflect his rescuing wisdom into the world. In the Bible, “sin”—for which there are various words in Hebrew—is the outworking of a prior disease, a prior disobedience: a failure of worship .

• From The Day the Revolution Began (2016)

  Nor is this simply a metaphor or a type that would point forward, like a signpost, to something quite different. (A signpost may offer a symbol of a particular building, perhaps a hospital or a restaurant. The symbol doesn’t need to look at all like what you will see when you arrive at the destination. By itself, the signpost will give you neither medication nor food; but it will point you in the right direction. That is how many Christians have seen the biblical story of exile and the promise of restoration: a truthful signpost, but a signpost to something essentially different.) Western culture has been so wedded to the platonic idea that God’s purpose for humans is to leave this world and go to “heaven” to be with him—as opposed to the biblical idea that God’s purpose for humans is to reflect the praises of creation back to him and to reflect his image in the world, so that ultimately heaven and earth will be one—that many who hear and understand the point I have been making will still try to see it as an “illustration” rather than as part of the story in which Jesus and his followers were still living. Such people, perhaps the most frustrating of dialogue partners, will at once insist on “translating” the Israel-specific historical and biblical context into an abstract idea, as though Israel itself were simply an example of something else rather than the people through whom the divine project of restoration was to be taken forward. Such readers will then have to create a new context for Jesus and his death. It will only be “in accordance with the Bible” in a thin, twisted sense. The new context will distort what the Bible itself—both Old and New Testaments—actually says. This has happened time and again. But if we keep our nerve, we may perhaps be able to get things straight at last. If exile is the result of Israel’s sin, and if this exile is therefore to be understood as death, it is not simply that Israel happens to have done on a grand scale what the human race, symbolized in Adam and Eve, had done all along. Israel—the people called by God for the unique role in his purposes—could never be merely an example, even a large-scale example, of something else . Israel’s idolatry and exile, Israel’s sin and death are seen in Israel’s scriptures themselves not just as the quintessence, but also as the radical deepening of the human plight. It is as if the lifeboat sent to rescue drowning sailors from a stricken ship has itself been submerged under a giant wave before it has reached those in need of it. But the project continues nonetheless.

• From The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma (2014)

  Daring to Tell the TruthI recently led another group structure with a twenty-six-year-old man named Mark, who at age thirteen had accidentally overheard his father having phone sex with his aunt, his mother’s sister. Mark felt confused, embarrassed, hurt, betrayed, and paralyzed by this knowledge, but when he tried to talk with his father about it, he was met with rage and denial: he was told that he had a filthy imagination and accused of trying to break up the family. Mark never dared to tell his mom, but henceforth the family secrets and hypocrisy contaminated every aspect of his home life and gave him a pervasive sense that nobody could be trusted. After school, he spent his isolated adolescence hanging around neighborhood basketball courts or in his room watching TV. When he was twenty-one his mother died—of a broken heart, Mark says—and his father married the aunt. Mark was not invited to either the funeral or the wedding. Secrets like these become inner toxins—realities that you are not allowed to acknowledge to yourself or to others but that nevertheless become the template of your life. I knew none of this history when Mark joined the group, but he stood out by his emotional distance, and during check-ins he acknowledged that he felt separated from everyone by a dense fog. I was quite worried about what would be revealed once we started to look behind his frozen, expressionless exterior. When I invited Mark to talk about his family, he said a few words and then seemed to shut down even more. So I encouraged him to ask for a “contact figure” to support him. He chose a white-haired group member, Richard, and placed Richard on a pillow next to him, touching his shoulder. Then, as he began to tell his story, Mark placed Joe, as his real father, ten feet in front of him, and directed Carolyn, representing his mother, to crouch in a corner with her face hidden. Mark next asked Amanda to play his aunt, telling her to stand defiantly to one side, arms crossed over her chest—representing all the calculating, ruthless, and devious women who are after men.

• From The Pillar of Salt (1953)

  Alexandre, Mordekhai, Benillouche. Benillouche or, in Berber-Arabic dialect, the son of the lamb. From what mountain tribe did my ancestors descend? Who am I, after all? I sought — in everything from official documents to my own sharply defined features — some thread which might lead me to the knowledge of who I am. For a while, I believed my forebears had been a family of Berber princes converted to Judaism by Kahena, the warrior-queen and founder of a Jewish kingdom in the middle of the Atlas Mountains. It pleased me to think that I came from the very heart of the country. But then, another time, I found I was descended from an Italian Renaissance painter. I tore the article from the big Larousse encyclopedia and displayed reproductions of my ancestor’s paintings to all my friends. Philology could explain away what changes the name had undergone, and my friend Sitboun, the star Latin student, backed me up and even discovered that the patron of a Latin poet had had a similar name. But philology is a fragile science, and the past is much too far away. Could I be descended from a Berber tribe when the Berbers themselves failed to recognize me as one of their own? I was Jewish, not Moslem; a townsman, not a highlander. And even if I had borne the painter’s name, I would not have been acknowledged by the Italians. No, I’m African, not European. In the long run, I would always be forced to return to Alexandre Mordekhai Benillouche, a native in a colonial country, a Jew in an anti-Semitic universe, an African in a world dominated by Europe. Had I believed in signs, might I not have said that my name holds all the meaning of life? How is it possible to harmonize so many discords in something as smooth as the sound of a flute? My native city is after my own image. Through Tarfoune Street, our alley led to the Alliance School; and between home and the schoolyard, the atmosphere remained familiar, all of a piece. We were among Jews of the same class, and we had no painful awareness of our situation, no pretenses. At school, we persisted in speaking our own dialect despite the director’s posters which demanded French. Sometimes I crossed a Moslem quarter as if I were fording a river. It was not until I began attending the lycée that I really became acquainted with the city. Until then, I had believed that, by some special privilege, the doors of the world were being opened to me and that I need only walk through them to be greeted with joy. But I discovered I was doomed forever to be an outsider in my own native city. And one’s home town can no more be replaced than one’s mother.

• From Momma and the Meaning of Life (1999)

  That’s what you get paid for, isn’t it? And paid well too.” “I know you don’t know, Myrna, but I want you to dip into your fantasy. How could I have helped you today?” “You could have introduced me to one of your rich single patients.” “You see ‘Dating Bureau’ on my T-shirt?” “You bastard,” she muttered, punching the “stop” button. “I pay you one-fifty an hour for this smart-ass shit?” She pressed “rewind” and replayed the exchange. “. . . could I have helped you today?” “You could have introduced me to one of your rich single patients.” “You see ‘Dating Bureau’ on my T-shirt?” “Not funny, Doctor.” “No, you’re right. Sorry. What I should have said is that you stay so far away from me—from saying anything about how you feel about me.” “You, you, you. Why always my feelings toward you? You’re not the issue, Dr. Lash. I’m not going to be dating you—though maybe I’d get more out of that than from what we’re doing.” “Let’s go over it again, Myrna. You originally came in to see me saying you wanted to do something about your relationships with men. In our very first session, I said I could best help you examine your relationships with others by focusing on our relationship right here in this office. This space here in my office is, or should be, a safe place, where I hope you can talk more freely than elsewhere. And in this safe place we can examine the way we relate to one another. Why is this so hard to understand? So let’s look again at your feelings toward me here.” “I already said ‘frustrating.’” “Try to make that more personal, Myrna.” “Frustrating is personal.” “Yeah, in a way it’s personal, it tells me about your inner state. Things go ‘round in a circle in your mind, I know. And they go around in a circle when you’re here too. And I get dizzy with you. And I feel your frustration. But the word frustrating doesn’t tell me about us. Think of the space here between us. Try to stay there for a minute or two. What’s the space like today? What about your comment a couple of minutes ago about getting more out of dating me than being in therapy?” “Told you already, nothing. The space is empty. Just frustration.” “This—what’s going on now, this moment—is precisely what I mean when I say that you shy away from real contact with me.” “I’m confused, lost.” “Our time’s about up, Myrna, but try something before we stop—the same exercise I asked you to do a couple of weeks ago. Just for a minute or two, think about something you and I could be doing together. Close your eyes; let some scene, any scene, appear. Describe it as it’s happening.” [Silence] “What do you see?” “Nothing.” “Force it. Make something happen.” “Okay, okay. I see us walking along.

• From The Pillar of Salt (1953)

  In high school, I began to suffer because they forced me to ask myself what I was. This problem never could have arisen at the Alliance School where we had all been Jews, all but a tiny minority which had soon been reduced to discretion. But in high school a constant flow of remarks made me ponder the problem of the ideal Jew and forced me to study myself in order to discover in me the typical characteristics. Such introspection calls up ghosts, and through sheer rebelliousness, I defended my own ghosts and thus assured them an existence of their own. I, an artisan’s son and poor, defended merchants and financiers in the presence of non-Jews, trying to explain historically why some Jews went into trade as though I had personally been responsible for Jewish trade and believed that non-Jewish trades were indeed more acceptable. As I condemned Jewish trade, I attacked it in the face of Jews, too, but far more virulently than the anti-Semites did and more openly.

• From The Pillar of Salt (1953)

  The whole band was in a frenzy, in response to the clashing cymbals that never ceased sounding. The door was literally vibrating as I knocked on it, at first with my fists, then with my feet too. They must all have become quite deaf, if not insane, from this awful music. At last, someone opened the door for me and the din was at once unbelievably louder, swelling to fill the whole staircase, right up to the glass roof at the top. I dived into this weird mixture of hysterical flutes, wild cymbals, tom-tom drums, and darbouka bagpipes, all seasoned with the babble of excited women. The air seemed tropical, damp and warm, heavy with human breath and incense. With great difficulty, I forced my way through the throng of women, all of them familiar faces, aunts, cousins, neighbors, but each one of them now a stranger under the spell that had overcome her. They stood there motionless, their hair disheveled, their eyes aglow, rigid as statues, or perhaps like stupid cows that I had to push aside, as if they couldn’t understand me. They even seemed not to recognize me. But I had still not penetrated into the room where the dance was being held, beyond a broad doorway that was cloudy with smoke. To get there, I had to make my way through a tangled throng of women who were watching, some of them standing on chairs, stools, even tables, leaning against the walls, clinging together in clusters, all peering deep into the cloud of smoke. How could they see anything at all? Close to me, I recognized my Aunt Noucha, dressed for the occasion in Bedouin costume. I shouted into her ear: “Where is Mother?” When I got no answer, I grasped hold of her arm and shook it roughly. It was oily and sticky with sweat, and seemed to slither out of my grasp. “Where is Mother,” I shouted again. “I want our keys!” She smiled absently at me and pointed toward the living-room. The closer I seemed to get to the heart of all this mysterious din, the more crowded it was. The women who were watching were treading on each other’s feet, almost melting into a mass of compact flesh. I had to be really rough to reach the blue-gray cloud that was so thick that I could scarcely distinguish, through the smoke, the red embers of an earthenware brazier, like a shepherd’s fire in a fog. My eyes smarted from the smoke and became clouded with soothing tears. The noise was so loud, so full, that I seemed no longer to hear anything at all. One moment, I felt I was in sheer void, with no shapes or sounds around me any longer. Then my eyes grew accustomed to it and began to distinguish with difficulty what was going on.