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 Buddenbrooks: The Decline of a Family (1901)

  You're sour!' Herr Grünlich poured himself a glass of red wine, lifted the crystal bell and went on to the cheese. He didn't answer at all. "Do you still love me?" repeated Tony... "Your silence is so naughty that I may very well to remember a certain appearance in our landscape room... You cut a different figure then!... From day one you only sat with me in the evenings, and that only to read the newspaper. At first you showed at least some consideration for my wishes. But even that ended a long time ago. You neglect me!" "And you? You're ruining me." "Me?... I'll ruin you..." "Yes. You're ruining me with your laziness, your craving for service and hassle..." "Oh! don't blame me for my good upbringing! I didn't have to lift a finger with my parents. Now I've had a hard time getting used to the household chores, but I can demand that you don't refuse me even the simplest aids. father is a rich man; he could not expect that I should ever be short of staff..." "Then hold off on the third girl until this wealth is of any use to us." "Do you want to wish father dead?!... I say that we are wealthy people, that I did not come to you empty-handed..." Although Herr Grünlich was about to chew, he smiled; he smiled superiorly, wistfully and silently. This confused Tony. "Greenish," she said more calmly... "You're smiling, you're talking about our circumstances... Am I wrong about the situation? Have you done bad business? Do you have …" At that moment there was a knock, a short drum roll, on the corridor door, and Herr Kesselmeyer entered. Sixth Chapter Herr Kesselmeyer came into the room unannounced as a friend of the house, without a hat or a palet, and stood by the door. His appearance fitted the description Tony had given of it in a letter to her mother. He was of slightly stocky stature and neither fat nor thin. He wore a black and already somewhat bare coat, the same kind of trousers that were tight and short, and a white waistcoat on which a long, thin watch chain was crossed with two or three pinnipe cords. The clipped white whiskers, which covered his cheeks and left chin and lips exposed, stood out sharply from his red face. Its mouth was small, mobile, funny, and contained only two teeth in the lower jaw. While Herr Kesselmeyer stood, confused, absent-minded and thoughtful, with his hands buried in his vertical trouser pockets, he set those two yellow, cone-shaped canine teeth on his upper lip. The white and black downy feathers on his head fluttered softly, although not the slightest breath of air could be felt. Finally he drew his hands out, bent down, lower lip hanging down and laboriously freed a pince-nez strap from the general entanglement on his chest.

• From Buddenbrooks: The Decline of a Family (1901)

  A young thing like you never really knows what it really wants... It looks as confused in the head as it does in the heart... You have to give your heart time and keep your head open to the encouragements of experienced people who plan to ensure our happiness..." 'I don't know anything about him -' Tony managed disconsolately, squeezing her eyes with the little white cambric napkin that had egg stains in it. "All I know is that he has golden whiskers and a brisk business..." Her upper lip, which trembled when she cried, looked unspeakably touching. The Consul, with a movement of sudden tenderness, drew his chair near her and stroked her hair, smiling. 'My little Tony,' he said, 'what should you know about him? You're a child, you see, you wouldn't know any more about him if he hadn't spent four weeks here, but fifty-two... You're a little girl who doesn't yet have eyes for the world and who focuses on eyes of other people who have good intentions for you..." "I don't understand...I don't understand..." Tony sobbed in disbelief, cuddling her head like a kitten under the stroking hand. "He comes here... says something nice to everyone... leaves... and writes that he... I don't understand... how did he get there... what have I done to him?!..." The Consul smiled again. 'You've said that before, Tony, and it shows your childish perplexity. My little daughter doesn't have to believe that I'm pushing her and tormentwants ... All this can be considered calmly, must be considered calmly, because it is a serious matter. That's what I'll answer Mr. Grünlich for the time being and will neither refuse nor approve his request... There are many things to consider... So... we see? deal! Now papa goes to work… Farewell, Bethsy…” "Goodbye, my dear Jean." "You ought to have some more honey, Tony," said the Consul, when she was left alone with her daughter, who remained motionless and with her head bowed. "You have to eat enough..." Tony's tears gradually dried up. Her head was hot and full of thoughts... God! what an affair! She had known that one day she would become the wife of a merchant, enter into a good and advantageous marriage, as befitted the dignity of the family and the company ... But now it suddenly happened to her for the first time that someone really and seriously wanted to get married! How should one behave? For her, Tony Buddenbrook, it was suddenly about everyone those terribly weighty expressions that she had only read up until now: for her "yes," for her "hand"... "for life"... God! What a whole new location all at once! "And you, Mama?" she said. "So you're also advising me to give my . but then, for the first time in her life, she said it with dignity. She began to feel a little ashamed of her initial bewilderment.

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

  “I don’t know if it’s just about the turn-on or if there is something more—some need?” Trevor replied. “What do you think that need is, Trevor?” Ted asked. “I’m not sure,” Trevor answered honestly. “That’s okay, son. You don’t have to figure it all out. We will just create a dialogue in this group. Sexual thoughts, feelings, or fantasies are all okay to talk about right now. You can ask any questions you have about sex. I’m happy to listen to you, as you think this through. I think the most important thing isn’t necessarily figuring out why you look at gay porn, but more importantly, what are your values, how are your relationships, and what choices are you making. I want to support you, as best I can,” Ted reassured. “Thanks, Ted. I haven’t ever had anyone to talk with about this stuff. I have been trying to figure it out on my own, and honestly, it’s all pretty confusing.” “Yeah, I get that, son. So, besides the porn, what else is going on with you?” “I have felt responsible for my mom, as long as I can remember.” “That’s heavy,” Ted responded. “Yeah, it is. Suffocating at times. I feel like I’m supposed to be her replacement husband.” “Trevor, you can’t be your mom’s surrogate spouse. That’s not your job. You are her kid, not her husband. How would it be for you to start setting some limits with mom and thinking about becoming your own man—separate from your mom? I don’t mean you don’t love her and respect her. I just mean you work on making your own choices and taking full responsibility for your life and allowing her to take full responsibility for her life.” “That would feel good. Do you think I am—too close with my mom?” “I don’t know, son. What do you think? Are you enmeshed or codependent with your mom?” Ted asked. “What does enmeshed mean?” Jeff asked. “Typically, people in enmeshed relationships have difficulty knowing they are actually in an unhealthy relationship. An enmeshed relationship between a mother and son may look like this: Mom is all about mom, while the son is the person who lives to give to his mom. Mom knows her son is the only one she can depend on to help her and listen to her. The son is afraid to stand up to his mom, so she exploits his willingness to give to her. It’s draining for the codependent and admitting it is an unhealthy relationship is the first step in making positive changes.” Trevor looked around the room, and asked Jeff, “What do you think, Jeff? You have known me forever. Am I enmeshed with my mom?” Jeff sort of laughed. “Dude, you have been taking care of your mom since you were six. She is a sweet lady, but seriously, it’s like she is emotionally twelve.”

• From Buddenbrooks: The Decline of a Family (1901)

  Tony saw himself in the portico picking up his cane and disappearing down the corridor. She stood, completely confused and exhausted, in the middle of the room, the damp handkerchief in one of her drooping hands. Four Chapter Consul Buddenbrook said to his wife: 'If only I could think that Tony had some delicate reason for not being able to make this connection! But she's a kid, Bethsy, she's fun-loving, dances at balls, lets the young people treat her with pleasure, because she knows she's pretty and family Search, but I know her, she hasn't found her heart, as they say... If you asked her, she'd turn her head and think... but she wouldn't find anyone... She's a kid, a sparrow, a Springinsfeld … she says yes, that way she will have found her place, she will be able to set herself up nicely however she likes and in a few days she will love her husband... He's not a beau, no my god, no, he's not a beau... but he is, after all, presentable in the highest degree, and in the end you can't ask five legs for a sheep, if you want to give me credit for the commercial phrase!... If she wants to wait until someone comes along who's a beauty and a good match too is – well, God bless! Tony Buddenbrook always finds something. Meanwhile, on the other hand ... there remains a risk, and, to speak again in business terms, fishing is every day, but not every day catch day! ... Yesterday morning, in a lengthy conversation with Grünlich, who is applying with the most seriousness all the time, seen his books... he showed them to me... books, Bethsy, for framing! I expressed my greatest pleasure to him! His things are looking pretty good for such a young business, pretty good. His fortune amounts to around 120,000 thalers, which is obviously only the provisional basis, because he makes a nice cut every year ... What Duchamps say, whom I asked, doesn't sound bad either: they don't know his circumstances, but he's alivegentleman like, am in the best of company, and his business is notoriously lively and widely ramified... What I learned from a few other people in Hamburg, such as a banker Kesselmeyer, also gave me complete satisfaction. In short, as you know, Bethsy, I cannot help but desire this marriage, which would only benefit the family and the company! - I'm sorry, my God, that the child is in a difficult situation, that she is surrounded on all sides, walks around depressed and hardly speaks; but I just can't bring myself to dismiss Grünlich out of hand...because one more thing, Bethsy, and I can't repeat it often enough: we haven't been very happily received by God in the last few years. Not that the blessing is missing beware, no, faithful work is fairly rewarded. Business is going quietly...

• From Blue Like Jazz (2003)

  I began to understand that my pastors and leaders were wrong, that the liberals were not evil, they were liberal for the same reason Christians were Christians, because they believed their philosophies were right, good, and beneficial for the world. I had been raised to believe there were monsters under the bed, but I had peeked, in a moment of bravery, and found a wonderful world, a good world, better, in fact, than the one I had known. The problem with Christian community was that we had ethics, we had rules and laws and principles to judge each other against. There was love in Christian community, but it was conditional love. Sure, we called it unconditional, but it wasn’t. There were bad people in the world and good people in the world. We were raised to believe this. If people were bad, we treated them as though they were either evil or charity: If they were bad and rich, they were evil. If they were bad and poor, they were charity. Christianity was always right; we were always looking down on everybody else. And I hated this. I hated it with a passion. Everything in my soul told me it was wrong. It felt, to me, as wrong as sin. I wanted to love everybody. I wanted everything to be cool. I realize this sounds like tolerance, and to many in the church the word tolerance is profanity, but that is precisely what I wanted. I wanted tolerance. I wanted everybody to leave everybody else alone, regardless of their religious beliefs, regardless of their political affiliation. I wanted people to like each other. Hatred seemed, to me, the product of ignorance. I was tired of biblical ethic being used as a tool with which to judge people rather than heal them. I was tired of Christian leaders using biblical principles to protect their power, to draw a line in the sand separating the good army from the bad one. The truth is I had met the enemy in the woods and discovered they were not the enemy. I wondered whether any human being could be an enemy of God. On the other hand, however, I felt by loving liberal people, I mean by really endorsing their existence, I was betraying the truth of God because I was encouraging them in their lives apart from God. I felt like there was this war going on between us, the Christians, and them, the homosexuals and environmentalists and feminists. By going to a Unitarian church and truly loving those people, I was helping them, I was giving joy to their life and that didn’t feel right. It was a terrible place to be. This was, at the time, my primary problem with Christian faith. With all its talk about pure love, in the end it shook down to conditional love. Again, this is a provocative statement, but I want to walk you through the emotional process I went through.

• From The Principles of Psychology (Volume 1 of 2) (1890)

  "Before the star reached the thread he looked at the clock, and then, with eye at telescope, counted the seconds by the beat of the pendulum. Since the star seldom passed the meridian at the exact moment of a beat, the observer, in order to estimate fractions, had to note its position at the stroke before and at the stroke after the passage, and to divide the time as the meridian-line seemed to divide the space. If, e.g., one had counted 20 seconds, and at the 21st the star seemed removed by ac from the meridian-thread c, whilst at the 22nd it was at the distance bc; then, if ac: bc:: 1: 2, the star would have passed at 21 1/3 seconds. The conditions resemble those in our experiment: the star is the index-hand, the threads are the scale; and a time-displacement is to be expected, which with high rapidities may be positive, and negative with low. The astronomic observations do not permit us to measure its absolute amount; but that it exists is made certain by the fact than after all other possible errors are eliminated, there still remains between different observers a personal difference which is often much larger than that between mere reaction-times, amounting . . . sometimes to more than a second." (Op. cit. p. 270.) [335] Philosophische Studien, II. 601. [336] Physiol. Psych., 2d ed. II. 273-4; 3d. ed. II. 339; Philosophische Studien, II. 621 ff.—I know that I am stupid, but I confess I find these theoretical statements, especially Wundt's, a little hazy. Herr v. Tschisch considers it impossible that the perception of the index's position should come in too late, and says it demands no particular attention (p. 622). It seems, however, that this can hardly be the case. Both observers speak of the difficulty of seeing the index at the right moment. The case is quite different from that of distributing the attention impartially over simultaneous momentary sensations. The bell or other signal gives a momentary sensation, the index a continuous one, of motion. To note any one position of the latter is to interrupt this sensation of motion and to substitute an entirely different percept—one, namely, of position—for it, during a time however brief. This involves a sudden change in the manner of attending to the revolutions of the index; which change ought to take place neither sooner nor later than the momentary impression, and fix the index as it is then and there visible. Now this is not a case of simply getting two sensations at once and so feeling them—which would be an harmonious act; but of stopping one and changing it into another, whilst we simultaneously get a third.

• From The Principles of Psychology (Volume 1 of 2) (1890)

  I think I can in my own case; and as what I say will be likely to meet with opposition if generalized (as indeed it may be in part inapplicable to other individuals), I had better continue in the first person, leaving my description to be accepted by those to whose introspection it may commend itself as true, and confessing my inability to meet the demands of others, if others there be. First of all, I am aware of a constant play of furtherances and hindrances in my thinking, of checks and releases, tendencies which run with desire, and tendencies which run the other way. Among the matters I think of, some range themselves on the side of the thought's interests, whilst others play an unfriendly part thereto. The mutual inconsistencies and agreements, reinforcements and obstructions, which obtain amonst these objective matters reverberate backwards and produce what seem to be incessant reactions of my spontaneity upon them, welcoming or opposing, appropriating or disowning, striving with or against, saying yes or no. This palpitating inward life is, in me, that central nucleus which I just tried to describe in terms that all men might use. But when I forsake such general descriptions and grapple with particulars, coming to the closest possible quarters with the facts, it is difficult for me to detect in the activity any purely spiritual element at all. Whenever my introspective glance succeeds in turning round quickly enough to catch one of these manifestations of spontaneity in the act, all it can ever feel distinctly is some bodily process, for the most part taking place within the head . Omitting for a moment what is obscure in these introspective results, let me try to state those particulars which to my own consciousness seem indubitable and distinct. In the first place, the acts of attending, assenting, negating, making an effort, are felt as movements of something in the head. In many cases it is possible to describe these movements quite exactly. In attending to either an idea or a sensation belonging to a particular sense-sphere, the movement is the adjustment of the sense-organ, felt as it occurs. I cannot think in visual terms, for example, without feeling a fluctuating play of pressures, convergences, divergences, and accommodations in my eyeballs.

• From The Principles of Psychology (Volume 1 of 2) (1890)

  It then becomes clear that there is a function of consciousness, as exercised in the most rudimentary experience [namely, the function of synthesis ] which is incompatible with the definition of consciousness as any sort of succession of any sort of phenomena."[290] Were we to follow these remarks, we should have to abandon our notion of the 'Thought' (perennially renewed in time, but always cognitive thereof), and to espouse instead of it an entity copied from thought in all essential respects, but differing from it in being 'out of time.' What psychology can gain by this barter would be hard to divine. Moreover this resemblance of the timeless Ego to the Soul is completed by other resemblances still. The monism of the post-Kantian idealists seems always lapsing into a regular old-fashioned spiritualistic dualism. They incessantly talk as if, like the Soul, their All-thinker were an Agent, operating on detached materials of sense. This may come from the accidental fact that the English writings of the school have been more polemic than constructive, and that a reader may often take for a positive profession a statement ad hominem meant as part of a reduction to the absurd, or mistake the analysis of a bit of knowledge into elements for a dramatic myth about its creation. But I think the matter has profounder roots. Professor Green constantly talks of the 'activity' of Self as a 'condition' of knowledge taking place. Facts are said to become incorporated with other facts only through the 'action of a combining self-consciousness upon data of sensation.' "Every object we perceive . . . requires, in order to its presentation, the action of a principle of consciousness, not itself subject to conditions of time, upon successive appearances, such action as may hold the appearances together , without fusion, in an apprehended fact."[291] It is needless to repeat that the connection of things in our knowledge is in no whit explained by making it the deed of an agent whose essence is self-identity and who is out of time. The agency of phenomenal thought coming and going in time is just as easy to understand . And when it is furthermore said that the agent that combines is the same 'self-distinguishing subject' which 'in another mode of its activity' presents the manifold object to itself, the unintelligibilities become quite paroxysmal, and we are forced to confess that the entire school of thought in question, in spite of occasional glimpses of something more refined, still dwells habitually in that mythological stage of thought where phenomena are explained as results of dramas enacted by entities which but reduplicate the characters of the phenomena themselves.

• From Blue Like Jazz (2003)

  They said it worked like magic. The whole idea of everybody wanting to be somebody new was an important insight in terms of liking God. God was selling something I wanted. Still, God was in the same boat as the guy selling the knives and Juliet promising to make Romeo new. Everybody exaggerates when they are selling something. Everybody says their product works like magic. At the time I understood God’s offer as a magical proposition, which it is. But most magical propositions are just tricks. The older you get, the harder it is to believe in magic. The older you get, the more you understand there is no Wizard of Oz, just a schmuck behind a curtain. I pictured my pastor as a salesman or a magician, trying to trick the congregation into believing Jesus could make us new. And, honestly, I felt as though he was trying to convince himself, as though he only half believed what he was saying. It’s not that Christian spirituality seemed like a complete con, it’s just that it had some of those elements. The message, however, was appealing to me. God said He would make me new. I can’t pretend for a second I didn’t want to be made new, that I didn’t want to start again. I did. [image "9780785263708_0043_003" file=Image00008.jpg] There were aspects of Christian spirituality I liked and aspects I thought were humdrum. I wasn’t sure what to do. I felt I needed to make a decision about what I believed. I wished I could have subscribed to aspects of Christianity but not the whole thing. I’ll explain. I associated much of Christian doctrine with children’s stories because I grew up in church. My Sunday school teachers had turned Bible narrative into children’s fables. They talked about Noah and the ark because the story had animals in it. They failed to mention that this was when God massacred all of humanity. It also confused me that some people would look at parts of the Bible but not the whole thing. They ignored a lot of obvious questions. I felt as if Christianity, as a religious system, was a product that kept falling apart, and whoever was selling it would hold the broken parts behind his back trying to divert everybody’s attention. The children’s story stuff was the thing I felt Christians were holding behind their back. The Garden of Eden, the fall of man, was a pretty silly story, and Noah and the ark, all of that, that seemed pretty fairy-tale too. It took me a while to realize that these stories, while often used with children, are not at all children’s stories. I think the devil has tricked us into thinking so much of biblical theology is story fit for kids. How did we come to think the story of Noah’s ark is appropriate for children?

• From The Principles of Psychology (Volume 1 of 2) (1890)

  Pricks on the other (non-writing) hand, meanwhile, which awakened strong protest from the young man's vocal organs, were denied to exist by the self which made the planchette go.[203] We get exactly similar results in the so-called post-hypnotic suggestion . It is a familiar fact that certain subjects, when told during a trance to perform an act or to experience an hallucination after waking, will when the time comes, obey the command. How is the command registered? How is its performance so accurately timed? These problems were long a mystery, for the primary personality remembers nothing of the trance or the suggestion, and will often trump up an improvised pretext for yielding to the unaccountable impulse which possesses the man so suddenly and which he cannot resist. Edmund Gurney was the first to discover, by means of automatic writing, that the secondary self is awake, keeping its attention constantly fixed on the command and watching for the signal of its execution. Certain trance-subjects who were also automatic writers, when roused from trance and put to the planchette,—not knowing then what they wrote, and having their upper attention fully engrossed by reading aloud, talking, or solving problems in mental arithmetic,—would inscribe the orders which they had received, together with notes relative to the time elapsed and the time yet to run before the execution.[204] It is therefore to no 'automatism' in the mechanical sense that such acts are due: a self presides over them, a split-off, limited and buried, but yet a fully conscious, self. More than this, the buried self often comes to the surface and drives out the other self whilst the acts are performing. In other words, the subject lapses into trance again when the moment arrives for execution, and has no subsequent recollection of the act which he has done. Gurney and Beaunis established this fact, which has since been verified on a large scale; and Gurney also showed that the patient became suggestible again during the brief time of the performance. M. Janet's observations, in their turn, well illustrate the phenomenon. "I tell Lucie to keep her arms raised after she shall have awakened. Hardly is she in the normal state, when up go her arms above her head, but she pays no attention to them. She goes, comes, converses, holding her arms high in the air. If asked what her arms are doing, she is surprised at such a question, and says very sincerely: 'My hands are doing nothing; they are just like yours.' . . .

• From Blue Like Jazz (2003)

  He seemed to have an emotional relationship with the Book, the way I think about Catcher in the Rye . This man who was speaking reads through the Bible three times each year. I had never read through the Bible at all. I had read a lot of it but not all of it, and mostly I read it because I felt that I had to; it was healthy or something. The speaker guy asked us to go outside and find a quiet place and get reacquainted with the Book, hold it in our hands and let our eyes feel down the pages. I went out on the steps outside the rest room and opened my Bible to the book of James. Years ago I had a crush on a girl, and I prayed about it and that night read through James, and because it is a book about faith and belief I felt like God was saying that if I had faith she would marry me. So I was very excited about this and lost a lot of weight, but the girl gave her virginity to a jerk from our youth group, and they are married now. I didn’t care, honestly. I didn’t love her that much. I only say that because the book of James, in my Bible, is highlighted in ten colors and underlined all over the place, and it looks blood raw, and the yellow pages remind me of a day when I believed so faithfully in God, so beautifully in God. I read a little, maybe a few pages, then shut the book, very tired and confused. But when we got back from the conference, I felt like my Bible was calling me. I felt this promise that if I read it, if I just read it like a book, cover to cover, it wouldn’t change me into an idiot, it wouldn’t change me into a clone of Pat Buchanan, and that was honestly the thing I was worried about with the Bible. If I read it, it would make me simple in my thinking. So I started in Matthew, which is one of the Gospels about Jesus. And I read through Matthew and Mark, then Luke and John. I read those books in a week or so, and Jesus was very confusing, and I didn’t know if I liked Him very much, and I was certainly tired of Him by the second day. By the time I got to the end of Luke, to the part where they were going to kill Him again, where they were going to stretch Him out on a cross, something shifted within me. I remember it was cold outside, crisp, and the leaves in the trees of the park across the street were getting tired and dry.

• From The Principles of Psychology (Volume 1 of 2) (1890)

  The second, which could then always be known by default, was often not clearly distinguished in itself. When the time was too short, the first could not be isolated from the second at all. The second way was to accommodate the attention for a certain sort of signal, and the next moment to become aware in memory of whether it came before or after its mate. "This way brings great uncertainty with it. The impression not prepared for comes to us in the memory more weak than the other, obscure as it were, badly fixed in time. We tend to take the subjectively stronger stimulus, that which we were intent upon, for the first, just as we are apt to take an objectively stronger stimulus to be the first. Still, it may happen otherwise. In the experiments from touch to sight it often seemed to me as if the impression for which the attention was not prepared were there already when the other came." Exner found himself employing this method oftenest when the impressions differed strongly.[330] In such observations (which must not be confounded with those where the two signals were identical and their successiveness known as mere doubleness , without distinction of which came first), it is obvious that each signal must combine stably in our perception with a different instant of time. It is the simplest possible case of two discrepant concepts simultaneously occupying the mind. Now the case of the signals being simultaneous seems of a different sort. We must turn to Wundt for observations fit to cast a nearer light thereon. The reader will remember the reaction-time experiments of which we treated in Chapter III. It happened occasionally in Wundt's experiments that the reaction-time was reduced to zero or even assumed a negative value, which, being translated into common speech, means that the observer was sometimes so intent upon the signal that his reaction actually coincided in time with it, or even preceded it , instead of coming a fraction of a second after it, as in the nature of things it should. More will be said of these results anon. Meanwhile Wundt, in explaining them, says this: "In general we have a very exact feeling of the simultaneity of two stimuli , if they do not differ much in strength.

• From Blue Like Jazz (2003)

  The whole idea of everybody wanting to be somebody new was an important insight in terms of liking God. God was selling something I wanted. Still, God was in the same boat as the guy selling the knives and Juliet promising to make Romeo new. Everybody exaggerates when they are selling something. Everybody says their product works like magic. At the time I understood God’s offer as a magical proposition, which it is. But most magical propositions are just tricks. The older you get, the harder it is to believe in magic. The older you get, the more you understand there is no Wizard of Oz, just a schmuck behind a curtain. I pictured my pastor as a salesman or a magician, trying to trick the congregation into believing Jesus could make us new. And, honestly, I felt as though he was trying to convince himself, as though he only half believed what he was saying. It’s not that Christian spirituality seemed like a complete con, it’s just that it had some of those elements. The message, however, was appealing to me. God said He would make me new. I can’t pretend for a second I didn’t want to be made new, that I didn’t want to start again. I did. There were aspects of Christian spirituality I liked and aspects I thought were humdrum. I wasn’t sure what to do. I felt I needed to make a decision about what I believed. I wished I could have subscribed to aspects of Christianity but not the whole thing. I’ll explain. I associated much of Christian doctrine with children’s stories because I grew up in church. My Sunday school teachers had turned Bible narrative into children’s fables. They talked about Noah and the ark because the story had animals in it. They failed to mention that this was when God massacred all of humanity. It also confused me that some people would look at parts of the Bible but not the whole thing. They ignored a lot of obvious questions. I felt as if Christianity, as a religious system, was a product that kept falling apart, and whoever was selling it would hold the broken parts behind his back trying to divert everybody’s attention. The children’s story stuff was the thing I felt Christians were holding behind their back. The Garden of Eden, the fall of man, was a pretty silly story, and Noah and the ark, all of that, that seemed pretty fairy-tale too.

• From The Hours (1998)

  You remember all that, don’t you?” He says, “Yes.” Then he says, “No.” “Which is it?” she asks. “Sorry. I seem to keep thinking things have already happened. When you asked if I remembered about the party and the ceremony, I thought you meant, did I remember having gone to them. And I did remember. I seem to have fallen out of time.” “The party and ceremony are tonight. In the future.” “I understand. In a way, I understand. But, you see, I seem to have gone into the future, too. I have a distinct recollection of the party that hasn’t happened yet. I remember the award ceremony perfectly.” “Did they bring your breakfast this morning?” she asks. “What a question. They did.” “And did you eat it?” “I remember eating it. But it’s possible that I only meant to. Is there a breakfast lying around here somewhere?” “Not as far as I can see.” “Then I suppose I managed to eat it. Food doesn’t matter much, does it?” “Food matters a great deal, Richard.” He says, “I don’t know if I can bear it, Clarissa.” “Bear what?” “Being proud and brave in front of everybody. I recall it vividly. There I am, a sick, crazy wreck reaching out with trembling hands to receive his little trophy.” “Honey, you don’t need to be proud. You don’t need to be brave. It’s not a performance.” “Of course it is. I got a prize for my performance, you must know that. I got a prize for having AIDS and going nuts and being brave about it, it had nothing to do with my work.” “Stop this. Please. It has everything to do with your work.” Richard draws and exhales a moist, powerful breath. Clarissa thinks of his lungs, glistening red pillows intricately embroidered with veins. They are, perversely, among his least compromised organs—for unknowable reasons, they have remained essentially unharmed by the virus. With that potent breath his eyes seem to focus, to gain greener depths. “You don’t think they’d give it to me if I were healthy, do you?” he says. “Why, yes, as a matter of fact, I do.” “Please.” “Well, then, maybe you should refuse it.” “That’s the awful thing,” Richard says. “I want the prize. I do. It would be far easier if one cared either more or less about winning prizes. Is it here somewhere?” “What?” “The prize. I’d like to look at it.” “You haven’t gotten it yet. It’s tonight.” “Yes. That’s right. Tonight.” “Richard, dear, listen to me. This can be simple. You can take simple, straightforward pleasure in this. I’ll be there with you, every minute.” “I’d like that.” “It’s a party. It’s only a party. It will be populated entirely by people who respect and admire you.” “Really? Who?” “You know who. Howard. Elisa.

• From Blue Like Jazz (2003)

  The truth is I had met the enemy in the woods and discovered they were not the enemy. I wondered whether any human being could be an enemy of God. On the other hand, however, I felt by loving liberal people, I mean by really endorsing their existence, I was betraying the truth of God because I was encouraging them in their lives apart from God. I felt like there was this war going on between us, the Christians, and them, the homosexuals and environmentalists and feminists. By going to a Unitarian church and truly loving those people, I was helping them, I was giving joy to their life and that didn’t feel right. It was a terrible place to be. This was, at the time, my primary problem with Christian faith. With all its talk about pure love, in the end it shook down to conditional love. Again, this is a provocative statement, but I want to walk you through the emotional process I went through. How could I merge the culture of the woods and the Unitarian church with Christian culture and yet not abandon the truth of Scripture? How could I love my neighbor without endorsing what, I truly believed, was unhealthy spirituality? My answer did not come for many years, and as for that summer, I became very confused. I gave in to keep the peace. I stopped going to the Unitarian church, I shaved, I cut the hippy act and made friends, good friends, friends whom I loved and who loved me. From time to time I would overhear comments by my friends, destructive comments about the political left or about homosexuals or Democrats, and I never knew what to do with those comments. They felt right in my head but not in my heart. I went along, and, looking back, I think we all went along. Even the people who were making the comments were going along. What else was there to do? Truth is truth. [image "9780785263708_0230_002" file=Image00087.jpg] It is always the simple things that change our lives. And these things never happen when you are looking for them to happen. Life will reveal answers at the pace life wishes to do so. You feel like running, but life is on a stroll. This is how God does things. My realization came while attending an alumni social for Westmont College. I had never attended Westmont, but my friend Michelle did, and she invited me. Greg Spencer, a communications professor, was to speak, and Michelle thought I might enjoy the lecture. I did. More than I can say. The lecture was about the power of metaphor. Spencer opened by asking us what metaphors we think of when we consider the topic of cancer. We gave him our answers, all pretty much the same, we battle cancer, we fight cancer, we are rebuilding our white blood cells, things like that. Spencer pointed out that the overwhelming majority of metaphors we listed were war metaphors.

• From The Principles of Psychology (Volume 1 of 2) (1890)

  Their submerged consciousness was of course seeing them, or the hand could not have written as it did. Colors are similarly perceived by the sub-conscious self, which the hysterically color-blind eyes cannot bring to the normal consciousness. Pricks, burns, and pinches on the anæsthetic skin, all unnoticed by the upper self, are recollected to have been suffered, and complained of, as soon as the under self gets a chance to express itself by the passage of the subject into hypnotic trance. It must be admitted, therefore, that in certain persons , at least, the total possible consciousness may be split into parts which coexist but mutually ignore each other , and share the objects of knowledge between them. More remarkable still, they are complementary . Give an object to one of the consciousnesses, and by that fact you remove it from the other or others. Barring a certain common fund of information, like the command of language, etc., what the upper self knows the under self is ignorant of, and vice versa . M. Janet has proved this beautifully in his subject Lucie. The following experiment will serve as the type of the rest: In her trance he covered her lap with cards, each bearing a number. He then told her that on waking she should not see any card whose number was a multiple of three. This is the ordinary so-called 'post-hypnotic suggestion,' now well known, and for which Lucie was a well-adapted subject. Accordingly, when she was awakened and asked about the papers on her lap, she counted and said she saw those only whose number was not a multiple of 3. To the 12, 18, 9, etc., she was blind. But the hand , when the sub-conscious self was interrogated by the usual method of engrossing the upper self in another conversation, wrote that the only cards in Lucie's lap were those numbered 12, 18, 9, etc., and on being asked to pick up all the cards which were there, picked up these and let the others lie. Similarly when the sight of certain things was suggested to the sub-conscious Lucie, the normal Lucie suddenly became partially or totally blind. "What is the matter? I can't see!" the normal personage suddenly cried out in the midst of her conversation, when M. Janet whispered to the secondary personage to make use of her eyes. The anæsthesias, paralyses, contractions and other irregularities from which hysterics suffer seem then to be due to the fact that their secondary personage has enriched itself by robbing the primary one of a function which the latter ought to have retained.

• From Buddenbrooks: The Decline of a Family (1901)

  "How is it possible!" he said, with a desolate shake of his head... "In these few years!" "Child's play!" replied Herr Kesselmeyer in a good mood. »In four years one can very well be thrown to the dogs! When you think how merrily the Westfahl brothers were jumping around in Bremen a short time ago..." The Consul blinked at him, neither seeing nor hearing him. He had by no means expressed the real thought he was mulling over... Why, he wondered suspiciously yet uncomprehendingly, why all this now? B. Grünlich could have been where he is now two or three years ago; you could see that at a glance. But his credit had been inexhaustible, he had received capital from the banks, he had repeatedly received the signatures of solid houses like Senator Bock and Consul Goudstikker for his ventures, and his bills of exchange had circulated like cash. Why now, now, now - and the boss of the company Johann Buddenbrook knew well what he meant by this now - this collapse on all sides, This total withdrawal of all trust as if by agreement, this unanimous attack on B. Grünlich, neglecting every consideration, even every form of politeness? The Consul would have been far too naive if he had not known that the prestige of his own house after Grünlich's engagement to his daughter must have benefited his son-in-law as well. But had the latter's credit depended so completely, so blatantly, so exclusively on his? Was Grünlich himself nothing? And the inquiries made by the consul, the books he had examined?... Whatever happened, his resolution not to lift a finger in the matter stood firmer than ever. One should Greenish, putting aside every consideration, indeed every form of politeness? The Consul would have been far too naive if he had not known that the prestige of his own house after Grünlich's engagement to his daughter must have benefited his son-in-law as well. But had the latter's credit depended so completely, so blatantly, so exclusively on his? Was Grünlich himself nothing? And the inquiries made by the consul, the books he had examined?... Whatever happened, his resolution not to lift a finger in the matter stood firmer than ever. One should Greenish, putting aside every consideration, indeed every form of politeness? The Consul would have been far too naive if he had not known that the prestige of his own house after Grünlich's engagement to his daughter must have benefited his son-in-law as well. But had the latter's credit depended so completely, so blatantly, so exclusively on his? Was Grünlich himself nothing? And the inquiries made by the consul, the books he had examined?... Whatever happened, his resolution not to lift a finger in the matter stood firmer than ever. One should that after Grünlich's engagement to his daughter the prestige of his own house must also have benefited his son-in-law. But had the latter's credit depended so completely, so blatantly, so exclusively on his? Was Grünlich himself nothing?

• From Blue Like Jazz (2003)

  How could I merge the culture of the woods and the Unitarian church with Christian culture and yet not abandon the truth of Scripture? How could I love my neighbor without endorsing what, I truly believed, was unhealthy spirituality? My answer did not come for many years, and as for that summer, I became very confused. I gave in to keep the peace. I stopped going to the Unitarian church, I shaved, I cut the hippy act and made friends, good friends, friends whom I loved and who loved me. From time to time I would overhear comments by my friends, destructive comments about the political left or about homosexuals or Democrats, and I never knew what to do with those comments. They felt right in my head but not in my heart. I went along, and, looking back, I think we all went along. Even the people who were making the comments were going along. What else was there to do? Truth is truth. It is always the simple things that change our lives. And these things never happen when you are looking for them to happen. Life will reveal answers at the pace life wishes to do so. You feel like running, but life is on a stroll. This is how God does things. My realization came while attending an alumni social for Westmont College. I had never attended Westmont, but my friend Michelle did, and she invited me. Greg Spencer, a communications professor, was to speak, and Michelle thought I might enjoy the lecture. I did. More than I can say. The lecture was about the power of metaphor. Spencer opened by asking us what metaphors we think of when we consider the topic of cancer. We gave him our answers, all pretty much the same, we battle cancer, we fight cancer, we are rebuilding our white blood cells, things like that. Spencer pointed out that the overwhelming majority of metaphors we listed were war metaphors. They dealt with battle. He then proceeded to talk about cancer patients and how, because of war metaphor, many people who suffer with cancer feel more burdened than, in fact, they should. Most of them are frightened beyond their need to be frightened, and this affects their health. Some, feeling that they have been thrust into a deadly war, simply give up. If there were another metaphor, a metaphor more accurate, perhaps cancer would not prove so deadly. Science has shown that the way people think about cancer affects their ability to deal with the disease, thus affecting their overall health. Professor Spencer said that if he were to sit down with his family and tell them he had cancer they would be shocked, concerned, perhaps even in tears, and yet cancer is nothing near the most deadly of diseases. Because of war metaphor, the professor said, we are more likely to fear cancer when, actually, most people survive the disease.

• From Blue Like Jazz (2003)

  15 Community Living with Freaks BEFORE I LIVED IN COMMUNITY, I THOUGHT FAITH, mine being Christian faith, was something a person did alone, like monks in caves. I thought the backbone of faith was time alone with God, time reading ancient texts and meditating on poetry or the precepts of natural law and, perhaps, when a person gets good and godly, levitating potted plants or pitchers of water. It seems that way in books. I had read a Christian book about the betterment of self, the actualization of the individual in the personal journey toward God. The book was all about focus and drive and perspective. It was all stuff you did in a quiet room. None of it had anything to do with community. If other people were a part of the Christian journey, they had small roles; they were accountability partners or counselors or husbands or wives. I hadn’t seen a single book (outside the majority of books in the New Testament) that addressed a group of people or a community with advice about faith. When I walked into the Christian section of a bookstore, the message was clear: Faith is something you do alone. Rick does not have much tolerance for people living alone. He’s like Bill Clinton in that he feels everyone’s pain. If Rick thinks somebody is lonely, he can’t sleep at night. He wants us all to live with each other and play nice so he can get some rest. Tortured soul. I didn’t know what to think about the idea of living in community at first. I had lived on my own for about six years, and the idea of moving in with a bunch of slobs didn’t appeal to me. Living in community sounded so, um, odd. Cults do that sort of thing, you know. First you live in community, and then you drink punch and die. It was Rick’s idea, though, and he seemed fairly normal in all the other areas of his life. He never mentioned anything about a spaceship trailing behind a comet. He never asked us to store weapons or peanut butter, so I figured the thing about living in community was on the up-and-up. Just because something looks like a cult doesn’t mean it really is, right? The other thing is that, at the time, I was pushing thirty and still not married. When you are thirty and not married and you move in with a bunch of guys, you look like you have given up, like you are a bunch of losers who live together so you can talk about computers and share video games. If I lived in community, we would have to have about five raging parties just to shake the loser image. But I am not one to party. I like going to bed at nine and watching CNN till I fall asleep.

• From Saint Thomas Aquinas Collection (22 Books) (2016)

  THEOPHYLACT. A certain heretical sect of the Jews called Sadducees denied the resurrection, and said that there was neither angel nor spirit. These then coming to Jesus, craftily proposed to Him a certain tale, in order to shew that no resurrection should take place, or had taken place; and therefore there is added, And they asked him, saying, Master. And in this tale they lay down that seven men had married one woman, in order to make men draw back from belief in the resurrection. BEDE. (ubi sup.) And fitly do they frame such a fable in order to prove the madness of those who assert the resurrection of the body. Such a thing however might really have happened at some time or other among them. PSEUDO-JEROME. But in a mystical sense: what can this woman, leaving no seed of seven brothers, and last of all dying, mean except the Jewish synagogue, deserted by the seven-fold Spirit, which filled those seven patriarchs, who did not leave to her the seed of Abraham, that is, Jesus Christ? For although a Son was born to them, nevertheless He was given to us Gentiles. This woman was dead to Christ, nor shall she be joined in the resurrection to any patriarch of the seven; for by the number seven is meant the whole company of the faithful. Thus it is said contrariwise by Isaiah, Seven women shall take hold of one man; (Is. 4:1) that is, the seven Churches, which the Lord loves, reproves, and chastises, adore Him with one faith. Wherefore it goes on: And Jesus answering, said unto them, Do ye not therefore err, not knowing the Scripture, neither the power of God? THEOPHYLACT. As if He had said, Ye understand not what sort of a resurrection the Scriptures announce; for ye believe that there will be a restoration of our bodies, such as they are now, but it shall not be so. Thus then ye know not the Scriptures; neither again do ye know the power of God; for ye consider it as a difficult thing, saying, How can the limbs, which have been scattered, be united together and joined to the soul? But this in respect of the Divine power is as nothing. There follows: For when they shall rise from the dead, they neither marry, nor are given in marriage; but are as the angels which are in heaven; as if He had said, There will be a certain heavenly and angelic restoration to life, when there shall be no more decay, and we shall remain unchanged; and for this reason marriage shall cease. For marriage now exists on account of our decay, that we may be carried on by succession of our race, and not fail; but then we shall be as the Angels, who need no succession by marriage, and never come to an end.