Contentment

Passages

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

Page 13 of 189 · 20 per page

• From Come As You Are (2015)

  If you’re learning to orgasm with a partner, do all of this alone for a week (or three), then do it with a photo of your partner sitting beside you. Do that for a week (or three). Then do it with them maybe on the phone or in the next room. Then with them in the room but far away, in the dark, blindfolded, and facing the other way. Gradually increase their proximity and even the light. Once you’re orgasming with your partner on the bed with you, begin showing them what feels good to you. Move your partner’s hands on your body to show them what you like. And always, notice if you’re getting frustrated and remember that you are already at the goal: pleasure. appendix 2: extended orgasmExtending and expanding your orgasms is a kind of meditation. If you’ve never meditated in nonsexual ways, it might be easiest if you begin by practicing outside the context of sexuality. Here’s how. Begin with a simple breathing exercise like the one I describe in the spectatoring section in chapter 8. Inhale through your nose for five seconds. Then exhale through your mouth for ten seconds. Do that eight times, for a total of two minutes. As you breathe, your mind will wander to other things. That is normal and healthy! The point is not to prevent your mind from wandering but to notice when that happens, let those thoughts go for the moment, and gently return your attention to your breathing. The breathing is good for you, but the noticing that your mind wandered and returning your attention to your breath is the crucial skill. Do this every day, and gradually you’ll notice yourself noticing what you’re paying attention to all the time. Once that’s happening spontaneously, you’re ready to begin moving toward extended orgasm. When you’re ready, create a context where you have lots of time on your own (or with a partner you trust) without interruption or distraction. You’ll need an hour or two—and if you’re thinking, “I don’t have an hour or two to have an orgasm,” that’s totally fair! Extended orgasm is the sex equivalent of running a marathon. You can be as healthy as anyone needs to be and never run a marathon. Just jog a few times a week, that’s great! But sometimes you have the opportunity to set an ambitious goal and dedicate some time and attention to it. Whether it’s a marathon or ecstasy, it’s always a choice you make, depending on what fits your life. So. Create a context. And begin with the breathing exercise for two minutes, practicing returning your attention to your breath when it strays. Then begin a little sensory exploration, paying attention to how your body feels, using all the techniques in the therapeutic masturbation approach (appendix 1).

• From Come As You Are (2015)

  “We already have a vibrator,” was how Johnny put it. But they thought, What the hell. We paid for these arts-and-crafts supplies. We got your mother to babysit. We made a hotel reservation. Let’s just go, and whatever happens (or not), happens (or not). The box included instructions, laying out their evening and some rules, but they didn’t follow the rules. They talked about it all in the car on the way to the hotel, laughing the whole time. They had a pizza delivered and they kept talking about it, and talking about other things, too—work, kid, family. They just talked about stuff and remembered how much they like each other. Then Laurie had a bubble bath, taking a book of erotic stories with her into the tub. I’ll fast-forward through the rest of the evening by suggesting you hum “Can You Feel the Love Tonight?” to yourself for a few minutes. At what point in the evening did Laurie start experiencing something she would describe as actual “desire”? About halfway through the massage Johnny gave her when she got out of the tub and strolled to the bed wearing nothing but a lacy bra and perfumed body lotion. At what point did Johnny start experiencing desire? In the car on the way there. But it worked out just fine. It was an expensive night, and it required a significant amount of planning ahead, but it got Laurie all the way out of the parenting-bosslady-student-OMG-life state of mind and into a Johnny-and-me-sexytime state of mind that allowed her stressors to slip into the shadows of her attention for a while, while hey-sexy-lady stood in the spotlight. And all they changed was the context. “why can’t I just take a pill?”When you believe there’s something wrong with you, your stress response kicks in. And when your stress response kicks in, your interest in sex evaporates (for most people). Insisting that spontaneous desire is the only “normal” desire is insisting that a healthy person with responsive desire is sick. Say it often enough and eventually they’ll believe you. And when they believe you, suddenly it’s true. The myth makes people sick. This is exactly what I saw during the FDA approval of the drug Flibanserin, a drug to treat “low desire.” It’s a pill you take every day. For what benefit? According to the FDA analysis of the data, women on the drug had less than one additional “satisfying sexual event” per month, compared to those on the placebo; overall, approximately 12 percent of study participants were “at least minimally improved” above placebo, which means that about 88 percent of participants experienced not even minimal benefit above placebo.14 (Unsurprisingly, it was not a bonanza.)

• From Come As You Are (2015)

  The biological message is simple: Female ejaculation is a byproduct, like male nipples and the hymen. No matter how big a deal culture makes of it, people just vary. One woman I know never ejaculated in her life until shortly after menopause, when she got a new partner. All of a sudden she was ejaculating a quarter of a cup of fluid with every orgasm. Was it the change in partner? Was it the hormonal shift of menopause? None of the above? I have no idea. Some research has found that the number of Skene’s glands orifices (that is, the number of holes exiting the Skene’s glands) predicts whether someone ejaculates.8 Does the presence of more openings increase the likelihood of ejaculation? Does ejaculation lead to the development of more openings? Again, no idea. But this brings me to an important point about genitals: They get wet sometimes, and they have a fragrance. A scent. A rich and earthy bouquet, redolent of grass and amber, with a hint of woody musk. Genitals are aromatic, sometimes, and sticky sometimes, too. Ellen Støkken Dahl and Nina Brochmann, authors of the women’s sexuality book The Wonder Down Under, introduced the phrase “disco mouse” to describe the vulva after a long, sweaty day. Your genital secretions are probably different at different phases in your menstrual cycle, and they change as you age, and they change with your diet—women vary. If you don’t find the smell or sensation of genital wetness to be completely beautiful and entrancing, that’s unsurprising given how we teach people to feel about their genitals. But how you feel about your genitals and their secretions is learned, and loving your body just as it is will give you more intense pleasure and desire and bigger, better orgasms. More on that in chapter 5. intersex partsIntersex folks,9 whose genitals are not obviously male or female at birth, also have all the same parts; theirs happen to be organized somewhere between the standard female and standard male configurations. The size of the phallus, the location of the urethral opening, or the split of the labioscrotal tissue may be anywhere in between.

• From The John Dominic Crossan Essential Set (Jesus; The Birth of Christianity; The Power of Parable; The Greatest Prayer) (2004)

  But the seventh day is a sabbath to the Lord your God; you shall not do any work—you, or your son or your daughter, or your male or female slave, or your ox or your donkey, or any of your livestock, or the resident alien in your towns, so that your male and female slave may rest as well as you. Remember that you were a slave in the land of Egypt, and the Lord your God brought you out from there with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm; therefore the Lord your God commanded you to keep the sabbath day. (Deuteronomy 5:12–15) The sabbath day represents a temporary stay of inequality, a day of rest for everyone alike, for animals and humans, for slaves and owners, for children and adults. Why? Because that is how God sees the world. Sabbath rest sends all alike back to symbolic egalitarianism. It is a regular stay against the activity that engenders inequality on the other days of the week. The sabbath year is to years as the sabbath day is to days. Every seventh year is also special. It represents another stay against inequality. Notice, once again, how its reason is formulated in that earliest Covenant Code. For six years you shall sow your land and gather in its yield; but the seventh year you shall let it rest and lie fallow, so that the poor of your people may eat; and what they leave the wild animals may eat. You shall do the same with your vineyard, and with your olive orchard. (Exodus 23:10–11) Leaving land periodically fallow to have minerals replenished by animal pasturing and organic manuring is not particularly unusual. But what exactly is imagined in that law? Léon Epsztein suggests that the land “could not have been left fallow. It was cultivated, but once the harvest was reaped, it was not taken in; the corn was left spread on the ground to be there for those who needed it…. [I]t is improbable that this measure was applied to all Israel at the same time; it is more probable that each farmer adopted the measure at regular intervals in rotation” (132). Norman Habel claims, to the contrary, that “the land sabbath, unlike the fallow law, applies to all arable land during the sabbath year; every seven years all agriculture is to cease in the land” (103). That seems a more correct reading of the law, especially since Josephus records the following decree of Julius Caesar in 47 B.C.E. concerning taxes from the Jewish homeland: Gaius Caesar, Imperator for the second time, has ruled that they shall pay a tax for the city of Jerusalem, Joppa excluded [included?], every year except in the seventh year, which they call the sabbatical year, because at that time they neither take fruit from the trees nor do they sow.

• From Come As You Are (2015)

  I’ll illustrate this with my favorite research paper on the subject, a small study that looked at the role of mindfulness in people’s experiences with generalized anxiety disorder.5 The researchers measured, among other things, participants’ anxiety symptoms and the degree of interference with daily life these symptoms caused, along with participants’ responses on the Five Facet Mindfulness Questionnaire (FFMQ). Two of the five facets are “observe”—noticing your internal experience—and “nonjudge”—not categorizing your internal experience as either good or bad. So dig this: Research participants who were less affected by their symptoms did not experience lower frequency or severity of symptoms, nor were they more aware of their internal state—the “observe” factor. Nope. The people who were less impacted by their symptoms were those who were more nonjudging! In other words, it isn’t the symptoms that predict how much anxiety disrupts a person’s life, it’s how a person feels about those symptoms. It’s not how you feel—it’s not even being aware of how you feel. It’s how you feel about how you feel. And people who feel nonjudging about their feelings do better. The body of research specifically measuring nonjudging in relation to sexual functioning is steadily growing. In an early, tiny study of sensorimotor sex therapy, women in the treatment group reported that the therapy helped them to feel less like they “should” be experiencing something in particular and more able to be gentle and forgiving with themselves.6 (Sound like anything from, oh, say, chapter 5? Remember self- compassion?) But the real win in recent research on nonjudgment and sex is the development of the Sexual Mindfulness Measure, based on the FFMQ. This development found that sexual mindfulness—nonjudgmental awareness—predicted sexual satisfaction, especially in women.7 Notice, though, it’s not awareness per se that makes the differences. For example, overall body awareness doesn’t affect arousal nonconcordance—it’s not that people are “unaware” that their bodies are doing stuff.8 It’s that people can be aware and nonjudging, or they can be aware and judging, afraid, ashamed, frustrated, resentful, or despairing. It’s the nonjudgment that makes the difference.9 Let’s look at five situations where nonjudging can help: feelings that happen for “no good reason,” healing trauma, resolving pain, increasing pleasure, and mourning the “shoulds.” What says, “You are awesome in bed!” more clearly than your partner’s orgasm? Your partner not being able to stop themselves from having an orgasm—especially if that partner has a slightly stubborn accelerator. Camilla thought through the “If I make you a pizza and you only eat one slice, how does that make me feel?” problem logically and came to a smart conclusion: They made a rule against her having orgasm. They could do anything else they wanted, but Camilla wasn’t allowed to have any orgasms. It’s a reverse psychology trick that you’d never expect to work in real life—“You don’t want to have an orgasm? Fine. You’re not allowed to have an orgasm!”—but it actually does.

• From Come As You Are (2015)

  No organization is better or worse than any other, and no phase in our life span is better or worse than any other; they’re just different. An apple tree can be healthy no matter what variety of apple it is—though one variety may need constant direct sunlight and another might enjoy some shade. And an apple tree can be healthy when it’s a seed, when it’s a seedling, as it’s growing, and as it fades at the end of the season, as well as when, in late summer, it is laden with fruit. But it has different needs at each of those phases in its life. You, too, are healthy and normal at the start of your sexual development, as you grow, and as you bear the fruits of living with confidence and joy inside your body. You are healthy when you need lots of sun, and you’re healthy when you enjoy some shade. That’s the true story. We are all the same. We are all different. We are all normal. the organization of this bookThe book is divided into four parts: (1) The (Not-So-Basic) Basics; (2) Sex in Context; (3) Sex in Action; and (4) Ecstasy for Everybody. The three chapters in the first part describe the basic hardware you were born with—a body, a brain, and a context. In chapter 1, I talk about genitals—their parts, the meaning we impose on those parts, and the science that proves definitively that yes, your genitals are perfectly healthy and beautiful just as they are. Chapter 2 details the sexual response mechanism in the brain—the dual control model of inhibition and excitation, or brakes and accelerator. Then in chapter 3, I introduce the ways that your sexual brakes and accelerator interact with the many other systems in your brain and environment, to shape whether a particular sensation or person turns you on, right now, in this moment. In the second part of the book, “Sex in Context,” we think about how all the basic hardware functions within the reality of your actual life—your emotions, your relationship, your feelings about your body, and your attitudes toward sex. Chapter 4 focuses on two primary emotional systems, love and stress, and the surprising and contradictory ways they can influence your sexual responsiveness. Then chapter 5 describes the cultural forces that shape and constrain sexual functioning, and how you can maximize the good things about this process and overcome the destructive things. What we’ll learn is that context—your external circumstances and your present mental state—is as crucial to your sexual wellbeing as your body and brain. Master the content in these chapters and your sexual life will transform—along with, quite possibly, the rest of your life.

• From Martin Luther (2016)

  He wondered if they wanted to go to bed themselves. He then walked into the next room, presumably the privy, and as he crossed the threshold, he spoke the words “Into your hand I commend my spirit, You have redeemed me, God of truth.” Returning to bed, he shook each person’s hand and wished them good night, telling them to pray for God and his gospel, “because the Council of Trent”—the meeting of the council of the Catholic Church that initiated the Counter-Reformation had finally begun in December 1545—“and the evil Pope fights bitterly with him.” 15 Jonas, Luther’s two sons Martin and Paul, his servant Ambrosius, and other servants kept watch by the bed. Around one in the morning he awoke, complaining again of cold and pain in the chest. “I think I will stay here at Eisleben where I was born and baptized,” he told Jonas with his usual wry humor. Again he walked into the privy unaided, repeating the same words as before. 16 Johann Aurifaber, Coelius, two doctors, the owner of the house, and a clutch of local dignitaries and their wives had joined those looking after him, and he was again rubbed and given warmed cushions. 17 He did not receive the last rites, in line with his conviction that extreme unction was not a sacrament: He trusted instead in his baptism. Luther spoke his final prayer, thanking God “that you revealed to me your dear Son Jesus Christ, in whom I believe, whom I have preached and proclaimed [and] whom the accursed Pope and all the godless shame, persecute and blaspheme against.” Even at the last, Luther balanced his love with his anger. 18 Another valuable medicine was tried, but Luther said, “I am traveling hence, I will relinquish my spirit.” Again he repeated three times very quickly, in Latin, “Father, into your hands I commend my spirit, You have redeemed me, God of Truth,” after which he fell silent. Jonas and Coelius now asked him, “Reverend Father, will you die faithful to Christ and to the doctrine you have preached?” “Yes,” Luther replied clearly, so that all those around could hear him. He fell asleep again and, after a quarter of an hour, he gave up his spirit “in stillness and great patience.” Jonas and Coelius, who wrote the account, noted that “no one could discern (to this we bear witnesses before God on our consciences) any unrest or discomfort of his body, or pains of death.” 19 Luther died, as he had lived, in public.

• From Come As You Are (2015)

  Nope. Despite the painstaking efforts of women’s magazines and even researchers to identify and label the various kinds of orgasms we could be having—G-spot orgasms, blended orgasms, uterine orgasms, vulval, and all the rest9—there can be only one. (Like The Highlander.) There’s just the sudden release of sexual tension, generated in different ways. Anatomically, physiologically, even evolutionarily, it doesn’t make much sense to talk about kinds of orgasms based on what body parts are stimulated.10 It’s true that orgasms generated through clitoral stimulation often feel different from orgasms generated through vaginal stimulation. But it’s also true that vaginally stimulated orgasms feel different from each other, and clitorally stimulated orgasms feel different from each other. Orgasms with a partner may feel different from orgasms without a partner, and orgasms with one particular partner may feel different from orgasms with a different partner, and orgasms with one partner may feel different from sexual encounter to sexual encounter. If we were going to categorize orgasms by how they feel, we’d need a new category for every orgasm a woman has. Just as all vulvas are normal and healthy just as they are, so all orgasms are normal and healthy, regardless of what kind of stimulation generated them or how they feel. An orgasm’s value comes not from how it came to be or whether it meets some arbitrary criteria but from whether you liked it and wanted it. It comes to this: Pleasure is the measure. Pleasure is the measure of your orgasm—not what kind of stimulation created it, not how long it takes to get there, not how long it lasts or how strongly your pelvic floor muscle contracts. The only measure of your orgasm is how much you enjoy it. Orgasms were not Laurie’s problem. Once she got going, she found orgasm pretty reliable. No, Laurie’s problem was that the stress in her life built a stone wall between her and sexual pleasure of any kind. She and Johnny were learning how to break down that wall by changing the context… but following their “Can You Feel the Love Tonight?” success, Johnny got cocky. He pushed his luck. He started asking and pressing and chasing, which made Laurie feel more and more pressured, and soon she started to resent that he was asking, especially since he knew—he knew—that when she felt pressured, her interest evaporated. It was like he was trying to ruin it.

• From Lit: A Memoir (2009)

  You could be saying jump-rope rhymes, the monk informs me before the service. The breathing of the chants is supposed to relax you into a posture I couldn’t hold for the appointed time if you oil-canned my knees like Oz’s Tin Man. It’s a year before we follow Toby and his wife, Catherine, to their Catholic parish, maybe because I associate their church with the shame of my lapsed pals or the Inquisition’s torture devices. The whole surface of the room is sloppy with kids—toddlers zigzag down the aisles, babies squeak and yell. On the altar, Father Kane is a blue-eyed Irishman who takes us through Mass in the most unvarnished way, with none of the maudlin piety I’ve seen at some other churches and temples. At the outset, he seems humble without seeming bent or cowed. As a kid, I’d been dragged to a Mass by neighbors, where the priest downshifted in prayer into this slow, syrupy—extra-holy—way of talking, as the congregation no doubt prayed to get home in time for kickoff. When Father Kane breaks up the bread, the movements are simple, stripped of any show—with the solemn dignity of an enlightened master mechanic adjusting a carburetor—nothing pro forma about it. The process somehow erases him so he’s a clear conduit, and the keen quality of his attention draws me in . Toward the end of Mass, Dev whispers, Is that a yarmulke on his head? Since Dev goes to a Jewish after-school—the best in town—he’s covetous enough of a yarmulke that he once lopped the ears off his Mickey Mouse hat to make his own. I shush him, but Toby says under his breath, What is that? The priest has taped to the top of his scalp a round piece of wire mesh. From my vantage, I’d thought it was some holy hat, but now it looks like nothing so much as a small inverted sink-drain catcher. Father Kane tips the microphone and says sheepishly, I normally wouldn’t mention this, but I had a growth taken off my head. He pauses, almost blushing as he adds, I didn’t want you to think I’d joined the Hair Club for Men. Which draws hoots. Walking to the parking lot, I realize I forgot my paperback. For the first time since God-shopping, I haven’t cracked it open. Maybe I’m getting softheaded, I think, driving home. Or the burden of single-motherhood is making me a crackpot. Since Warren’s moved to New Haven for love and work, a church community seems like necessary parenting ballast, though twice a month, he drives in all weather to see Dev, even staying at our house, both alone and with his sweetheart. Still, if Dev loses the bow to his school-owned bass the night before a concert or needs his basketball hoop set to regulation height the night before his birthday party, it falls to me.

• From Lit: A Memoir (2009)

  I walk back to the table with a pearl balanced in my middle. And Lord am I hungry. Lux is in place, and my wineglass has been swept away, replaced by ice water. I ask for the bread basket and tear off a piece of the rough Tuscan bread and dunk it in the peppery green olive oil—never has bread tasted so good. I gobble up three pieces before the salad comes. For most of the meal, I sit dumb as a stump, honestly listening to other people’s tales with little thought for where I can wedge in a comment to justify all the chow I’m wolfing down. As the dessert plates are being cleared away, Toby nudges me to ask after Mother, whose travails I regaled him with as a student. Since I’ve just been in Texas to clear out her ex-boyfriend’s belongings that summer, her latest romantic misadventure is fresh in my head. Toby says, This was your mother’s new boyfriend? What happened to the nurse? She got sober. He didn’t, the nurse. That’s the hell of it. She picked this subsequent guy sober. At first Mother described the new guy as a boarder. Ben Barker, his name was. I expected some homely local Joe, but in the picture she sent, Ben towered over Mother with the lean frame of a basketballer. He had steely razor-cut hair and deep blue eyes. A health nut, Ben occupied a room in a house whose curtains were saturated with menthol smoke. He introduced to Mother’s kitchen the Cadillac of vegetable juicers along with a flat of wheatgrass for squeezing all the chlorophyll out of. It’s supposed to clean your liver, Mother told me. It’s filthy stuff to drink. How can you tell your liver’s dirty? I said. That’s what I wanted to know, Mother said. Tell me he’s got a job at least, I said. He’s retired, she said. I thought he was, like, fifty. (Which, by the way, was way younger than Mother.) She told me Ben had done well farming all over the Midwest, but the crop prices kept dropping and he’d sold out. He kept his truck parked in the garage but mostly tooled around the county on a racing bike worthy of the Tour de France. He also had a fancy fiberglass kayak he took out in the bayous at dawn among the alligators and morning glories. He got Mother taking pricey vitamins by the fistful. He wanted her to flush out her nose with salt water snorted from the spout of a porcelain Indian neti pot, but she eschewed that and kept burning cigarillos, though she did sip infusions of Chinese herbs he bought at the Buddhist temple run by Vietnamese monks. One morning Mother called me to ask a question I found strange. Did you ever meet somebody you thought wasn’t who they said they were?

• From Come As You Are (2015)

  The standard narrative of sexual desire is that it just appears—you’re sitting at lunch or walking down the street, maybe you see a sexy person or think a sexy thought, and pow! you’re saying to yourself, “I would like some sex!” That’s Olivia’s usual style. That’s “spontaneous” desire. But some people find that they begin to want sex only after sexy things are already happening. Rather than eagerly anticipating sex, they might have a pragmatic motivation for showing up at 7 p.m. on Saturday night, because date night is on their calendar. They put their bodies in the bed, let their skin touch their partner’s skin… and their body wakes up and says, “Oh, right! I like this person! I enjoy this!” That’s responsive desire. Where spontaneous desire appears in anticipation of pleasure, responsive desire emerges in response to pleasure. And it’s normal. People with responsive desire don’t have “low” desire, they don’t suffer from any ailment, they don’t even long to initiate but feel like they’re not allowed to. Their bodies just need some more compelling reason than, “Sex is generally fun,” or “That’s an attractive person right there,” to crave sex. They can be sexually satisfied and in healthy relationships, and yet never crave sex out of the blue. That’s Camilla. Lack of spontaneous desire for sex is not, in itself, dysfunctional or problematic! Let me repeat: Responsive desire is normal and healthy. But actually? It turns out everyone’s sexual desire is responsive. It just feels more spontaneous for some and more responsive for others, because even though we’re all made of the same parts, the different organizations of those parts result in different experiences. Research suggests about half of women might be categorizable as one or the other, spontaneous or responsive.1 Most people’s desire style is probably—drumroll, please—context dependent. That’s Merritt and Laurie. And they’re normal, too. These are folks who, in the hot and heavy, falling-in-love stage of a relationship, may want sex seemingly out of nowhere, but ten years and some kids later, it takes a little more deliberate effort to get them interested in sex. So in this chapter I’ll explain what desire is, how it works, how to make the most of it, and what to do if you and your partner have different desire styles. We’ll start with where desire comes from: Desire is pleasure in context.2 We’ll spend some time talking about what’s unlikely to cause desire problems—hormones and monogamy—and what is much more likely to cause desire problems—sex-negative culture and the chasing dynamic. And we’ll wrap up the chapter with a left turn away from mere “desire” toward what matters most: sex worth wanting. desire = pleasure in contextThough details vary from person to person, we can experience desire in a variety of ways, depending on the context and the sensitivity of our brakes and accelerators. To illustrate, let’s think through three different scenarios, each with the same stimulation, same brakes and accelerator, but different contexts.

• From Martin Luther (2016)

  Married LifeNow forty-two, Luther was set in his ways. He would continue living in the same place he had been living since coming to Wittenberg fifteen years earlier. The only difference was that then there had been forty monks living in the Black Cloister and now there was only one former monk—and one former nun. But the success of Luther’s marriage is a testimony both to Luther and to his Kathie. He was cheerful toward her in all the years of their marriage, and when one considers how exceedingly cranky and angry he could be to everyone with whom he dealt, that is the more extraordinary. But as extraordinary as his marital cheer is, Luther had chosen what by all accounts was an extraordinary woman. She was significantly younger than he, by fourteen years, but somehow the two of them fit together as well as any couple could. Years later, he recalled his first year as a married man: Man has strange thoughts the first year of marriage. When sitting at table he thinks, “Before I was alone; now there are two.” Or in bed, when he wakes up, he sees a pair of pigtails lying beside him which he hadn’t seen there before. On the other hand, wives bring to their husbands, no matter how busy they may be, a multitude of trivial matters. So my Katy used to sit next to me at first while I was studying hard and would spin and ask, “Doctor, is the grandmaster the margrave’s brother?”19 Kathie respectfully called Luther Doktor, but from the full picture we get of her, we imagine she said this with a twinkle. And he always returned the favor by calling her Doktorin, which is the feminine version. One never gets the sense that she was out of her depth with him or that he found it difficult to relate to her because of her relative youth and lack of education.

• From Martin Luther (2016)

  Martin and Kathie’s wedding feast itself was to be on June 27, presumably to give out-of-town guests time to travel to Wittenberg. This was of course precisely two weeks after the marriage ceremony, and therefore also a Tuesday. Tuesdays were at that time for some reason thought to be lucky days for getting married, perhaps because there is a Jewish tradition that considers Tuesdays especially fortunate because in the first chapter of Genesis God says, “It was good,” twice on the second day of the week. On June 21, Luther invited his friend Nicholas von Amsdorf to the wedding feast: Indeed the rumor is true that I was suddenly married to Catherine; [I did this] to silence the evil mouths which are so used to complaining about me. For I still hope to live for a little while. In addition, I also did not want to reject this unique [opportunity to obey] my father’s wish for progeny, which he so often expressed. At the same time, I also wanted to confirm what I have taught by practicing it; for I find so many timid people in spite of such great light from the gospel. God has willed and brought about this step. For I feel neither passionate love nor burning for my spouse, but I cherish her. To give a [public] testimony of my wedding I shall give a banquet this coming Tuesday, where my parents will be present. I definitely wish that you, too, will be there. Therefore, since I wanted to invite you, I am inviting you now and ask you to be there if you can possibly do so.14 Luther of course must invite Leonhard Koppe, who had driven the getaway wagon when the Nimbschen twelve busted out of the convent. Luther asked Koppe and his dear wife to please bring a barrel of Torgau beer and teased him that if it didn’t taste good, Koppe would be forced to drink it all himself. Of course Luther invited his parents, as well as some other friends and family from Mansfeld. And when he invited Spalatin, he asked him to procure some venison from the Saxon court. It seems that anyone wishing to celebrate with game must become a mendicant. The city of Wittenberg gave Luther and his new bride a gift of twenty silver gulden and a barrel of Einbeck beer. Because the barrel cost nearly six gulden, it must have been magnificently large. Einbeck and Torgau were both famous for their beer during this period. Wenceslas Linck had himself been married for two years, and he came too, all the way from Altenburg, as did Melanchthon, who after all only lived down the block.

• From Anxiety at Work: 8 Strategies to Help Teams Build Resilience, Handle Uncertainty, and Get Stuff Done

  We find a collaborative goal-setting process like this can also build team spirit. As Adam Goodman, director of the Center for Leadership at Northwestern University, writes, “Working toward something together, that you’re committed to, forms strong bonds and fosters collaboration.” Open, mutual discussions like Lewin observed with team members help create a sense of shared vision; and according to our research, employees are much less likely to burn out when they can easily see the connection between their work and their team’s or organization’s larger mission and vision in a way that makes them feel that their job is vital and that the work they are doing is making a real difference. Method 2: Balance LoadsAs part of the collaborative roadmap process we just described, it’s essential to ensure that workloads are well-balanced among team members to avoid certain members becoming overwhelmed. In many teams we visit, we find a handful of stressed-out workhorses putting in seventy-hour weeks while other employees appear happy-go-lucky, heading home at five every day. How can a manager ensure everyone on the team has the right amount of work? DeNooyer of Keurig Dr Pepper adds that she monitors her team’s workload regularly and tries to create an environment where team members help each other during peak times to ensure no one gets overloaded too often. “I have weekly touchpoints with my team, and when I can tell that it’s getting too much, I’ll say, ‘Okay, what’s the list of things? And which ones do you have to do? Which ones can be shared with somebody else? Which ones can wait?’” By balancing in this way, she is methodical about setting priorities for the coming week, and is transparent about what trade-offs must be made, projects that can be delayed, and who else they might need to get involved. With this, we know some anxious employees are driven intrinsically to impress and take on more and more, and managers can tend to over-rely on these people because they are so willing. These folks end up doing disproportionately heavy lifting until it becomes too much. Yet it’s dangerous to conflate hours worked with productivity, as that can create more anxiety in the team. Hours and results are not the same thing. Some employees can get an incredible amount done in a typical workday and head out at five, and there’s nothing wrong with that. “It’s important to make sure your employees understand you don’t equate hours with productivity,” says Liane Davey, cofounder of 3COze Inc. The best way to do this, she says, is to openly praise strong performance, irrespective of hours worked. “If José put up great numbers last week—even if he leaves at 4:30 every day—you need to celebrate him in a public forum.

• From Anxiety at Work: 8 Strategies to Help Teams Build Resilience, Handle Uncertainty, and Get Stuff Done

  We conducted a job rotation exercise with our team and ended up shifting bookkeeping duties, which Adrian had been doing as one of the owners. The role was happily assumed by a team member who loved detail-oriented logistics. In short order, she became much better at the job than Adrian had ever been. She also appreciated the role, as it gave her a chance to learn, grow, and flex her analytical muscles. Method 4: Closely Monitor Progress An important next step to build resilience is to check in frequently with one’s team about how they are holding up, as a group and individually. A laissez-faire management approach rarely works—relying on the annual performance review as the only check-in, for instance—but neither does micromanaging people and leaving them feeling as if they’re watched over by “Big Brother” (the Orwellian type, not the CBS reality show). The sweet spot is in the middle, and if done correctly, employees greatly appreciate it. Rather than viewing check-ins as wielding a stick, see it as a way to allow team members to share challenges that are developing in a timely fashion, so that you can work together to find solutions. As Jamie Dimon, CEO of JPMorgan Chase, tells his team, “If there is a problem and you tell me, it’s our problem. If there’s a problem and you don’t tell me, it’s your problem.” It bears repeating that sometimes all an employee needs is a sympathetic ear to bend when he has an issue; other times he’ll need advice and intervention. Another highly successful senior executive offered similar advice on sharing challenges to her team. Shelly Lazarus, chairman emeritus of Ogilvy & Mather, once told us leaders should tell their team members: “If you are not going to hit a goal, please let me know earlier rather than later.” She reflected that, in too many companies, “we go through monthly meetings where people don’t fess up and admit: ‘I’m not going to make that number.’ The reason they don’t is that they think they are going to be punished. Rather than punishing them at that point, you should laud them in front of others and thank them for their honesty and for giving us the time to make the adjustments by the end of the year.”

• From Martin Luther (2016)

  On his return to Wittenberg, Luther had entered a new season, one in which challenges from such as Duke George—on the more hidebound traditionalist right—were matched by such as Karlstadt and Müntzer on the free radical Schwärmer left. He must now focus not merely on parrying the attacks on both flanks but also on defining what the new way forward would look like, although having people pushing on both sides helped bring definition to what lay between them. Still, the last thing Luther had ever expected to do was be saddled with the unfathomable challenge of creating what amounted to a new church—or at least a new denomination. But the events of the past years had brought him to this curious historical pass, and now he faced the task of figuring out what things should be, not only for his own congregation in Wittenberg, but for all those others in surrounding towns—and some very far away too, who looked to him for leadership. He would have to puzzle out exactly what a worship service would be like, and in the course of doing this, would find himself writing music and hymns, for one of his signal achievements in history would be bringing congregational singing into the church. In this first year back, Luther wrote a great deal in which he was trying to clarify what real faith meant and how a Christian ought to live. He wrote the Personal Prayer Book, in which he attempted to help counteract much that had passed for prayer and devotional life under the medieval church, in which rote prayers were said multiple times, as though God were doddering or distracted or simply disinclined to hear what we had to say. Luther understood that the God of the Bible was a loving father eager to hear the prayers of his children. What Luther wrote in a letter to an Austrian nobleman two years later helps us see the heart of this idea. This nobleman’s wife had died, so he had written to Luther about praying for her soul, saying that he had paid many priests to say private masses for her. Luther minced no words, saying that paying priests to pray for his deceased wife was “faithless.” It is sufficient for your grace earnestly to pray once or twice for her. For God has promised that whatever you ask for, believe that you will receive it and you will certainly have it (Luke 11:9–10). In contrast, when we pray over and over again for the same thing, it is a sign that we do not believe God and with our faithless prayer only make him angrier. True, we should regularly pray, but always in faith and certain that we are being heard. Otherwise, the prayer is in vain.17

• From Martin Luther (2016)

  But Jonas and Coeleus were both keenly aware that the manner of Luther’s death would soon be known all across Europe, and how he died was vitally important. To die ignobly or in terrible agony was always taken as a sign that the dead had gone not to his reward but to everlasting punishment. So for the historical record, they both shouted loudly, so that even someone on the very verge of eternity might hear: “Revered father! Are you ready to die trusting in your Lord Jesus Christ and to confess the doctrine which you have taught in his name?”8 Luther had heard them, for out of his mouth now came his last spoken word, a loud and distinct Ja. He then turned over onto his right side, which made them think perhaps he would recover, but then he slipped into a sleep and was from that point unresponsive. Fifteen or so minutes later, at about a quarter to three, he was observed to take a final especially deep breath, and then he gave up the ghost. It was obvious to all that he had died peacefully. But the apothecary, Johann Landau, had by now entered the scene, and in a final, vain attempt to revive Luther—one that amounted to a bizarrely fitting scatological postscript—he administered an enema to the lifeless body. It was unsuccessful. But in its way it can be seen as the kind of gallows humor that Luther was himself unable to suppress. He laughed at corporeality and celebrated it too. We could not be ethereal sprites unmoored from this earth or our own earthiness, literally or figuratively. From the ground we were made and back to the ground we would go, but God had seen fit in filling us creatures of earth with the very breath of heaven, with the wind of eternity. So it was not the devil who had the last laugh but us—and God. We who were made from the mud of Eden and who would be devoured by maggots as we returned to the soil would be resurrected on the Last Day, would fly in the air to meet with the loving Lord and King who made us, and both of us would have bodies, young and fresh—eternally young and beautiful. That is redemption: to make from these fleshly containers of blood and bile and excrement something so extraordinary that we could never ourselves be so free as to truly imagine it and appreciate it. But Luther would get closer than anyone before and would draw millions in his happy wake.

• From Martin Luther (2016)

  If the change to married life was jarring for anyone, it must have been jarring for Kathie. She moved from Cranach’s palatial and extremely well-appointed home to the near stable that was the Black Cloister. Since the monastery had been deserted, only Luther and another monk named Brisger lived there, plus Luther’s servant Sieberger, who was famously unacquainted with cleanliness and order. Brisger was soon married and moved out, and Sieberger built a small adjoining house for himself, so that the vast, tumbledown monument to men without women became Martin and Kathie’s to care for. To say that it benefited from this one woman’s touch would be a historical understatement. That Luther had previously lived as the quintessential bachelor is borne out by the following disgusting admission: “Before I was married the bed was not made for a whole year and became befouled with sweat.”20 The gag-inducing image of a straw mattress soaked with the perspiration of Martin Luther to the extent that it should become “foul”—even in his eyes—is enough to make almost anyone cheer at his having taken the plunge into marriage. And indeed, the fetid horrors of the Black Cloister would soon be exorcised by the dramatically capable Kathie. There is no question that she ran the household, doing more things than can be enumerated. Her work ranged from overseeing the much-needed paint and plaster repairs, to eventually raising hogs, cattle, and even fish. Kathie actually oversaw a fishpond that gave them trout, perch, pike, and carp, gathered via net. And then there was a nearby orchard that provided apples, pears, nuts, and peaches. Kathie also oversaw the barnyard. In addition to the pigs she raised, there were cows, ducks, and hens. It is a matter of record that the noble former nun did the slaughtering herself. Luther was in charge of the garden, where he grew melons, cucumbers, peas, lettuce, cabbage, and other things. He did much of the work himself there and was endlessly bothering his friends about sending seeds.

• From Lit: A Memoir (2009)

  Lux is in place, and my wineglass has been swept away, replaced by ice water. I ask for the bread basket and tear off a piece of the rough Tuscan bread and dunk it in the peppery green olive oil—never has bread tasted so good. I gobble up three pieces before the salad comes. For most of the meal, I sit dumb as a stump, honestly listening to other people’s tales with little thought for where I can wedge in a comment to justify all the chow I’m wolfing down. As the dessert plates are being cleared away, Toby nudges me to ask after Mother, whose travails I regaled him with as a student. Since I’ve just been in Texas to clear out her ex-boyfriend’s belongings that summer, her latest romantic misadventure is fresh in my head. Toby says, This was your mother’s new boyfriend? What happened to the nurse? She got sober. He didn’t, the nurse. That’s the hell of it. She picked this subsequent guy sober. At first Mother described the new guy as a boarder. Ben Barker, his name was. I expected some homely local Joe, but in the picture she sent, Ben towered over Mother with the lean frame of a basketballer. He had steely razor-cut hair and deep blue eyes. A health nut, Ben occupied a room in a house whose curtains were saturated with menthol smoke. He introduced to Mother’s kitchen the Cadillac of vegetable juicers along with a flat of wheatgrass for squeezing all the chlorophyll out of. It’s supposed to clean your liver, Mother told me. It’s filthy stuff to drink. How can you tell your liver’s dirty? I said. That’s what I wanted to know, Mother said. Tell me he’s got a job at least, I said. He’s retired, she said. I thought he was, like, fifty. (Which, by the way, was way younger than Mother.) She told me Ben had done well farming all over the Midwest, but the crop prices kept dropping and he’d sold out. He kept his truck parked in the garage but mostly tooled around the county on a racing bike worthy of the Tour de France. He also had a fancy fiberglass kayak he took out in the bayous at dawn among the alligators and morning glories. He got Mother taking pricey vitamins by the fistful. He wanted her to flush out her nose with salt water snorted from the spout of a porcelain Indian neti pot, but she eschewed that and kept burning cigarillos, though she did sip infusions of Chinese herbs he bought at the Buddhist temple run by Vietnamese monks. One morning Mother called me to ask a question I found strange. Did you ever meet somebody you thought wasn’t who they said they were? I hadn’t. I’d met all manner of strange individuals. But other than a tripped-out guitar player who’d told everybody he was Moses, I’d never met anybody whose stated identity I questioned.

• From Lit: A Memoir (2009)

  Lying back in the fragrant water, I let a washcloth obliterate my features, rewinding to the days and hours before I got on the train. It’s the old story. Underslept and underfed, I’d been running with my shoulder bag thumping against my butt, doing quarterback dodges and rolls on crowded holiday streets, while behind me, pedestrians dove for cover. I was behind in every conceivable way. So the old attack dog started howling through my head as I’d loped. Take the subway, the sane voice had said. Take the subway, you can buy a sandwich. Then counterattack claimed I needed cardio for the blubber on my ass. A sandwich isn’t the solution. You need to refinance. You need five hundred dollars this week or Dev’s Christmas is Tiny Tim’s. You might as well call it the voice of the Adversary, for once I tune in to it, I’ve lost my real self—the God-made one, akin to others. The Adversary’s voice can suck me into the maelstrom of my tornado-force will, which’ll chew up anybody in its path, me included. The washcloth steams my features soft, and once the water’s cold, I oil myself up like a bodybuilder, slip on sweats, then towel-wrap my hair like a Turkish pasha. Heating up meatballs for Dev and his pals loudly playing air hockey in the basement, I do Patti’s list of what’s changed in ten years. The boys clattering downstairs are a nightly antidote to the shipwrecked household I grew up in, and we no longer have to roll coins from the sofa cushions in order to afford meatballs. Last month at Mother’s surprise birthday, I floated in the pool alongside her and Lecia while brother-in-law Tom worked the grill and Dev and his cousin did cannonballs. The night after the train debacle, I drive under a sky black as graphite to meet my new spiritual director for the Exercises—a bulky Franciscan nun named Sister Margaret, patiently going blind behind fish-tank glasses that magnify her eyes like goggles. Asked my concept of God, I mouth all the fashionable stuff—all-loving, all-powerful, etc. But as we talk, it bobs up that in periods of uncertainty or pain—forlorn childhood, this failed relationship—I often feel intentionally punished or abandoned. How’s that possible, I say, if I have no childhood experience of a punishing God? Margaret says, We often strap on to God the mask of whoever hurt us as children. If you’ve been neglected, God seems cold; if you’ve been bullied, He’s a tyrant. If you’re filled with self-hatred, then God is a monster making inventor. How do you feel sitting here with me now? I don’t know, like some slutty Catholic schoolgirl. She laughs at this and says, I see you—she peers through those lenses—what I can see of you, as my sister, God’s beloved child. The hairs on your head are numbered, and we’ve been brought together, you and me, to shine on each other a while. So you don’t judge me?